The Glade 4.0

First, I don't believe for a second that the current situation is sustainable, despite what democrats are saying. The only way to make it work is to dramatically control the currency. It's not "ok", we're simply "getting away with it" for now.

But, let's assume that everything's hunky dory, and that we can go on like this for a long time.

This remains completely unacceptable because:
1) Democrats, and especially Obama, have been campaigning on promises of fiscal responsibility. The debate has always been about HOW to achieve this, not WHETHER to achieve this. They are liars.
2) What is the purpose of government? Basically it boils down to providing key services and manage disputes between various entities. Borrowing money should only be an option in the event of an emergency, and in order to fulfill one of those key services. Not a 30-year plan.
3) The individual share of the debt is increasing dramatically. If the debt was increasing, but the share of that debt was decreasing, I probably wouldn't care much. The trajectory would be right. It's not.



4) GET TO WORK. Kicking the can down the road in the hopes someone more competent will come along to solve difficult problems is not what these people were elected for.

You came very close there Arathin, but you missed one thing. I don't believe we are kicking the can down the road in hopes that someone more competent will come along. We are kicking the can down the road in hopes that the "other side" (or barring that just someone else) will be in charge when it comes time to pay the piper.

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I don't disagree, which is part of why I'm not a communist or any other form of radical egalitarian. However, there are a great many possible equilibria, and which one holds at any given time is determined, in part, by the cultural, political and legal framework in which economic decisions are made as well as the relative concentrations of power (including economic power) in the system at such time. It seems pretty difficult to argue that government placing its thumb on the scale (e.g., contract enforcement laws, property rights laws, anti-trust legislation, differential tax rates, transfer payments, education policy, etc.) will have zero effect on which equilibrium we reach.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/busines ... 6602142443



Is this 3rd or the 4th spending ceiling raise?

... Oh, you think we've only done 3 or 4? That's so priceless!

We've been doing it like every year or two for decades, Lydiaa. It's only recently, with the Republicans making a big stink about the ludicrous amount of deficit spending we've been doing post-Bailout (and pre-Bailout to fund Middle Eastern military excursions, but that flew more under the radar in comparison; the Republicans didn't want to point out that Bush wasn't very fiscally responsible, and the Democrats didn't want to lose the "You want the ter'ists to win" argument) that anybody outside of credit rating agencies have paid attention to the US raising its debt ceiling.

_________________
"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

Well I've only really being keeping an eye on the US since your financial crisis, to see if there are any investment opportunities in housing. I realised you guys were a bit bad, but I guess I didnt know exactly how bad.

In other news, your laws on investment housing heavily protects the renter rather than the owner, and the rental return is dreadful compared with other cities... (except a handful of big cities). It's almost like there's a war on the rich =P

Lydiaa:

There's a war on self-sufficiency, work ethic, and the acquisition of knowledge in our country. Contrary to whatever propaganda our government is feeding you in Australia, the following things are true --

1. The government caused our health care situation, not the doctors.

2. The government caused our housing crisis, not the lenders.

3. The US government, in collusion with the Big 5, are responsible for the global fallout of our financial crisis.

4. Barack Obama's supporters are vastly more duplicitous and willing to repeat the bullshit of their demagogue than any previous set of "Our Guy is in the White House" Americans ever.

Individual wealth is a threat to their egalitarian society, which will amazingly look exactly like Soviet Russia in the 1980s. The governmental doublespeak and shenanigans have gotten so bad, the labor reports and major economic indices in the United States are no longer news. They're so falsified and fabricated by the current administration's people no one knows what to do with them.

Inflation is double digits, but Obama will tell you it's so low that we need to artificially pump more money into the money supply.

The Fed has nearly quintupled the number of dollars in circulation in the last 3 years.

The Fed has bought at least 4 trillion dollars of debt from the US Government to monetize.

Barack Obama intentionally deflected the expiration of the Democrat's supposed "Payroll Tax" holiday by focusing on a series of tax cuts and margins that actually make sense.

The U.S. Government suppressed the results of the U.N. audit of our tax system; Obama didn't want it getting out that the United States has the most progressive, wealth redistributing tax system on the planet; and that's saying something considering the near 0 government benefit our taxpayers get. By the end of 2016, if current trends remain in play, Obama will leave the Presidency of the United States with a population that has a higher plurality of South American Hispanics than those from European and African ancestry. He will leave the United States with a population supported by the top 25% of its earners, because the United States's poverty rate is growing faster than India's.

The United States is run by an entrenched ruling class; Barack Obama is a hack demagogue; and his supporters are mindless sheep repeating obvious lies about our economy, health care situation, and disastrous explosion of entitlement mentality. The other side of the fence is functionally the same. The fractiousness of our political system is political theatre. The United States is run by an oligarchy preparing to take the money and run.

_________________

May have been posted before.

_________________

That video makes the assumption that congresses passes a budget, which it seems incapable of doing.

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Not much point in addressing the rest of your (now standard) rant, but I'm surprised by the line above. Why is this a bad thing in your mind? Sounds pretty racist/xenophobic of you.

I didn't say it was a problem in terms of ethnicity; it's a problem in terms of skillsets, education, and the explosion of our entitlement mentality. Ask the California, Arizona, and Texas state legislatures how its worked out for them economically, socially, and structurally. As for why it's going to be Obama's problem more than most others, his Administration and his 3-Monkey Democratic Years have made it even more difficult for viable, well trained, highly educated individuals to legally come to this nation.

I don't know about you, but what I want out of an immigration policy is something Canadian -- where they're importing so many advanced degree holders that there are cabbies with valid MDs in Toronto.

And, as for not addressing my 'rant', it's not that there's no point in it; you simply can't without repeating Administration delivered talking points. Addressing my rant requires you to concede the argument.

_________________

Because these countries are shoving uneducated, unskilled workers off on us, and because it will have been allowed to happen contrary to laws passed by our duly elected legislature. "Asian" could easily have been included along with European and African.

Do you seriously think that "Whites, Blacks, and Asians are fine but I hate me them dirty Hispanics" passes muster as anything but using racism as a strawman?

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

Khross didn't say his objection was to uneducated/unskilled workers or violation of immigration laws. Nor did he say anything about asians. Hell, he didn't even clearly state that his objection was to hispanic immigrants. I assumed that was his intent based on his wording, but given that he referenced current trends, and those current trends are in fact toward decreasing illegal immigration and an increasing percentage of the population being native-born hispanic-Americans, I wasn't sure what he was getting at. Hence my request for clarification.

*Edit: Changed verbs to past tense.

Nope. The problem is that I've gone 15 rounds with you on that **** before, and there's no point in repeating the exercise.

You went 15 rounds and lost because you were repeating the government's or your liberal professor's easily disprovable balderdash. And by the by, the South American Hispanic population thing is also a problem for the obvious ongoing issues of non-integration.

_________________

Nope again. But you're welcome to think so. Last word is yours if you want it.

How so?


I'm torn on this. I think a mixed policy that encourages (almost to the point of open borders) highly skilled workers to come but also permits a sustainable level of family-based and humanitarian immigration is probably my ideal approach.

RangerDave:

The Obama Administration has been, just like the Bush Administration, adjusting down the quotas allowed for highly skilled, highly trained legal immigrants in favor of pursuing the amnesty agenda. As for open borders, that's bad mojo. Even as libertarian as I am, that's a practical impossibility. As I have repeatedly said, Americans in general and American liberals in particular have a woefully insufficient understanding of nationalism and racism. In your haste to be accommodating and accepting, you still haven't learned that vast majority of people who are not-you, don't want to integrate or live in a society with people who are not-them.

_________________

This bears repeating. The left loves to call the whites(not lefty whites of course) on what they preceive is racisim. They have nothing to say about the minorities that want to...gasp...just be around other minorities.

_________________
"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

I think we have this in the US too, if you can't get into a residency your MD is worthless, and since residencies are funded by Medicare the amount of them relative to the amount of graduating MDs decreases every year.

"If you want to raise the debt ceiling, we demand a budget deal!"
"Ok, let's raise the ceiling and come up with a deal. If not, it will trigger automatic spending cuts."
"We can't come up with a deal, the sequester is going to hit!"
"We can't risk this! The sky is falling!"
"Too bad, we need to reduce the deficit!"
"$85 billion in cuts this year! OMG!!!"
"Ahhhhhhhhh!"
"Hey, we need to raise the debt ceiling again."
"Ok, no problem - add an additional $84 billion?"
"Sounds good."

/golfclap

Obviously he didn't; I said the thing about asians and pointed out that he could have included them, and as for Hispanics, exactly how else would it be a problem besides illegal immigration and lack of education and skills. I mean clearly, he must just hate hispanics instead of the objecting to the obvious problems that are mostly created by people that just happen to be Hispanic because that's who lives in those countries!



You really needed clarification to figure this out? I don't think so. I know you're smarter than that.

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

I think it should be plainly obvious he was using that to illustrate the wisdom of Canada's overall immigration policy, not because there are no cabbies with MDs anywhere in the U.S.

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

I would be hesitant to say what they give us is a "budget."

_________________
"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Given that his subsequent posts indicate that non-assimilation is one of his main concerns, it seems that his previous comment actually may not be exclusively about immigrants. Rather, he seems to be objecting to the growth of an unassimilated hispanic cultural presence in the US, which could very well encompass both immigrants and native born hispanics. His view on this isn't clear from what he wrote.

So, Khross, can you just clear this up - is your concern about the increasing hispanic population in the US and the (alleged) lack of cultural assimilation limited solely to first generation immigrants or does it extend to native-born hispanic-Americans too?