Good post. I still say we can keep every program we currently have, if only we stop the over/needless spending.
Fiscal responsibility: suppose the govt "doesn't spend money it doesn't have."
- Thread starter NAOS
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Good post. I still say we can keep every program we currently have, if only we stop the over/needless spending.
jimmy eat jazz
Well-Known Member
With due respect, without offering any qualifying explanation to your quip, how else were we supposed to interpret what you said? I'm happy to accept your qualifier here, but the problem is, I've heard so many other people say the same thing, and who meant exactly what they said in all of its simplistic naiveté that interpreting your comment the same way seemed reasonable.
As I've said, I'm all for a frank discussion about prudent and even painful cuts in spending and deficit/debt, but until we put everything on the table--including military spending and revenue increases--then it seems to me that there is nothing productive to be gained. I'm opposed to any approach that places the disproportionate burden of spending/deficit/debt reduction on the social safety net, useful social programs, and lower and middle classes. There isn't enough there anyway to achieve the kind of debt/deficit reduction that the right claims to want. I'm also opposed to European-style austerity, which I do not believe works. I don't want an ideological solution to the problem, I want an actual, realistic, rational solution to the problem. But I don't think this is possible in the current political environment, and I place the blame overwhelmingly on the shoulders of the far right whose extremism, intransigence, and irrational hatred of Obama has so poisoned the well that no actual solution is anywhere in sight.
NAOS
Well-Known Member
allusions to shipwrecks; metaphors of self-control, bodily harm (bleeding and addiction), and machines out of control; money is over-simplified; justification of current pain for some supposed future betterment if we can just get our act together.
I'm not angling here, but I can have some real substance? This nothing but moralizing crap. Why must you speak in parables?
NAOS
Well-Known Member
No, Scat, this thread isn't dedicated to you. This is a common refrain from the right. When you ask for an explanation you usually get some paternalist, moralizing stance that sounds more like daddy explaining the Protestant work ethic and staying off drugs than it does something about economics (see jazzspermzz).
The problem is a solution would have to be enormous and just to hammer out the details would take huge hours/weeks/months/years of work to work out all the issues and get things done. Not many of the people paid to do this want to truly take on the task.
As to your blaming one side for this, you are part of the problem. There is plenty blame to go around, but blaming doesn't fix anything. It would take both sides letting go of the hate and working together, and I don't see that. You may want to blame the "far right whose extremism, intransigence, and irrational hatred of obama" but you see you have just labeled yourself as the "far left whose extremism, intransigence, and irrational hatred of (Romney or Republican)"... which means you are exactly the same but the other side of the coin.
Blame never leads to agreement or solutions whether deserved or not.
I can read through the 'metaphors' and get the meaning. His meaning, as I read it, was we cannot simply ignore the annual exercise of over-spending the revenue. That, in all it's simplicity, I can agree with.
NAOS
Well-Known Member
Daddy is good at wagging the finger.
If my stance, as I have said a dozen times, is that I think a complete overhaul of budgets and spending control should be the primary focus, then why would I want to put the cart before the horse and answer a question prior to having the important empirical data necessary to answer?
NAOS
Well-Known Member
Do you think FDR was a good president?
Do you think Keynes knew a few things about economics?
Do you know who these dudes are?
(For the record, I don't support going this direction, but Franklin can give you a solid argument for why we should get behind something just like that.... but you'll all after to stop moralizing about spending like it's some quasi-sin in order for that to happen. This is a genuine question I'm asking, and nobody has even tried to answer it. Yup, no tries so far.)
I suppose I speak in parables so that anyone with a brain can understand me. I appreciate the unintended compliment.
This is exactly what I expected of you and why I did not plan on continuing with this conversation.
You see, leaders speak about visions and ideas based on morals and goals. People with hatchets and axes instead of actually listening to understand what is being said, start to hack away and tear it down without gaining anything.
Hack, I like that for your new nickname, because you seem to wildly swing at about anything.
If two people having a conversation can't agree on the big picture, arguing about details accomplishes nothing. You are looking at a picture of an old woman, I see a young woman.
You want real substance, go get your food stamp money and buy yourself something to eat on my dime.
You my "friend", are acting like a complete Moran. I blame you.
Nope, never heard of FDR or JMK ...
I said I wasn't opposed to spending and I'm not. I said I'm opposed to spending more than what something should cost in the private sector. I think government waste is out of control ... and no conversations of Keynesian economics or historical enclosure theory will fix it. It will take the people demanding change and real financial oversight .. we must eliminate the piss-poor management.
I said I wasn't opposed to spending and I'm not. I said I'm opposed to spending more than what something should cost in the private sector. I think government waste is out of control ... and no conversations of Keynesian economics or historical enclosure theory will fix it. It will take the people demanding change and real financial oversight .. we must eliminate the piss-poor management.
jimmy eat jazz
Well-Known Member
There is plenty of blame to go around; the left will mobilize to protect its pet programs as swiftly as the will the right. And you're right, resolving this issue would take a huge effort and--here's the kicker--compromise by principled yet pragmatic lawmakers (such as the Founding Fathers who the Tea Baggers claim to revere so much). These are becoming a scarce breed in the Republican Congress and if the Tea Party has its way, will become scarcer yet. There has been a steady parade of legislators, past and present, coming out and saying how the environment in DC is becoming poisoness--the worst its been in their memory, making actual legislating in the harder and harder. There can be no doubt where the blame lies for this.
Yes, the blame game can be counterproductive, but so is burying one's head in the sand and ignoring what's causing the problem. (If these morons had their way, they would have forced the US to default on its debt--is there any better piece of evidence of their irrationality?) The BEST thing that could happen to this county is for the Tea Party (and the extremists in the Republican Party) to go the way of the No-Nothing Party, their 19th Century counterparts, and to do so as soon as possible, so that some semblance of sanity can return to Washington.
Note I am not saying that the left doesn't have their share of nut jobs and extremists, but they are not the ones currently poisoning the well and making impossible the very thing you say is necessary to get a grip on and solve this problem.
Of course you do. Let's completely ignore the 800 lb gorilla in the room that is the greatest spender in the history of the United States.
I pretty much agree with your take on this, not necessarily on which side is worse. When a Repub is in office it is the other side that is "poisoning the well". We are in a tough situation as a country and I only see it getting worse before something big has to happen to try and salvage things and fix things. As things are currently, not much positive will happen because of the McCoy's and the Hatfields.