Krugman gets it right again. When you appease bullies and fanatics, it only emboldens them to bully you more and take even more extreme positions. The President Surrenders By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 31, 2011 A deal to raise the federal debt ceiling is in the works. If it goes through, many commentators will declare that disaster was avoided. But they will be wrong. For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status. Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have a depressed economy all through next year. And we will probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if not beyond. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=columnists&adxnnlx=1312290005-wyE+aYvSGpYSnnpastaMkA
Yep! Those "terrorists" really stuck it to BO, didn't they? You better teach that man not to negotiate with"terrorists" like that. Letting about 40% of the American public get a drop in the bucket can be dangerous. Just think. Now we are only going to increase our spending 8% next year. WOW!!!
None of that really makes any sense. Are you trying to say something or make some point? Just make it. Sarcasm is not your friend. I'd avoid using it when you are so bad at it if I were you.
anyway... The Right-wing is made up of two main factions. The base, known as the Tea-Vangelists that represent main street mainly and the Wall Street types. This trumped up debt ceiling crisis highlighted the split between the two interest groups. The Tea-Vangelists were willing to bring down the economy of this country and the entire world to get what they think they wanted while the Wall Street types weren’t willing to see the financial turmoil such a move would have unleashed. Whenever there is a conflict between the Tea-Vangelists and the Wall Street types, Wall Street always wins. The Wall Street types are a much smaller portion of the Right-wing but they have all of the power and the money. At the end of this “crisis” Wall Street won again proving only that the Tea-Vangelists are just tools that Wall Street uses to get what it wants. Think about the cuts that were enacted. Roughly 2 trillion in cuts over 10 years if the cuts stand since future congresses are not obligated to abide by what this congress passes. The 2 trillion works out to be about 200 billion a year in cuts for mostly old people, the poor, children, and students. Our current national debt is over 14 trillion dollars and growing. Throwing the entire 200 billion a year at the national debt, which will never happen, and assuming the national debt doesn’t grow one penny, like that will happen, we still will be left with 12 trillion in debt. Even that assumes 10 straight years of balanced budgets which again will never happen. This should demonstrate to anyone who is capable of objectivity that we can’t cut our way out of debt and that the only way to actually make a dent in our national debt is to cut spending, raise revenues, grow the economy, and reduce unemployment. Given the fact that you can’t grow the economy by spending less and cutting jobs, all arguments about reducing the debt are completely false unless you are willing to take a balanced approach to deficit/debt reduction.
First of, the Tea Party members are not Tea-Vangelists in the current lingo. They are terrorists. Just ask Biden and many other of your liberal friends. Secondly, your spending "cuts" are merely slight decreases in the future increases. My comment about an 8% increase for next year is in no way sarcastic or facetious. I realize that is the new political definition of "cut", but it is not mine.
As far as cuts go, there can never be enough cuts to ever pay down the debt even if we closed Washington entirely. This fact seems to elude the dolts in the base of the Right-wing. Cut, cut, cut, let's lay every government worker off even though the government accounts for 20% of our economy. Then we'll have a depression of our own making with unemployment at about 30%. Then the Right-wing will be happy and we'll still be in massive debt as no money comes in to pay it down. Great plan Tea-Vangelists!
So you are saying Greece did such a great job, we should follow their example. The alternative is for every American to pay all of their income to the government. That ought to work about as well as BO managed to keep out unemployment below 8%
Yeah, that is exactly how I would have interpreted what I said. We should become Greece! How about Iceland? They went financially belly-up first. Do you know what the US and Iceland have in common? Iceland has the lowest corporate tax rate in the developed western world. Do you know who has the second lowest corporate tax rate in the developed western world? We do! Iceland is a far better example than Greece if you need to make a comparison.
Just a guess, but the "Iceland" you are talking about is probably more commonly known as Ireland? Oh, and some corporate tax rate for Iceland is 20%. A couple other examples are Honk Kong = 16.5%, Ireland = 10 - 25%, Greece 22/25%, UK = 21 - 26% and USA = 0-47% (AKA the highest rate in the world). BTW, the second highest rate would be the booming economic power of Bangladesh at 0 - 45%
No, I was actually talking about Iceland. Do you not get the news but once every three years in your parts? The 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis is a major ongoing economic and political crisis in Iceland that involves the collapse of all three of the country's major commercial banks following their difficulties in refinancing their short-term debt and a run on deposits in the United Kingdom. Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland’s banking collapse is the largest suffered by any country in economic history. In an article called “IF YOU SAY SOMETHING” penned by Igor Greenwald, he states that: You may have heard: U.S. corporations face one of the highest income tax rates in the world, though the mention of "rate" is often enough excised, so that what comes through is the assertion that corporations pay too much in taxes. This is simply untrue if your basis for comparison is the developed world. The truth is that while the 35% corporate income tax rate is high indeed, the creativity and global reach of U.S. corporations make them among the most lightly levied. Between 2000 and 2005, U.S. corporate taxes amounted to 2.2% of the GDP. The average for the 30 mostly rich member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was 3.4%. You are simply a victim of being in the crowd that has heard the lie often enough that you have begun cheerleading for it. Try cheerleading for the truth next time.
First. I mostly based "Ireland" on you statement that it was the country with the lowest tax rate. I guess I should not assume any of your info is valid. BTW, you conveniently omitted state taxes. No other country that I saw has any equivalency. FYI, the forth highest rate is Canada and the fifth is France - that is assuming that you exclude the states. 46 states have a corporate tax rate higher than fourth-ranked Canada and all 50 states have a corporate tax rate higher than fifth-ranked France. I guess "you tend to post polls that agree with your position without regard to those that contradict it."
Pssssst. Wanna know a secret? The deficit last year (2010) wasn't really 1.3 trillion dollars. It was actually 6.5 trillion. And our national debt isn't really 14 trillion dollars, it is 75 trillion dollars. But Congress hides that little fact because, unlike a business, it doesn't have to claim its expenditures until it writes the checks. Sleep tight.
Here is what a prominent supply-sider said about Iceland in 2007: The supply-side economist Arthur Laffer assured the Icelandic business community in 2007 that fast economic growth with a large trade deficit and ballooning foreign debt were signs of success: “Iceland should be a model to the world”. The value of the banks’ “assets” was then around eight times greater than Iceland’s GDP. How'd that work out for them?
