On 5/4/10 09:11 , bpnjensen wrote:
On May 4, 3:05 am, "D. Peter wrote:
On 5/3/10 23:17 , bpnjensen wrote:

On May 3, 8:48 pm, "D. Peter wrote:
On 5/3/10 18:57 , m II wrote:

D. Peter Maus wrote:

Yeah, when I pay more tax than John Kerry, it makes my blood boil, too.

Would paying more tax than George Bush be different somehow?

George Bush didn't run on a platform of raising my taxes.

...nor did he run on a platform of doubling our national debt.

You mean the way Obama trebled it in less than 5 months? Or
increased it 10 times over the period of his first term? I mean, if
you want to have a third grade argument, we can. But you've
demonstrated too many times that you're smarter than that.

The discussion, however, is that Kerry, like Obama, and
especially Biden, ran on a platform of raising taxes for us, while
doing everything he can to avoid paying his own. If he's so
determined that more taxes need to be paid, then let him lead the
way...pay more of his own money into the Treasury before he
confiscates ours. If Biden is so convinced that paying taxes is a
patriotic thing to do, then let him lead the way. Let him show us
his own patriotism and forego his exemptions. Let him and pay more,
before telling us that we must pay til it hurts as a matter of duty.

If it's a matter of taking care of the less fortunate, then
donate more of his own money before redistributing ours. By his own
released records Kerry donates nothing to charity. While you and I
do, out of our own pockets. Bush and Cheney donated more out of
their own pockets...more of their own money...than all the Democrats
in Congress combined. While those same Democrats argued that we must
be more generous, and take care of the less fortunate, by raising
our taxes and redistributing that wealth, at the same time
protecting their own.

Kerry, especially, makes 5-10 times what you and I do, and yet he
avoids paying his share of taxes, while arguing that you and I must
pay more. If George Bush had done the same, I'd be just as ****ed at
the double standard. But he didn't.

It's laughable at how the argument, no matter the topic, always
gets pushed back to what Bush did or did not do. The truth is that
I'm no happier about Bush's Presidency than I am Obiteme's. His
administration is responsible for not one, but two lame-ass stimulus
packages that did nothing but make busywork for civil employees. It
cost the government about $2400 in man-hours to write those silly
$600 stimulus checks that did nothing to stimulate the economy.
While a simple tax cut would have boosted economic output, and in
the process increased the flow into the Treasury immediately. Bush's
administration further wrote checks on my future to bailout General
Motors, Chrysler and how many banks and Wall Street brokerages?
While letting them go to bankruptcy when bankruptcy first
threatened, would have ended the harping, and started the rebuilding
within two weeks. Instead of dragging the process out, further
depressing the economy until there was no way the banks, the auto
companies or Wall Street brokerages could recover themselves.

The reality is, that Bush did precisely what he ran
against...government interference in the private sector. Had GM, for
instance, simply been allowed to fail when the issue first came up,
there would have been a bankruptcy, and another manufacturer, or
manufacturers would have swooped in and bought up the assets for
pennies, restructured the businesses, and moved on. For two weeks
there would have been a lot of nail biting, stocks would have been
depressed, and then recovery would have been well under way by the
time the housing bubble burst and the real crash occurred nearly a
year later. The economy would have strong enough to absorb the hit
without spending nearly two trillion more out of public coffers,
which created the public panic that virtually halted the economy for
more than a year.

The economy is resilient. It has the ability to right itself
after a bubble burst. Had it been allowed to simply do so, as with
the crash of the 20's, the economic calamity that followed, like the
Great Depression, would have been very short lived before recovery
began. History has shown time and again, that economic downturns are
short lived except when government interferers. And that the debt
soars when the ruling party can't keep its hands to itself.

So, yes, I'm furious at Bush, as well. He took a well
intentioned, and successful Presidency and ran it off the rails.

But that's not what this discussion is about.

You know, it's rare that Kevin and I find ourselves on the same
side of a political issue, but he's right...both parties are
abominations to the Founding Fathers' intentions, these days.

There are 535 people who can be blamed for the state of the
nation. 535 people who have run for office decrying the enormous
government waste. The same 535 people who could at anytime put an
end to that waste overnight. And yet, they have not. 535 people who
have run for office decrying runaway government spending. The same
535 people who could at anytime end that runaway government spending
overnight. And yet, they have not. 535 people, every term who have
promised campaign after campaign, that there will be improvement in
government responsibility, government transparency, and government
effiency. The same 535 people, who, every term fail to fulfill those
promises, blaming the economy, the deficit, international terrorism,
tooth decay and toenail fungus.

The deficit hasn't been addressed because those 535 people don't
WANT it addressed. Because it's a touchstone for their campaigns.
End the debt and they lose the issue that gave them their impetus
for election. Government waste hasn't been addressed because that
money is their pipeline to support in the civil sector. Runaway
government spending hasn't been addressed because that money is the
source of their power for that 535 people.

535 people. That's all it takes to end these ills. 535 people.
Each one with the power to change things.

And yet, they don't. Because they don't want to.

It could be done overnight. In the dead of night. The same way
they hide their efforts from those of us who elect them. But it
doesn't happen because those 535 people con't want it to.

But all of this is not the issue at topic in this discussion.

The argument that we, The People, must surrender our hard-earned
productivity to the Federal Treasury being made by persons who,
themselves, exploit every opportunity to avoid their share of
taxation is an abomination unto itself.

And that was the point of this discussion.

Peter - there is one issue that this argument, and many others like
it, miss entirely - it is the FLOW of money, not the amassing of
money, that keeps the economy going. Pure private enterprise, for all
its innovation, tends to amass and concentrate money in specific
places; in some cases, like Wall Street or the banks, that amassed
money is either given to execs or squandered. The stimulus packages,
OTOH, kept money flowing. So what if some of it goes to public
employees? Public employees, at the end of the day, are mostly middle-
class, mostly typical family people, and spend that money in turn at
lots of private commercial stores - whether for clothing, cars, food,
washing machines or entertainment of one kind or another. The private
sector gets it back again...but in the meantime, someone's child not
gone hungry, sopmeone has not lost his home or been unable to afford
health care.

It's the flow that matters when the economy is tanking.

That's exactly right. FLOW matters. But only private sector
spending. In the private sector, each dollar spent is turned over to
create another dollar and that dollar goes back into the economy.
Further, in private sector spending each dollar spent triggers
productivity, which increases total domestic product, which
increases the value of every other dollar spent.

Public spending comes from taxation, which is a dollar removed
from the economy, lost in bureaucratic fractionalization, and then
returned to the economy as a small fraction of it's original value.
Like $600 stimulus checks that cost $2500 in man-hours each to
produce. $1900 of that is lost to the bureaucratic maze. While $2500
in tax cuts to the same individual will produce far more in economic
stimulation than the $600 check when taxation remains high. Because
$2500 in tax cuts puts that full $2500 back into the economy, with
corresponding productivity. More dollars, and stronger dollars, in
the economy

Public spending, on the other hand does nothing to stimulate the
economy because the government is not part of the economy.
Government feeds on the economy. But the government produces
nothing. A government dollar spent does nothing to stimulate
production, so there is no increase in total domestic product, and
no increase in the value of the dollar spent. Further, a government
dollar spent requires infrastructure support of many more dollars in
bureaucratic operating costs, which come from taxation. In the end
the dollars spent are a fraction of the massive cost of bureaucracy,
and taxation on the dollars put back into the economy are incapable
of paying the cost of putting them into the economy. Fewer dollars,
and weaker dollars in the economy.

Public sector spending regardless of volume, increases nothing,
stimulates nothing. Because the government produces nothing. It only
adds to the cost of government.







Bruce