"A tax cheat runs the Treasury."

"Hahahaha!"

"No, I'm serious!"

What's that you say, Thomas Sowell?

"If anything, "the rich" have far more options for putting their money beyond the reach of the tax collectors today than they had back in 1921. In addition to being able to put their money into tax-exempt securities, the rich today can easily send millions -- or billions -- of dollars to foreign countries, with the ease of electronic transfers in a globalized economy.

"In other words, the genuinely rich are likely to be the least harmed by high tax rates in the top brackets. People who are looking for jobs are likely to be the most harmed, because they cannot equally easily transfer themselves overseas to take the jobs that are being created there by American investments that are fleeing from high tax rates at home.

"Small businesses -- hardware stores, gas stations or restaurants for example -- are likewise unable to transfer themselves overseas. So they are far more likely to be unable to escape the higher tax rates that are supposedly being imposed on "millionaires and billionaires," as President Obama puts it. Moreover, small businesses are what create most of the new jobs.

"Why then are so many politicians, journalists and others so gung-ho to raise tax rates in the upper brackets?

"Aside from sheer ignorance of history and economics, class warfare politics pays off in votes for politicians who can depict their opponents as defenders of the rich and themselves as looking out for working people. It is a great political game that has paid off repeatedly in state, local and federal elections.

"As for the 1920s, (Secretary of the Treasury Andrew) Mellon eventually got his way, getting Congress to bring the top tax rate down from 73 percent to 24 percent. Vast sums of money that had seemingly vanished into thin air suddenly reappeared in the economy, creating far more jobs and far more tax revenue for the government.

Sometimes sanity eventually prevails. But not always."

Where are the "lies"?

Isn't this "Obama Plan" the same old rubbish?

Another "stimulus"?
Another clarion call to raise taxes on the wealthy?

Conspicuously absent: cutting/slowing government spending, scrapping onerous regulations

"In 1939, ten years after the crash on Wall Street, the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., told the House Ways and Means Committee:

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!


You've leapt off this cliff countless times, lefties.
Flapping your arms harder won't slow (y)our plunge.

When the government gave free land to railroad companies, we got fraud and theft of historic proportions. We also got the most extensive railroad system in the world.

When the government gave billions to NASA, contractors looted the treasury, but we also got to the moon.

Every year the pentagon wastes our money on $100 toilet seats, but we also get the security of knowing that no one can threaten our way of life by force.

If we want green energy fast (and yes, I know not everyone does), we have to spend a lot of money and accept that waste will happen. That doesn't mean we can't do more to limit waste and fraud. It means we shouldn't let them deter us from doing what it takes to meet our goal.

Factually incorrect? Tell this guy:

"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 Morgenthau, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt

If the revisionist history of the left was accurate, the Golfer-in-Chief could reproduce the results of FDR's "success".


FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate


"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."



>> ^JiggaJonson:



>> ^quantumushroom:
Ah FDR, that delightful 'benevolent' fascist whose policies prolonged the Depression and whose ass was saved by WW2.

That was as retarded as it was factually incorrect.

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.

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.

Did I just upvote a comment by Bob Knight? I hope your sentiment is bipartison.

The "debt ceiling crisis" was a self inflicted wound. This vote, which has been routine and generally unpolitical, was indeed used, badly I might add, as a political hostage. The many republicans, who in banana republic style advocated a US default on our legitamate active debts are directly responsible for the credit downgrade by S&P. Lest we forget who they are, from TPM:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), May 17, 2011: "You want to make sure that the bondholder has confidence that the government's going to be able to pay them.... That's what I'm hearing from most people, which is if a bondholder misses a payment for a day or two or three or four what is more important that you're putting the government in a materially better position to be able to pay their bonds later on."

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), May 18, 2011: "What I think is that the markets are looking to see credible progress on changing the fiscal trajectory in Washington. The markets are not fooled by some date imposed to say that that is the trigger for the collapse. I think the markets are looking to see that there is real reform."

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), May 19, 2011: "The government is not to be trusted with more of your money, so I will refuse to allow them to borrow more. Now is it a good idea to default? No! But this is a false claim being promoted by big-government advocates. We can simply spend what we take in!"

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), June 24, 2011 on administration warnings of "catastrophic consequences" of not raising debt limit: "I don't believe them, it's not true."

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), May 18, 2011: "This problem is so urgent that there is -- an alternative school of thought has emerged recently," Toomey said. "The most high-profile advocate for this was Stanley Druckenmiller ... one of the world's most successful hedge-fund managers, extraordinarily wealthy from his knowledge of the markets, a big money manager now, and a big holder of Treasury securities -- and he has said that he would actually accept even a delay in interest payments on the Treasuries that he holds. And he would prefer that if it meant that the Congress would right this ship."

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), July 13, 2011: "To get a balanced budget amendment in this environment...we'd have to make the serious, credible, earnest threat that if you want to raise [the debt ceiling] and you want to have any Republicans voting for raising it, you're going to have to assist us: You give us 20 votes to adopt the balanced budget amendment in the Senate and we'll make sure you get the votes you need to raise the debt limit."

This is about as angry as I get when I think about the ongoing looting of the American treasury by Wall Street.

Kudos, angry man. Kudos.

How do the taxocrats think of this rotten debt deal scam as a "defeat"?

* The rich already pay the lion's share of the tax burden.

* The tax cheat running the Treasury continues to print Monopoly money.

* The Kenyanesque Hawaiian got a green light to burn through another 2 trillion (after pissing away 3 trillion with nothing to show for it)

* Unsustainable debt continues unabated, jeopardizing the world economy

Somehow the left considers this a defeat 'cause they couldn't shake Rich Uncle Pennybags by his ankles?

there was no threat of default. you can know this by looking at the treasury bond market for the last weeks. it was static, so they knew there was zero chance of default. no?

[citation needed]

In reply to this comment by Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Hm – well I’ll give the racist bigot host a 50% for being half right.

It is true that US citizens do have a hypocritical relationship with the big government’s socialist voter-bribery scams. However, he is dead wrong when he claims ‘socialism works’.

Socialism doesn’t work. European governments across the spectrum are being forced to increase privatization and cut social benefits in order to stave of fiscal collapse. When BM glowing describes all the great stuff European countries have (health care etc…) he totally ignores report after report after report of these so-called ‘services’ being abject, utter, complete failures. The UK health care system is being forced to ration SURGERIES (IE death panels) or collapse. Spain, Greece, Italy, France, UK, Germany, Portugal… The list of European socialist nations tottering on the edge of failure and having to pass ‘austerity measures’ to survive is myriad.

But the reaction that citizens have to cuts in socialist services in Europe is no different than that of the pork addicted public in the US when anyone suggests that shutting off the spigot. The riots in Greece prove that. It is nothing more than the principle Thatcher nailed so accurately in 1975… “The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money.” This is merely an extension of Tytler’s argument that “democracy can only survive until the majority discovers it can vote itself largesse out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship.” Which then leads to his subsequent “Cycle of Tyranny” (Liberty, Complacency, Dependancy, Tyranny, Revolution).

Maher (and other of his ilk) love to pretend that socialism works. Problem is that every factual analysis of socialism proves quite conclusively the exact opposite. Socialism doesn’t work. It is failure after failure on parade. And the reason the US is failing is BECAUSE it has so much socialism in it already. We better hope the Tea Party can talk more citizens into agreeing to ditch socialism, or the US is destined to financial collapse and subsequent balkanization.

As a side note – oh YEAH Bill Maher… The US budget entirely goes to military spending and corporate tax breaks, eh? What a complete moron. Whenever he opens his mouth to vainly try and sound intelligent, he proves himself ever more conclusively to be an absolute idiot. The 60 trillion in unfunded federal obligations is for socialism, dummy. The biggest budget items are socialism, idiot. Defense spending could be cut to zero tomorrow and we’d still be 59.2 trillion in debt for all those wonderful social programs that everyone loves so much.

Maher calling Palin a retard is like a severed head calling Cain Velasquez a cripple.

Hm – well I’ll give the racist bigot host a 50% for being half right.

It is true that US citizens do have a hypocritical relationship with the big government’s socialist voter-bribery scams. However, he is dead wrong when he claims ‘socialism works’.

Socialism doesn’t work. European governments across the spectrum are being forced to increase privatization and cut social benefits in order to stave of fiscal collapse. When BM glowing describes all the great stuff European countries have (health care etc…) he totally ignores report after report after report of these so-called ‘services’ being abject, utter, complete failures. The UK health care system is being forced to ration SURGERIES (IE death panels) or collapse. Spain, Greece, Italy, France, UK, Germany, Portugal… The list of European socialist nations tottering on the edge of failure and having to pass ‘austerity measures’ to survive is myriad.

But the reaction that citizens have to cuts in socialist services in Europe is no different than that of the pork addicted public in the US when anyone suggests that shutting off the spigot. The riots in Greece prove that. It is nothing more than the principle Thatcher nailed so accurately in 1975… “The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money.” This is merely an extension of Tytler’s argument that “democracy can only survive until the majority discovers it can vote itself largesse out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship.” Which then leads to his subsequent “Cycle of Tyranny” (Liberty, Complacency, Dependancy, Tyranny, Revolution).

Maher (and other of his ilk) love to pretend that socialism works. Problem is that every factual analysis of socialism proves quite conclusively the exact opposite. Socialism doesn’t work. It is failure after failure on parade. And the reason the US is failing is BECAUSE it has so much socialism in it already. We better hope the Tea Party can talk more citizens into agreeing to ditch socialism, or the US is destined to financial collapse and subsequent balkanization.

As a side note – oh YEAH Bill Maher… The US budget entirely goes to military spending and corporate tax breaks, eh? What a complete moron. Whenever he opens his mouth to vainly try and sound intelligent, he proves himself ever more conclusively to be an absolute idiot. The 60 trillion in unfunded federal obligations is for socialism, dummy. The biggest budget items are socialism, idiot. Defense spending could be cut to zero tomorrow and we’d still be 59.2 trillion in debt for all those wonderful social programs that everyone loves so much.

Maher calling Palin a retard is like a severed head calling Cain Velasquez a cripple.

But that's just it: the treasury isn't the only source of money in the country. Bankruptcy implies defaulting on paying bills, which we haven't done yet. Everybody keeps saying how broke this country is, while the top 0.1% hoard massive amounts of the country's money supply. If we were serious about paying down our debt, we'd acknowledge that the plurality of wealth is concentrated into the hands of a tiny minority. There should be at least two more tax brackets, for millionaires and billionaires, to tap into the vast reserves of cash just sitting in the accounts of people who own private jets. Let's stop fooling ourselves that a nation where this is possible is somehow running out of money.

If Ron Paul had his way, we'd write off all the debt we owe ourselves like it didn't exist. Is that really a responsible solution?

>> ^MarineGunrock:

Apple now has more cash than the US Treasury.>> ^CircleMaker:
America is the wealthiest nation in the world by a huge margin. We are nowhere close to being bankrupt.

Apple now has more cash than the US Treasury.>> ^CircleMaker:

America is the wealthiest nation in the world by a huge margin. We are nowhere close to being bankrupt.