Fuzzy, you have no clue whatsoever! The growing inequality in America isn't the government's fault; we've had thirty years of no holds barred free market capitalism, union busting, tax cuts for the rich and millions of jobs shipped overseas! I think this has much more to do with the decimation of the middle class than the federal government! According to an August 2008 GAO Report, the average effective rate of taxation on large corporations was about 25%, a post-WWII historic low! One reason for corporations outsourcing jobs is the four percent average effective rate of US federal corporate in one tax on foreign earnings; corporate profits are subject only to a small residual tax which is further reduced by a tax credit from the federal government on earnings taxed by foreign governments. This is further reduced by the tax deferal on unrepatriated profits! In 2004, Bush gave tax breaks to repatriate profits earned overseas. This actually cost jobs by encouraging even more outsourcing as the total effective corporate dropped even further below the 25% average as a result of the Bush policy!
Ron Paul would change none of this by simply eliminating federal intervention in the economy! We've come close enough to doing that and we've lost millions of jobs while creating the widest class disparity since 1929! Ron Paul's approach would worsen the already atrocious situation!
Ron Paul would change none of this by simply eliminating federal intervention in the economy! We've come close enough to doing that and we've lost millions of jobs while creating the widest class disparity since 1929! Ron Paul's approach would worsen the already atrocious situation!
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Gee, I wish I could be a slick, politically jaded guy like you fuzzy but all I have is my shitty little MA in political science from UW-Madison.
Social Security is so broke that it's run a surplus every year since 1940! The interest payments it makes by loaning funds to the federal government's general fund amounts to about 15% of total revenue collected (in fiscal '09 SS collected about $654 billion in FICA payroll taxes and earned about $120 billion in interest payments from the federal government). But right wing liars like Ron Paul use these inter-agency transactions to misleadingly argue that the fund is broke! What utter nonsense! All we need to do is raise the cap or create a doughnut hole so the millionaires pay more and problem solved!
As more and more income is concentrated in the hands of the rich, the taxable earnings base for Social Security shrinks, especially when hedge fund managers' income is taxed as capital gains rather than regular income! Raise the cap! Why can't we tax the rich? The economy only works for them these days!
Also, the health insurance mandate was not part of Obama's original plan; it was a public option or a Medicare buy in for qualified households! The private insurance companies wanted the mandate to diversify the insurance pool and eliminate "adverse selection" or the weighting of the pool towards older sicker patients! Frankly, expanding Medicare would solve all these problems but Republicans like Ron Paul would fight it on behalf of corporate interests! The claim that RP is anti-corporate is one of the biggest, and most transparent, lies of his whole political campaign!!
Social Security is so broke that it's run a surplus every year since 1940! The interest payments it makes by loaning funds to the federal government's general fund amounts to about 15% of total revenue collected (in fiscal '09 SS collected about $654 billion in FICA payroll taxes and earned about $120 billion in interest payments from the federal government). But right wing liars like Ron Paul use these inter-agency transactions to misleadingly argue that the fund is broke! What utter nonsense! All we need to do is raise the cap or create a doughnut hole so the millionaires pay more and problem solved!
As more and more income is concentrated in the hands of the rich, the taxable earnings base for Social Security shrinks, especially when hedge fund managers' income is taxed as capital gains rather than regular income! Raise the cap! Why can't we tax the rich? The economy only works for them these days!
Also, the health insurance mandate was not part of Obama's original plan; it was a public option or a Medicare buy in for qualified households! The private insurance companies wanted the mandate to diversify the insurance pool and eliminate "adverse selection" or the weighting of the pool towards older sicker patients! Frankly, expanding Medicare would solve all these problems but Republicans like Ron Paul would fight it on behalf of corporate interests! The claim that RP is anti-corporate is one of the biggest, and most transparent, lies of his whole political campaign!!
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This "sound money" b____ is getting on my nerves; it's a total red herring! Our problems are not monetary but fiscal! The economy needs to be stimulated through public works projects such as a cross country passenger railway system which will make thousands of jobs while saving fuel costs! Corporations hate that stuff because full employment tightens the labor market and raises wages! It is very good however, for the bottom ninety percent! Guess whose side RP is on!
Sound money is also bullshit because we have a deflation and low interest rates! The gold standard will cause a recession that makes the current one look like the roaring twenties! And recessions don't create efficiency by weeding out high cost producers! It destroys trillions in output and capital stock of otherwise profitable businesses by depriving them of the effective demand necessary to sustain them and the jobs and income they provide! Wanna know whose policies would benefit Wall Street most; it's Ron Paul! Corporations don't support cuz they know he's nuts!!
Sound money is also bullshit because we have a deflation and low interest rates! The gold standard will cause a recession that makes the current one look like the roaring twenties! And recessions don't create efficiency by weeding out high cost producers! It destroys trillions in output and capital stock of otherwise profitable businesses by depriving them of the effective demand necessary to sustain them and the jobs and income they provide! Wanna know whose policies would benefit Wall Street most; it's Ron Paul! Corporations don't support cuz they know he's nuts!!
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So how do you know how much money is being printed (the US Treasury's Bureau of Engraving mints the money, not the Fed) and how much is enough and how much excess there is circulating around? The obvious answer is you don't! The member banks of the Federal Reserve are holding on to the money they got and not lending! Guess why! There's a much higher rate of return on global financial speculation than lending to consumers and small businesses! Until we get a REAL fiscal stimulus worth at least a trillion and a half to be spent over the course of two years time, there won't be enough growth to attract banks to Main Street's financial needs! This is the problem! Shrink the money supply and the economy sinks further!
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Fuzzy, your rant was incomprehensible but I'll help you finally get it! The debt hasn't grown much since Bush who is the real owner of this mess! $2.1 trillion in tax cuts mostly for the top five percent (who received 55% of the total cuts), the unfunded wars and the lost tax revenue from the recession has, according to the CBO, accounted for at least 65% of the annual deficits since 2008!
Want to bring down the deficit, let's invest some of that almost zero interest money the whole seems eager to loan us and build schools, roads, bridges and a high speed cross country railway system that connects all the major metropolitan areas of the country! And in addition, we can hire people to weatherize homes and offices for energy efficiency! Between the mass transit and conservation programs alone we create millions of jobs and bring down net energy consumption! The stimulus will also reduce the deficit through faster GDP growth.
You claim we have no capitalism but we do! The left used to try to dodge the thorny question of Soviet oppression by denying it was real socialism which is also b____ but less so because there is democratic socialism as well! You try to define capitalism extremely narrowly to suit your views and agenda! But a dogmatist is one who sees the obvious failure of a system and explains it away by saying that the system is simply insufficiently pure. It's intellectually dishonest on both the left and the right! We do have capitalism! It is what it is and not your ideal of what it should be! Monopolization of wealth and political control of the state is historically part of late capitalism! It is not an aberration.
Want to bring down the deficit, let's invest some of that almost zero interest money the whole seems eager to loan us and build schools, roads, bridges and a high speed cross country railway system that connects all the major metropolitan areas of the country! And in addition, we can hire people to weatherize homes and offices for energy efficiency! Between the mass transit and conservation programs alone we create millions of jobs and bring down net energy consumption! The stimulus will also reduce the deficit through faster GDP growth.
You claim we have no capitalism but we do! The left used to try to dodge the thorny question of Soviet oppression by denying it was real socialism which is also b____ but less so because there is democratic socialism as well! You try to define capitalism extremely narrowly to suit your views and agenda! But a dogmatist is one who sees the obvious failure of a system and explains it away by saying that the system is simply insufficiently pure. It's intellectually dishonest on both the left and the right! We do have capitalism! It is what it is and not your ideal of what it should be! Monopolization of wealth and political control of the state is historically part of late capitalism! It is not an aberration.
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Firstly, the two main reasons that the ratio of annual federal income tax revenues to total national debt fell from over half to roughly one sixth is the more than four trillion in tax cuts since 1981 and the decline in the average real rate of annual GDP growth from about four percent between 1945 and 1980 to less than three percent between 1981 and the present!
Secondly, Social Security is the federal government's most successful program in history; it's operating costs are only 2% of revenues and it keeps millions of Americans out of poverty which is irrelevant to libertarians like Ron Paul! The federal government has never failed
to repay the SS fund it's principle and interest so it's much less risky than either the stock market or commercial paper! Worried about the boomers, fine, raise the cap and TAX THE RICH!
Secondly, Social Security is the federal government's most successful program in history; it's operating costs are only 2% of revenues and it keeps millions of Americans out of poverty which is irrelevant to libertarians like Ron Paul! The federal government has never failed
to repay the SS fund it's principle and interest so it's much less risky than either the stock market or commercial paper! Worried about the boomers, fine, raise the cap and TAX THE RICH!
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You guys are the most transparent trolls I've ever seen and I've been at this on several sites for eight years! The Fed has tried monetary stimulus several times and it's impact has been weak but never harmful! We need fiscal stimulus! The stock market actually slide back from its rebound recently on the news that the fed would suspend stimulus efforts next month! This indicates that whether or not the Fed is helping the economy it certainly hasn't caused inflation, high interest or any other economic problem!
Ron Paul is actually the banks best friend; he'll raise interest rates way up to draw in foreign financial investment, kill off the economy for good and let the banisters and the private equity vultures pick up formerly profitable assets for nothing from desparite, bankrupt business people and make a fortune financing their sale to big global investors concentrating (and stagnating) the US economy even further! If anyone will take financialization further, it's him! Except he'll have already finished shredding the social safety net for the millions left behind by his lassez faire agenda!
Want a real "populist" candidate? Try Bernie Sanders!!
Ron Paul is actually the banks best friend; he'll raise interest rates way up to draw in foreign financial investment, kill off the economy for good and let the banisters and the private equity vultures pick up formerly profitable assets for nothing from desparite, bankrupt business people and make a fortune financing their sale to big global investors concentrating (and stagnating) the US economy even further! If anyone will take financialization further, it's him! Except he'll have already finished shredding the social safety net for the millions left behind by his lassez faire agenda!
Want a real "populist" candidate? Try Bernie Sanders!!
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I agree! We need to get social democracy within the range of acceptable tendencies within our political culture! We need a multitrillion public investment campaign run at the federal level; states have to much discretion, to little transparency and most states used the 2009 stimulus money to balance their budgets instead of on public works projects! We badly need a national energy conservation program including weatherization of structures and stricter fuel efficiency standards on the automotive industry! We need single payer, universal health care and high speed national passenger rail service; I believe it was Nixon, a Republican who started AMTRAK!
Ron Paul opposes all of this; corporations don't want it! But most people do!
Ron Paul opposes all of this; corporations don't want it! But most people do!
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