quote:Speaking of lying and deception, has anyone else noticed that Beren One Hand is either remarkably stupid or intentionally misleading?
Yeah, us rabble rousers have to play pretty dirty to stir up the crowd.
It was not my intent to mislead anyone, so I guess I must be remarkably stupid. Note however, my post never claimed to "represent American opinion." In fact, I specifically stated the poll was unscientific.
The title of this thread is "Hate Bush? Vote here," and not "Americans hate Bush, come see the proof!"
I was simply looking for the term "online opinion poll" on Google and found this site as the third sponsored link on the first page of results. If you find a similar American-based site you are more comfortable with, please share, as I can never get tired of voting against Bush in those polls. Posts: 4116 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
"The worst Bush did was claim something that he thought was true and ended up not being true, the worst."
Actually, I think the rapidly swelling deficits and outrageous tax cuts are the worst he's done. The war is largely not on my radar.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tom, I join you in condemning ballooning budget deficits. But would you agree that the reason we are losing so much money is because we spend too much?
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
"But would you agree that the reason we are losing so much money is because we spend too much?"
I would agree that we are losing so much money because we are spending too much relative to the amount we're taxing. I don't necessarily think that we're suffering from excessive taxation.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: I don't necessarily think that we're suffering from excessive taxation.
I do think we are suffering. But that's not what I asked you. So since you think we are not taxed enough, and how much we spend should only be limited by how much we take in with taxes, would you say that there is any kind of a limit? Is there some level where government should stop spending? What percent of our GDP is an acceptable amount?
The problem with our current setup is that we are $7 trillion in debt. The more we spend, the more we go into debt. Even if we raised taxes to cover our budget deficit, we would still have $7trillion of debt. What would happen once we started hearing about surpluses? We would get massive new spending, no one wants to actually pay off our debt.
To me, this is one of the most important issues this election. What is a candidate going to do about the heavy foot of government, and how will said candidate pay off our debts. Democrats want to raise taxes, but this will only result in a bigger government nanny. Republicans want to cut taxes and spend a tiny little bit less. We need someone who will freeze tax rates where they are, and slash spending dramatically. "Welfare" spending needs to be the first to go. Once the spending is under control and we have made significant progress paying off the debt, then we need to abolish income taxes, or failing that, set a flat tax which is very low. Something like 5 - 10%.
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"Is there some level where government should stop spending?"
I think an arbitrary restriction like this is foolish, to be honest. On the other hand, I see no reason we can't write a debt restriction into the actual Constitution, so that Congress can't keep voting to raise it.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I see one big reason -- war. If we were ever to have a major war, that debt restriction would have to go right out the window.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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You may think its a bad idea, but it certainly addresses the problem of a massive debt.
(I think its generally speaking a bad idea. However, I also understand that generally speaking does not mean always).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Okay, assuming we raise taxes, how will you insure that the extra money goes to paying down the debt, year after year? Its not easy to convince people that a surplus is worth keeping, most will clamor for spending increases, and they would likely get them.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
You have the exact same problem if you cut spending to lower the debt -- there's a surplus when you ignore debt services. Your question applies equally to both situations.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
"How can we address the problem of massive debt without cutting spending?"
Toss Dubya out of the Presidency and the Republicans out of Congress. Just a bunch of drug crazed animals using Americas' credit card to party down with welfare queens
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
No, the question does not apply to both sides. Getting spending under control is a requirement for debt reduction, no matter how you create a surplus. The reason is that most of the programs which are costing the most are the ones which will continue to grow. No matter how much we raise taxes, we can never cover what the coming expenses will be if we don't put the brakes on Social Security, Welfare, etc.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: Toss Dubya out of the Presidency and the Republicans out of Congress.
I totally agree. Who would you replace them with? I would like to see libertarians in control of the budget.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
*sigh* That wasn't what you said, you said that "most will clamor for spending increases, and they would likely get them." This occurs in any situation with a surplus, whether that surplus is obtained by cutting spending, raising taxes, or both.
Are you saying that if spending was cut people would magically stop "clamor"-ing for spending increases?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
So now your argument is "Its easy because we said it was going to happen!" Uh huh.
Lets lay out what we're talking about here: Congress cuts certain programs from the budget in year 0. This leads to projected surpluses in years 1, 2 3 . . .
OR
Congress raises taxes in year 0. This leads to projected surpluses in years 1, 2, 3 . . .
Now, you just asserted that because, in scenario one, spending is being cut, that it doesn't matter if people clamor or not, that spending will not be raised again, while in scenario two spending raises will be a concern.
I have been saying that it is impossible to succeed at cutting the debt without cutting spending heavily. What is it that you are saying?
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:The worst Bush did was claim something that he thought was true and ended up not being true, the worst.
What you mean to say is, he claimed to KNOW something was true (rejecting even the need to take more time to investigate more closely) that ended up turning not being true, and used it to justify a war that he now claims had other more secret justifications that he didn't talk about because they were less popular and because he knew the American people wouldn't think they were good enough to justify an invasion.
No, this sure isn't enough to hate the man or call him evil. However, it is easily enough to fire him without a second thought.
posted
I'm saying your objection was nonsensically applied to only one method of cutting the debt.
Also, you confuse cutting spending with curtailing spending. Cutting spending means getting rid of spending which already exists/is planned for. Curtailing spending means not introducing new spending.
It is impossible to deal with the debt without largely curtailing spending. One could certainly deal with the debt without cutting spending -- by raising taxes.
Lets specify the two scenarios some more. In the first, spending is cut to the tune of $50 billion. In the second, taxes are raised to create a surplus of $50 billion. In both cases, no additional spending is added. Thus, in both cases the debt goes down at the same rate. If additional spending had been created after the initial cut in spending, that would cause the debt to be repaid more slowly. Similarly, if additional spending had been created after the tax increase, that would cause the debt to be repaid more slowly. Do you see how in both scenarios the debt being paid down is irrespective of whether or not the surplus is generated by spending cut or tax increase, but instead on the difference between taxes and spending, and the curtailment of spending?
quote: Do you see how in both scenarios the debt being paid down is irrespective of whether or not the surplus is generated by spending cut or tax increase, but instead on the difference between taxes and spending, and the curtailment of spending?
I see that in your example, yes. In either case, spending must be held steady. At the very least, no increase in spending can be allowed, in your example.
Now, in real life, even if we do not allow discretionary spending to grow, and we do not allow new spending programs, we will still see overall government spending increase. This is because existing programs, like social security, do not have a fixed yearly cost. By any reasonable projection, social security spending will drastically increase over the next 10-20 years. There will need to be a cut somewhere in the social security program if we are going to control our budget. The cut may be in the form of decreasing benefits to all involved, or not allowing some, probably the rich, to receive benefits at all. But the promises that are made by social security will be cut.
Don't get the idea that we always have the option to increase taxes. Even if there were no opposition to taxes, there is a limit to what we can spend, which happens to be our GDP. If we had 100% income taxes we would still have a limited amount which we could spend.
The question becomes one of which way is the best way to reduce government's burden, debt or taxes, on our people. As I stated before, I am all for freezing the tax rate where its at right now, and then slashing and burning most spending our government does. Most of this spending shouldn't be done whether we have the money or not. Then, once we have spending slashed to the bare essentials required to protect our private property and the nation as a whole, we can start slashing the tax rates.
posted
You aren't talking about general spending cuts, you're talking about particular spending cuts based on an ideological agenda. Don't act like you're talking generalities when you're not.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote: Toss Dubya out of the Presidency and the Republicans out of Congress. Just a bunch of drug crazed animals using Americas' credit card to party down with welfare queens
Isn't it the democrats that want to spend MORE on welfare?
Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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quote:By any reasonable projection, social security spending will drastically increase over the next 10-20 years. There will need to be a cut somewhere in the social security program if we are going to control our budget.
Well, we could always cut OTHER areas. For one thing, we waste tons and tons of money on military luxuries. For instance, we spend billions maintaining a nuclear weapons arsenal that hasn't been used in 60 years, doesn't look like we'll need in the next 60, and contains far more warheads than we could ever reasonably use.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote: You aren't talking about general spending cuts, you're talking about particular spending cuts based on an ideological agenda. Don't act like you're talking generalities when you're not.
First of all, I have an ideological agenda. I take sides. I have an opinion on how the government should operate. How can anyone have a meaningful discussion on the government if they don't have an opinion about it? Are you arguing for the sake of disagreeing with me? Or do you have some opinion of your own on how the government should operate?
Second, I am talking about freezing the amount of money that the government spends. I am talking about stopping ALL increases in spending, meaning if the gov. spent $2.1 trillion last year, thats exactly how much they spend this year, not $2.101 trillion. This is what is required for your examples to work. I say this is impossible without cutting the promises we make with such programs as social security. If you can explain how we would halt all increases in spending and still not cut social security, please do.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Sure we could, and should. The point has never been that social security is the only program that needs cutting, they all do. We shouldn't be spending billions maintaining military bases in Germany and Japan when those countries can afford to defend themselves.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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