The truth about the stimulus is why it has me so pissed off about it. The vast majority of it has not been spent and won't be unitl next year, an election year. So we made a gigantic show that we have to pass this act with all of this spending after it was written 11 hours previously and no one had read it to sit on Obamas desk for 4 days. Remember how we were told that if we did not do this the country would collapse. The whole pourpose of a stimulus is for an immediate response, so a year from passage is now considered immediate. It is a complete farse and created another slush fund for the pols to use.
Unemployment is at 9.4% which means 90.6% are working. Those who are working are still going to the mall and restaurants. Too many in this country believe that nothing will ever happen to them, doesn't save, is in debt to their eyeballs and lives for today only. And most items which are typically bought on credit ie cars homes and appliances, sales are way down.
But inflation is inevitably coming. The government is printing money without adding any value to the system. The treasury is printing money which it gives to the fed and the fed buys up US T Bills with it. T Bills are US gov't iou's. The national debt is the value of the T Bills in circulation. So the treasury is financing the purchase of its own debt with money whose ink isn't yet dry. This is crazy. And everytime it has been done in the world, rampant inflation follows shortly thereafter. But the pols are telling us because they did it, it is OK and none of the after effects apply to them.
For too long the federal government has existed in a parallel universe to reality. They act as if the laws of supply and demand and economics do not apply to them. Have you noticed that the troubles in the ecomomy are getting worse and worse and lasting longer each time. It is like a person who has a disease but doesn't take the meds they know they have to but don't because it is inconvenient. Congress primarily and the past administrations have been on a power trip. They have used our money to make us dependant on them. And it has been going on for almost a hundred years off and on. And since Kennedy, have been racking up deficits doing it.
The reasons for deficits is not taxes are too low, it is they spend too much and put our businesses at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world. Cheap labor from overseas is only part of the equation of why manufacturing is leaving the states. The tax structure currently in place is over burdensome and the rules and regulations that congress imposes adds significant costs to any company that operates here. And lets be honest, cost is the number one concern of most Americans. If an item is 50 cents more for the US made one than a Taiwanese widget, which one ends in the cart. But we want to tax business more to pay for all of these programs.
How many times does it have to be proven that reducing the tax burden does not reduce treasury income it increases it. It happened under Reagan and Bush both increased treasury revenues. The problem under Bush was he SPENT to much not that he taxed too little. Every person in this country needs to be prepared to pay more taxes for more services if they want them. To try and put the burden for all of it on one group is a recipe for disaster. As it is the top 10 percent of wage earners pay 96 percent of taxes, how much more can they bear before they simply stop trying to make money in the US that they never get to use before the IRS takes it? Reagan himself said the reason he only made 2 movies a year was because if he made three movies his tax burden went so high he would take home less than he would at 2 movies a year.
And you can use Europe as a crystal ball. The are the ones all of our esteemed leaders seem to be saying we should be more like. All of Europe has higher taxes than the US. They are below the US in per capita GDP for decades, but the gap is closing because they are removing some of the gov't red tape and changing to flat taxes and national sales taxes and their economies are improving as we rocket the other way. But again because it is the US government, history doesn't apply us.
Re: Biden
Member #: 61931
Registered: 9/16/2008
Posted:
963
Occupation:
Tower Contractor
Location:
PA
Personal:
mid 50s
Experience:
~37 years
