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The vast majority of which are so absurd on their very face that it's a waste of time & energy ... and it ain't exactly like the productivity of the two relevant parties is so high that they need to be wasting time like that. |
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I don't think its that politicians don't have decent ideas - I think its that most politicians are professionals and their job involves ensuring they retain a job first and foremost. Any 'real' solution to the problems existing in society/economy (in all countries not just the US) involve things which are unplalatable to a large section of society - either corporations (ie. funding your election) or populace (ie. voting) ... as such they'll ignore issues and leave things heading towards calamity rather than risk their own personal situation for the betterment of the majority. Think of it like a doctor who is paid directly by tips from his patient - he has a patient who appears outwardly fine, the patient will pay happily to stay 'fine' .... the doctor however knows he has a (currently) invisible tumour which will kill him, the treatment will be unpleasant and painful .... this will likely reduce the doctors tips, so he ignores the tumour in order to maximise his income .... |
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And that's part of what I'm trying to change by bringing in more outsiders. Let the radicals vote for the radicals in the debates, maybe the middle moderates can actually find someone to vote for when the "real" candidates don't have to pander to the fringes. |
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The problem is that everyone is a radical at the start of their career - I'm sure Obama when he started as a politician had more radical ideas and wanted to make a difference, ditto Republicans etc. .... The problem is self-interest, when its your job and income on the line how will you react - when a self-interest group offer you a cush $1m/year job as a retirement option after your term in office what will you do etc. ... Unfortunately most people will look after themselves and theirs first and foremost, ie. take the cash whether corruptly (ie. as a kickback) or legitimately (ie. as funds to advertise during the next campaign) ... it doesn't matter which tbh as the effect is the same. |
I guess maybe a top 4 or so?
Officials: US drone strike kills Taliban commander in Pakistan - World News Quote:
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Insight into the 4 days on the fiscal cliff negotiations.
Fiscal Cliff Averted: How The White House Got A Deal Before The Deadline Quote:
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Devil is in the details but below seems reasonable.
White House weighs broad gun-control agenda in wake of Newtown shootings - The Washington Post Quote:
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Interesting how a lot of people seem upset that their paychecks are smaller, thanks to more payroll taxes being taken out.
CURL: Obama supporters shocked, angry at new tax increases - Washington Times Hope and less change: Americans cringe at first paychecks of 2013; Stunned lib asks, ‘What happened?’ | Twitchy |
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1 and 2) Unconstitutional. Freedom of speech, remember? 3) I agree on SS at 70, but also tie to an life expectancy index that re-adjusts every decade or so. Also reform parts of the disability portion as well. To expand on SS/Medicare, the big problem is people take out more money than they pay in, by a rather big margin. Fix that equation, and you'll fix a lot of our problems. 3) Being a big company doesn't mean your violating anti-trust laws. 4) Why the change to the metric system? I guess the idea, but didn't we try that before? |
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I really can't believe how much opposition there still is to something as silly as the metric system conversion. It's better for math and science and plays an non-insignificant role on why we are getting worse at both of those fields. I have yet to hear a good reason as to why we are soft metric rather than hard metric. As for the unconstitutionality of getting money out of elections, we shall see. If not for an extremely pro-business Supreme Court, Citizens United goes a different direction or, more specifically, the floodgates aren't opened up and it's a much more narrow ruling. It's pretty easy to see someone making a "one person one vote not one dollar one vote" case that reverses it or severely limits it if the Supreme Court composition changes. So you could make the law now, hedging that in 10 years the court has changed as it took 8 years for this challenge of McCain-Feingold to reach them. That said, one could easily argue that making corporate dollars makes Congress that much more beholden to them so the two parties will coalesce around corporate dollars, thus further making both more protective of business and less protective of consumers and individual citizens. Oops. SI |
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What an insanely biased take on that. The payroll tax is not at the same level it was when Obama took office, and it was the GOP that absolutely refused to extend that tax cut, in part because they could twist it as an Obama tax increase. |
Ya, c'mon, it's only cool to highlight confused Republicans as examples of how every conservative thinks, don't do it with liberals.
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I don't care about the nutpicking, but the facts of the tax increase are wildly skewed.
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1) I'm not moving to the metric system, but it would be an uphill battle-both mentally and financially. 2) I have no problem with publicly financed elections-and it's not just businesses, but unions as well, who are just as bad as business. I always hated how it's okay for unions to fund their candidates, but not businesses. Both need to be removed completely from the process. How do you fight against "issue" campaigns? It seems like it would be tough to regulate along that line. Quote:
So how do you propose paying for SS? Shouldn't it be based on how much you pay in that you get back? What do you think about this article on Obamacare and jobs? http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...-jobs/1785641/ |
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Incredibly simplified and biased towards a particular angle intended to show "Obamacare" in a poor light. You could contrast it with the fact that if 'x' million more people will have cover there will likely be expansion within the healthcare industry to handle these people. (but frankly at this stage no one knows the ultimate effect of this policy - from the sounds of things it punishes companies who employ mainly part-time staff, so it could well lead to less jobs overall but more full-time positions .... whether thats a good thing, tbh I don't know ...) |
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It wouldn't cause inflation. It's just a technical fix to the problem, the money isn't being dumped into the economy. |
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Doesn't it punish employers for having too many employees who work more than 30 hours a week? That's what I thought the article was about, the service industry preparing to take a hodge-podge approach to minimize the number of "full-time" workers. |
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I'm struggling to think how printing a trillion dollar coin wouldn't cause inflation, regardless of how its used. The supply of money would obviously increase by quite a bit and would have some effect on the value of the American currency. Now you may argue that the inflation would be exactly the same as offering a trillion dollars in Treasury Bonds, but that causes inflation as well. |
Here's a good Q/A on the platinum coin option.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...all-wrong.html It's a terribly stupid idea, but probably less stupid than refusing to lift the debt ceiling. |
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The trillion dollars isn't entering the money supply. It's just a technical trick to allow them to keep borrowing. They would be spending what they had planned to spend in the first place. |
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Maybe not but it is a trick to raise the debt ceiling which is a failure of leadership. It's a sign that we depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our governments reckless fiscal policies. And it weakens us domestically and internationally. |
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Probably unconstitutional. If the courts get involved, that'd almost certainly be the outcome. OTOH, one can make the argument as well that Congress playing political games and trying to hold the nation's sovereign debt hostage to extract political concessions is ALSO unconstitutional. That would be a fascinating train wreck to watch. |
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The fun part is that foreign countries don't even hold 1/3 of United States debt. It's a fun little canard, but if you could magically wipe out every penny in foreign-held debt, we're still $10 trillion in the hole. The rest is entirely internal - debt held in the form of T-bills and savings bonds by United States citizens. Mitt Romney tried to make hay over the idea that we're borrowing money from China to subsidize Big Bird. China holds 8% of US debt. More than any other single nation, to be sure, but you're still talking single digit percentages. |
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You're right actually I misread it - I thought it was forcing coverage for low hour workers whereas its forcing it only for high hour workers ... thats particularly moronic imho, although I suppose from a politicians perspective its 'creating jobs' (ie. 1 full-time job is now 2 part-time) .... although I doubt that many will support people alone if thats the case. |
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Don't let facts skew this trillion dollar fake monster everyone is suddenly worried about. |
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And my post was tongue in cheek using Obama's exact words about the debt ceiling in 2006 Edit: And yes some of us are concerned about the debt created by both parties out of control spending. |
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I've seen columnists say that if one is unconstitutional then the other is constitutional. So one way or another... |
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What's your plan other than "stop spending"? |
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I don't think it's an either/or thing, frankly. I think the 14th Amendment cuts the legs out from under the House Republicans as it pertains to using the debt ceiling as a legislative hostage, and I think the Treasury would be usurping Congress' power if it minted a trillion dollar coin as an end run around the debt ceiling. |
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Well I am a middle school math teacher for a living so I am not going to act like some people on here do and say "Take 32.6 billion from the department of energy" with no idea whose job I am cutting or what that really means but yes stopping spending would be a big part of it. The overseas imperialism would probably be big cut #1 in a Panerd presidency. I differ substantially from Libertarians and Ron Paul on the tax thing. (Though at least Rand Paul made an attempt to cut from both the military and domestically unlike most in DC) I think a good response would be huge cuts in spending and then tax increases (though the IRS code could lose a few pages) to pay for what we can't cover. My big beef with "eat the rich" or whatever is why should they have to be the only ones shouldering a tax burden for a Congress that is scared to cut anything? I think of a family that has everything they need plus 25 cars and 6 houses they can't afford. So they call in the current GOP and Dem leadership and ask for advice. The real advice would be to both cut back seriously on the spending and to get another job to pay for what you don't cut. These guys would come in and find a $3.99 movie rental and argue over the morality of nudity in it and at the end of the day convince the voting public that this family can't cut back at all and can't get another job until we solve the problems with the $4 movie. |
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You are printing money to pay your debts. That cannot in any way, shape, or form be non-inflationary. Like I said, you can argue that inflation would increase by the same amount it will by spending the trillion dollars in T-bills, but increased inflationary pressure will result. I mean if its not inflationary, why don't we just print a coin that covers the entire debt and use that to pay our debt off? |
Its just like trying to argue that food and energy should be included in an inflation calculation. Of course adding $1,000,000,000,000 increases the money supply and decreases the value of the currency but you can't possibly understand the level of math they can do they says "Your groceries cost more?" well it isn't because we pumped trillions of dollars into the economy. (And when you do get them to admit it might be inflation then you get some nonsense about how inflation is good, why save when you can borrow money you shouldn't be borrowing at super low interest rates?)
But the weirdest part of all? Somehow these laws and math rules change based on which party controls the purse strings and the presidency. What was out of control in 2006 is now needed and vice versa. |
I don't think it would be terribly inflationary if the funds spent replaced money that would have otherwise been borrowed. The key would be committing to keeping the monetary level flat over the next three years and replacing what was spent through bond sales.
It's admittedly a terrible idea, but I think it's better than refusing to pay our bills and the resulting chaos from that decision. |
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Refusing to pay our bills is unconstitutional anyways. 14th Amendment FTW |
There's no practical monetary impact of the trillion dollar coin but it's hard to predict perception. Even the guy in the article above who likes the idea says that it requires Obama to "clearly explain" what it's all about and then "vow" to melt the coin when the crisis is past. That's his plan to control perception. Is it really that easy? I would assume whatever he tried to "explain" or "vow" would get twisted 6 ways from Sunday all over the globe and the world financial markets, but that the "trillion dollar coin part" would come across loud and clear. I don't know what the effect of that would be, just that Obama can't guarantee any particular perception just with a really nice speech.
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This is probably more for the economy thread, wherever that is, but I wonder if when the government bails out giant insurance companies, it budgets for the cost of defending lawsuits filed against it by that giant insurance company. Maybe all that legal work is part of the "stimulus," generated to spread more of of that taxpayer money around to well connected attorneys.
Rescued by a Bailout, A.I.G. May Sue Its Savior - NYTimes.com |
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Bit more on this Quote:
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Of course, all of that presumes no negative effects IF the debt limit is subsequently raised ;).
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No you aren't. The Trillion dollars isn't being used to pay debts and is not entering the money supply. It's just a technical trick. Absolutely nothing would change between this and Congress raising the debt ceiling. |
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Are you indicating to me that spending an extra $1 trillion after raising the debt ceiling would not increase inflation? If not (and you should not indicate that, because it's not true) then spending $1 trillion in lieu of that would increase inflation as well. |
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They aren't spending the extra trillion. |
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It wouldn't actually be spent. It just temporarily changes the balance sheet so the debt situation doesn't look as bad, which would allow the government to borrow more money under the debt ceiling laws. That doesn't necessarily make it that simple, or even a good idea - but ON PAPER there's no practical effect other than that end-around the debt ceiling laws. I don't think it's entirely without risk in terms of how other countries and banks might react to it, and there might be some separation of powers/abuse of executive authority issues (even though there is legal authority to do this, there's legal authority to do all kinds of things that are constitutionally suspect, that's why we have appellate courts to sort those things out). Somebody brought up how the Dems would react if Bush floated this idea during the Iraq War/Debt limit stuff - I'm positive there would have been calls for impeachment and such. |
For the record, I don't think it should be done. It's a shitty gimmick move and sets a bad precedent. At the same time, I think all of this is just grandstanding and there is no way they'd let us default on our debt and stop SS checks and military pay to go out.
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Welcome to US politics! Pretty much everything is at least setting a bad precedent, and most are shitty gimmick moves that don't really address the underlying issue(s) but make it appear that they are doing something. |
The Trillion Dollar Coin seems like a horrible idea politically.
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I think those are good plans for the most part. I just think people underestimate how much spending you'd have to cut. Closing a few bases overseas is not going to do it. You'd have to dramatically cut military spending. And with that comes the loss of jobs and less tax revenue to pay for the other bills. There are so many jobs tied into our defense spending. And on top of it, a large chunk of our defense spending is legacy costs. Paying the benefits of veterans who fought in wars. How can you cut that? You keep saying cut back on spending, but there aren't a lot of other areas that would have an impact. It's either got to be defense, social security, or medicare. Now you can cut a research project or something else, but it's insanely small. Sort of like the griping over PBS which would have literally no impact on our overall deficit. So how do you go about cutting SS and Medicare? You've had people who paid in their entire lives. Cutting their payments would be akin to a company stealing a pension from their employees. Or your financial advisor raiding your IRA. That's why cutting spending is so hard. Personally I think there are some easy fixes that can be done right away. Medicare could go through a bunch of reforms to reduce costs. One would be opening borders for the trade of prescription drugs (which helps all Americans). The other would be allowing us to negotiate rates with manufacturers (which is insane that we can't do it now). No reason why payroll tax shouldn't be restarted after say $250k and no reason there shouldn't be a Medicare/SS tax on capital gains. |
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*sigh* There is a reason that the link that DT posted talking about Diel keeps mention "When the debt limit is raised, then can exchange the limit for the coin and melt it" - its because the coin is substituting for the limit - ie, the government spending that needs to be done will be accomplished by the coin rather than through debt instruments. Basically, it IS being spent as it would be spent using debt instruments. To claim that no inflation results is silly. Of course inflation results. Inflation results from taking on increased debt as well believe it or not. |
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I can't think this is anything more than political posturing that will never see the light of day SI |
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They aren't spending anything new. The coin just allows them to borrow more money, just as a little note from Congress does. All that happens now is they have a coin in a vault instead of a letter from Congress. No new money is entering the financial world which is what causes actual inflation. They will be doing exactly the same thing they would do if Congress gave them approval to raise the debt ceiling. Increased debt doesn't lead to inflation either. Perhaps in the case where there is a fear of sovereign default. The opposite is happening these days as whenever things go bad in the economy, everyone jumps to their safety net, the US dollar. |
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Yes, exactly, which leads me to: Quote:
Even Paul Krugman, the Keynesianest of the Keynesians believes that while debt doesn't lead to inflation in these economic conditions (economy depressed and interest rate close to 0), he is quick to mention that when these conditions change, the Federal Reserve will have to quickly sell off its federal debt in order to prevent massive rise in inflation. Others, who aren't as ok with mounting debt do believe that debt leads to inflation. |
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