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Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
I was listening to a 60 Minutes podcast the other day. There were two segments I found particularly interesting:
(1) A Reagan budget aide coming out saying that there is nothing that can be cut in any significance from the U.S. budget. You can lop off a million here and a million there, but that does nothing in the long term towards the trillions in debt. The only cuts that would make any significant impact would be military, medicare or social security, all of which would be suicide at the voting booth. His solution: "Raise taxes". The government may be going broke, but the country is not. The amount of personal wealth in the United States is mind boggling.
(2) Steve Balmer and Bill Gates are on opposite sides of an Oregon bill. The bill states that people making over $200,000 a year have to pay an education tax to provide more funding to a failing school system. The state can't afford to pay for more teachers when clearly more are needed, nor can it provide adequate supplies for the classroom. Gates says that the money is needed and that he should pay his fair share. Balmer says that Bill no longer has to worry about keeping the Microsoft executives that would leave to greener pastures should the bill pass.
I think the issue is that the political system in the United States is completely broken. Increased revenues from taxes on the rich are absolutely needed, yet both parties are trying to outbid each other to the tax floor. The Republicans cry tax cuts are the solution to every problem, and then spend like drunken sailors when in office. The Democrats claim they are the party of fiscal responsibility, balancing tax cuts with spending programs, but Obama's extension of the Bush tax cuts only hurts the country in the long run. I mean, if it is obvious to even Reagan's budget people, it has to be obvious to most people... the country is in trouble and something needs to be done, but no political party is willing to make the sacrifice needed because they will be booted out of office.
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Yeah, throwing money at drunken sailors is always a good idea. Let me guess, you are on gov payroll?
Ever thought that the US citizens were able to generate so much wealth because their gov was smaller (relative to the rest of the world), took a smaller cut thus the citizens generated enough wealth to sustain the drunken sailor spending? Now it's gotten out of hand and it's killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Raise taxes, keep gov spending on max to attract poor voters, kill the middle class and see what happens. Brilliant.