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You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

Started by Flick James, June 08, 2010, 09:48:30 AM

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Leah

here's an idea- split it down the middle, say 50/50? people complain that having too much gov't intervention is like Communist, whereas the other one say that little gov't will become an anarchy and the big business will take over, probably not as big as in the Gilded Age.
yeah no.

indianasmith

Most of the technological advances that make our comfortable lives of today possible were made in the Gilded Age.  There was a horrendous cost to labor, true, but also the creation of the conditions that made a real, working labor movement possible.

In the end, I trust business more than I trust government.  Business just wants your money.  Government ultimately winds up wanting to run your life.
"I shall smite you in the nostrils with a rod of iron, and wax your spleen with Efferdent!!"

Flick James

#1292
Quote from: indianasmith on June 14, 2011, 12:41:28 AM

In the end, I trust business more than I trust government.

As do I. I just don't labor under any delusions that the Republicans are any friends of capitalism. Corporatism, or crony capitalism, is what we have, not capitalism. It's a mixed economy, and it is absolutely burying us in debt.

I know there's absolutely nothing I can do to prevent this coming across as pro-socialist, because anybody who knows me knows I am anything but, but a socialist system, at least if it's not embracing a total war economy, will produce less debt than what we currently have in place. Socialist countries will at least tax their people to the gills to pay for everything, and their infrastructure is superior to ours. In the U.S., we have a massive, over-spending government, and with a government of partisan fools locked in a stalemate over what to do about it, and nobody wants to raise taxes to pay for it. This is not an endorsement to increase taxes, they should stay the same for the time being while they cut the s**t out of spending (and this includes the military as well as entitlement). The U.S. spends it's money on entitlements that don't produce anything, wars, law enforcement (remember when they used to be called peace officers?), when they should be spending a fraction of it, and on education and infrastructure, things that will actually make the U.S. competitive again.

I would love to see the Republicans actually do something other than point at Democrats and call them socialists. That seems to be the only weapon in their arsenal for dealing with the situation. Especially when what we have isn't socialism and is going to kill the country faster than socialism would. But no. That won't happen. Instead, the parties will continue to point the finger at each other over a mess they both created. No, I'm afraid pointing a finger and saying "socialist" isn't going to cut it.
I don't always talk about bad movies, but when I do, I prefer badmovies.org

Flick James

#1293
Oh, and the budget deficit can be fixed. Everybody talks about the budget deficit being over 10% of GDP as a sign of the end. Well, fear does buy votes, doesn't it? The budget deficit has gone over 10% of GDP four times in U.S. history: during the Civil War, during WWI, during WWII, and in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Notice how every single one of those is during wartime? Ah the high cost of intervention.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html

Notice how none of these were during the Great Depression? I mean, wouldn't you think that such massive government spending would send the GDP into orbit? Well, it did spike, but not as high as the four times mentioned. Why? Partly because so much of the money went into infrastructure, things that make the country more productive and efficient, and produce a higher GDP. Then, as the deficit began to decline, along came WWII to push the deficit to almost 30%, the highest in U.S. history.

I'm not blaming all of this on the war. I'm not naive. But it seems a bit ignorant to overlook those corellaries. I'm not in favor of a big, intrusive government, I just don't buy the hype that Democrats are out to destroy our country and Republicans are out to save it from destruction. The common refusal of both parties to come to terms with it and actually do something about it means they are in collusion as far as I'm concerned, I don't care what they say to get votes.

Ah, okay, I've vented. Anger receding. I'm good now.
I don't always talk about bad movies, but when I do, I prefer badmovies.org

lester1/2jr

"moderates" like Hillary Clinton, John MccAin, and Joe Lieberman are kind of ridiculous. At least far left liberals are against the pentagon and far right conservatives are ostensibly for smaller government.  moderates are moderate because they are for BOTH! They are actually extremists fiscally speaking, if you think about it.

indianasmith

Some good points there, Flick, as always.  I am not a blind partisan, no matter what you may think.  But when you crunch the numbers,  Democrats tend to spend a heck of a lot more, at least in recent history.  The most recent Republican budget featured a deficit of $167 billion (FY '07).  Five years later, our deficit is at $1.45 trillion.  That's almost a tenfold increase - yet the number of troops in the field has not significantly changed from 07 to 11.  So we can't blame it all on the military. 

I do support our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, which I know that you don't.  Or at least, you seem to question whether they are worth what they cost.  Honestly, the jury is still out there and probably will be for a decade.  But in the end, it is entitlements which are breaking the bank.  Medicare alone accounts for 70% of all non-discretionary public spending, and, if the program continues unchanged, it will account for 100% of all non-discretionary government spending in just five years.  That's one issue that Paul Ryan has attempted to address in his budget plan.  You may disagree with elements of his plan, but there is a serious attempt there to actually get something done on reducing spending.  The Democratic Congress has gone over 750 days now without producing a budget.  All of FY'10, the second half of FY '09, and the first half of FY '11 for the Senate.  Congress'  job is to formulate a budget every year, and the Democrats' absolute failure to do so is one of the most cowardly derelictions of duty ever carried out by any branch of the Federal government.  Obama's own budget plan was so bad that not a single Senator in either party voted for it!  Why won't the Democrats propose a budget?   The reason they won't do it is because all they seem to know how to do is tax more and spend even more than that, and the public ain't buying it any more. 
  There are a lot of old guard Republicans who are part of the problem, but there are also some people on the Hill who at least have the guts to try and solve some of the problem. That is more than the Democrats have shown since they won the Senate and House in '06, and more than enough reason to kick every one of them out on their asses!! And let's clean house with a few RINO's while we're at it.  Then, after a few years of Republican reform, if the country doesn't like it, they can take US to the woodshed!
"I shall smite you in the nostrils with a rod of iron, and wax your spleen with Efferdent!!"

Nightowl

When I go out of my way to be polite and no one says thank you. For example like opening a door for someone and no thank you, it's like i'm a the diseased bell boy at some fancy hotel and they are paris hilton, what gives? What it kill a person to say a friggin thank you every once in a while.

Jack

Quote from: Nightowl on June 15, 2011, 12:19:03 AM
When I go out of my way to be polite and no one says thank you. For example like opening a door for someone and no thank you, it's like i'm a the diseased bell boy at some fancy hotel and they are paris hilton, what gives? What it kill a person to say a friggin thank you every once in a while.

It's funny here in Minnesota, if you're going our a door and hold it open an extra 1/2 second for the person behind you, you will always - without fail - get a thank you from them.  It's like part of our DNA or something   :teddyr:

I'm mad at computers.  Had some thunderstorms last night so I turned the thing off just to be on the safe side.  Turn it on this morning, and within minutes it's installing some gigantic Windows update.  Click on my browser, maybe 5 - 10 minutes later it finally opened.  I think if I added up all the time I spend waiting for security and anti-virus updates do download and install, I'd be better off just getting the damned viruses.
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.

- Paulo Coelho

Flick James

Quote from: indianasmith on June 14, 2011, 11:54:23 PM
Some good points there, Flick, as always.  I am not a blind partisan, no matter what you may think.  But when you crunch the numbers,  Democrats tend to spend a heck of a lot more, at least in recent history.  The most recent Republican budget featured a deficit of $167 billion (FY '07).  Five years later, our deficit is at $1.45 trillion.  That's almost a tenfold increase - yet the number of troops in the field has not significantly changed from 07 to 11.  So we can't blame it all on the military.  

I do support our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, which I know that you don't.  Or at least, you seem to question whether they are worth what they cost.  Honestly, the jury is still out there and probably will be for a decade.  But in the end, it is entitlements which are breaking the bank.  Medicare alone accounts for 70% of all non-discretionary public spending, and, if the program continues unchanged, it will account for 100% of all non-discretionary government spending in just five years.  That's one issue that Paul Ryan has attempted to address in his budget plan.  You may disagree with elements of his plan, but there is a serious attempt there to actually get something done on reducing spending.  The Democratic Congress has gone over 750 days now without producing a budget.  All of FY'10, the second half of FY '09, and the first half of FY '11 for the Senate.  Congress'  job is to formulate a budget every year, and the Democrats' absolute failure to do so is one of the most cowardly derelictions of duty ever carried out by any branch of the Federal government.  Obama's own budget plan was so bad that not a single Senator in either party voted for it!  Why won't the Democrats propose a budget?   The reason they won't do it is because all they seem to know how to do is tax more and spend even more than that, and the public ain't buying it any more.  
 There are a lot of old guard Republicans who are part of the problem, but there are also some people on the Hill who at least have the guts to try and solve some of the problem. That is more than the Democrats have shown since they won the Senate and House in '06, and more than enough reason to kick every one of them out on their asses!! And let's clean house with a few RINO's while we're at it.  Then, after a few years of Republican reform, if the country doesn't like it, they can take US to the woodshed!

I don't think you are blind, Indy, I just think your bias gets the better of you sometimes.

You won't see me disagreeing with cutting some considerable fat from entitlement programs. I don't quibble over percentages of the budget, that's something that partisan people trying to garner votes do. It's simple for me: does the spending help our country? Does it make us more competitive, more productive? If the answer is yes, then I'm generally in favor of it. If it does nothing to improve our country, then I'm in favor of cutting severely. The spending of FDR was a double-edged sword. It DID help the country out of the Depression and assist a country in great need. However, it also created a legacy. While much of the spending was intended for and succeeded in getting Americans back to work and productive again, once the country was out, the programs that were a temporary fix remained in place. This was the problem.

Our manufacturing center isn't what it used to be, but our country still thrives in the area of technology and higher grade goods. This will not be sustained if we refuse to invest in education and continue to trail behind other countries. So, I am in favor of investing in education and infrastructure. It makes sense.

Numbers numbers numbers. We love numbers, don't we? I don't much get into them because they tend to be used in misleading ways, but okay, I'll play a little. Let's see, the defense budget for years 2010 and 2011 were somewhere in the area of just under $700 billion, about 20%. This is not exactly a drop in the bucket, but it seems like a reasonable number, right? Folks that support the war would like us to believe that this is what the U.S. spends on war. This is far from the case. This number does not include FBI counter-terrorism, International Affairs (which includes foreign arms sales), defense-related Energy Deparment expenditures, Veteran's Affairs spending, Homeland Security, NASA satellites allocated for military applications, veteran's pensions, and interest on debt incurred in past wars. That last one is a doozy, projected to be somewhere between $109 billion and $430 billion in 2012. War takes generations to pay off.

This brings the projected military budget for 2012 to between $1 to $1.4 trillion, almost twice this %20 we hear about. Now we're talking close to %40 of the federal budget spent on military expenditures, both past and present. When you couple that with the fact that the only four times in U.S. history that the budget deficit has hit 10% or more were during wartime, I wouldn't call it a stretch to say that war takes a devastating toll on us financially.

So, to some degree, yes, I am anti-war. I am not anti-defense. The U.S. has become so bent on foreign intervention, yet we are losing our country here. You were right about me when you said that I do not believe the cost is worth it, not by a long shot. Given what we're paying for past wars, and what coming generations will pay for this one, I don't see the benefit. As for whether or not we'll see the reality in a decade or so, I wouldn't count on that either. The same tired debates will still be going on, as well as the same distortions of numbers.

So, to cut to the chase, we can banter about numbers all day long. In the end, I don't trust them. People say that numbers don't lie. True, but people do, and they use numbers to do it.  
I don't always talk about bad movies, but when I do, I prefer badmovies.org

AndyC

I agree. The 20th Century ingrained an almost perpetual wartime mentality in the US government and military. It might go farther back than that, actually, if you look at the wars fought by Americans since the Revolution. Several in the 19th Century, including the Civil War. Still, with the two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War, there were several generations who never actually experienced anything close to real peacetime. Especially WW2 and later, when the nation geared up for war and to some degree stayed there.

That said, I also don`t agree with the way we do it in Canada either, with the military slashed by a succession of governments, to the point where it barely has enough personnel and equipment to meet its modest peacekeeping commitments, much less defend the country. And it`s a major controversy every time somebody wants to replace aging planes, ships, helicopters, etc.

Somewhere, there is a happy medium.
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"Join me in the abyss of savings."

Flick James

Quote from: AndyC on June 15, 2011, 09:43:26 AM
I agree. The 20th Century ingrained an almost perpetual wartime mentality in the US government and military. It might go farther back than that, actually, if you look at the wars fought by Americans since the Revolution. Several in the 19th Century, including the Civil War. Still, with the two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War, there were several generations who never actually experienced anything close to real peacetime. Especially WW2 and later, when the nation geared up for war and to some degree stayed there.

That said, I also don`t agree with the way we do it in Canada either, with the military slashed by a succession of governments, to the point where it barely has enough personnel and equipment to meet its modest peacekeeping commitments, much less defend the country. And it`s a major controversy every time somebody wants to replace aging planes, ships, helicopters, etc.

Somewhere, there is a happy medium.

Thank you, Andy. Thank you.
I don't always talk about bad movies, but when I do, I prefer badmovies.org

Newt

Quote from: AndyC on June 15, 2011, 09:43:26 AMAnd it`s a major controversy every time somebody wants to replace aging planes, ships, helicopters, etc.

You mean...like the fuss that's building (again) right now?  Apparently a large portion of our (Canadian) military materiel is expected to need replacing soon due to wear-and-tear in recent actions, and the usual groups are gearing up to scream about the cost.  Same old.
"May I offer you a Peek Frean?" - Walter Bishop
"Thank you for appreciating my descent into deviant behavior, Mr. Reese." - Harold Finch

Flick James

Quote from: lester1/2jr on June 14, 2011, 06:53:23 PM
"moderates" like Hillary Clinton, John MccAin, and Joe Lieberman are kind of ridiculous. At least far left liberals are against the pentagon and far right conservatives are ostensibly for smaller government.  moderates are moderate because they are for BOTH! They are actually extremists fiscally speaking, if you think about it.

I agree. So-called "moderates," for all their supposed level-headedness and compromise, are one of the worst things to have come along in the political spectrum in a long time.
I don't always talk about bad movies, but when I do, I prefer badmovies.org

AndyC

Quote from: Newt on June 15, 2011, 10:15:48 AM
Quote from: AndyC on June 15, 2011, 09:43:26 AMAnd it`s a major controversy every time somebody wants to replace aging planes, ships, helicopters, etc.

You mean...like the fuss that's building (again) right now?  Apparently a large portion of our (Canadian) military materiel is expected to need replacing soon due to wear-and-tear in recent actions, and the usual groups are gearing up to scream about the cost.  Same old.

And if we had a little more ongoing military spending in Canada, we might avoid this pattern of sudden huge expenses that freak people out. It's the same principle I've seen at work in municipal government, where a local council will cut, cut, cut, and it all seems to be going wonderfully until they need to replace three firetrucks and a road grader that have been pushed well past their operational lifetime, and there isn't enough money set aside.
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"Join me in the abyss of savings."

Flick James

QuoteThe most recent Republican budget featured a deficit of $167 billion (FY '07).  Five years later, our deficit is at $1.45 trillion.  That's almost a tenfold increase - yet the number of troops in the field has not significantly changed from 07 to 11.  So we can't blame it all on the military.

Come on, Indy. The number of troops has nothing to do with it, it's the amount of money spent on the military budget. Your correlary doesn't mean anything. Military spending goes up each year regardless of troop numbers, as does spending in other areas. This is why the deficit goes up. Military spending is a big piece of the pie, along with entitlement spending. At no point did I blame everything on the military. I'm simply pointing out the general Republican refusal to acknowledge the extent of the impact. It's every bit as ignorant as the Demoractic refusal to acknowledge the same of worthless entitlement programs.

I'm familiar with Paul Ryan's plan. Great stuff except that there's still carte blanche to runaway military spending. Therefore, it is an illegitimate plan as far as I'm concerned, and will do nothing to end this ridiculous stalemate.

I've actually registered Republican, changing a 12-year-old vow to never register as either a Rep or a Dem in order to support Ron Paul. He's the only one in the debates that I don't think is completely bulls**tting me.
I don't always talk about bad movies, but when I do, I prefer badmovies.org