The problem is NOT too much spending. The problem is rich fucks not paying taxes!

[Hugabear]

If anything, we're not spending ENOUGH money. Education in many areas is a complete joke. Our health care system is broken. The ranks of the elderly are exploding, and people are being forced to work well past their retirement age. Homelessness is on the rise, as fatcat bankers force more and more people out of their homes.

How in the hell can anyone tell me that we're spending TOO MUCH money to help other people? If anything, we're not spending enough money! If we must make deep cuts, cut the military industrial complex, cut back on our worldwide empire.

No, the primary problem in this country is that the ultra-rich are not paying their fair share. It's time to not only end the Bush-era tax cuts (which really didn't create any jobs to begin with), but we need to significantly raise taxes on the richest of the rich. It's basic math. In order to reduce the deficit, you must either reduce spending or increase revenue. We can't really reduce spending without adversely affecting millions of our most vulnerable people, so the only alternative is to ask the wealthy to share more of the burden.

[gateley]

1. Preaching to the choir, Hugabear. We all know and agree! Rec! nt

[Vanje]

2. K. R. and a thumbs up to Hugabear nt

[abelenkpe]

3. +1000 nt

[Cronus Protagonist]

4. It's BOTH

We cannot fund a warfaring empire, pay for a fascist government, cut taxes for the rich AND simultaneously balance the books.

I say if there is an imbalance, remove something that's actually on the scales, don't break open the poor old lady's piggy bank to add to the stack.

[emilyg]

5. Correct.

[judgegblue]

6. Why aren't more Americans clamoring for a revenue increase

by taxing the wealthy who own this country. They own it, they ought to pay for its upkeep. The repubs often compare our budget to that of a family: don't spend what you don't have. Well, if a individual can't make ends meet on current income, the answer is not to quit eating or paying the rent, but to get more income, i.e. a second job. We need more revenue asaa country.

[grahamhgreen]

7. K&R every thread like this til they hear us!

[HappyMe]

8. Shut up!!!

Who would've thunk!



:D

[whosinpower]

9. The problem is that money is not liquid enough

And that is where taxes makes money move. The more hands it flows through, the healthier the economy, and the more value that currency has in purchasing power.

The ten dollars that the maid earned, gave her employer services rendered, and she in turn bought groceries, which enabled the grocer to pay for his suppliers, which in turn helped the farmer and the farmer paid the truckdriver who delivered it to the store, and the driver paid for gasoline, which helped the gas company, and the gas company paid its staff, etc, etc, etc. If you added it all up - that ten dollars far outlived its initial worth. Each time it passed through a set of hands, its value multiplied. BUT, if that ten dollars is locked up in a safe - it is only worth ten dollars.

Austerity measures locks up money. For the simple reason that people fear and worry that it may be their last, so they will hang on to it. Taxes opens up the safe and moves the money whether the owner wants to or not. It forces it to move. If private enterprise moved it along on its own, then there would be no need for higher taxes. And when private enterprise makes more money on the stock market, gambling than real life products and services, then they will never bother to hire workers to create a product to sell, or market a service. It is where the intent of Wall Street has been transformed into one big elaborate casino, betting on hunches and speculating, instead of providing capital to companies to grow.

The GOP believe that high taxes is a deterrent to private enterprise. Actually private enterprise forces the issue by not allowing the money to move, but rather to accumulate and hold it. And the more they hold, the less vibrant the economy, as a whole. The GOP believes that regulations are a deterrent to private enterprise. But, the very nature of private enterprise is to make profit above all else, and has no inclination to self regulate what is best for society as a whole. It would be very nice if government did not have to step in, but they do. It would be very nice if low taxes did not encourage wealth hoarding, but it does.

[PoliticAverse]

10. We're spending too much on the military.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. <…> Is there no other way the world may live?"

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/11/hbc-90001660

[Zax2me]

14. As a START, yes.

Military spending, cut in half.
But that is just a start.

[WinkyDink]

11. Now , now! We wouldn't want a BILLIONAIRE RIOT, would we?!

[TheMadMonk]

12. Actually in a good many areas, the US does spend about twice...

...as much as other countries and for that outlay delivers approximately half the service.

You are spending more than enough money. You are just spending it very, very badly.

And one of the major causes of that it the absolutely American meme, that there must ALWAYS be space in a transaction for someone to take a profit, which has culminated in the push to privatise everything from which a profit might be conceivably be drawn.

[Zax2me]

13. No. It's too much spending.

It keeps going up.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/past_spending
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html

While revenue has remained for the most part constant the past forty years.
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/revenue_history

To say now the rich fucks aren't paying enough, fine, but we should have addressed that BEFORE we went out and mortgaged the country three generations forward.
How back wards is this logic?
A kid buys a car for 2 grand after his dad only gives him 1 grand - kid tells salesman go to my dad for other grand, he's good for it.
He just didn't give me enough.
The dad would be in the right to say FU son, no car at all then.

We have to be more responsible with our spending.

Saying 'we aren't getting enough TO spend' gimme more while already spending more and more each year - is that what you call responsible?
No.
Which is why we were downgraded by the world and rightfully so.
The era of the big bully US is over.
All we are now is the spoiled rich kid asking for more money. More credit.

[Booster]

15. Your forgetting the people who lost their jobs and USED to pay

taxes. We need jobs for the average man and for the rich to lost their tax breaks. Oh, I forgot - END THESE GOD DAMN WARS.

[upi402]

16. yup, +1,000 n/t

[indepat]

17. The canard of shared sacrifice lacks a shred of creditability since it calls for

sacrifice of earned benefits on one hand whereas the uber-wealthy, who have been on a sucking frenzy at the public welfare teat for over thirty years, would be asked to give up a small portion of the largess currently being sprinkled upon them which has amounted to trillions of dollars to date. An example of loathsome disingeniousness rising to an ugly art form. :patriot:

[Pacifist Patriot]

18. And yet again I heard a smart ass right wing Republican whine about...

the longer bus ride her children were going to have this school year because of budget cuts in the same breath she praised a local tea party politician. She doesn't fucking get it.