Now you're in a pimped out duck blind?

Christ, how many times have you moved in the last two weeks?

Interesting.
On other threads, Dave complains about democrats fear mongering. Yet uses the same tactic in this article in economic terms.

Matt, it's all in how you look at the rambling, security-gated, DIY shack with a duckpond behind it that I live in.

And JQP, I was indeed concerned about the fearmongering issue when I wrote the article, but it occured to me that spreading some fear about a real threat was a nice change of pace from spreading fear about fearmongering and fearmongering about the economy.

Dave

"The scary part is that it's quite possible that an economic crisis might begin in anticipation of these negative outcomes almost the moment the election is over, leading to a massive downward spiral in the stock market and wealth being sucked out of the economy as private and corporate investors scramble to protect their assets."


Hedging your bet Dave?

Not sure what that comment means, but yes I'm liquidating certain assets prior to the election.

Dave

great post on tax-cut benefits. I would like to see cost-reductions to go along with tax cuts, though. Don't see us simply growing our way out of the current deficit.

But I'd never even heard of the ASA...(learn something new every day). The most significant statistic is the 55% of stockholders make less than $50,000 a year...

Dave if it comes down to the fear I know (Bush/Iraq) or the fear I don't know, I'll choose the fear I don't know.

No new taxes means we go deeper and deeper into national debt that the next three generations will have to pay down because we didn't want to raise taxes.

"No new taxes means we go deeper and deeper into national debt that the next three generations will have to pay down because we didn't want to raise taxes."

It does? So I guess we could never cut spending instead of raising taxes huh Jet?

More than a trillion dollars returned to taxpayers.
Mostly to upper income payers and corporations

• An economy growing faster than any other industrialized nation.
On the backs of swiftly vanishing mmiddle class and because corporate profits are skyrocketing on the backs of third-world wages and products made in China instead of the U.S. When was the last time you bought an American Made T.V. Dave?
Corporate profits factor into our economic figures and that includes all of the ones based in the U.S. but producing products to be sold here made in foreign companies

• 6.6 million new jobs since August of 2003.
versus hou many lost. How many high-paid factory workers who now work minumum wage at McDonalds etc does that factor in?

• Real take-home wages up by 2.2% in the past year. for executives and upper management with great bonus plans above $75K but not the people who haven't had a minimum wage raise in 5 years and are losing ground to energy price hikes supporting obscene Big Oil profits, and offset by skyrocketing health care and insurance costs

• Cutting the federal deficit in half three years ahead of schedule.
Excuse me, what about the federal debt? And what was the federal deficit when Bush took office in 2000 vs what it is now?

Just wondering
Jet

Jet you can't see me right now but I'm making the world's smallest violin gesture with my right hand and pitying you after your last post. I think whatever Nancy has is contagious and you caught a seirous case of it.

Be sure you use a napkin to clean up when you're done Arch... that stuff gets sticky

What about the issue of the alternative minimum tax?
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Making permanent the tax cuts enacted since 2001 would have a direct cost of $2.8 trillion over the next ten years (fiscal years 2007 through 2016), based on Congressional Budget Office estimates. (Emphasis mine.) This includes the cost of extending Alternative Minimum Tax relief." In this analysis, the tax cuts are mortgaging the present on the backs of the future (to mangle a metaphor), and the next couple of administrations will have to deal with it after Bush is gone. The list of tax cut benefits that you provide doesn't take this into account.

Also, the president of the American Shareholders Association you're talking about just happens to be Grover Norquist. Hard to get much more partisan than that.

More than a trillion dollars returned to taxpayers.
Mostly to upper income payers and corporations

I guess that depends on how you define 'upper income'. The cuts were actually distributed pretty evenly on a percentage basis. And BTW, were you aware that the top quintile earns only 48% of all income and after the reductions they still pay 85% of all taxes?

As for the corporations, they paid substantially MORE corporate tax after 2003 than they did in any prior year.

• An economy growing faster than any other industrialized nation.
On the backs of swiftly vanishing mmiddle class and because corporate profits are skyrocketing on the backs of third-world wages and products made in China instead of the U.S. When was the last time you bought an American Made T.V. Dave?

I've bought TVs made by companies wholly or partially owned by Americans in the last few years, so benefits of those sales went to American businessmen, workers and stockholders.

Low-skilled labor is a natural resource which the US is not well supplied with. We have more valuable and more skilled workers. You're essentially asking me why I'm glad that I get to eat steak instead of a bowl of rice for dinner.

Corporate profits factor into our economic figures and that includes all of the ones based in the U.S. but producing products to be sold here made in foreign companies

At lower prices so that consumers spend less of their income.

• 6.6 million new jobs since August of 2003.
versus hou many lost. How many high-paid factory workers who now work minumum wage at McDonalds etc does that factor in?

Actually, each job lost results in more than 2 new jobs created, and the average wage of the new jobs is higher than the average wage of the old jobs. And people aren't unemployed, so they are training up and taking the new better paid jobs. We're evolving in a positive direction.

• Real take-home wages up by 2.2% in the past year. for executives and upper management with great bonus plans above $75K but not the people who haven't had a minimum wage raise in 5 years and are losing ground to energy price hikes supporting obscene Big Oil profits, and offset by skyrocketing health care and insurance costs

Less than 1/3 of one percent of the population earns anything near the minimum wage. And hourly wages increased at a rate which outpaced other sectors of the workforce in the last 5 years.

• Cutting the federal deficit in half three years ahead of schedule.
Excuse me, what about the federal debt? And what was the federal deficit when Bush took office in 2000 vs what it is now?

You cut the deficit year by year until you end up with a surplus a few years down the line which pays off the debt. That's how it works. It would work a hell of a lot faster with no war in Iraq and some serious budget cuts, of course.

Dave

Also, the president of the American Shareholders Association you're talking about just happens to be Grover Norquist. Hard to get much more partisan than that

Partisan? I guess in the sense that he's against excessive government and against taxation, sure. He's famous for his attacks on Republicans, though he's nominally part of the party. He's certainly no party loyalist. He's basically a plutocratic anarchist, and while his views are certainly extreme, when you're talking about taxes he does know his stuff.

Dave

Grover Norquist is also on the list with Ney, Safavian, DeLay and others in the entire Abramoff scandal.
So partisan would appear to fit quite nicely.
A good point raised about cutting spending, something this adminstration and Congress have not been capable of.
And it comes as no real suprise that Dave here would be a fan of Norquist.

Grover Norquist is also on the list with Ney, Safavian, DeLay and others in the entire Abramoff scandal.
So partisan would appear to fit quite nicely.

Partisan towards money, anyway.

A good point raised about cutting spending, something this adminstration and Congress have not been capable of.

And which the democrats are proven to be even worse at, remember.

And it comes as no real suprise that Dave here would be a fan of Norquist.

Where on earth did you get that idea? I called him a 'plutocratic anarchist' - does that sound like a good thing to you? It certainly doesn't to me. He's a dangerous nut who just happens to be right about cutting taxes.

Dave

I'm fine with tax cuts, but I feel like spending should match revenue, at least roughly.

Bush can have it both ways for now, cutting taxes and maintaining services, but sooner or later the government's debt is going to put a drag on the economy.

As for the "democrats being worse", that could be debatable.
Recent history suggests that the best thing for fiscal responsibility is a divided government. And the way things are shaping up, we might just get it after election day.
But the budgets of the last few years have proven that the republicans are quite capable of breaking all records when it comes to spending. At least according to the CBO and GAO.
The crucial point will be determined if such a divided government will decide that "pay as you go" is to be followed, as it had been, or if our government will continue to borrow to cover the shortfalls.
Which has been the policy of the republicans, mortgaging our country to China and the like to pay for their boondoggles.
The best we can hope for is that the fiscal hawks on both sides watch over the process and insist on balancing the nation's checkbook.

Bush can have it both ways for now, cutting taxes and maintaining services, but sooner or later the government's debt is going to put a drag on the economy.

Maintaining services? The problem is that he's expanded all sorts of services, including presiding over the largest expansion of social welfare spending since LBJ's Great Society.

Dave

JQP, I'm with you on the benefits of divided government, assuming they can actually get anything at all done.

But please don't trot out the 'mortgaging our country to China' crap. The fact that the Chinese choose to buy US bonds is not something the government can control, and it doesn't give them any power over us. It's in no way comparable to a mortgage.

Dave

We will just have to disagree on the possible implications of foreign national banks holding onto U.S. debt.
Part of my problem with the way such debt is financed has always been that it's not even as sanely done as a mortgage, but more like the kind of a deal you would get form a loan shark. After reading some of your own writings, I'm certain you know the numbers here, and realize just how outrageous the interest payments are to our government.
Funny you should mention LBJ and his "Great Society". Some good things there, and some awful ones.
But can you show the justification for your analogy? Just how do you extrapolate social welfare programs and the like with huge gobs of taxpayer cash given as corporate welfare such as the 8 billion in the "Energy Bill"?
On the one hand, you have Johnson trying to help less fortunate Americans with debatable results, on the other you have Bush giving billions to companies that have posted record profits.
Not that it matters, really, but such assertions raise curiosity as to your rationalizations.

We will just have to disagree on the possible implications of foreign national banks holding onto U.S. debt.

Banks are banks. The rules on that debt are set by the US Treasury, not by the note holders. And US citizens still remain the largest creditors to the government.

Part of my problem with the way such debt is financed has always been that it's not even as sanely done as a mortgage, but more like the kind of a deal you would get form a loan shark. After reading some of your own writings, I'm certain you know the numbers here, and realize just how outrageous the interest payments are to our government.

For the most part the interest rates are lower than they are on mortgages, but any super long-term debt is going to build up ridiculous interest payments.

Funny you should mention LBJ and his "Great Society". Some good things there, and some awful ones.

Some good ideas, perhaps. In actual implementation almost everything was disastrous.

But can you show the justification for your analogy? Just how do you extrapolate social welfare programs and the like with huge gobs of taxpayer cash given as corporate welfare such as the 8 billion in the "Energy Bill"?

Pointing to that one example doesn't mean it was the only one. 'Corporate welfare' is a questionable term anyway. The reasons for it are different and it brings with it the expectation of certain corporate actions which theoretically justify it. I'm against all forms of state subsidies. Bush could start by cutting farm subsidies which are among the most destructive. I only mentioned social welfare specifically because Bush's excessive spending in that area is usually a surprise to those on the left so it has some dramatic effect.

On the one hand, you have Johnson trying to help less fortunate Americans with debatable results,

I don't think the results are debatable at all. He created three generations of economic serfdom in service to the democratic party, a system which is just starting to break down.

on the other you have Bush giving billions to companies that have posted record profits.

Given the 'record profits' they hardly need Bush's small handouts, most of which went to encourage speicific desirable programs. He hardly just handed them a blank check.

Here are some of the things that 'corporate welfare' went to:

$3400 rebate for anyone who buys a hybrid car
$4.3 billion for building new nuclear power plants
$2.8 billion to expand refinery capacity (the only major fossil fuel spending in the bill)
$2.7 billion for solar and wind energy subsidies.
$1.6 billion for clean coal development and research
$1.3 billion for for things like home insulation incentive programs
$1.3 billion for alternative fuel vehicle subsidies

Those all sound like pretty damned good programs to me. The truth is that it's overwhelmingly oriented towards clean, renewable and alternative energy development, something critics seem strangely unaware of.

Dave

Dave, in the numbers you cite form the Energy Bill, you mention many things contained within. However, what I was talking about was the direct subsidies. To the tune of about 8 billion dollars, not the specified amounts you cite for specific programs.

My mistake, I had thought this was a discussion about issues, and had not realized I had stepped on partisan toes.

$3400 rebate for anyone who buys a hybrid car
Who can afford to buy a hybrid car? Only the rich and celebrities; Dave have you priced one lately?

$4.3 billion for building new nuclear power plants
Who's rich enough to build new Power plants... The rich energy corporations that have been posting obscene profits of late... and would rather spend OUR money than their own.

$2.8 billion to expand refinery capacity (the only major fossil fuel spending in the bill)
Who can afford to build new refineries-the rich guys who put Bush in office-They've gotten a lot of subsidies but tell me Dave exactly how many refineries have been built in the last 6 years? a number please not a GOP excuse about ecology because we're giving them money to build something they have no intention of building... so hoe many Dave?

$2.7 billion for solar and wind energy subsidies.
who can afford to build solar energy? The rich. How much does it cost to put one of those windmills up on your property Dave and how long would it take to recoup the investment?

$1.6 billion for clean coal development and research... which will benefit rich coal companies
and boost their rates.

$1.3 billion for things like home insulation incentive programs, in these times the only people who desparately need to reinsulate their homes are families below 50K but can't, because they have to pay for it out of their own pocket because they can't get a loan to do it BEFORE it rebated back to them some time in the following year.

$1.3 billion for alternative fuel vehicle subsidies, for rich corporations who are building cars the average Joe can't afford already. you know.. the ones who NEED them?

Now...
How was this going to benefit the poor middle class americans?

Still can't see over that fence I see, and you still can't see the little peons from your Mt. Olympus.

pity

Dave, how is it that you alone see these things, as against all the other experts who publish in places like the New Republic, Time, Newsweeks, the NY Times, the WP, and other major news/analysis outlets, who say just the opposite, that all these tax cuts & breaks are indeed going only to the richest 1% of the population, as well as the humongous, already-glutted and undertaxed multinational corporations? Are you claiming ALL of THEM are wrong and YOU ALONE are right? Oh, puh-leeze, do take your meds. The only thing you've convinced me of by your article is that you earn most of your money thru under-the-rug kickbacks acting as a paid shill for BushCo. on this subject. No one else in their right mind - including responsible & credible conservative fiscal writers - believes this line of pap.

Jet - #11 - almost fell off my chair laughing; GREAT comeback!

Arch, I'm sure we'd all love to reduce spending. How's about you take it up with your boy, Georgie, in the WH & convince HIM to cut back on dumping his money down Iraqi ratholes, huh? HE'S the one that's raised the national expenditure & national debt to new record levels, remember? HE'S the one that's been "The Decider" making all the decisions for the past 6 years - remember? HE'S the one that's been spending the US budget like it was water on tax cuts for various special interests at the expense of the general public - remember? Or are you going to deny all of that, too? Try pulling the other one, Arch.

$3400 rebate for anyone who buys a hybrid car
Who can afford to buy a hybrid car? Only the rich and celebrities; Dave have you priced one lately?

Aside from the fact that thousands of middle class families are buying them, the whole point of the rebate is to reduce the cost to the consumer and encourage the buying of hybrids.

I drive a Ford Escape. Call your local Ford dealer and see how long you have to wait to get an Escape hybrid -- they're THAT popular.

Nice republican distract and diversion from the subject but you didn't answer the question. Just because the upper quadrant of the income brackets can afford one, how much are they?

The people who need a hybrid couldn't afford the insurence on one much less the car payments.

The price the price?

In the MD/DC/NoVA area, that's about $30K without the frills. Out of range of most people I know & work with-!

U.S. Comptroller General David Walker (basically our national accountant) is on a tour around the country warning about the very real danger of national fiscal disaster in the near future. He and many credible economists from the right, center, and left are expressing serious--or grave--concerns that a combination of tax cuts, uncontrolled spending, the costly war, rising health care costs, the coming of retirement age to baby boomers, and heavy borrowing from foreign countries will swamp us. Running a household or business like Bush and Congress are running the country, by ignoring reality, dimissing facts, and forgetting about the future would lead quickly to financial disaster. (And, Walker isn't running for anything).

3400 rebate for anyone who buys a hybrid car
Who can afford to buy a hybrid car? Only the rich and celebrities; Dave have you priced one lately?

Then you're saying 'who can afford to buy a car', because that $3400 rebate is more than the difference in cost between most hybrids and an equivalent non-hybrid car of the same model. And yes, I have priced them. With the rebate a 4-door Prius Hybrid (60mpg) will run you about $17.000 stripped down. For a new car that's pretty affordable. Your payment would be about $250 a month on a 48 month note, and you'll save about $600 a year on gas vs. a comparable non-hybrid model.

You're in my home field here, Jet. Remember, I'm the eco-republican of your nightmares with my bigass EcoTruck which hasn't burned a drop of black gold in a almost a year. I do know my shit when it comes to alternative fuel and hybrid vehicles, and believe me when I tell you that the rebates on both are legit and they are meaningful. If you can't afford a hybrid or an alternative fuel conversion right now with the rebates, you can't afford a car in the first place.

$4.3 billion for building new nuclear power plants
Who's rich enough to build new Power plants... The rich energy corporations that have been posting obscene profits of late... and would rather spend OUR money than their own.

The problem is that they aren't building them. The startup overhead intimidates them, and we're not talking companies on the scale of Exxon here, we're talking local and regional public or private utilities which have a lot less excess money to throw around. The fat oil barons you revile don't build nuclear plants.

$2.8 billion to expand refinery capacity (the only major fossil fuel spending in the bill)
Who can afford to build new refineries-the rich guys who put Bush in office-They've gotten a lot of subsidies but tell me Dave exactly how many refineries have been built in the last 6 years? a number please not a GOP excuse about ecology because we're giving them money to build something they have no intention of building... so hoe many Dave?

Not a one, Jet. I know. And that's why this incentive program is in the bill - and we're talking a bill that only just passed, so give some time for results. This is primarily a concession to state governments who are clammoring to have refineries built in their states, and pushed for this to be included in the bill to motivate companies to build refineries. And yes, it hasn't worked, but new refineries ARE being built overseas in Russia and Oman and Kuwait.

$2.7 billion for solar and wind energy subsidies.
who can afford to build solar energy? The rich.

That's the whole point of the subsidies, Jet. They are intended to take something only the rich can afford and make it affordable to everyone else. And the subsidies for solar can be pretty large. Not enough to cover the entire cost of the panels and installation, but enough to make it worth considering. Plus you can get financing on a solar installation.

How much does it cost to put one of those windmills up on your property Dave and how long would it take to recoup the investment?

A worthwhile windmill runs about $600 for 150kw of generating capacity (under average conditions) - they sell them at Tractor Supply Company. If you've got good wind conditions that would probably pay itself off in 5 years. The same is true for solar. It takes about 5 years for solar to pay itself off too. In both cases that's figuring in the rebates. Without rebates it would be 3 years more probably.

And even if it were only the rich or corporate facilities getting these alternative energy systems installed, that still reduces demand on the system and lowers the price of energy for everyone.

$1.3 billion for things like home insulation incentive programs, in these times the only people who desparately need to reinsulate their homes are families below 50K but can't, because they have to pay for it out of their own pocket because they can't get a loan to do it BEFORE it rebated back to them some time in the following year.

Again, that's the whole point of programs like this - to make it affordable for the poor to insulate their homes. And some of these programs also come with loan guarantees so that low income people CAN get loans for things like insulation.

$1.3 billion for alternative fuel vehicle subsidies, for rich corporations who are building cars the average Joe can't afford already. you know.. the ones who NEED them?

Jet, I've got an alternative fuel vehicle. Am I a rich corporation? The retired vietnam vet down the road has an alternative fuel vehicle and makes his own fuel for it. You can buy a used diesel VW for $6000 and run it on Biodiesel. Or you can buy a 10 year old Malibu for $3000 and get a propane conversion for $2500 and get a subsidy to pay for half of that or more. Alternative fuel vehicles ARE a realistic option for just about anyone.

How was this going to benefit the poor middle class americans?

Doh. By reducing our dependence on foreign oil and lowering fuel prices.

Still can't see over that fence I see, and you still can't see the little peons from your Mt. Olympus.

Like I said before, the hill's only 600ft high and gives a great view of the peons through the fence which is just barbed wire.

Dave

It happens that I just spent some time pricing hybrids. On a Prius, the alternative vehicle fuel subsidy does make a difference, but those subsidies are rapidly being phased out. Also, as part of my research I read a Consumer Reports analysis of whether it made economic sense, from the consumer's point of view, to buy a hybrid, and when all factors are taken into account, for many if not most people it actually doesn't. (I ended up buying a Honda Fit - a high mileage non-hybrid).

Dave, how is it that you alone see these things, as against all the other experts who publish in places like the New Republic, Time, Newsweeks, the NY Times, the WP, and other major news/analysis outlets, who say just the opposite,

I'm hardly alone. The fact that you've missed or chosen to ignore the dozens of others who have also written on the benefits of the tax cuts is peculiar, but doesn't make me wrong or alone.

that all these tax cuts & breaks are indeed going only to the richest 1% of the population, as well as the humongous, already-glutted and undertaxed multinational corporations?

Nancy, this just isn't true. Check the articles you claim you've seen in all those magazines. Even if they are against the cuts, unless they are straight out lying, they have to admit that a good chunk of the tax cuts did not go to the rich and certainly not the top 1%. This is just a fact.

Are you claiming ALL of THEM are wrong and YOU ALONE are right? Oh, puh-leeze, do take your meds.

No, I'm claiming that facts are facts and you're either not getting them or choosing to ignore them.

The only thing you've convinced me of by your article is that you earn most of your money thru under-the-rug kickbacks acting as a paid shill for BushCo. on this subject. No one else in their right mind - including responsible & credible conservative fiscal writers - believes this line of pap.

Again, you're just wrong. I wish there were some nice kickbacks coming my way, but there are no such things. Telling the truth is its own reward.

Nancy, the fact is that you only hear what you want to hear - like a lot of people. Go to a respectable government source like the IRS or the Census or the BEA and look up how the tax cuts applied to different income groups and it will be immediately clear that they were not heavily skewed towards the rich.

Dave

I read a Consumer Reports analysis of whether it made economic sense, from the consumer's point of view, to buy a hybrid, and when all factors are taken into account, for many if not most people it actually doesn't. (I ended up buying a Honda Fit - a high mileage non-hybrid).

I'm not a big fan of hybrids either, because they aren't a real longterm solution. But they are cost effective if you drive them a lot and keep them for more than the 2.5 year average Americans keep their cars. You'll note that I went with a biodiesel vehicle instead of a hybrid largely because of the time it takes to make the hybrid pay off.

BTW, exactly how much of a subsidy did they offer on the Prius? Less than the full $3400, right?

Dave

Yes, I believe it was less than the full $3400 - I forget the exact amount, but it drops off over a couple of years and I think next year it's down to nothing on the Prius (the subsidy on other models drops off differently - it depends on how fast they are selling, and the Prius is extremely popular).

Dave, #31- Now, I do admit I know noone who makes their own alternative fuel out of stuff like fast food frying oil. Is this what the converter you mentioned earlier does? I don't know I could stand to go around smelling like a chinese carry out.

I also don't believe that Time, the NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, WP, and other publications DON'T go around printing tenuous hypotheses as fact, Dave, and all the fiscal analyses I've read say that the ONLY ones being benefited by BushCo's tax cuts, etc. are the ultra-rich & corporations. I doubt all these are in a conspiracy against Bush, yet they all agree. Even some of the conservative think tanks agree.

Did LBJ really create three generations of serfdom? It's a neat trick, getting a liberal Democrat to hold the bag for centuries of slavery and racism. The Great Society may have been a bribe paid to black Americans to make their servitude more amenable, but it certainly did not invent their inferior status in this country. Farm subsidies, rent subsidies, and cheap televisions. Bread and circus, anyone?

I think that quibbling over the relative merits of alternative energy sources is going to seem fairly quaint in a few years. As a nation we are addicted to living beyond our means. We will be looked back upon by future generations with gape-jawed amazement as prodigies of appetite and waste. The possibility of our scaling back gradually from the precipice seems to me remote.

I recently took an Ethiopian visitor on my rounds of home care patients. He was puzzled and amused at all the wealthy white people living by their ones and twos in their big houses. "Do they ever turn the television off?", he asked. No, apparently not. "Who would want to live like that?" Only an American.

Michael

It's just too simplistic to say that tax cuts are an all-purpose magic remedy for the economy. It's also too simplistic to assume that the Dems will just automatically raise taxes. And reducing complex issues to sloganeering gets us nowhere.

The deficit ain't goin' nowhere as long as the all-too-real war in Iraq and the quite possibly mythical War on Terror consume the federal government's time and money. The projections showing the deficit disappearing always seem to conveniently leave out war expenditures.

The Alternative Minimum Tax will have to be dealt with before the 2010 deadline for the tax cuts anyway. It is a disaster waiting to happen, and shouldn't be left out of your detailed apologia for tax-cutting ideologues.

for those interested in following up on Lee Richards' info in #30 - check it out

"Running a household or business like Bush and Congress are running the country, by ignoring reality, dimissing facts, and forgetting about the future would lead quickly to financial disaster."

Hey this sounds like the guy running either a modest estate, rambling shack or pimped out duck blind......

For Lee and Troll, let me quote from the original article, which they seem not to have been paying sufficient attention to:

"The tax cuts have been great, but the GOP has a poor record on controlling government spending in recent years. Only the incredibly strong economic growth generated by the tax cuts has kept unbridled spending from being a major problem."

I site this artiicle as a prime example of how encouraging comments can be educational, entertaining and thought stimulating... and yes Dave can even change minds.

There ore those who assert that answering your commenters only "pimps" your article and raises your comment stats.

I say bullshit.

The comments posted on this article FROM BOTH sides are well though out, and also answered intelligently. The subject has been expanded beyond the original article in a worth-wile manner.

Thanks for the education Dave
Absolutely no sarcasm intended or offered.
Jet

"I say bullshit."

But I bet you didn't say it with a straight face.

"I recently took an Ethiopian visitor on my rounds of home care patients. He was puzzled and amused at all the wealthy white people living by their ones and twos in their big houses. "Do they ever turn the television off?", he asked. No, apparently not. 'Who would want to live like that?' Only an American."-Michael

I bet if you took a person from anywhere in the world through the US, then through an Ethiopian village packed full of fly infested, feces covered starving children they'd know which ones they'd rather live like. Way to throw out the obligatory wealthy WHITE people though. Racial tension is the page out of the leftist playbook that probably seen the most success.

Actually, I think the actual gist of it was that the visitor was from a relatively poor nation, their ethnicity had nothing to do with it.
The only racial tension was what was placed into the comment by the reader.
Take the same scenario, and you could put in any eastern European.
"remove the plank"

"The only racial tension was what was placed into the comment by the reader."

If it wasn't meant to have subtle racial tones then why mention the skin color of the people any more than their eye or hair color?

*Only the incredibly strong economic growth generated by the tax cuts has kept unbridled spending from being a major problem.*

unbridled spending already is a major problem

tax cuts are government spending - one factor stimulating economic growth

war production is government spending

social programs are government spending

financing debt is government spending

all this government spending stimulates expansion but in the long run growth won't generate funds sufficient to keep up with spending -

...like a dog chasing its tail the Socialist economy will collapse from exhaustion now and again just like its Capitalist cousin even without a global warming crisis

how about government gets out of the way allowing class conflict to move forward

Tax cuts are government spending??? Come again? Think about whose money it is they are spending. Then ask yourself if a tax cut which gives you back some of the money they rape away from you is at all comparable to wasting your hard earned money on boondoggle pork extrvabanzas.

money like all real property belongs to government and is leased out for a price which we call taxes

Good lord. You don't really believe that, do you troll?

Dave

only functionally

and a last touch for Dave...

we could easily be thought of as two sides of the same Coin, so little separates us on most Issues

the crux being the old Ends versus Means bit i ranted on in my very first Article

i wanted to thank you Dave, for your encouragement, and for being an Editor who let me do what i do the way i do it... for all the bluster, it showed yer mettle to this gonzo

ya got my e-mail, or ping any of my Threads if ever the desire arises

all my Best to you and yours

Excelsior?

if that's the fuctionality then our goal must be to make function fit the form once again.

unfortunately free market capitalism with its profit restricting competition - lack of protectionism - and no holds barred class conflict is the last thing corporate leaders and American businessmen want

they want a government that looks out for their interests

Italian Fascism (read Socialism) won the big one and is the current form...no adjustment of function required