quote:

ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

Steven,

I'm moderate, fiscally conservative, progressive socially. I'm neither for nor against government--I'm for solving problems.

I'd slightly raise SS taxes and slightly delay retirement age (while keeping disability as is). This is actually a simple fix if we do it now, while SS still runs a surplus. After the baby boomers, this program will exist just fine. Continue to offer and promote 401k/403b and IRA/Roth IRA to encourage retirement savings.

puts you at the whim of wall street wherein you can only go long while wall street is short.


Medicare/Medicaid, along with a few problems, do a good job of solving a previous need. They need more help, though, especially as health care costs rise and and state government budgets are in crisis.

Costs rarely rise unless as a result of government intervention.  Prices have not gone up since the stone age.   The value of your dollar has gone down.  You all really need to put things in its proper perspective.

I've no problem with increasing these taxes, as they're already pretty low. Commissions of doctors to oversee costs is important. But this also links to....

Pay the government to redistribute your wealth for you instead of just donating to your fav charity or the hungry on man on the street and the middle man (the government) gets to take their cut.  thats what taxes are.

Health care reform. This is a crisis, getting worse all the time. We are the only industrial nation left with it unaddressed.

You mean unsocialized?

We spend more than any other nation, but don't have universal coverage, and can be dropped or excluded for new conditions, existing conditions, or rapidly increasing rates.

Well you see thats all based in the monetary system when you live under admiralty jurisdiction.   Its all about insurance and for "profit" and the advancement of commerce.

This is money we are already ill-spending as a nation, and we can't afford to continue this way.

So you feel you could spend it better?  You need to decide whwich way you want it then.  You claim you support higher taxes, (government controlled redistribution) but at the same time are not happy with the manner in which they redistribute it.

I'm absolutely in favor of the government stepping in.

sigh.

 If we continue to do nothing, the day will come when we BEG for a "government take-over."

The desire for government managed redistributed wealth and government managed health is BEGGING for government take over and that is what is called double speak or double talk if you will.

We blow a fortune on defense, bizarrely exceeding all other nations. We can't afford it.

Protecting our markets abroad to control and maintain the world US, England power structure.

We're spending billions on Homeland Security to essentially put on a show. Stop it. It's a silly and expensive over-reaction. Spend the money on intelligence.

well thats what it takes when you piss off the whole wolrd at large by forcing them into the club.

Invest in education. Make college free or at least provide much more aid.

Yup governemnt agenda, and you BEG for more government takeover!  Everytime the government gives you something there are agreements being made starting with you will pay them back with interest.  You are a dichotomy in contradiction.

This should be within everyone's reach financially. It will pay back many, many times over.

yes if you are the interest or tax collector as in the bank there will be great payback.

Federal government is smaller than it was as a percentage of the population. State and local governments have ballooned.

Taxes never get lessened they just shift.  like in deep space9 LOL

Federal taxes are actually quite low, both as a percentage of income/GDP and compared to other nations. Every time we cut them further, state and local taxes grow more than the cut to make up the loss. It's inefficient. Some things are simply best handled at the federal level.

Everything is already handled at the federal level and separation of state, courts et al is a delusion if anyone would take 5 minutes and learn how to read the government code.

I'm all for free markets, but we know from the past 150 years that unregulated markets do not work, as they produce externalities that give flawed feedback and mis-reward to participants.

There is no such thing as a free market never has been and never will be.  The markets always have been and always will be extremely manipulated and franly its a fools a game to think otherwise.

Polluting, for example, is not a cost to the polluter (w/o regulation). Honey producers are not rewarded for the beneficial effects of pollination. I'm not anti-corporation either, but large producers shut out small local operations, making us dependent on costly shipping.

Which is precisely why they had 10 - 20 year charters tops!  Which is precisely why they did not have rights as they do now.  Which is precisely why original taxation in this country was directed at them.  Who gets the federal protection of the military that YOU pay for to protect their overseas operations that you pay for whether you buy their goods or not?  YOU DO!

Who protects the little guy?

It was originally done that way to protect the little guy but now days you want to pay more taxes and feed the corporation and whine about the little guy getting fucked.

Public school education has failed abysmally in teaching people how the system works and like the monetary system the harder you try to work within it to get out the deeper it sucks you and the harder you fall.

you people completely fail to see what is right in front of your noses.

Markets also don't reward looking down the road--like more renewable energy, or local production to alleviate transmission difficulties.

That does not increase commerce!  The king of england never freed america from any commercial agreements, not that I expect anyone here will actually add that all up into something more constructive than name calling conspiratist paranoia such that it can actually be used constructively to effect change.

For this reason, ALL economies in the world today are mixed economies, with both private and government initiatives

Very good!  Which is precisely WHY you are owned lock stock and barrel by the government of your own creation which is no longer a government OF the people but a small group who were smart and clever enough to put the people into receivership such that their constitutions were over ridden and none of you are the wiser.  Just go into court over a traffic ticket and tell the judge you got rights under the constiutution and he will RIGHTFULLY look you square in the eye and tell you to STFU the constitution does not apply here.

(with different nations at different points along that continuum). No, government is not THE solution, but neither is government the problem. At times, we need government solutions.

While I agree with this last one its all really boils down to the implementation of it.


More troubling is the hard line partisanship that has arisen over the past three decades. Democrats and Republicans used to meet "after hours" and hammer out solutions. Now, it seems all about slamming the other party and getting back into or holding onto power, whatever the cost. We need to elect an army of Independents who caucus separately.

You finally said something that I can actually agree with you on.

We need to invest/contract in good times. Instead, we always follow expansionary policies, no matter what.

the problem here is that all your solutions do just that!

Right now, OK, we have to spend to avoid halting the economic recovery. But then we have to contract.

Not sure what you mean by that combination.

That means raising taxes. That means trimming programs. That means being sensible.

Especially when you add the taxes part in to it, but it should be painfully obvious that if you raise taxes and cut programs someone is making more money and providing less services!

Incidentally, building our exports further is a good idea. We already export a trillion dollars worth of goods, yet still have a trade deficit. We've ignored that too long. Build a trade deal with Africa--markets markets markets.

We just did that with the takeover of 2 countries who do we point our guns at next? Africa?

Get back to deficit reduction. I had hope in the 90s. Keep the troops for real emergencies, not neo-con war games. Send special ops after single targets.

more double talk

And stop the ridiculous banter slamming left/right over whatever hit the news that week. The majority of people are moderate. Let's face THAT reality.

quote:

ORIGINAL: SL4V3M4YB3

'Ain't never going to change'

Is a double negative.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

quote:

ORIGINAL: SL4V3M4YB3
'Ain't never going to change'
Is a double negative.

thats a quote from that kick ass video I put at the end of the post. :)