I study this stuff. It's strange that Mericans have this romanticised view of their Constitution, Bill o rights, Puritans and the founding fathers, but the humans were just human, and the documents were just documents: Imperfect. Not holy writs and prophets. The USA did not get rich and prosperous on its founding father's ideals, but the backs of slave labour, massive natural resources and comparatively few wars at the beginning.

To think that "As one of Jefferson’s favorite books, Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ so luminously argued, there is no surer sign of a country’s cultural and political decay than obtuse blindness to its unmistakable beginnings" means one should look at the beginnings and say: "Wow everything was awesome then!" is romanticising history. All that stuff I mentioned above which you ironically called 'obtuse blindness' is deeply ingrained not only in the US' history but also the constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I have read both documents, unfinished drafts, rewritings, documents about the discussions and much more such tedious stuff: It's all deeply political, partisan even then and not! perfection. I know that it's much easier to think that libertarianism is the goto-solution for everything, but it isn't. Nothing is.

Talk about rose colored glasses for the past. Some how the deadliest natural disaster and 2nd most costly hurricane in US history = A model of libertarian efficiency. What a ridiculous fallacious comparison. Maybe if the people had evacuated themselves or built a seawall and raised the island in anticipation of the storm rather than after ~8k people were killed and damn near every building on the island was wiped off it did they think, 'hey maybe we should be slightly concerned about hurricanes'. Further more, it was the Texas and Galveston governments that were responsible for the creation of the seawall. Its not like all the local residents and business banded together to create it.

I don't think anyone would argue that FEMA is a great agency, but to suggest its worthless is absurd (especially in offering the 1900 Galveston hurricane as comparison of how much better things were without FEMA).

Are you ever going to address the fact that the Great Depression was ended by massive record deficits, followed by taxing the richest by over 90%?

Your entire argument is deficits never work, and raising taxes on the rich hurts the economy. I just gave you an irrefutable example of that being dead wrong, and you go into FDR's New Deal. Dude, I'm not debating the New Deal with you.

Prove that the US economy got out of the Great Depression without massive deficits (regardless if it was New Deal spending or WWII spending, it's irrelevant), followed by massively taxing the rich over 90% in the 1950s, during which the US economy was extremely prosperous.

That's the thing, dude. You can try to dodge this all you want. I'm not letting you try to move to discussing the New Deal, or Social Security, or how apparently communist George W. Bush (SERIOUSLY?!?!? WTFBBQ?!?!?!?) is.

This example in US history proves your rigid, ideological economic philosophy is dead wrong. You can't argue honestly that deficits are always bad, and massive gov't spending is always bad, and the US gov't can't help aid in turning around the economy. It most certainly can. It indisputably did. There's no "some fact" to this. It absolutely is historical fact.

That's the thing. Once you admit that yes, deficits can and do help end recessions, and taxing the rich more heavily can be good for the economy, we might be able to actually have an honest, adult conversation about how to help the economy. Until that, you're just spewing idiotic and/or intentional misinformation.

And then you just completely glossed over the entire reason why the gov't is almost always the one who HAS to spark the economic turnaround. We NEED the gov't to stimulate the economy, just as we need the gov't to put the brakes on when the economy grows too quickly, which is when those deficits can get paid for incidentally.

Are you just gonna sit there and call everyone other than the Tea Party communists, or are you actually going to address any of this?

>> ^quantumushroom:

The rich pay a higher percentage, and more taxes overall than the poor. Why do you think anyone is saying otherwise?

And that's absolutely how it should be, for the good of everyone, rich included.
But why doth "the poor," who siphon the "free" money, have no civic responsibility at all? Shouldn't they be paying something into the system? Or maybe "dependency voters" are needed by a certain political party?

It's perfectly sensible to talk about why some people don't pay any taxes at all. I'm not even debating that. But the rich should still pay more, regardless. The US has been one of the strongest economies for most of the 20th and 21st centuries with a progressive income tax, and it's been a heck of a lot more progressive than it is now, and we were still very prosperous.
The rich already DO pay more. It will do NO GOOD to shakedown the rich for ever more $$$. The problem with tax addicts is they can never get enough. It's too easy to spend money. Destroy the incentive to invest and/or create (or deny there is incentive at all) and you get stagnation. GOVERNMENT CREATES NOTHING.
Showing fraud in some programs doesn't mean the program should be abolished. It can be reformed as well. There are plenty of ways to do that. We didn't abolish welfare in the 1990s. We reformed it. And no, it's not true that private businesses will always create the jobs when the economy is down. History has proven quite the opposite. Why would a business invest to make more goods and services if there's no market for it. A downturn in the economy breeds more economic decline. It's called a business cycle, and it's a natural occurrence. If you were a business owner, generally speaking, if you know less people out there have the money to buy your goods and services, would you increase production and hire more workers? Of course not. Does the average person put more money into the stock market or take money out when the market tanks? Takes money out, which drains money for investing. This is basic micro and macroeconomics.
But what about now, when our cherished federal mafia creates INstability? No sane businessperson will hire now with the Hawaiian Dunce in office. I've heard this claptrap about government spending as savior before.
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."

Henry Morganthau, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Some force has to run counter to the natural tendencies of the market to force demand to increase, and of course this virtually always requires running a deficit. This is why slogans like "the gov't should be run like a business" are simplistic and wrong. The gov't should in those situations create jobs through various programs, thereby increasing income for the lower classes, which creates spending and demand, which then causes businesses to increase production, hire more workers, and that gets the economy back on track. You can site case study after case study in our history we've done this, and it worked.
But it's not working now, is it. OOPS! I agree that govt should not be run like a business. It should instead by treated like the dangerous raw force it is, because that's ALL it is.

We ended the Great Depression via defense spending in the form of WWII in record levels as the most obvious exaggerated example. That historically was qm's worst nightmare - record deficits in raw amount at the time, and still to this day historic
record deficits as a percentage of GDP during WWII, followed by a tax raise on the richest Americans to over 90%. And what calamity befell the US because of those policies? We ended the Great Depression, became an economic Superpower, and Americans enjoyed record prosperity it and the world had never seen before.
This is historical fact that simply can't be denied.
There's some fact in there, but the cause and effect seems a little skewered.
FDR was a fascist, perhaps benevolent in his own mind, but a fascist in practice nonetheless, the sacred cow and Creator of the modern, unsustainable welfare state. He had no idea what he was doing and there is a growing body of work
suggesting his policies prolonged the Depression.

Here's what happened - Democrats deficit spent as they were supposed to (which is exactly what the GOP would have done had they been in power, because it was started by George W. Bush), which stopped the economic free fall.
This is all quite arguable. Yes, Bush the-liberal-with-a-few-conservative-tendencies ruined his legacy with scamulus spending, but nothing--NOTHING--close to 3 trillion in 3 years! Spending-wise, it's comparing a dragster to a regular hemi.

Moody's didn't downgrade the US debt. It was S&P. They sited math about the alarming deficits which contained a $2 trillion mistake on their part. They also sited political instability as the GOP was risking default to get their policies in place, which btw still include massive deficits.
Do you wonder why you can so neatly explain things while the Democrats in DC, with their arses on the line, cannot? The failed scamulus has forced the DC dunces to change boasts like "jobs saved" to "lives touched". Apparently there's a lot more to this tale than the Donkey Version.

The GOP couldn't stop the Democrats from spending all that money?! Laughable.
They didn't have the votes.

The GOP started the freakin' bailouts and stimulus! What did the GOP do the last time there was a recession after 9/11? Deficit spent, then continued to deficit spend when the economy was strong. Dude, seriously, you have no factual basis for
that kind of claim whatsoever.
Compare taxocrats' dragster-speed spending of the last three years versus Repub spending during the 8 years before it. The argument of "But they do it too!" has some merit, but as the rise of the Tea Party has shown, business-as-usual is no longer acceptable.
Oh, and taxocrats, remember this: the Hawaiian Dunce considers anyone making over 250K to be millionaires and billionaires.

>> ^Payback:

>> ^MycroftHomlz:
I think they should have tests US history to allow people to vote. Also, only land owners. And you have to be white. If you are black you get 3/5ths vote. That I think would be perfect.

You COMPLETELY have missed out the problem of half-breeds in your scenario. You haven't thought this out far enough. How can you POSSIBLY effectively protect the God-given rights of white people without addressing that?


It's easy, if you like their ugly mug, "who was George Washington?" If not, "how many marbles are in this jar?"

So Teddy Roosevelt was a communist?!

It doesn't mean there's no problem government can't fix. It means that gov't can fix shortcomings in a free market system with reforms. You know things like the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, those terrible gov't programs that spend other people's money to do things like ensuring what you buy at the grocery store won't kill you. How wasteful!

The Progressive Movement was about eliminating corruption in government. It was about improving society through various means, including gov't involvement when needed, but not always. For example, Henry Ford paid his workers well, very much against what most factory owners did, as Ford was heavily influenced by the Progressive Movement. Settlement Houses were charity based, not government run, and helped to educate adults to become more effective workers by teaching various skills. Yes, it overstepped its bounds with Prohibition, but it also brought the following communist, socialist, un-American things:

Women's Suffrage
Meritocracy to gov't agencies and officials
Modernized public schools
Food and Drug Administration
Busted up monopolies to protect consumers
Regulated unfair business practices designed to eliminate competition at the detriment to consumers
Safer working conditions
End of child labor
Fairer pay for workers with things like the minimum wage
Unemployment insurance

I'm sure qm will have a problem with some of the above, but how can you argue with the vast majority of them? Most historians rank T. Roosevelt and FDR as two of America's best presidents. They're probably the two most well known Progressives in US History.

This is of course all part of the communist conspiracy!!!

>> ^quantumushroom:

Progressivism = socialism = statism = communism lite and regular brand.
Nutshell:

There's no problem government can't solve! Just keep throwing other peoples' money at it!

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Someone care to explain what "progressive" means? I can't find a suitable definition on the internets, or in commonality of liberal progressives. The only meaningful definition was from progressive tax codes, but I don't think that idea encapsulates the entirety of this vague concept.

I call it like it is. Affirmative Action is racism. It's sole purpose is to tell ethnic groups that they are too inferior to accomplish something without troweling them into some artificial quota bin. The only quota system that has any value is individual merit and accomplishment. Everything else is a bunch of PC crap that punishes or rewards people based entirely on the color of their skin. It's the most racist policy in US history except for (A) slavery and (B) Japanese internment camps. That's some really good company it's keeping, isn't it?

Good intentions? Let me point you to a place where that road leads...

Couple of points in this that are absolutely laughable.

If the gov't can't borrow money, would it continue to function? Yes.
Would it require we immediately cut defense funding overnight, completely withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq? Yes.
Would we have to become isolationist? Yes.
Would it destroy the US economy pretty quickly? Yes.

Look, even if you're a deficit hawk, if you actually understand economics, you'd know that even if you wanted to transition all gov't expenditure to pay as you go, you can't do it overnight. It's the economic equivalent of throwing someone suffering from hypothermia into a sauna to warm them back up.

The president has gone back on some of his promises like torture, etc. How in the hell is that of any relation to lowering the credit rating of the US gov't?! Yeah, Obama, just like every president in US history, lied, and that means that the national debt, which couldn't be paid back even in this decade, will never be paid back because of Obama, even though Obama would have been out of office for decades before those debts are paid. Why did creditors trust Bush after WMDs weren't found? Why did they trust Clinton after lying under oath about his affair? Why trust Bush Sr. after the "read my lips" gaffe? I think I know why. BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T RELEVANT TO THE US GOV'TS ABILITY TO PAY BACK DEBT!

The above clip is common sense? No, it's narrow minded partisan hackery with a large dose of absolute ignorance of economic policy, regardless of your ideology.

Dude, is it so hard to believe a public employee makes $12,000 a month? That's only $144,000 a year, not $1.4 million. It's possible. Especially since so many groups are unionized in this state.

Remember this video with Councilman Bernard Parks banning fast food in South LA? Well, according to this article from LA Times (you know how right wing they can be), Parks makes $178,789 a year plus "$22,000 a month in city retirement benefits". Plus a police pension of $265,050 being the highest paid police chief in US history. But that's just one councilman and retired police chief in LA.

The entire Los Angeles general fund budget is $6.7billion, and they're projecting a deficit. The police budget's over 1 billion. And check this article out:

Los Angeles could face nearly a $1-billion shortfall by 2010 because of a mammoth bailout needed for the city's employee pension funds, which have seen investments tank in the spiraling national recession, according to a city budget report released Friday.

Sure, they're cutting some jobs, but look at all the new spending and hiring they're doing. On the news right now they're reporting about LA City Council voting to fund a $1.2 billion-development project to build a luxury hotel. And what about the high speed railsystem from San Diego to San Fran? The point is, LA and California spend a lot of money, so why is the $12,000 monthly salary for a fireman too big for you to swallow? Usually there's nothing too big for you to swallow.

Hell, a quick google search could've easily proven my "apocryphal firefighter" is in fact not so questionable. According to this article, "overtime pay for the Los Angeles Fire Department soared 60 percent over the last decade", and "the department's top earner racked up a total of $570,276 in overtime in the last three years, including $206,685 in 2006." And that's just overtime. How are they able to earn so much? Is it because the number of fires magically leapt to historical highs over the last couple of years? Well, according to the article, that sounds unlikely:

Recruits earn overtime for after-hours remedial training "if they feel the need for more time to grasp the skills," a department spokeswoman said.

So, do you now still call bullshit on me, my CPA, and your mom the two of us were fucking when we told each other that story? Or does it seem possible (nay probable!) that maybe the city workers in unions here in LA (and all over California for that matter) are making a very good (and at times great) salary on our tax dollars?

My CPA also told me a story of an architect who got tired of struggling as a small business and having to pay so much in taxes, so he quit the private sector to make more money working for the city. You wanna call BS on my apocryphal architect?

And I do care about the taxes I have to pay. I envy you that you don't. You must've had a great life as a lawyer's son. Always having more than you owe. I wish we all could come from there so we could also take the same sanctimonious positions you do. Only people of privilege seem to say things like, "money isn't everything." As if they scowl at the rest of us for wanting better for ourselves. Now excuse me while I go back to that mom of yours I was fucking when I told you this story.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
I'm not accusing you of lying, I'm just expressing skepticism since it doesn't line up with either my personal experience, nor with objective analyses of the changes in tax law from 2009 to 2010. Since you don't seem to have any firsthand knowledge about why your taxes might be higher, there's not really any way for us to get to the bottom of the discrepancy in our viewpoints.

I can't say the same about your secondhand hearsay about a supposed fireman who's making six figures. I call bullshit on you, your CPA, and the pig the two of you were fucking when you told each other that story. It's either a total fabrication, or the guy's primary source of income has nothing to do with firefighting.

As for Ireland, Greece, Spain and the UK, they're not in the same boat as the US. They're all engaged in much sterner deficit-reduction policy than the US has adopted or is likely to adopt in the near future. And to answer the question I posed to you, the net result is that they're just making things worse. What on paper should have reduced the budget didn't since it depressed the economy so much, and as a result they're no better off in terms of government debt, and much worse off when it comes to their general economies. Countries who took the liberal path like Canada and Sweeden are in pretty good shape. The US is pretty much splitting the difference, and while we're not getting worse anymore, we're not really recovering either.

I kinda feel sorry for you if you really think taxes are the only thing standing between you and a happy, satisfying life. A 35% raise wouldn't give that to me, nor would even a 350% raise. It'd be nice to have to be sure, but I feel like I've passed the point where even large increases in my income would have a qualitative impact on my overall quality of life. I don't really make all that much in the grand scheme of things either -- far less than your apocryphal firefighter.

I appreciate your candor in admitting that you don't care about wars, or humanitarian crises that happen to other people, just about how much taxes you have to pay and whether people you know make fun of you or not. Most people who feel that way don't have the guts to come right out and say so.

Just a word of advice, but money isn't everything. It can feel like it if you're not able to put food on the table, a roof over your head, or pay your medical bills, but beyond that happiness and satisfaction has a lot more to do with your emotional needs and the relationships you have with the people in your life than much of anything else.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Well, I'm certainly not lying. And it was 35% on my adjusted income, or what they call taxable income, I think. And it was in no way over or even in the same ballpark as $373k. Not even close.

I don't own. I rent. It is LA, after all. Buying a home in the city is tough. But I shouldn't be penalized for that, should I? We didn't get married last year, but we're certainly doing it this year. That may help next year, but why punish people who are single? Does that seem fair to you? And why punish those who don't want to work in the public sector or for a corporation? You know, I did employ two freelancers, so I create jobs this year. Shouldn't I be rewarded for that? It just makes zero sense to me.

I don't know why my tax is so high, to be honest. I have a CPA that deals with all of that. I just give him my itemized deductions and the amount I made, and he does the rest.

Yes, Ireland, Greece, Spain and the UK are exactly the same as the US. Bravo. Their EU is part of their problem, but that's an entirely different conversation, isn't it? I like how you bipartisan types take someone's real problems and make a political statement out of them. You know, taxation of this magnitude is not a partisan issue. This affects real people with real lives. Right now in my life, the only thing that stands in the way of me building a better life and the ability for me to pursue my happiness is the government. I owe them every year, and every year it goes up, and every year the Democrats call me a liar. I don't understand that.

Meanwhile, my CPA tells me of some of his clients. The firemen and policemen in LA. One fireman, a captain for a firehouse, makes $12,000 a month, and he'll retire when he's 55, and he'll take home 90% of that for the rest of his life. Good for him. A police captain makes enough to buy a home in Malibu overlooking the water. According to my CPA, he's got one helluva beautiful manicured backyard, too. Good for him. Glad I can pay for it. And you wonder why some of us hate public unions. Because I have to pay for them to retire at the age of 55 and take home a pension for the rest of their lives, yet the small businessmen can't catch a break because we're just middle class. I hear it's a helluva lot easier to just get on welfare and ride that out for a while.

So, you can comeback all you want with "Spain! UK! Greece!" but it means little to people like me, because I don't give a damn about your partisan bullshit, and it's not worth my effort to sit here and point out the many flaws in that argument. I care about how this affects me. The wars, the world affairs, the humanitarian efforts, and whatever else to me is just a distraction. What's important is I shouldn't be raked over the coals, and then have a gaggle of confused statists scratching their heads and point fingers at me as if there was some taxation glitch in the system.

>> ^kronosposeidon:

Funny how NO one was talking about government at all, but now that you mention it, @NetRunner, @dystopianfuturetoday and I are proposing legislation to carefully monitor the caloric intake of every single American. If your intake is too high, we starve you; if it's too low, we force feed you. And we'll force feed you Muslim food, and take away your Christian food. And then we'll all be forcibly relocated to Kenya Indonesia.



Well? Isn't the left's answer to everything MOAR BIGGER GOVERNMENT? After all, the herd has to be ruled by a cabal of powerful geniuses who knows what's best for everyone. And isn't obamacare the PERFECT license to rule? Now you can withold medical care when a citizen chooses to live an unhealthy lifestyle.


Funny how you didn't mind the tyranny of the Bush regime when he presided over the biggest expansion of government in US history, but when someone tries to make sure that no one has to die for lack of insurance then suddenly it's tyranny. I've noticed as of late you've picked up blankfist's "statist" lingo, but you didn't mind it when Bush authorized the state to wiretap without warrants.


The Right was angry then and is still pi$$ed off now at fakeservative Bush's spending sprees (a drop in the bucket compared to the next guy). I wish the left took the threat of radical islam as seriously as those wiretaps, continued under His Earness.

Funny how NO one was talking about government at all, but now that you mention it, @NetRunner, @dystopianfuturetoday and I are proposing legislation to carefully monitor the caloric intake of every single American. If your intake is too high, we starve you; if it's too low, we force feed you. And we'll force feed you Muslim food, and take away your Christian food. And then we'll all be forcibly relocated to Kenya Indonesia.

Funny how you didn't mind the tyranny of the Bush regime when he presided over the biggest expansion of government in US history, but when someone tries to make sure that no one has to die for lack of insurance then suddenly it's tyranny. I've noticed as of late you've picked up blankfist's "statist" lingo, but you didn't mind it when Bush authorized the state to wiretap without warrants.

QM <3 the (Republican) state>> ^quantumushroom:

Real freedom means people have the right to ruin their lives, and many do.
The tyrannical nanny-state alternative is far worse.

>> ^jwray:

epic fail. Isn't US history a required subject in high school and/or college? How do you study US history without studying the new deal, and mentioning Keynesian economics?


Easy, they don't call it "Keynesian economics" they call it "the New Deal", and "jobs programs", and "infrastructure investments", and then most classes say that it was the mobilization for WWII that really ended the Great Depression.

My high school history class on the depression went way into the weeds about the Tennessee Valley Authority and the WPA, but never once did they say "the New Deal was a Keynesian economic policy that used fiscal stimulus to increase aggregate demand to close the output gap that had opened up in the Depression".

epic fail. Isn't US history a required subject in high school and/or college? How do you study US history without studying the new deal, and mentioning Keynesian economics?

Me scared? Did you miss the part where I said I don't really care? Mostly, I feel completely apathetic about the whole situation. I was merely saying that, in this particular case, I can understand why people are upset. And while I understand your sentiments on using racism and war to garner political strength to accomplish alternate goals, it still doesn't assuage my understanding.

It is all just symbolic anyway, that is why I don't think the government should be involved at all. But I do understand why it upsets people. It would be like putting a Irish pub next to a school that was bombed by the IRA, or some other such thing. It doesn't "do" anything but sit there, but to those that had a close relation to the disaster, it is a symbolic slap in the face. I don't know the motivations of those building it, and most likely it isn't trying to spite people in the local area. But when your are even minority associated with one of the most brutal acts in US history, you have to expect some resistance even if it isn't right.

I, of course, believe in liberty, so let them build it. That doesn't mean, conversely, that people can't be outside the building everyday protesting it and demanding it be moved. I don't give a rats but, symbolism never did anything for me. Just recently, someone told me a story where butterflies landed on the husband of the wife who's funeral he was attending...and I guess it was supposed to be moving, but the only thing that moved on me was my intestines.

Put away your dagger man, it doesn't become you.