The Glade 4.0

X:
I'll put it more plainly.

The groups I enumerated above have disparate reasons for separating you from your money; whether it is because you should only have as much as they think you should have, or because you might get uppity and think you can do for yourself instead depending on Gov't to provide. As Ienan stated, for the majority of them, the efficacy of Hauser's Law is in question, or irrelevant because it cannot be true for their worldview to remain intact. The rest just want to separate you from your money, and taxes are an effective way to do it.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I read it all and didn't like the path it was taking. Correct me if I am wrong here but it looks like 1/2 a page of ipeener wagging that's been rehashed about 1000x before. Neither side listens to the other so it becomes little ego castles that each side defends with a moat of indignation.

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Actually, the government doesn't have to pay interest on that debt; nor, for that matter, do they actually have to pay the debt. And defaulting might just be a wise idea.

Hopwin:

We're between 40 and 60% over budget. And approximately 0% of that budget actually goes to debt repayment.

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So the 75% reduction in spending coupled with a 60% reduction in inflows would not even cover the current shortfall?

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Hopwin:

Since approximately 56% of our budget is currently mandatory and driven by unfunded liabilities, no amount of revenues will actually fill the current shortfall. If we honestly wanted to be solvent under the current system, the government would need to take in 45-60% of GDP depending on that year as tax revenues.

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A 60% reduction in taxes doesn't mean a 60% reduction in inflows (although it might in the very very sort term). The idea is that lower taxes would reduce cheating, evasion, and tax sheltering by taking away most of the incentive, plus boost revenue from the increased economic activity. Conceivably, you could have more actual dollars coming in.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Actually, it would mean less revenues and intentionally so. Our Federal government is entirely too large for its and our own goods.

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*Harrumph* I for one am never indignant, and I consider it an insult of the highest order that you would suggest otherwise. You, sir, have offended my honor, and I shall expect your apology forthwith.

I see what you did there.

That's why I said it could concievably result in more dollars, not that it necessarily would. I don't think that's very likely and I agree that the government is far too large.

The point was that 60% tax cut =/= 60% reduction in revenue.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What is it you guys believe to be true, though? What do you think Hauser's Law demonstrates? If it's simply the limited point that, all else being equal, increasing tax rates beyond a certain point doesn't increase tax receipts in a linear, 1:1 ratio because of growth reduction and tax avoidance effects, then I doubt any intelligent liberals would disagree. However, I get the sense that when people reference Hauser's Law, they're usually making the much broader claim that no matter how the tax system is structured, receipts can never exceed 15-20% of GDP. That claim, I'm sure, isn't accepted by many liberals, and I personally don't think it's supportable for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

*ETA that 15-20% of GDP is itself a huge range in terms of cash receipts, so, like I said before, even granting the broadest interpretation of Hauser's Law gives us room in the medium/long term to substantially increase receipts from their current level.

Vind - do you really think, in all fairness, that's what motivates liberals/progressives, or are you just kind of venting? Honest question.

Screw you and your moat! INCOMING!!

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Jeeesus Christ!

Obviously not Vind, but there is a rather vocal contingency of media covered Liberals that have stated exactly that, though generally in less honest choice of words. Pelosi and Boxer are their cheerleaders.

The best option is to announce that we are considering defaulting on our debt.

This will halt any more lending to the US.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Bolding is mine. That's the thing, though - you're assuming their stated reasons for supporting a policy are dishonest, because obviously the real reason is that they're arrogant elitists who love bureaucracy and want to pursue government redistribution of wealth as an end unto itself.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't some liberals who fit that stereotype, but in my experience, most operate based on some variation of the following thinking:

1. X (poverty, lack of education or health care, pollution, whatever) is undesirable.
2. Changing X will require large-scale coordination and lots of money, which isn't going to happen without government action.
3. Government action on X is legit because it will occur via the democratic process and the imposition on individual rights will be minimal.
4. Rich people have most of the money, so the practical reality is they'll have to pay most of the cost.
5. That's fair b/c (a) the per-dollar impact on their lifestyle is low, and (b) they've benefited the most from society and thus owe the most in return.

I think what he's stating is that they're arrogant elitists who want to redistribute income via government, regardless of the end. They don't love bureaucracy in and of itself, rather they simply don't give a **** how big the bureaucracy is as long as the end of wealth redistribution is reached.

It's fairly easy to find far-left people explicitly stating that wealth redistribution is the solution to <insert problem here>.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I am not sure how you came to that conclusion from what I wrote, but for clarification, its a increasingly frequent event to have a liberal politician espouse the wealth redistribution as the basis for their legislative decisions, and that one of the primary goals of government (if not the primary) is to facilitate this end. They don't talk about the effects of the programs on the size of the bureaucracy, nor do I think they care about the size of government, as long as it moves money from one group that has it to a group that doesn't.

Pursing redistribution of wealth as an ends unto itself? Some have stated its a necessity, some couch as it alleviating "X" conditions, etc, but they are all aware of the mechanism to attain whatever goal they support, or are politically motivated to use.

I know you're restating a perception, but I'd like to point out that that's not what fair means.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Whoops. Fyi, it looks like you guys posted while I was typing up an edit to my last post. At any rate, I think only a very small minority of liberals see redistribution purely as an end unto itself. However, I admit item 5 in my edited post above is where the issue can get blurry. People of all political persuasions tend to get upset when their own conception of fairness is rejected or denied, and liberals and conservatives pretty strongly disagree on the fairness of having the rich pay most of the cost for things. As a result, that's the issue on which most of the heated rhetoric gets voiced. For liberals, things like education funding, universal health care, etc. really are pursued for the sake of the underlying issue, but since paying for those programs requires progressive taxation that conservatives oppose, liberal activists and politicians tend to get all pissed off and go on rants about how right and fair it is to tax the rich and give to the poor in the form of the relevant programs. Of course, on the other side of the aisle, most conservatives obviously don't oppose kids getting an education or sick people getting treatment; they just think it's unfair to make rich people pay for it all, so again, that's what they tend to get all pissed off and rant about.

Fair is treating individuals equally. Period.

All other definitions (excluding those regarding festivals) grew from that original definition.

So "fairness" being applied to treating groups differently (by different tax rates) might work under the sub definition of say, functioning within the rules, but that itself implies as a given that the rules are "just," "impartial," or "FAIR," which varied rates are not.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Relating to the OP and the thread I posted recently about the defense review, it seems Britains cuts will not be as hideous as that blog writer had predicted. I'm not surprised as that would have been totally insane, but there are going to be cuts.

The thing I find most ridiculous is the aircraft carrier situation, in terms of the carriers themselves, the planes they are to embark, and the escorts. I'm also alarmed by the idea of the Brits going down to 3 SSBNs embarking no more than 40 warheads between them. It seems they just can't free themselves of the Liberal Democrat "Nuclear disarmament FTW RARR!!" idiocy.

Of course, a lot of this is the end result of 50 years of mostly mismanaging the RN. Then again, maybe I shouldn't talk; between the F-14 - F/A-18E/F, the Seawolf/Virginia absurdity, and the latest debacle of the DDG-1000 destroyers, we're in no position to talk. Maybe we're taking lessons from the Brits?

At least this time they're making social cuts along with the defense cuts. Still, they could have a far stronger military for the same amount they'll be spending after the cuts if they would make intelligent decisions about purchasing in a timely manner. For that matter, so could we. We've pissed away more money trying to save money than you can shake a stick at.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

*sniff* F-14 *sniff sniff*

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

/mourn Seawolf

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yup. I'm not sure which incident was teh greater travesty and waste of taxpayer money.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."