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#16
December 29th 04, 03:49 PM
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N2EY wrote:
In article , (Steve Robeson K4YZ) writes: snip Yeah...fixed by Mr. 15% Inflation Carter. Uh huh...I remember. He enacted a 17.5% one time parity raise for the Armed Forces, then taxed the bee-jeebers out of us. WHOA! Let's look at exactly what happened in that time period! First off, the govt. started deficit spending in the '60s to pay for LBJ's "Great Society", the Vietnam war, and the "space race". This deficit spending and other fiscal changes resulted in rising inflation and interest rates. Nixon and Ford tried to fight inflation with price and wage controls. (Remember "WIN buttons"?). Didn't work - all that it did was delay the problem and make it worse. Isn't it amusing that the most left-wing socialist utterly failed fiscal policy was implemented by *which party*? In 1973 we got the OPEC boycott, and when it ended gasoline prices were doubled. Which affected *all* energy costs, and all businesses that use energy, and fed inflation like - throwing gasoline on a fire. Carter inherited that mess from his Republican predecessors - who had inherited the elements that started the mess from their Democrat predecessors. Taxes were raised to keep the deficit from going even higher. At a time of high interest rates, a high deficit can cause a runaway situation because you need more and more money just to pay the interest on the loans. You don't necessarily need high interest rates, Jim. They can suppress the inflation for a little bit, but only a year or two. I'm noticing inflation nipping at the edges of my purchases. Where I get Breakfast at McD's they have raised the prices by 10 percent this week. My XYL's flooring suppliers have announced a 20 percent hike effective 1/1/2005. People that think that we can support a virtually unlimited deficit coupled with tax cuts *without* inflation are the same people that thought that there was a new paradigm afoot in the stock market during the late 90's. If you continue to spend more than you make, you eventually go bankrupt. It's that simple. Despite all we do, all the adjustments, all all of it, we can not ignore a fundamental rule. And in 1979 we got another OPEC boycott and another doubling of gasoline prices. So don't blame Jimmy Carter without also blaming those who came before him. Blaming Carter for high inflation is simply so incorrect. Here is another case of words and actions differing. Here you have an honest and honorable man who was president at a difficult time in American history, when we struggled to pay back those Moonshot and War expenses, and yet he is ridiculed as a weak and ineffective president. So much for "Character counts" !!! History will probably be much kinder to JC than so many of us are now. And the fact remains that married couples who both work pay *more* federal income taxes than if they weren't married. That "marriage penalty" was partly fixed by Carter and then unfixed by Reagan. If the Republicans are truly for "family values", why is the penalty still there? It amounts to serious money, not just a few dollars. When actions and words differ, I rely on actions. Unfortunately, it seems too many people rely on the words these days. Makes 'em very easy to manipulate. snip Of course it's usually narcotics...You can always tell the real abusers...They eat the narcs like M&M's, then wind up stopping the intestinal tract. Then they develop a bowel obstrcution for which they ahve to go to surgery. And of course surgery means more meds...See where this goes...??? Round and round.... I think that maybe it is Darwinism in action. Too bad we have to foot the bill. snip Personally, I am all for "all of the above". I would add a whole section of the Sunday paper with a full color mug shots of those convicted of bilking assistance programs because that's stealing from you and I. Peer pressure and a bit of humiliation go a long way towards modifying undesired behaviour. That's a bit hazardous. If someone was convicted of fraud but then later won on appeal, they'd go after the paper and the agencies in a big way for "distress" and "defamation". Steve, does your mug shots include people who steal money from the Social security program? And someone willing to play the game might not be that humiliated. It won't work. In this day and age, there are people willing to humiliate themselves to get on programs such as Jackass, The Swan, Survivor, (pick a theme) Jerry Springer, or any of the other television shows that allow idiots to get their visage on TV. There might be people lined up to do this. I recall that in some places there were anti-prostitution efforts that focused on the *customers* rather than the *workers*, so to speak. Pictures and names in the paper and all. I dunno how well those programs fared. This usually fails. Some of the people who frequent those prostitutes have deeep pockets, and aren't in a position to be affected by public shame. There was a so-called Christian group semi-locally who were taking pictures of license plates of people parked at adult book stores (do they actually sell any books?) That usually goes on until they get sued, and of course invariably someone is caught that ends up being an embarrassment to the fundies. This all relates to amateur radio in a very basic way: The abuses mentioned by Steve and I are all the result of a mindset that focuses on "rights" to the exclusion of *responsibilites*. Many of us see proposed reductions in the standards of the ARS as a form of that mindset. Jim, that is a *major* stretch, almost as if I were to say that *any* message here is on topic, as well as any reply I make because my primary mode is PSK31, which involves typing, and all these messages are typed! 8^) You and Steve will never change each others minds about this political stuff. If nothing else, you two have brought out that neither party has a lock on fiscal responsibility, ethics, honesty, big picture thinking or any of the other qualities we (should) look for in our leaders. - Mike KB3EIA - |
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