Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: MillCreek on September 03, 2012, 11:14:25 AM
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80483.html
David Koch thinks that:
Gay marriage should be permitted
We should bring our troops home from the Middle East
The government should consider both defense cuts and tax increases to get our financial house in order
Perhaps I have found my write-in candidate!
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Isn't he one of those evil Koch brothers whose secret mission has been to bring America down? I'm pretty sure I read that in Mother Jones. :O
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Sounded good until 'increase taxes'. Increasing the Government's revenue is never the answer, specially when they have more than enough to begin with.
Giving more money to the government is like giving a second serving to an angry toddler trashing food about on his highchair.
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Giving more money to the government is like giving a second serving to an angry toddler trashing food about on his highchair.
I shall be stealing this.
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80483.html
David Koch thinks that:
Gay marriage should be permitted
We should bring our troops home from the Middle East
The government should consider both defense cuts and tax increases to get our financial house in order
Perhaps I have found my write-in candidate!
voted for him once for vp
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Over the last 100 years (basically, income tax history) every $1 of increased revenue due to increased taxes, or increased tax base has been met with close to $1.30 of increased spending. Therefore, revenue is not the problem, spending is.
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Congress is spending money like a bunch of drunken sailors and you want to give them more money? The hell?
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Congress is spending money like a bunch of drunken sailors and you want to give them more money? The hell?
That's an insult to drunken sailors everywhere.
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did he advocate letting congress spend more? or that we need to balance what we spend and pay down what we owe? remember he ran as a libertarian on a real ballot. heck when he ran no one knew who ron paul was
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Many reputable economists, although probably not of the political stripe favored by many of the participants of this forum, favor a combination of government cost reduction and revenue increases to solve our economic issues. The More You Know.
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Many reputable economists, although probably not of the political stripe favored by many of the participants of this forum, favor a combination of government cost reduction and revenue increases to solve our economic issues. The More You Know.
Forgive me if I fail to bow to these "reputable economists" that also have advocted the exct same policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
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Many reputable economists, although probably not of the political stripe favored by many of the participants of this forum, favor a combination of government cost reduction and revenue increases to solve our economic issues. The More You Know.
And many reputable economists agree that we Are already past the growth maximizing point of marginal tax rates, and are actually close to or even past the revenue maximizing point, so increased revenues are either effectively impossible, or woud result in slower growth. Almost regardless of marginal rates, revenue has been within 2-3% of 19% of GDP, and spending averages around 18-20%. Obama has raised that spending to 25% and slow economic growth has limited revenue to 18%.
Spending is the problem (well hove historical averages), not revenue (which is in line with historical averages).
By reputable economists did you mean ONLY those of the Keynesian school? Because there are plenty of reputable economists that fundamentally disagree with that approach.
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If it was up to me, each dollar of revenue enhancement would be met with at least two dollars of cost reduction, starting with defense, Social Security and Medicare. I would target the revenue enhancement towards debt reduction and infrastructure improvement.
I do not see this as within the realm of the practical, given the political realities of the time.
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did he advocate letting congress spend more? or that we need to balance what we spend and pay down what we owe? remember he ran as a libertarian on a real ballot. heck when he ran no one knew who ron paul was
I don't think that was the point, I think the point was that kongress spends $1.30 for every $1.00 it gets. The solution in this situation isn't to give it $2.50, the solution is to give it a nickel.
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how would that help? except increase the deficit?
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how would that help? except increase the deficit?
:facepalm:
OK let's give it a bazillion dollars and THEN see how much it spends [tinfoil].
Is there someway to ACTUALLY CUT GOVERNMENT SPENDING? ? ?
Our national debt will reach 16 trillion dollars this week, while the demorats are at the convention.
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^^^ Yes, there is. Find a politically-palatable way to get meaningful defense, Social Security and Medicare cuts through Congress. Figure that out and you have my vote.
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oh come on why would we give up the revolutionary noise and think practical
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^^^ Yes, there is. Find a politically-palatable way to get meaningful defense, Social Security and Medicare cuts through Congress. Figure that out and you have my vote.
Agree -- mostly.
But during a war--and with the Chinese uparming, cutting our military might not be such a terrific idea....wouldn't want this to be our servicemen's standard sidearm, AGAIN. [popcorn]
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^^^ Yes, there is. Find a politically-palatable way to get meaningful defense, Social Security and Medicare cuts through Congress. Figure that out and you have my vote.
You are forgetting the other way to cut spending: Major crisis and there is no more money to spend. Of course, then the printing presses go to 3 shifts and we move our dollars around in wheel barrows and grocers add another zero to their prices.
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Agree -- mostly.
But during a war--and with the Chinese uparming, cutting our military might not be such a terrific idea....wouldn't want this to be our servicemen's standard sidearm, AGAIN. [popcorn]
you fight the chinese you can leave the sidearms at home. the stakes have changed and they do have what it takes to buy the hand/pot our biggest asset in that fight is that they haven't figured out how to swim that ocean
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If it was up to me, each dollar of revenue enhancement would be met with at least two dollars of cost reduction, starting with defense, Social Security and Medicare. I would target the revenue enhancement towards debt reduction and infrastructure improvement.
I do not see this as within the realm of the practical, given the political realities of the time.
The problem is the revenue enhancement passes but not the cuts. If you actually have the political power to make the cuts, many things are possible.
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The problem is the revenue enhancement passes but not the cuts. If you actually have the political power to make the cuts, many things are possible.
thats exactly the problem maybe hitch them together no enhancements till after the cuts have been enacted
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Focusing on Defence cuts is a distraction. Half the budget is social security and welfare and such. I bet that is higher now versus a few years ago. Defense funding could be improved but you are not going to solve your budget problems by cutting Defense. Defence only comes up because that is the only thing most Democrats are willing to cut.
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thats exactly the problem maybe hitch them together no enhancements till after the cuts have been enacted
Never gonna work in reality. Make the cuts first. That is the hard part. If you Try to do both, the cuts will get cut.
How many Presidents have made deals only to see the spending cuts never happen? Isn't that more or less what happened to Bush I?
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Defence only comes up because
that is the only thing most Democrats are willing to cutit will cost either party fewer votes.
its less partisan than you might expect
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Never gonna work in reality. Make the cuts first. That is the hard part. If you Try to do both, the cuts will get cut.
How many Presidents have made deals only to see the spending cuts never happen? Isn't that more or less what happened to Bush I?
i think you are right but who was it that undercut him? wasn't some of it self inflicted?
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Defence only comes up because that is the only thing most Democrats are willing to cutit will cost either party fewer votes.
its less partisan than you might expect
I agree completely, and I think that Defense should not be the untouched sacred cow. And what really irks me are the legislators that are all in favor of budget cuts until the Pentagon talks about closing the base in their district or no longer procuring the ships/vehicles/airplanes/armaments that are manufactured in their district. Then, it is all about saving jobs and our industrial base.
http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpolicy/p/Budget_Spending.htm and according to this, 2/3 of the national budget goes to mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and military retirements, and of the remaining 1/3 of the national budget, 2/3rds of that goes to military spending. So again, I argue for cuts in Defense, Social Security and Medicare, and perhaps we should look at retirement benefits, too. If the states feel they can no longer afford public employee pensions, maybe we need to share the pain by cutting Federal/military retirement plans as well.
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Defense is, what, 15% of the budget? Maybe 17% tops? It's less than 5% of GDP.
Why is that always the first thing to get raised in the "cut everything" discussion?
Tell you what, let's start with a 10% cut everywhere else -- especially all those areas that aren't expressly a Federal responsibility -- like, say, education for instance, or medicine. Hell, let's get rid of the subsidies for the "arts" and "public" broadcasting. The Feds don't belong in any of those areas.
Oh, when I say "cut" I don't mean "a reduction in the [baseline] increase." I mean "reduction in spending."
And can we return to the Constitutional taxation structure? Repeal that 16th amendment thing and ditch the IRS. If you need an income tax, go to a 10% or 8% flat tax, no exceptions, no loopholes. Or replace it with a sales tax.
And this:
Many reputable economists, although probably not of the political stripe favored by many of the participants of this forum, favor a combination of government cost reduction and revenue increases to solve our economic issues. The More You Know.
. . . is misleading.
When taxes are lowered, government revenue does, in fact, increase.
This "revenue increase" thing is a red herring, liberally interpreted to mean "tax increase" by government economists.
Revenue increase is good. Tax increase is bad. Those are not conflicting statements.
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Arfin, why should Defense be the untouchable sacred cow?
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Not say sacred cow.
Say "not sacrifice first."
Education = not in the COTUS.
Retirement = not in the COTUS.
Medicine = not in the COTUS.
Defense = baked into the COTUS.
Why we always sharpen the Defense knife first?
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Cut the welfare and social services bullshit. Very little of that money is going to people who actually need it.
Dont cut defense spending but refocus it. For the amount of money we spend on defense we could have a hell of a force with completely modern equipment...
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you fight the chinese you can leave the sidearms at home. the stakes have changed and they do have what it takes to buy the hand/pot our biggest asset in that fight is that they haven't figured out how to swim that ocean
You do realize I was being sarcastic ~~ right? I mean, I don't think if we're gonna fight the Chinese we should arm our guys with Roman Gladius either.
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You do realize I was being sarcastic ~~ right? I mean, I don't think if we're gonna fight the Chinese we should arm our guys with Roman Gladius either.
sorry i was completely clueless about the sarcasm .fighting the chinese triggers some real fear in me. might be that i'm 1/2 japanese but i think its because i believe thats a fight we will lose.
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sorry i was completely clueless about the sarcasm .fighting the chinese triggers some real fear in me. might be that i'm 1/2 japanese but i think its because i believe thats a fight we will lose.
Depends. Right now we'd woop 'em. However, cut our navy, cut our forces, in another generation and assuming the Chinese keep increasing their abilities and in a few decades then you will be right.
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i don't think you can kill enough chinese to whoop em. they have 50 and hundred year plans. barring some rapid noisy splitting of atoms i think they will eventually prevail by weight of numbers.
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We don't necessarily have to invade China to fight them.
They don't have the force projection ability to come over here. The most likely scenario is a western Pacific conflagration, over Taiwan. The Chinese are developing some nasty missiles that eventually could really compromise our carrier groups, plus they already have a "stealth fighter" being built. Also, they're developing a submarine force. At this moment they are in no position to do much to us except embarrass us by having one of their subs pop up in the midst of one of our aircraft carrier groups undetected, but this will take a turn for the worse in coming decades, assuming we do nothing about it.
Of course we could nuke them back into the Pleistocene.... but that assumes we'd have a prez with the cojones to do it.
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I actually wonder more about some sort of cyberwar with the Chinese.
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I actually wonder more about some sort of cyberwar with the Chinese.
Yeah .... that could happen. They are already trying to use computers to hack into our computers and steal things and see what they can get away with.
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We don't necessarily have to invade China to fight them.
They don't have the force projection ability to come over here. The most likely scenario is a western Pacific conflagration, over Taiwan. The Chinese are developing some nasty missiles that eventually could really compromise our carrier groups, plus they already have a "stealth fighter" being built. Also, they're developing a submarine force. At this moment they are in no position to do much to us except embarrass us by having one of their subs pop up in the midst of one of our aircraft carrier groups undetected, but this will take a turn for the worse in coming decades, assuming we do nothing about it.
Of course we could nuke them back into the Pleistocene.... but that assumes we'd have a prez with the cojones to do it.
big mistake westerners make is thinking the chinese will react the way we would over a nuke attack and that therefore it has deterrent value comparable to our feelings. they will deliver the death of a thousand cuts leverage us outa resources etc. not in my time or my kids. but barring a greater calamity its inevitable
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It's not inevitable, especially in the long run. Any case of china being uppity will occur in the near term, for simple demographic reasons--due to one-child policy (which has severely biased their population not just in age, but in gender), if you look at detailed demographics AND economic growth rates, the reason china is pushing so hard now is without an economic growth rate of 10+% or better per year, they will get old before they get rich. In terms of military capability, the same is true, demographically, their ability to wage war will begin to be substantially impacted within 10-15 years, and continue until 25-50 years after the bias is removed. Given their need for growth NOW (you think we have a baby boomer issue in terms of age bias, theirs is far worse) to support the future, and the severe impact in appropriately aged folks in 10-20years from now, AND their excess of military aged males NOW, any imperialistic actions will literally hve to occur in the next 10-15 years because after that, they will have economic and population issues that will limit their military abilities, both demographically and economically due to domestic requirements.
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i don't think you can kill enough chinese to whoop em. they have 50 and hundred year plans. barring some rapid noisy splitting of atoms i think they will eventually prevail by weight of numbers.
We don't have to kill "enough" of them. All there population and such are pretty concentrated. They also have some big infrastructure targets.
If you think some communist govt can successfully plan 50 or 100 years ahead, I think you are worried about nothing. People said that about the Japanese right before their economy dropped out in the 90's.
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big mistake westerners make is thinking the chinese will react the way we would over a nuke attack and that therefore it has deterrent value comparable to our feelings. they will deliver the death of a thousand cuts leverage us outa resources etc. not in my time or my kids. but barring a greater calamity its inevitable
It may not have a deterent effect but being turned into free ions and spread over the stratosphere will inhibit their ability to conduct a war........ =D ....as I said....if the then current leader has the cojones.....
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that plan seems to assume that no one else has nukes or if they do they won't use em. thats a flaw
and it ignores our recent history in conflicts
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We don't have to kill "enough" of them. All there population and such are pretty concentrated. They also have some big infrastructure targets.
If you think some communist govt can successfully plan 50 or 100 years ahead, I think you are worried about nothing. People said that about the Japanese right before their economy dropped out in the 90's.
heres that drop as a visual
http://postgrowth.org/japan-the-worlds-first-post-growth-economy/
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Defence only comes up because that is the only thing most Democrats are willing to cutit will cost either party fewer votes.
its less partisan than you might expect
CSD, I realize Republicans come in all shapes and sizes. It is why I get frustrated with that party and refuse to call myself one. However, the Democrats have almost unanimously opposed any cuts in any non-defense programs just about as long as I have been alive. I am sure there have been a few that were responsible, but I can't name them. That is why I tend to focus on Democrats. Republicans have certainly played their part in spending increases, but they also seem to be the only party that seriously talks about cutting govt. Getting enough Congressmen on board to make cuts will be a major challenge for anyone.
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Many reputable economists, although probably not of the political stripe favored by many of the participants of this forum, favor a combination of government cost reduction and revenue increases to solve our economic issues. The More You Know.
And if the retards in DC could manage a dollar, we might consider that a viable plan.
Those "reputable economists" obviously don't take into account the insatiable appetite of those who wish to retain power. Give them another dollar, they'll still spend a bunch thirty.
They will always loophole the spending cuts away.
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voted for him once for vp
Ran with an L. behind his name a couple times, back in the early days of that party. That's my recollection.
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Birdman has china's number.
Chinese gdp growth is dipping to 8pct or so and they are sweating that small drop.
Also, they have a real estate bubble that makes our 2008 bubble look picayune.
I buy chinese elctronics weekly and have noticed a drop in prices, despite usdollar inflation. Something not happy is getting ready to surface in their economy, I would bet.
Econ colapse plus demo bulge of unmarriable males equals exciting times.
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Econ colapse plus demo bulge of unmarriable males equals exciting times.
Makes me glad there's a massive ocean and a massive navy between us. I weep for the rest of Asia, though.
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Ran with an L. behind his name a couple times, back in the early days of that party. That's my recollection.
at least once and he made the ballot
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that plan seems to assume that no one else has nukes or if they do they won't use em. thats a flaw
and it ignores our recent history in conflicts
China has nuclear bombs but is only now developing the missiles necessary to project them. By the time this war develops .... who know if M.A.D. will work? [tinfoil]
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that same myopia exists. why do you imagine china as the only player?
they don't need to wipe us out just hit a good lick with nukes would leave a mark
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/world/asia/chinas-missile-advances-aimed-at-thwarting-us-defenses-analysts-say.html
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I have no idea what will happen in the future. Who will align themselves with China? Russia? Maybe, but theyve not proven to be the best of friends.
Naybe Tom Clancy can concoct a believable scenario with likely allies and antagonists all spelled out.
Can you?
=|
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China has nuclear bombs but is only now developing the missiles necessary to project them. By the time this war develops .... who know if M.A.D. will work? [tinfoil]
China has had the means to deliver large multi-megaton warheads via ICBM to the US for over 40 years. Ever since Tsien left the US and created the DF-5/CSS-4 in 1971.
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China has had the means to deliver large multi-megaton warheads via ICBM to the US for over 40 years. Ever since Tsien left the US and created the DF-5/CSS-4 in 1971.
Really? Last I heard was Clinton selling them some techie stuff back in the 90s and helping them work out some bugs in the multi-stage stuff....which was rather unreliable ..... waaaaaaaayyyy after 1971 ....... ???
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I am reasonably certain that I had read that Chinese ICBMs can reach the West Coast of the US at a minimum. This piqued my interest, living in Seattle and all.
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Really? Last I heard was Clinton selling them some techie stuff back in the 90s and helping them work out some bugs in the multi-stage stuff....which was rather unreliable ..... waaaaaaaayyyy after 1971 ....... ???
What you are referring to was the use of the Iridium smart dispenser satellite bus on the long march space launch vehicle (a derivative of the CSS-4) which gave them a leg up on a MIRV'able bus design, but they have had single warhead ICBM's since the early 70's, missiles capable of reaching anywhere in CONUS in the early 80's and have been also launching large satellites since the early 80's.
Seriously, believe me on this, they have had the ability to hit us for over 40 years (west coast) and all of conus for almost 30 years.
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What you are referring to was the use of the Iridium smart dispenser satellite bus on the long march space launch vehicle (a derivative of the CSS-4) which gave them a leg up on a MIRV'able bus design, but they have had single warhead ICBM's since the early 70's, missiles capable of reaching anywhere in CONUS in the early 80's and have been also launching large satellites since the early 80's.
Seriously, believe me on this, they have had the ability to hit us for over 40 years (west coast) and all of conus for almost 30 years.
OK, don't get your feathers in wad, I believe you. :angel: