A Mitt Romney fan, eh? You should probably read this article, which absolutely guts the myth that only half of income earners pay taxes.

As far as the top 1% paying 40% of the taxes, I agree that is atrocious--they are supposed to be paying almost ALL of it! See, when the income tax was introduced with the 16th Amendment, it was primarily meant to be a tax on the rich. The federal tax rate for middle-class people was meant to be around 1-2% whereas the tax rate on the rich was around 7%. You can see the original 1913 tax form here.

Of course, since literally the income tax's inception, the federal government has continuously been shafting the middle classes while reducing the tax burden of the wealthy. It's about as American as apple pie by this point!

The big problem is that the government relies more and more on income tax to fund federal projects. Take a look at the graph in the article I linked to at the start of this comment and note how corporate taxes keep going down while income and payroll taxes keep going up.

It doesn't help at all that most of America's biggest businesses have offshore tax havens where they can avoid paying taxes (think Ireland for Apple, Inc., though that hasn't worked out so well for them thanks to the EU being less corporate cock-sucking than the U.S. government).

So, to solve America's tax deficit problem, the solution is pretty clear--tax rich people more (as was intended), tax corporations more and cut off their tax havens, and maybe give a tax break to the people who actually need and deserve it--the middle and lower classes.

But of course all of that sounds suspiciously like socialism, which as we all know is the devil incarnate and about as un-American as naming your kid Stalin.

I think it's silly to say "treason is wrong period." The USA was born of a revolt against England.

If the south had wanted to secede for almost any other reason but the right to own human beings, then Lincoln would have been a monster to pursue such a bloody war to hold the union together. It would be as if the EU sent troops to force the UK to stay part of the EU.

I think there are plenty of examples in history of groups justifiably wanting to replace their leaders or separate from a political union.

ECB Research Bulletin:

In an economy with its own fiat currency, the monetary authority and the fiscal authority can ensure that public debt denominated in the national fiat currency is non-defaultable, i.e. maturing government bonds are convertible into currency at par. With this arrangement in place, fiscal policy can focus on business cycle stabilisation when monetary policy hits the lower bound constraint. However, the fiscal authorities of the euro area countries have given up the ability to issue non-defaultable debt. As a consequence, effective macroeconomic stabilisation has been difficult to achieve.

Translation:
- all members of the eurozone effectively use a foreign currency
- they can default, because they do not and cannot issue debt in their currency
- fiscal policy has thus been completely neutered

Ergo, national parliaments have a significantly smaller policy space compared to countries with their own currency. Our parliaments intentionally surrender power to unelected technocrats, even control of the national budget, which is the primary power available to any parliament anywhere.

"Sorry, lad. We cannot pay for healthcare/pension/infrastructure/education/wages/X, we have to maintain a balanced budget to appease the market." Yet it is still illegal to call for the guillotine...

Meanwhile, Japan doesn't give a fuck. The BoJ has been vacuuming up outstanding debt like there's no tomorrow. It currently holds in excess of 40% of all government debt, effectively canceling it. It's just book-keeping. The Treasury issues the debt, the CB buys the debt. Both are part of the consolidated government sector, ergo no debt. "Hyperinflation!", they scream. Can you hear them? Except Japan has been fighting deflation for two decades, with no end in sight.

Yet the inflation-hawks are still treated as persons of authority. Flat-earthers, the lot of 'em.

And my country wants the rest of Europe to sign on to the most moronic law in German history: the "Schuldenbremse", which makes running a deficit illegal at the constitutional level (except for undefined "emergencies"). They are either a) brainwashed, b) idiots, or c) straight up evil. And I'm not sure which one I prefer.

*doublepromote

Mark's been on the money since about the time he wrote "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea", but there have been two significant developments in Europe that he seemingly didn't see coming: Portugal and the UK.

The Left Alliance in Portugal has basically been giving Schäuble the finger for two years now, with their unilateral end to austerity. How dare they defy the master of coin?! If Schäuble says you need another round of austerity, by God, you better tighten your belts, even if they are already around your neck.

Unsurprisingly, everyone going along with austerity without having a completely export-dependent economy is in deep doo-doo. Meanwhile, those pesky Portuguese actually managed to massively reduce unemployment, despite running a deficit that is entirely too small for their current situation. But that's a different story.

And then there's the UK. There's Corbyn. Tribune of the Plebs. Managed to get the youth voting by offering actual left-wing policies (the "radical youth", as the NYT likes to call them, while claiming that the warmongering, Constitution-shredding, wage-depressing, ecosphere-destroying "centrists" are not the real radicals). Managed to turn quite a lot of UKIP voters around as well. Within striking distance of the Tories, despite the media running 24h a day of drivel like "Jezza's Jihadi Comrades" -- Goebbels would be ashamed of the crudeness of the propaganda campaign by the Sun/Daily Mirror/etc.

The populist left is back, bitches. Corbyn and Sanders are the first steps past the neoliberal warmongers of the Third Way. The Obama experience of a corporatist disguised as a left populist may have given us The Orange One, but it also put another nail into the coffin of neoliberalism.

Antonio Gramsci, founding member of the Italian communist party, who was killed by the fascist regime of Mussolini, gave us the appropriate description of our time:
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

That's your Trump. That's your opioid epidemic. That's the EU's austerity program in Greece, doing twice as much damage as the German occupation in WW2.

The scary thing is, absolutely none of what he said about Brexit wasn't known before the vote. Also, pretty much none of it was known by the British public.

The politicians on both sides tried to fight it on slogans rather than facts, and the press did practically nothing to improve the situation. The American press get a lot of flak for partisanship, but they've got nothing on the Brits.

In fact, completely unsurprisingly, the British press came dead last out of the 33 countries in a recent EU poll on how much the people trust the press. Have a guess how much coverage this got there.

It really annoys me, and we Irish are supposed to hate the Brits.

Also: "Thatcher In The Rye". Brilliant. Still sniggering.

Also also: there are also plenty of good arguments for Brexit, but they got equally terrible coverage.

I understand, and "pollution per capita" is a logical argument. But from my point of view there are some critical problems and many flaws with following such reasoning. For example:

The US isn't the greatest emitter of Co2 per capita, but when that's brought up...the argument falls back to emissions in absolute terms. Many would say that that's hypocritical.

Wealth inequality is particularly bad in the US, with the top 20% of the population holding upwards of 88% of all wealth (while the total wealth of individuals isn't GDP, it does correlate with income flow). Doesn't this skew GDP per capita, holding the poor in the US to an unfair standard, vis a vis emissions? If it doesn't, then how is it unfair to poor, rural Chinese?

No international organizations agree on the definition of a "developing" country. Without this, aren't these types of arguments extremely subjective and open to abuse? The point being that there are very, very few "apples-to-apples" comparisons available. For example, would it be a fair comparison if I told you that China's per capita Co2 emissions exceeded the per capita emissions of the EU starting back in 2014?

But you're right...in that the US has polluted the most in absolute terms historically (with China catching up pretty fast). We didn't have a "God-given" right to do it; for most of it, we didn't even know that "it" (Co2) was a pollutant.

You're also right that as individual Americans we have more power to demand change. I understand and accept the dangers of climate change, and I very much want to do something about it. This is why I'm so frustrated with our current administration.

I just want you to understand that I'm not strictly pro-US and/or anti-China. In my opinion, climate change is giving us one resource to either take advantage of or to squander. That resource is time. And time isn't going to make accommodations for any nation, big or small, rich or poor.

This is why I'm troubled by a government like the CCP, that has plans to accelerate their emissions. We know better now (re. Co2), and so such actions on their part are unreasonably selfish. They know their actions will likely hurt or kill all of us, and yet they continue...with the hope that other nations will sacrifice so much as to be properly weakened while they themselves are strengthened.

I understand that in a perfect world, we'd have an equality of outcome. Wouldn't that be great? But we don't have the time left to make most of South America, much of Asia and virtually all of Africa economic equals. What we can do is get our own emissions down to as close to zero as possible, and help these nations build up an infrastructure using green energy. In this way, maybe we can try to foster at least an equality of opportunity energy-wise. The Chinese government has the funds to not only fully transform their own nation, but also to help to some degree in the aforementioned global initiative. But instead of being honestly proactive, they're creating a new cold-war mindset. This is not only wasting time, but also resources (both their own and those of the US in seeking to maintain their strategic edge militarily) that could be better used to help the less fortunate.

So what do we do? Well, I'm not entirely sure. But I can tell you that having other countries paint the US as a villain in this issue, and China as a saint certainly isn't helping.

@newtboy
i like the 'failing liver" analogy.
appropriate and easily understood.

and i can understand where milkmandan is coming from,but my perspective is more aligned with yours newt.

what consistently baffles me,is how so many people are willing to simply accept this short term strategy from our politicians.

there is no surprise when corporations push for this,they are just focusing on their own interests and bottom line,which is short term profit.

or the politicians who bow to their neoliberal masters to receive those tasty campaign contributions.

or even the banks,who again focus on their short term gains.

these players are all behaving as they always have:for their own self interest.so there should be no shock or surprise when they act exactly as they have always acted.

but when i see everyday,normal people defend the behavior and actions of oliticians,financial institutions and multi-national corporations.it baffles me as to why they would choose to do such a thing.

we can understand why those players seek to retain a system which benefits them,their shareholders and their bottom line,but that system no longer serves the interests of the people,community and society as a whole.

so why make arguments defending it?

it is,quite frankly,killing us slowly as a species.

look at germany.
that country has slowly been recruiting,educating and now poised to corner the market in:new energy,renewable energy and are leading the world in breakthrough technologies in all energy fields.

germany has long played the long game.
they now dominate the entire EU in finance,and are now focusing on dominating the globe with new energy technology.

and what are we doing here in america?
pushing through more and more neoliberal policies that immiserate the working poor,both here and abroad.desperately continuing our destruction of entire ecosystems to exploit our natural resources for:oil and gas.military conflicts,which only make this country less safe,all to exploit other nations and extract THEIR oil and gas,and the cost in human lives is absolutely indefensible.

all of it.
every single bit of it for short term gains for an extremely small minority.

and here we are,with trump opening the flood gates to further exploit and destroy our natural resources with no thought or plan for the future.no investment in our communities,nor our society as a whole.

and for those who wish to make an argument that hillary would be better.i will only concede that on a domestic level this may have been true,but hillary is a neoliberal corporatist,and she would have pushed for even MORE military intervention in the middle east.MORE sanctions against countries unwilling to play ball,in order to politically squeeze them out,and even MORE of this countries policy of "regime change" to exploit and extract from those countries their precious resources.

i strongly suspect Iran would have been next on her agenda.

so when are some of these people going to step up,and realize that both trump AND clinton are (or would have been) disasterous for us as a community,a nation and as a species?

because they both only offer short term solutions to long term problems.and those short term solutions only benefit a minority of the population.

we could turn this ship around TODAY,right now,if we so choose.
we need more politicians like elizabeth warren and tulsi gabbard.we need more integrity in our media and journalists willing to do their job and criticize power,not bow to it just for access.we need the people to become engaged and confront their representatives,and make them uncomfortable,not treat them as celebrities.

and we need to reject the system where rich people choose who we get to vote for,and begin to dismantle this two party duopoly.

because trump vs hillary?
this election cycle has just revealed that both these candidates are not the disease,but rather the symptom of a very broken,and dysfunctional political system.

we need to begin to invest in the future.
and reject the status quo as no longer being viable for the continued existence of the human species.

and with the newly energized american public,who are growing in numbers daily,and is a direct response to the unmitigated disaster that is trump.there may be hope for us yet.

because if we stay on this trajectory,we are fucking doomed.

It would be interesting to see how much EU university (hidden)costs have risen in the last 10-20 years and see if they compare at all to the US experience.

In the EU university is free in most countries..... It's great

The problem isn't the textbooks, but rather the extreme end of capitalism running rampant.

Pretty much interview scripted by Putin personally.

Why the drama about US - russian relations if the russians supposedly are not dangerous and Putin is not evil.

Building a case to sell Poland and the Baltic countries to Putin. Worked like a charm with Hitler and Czechoslovakia before WWII. Poland these days does not even have a border with Russia proper, only with what used to be Koenigsberg. Poland is part of NATO and if Abby and her friend the professor want to give that up then it is them who are pushing us all closer to a war (cold or not).

Ukraine has already exploded. Putin has already taken 1/3 of the country breaking bilateral treaties. Cant get much worse, hard to imagine how the US can get involved, Trump notwithstanding.

Syria - its basically over, except for the humanitarian and human rights catastrophe. Putins ally won - a slightly pyrrhic victory perhaps, but for the meantime Assad stays. Did they level cities or liberate them? Hard to tell the difference. Probably both. That said US involvement in the middle east is a grave shitstorm.

This awesome "analysis" somehow misses the biggest current problem of NATO - Turkey - possibly because Putin does not have a good handle on Turkey yet so its off-limits. Also Pakistan/India and North Korea does not get a mention for the same reason - no chance to push Putins agenda.

NATO might have reassured Gorby it had no intention to spread. It is important to understand that Warsaw pact countries generally accepted Russians as saviours from German occupation, by the 1970s this had changed firmly to perceiving Russians as occupants, political persecutors and economic idiots.

After the economic collapse of the USSR (supposedly somehow caused by Ronald Reagan :-) all these countries needed reassurance that the Russians were not coming back. The only possible reassurance was joining NATO. If that meant breaking a promise made to an ex-representative of a no longer existing country, that is fine by me. If NATO had promised not to spread to Mother Theresa I would be more concerned.

The problem with the Ukraine is that we (EU) made an offer that put them in danger (from Putin) and we could not back that up with real economic or military assistance. Dumb move. But also Ukrainian politics is an incredible mess and simply too many ethnic russians live there giving Putin a strong nationalist base.

*ban2.0
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Yeah, Ireland was neutral in both World Wars. "Neither King not Kaiser" was the slogan. Basically, it was felt that while the Axis weren't the nicest guys, we weren't super keen to join in with the guys who'd occupied our country for the previous 800 years either.

Technically, Ireland is still a neutral country. It doesn't belong to NATO.
In practice, as a member of the EU, it would almost certainly have to help defend the Eu if it were attacked from the outside and in recent years, (in a fantastically Irish way) we have been "neutral on the side of the US/U.K."; allowing US warplanes to refuel for example.

Americans don't want health care, and Brits don't want to stay in the EU, I'd say it's been a year of bad decisions all around.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by eric3579.