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ORIGINAL: mnottertail
That entitlement class, is that the 47% or is that the 53% or is that the 1%.   I don't see the 'entitlement' class doing anything but howling about lowering taxes for corporations.

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

Well, you haven't written anything of value, now have you?

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ORIGINAL: Yachtie

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

He asked you a clarifying question as to which entitlement class you referred.

He gave me three choices. Besides, which entitlement class, his 47%, 53% or 1%, is he referring to howling about lowering taxes for corporations?

Really, I don't see anything worth responding to. Besides, one does not end a question with a period[8|]

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

It was rhetorical, because I know the 'entitlement' class you are referring to.  And I know the 'entitlement'  classes you are not referring to.

And thats why I am saying that the notion is valueless.

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ORIGINAL: cloudboy

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While the plan does cut tax rates, it is "revenue neutral." The reduction in tax revenues from lower rates will be made up for by some combination of increased economics and - and this is the part that most critics ignore - the plan also calls for getting rid of most, if not all, loopholes, carve outs, or whatever you want to call them.

You are not making any sense. Can you cite one example from history where cutting taxes helped reduce the national deficit? Its never happened. The deficit can only be reduced by raising taxes. Raising taxes on the wealthy won't kill the economy either, that's a myth.

1. Increase taxes to the point that spending is less than revenues.
2. Decrease spending to the point that it's less than revenues.
3. Some mixture of the first 2.

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Clinton controlled spending (unlike Republican Presidents) and increased taxes. He's the only President in our lifetime to run a balanced budget. Every Republican at the time said his policy would ruin the US economy.
The most important achievement in political economy in the Clinton yeas was reducing the federal deficit. Just before his inauguration Clinton held an economic summit in Little Rock, at which academic, business executives, and financiers one after another moaned about how huge federal borrowing to cover debt was making capital too expensive to allow industry to grow. One year later Clinton had rammed through a tax-and -budget bill that turned a chronic deficit into a surplus.
The anti-deficit drive was controversial within the Democratic Party, because Clinton seemed to be truckling to financial markets rather than spending more for education and health. It was bitterly resisted by the Republicans; every single Republican member of Congress voted against the new taxes in the plan. It was an enormous gamble on Clinton's part: he had Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. The historical judgment has to be that it paid off, for Clinton, and, of vastly more importance, for the country.

--James Fallows

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ORIGINAL: Yachtie

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail
That entitlement class, is that the 47% or is that the 53% or is that the 1%.   I don't see the 'entitlement' class doing anything but howling about lowering taxes for corporations.

Way to address what I wrote[8|]

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ORIGINAL: cloudboy
From 1992-2000 the Clinton budget started out at: $1,409,386 (1993) and ended up in 2000 at $1,788,950 (in millions of dollars.)
The US Government budget went up 26% in eight years. That about a 3.3% growth rate a year.
Let's compare that to Reagan and GWB.
Reagan went from $599,272 (1981) to $1,064,416 (1988). (in millions of dollars.) The US government budget under Reagan went up 77% increasing at a pace of about 9.5% a year.
GWB went from 1,862,846 (2001) to 2,982,544 (2008). The US government budget went up about 60% increasing year over year by about 7.5%. A lot of that money was $$ poured down the drain in poorly executed wars.
These are the numbers. As you can clearly see, Clinton Controlled spending better than any of his peers by a significant margin of at least 2.5 - 1.

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ORIGINAL: DarkSteven

I don't believe it, but here's the argument. The whole concept of trickle-down is that, if money does not go to the government, it will go to the private sector and spur economic activity. Trickle-down holds that at the proper location on the Laffer curve, each dollar of tax cuts simulates enough economic activity that the marginal increase in taxes directly due to that activity is worth MORE than a dollar.

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ORIGINAL: Yachtie

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail
Cute, one does not reduce outlays by reduction of income.

Of course not. One must reduce outlays to a sustainable outlay of one tax dollar in one tax dollar out. It's impossible to outlay two or three out for each one in. Even the wealthy cannot support that bill.

But that is exactly what is being demanded by the entitlement class, and it's going to be hell when it collapses.

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Good fucking Lord. That's abso-fucking-lutely re-cock-ulous. You're going to compare Clinton's Presidency to Reagan's and W's? Care to compare the global events of those Presidency's to put everything in context?

Of course not.

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ORIGINAL: cloudboy

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Good fucking Lord. That's abso-fucking-lutely re-cock-ulous. You're going to compare Clinton's Presidency to Reagan's and W's? Care to compare the global events of those Presidency's to put everything in context?
Of course not.

We know you don't like the comparison b/c it impeaches your views. You just laughed at the notion that Clinton controlled spending, but then when you are shown the hard numbers you dismiss them.But, this comparison shows the mythology of Republican Fiscal Conservatism better than anything. Reagan, during peacetime, turned the US from the world's largest creditor into the world's largest debtor nation. Bush turned a surplus into a massive deficit.

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Reagan could have foregone his massive military buildup, which was based on the exaggerated threat of the USSR (which imploded from within), and...

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However, this project of creating a unified, centralized socialist state proved problematic for several reasons. First, the Soviets underestimated the degree to which the non-Russian ethnic groups in the country (which comprised more than fifty percent of the total population of the Soviet Union) would resist assimilation into a Russianized State. Second, their economic planning failed to meet the needs of the State, which was caught up in a vicious arms race with the United States (emphasis mine). This led to gradual economic decline, eventually necessitating the need for reform. Finally, the ideology of Communism, which the Soviet Government worked to instill in the hearts and minds of its population, never took firm root, and eventually lost whatever influence it had originally carried.

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...BUSH could have cleaned Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and then used proxies to hold power. Instead, he elected to occupy two (2) hostile countries at astronomical tax-payer cost while slashing taxes for the wealthy. (That had never been done before in the history of the USA.)

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Clinton kept spending low. He did not send troops overseas to occupy Somalia, Rhwanda, or Yugoslavia, and he did not exaggerate foreign threats to ramp up defense spending.
Clinton can do the SUNDAY NYT Crossword puzzle in about two minutes; GWB was a recovered alcoholic, fundamentalist Christian, who spoke poorly. Reagan had Alzheimer's during his second term.

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These are the facts, jack.

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Iraq must comply fully with UNSCR 660 (regarding Iraq's illegal invasion of Kuwait) "and all subsequent relevant resolutions."


Authorizes UN Member States "to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area."