Point Well Taken for the Conservatives
Everyone should read this article by David Brooks in today’s NYT’s.
Although I’m on record as being more tolerant of Government solutions to problems than most of you, David Brooks raises a great point about where government, and liberal Democrats, have screwed the pooch and I think it is good reading. While I support reasonable government regulation of markets to ensure fairness, and government curbs on monopoly power (which is while I support extending Medicare to anyone who wants it (at an actuarial appropriate premium to counter the strangle hold insurance companies have on us)), I do recognize where things have gone off track. And government salary, health and pension benefits are out of freaking control.
See you at the Rally to Restore Sanity!!!!
Sad Sam
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Sam:
These government retiree benefits, if not restructured, will end up in some sort of civil war. Why should private sector employees be killing themselves to pay well above market benefits to public sector early retirees? All of these need to go to defined contribution, period. If you retire, FIND ANOTHER JOB. Before we can start making these hard decisions, we have to quit the non-sensical talking points. Let me try with a few. Bush inherited a declining economy that was downright scary in the days after 911. Does anybody remember what happened to the market in the week after it returned after several days off? I do. It was like October 2008. His first tax cut was a disaster. It was one of those one time $600 things. It accomplished nothing other than pissing away money. His across the board tax cuts almost instantly ignited the economy. The Bush tax cuts were not the reason for the recession. They created millions of jobs until the downturn. The recession was caused by the housing downturn caused by a.)an easy money fed, b.)no accountability by loan originators, c.) lousy appraising, and d.) loose market regulations for which both parties are to blame. When faced with a crisis, Bush started spending money like Hoover, with similar results. Obama did not inherit the worst economy since the Depression. The Carter and early Reagan years were worse. We had all the current conditions PLUS Argentinian interest rates. He did inherit an awful economy. Instead of following a Reagan model to solve it, he followed a Roosevelt model (although Roosevelt made people work to get money). Instead of getting Reagan’s growth, he is getting Roosevelt’s results. People aren’t mad at him because the economy is bad. They are mad because anybody with a brain knows his plan won’t work. If we would simply do things that are proven to work to get the economy back, or, like downsizing these retirement benefits to balance the books..to hell with the politics, we will get on track. If not, we are doomed.
1Jeff, I agree a 100% on your reasons for the mess we are currently stuck and if it took us 10-15 years to get in, might take a while to extract ourselves…..also, the housing boom was the MAIN reason for all the illegal immigration, and yes WE all have some skin in the game, ALL of us for our current situation….WE were greedy, sky was the limit…might be another five years until wedig out of this hole…no magic solutions….but MORE government NOT the answer
Sam, our Governemnt is there to protect us here and abroad, anything more than that was not the vision our Founding Fathers had…..they provide a service, not solutions, they aid not involve, and we are taxed enough, reduce instead of increase….If our goverment raises our taxes , how about a novel idea, DO NOT PAY
2Take away government regulation of the securities industry and you have you no stock market. You need enough regulation to assure an honest market.
Take away regulation of the food industry and you’ll have samonella and other problems even more than you do now.
I believe it was Adam Smith who said that the only problem with capitism is capitalists. We don’t have a 1776 economy. The Founding Fathers also probably bled themselves when they were sick because they had “the vapors.” They counted black people as 3/5th’s of whites. They were great and wise men, but we’ve come along way since 1776
3Sam, I was always under the opinion that the founding fathers were smart enough to put a system in place that allowed the wrongs of the day to be worked out in a systematic processes instead of trying to end things all at once and have another revolution on their hands. Then again, I may just be naive.
4TM: you are absolutely correct. I agree completely and sorry if I was inelegant. My point was that we can’t return to a 1776 sized government. The Founding Fathers were vastly superior intellectually to me or you, but we have the benefit of 200+ years of hindsight.
5I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. I dont think anyone thinks we can go back to a 1776 sized goernment, but I hope no one thinks we need a 2010 sized government either.
6fair enough
7I think 1955 is about right.
8Sounds good but lets not play any kind of games. Lets make it the actual size, NOT the same percentage of GDP or anything like that.
9Here’s an idea. Rather than this budgetary concept where increases are automatic, and then a reduction in the increase is a cut…how about this. First, we will exempt Medicare, Social Security, Defense and Homeland Security (they will have another process). Everything else has to justify their existence. Sixty years ago we didn’t have many of these departments. Why have them now? My position would be that they are all permanently shut down unless they can justify their societal ROI. How about this for social security. We make the eligiblity age a function of the expected life of a citizen. Right now, it is about 13 years I think. Let’s make it 11, and tie it to longevity. Defense, well let’s go back to defense. Offense has given us all it is going to give. Medicare, we could talk about that forever, but the govt has no chance of stopping health care costs from increasing. Only people can stop that.
10if you exempt social security, defense, medicare, and interest on the debt, you are way, way short of balancing the budget unless you raise the top marginal tax rate…I think in 1955 it was 90%
11Sam what if not only you cut back on budget, but you get rid of entire departments? Do we really need an agricultural department? They have more employees than there are farmers? Whats the point of the Education Department? Isn’t that the state’s job? I’m sure we can go on and on. There has to be plenty of fat to cut, including entire departments.
12That is the point. Entire departments need to go. Sam, did you miss the part about indexing SS benefits to life expectancy? I am also for cutting defense. That was my point about not trying to have our defense be on offense. I am for scaling down in the middle east. I am for eliminating much of the defense beauracracy. I am for making sure any weaponry makes sense before we buy it. I do like spending money on rank and file. First, I think in these times, being in the military provides a real job and real skills for many young kids. Also, I think it provides them discipline which many of them need..but yes, overall defense spending needs to go down.
We need to do this soon before we get the pathetic site here that we are watching in France. I can not believe people are on the streets demanding to be paid money sooner for doing nothing. What a site. It is amazing that so many people still believe in the tooth fairy.
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