Just sayin howdy-do!!

However, with higher taxes on the rich (even back to the level of the Clinton years, during which we experienced enormous prosperity), significant defense cuts appropriate to our pulling out of Iraq (and hopefully, soon, Iran), and a continuing economic recovery, we could eliminate the DEFICIT – the hole in the current year budget and begin to run surpluses again. Each year’s surplus would pay down some of the debt and/or go to reducing the unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare. Raising top-level income taxes to the rates the rich enjoyed during the gangbuster economic growth of the 1950′s would produce even larger surpluses, which could either further reduce the debt faster, or enable us to start working on long-deferred maintenance on things like federal highways, bridges, and so forth.

Social Security and Medicare do present a separate challenge, but that challenge is solvable as well. If we expanded the SS tax base to include all earned income, that would take care of a great deal of it. An investment banker on Wall Street making $50 million a year would pay his 7.65% on that amount and so would his employer – and that $7,650,000 would be enough to pay the current year’s benefits of about 300 people. Continue to raise the retirement age gradually to 70 (though at a slightly faster pace than the last hike), means-test both programs (if you’re making $10 million a year in retirement off investments, you don’t need subsidized health care), and you’re about 90-95% of the way to solving the funding problems of both programs.

As for the employer’s vs. employees’ portions of employment taxes: the general consensus among business, labor, economists and just about everyone else is that those should be considered part of the employee compensation total, because presumably if the government didn’t tax the wage base to cover Social Security and Medicare, that money would eventually work its wage into the general wage base. When employers (and I am one) calculate how much it costs to hire a new employee, we add the total wages or salary, the employment taxes, and the costs of benefits – and that’s the number we work with. Not every company would increase wages by 7.65% if the (standard) FICA/Medicare taxes were eliminated, but a company *could* while seeing no change to its bottom line.

As for Wisconsin: multiple Republicans are getting recalled right and left, and the governor there faces an increasingly likely recall himself. It’s telling that Radical Republicans could only take control in so many statehouses in “off” year elections; it’ll be interesting to see how things play out this year.

The real tool is this blogger. He missed the point. Because he wanted to. He was upset that the majority in Wisconsin and other places are sick of being trampled on by socialist union thugs who think it is o.k. to rape and pillage the public. We are not taking the BS anymore.

As Michael Moore has said, “The richest 1 percent have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.” which is true.

Unlike Bill Whittle, I’m not going to cherry pick. I’m going to eat the ****ing rich with no mercy.

If we take the wealth of all the richest Americans, that amount of money alone (nobody middle class or poor would spend a dime) could afford a 3.7 trillion budget per year until 2024, and if you include their offshore accounts, until at least 2027.

You also misunderstand the term “limiting freedom.” When the federal government gives banks a mandate of lending in a certain neighborhood rather than lending to maximize profit and/or minimize risk, the banks have, by any definition, lost freedom. You can argue that they haven’t lost a great deal of freedom, or you can argue that the goal of increased home ownership is worth the cost of lost freedom. But you can’t argue that the government has not limited the freedoms of the banks and their shareholders.

You have suggested that, since the banks receive some federal assistance, they have no right to the freedoms that the CRA took away. I disagree again. If federal assistance to banks is a bad thing, which I think it is, let’s take that away. Let’s not use the federal government’s interference in the banking marketplace as self-justification for increased governmental interference in the banking marketplace.

I’ll simply say that I disagree with your fundamental principles. I think the highest and most noble purpose of government is to protect individuals’ life and property from others (be they individuals, or states).

You seem to believe that the government’s most noble purpose is to develop a centrally planned set of goals (universal health care, high percentage of home ownership, compact fluorescent light bulbs, etc.), and then take away freedom and property for the purpose of achieving these goals. And I’m ignoring the question of whether the government is even capable of achieving these goals.

Ron Paul may, or may not, be a nut. If the president is an autocrat, then it matters if he’s a nut. Ron Paul is the least autocratic candidate for president, for either party, in recent memory. But if he were president, the government would interfere in our lives much less than it currently does. And that’s what I care about.

In that light, the “cost” appears negligible and the benefits, even if muted, are tangible – more poor people able to buy a house.

And FYI, I don’t consider that “limiting freedom”. Banks are businesses which avail themselves of all sorts of government-sponsored protections, like depositor insurance. In return, they operate under a set of rules designed to help ensure fairness, including the CRA, which only seeks to ensure that poor depositors aren’t just providing the funds for the bank to invest elsewhere; some of their money has to be reinvested in their own areas.

I have no problem with the Tenth Amendment. I just don’t interpret it the way some states-rights nutcases do. I’m also not necessarily in favor of a large government so much as I’m in favor of a government that has the power and flexibility to deal with the challenges we face. I’d gladly sacrifice federal farm aid, for instance, which is basically welfare for large agribusiness corporations and a handful of politically connected wealthy farming families. I’d be happy to shrink the military by about 50%, to the size force we actually need to protect the United States and not every tinpot oil-producing oligarchy like Saudi Arabia.

Finally, I tend to agree with “general” government aims but not with the particular means that usually end up being developed to carry out those aims. For instance, I’m in favor of universal health care for all health care costs over a certain amount per person, per year. I think insurance plan liability ought to be capped, which would bring the cost down dramatically, and likewise the plans should have a mandatory deductible big enough to make it pointless to file claims for small amounts, which adds to the cost of the system.

In a nutshell: people would be responsible for the first, say, $5,000 of health care costs out of pocket, which they could pay for from savings, credit card, loans from the bank, etc. (with a subsidy system for the working poor); mandatory insurance would cover costs between, say, $5,000 and $75,000 or $100,000 (which would cover most accidents, minor hospitalizations, etc. but not catastrophic costs for things like cancer; and the government would pick up the costs above that each year. Since most people don’t make a claim over $5K, insurance would be relatively cheap (large base, small risk of payout) and that would make it possible to cover the relative handful of cases that run into 6 or 7 figures through general taxes.

That’s one example of what I mean when I say I agree with government aims but not the way they’ve chosen to meet those aims.

Oh, and I dismiss Ron Paul because he’s a nut – a consistent, principled nut, but a nut nonetheless.

Moreover, just because one party didn’t seize a few months’ time (the only amount of time Democrats held a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate) to pass major tax reforms doesn’t make THAT party responsible for everything in the tax code. That’s like saying that because you didn’t happen to hand a homeless person a coat yesterday, and he froze last night, you’re solely responsible for his hypothermia-induced death.

If you get a Christmas bonus this year, I suggest you purchase a clue.