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Well isn't one of the goals of socialism to eliminate the middle cl****? Anyone that didn't think this guy was going to bend EVERYONE over was not thinking straight. Congrats to the 51% as well as the low information voters.
Shared sacrifice isn't on the table.
Asking 1-2% to shoulder the load is like 49 states making Oklahomans get all the tax hikes. Oklahoma is 2% of the union.
Profits = stealing.Originally Posted by soonerintn
We need to change the way we think about spending and government if we are able to really get off this fiscal cliff. Republicans and democrats right now aren't even making the right argument. Both want to spend more and tax more.
They almost need to cut everything by 10% across the board. Then do the same the next year. None of this calling a 7% increase instead of a 10% increase a cut. And stop with this so much money over ten years. No one in the future is going to honor that. They have to stop spending money and they have to stop now.
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There was a plan proposed last time to cut 1% a year. It doesn't hurt as bad, is doable and works, but didn't get much attention. They don't want to solve the problems. Most of the Congressional seats are so gerrymandered there's no chance that people lose their seat unless there is a primary challenge--which is extremely hard to win. It's easier to blame the other side and head off any primary challenge, continue to 'serve' and live the good life than it is to solve any problems.
We have to remember that ever dollar cut affects others. Cut 10% off defense and companies like Raytheon, Honeywell, Dyncorp, Boeing, etc make cuts as well. If those cuts (theirs or the governments) mean lay-offs then that's money not coming in later on.
I agree cuts are needed and no more of the "new math"crap. It's like when my company celebrates "only" adding $1M to bad debt when we budgeted for $1.5M.
That's very true but you can't run things, beit a country or a company, worrying about the supply line. I know it sounds heartless but you can't go further into debt worrying about what will happen to Joe's widgets. The government didn't care about Boeing when they were blocking them from moving to improve their situation. They sure didn't care about how their actions with GM and Chrysler hurt all those shareholders as well as the dealers and everyone down the line.
Somewhat dependent on the cuts made. If we cut bureaucracy and reign in regulations those companies you mention can actually expand. Cutting spending doesn't automatically mean we have to buy less--we can cut fat and waste and shrink the footprint, but still stay relatively close to the same amount of contracts, etc we have now. Office space and computers, etc may be bought less but we don't have to jump right to contracts.
I beg to differ on that point; the logistics of supply chain is what I deal with, all day long.
If your cuts of 10% lead to a decrease of revenue by 12%, then you didn't make the situation any better. Let me put it another way. You spend $50,000 a year and make $45,000 a year. You decide to close the gap by getting rid of your car thus saving $5,500 a year. All is good now because you are running a surplus. Except now you have to quit your job and take a $35,000 a year job because having a car was vital to the first job. I know, I know it's an overly simplistic example...
Is the office space rented and do we have a contract for it? If that's the case, we are stuck paying until the contract expires and Trammell Crow is counting on that money to make their profit margins this year...If we don't renew, Trammell Crow doesn't meet their numbers and has to lay off and their stock plummets.
Give me an example of a cut in bureaucracy/regulations that would reduce the deficit so I can shoot that down too.
Yeah, but you can't keep on hoping you get a raise year after year to eventually make up the difference, because our economy can't count on getting raises all the time. The economy will have downturns (paycuts). The only way to weather that storm is to have a surplus in the bank, which is HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA laughable with our current state of congessional affairs.I beg to differ on that point; the logistics of supply chain is what I deal with, all day long.
If your cuts of 10% lead to a decrease of revenue by 12%, then you didn't make the situation any better. Let me put it another way. You spend $50,000 a year and make $45,000 a year. You decide to close the gap by getting rid of your car thus saving $5,500 a year. All is good now because you are running a surplus. Except now you have to quit your job and take a $35,000 a year job because having a car was vital to the first job. I know, I know it's an overly simplistic example...
You're a liberal, you want a 99.9% tax rate and more spending....
I'm all for cuts; they are needed. We need people that can actually look at the budget line by line and that have the experience to know which cuts would cost more than the leaving them alone. I know, an impossible task.
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We are finally seeing the downside to deficit induced GDP growth. You don't create growth with deficit spending.....you basically reschedule growth to the present from the future.
When your economy has relied on +$1 trillion deficits for years then the natural level of GDP is basically +$1 trillion less then the published GDP statistic. When you take away any of that deficit spending then it (GDP) will tend to decrease to its natural level by the same amount.
The fiscal cliff is pretty depressing.....two parties and a nation arguing about which way to best kick the can further down the road.
Mad max cant get here fast enough.
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Until congress removes base-line budgeting you would really need to cut 20% a year to make any difference....
Here's a simple solution why not have the government sell the land it owns such as all the land it owns in the west. And privatize some of the industries it owns. That would probably bring in billions alone in the long run. There's a lot of little things like that Congress can do to save tons of money that it isn't even looking at right now.
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That's a one-time fix and doesn't create a self-sustaining model for the future.
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How do you know? Especially if the income tax alone wouldn't bring in tax for whoever moves in? Right now many of these places are just setting there doing nothing with nobody living in those areas. Yes there are some places here that are national parks and I'm for preserving those. But that's not a majority of the land in these areas.
So we sell the land to China, develop it, create short term job growth and a nice one-time payment. Then what? Back to where we are now, with **** in hand and no one to suck it.
A one time payment would first not make a dent in our problems and would most likely get spent on something else anyone. Think of your loser BIL that always behind on his bills and wants a loan to get him even. You give him the money and he most likely blows it elsewhere and is still in debt. He hasn't changed his lifestyle and the way he spends his money so he's back to where he was. Our government is the same way. Until we change our spending habits no influx of cash will make a difference.
However, that same 1% has seen a 275% increase in after taxes income since 1979. Compared to the rest of the population at under 40% (according to the CBO). I don't think that the comparison applies here. Oklahomans do not have a greater income than all the other states combined.
Until someone can show me a way to fix our problems with taxation, I won't support raising them on anyone. The house is on fire and we are talking about lawn fertilizers.
But the issue is that cuts aren't going to fix the problem much better than raising taxes.
The whole reason this is a fiscal cliff is because both ill-advised tax increases AND ill-advised cuts are about to take place.
There is no way out of this mess except for a rapidly expanding economy that makes deficit spending practical. It's not that debt is bad, it's that it requires always growth. 5030 hit the nail on the head.
It's like servers in a restaurant. They have a great night, make well over what they needed to take care of their bills and go out and drink the margin away. They do this all week long after making 35% more than they needed to bring in and drink it away. Next week, they have a bad week and are 10% under what they needed to make to pay the bills.
The only answer is a long term solution. Nothing in the short-run is going to fix this mess. The question is whether or not we can even survive through this current predicament and fix our ****ty habits over the long run. The only way to survive the current mess is for the economy to pick up at some point in the next 15 to 30 months and grow at a substantial pace (in or around 5%) and maintain that growth until we fix the system.
Pretty sure that's not going to happen, so get ready for the Baby Boomers to retire early and for the following generations to have to take care of most of them in their old age.
As one of those Baby Boomers I am pretty resigned to not ever being able to retire after what happened to my savings in 2008. There are a lot of us out here thinking the same way.
What happened to your savings? If you had been diversified and stayed the course you would be back to where you were in 2008...
Back to where you were, 4 years later, with 4 years of inflation...That doesn't sound right at all.
Even if he had stayed the course, I'd hold the same cynicism if I were him...especially when another recession is certainly going to occur in the next 5 years. And since the economy didn't really heal, the odds that he made up for an underperforming savings with some sort of pay increase is unlikely. Far more likely he was met with a pay decrease.
The real problem though isn't going to be Baby Boomers not having money in the bank. It's that the money they have in the bank isn't going to buy **** because of inflation. Having $500k in useful ****ets to last you 15 years of retirement, by the time you get there, is only going to end up lasting 10 to 12 years.
No it's because we've had ill advised spending and ill advised tax policies for decades. We've already gone over the fiscal cliff a long time ago. You really think that continued spending will do anything for the debt and deficit?The whole reason this is a fiscal cliff is because both ill-advised tax increases AND ill-advised cuts are about to take place.
This isn't about the debt and deficit. This is about the economy, and a slash in spending right now is a guarantee for a major recession.
I'm glad that you see the reality that our government is a shirt-storm and that it's not working. That doesn't mean it can't be fixed in the context of its own system. Systems can work even if they're not the best system.
We should stop any governing that is at it's core directed at affecting the economy. The government is to protect individuals from one another, not ensure that the dollar has value. This is not a government problem, it is a labor problem.
The debt won't continue to mean nothing. Eventually the dollar bubble will burst
I'm one of the few that can say I'm better off since 2008. I know that seems impossible, but its true. On the other hand, sustaining that going forward 5 years is looking very much impossible.
And I should add that the only reason I'm better off is that my wife and I both have sustained employment and kept no debt except our shrinking mortgage, which we've got down to a 3 year payoff. That's if we stay employed.
I don't see that happening in the next 5 years for sure. From there, it depends a lot more on the economic climate of the entire world than it does the little **** the US is doing, and I don't see the rest of the world doing any better than the US.
In fact, I'm going to guess in spite of ****ty government policy, the US will be in a better position vis-a-vis the rest of the world 10 years from now. If the dollar crumbles then the rest of the world's currencies will be going with it.
Value of the Dollar =/= Economy
Economy=/=Government
I don't remember making that claim.
What point are you trying to make with that initial post? The way you phrased the first sentence, I don't think you even agree with what you said. It would rule out regulation of interstate commerce and quite a few other functions the Government currently performs.
And bull**** this is just a labor problem. It's both and you know it.
If you can't stand that type of loss then you don't need to be in the market...recessions are going to happen and the market is going to tank from time to time...and if you are close to retirement age you damn sure don't need excessive exposure to stock market risk...
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