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And that's the way it's been for probably 100 years now. Conservatives hold the "small government" narrative, but all it really means is cutting the safety net. And they keep saying it because it works. Look at all the people who come on here talking about deadbeats on welfare. Welfare spending was 9% of the 2015 budget, and the rate of fraud is believed to be around 2%. Not 2% of the 9%, but 2% of the entire 100% that's spent on welfare. Put another way, for every $1 in taxes that funds the federal budget, 9 cents goes toward welfare. That means that a little less than two-tenths of a penny of that $1 is lost to fraud. That's what everyone is so up in arms about. Two-tenths of a penny.
Others complain about foreign aid. That's about 1% of the budget. One penny of your dollar.
Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much on corporate welfare -- i.e., subsidies -- than we do on social welfare. And that's not even including all the massive corporate tax breaks that leave gigantic companies like GE and Boeing essentially owing nothing in taxes -- nor does it include all the money they hide overseas. Guess who has to make up the tax shortfall? The middle class.
THAT is where people's outrage should lie. Not with poor people who are daily being reamed by these massive corporations who are raking in record profits. The top 1% to 2% are seeing all the recent monetary growth, while unemployment and underemployment remain a problem for everyone else.
The biggest place we can slash spending is in the military. We spend more on war than the next eight nations combined, and no other nation on the planet spends as much as we do. Our foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. We can't bomb the world into peace, and we can't destroy ideologies with military might. The military is for NATIONAL defense, not for subduing every bad guy around the planet, or dropping drone bombs on weddings and rescue parties, or assassinating American citizens, or running kill lists from the Oval Office. James Madison warned that liberty cannot survive in a nation that's at perpetual war, and we can see that in the way our civil liberties are being choked to death in the name of national security. Yet no one will have that discussion at the national level. Look at the flap over funding DHS -- where was the discussion about whether we even need this department? It's just taken as a given now. The two major parties are virtually identical when it comes to foreign policy and civil liberties, yet those are the two things we desperately need to force a national conversation on.
If I have to pay taxes, I want them to go toward helping people, not killing them. Universal health care and subsidized higher education -- I'd pay for those in a heartbeat. Social welfare is a pittance in the budget. Establishing a guaranteed minimum income for every American -- an idea that goes all the way back to Thomas Paine -- would help keep people afloat when they fall on hard times and could do away with a lot of redundancy in social programs.
We could manage to do most, if not all, of this by cutting corporate subsidies, closing tax loopholes, penalizing the hoarding of money overseas, and enacting deep cuts in military spending.
The problem is that the Ds and Rs all play for the same team, so this will never happen. Sure, there are some superficial differences between the parties, but both of them are drifting to the right. Today's mainstream Democrats are probably about where Nixon was on the political spectrum 40 years ago. Today's Republicans, meanwhile, would probably crucify Reagan as being a liberal.
The problem is that the Ds and Rs all play for the same team, so this will never happen.
You are correct. Left vs Right has no meaning to me. Both Ds and Rs love Big Government. Obama loves corporate welfare and has given billions of our tax dollars to his rich buddies. He also loves a HUGE military.
It is amusing to see Ds on this board talk about how Rs love corporate welfare while defending Obama who loves corporate welfare.
That craven lowlife as a candidate proposed a net federal spending cut -- and all of his supporters, who I can only assume were all far right wing tea party types cheered, chanted, and fainted!!!
Obama wouldn't know a spending cut if it bit him in the ass.
No, tons of other countries had massive inflation because of political instability or owing foreign-denominated debt. It had nothing to do with "money printing." Printing money is not the core cause of inflation.
Printing money IS inflation. Ever hear of the Weimar Republic? or France 1795-1796? or Hungary 1945-1946? or China 1947-1949? or Zimbabwe 2007-2008?
You are correct. Left vs Right has no meaning to me. Both Ds and Rs love Big Government. Obama loves corporate welfare and has given billions of our tax dollars to his rich buddies. He also loves a HUGE military.
It is amusing to see Ds on this board talk about how Rs love corporate welfare while defending Obama who loves corporate welfare.
Agreed. Only cut spending for "their" causes but not ours. How about when the talk around Congress was the increase isn't as much as before so that means we cut spending? lol
...so now it is about getting government out of the way..
We can't repair infrastructure without the government. The private sector won't fund it.
That's the plan, shrink the government impact on peoples lives.
Maybe your state cannot build it's infrastructure, but my state is booming and we are Obamas biggest enemy.
Printing money IS inflation. Ever hear of the Weimar Republic? or France 1795-1796? or Hungary 1945-1946? or China 1947-1949? or Zimbabwe 2007-2008?
Printing money is NOT inflation. The core causes of inflation (demand-pull and cost-push) happen regardless of if you print $0 in a year or $100 in a year, or if you trade in gold, chickens, prostitutes, whatever. There will still be inflation or deflation. Printing money controls currency expansion or contraction, in conjunction with interest rates.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pghquest
Oh just stop.. the equation you posted
Public Debt = Private Sector Wealth + Foreign Sector Holdings of U.S. Debt
is the total debt, but we're discussing the amount of currency in circulation, and your argument that debt = circulation.
STOP misrepresenting my arguments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Opin_Yunated
Public Debt is an accounting notation for currency creation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Opin_Yunated
The government issued it as a debt sometime in the last 200+ years.
Reading comprehension of some on the left NEVER ceases to amaze.
"Conservatives say reducing federal spending should be the Republican-led Congress’s top priority this session, beating out confrontations with President Obama over his immigration executive actions"
Funny I don't see, "getting rid of immigrants"
In fact, PLEASE show where ANYBODY wants to "getting rid of immigrants"
Maybe they should read their own articles before posting and making comments on them. It would save some embarrassment!
The low information voter strikes again.
Makes you want to put them out of their misery.
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