[Gozer]

While I don't have his high fallutin' debate tactics like screaming insults at myself to belittle my opponent's presumed positions, I would like to expand on HOZ's points. While I fear I may not be able to hold up to his high standards of discourse befitting moderators and fellow posters on CalgaryPuck, I hope I can augment his arguments without dumbing them down.


Economy:
The United States is "only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy.”
-Mitt Romney

Presumably this argument is rooted in the stimulus package, health care reforms, tax increases and regulations.

Stimulus package: 40% was tax cuts

Originally Posted by The Economist

The Obama stimulus package had $237 billion in tax cuts, and more than $100 billion of those were targeted at lower and middle class households

http://economistsview.typepad.com/ec...s-package.html

Obamacare: The opposite of a public system

Originally Posted by Politifact

"Government takeover" conjures a European approach in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees. But the law Congress passed, parts of which have already gone into effect, relies largely on the free market. Critics of the law are correct that it significantly increases government regulation of health insurers. But it is, at its heart, a system that relies on private companies:

• Employers continue to provide health insurance to the majority of Americans through private insurance companies.

• Contrary to the claim, more people will get private health coverage. The law sets up "exchanges" where private insurers will compete to provide coverage to people who don't have it.

• The government will not seize control of hospitals or nationalize doctors.

• The law does not include the public option, a government-run insurance plan that would have competed with private insurers.

• The law gives tax credits to people who have difficulty affording insurance, so they can buy their coverage from private providers on the exchange. But here too, the approach relies on a free market with regulations, not socialized medicine.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...overnment-tak/

Tax burden: dropping

Originally Posted by Politifact

...the tax burden has fallen modestly in recent years, from 31.2 percent in 2006 to 27.2 percent in 2011.

And as we concluded recently, the U.S. tax burden isn’t just hovering around a historical low -- it’s also low compared to other advanced industrialized nations. In a 2006 international comparison, 25 nations had a higher percentage of taxes compared to GDP than the U.S., while just four -- Mexico, Japan, Korea and Turkey -- had a lower percentage.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...ceasing-be-fr/

Regulation: Lax

Originally Posted by Politifact

Certainly, different groups could measure freedom differently. But let’s look at what Heritage concluded.

The U.S. ranked ninth out of 179 nations on the list, with a score that placed it near the top of the "mostly free" category. The only nations to be considered more "free" than the U.S. were, in descending order, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Ireland, and Denmark.

If the results of this study -- which, we’ll remind readers, was produced by a staunchly conservative think tank -- suggest that the U.S. is on the verge of socialism, then Lenin must be partying in his mauseoleum. For the U.S. to fall into the "mostly unfree" category, which is only the third-lowest category in the study, it would have to drop a whopping 83 slots, to a perch below such nations as Albania, Rwanda and Kazakhstan."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...ceasing-be-fr/