Let me just say, that this guy hit the nail on the head. A moment of clarity in the field of insanity. David Stockman has it right.
http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/3000109364/code/cnbcplayershare
Can't watch it ATM, cliff notes?
He runs through a lot of topics;
- Fed making bubbles because super low interest rate fuels speculatory activity - current Fed is insane
- Fed and pols lying to the people about the real costs of borrowing money
- Ryan budget is silly because it does not actually balance the budget in a realistic time frame.. aka will never balance. Plus other various criticisms like growing military
- Obama budget is pure fantasy, thinks SS and Medicare etc are OK to be kept as is while only raising taxes on the top 2%
On the topics of the budgets in general he says
- Military needs to be cut by 1/3rd to bring it down to the levels Eisenhower considered sustainable, when the USA actually had an industrialized enemy.
- SocSecurity is needed by 40 million people who are on it, however another 15 million who collect are affluent and should be means-tested.
- Medicare should be means tested as well, many people also need to pay more for it.
- Taxes need to go up
- He goes on at length about how the financial markets are broken, and why Bernanke needs to be fired ASAP.
- Lots of other good stuff and quotables on Fed, History, Warfare state, economics
I am all for having tons of stuff become means-tested. Lets even make mortgage deduction means-tested.
... but how is this not taxing the rich?
Tea Party can froth all they want, but at this point taxes going up for everyone not only inevitable, delaying it prolongs the pain we will have to endure.
I honestly do not think that most TP types would have a problem with modest additional tax measures *if* the cuts were of the serious type that Stockman described. AND if the Federal reserve was reigned in.
Otherwise, any tax increases are just pissing away our cash. We pay more while the connected elite continue borrowing at 0% to feed the bubble that will burst all over us.
In the current environment, taking more money from us serves no purpose but to make it harder for the average Joe to survive the bubbles being created by our Govt.
Raise taxs to meet 20% revune, and cut spending to 20%. 20/20 balance budget.
Balanced budged (at whatever %) is a good goal, but for any cuts to make sense defense budget will have to be cut as well. We cannot afford military this big.
Yeah.. Stockman said cut it by 1/3 , which I agree is a good number.
Budget needs to be balanced so our reliance on borrowed money is reduced and we can stop artificially suppressing interest rates, and our financial system can start returning to a semblance of sanity.
Someone please disagree with something, this thread is getting boring. :)
but for any cuts to make sense defense budget will have to be cut as well. We cannot afford military this big.
I agree, we need to cut back.
Someone please disagree with something, this thread is getting boring. :)
How dare you want to cut defense. With China ramping up their naval ships, building 5th gen stealth fighters, building carrier killer bombs. The pacific is not a safe place. We must protect Japan, and the malayasias islands, to keep them from being swallowed up by an Imperal China set to control everything. Also look at the high resource thinly populated sibera. With global warming occuring, that is going to be prime realestate, and where can 1.5 billion chinamen can go.