[ian807]

1. We collapse like the Soviet Union
2. We go to war (the really big, millions dying kind of war)

Not mutually exclusive. I'd bet on both.

[EnergyUnlimited]

1. We collapse like the Soviet Union
2. We go to war (the really big, millions dying kind of war)

Not mutually exclusive. I'd bet on both.

Well, US is quite on track for repeating Soviet experience.

1. Go to war in Afghanistan.
2. Collapse.

[AgentR]

Unfortunately, many Republicans have completely ignored the whole "curve" concept and think that every tax cut will pay for itself. This is simply not true.

We are currently on the left of the curve. You could easily raise the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 40% without decreasing economic growth prospects in any meaningful way.

I'm a Republican certainly enough, and I get pretty annoyed when the talking heads recite the short form of that mantra. It has been true in the past each time it was done because we were on the right hand side; people in the upper brackets were choosing to forgo income in order to avoid taxes. That was a bad thing, and the cuts at the time fixed it; but now, you have the opposite effect going on, people in the upper brackets are pushing income as hard as they can in order to get it clear and on their balance sheet for a myriad of reasons and increasing the tax rate wouldn't impact that urge for quite a while.

Problem is, the amount of money raised from the upper brackets, going from 35% to 40% is insignificant compared to the size of what we are spending and creating debt for.

As long as you are honest about doing an increase for the sole purpose of "gotcha"; then I don't see anything wrong with it. It'll have no impact on the deficit though.

That $9 trillion deficit projected over the next decade will mean an increase in the national debt of perhaps as much as 15 or even 20 trillion. That is, assuming we can continue the optimistic assumption of infinite demand for US paper.

Doesn't really matter anymore; we've crossed the threshold of our government buying its own paper. Now its just a matter of becoming comfortable with larger and larger scales.

I believe this is intentional, its not a mistake, nor misfortune. Its the objective.

[mattduke]

I'm disgusted by the Republican's premise that the government should maximize its theft rate. We want to be at the left hand side of the curve, not the middle.

[Buggy]

1. We collapse like the Soviet Union
2. We go to war (the really big, millions dying kind of war)

Not mutually exclusive. I'd bet on both.

Excellent point.

[smallpoxgirl]

Do you seriously attribute this financial collapse to policies and practices enacted and carried out during this short eight-month period Obama has been in office?

He didn't start it, but he's darn sure not helping the situation.

[Fishman]

"which stands an extremely low chance of happening."
Best describes O agenda from now on due to this data (regardless of the cause pstarr, boo hoo) The Republican arguement about tax cuts is certainly questionable, The Democratic arguement for spend and tax looks like a complete dead horse however.

I'm disgusted by the Democrat's premise that the government should maximize its theft rate and give it to someone else.

[BigTex]

Do you seriously attribute this financial collapse to policies and practices enacted and carried out during this short eight-month period Obama has been in office?

He didn't start it, but he's darn sure not helping the situation.

Government reminds me of the saying about when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

There is a time in the development of a society that government can provide useful services and a level playing field for conducting business and enjoying life. For the U.S., that time passed long ago.

At a certain point in the life of a society, the role of government becomes extremely corrosive as government officials and politicians begin to imagine that every social, economic, political, and ecological problem faced by the society is somehow solvable through the proper level of government action.

The forces against which late-stage empires struggle are vastly greater than the fingers-in-the-dike measures that their governments take to address them. It's really pitiful that anyone seriously believes that the problems our society faces today are somehow only a few good government programs away from being solved.

Comparing George W. Bush to Barack Obama is sort of like comparing two late-stage Roman emperors to one another. Who really cares what the differences are? What matters is that the entire system is morally, politically, ethically, economically, culturally, and ecologically bankrupt. No "change" is going to change that fact.

I appreciate Obama's sunny outlook and perhaps-sincere desire to do good for the U.S., but it really doesn't matter at all. The die was cast long ago, probably when the U.S. failed to heed Eisenhower's warnings on his way out of office.

The thing that I think people are upset about today is that intuitively they know that we have allowed our fantasies to inform our actions for too long and that we are decades past the time that meaningful action could have been taken to prevent an economic, political and ecological catastrophe.

Obama may just be the guy who happens to be flying the plane on the day that its design flaws show up in a catastrophic failure.

[patience]

BigTex,

+1! Great post!

[Buggy]

BigTex,

+1! Great post!

Ditto! You're hired!

[vision-master]

There is a time in the development of a society that government can provide useful services and a level playing field for conducting business and enjoying life. For the U.S., that time passed long ago.

Which leaves us with Multinational Corporations instead? Yeah, they are benevolent fookers looking for the comman good of it's subjects, eh.

I always knew you were 'one of them'.

[BigTex]

There is a time in the development of a society that government can provide useful services and a level playing field for conducting business and enjoying life. For the U.S., that time passed long ago.

Which leaves us with Multinational Corporations instead? Yeah, they are benevolent fookers looking for the comman good of it's subjects, eh.

I always knew you were 'one of them'.

All I'm suggesting is that governments have a tendency to get larger, no matter the needs of the underlying society. However, when the ability of the society to support the government begins to deteriorate, the size and scope of the government rarely gets smaller. This dynamic tends to hasten the decline of the society, as people lose faith more quickly in a society in which the government consumes more and more of the society's resources while delivering fewer and fewer services.

It's sort of the road that Rome went down.

As for who steps into the power vacuum following a breakdown in government control, I don't think that corporations will be much of a threat, since the whole premise behind a corporation unwinds when there is no political apparatus to protect the corporations' property rights.

I think, too, that today's government is hard to distinguish from today's corporation, and thus they are likely to see the wax on their wings melting in unison.

[Outcast_Searcher]

There is a time in the development of a society that government can provide useful services and a level playing field for conducting business and enjoying life. For the U.S., that time passed long ago.

Which leaves us with Multinational Corporations instead? Yeah, they are benevolent fookers looking for the comman good of it's subjects, eh.

I always knew you were 'one of them'.

As a Libertarian, I am strongly for property rights and hate big government via growing programs of EITHER party.

Consider some choices of how we may be ruled:

1). The intellectual dystopia that the original "Rollerball" movie depicted in a world run by corporations.
2). The big government dystopia that we seem to be entering, which seems to be the moral equivalent of the world Ayn Rand depicted in "Atlas Shrugged" -- where wealth confiscation is constantly escalated because of the increasingly shrill cries of (and on behalf of) "people in need".
3). The pro-business dystopia we just left (which started with Reagan, IMO) where letting business run amok and indulging in corruption and theft at every level that makes typical government look like a bunch of cherubs -- while living standards for all but the top 1% decline. (Unlike #1, we're allowed to have books, if we could only afford them...)
4). World war dystopia, where our government leaders fight over dwindling resources and blame each other. One could argue that this has already begun, since Iraq is about oil and we apparently aren't leaving, despite certain campaign promises.

Um, I doubt many folks like any of these, yet a future along one or more of these lines seems increasingly likely as the games roll on.

[smallpoxgirl]

There is a time in the development of a society that government can provide useful services and a level playing field for conducting business and enjoying life. For the U.S., that time passed long ago.

Which leaves us with Multinational Corporations instead?

That's baloney. Corporations are a legal fiction. They only exist because the government says they do. Government vs. corporations is a false dichotomy.

[Outcast_Searcher]

There is a time in the development of a society that government can provide useful services and a level playing field for conducting business and enjoying life. For the U.S., that time passed long ago.

Which leaves us with Multinational Corporations instead?

That's baloney. Corporations are a legal fiction. They only exist because the government says they do. Government vs. corporations is a false dichotomy.

Um, to a point. Talking first world here:
(Corporate taxes, for example, are a sham - people ultimately pay taxes, as corporations pass along the expense via their product pricing). However, considering how much corporate INFLUENCE there is on government decisions (example: IMO, that's 99% of the power behind the resistance to meaningful health insurance competition in the current U.S. debate) - powerful corporations end up wielding a huge proportion of government power over time, so defacto become much of the actual input to government decisions. (Lobbyists, for example).

Yes, in THEORY governments could ignore powerful corporate influence and boldly implement their ideals for a "better" society. Somehow, in today's and I suspect tomorrow's world, I don't see much of that happening overall.

[smallpoxgirl]

Yes, in THEORY governments could ignore powerful corporate influence and boldly implement their ideals for a "better" society. Somehow, in today's and I suspect tomorrow's world, I don't see much of that happening overall.

That was my point. Government and corporations are the same agenda. Vision Master was suggesting that the government was important to counter the influence of corporations. Basically corporations are a legal fiction invented by governments to allow rich people to reap the rewards and influence of business without having to absorb the consequences when businesses fail. It's just basically a bail out scheme. If your corp fails, they can't foreclose on your yacht.

[vision-master]

Government and corporations are the same agenda.

Sort of.

Without unions what power does the comman J6P have?

[smallpoxgirl]

Without unions what power does the comman J6P have?

t.
J6P's fundamental power is to consent to being governed or not. In the individual, J6P has no power. In the collective, the J6Ps have all the power. It's just whether they chooses to exercise it or not.

[Cloud9]

Unions are running with the big boys.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125112547653253819.html