Austerity begins (tier, tax, financial, cost)

[pie_row]

Originally Posted by jimhcom

Your analysis is garbage. The issue is not and never has been the housing bubble. The housing bubble was created to distract people from the real issue of the ramifications of NAFTA.
The reason we cannot recover from the housing bubble is that we have only a fraction of the manufacturing base we had prior to it.

That doesn't matter. The reason we had a bubble and not inflation was that wages weren't pushed up to support house prices during the last bubble. If wages had gone up then prices would not have had to come back down. Inflation = no bubble.

[jeremy2788]

I see a lot of references of cutting spending AND raising taxes, which would be great! But, look how much people complain about raising taxes on ANYTHING and how much some members of congress fight that "balanced" idea so aggressively. We will not have a balanced anything for quite some time.

[gwynedd1]

Originally Posted by jeremy2788

I see a lot of references of cutting spending AND raising taxes, which would be great! But, look how much people complain about raising taxes on ANYTHING and how much some members of congress fight that "balanced" idea so aggressively. We will not have a balanced anything for quite some time.

Is cutting spending and raising taxes some fundamental, divine good? I am willing to give all my worldly goods to for something which I have longed for my whole life. Yet I feel a sense of doubt.

[pie_row]

Originally Posted by gwynedd1

Is cutting spending and raising taxes some fundamental, divine good? I am willing to give all my worldly goods to for something which I have longed for my whole life. Yet I feel a sense of doubt.

He doesn't see the lack of anything to take the place of the missing government spending and the higher taxes. And what it will do to the economy.

[John23]

Does anyone else see how the US economy is being artificially held up? It seems like it isn't covered very much in the mainstream media.

-For example....the US Postal Service. Mail could easily go down to 3 days a week, maybe 4. Mail volume has dropped some staggering amount in the last 10 years.

On wikipedia, it says the post office employs 574,000 people!! The idea of solely paying attention to employment data to gauge the economic strength of this country is folly.

I wonder how many jobs in this country are being held up like the usps (i.e. govt, bankrupt city govt's etc). It seems like in the next 3-5 years, there will be a real wipe out.....the tide will eventually go out on things like the us mail and what's underneath won't be very pretty.

Real austerity, sequestration is going to leave us looking like argentina or brazil.

[gwynedd1]

Originally Posted by pie_row

He doesn't see the lack of anything to take the place of the missing government spending and the higher taxes. And what it will do to the economy.

And it says nothing about government licence. What if I could buy a taxing right from the government? That was the progress we made. Instead of being born into taxing rights, you can buy them.

[gwynedd1]

Originally Posted by John23

Does anyone else see how the US economy is being artificially held up? It seems like it isn't covered very much in the mainstream media.

-For example....the US Postal Service. Mail could easily go down to 3 days a week, maybe 4. Mail volume has dropped some staggering amount in the last 10 years.

On wikipedia, it says the post office employs 574,000 people!! The idea of solely paying attention to employment data to gauge the economic strength of this country is folly.

I wonder how many jobs in this country are being held up like the usps (i.e. govt, bankrupt city govt's etc). It seems like in the next 3-5 years, there will be a real wipe out.....the tide will eventually go out on things like the us mail and what's underneath won't be very pretty.

Real austerity, sequestration is going to leave us looking like argentina or brazil.

No you are not wrong, the economy has shrunk. However it has fallen mostly on the weak hands. So it is only acutely noticed by a segment of the economy with the broadest blow to wage income. You can even see it in the financial world. Big finance is starting to role in it once gain but they don't have to share it with Lehman Brothers.

[Butterfly4u]

John23,
The US Postal Service is privately owned and operated and takes no money at all to support
itself from the US Govt.
Debt has become our money system. If we don't get money from Treasuries and Bonds, the
US Government would be broke.
Europe has been buying our Bonds like crazy in the last 2-3 years because of the Euro
nonsense. That is why the US Govt has plenty of money and the interest rates have been
kept low.
Everyone wants US Treasuries and Bonds.
We can cut our military spending dramatically, and fortunately, the sequester does do that
over a 10 year period.
I do think I have a general understanding as to how our monetary system works, and the more
I feel I understand, the scarier it looks.
The politicans don't have a clue, do they? They are all ignorant, to a great extent as to how
the economy works.
THe jobs are gone. THey aren't coming back.
This is as good as it gets.
Am I wrong?

[gwynedd1]

Originally Posted by Butterfly4u

John23,
The US Postal Service is privately owned and operated and takes no money at all to support
itself from the US Govt.

Actually I thank you for a perfect example of everything that is wrong conservative economic thought. The post office surely has numbers and charts showing self sufficiency. Why? Because they are in possession of the first class mail monopoly granted to them by the government. Any law or license from the government is NOT self sufficiency. I am not sure how much deprogramming is needed, but I am sure a good deal of it is needed.

Government license for under market value is welfare.

[jm31828]

Originally Posted by treasurekidd

Government spending cuts, deficit reduction and (GASP) actualy debt paydown - BRING 'EM ON!!

The problem is the spending cuts are not being made smartly, they are making across the board cuts. So you have big bloated programs getting the same % cut as absolutely vital, already underfunded programs.