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So government is all about giving money to "lowlife shitbags"? You have a curious grasp of what the US budget is made of.

http://www.federalbudget.com/

BTW it is the government that institutes an guarantees contractual laws and property rights, without which a market economy and merit based wealth accumulation cannot happen.

As a father I really expect my kids to earn their own way. Frankly, if you think you need to give your kids more than $5 millions so that they'll be a success in life, than you really failed parenting school big time.

They're equally to blame: http://www.federalbudget.com/

They need to be cut equally. Military corporations and those who work for them are not entitled to continue to suck at the public teat any more than the exploiters of social programs any more than Veterans who weighed the odds and volunteered. Entitlements and wasteful spending must be limited no matter whether you like the group getting the money or not.

The US accounts for 46% of all world military spending. China, for comparison, accounts for 6% (assuming the numbers are accurate).

Check out this graph:
http://cdn1.globalissues.org/i/military/10/country-distribution-2009.png

From
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending

Our military spending is INSANE.

Another chart (I found these all via google. I cannot vouch for their accuracy. But they seem legit) shows the proportion of spending for various things.
http://www.federalbudget.com/

All this stuff shows me is that we could cut every other program in *half* excluding the last 4, and we'd barely make a dent.

People want to cut science and research and all the things that will make our future better, but we keep throwing away all our money on all this other crap!

People want to cut "pork" in these little programs that amount to 0.1% of our budget, but no one is willing to tackle the big ones. I'm so fucking sick of it.
-Taylor

Really? Across the board?
Please do provide some more information on all these defense budget cuts. We do spend more than the rest of the world combined on that so it seems a pretty safe place to start cutting. Nuclear is not renewable, you are burning the matter of dead stars, there is a limited supply of such stuff. It is still an excellent choice for baseload power though, if reprocessing of spent fuel was legal.

I live in Western NY, wind power is huge here. We keep putting them up and selling power to the eastern seaboard.

Well, it looks as though Health and Human services spend more then the Defense Budget: http://www.federalbudget.com/

So I start cutting there. The Defense Budget has already started a movement to trim 10% of the their budget. Let's see H&H do that. Or how about Social Security (Which isn't part of the federal budget, but agencies can 'borrow' against the Social Security trust, it's a broken system of spending).

This is really a political/social issue of what to cut. One side says Social Services, while the other screams Defense cuts. And nothing gets cut. It's a stale mate and we the tax payers are all going to lose and have been on the losing end. And it doesn't help when States can't keep their own budgets in line and then ask the Fed for $$ to solve their issues. Or the amount of subsidies out there are way too much as well.

The real bitch of it is, when these cuts happen (they should one way or another), does anyone really think that our taxes are going to go down? And the Govt should never have a large surplus of cash on hand once the budget is taken care of. They are not a for profit business.

This wouldn't have become an issue if the budgeting committees had actually given NASA a budget to work with. Their current budget stands around 19 billion dollars. Now if that sounds like a lot to you, to put it in perspective, the DoD received over 3/4 of a trillion dollar for FY 2009. http://www.federalbudget.com/

The vast majority of corporate monies come from the pockets of their customers (barring external investments made by the company.) This literally means that the taxes for any corporation are paid by its customers.

So if you charge the corporations more money, so the odds favor them adjusting prices to compensate and maintain their margins, which takes more money from their customers, which will either reduce their ability to buy if the item we're talking about is a non-essential, or reduce their ability to buy something else if it is an essential. On the other hand, if prices are not adjusted, then profits will suffer, which, for a public corporation, will devalue their stock, which in turn has secondary effects everywhere from interest rates they pay to how much capital they have available for improvement and investment. And of of course it also directly reduces their cash flow.

There is no free lunch. All monies come with a price.

In a free market, the producer with the best price / performance, ideally, gets the customer. Sales pitch trickery aside. This is generally a good thing, as it improves products, efficiency, and targets needs and wants more and more effectively.

In a market where artificial constraints are applied unevenly (as is inevitable when such things are applied top down, as taxes are), imbalances that have little or nothing to do with performance come into being. Products become less tied to performance and more tied to arbitrary costs. People suffer for reasons unrelated to their choices or performance.

I think it's also worth noting that in the US, at least, taxes already are high enough that they significantly impact the standard of living for many of the citizens, and the country's debt service (never mind the debt itself) is enormous, presently about 700 billion dollars yearly. The government's reaction to this? They're about to raise the debt ceiling by 1.7 trillion dollars. Of course. Because there's no way to hold them accountable, and unlike a business, they don't have to show a profit.

Defense is really the only place where we spend enough money for cutting to make a big difference. Care to raffle off a B-2 bomber?

http://www.federalbudget.com/

This is the scariest website that I've ever seen. If I could, I'd want all of those major government departments to be limited to $1 billion usually year to year, and $10 billion absolute max. All the rest of the "income" would go to "the debt." Yes let's sell china a fleet of anything that they want. Enough of this warmongering making like they are evil. China is our best trading partner and owns a good chuck of the US already. There would be no reason for China to declare war on us. They just need to call in our debts. What do we need to cut? The entire Dod, Health and Human Services, Department of Agriculture, Office of Personnel Management, and heck any federal department that spends more than $10 billion a year. I'd make all those programs bleed.

If I could, I'd get a few billion spent on wind, solar, geothermal and other energy sources based in the US, but that's the only place that I'd go wild with spending. All the rest would be trying to get the federal government back in the black. Then I'd start a program of using taxes to buy annuities and using only the income from the annuities to fund various government projects. The goal would be to long term reduce the needed tax income that would be needed to be zero and have the government just run off investments.

Government programs are there to accomplish what the private sector fails to accomplish.

And right there is another problem I have. If it isn't in the Constitution then it's not a job of Government. Liberals expand the Government every single chance they get and then are the first ones to whine when they turn around and discover that their civil liberties (except gun ownership of course, cuz those are dangerous) are being eroded. Just remember that a Government big enough to give you everything that you need is big enough to take away everything that you have.

Then you have a fundamental problem with the existence of a government, because all government spending is "wealth redistribution". It's still about taking a dollar from you and giving it to someone else, whether that person is a single mom or a police officer. In both cases, you're not guaranteed to get a dollar's worth of benefit, but you can expect to receive some amount of indirect benefit.

The police officer is providing a service and working a job. Lumping him in with the single mom who gets back my money from the EITC is disingenuous. She didn't work a job or provide any service to get that money. Somebody decided to take it away from me at gunpoint (what happens if you don't pay your taxes?) and give it to her. You might not have a problem with that but I have a fundamental disagreement with the whole concept. If anybody besides the Government was doing it, it would rightfully be called "stealing" and I'd really like to know what my "indirect benefit" is in this case.

Let's say you did that, and productivity dropped so much -- due to, let's say, increased crime and illness -- that you were still paying 2/5 of your (lower) income in taxes. Would you be happy paying 40% of your income in that case?

Again, mentioning crime is irrelevant. Fighting crime is one job that even die-hard libertarians acknowledge is a proper role for Government, so I really don't see why you keep bringing it up. It doesn't take the current bloated Federal bureaucracy to fight crime. And far as health care goes, if we were to get Government out of the way I'd wager that you would watch prices drop like a stone. Ever notice how spending on health care keeps going up yet life expectancies don't? Ever consider the possibility that just throwing more money at our problems isn't the best way to address them?

How much to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States"?

Ah, the commerce clause. Used to justify everything from product regulation to the War on Drugs. Apparently if I grow a pot plant in my basement for my own personal consumption that's interstate commerce and the DEA can bust my front door down. Here you see the unintended consequences of your expansion of Government.

Interesting that you skipped over military spending

Providing for the defense of the several states is a proper role for the Federal Government.

We spend more on the Department of Defense

Again, you fail.

and the "Global War on Terror"

I'm no fan of Bush calling it the "GWOT" (how do you declare war on a tactic?) but there's a big hole in lower Manhattan that suggests to me that our mission in Afghanistan is justified. We were attacked. It's the job of the Federal Government to disrupt the network that attacked us so they can't do so again in the future and to arrest/kill those who were responsible. Interesting that you can quote the commerce and welfare clauses to justify your nanny state but can't remember this one: The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion

The thought might be good. But what percentage of our taxes will be listed as "other" for the NSA, CIA, classified Defense, State and God knows what?
On the other hand, if Americans realize how much is "other", it could be an eye-opener. People will have more to complain about than welfare mothers and mass transit.

http://www.federalbudget.com/

Scariest site on the net. After viewing that, I thought wouldn't it be great if we could tell each of those departments that they are getting only $1 billion next year and until the debt is paid off. All the other billions would to straight to paying off the national debt. Foreign relations would improve if we just cut our military budget. Call them home and give them only a $1 billion in funding to play around with. Yeah, it'd never pass, but we'd be free to spend that money other places after only 10 years or so. (I doubt it would really take that long to pay it off, but the problem is each government not even bothering to try or sticking with a plan.)

Pork isn't even close to the top budgetary problem. Here's some numbers to check out from the federal budget.

My guess is that Ron Paul won't enforce the tax code, and if Congress won't play ball, tell the US NOT to pay their income taxes. That'll put a reign in on spending IMMEDIATELY!

Check out this chart real quick of our budget:
http://www.federalbudget.com/chart.gif

We could clear the debt in 4 years of we kept the same level of income and cut 80% of expenses. Personally I would be for cutting 90% of expenses and dropping income to 1% of what it is and just let natural inflation outpace our debt.

Ultimatly, one of the big 4 (at the bottom will have to be cut). http://www.federalbudget.com/chart.gif

I didn't say that all Republicans are stupid. In fact, I know some very bright Republicans. And believe it or not, most of them are actually really nice people. How does one account for this? Several reasons:

- They're Republican because they think that the Republican party has their social, religious, or ethical values in common with them, and that's more important to them than their economic well-being. Religion in particular is insidious for this characteristic. If God supposedly tells you that gays shouldn't get married, then it doesn't matter what the economic future of this country will be like; that trumps everything. Personally, I disagree with most of these people's values and beliefs, but we usually still get along because unlike most of them, I don't go trying to impose my own values on them.

- They're well off and have either only vague notions or no notion at all of what it's like to be poor. A lot of these folks are the middle-aged or old folks who lived in a time when there was upward mobility for the middle-class; when hard work and thriftiness really did pay off. These are typically the "I don't understand why poor people don't just pull themselves up by their bootstraps" Republicans, because when they were growing up, that was actually possible. They are against funding things like public education, public transportation, welfare, Medicaid, and so on, because they think that almost all poor people are poor because they're lazy or stupid, and we shouldn't have to pay to try to help them.

- They're ignorant of politics and economics. Not necessarily stupid, but they don't understand how government works, who's responsible for what, and what consequences are a result of what causes. These are the folks who can't name their own senators and representatives (Chambliss, Isakson, and Linder, at least those are mine). They have no idea who the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is (Roberts, so you don't have to look it up). They don't take the time to understand simple things such as how much we pay every year in interest on Reagan's and Bush's national credit card ($406 billion in 2006).

I'm sure there are other reasons, too. If you're a Republican for reasons that have to do with your beliefs or values, then although I probably disagree with you on that front too, at least I can understand where you're coming from. If you're a Republican for economic reasons because you're well off, then I think it's a little cold to stick it to the poor and middle-class folks out here, but at least I can understand where you're coming from. If you're a Republican because that's what your mom and dad are and you don't want to take the time out of your busy schedule to actually research what the differences in the parties are or believe that it really doesn't matter, then I think you're naive and a little misguided, but at least I can understand where you're coming from.

But if, on the other hand, you're poor or middle-class and you're a Republican because you think that their fiscal beliefs are sound and/or that the Republican party is capable of raising the general standard of living in this country through their economic policies, then yeah, I'm sorry it offends you, but I really do think you're pretty dumb.

The way that Iraq has been handled has turned it into a disastrous failure, with no apparent path out. Two years into the occupation of Germany, German police had taken over general policing and border control duties. The occupying force in Germany was under 20,000 men within two years of V-E, while three and a half years into Iraq the 140,000+ American troops in Iraq continue to be pulled back into fortified megabases as the rest of the country slips toward anarchy.

Total postwar combat casualties in the American occupations of Germany, Japan, Haiti, former Yugoslavia: Zero

On the domestic side, I continue to be shocked by the inaction of our elected officials as major elements of the Federal Government continue to do everything they can to remove transparency and accountability from the political process. I was brought up to believe that Republicans supported limited government, but I haven't seen much evidence of that since before 1996. Secret laws, intimidation of critics, ballooning federal deficits, blinding and willful incompetence at all levels of the governent... it's like a nightmare. All of the people who stand to benefit from a corrupt government are silent-- media, government contractors, officials, large corporations. The people who are afraid to lose their reputation and livelihood are silent. The media are fractured, manipulated, and have their own concepts of fairness and balance used against them to weaken their message. ...and the people who refuse to see what is being done in their names continue to raise a hue and cry about issues that don't matter while corrupt men continue to pervert the ideals that America stands for.

The Bush Administration has been a disastrous failure for America, and for the world we should be an example to. I wish I could trust that the Democratic victories in this election will produce a change, but I don't have a lot of hope for improvement in the near future unless we all work together to demand it.

wtf? democrats? blaming democrats for lack of space funding? what a stupid and broad generalisation. maybe if we weren't spending billions on republican wars.

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm
http://nationalpriorities.org/auxiliary/interactiv etaxchart/taxchart.html
http://www.federalbudget.com/

also, giving up screwing is a stupid thing to ask. birth control is your friend.

Yet we spend like three times as much money on social entitlements as we do on defense.
Please check your federal budget, http://www.federalbudget.com/
you spend more on defense than on all other real posts combined. Treasury is the cost of lending all this money from the rest of the world. You spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined.US spending on defense is outrageous and wrong by any standard.

The hereinafter mentioned nutjobs can tell you just how much could be saved by ending the war in Iraq.

Sorry. You are right. Mea Culpa. I missed that entirely.

That was pretty stupid.

People were saying these things and freaking out just like this when Reagan passed his tax cuts and less than ten years later the debt was gone[...]

That's the national defecit, which is the amount of money the gov't spends above its income (roughly speaking). The national debt has existed throughout your lifetime, and will not go anywhere for many years. To give you a rough idea, go look at fy04's spending. If we didn't have national debt, we could institute universal healthcare, or form an real international peacekeeping military force, or severely cut the federal tax rate, or buy everyone guns and suv's, or plant a smiley face pattern of trees in each state, or buy everyone a litter of kittens, or whatever.

Between your two mentions, the Department of Defense and the Treasury Department, about 1/2 of the money the US Gvt takes in gets spent. about 1/4 goes to the Dept of Health and Human Services, and the rest is divided among the other gvt agencies.

1) NO PRESIDENT has direct influence on the economy

So don't vote...

2) The DJIA is about the same as it was when Clinton left office

DJIA

3) The unemployment rate today is LESS than the average throughout the 1990s (ya know, when Clinton was there)

Not true. Interestingly enough, under Bush the percent working for the government has increased from 15.8 - 16.5 %. Bush is definitley a big government kind of guy.

4) Every economist is saying the economy is improving.

Why don't you just meantion one instead of this "every economist" that no one has heard about.

5) The tax cuts you are complaining about contributed to all of this. This is not a "fluke" by any stretch.

The tax cuts has lead to a huge deficit, which is basicly a huge tax increase on everyone, rich and poor. Of course, the rich are lucky, and have got most of the tax cuts to compensate for this unfortunate tax increase on the nation. Bush the tax increase.

Reagan's supply-side economics proved that huge growth can occur by cutting taxes.

Regean had to reverse his tax cuts. Bush senior had to increase taxes more (read his lips). Clinton increased them even more, and the boom came.

Bush is using the SAME policy, and we will see SIMILAR results in 5-8 years just as we did under Reagan

... when we have a fisical responsible democrate in the White house. Thank God for the republicans with their booms 8 years after leaving office, a boom they gave us even "no president has direct influence on the economy".

My personal concern is that as this occurs the cost of Social Security will skyrocket (due to all those retiring folks), and if our federal budget keeps going the way it is we're going to end up with very high taxes that could offset the benefits of higher wages.

I think most people would agree that the US's current Social Security program is non-sustainable. I pay Social Security, but I don't expect to see any of that money when I retire in 30+ years. Fortunately, I am a pessimist and I'm planning for retirement without Uncle Sam's "help". Many of my coworkers are not US citizens. They must pay Social Security too, but they are not legally allowed to collect it (unless they become US citizens).

Does anyone here think that the US can or will phase out Social Security within our lifetimes? I understand that current Social Security recipients need to get paid, but I hope we can phase out this "benefit" so I can keep more of my paycheck each month. We could significantly increase Joe Sixpack's take-home pay without cutting "taxes"! We wouldn't need cuts in "taxes" or budgets (except Social Security). I'm not calling Social Security a "tax" because, supposedly, I will later get my money back, though the government will get to keep my compounded interest.

You can find more information about the US federal budget at federalbudget.com. The US spends more on Social Security that it does on the Department of Defense! Social Security spending is #2, close behind Health and Human Services at #1.

The economy grew at 4% last quarter [economagic.com]. You do realize the '01 recesion was the shortest in 20 years right?

Narrow your parameters enough and you can get any results you like. Based on the stock market performance over the past week, your 4% growth will probably be reversed by this quarter. Lies, damned lies, and quarterly reports.

By the way, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, it is too soon to call the recession "over". The US still has a 6% unemployment rate (an 8 year high). Yes, this is low compared to the 1982 high of 10.8 (whilst R. Reagan (R) was president), and is less than the 7.8% in 1990-1991 (whilst G. Bush Sr. (R) was president), but it hasn't changed significantly since Decemeber 2001.

The absolute size of the defecit isn't important, it's the size of the defecit relative to the size of the economy.

While I can understand your point of view, I disagree. A high debt load is a liability, and is a risk when things like recessions and depressions occur. The size of the deficit affects interest rates and the performance of Wall Street. The national debt is 6.3 trillion dollars. We've spent 118 billion dollars in interest payments on that debt since October 2002. That interest is paid out of taxes. You may be comfortable living with a high debt load, but I'm not, and I don't much appreciate having to pay for poor policy decisions by the current administration.

Actually they are letting them keep more of their own money.

... which results in everybody else having to shoulder more of that budget deficit.

Look, there's a simple, and accurate, analogy: you owe $100 to a bank, and your payments are not even sufficient to pay the monthly interest on that amount, so the amount keeps increasing. Rather than try to pay off the debt, you've decided on a plan of action that will reduce your spending on health insurance, increase your leasure spending, and buy more handguns. Oh, and you've decided to pick a fight with your neighbor because you think he might be planning to pick a fight with you, and you're hemoraging money to support that.

Deplete it of what? And what will be the benefit of a larger supply of oil?

Er... about $9 billion dollars, per month to support the war effort. That's a conservative estimate, and doesn't include the current costs of proparations for the war, which are in the hundreds of millions. The estimates for a total cost for the war are from $50 billion (low, conservative estimate) to $300 billion (high, liberal estimate). The reality is probably around $100 billion. Surely, a drop in the bucket for our current $6 trillion budget deficit.

For lower gas prices.

Jesus.

The problem is that America's economy is greatly proped up by the economic colonialism that we've been forcing on to other countries. The best example is our installation of the Shah in Iran, that then allows Shell Oil and other American companyies to be able to mine 40% of the Iranian oil. This in turn pays for the CIA operation that allowed it to have via taxes, and also overall helped our economy by allowing us to have cheaper oil that was practically gifted to our corporations as a thank you for instituting the Shah regime.

The war on Afghanistan has it's form of paybacks in the Unocal gas pipeline and rights to move Caspian Sea oil. A potential war in Iraq will have similar benefits. Protecting South Korea is important to us because our companies have a lot invested in the area. We hate Cuba, not because it's communist, but because it nationalized our corporation's property. We liberated Kuwait because of American interests. We don't care about the Palesting issue beyond how it effects Israel because Palestinians have no money.

Unlike the British before us, we don't politically colonize an area, we just economically take what we can, by force or finesse. That is, after all, what capitalism is about: strength in capital.

The thing that distrubs me about a Republican complaining about welfare is the total non-realization that, like a corporate bailout, a welfare bailout to an individual can enable them to continue in society and reintegrate back into the tax paying workforce. By not having a welfare system, those who need it may turn to crime, or lean on their families in a way that leave them destitute as well.

I don't know any party that likes the idea of a person who continuously and chronicly lives on welfare who doesn't need it and is just gaming the system. I do know that both parties support continuous chronic subsidization of agriculture (in fact, Bush just signed a bill increasing the amount over the next 30 years).

The only thing that does piss me off about how Republican's view Democratic budgets is that Republican budgets have very traditionally made use of deficit financing to achieve their ends, while Democratic budgets have even worked to pay the debt off. While the Democrats are really my number 1 choice, it is truly frustrating to know that 16% of my income taxes (no state tax in florida) are going towards interest on the debt alone.

You ever tried to be on welfare? An able bodied man? It ain't gonna happen, son.

And if you ever did go on welfare, it is not, not not going to pay your mortgage payment, nor would even begin to touch your rent, if you live anywhere halfway decent.

It's a few hundred dollars a month.

Your taxes wouldn't quintuple, BTW. Welfare doesn't even begin to nick the federal budget. For instance, Aid for Families with Dependent Children, even at its spending height, didn't exceed one percent (1.0%) of the national budget. People seem to think half their taxes are paid out to welfare receipients.

Now, if you want to talk the BIGGEST welfare scam of all time, think of this: 17% percent of your taxes, that is to say 17 times what we spend on little kids in poverty, is spent paying the interest on the national debt. That's the INTEREST. So when you hear them increasing the debt limit once more (it's 6.5 trillion now), you can listen to 17/100 of every one of your tax dollars pouring into wealthy holders of that debt paper. And it's been pouring into their pockets for over twenty years.

Let's see, let's just posit we take in 2 trill a year. 340 billion goes towards the bondholders who hold that paper. Hoody hoo!!!! multiply that by 20 years, assuming inflation makes all things equal, and we get:

6,800 billion dollars.

I somehow doubt we have paid poor people in the U.S. 6,800 billion dollars since 1980. On the other hand, we have paid individuals, funds, and business 6.8 trillion dollars of free money. And we haven't even touched the principal.

Take a look at the Federal Budget, or more tellingly, a graph of what we spend taxes on.

That teeny-tiny piece caled human services is what covers welfare. The big cancer is the debt, the service on the debt, and defense spending.

I *wish* we had a safety net in this country, but we don't. Welfare won't pay for anything. You have to have *no* income, sell your belongings, your home, kill your assets. I have bad memories of a brush with welfare when I was a kid. Believe me, you wait months to see any cash. And the money you get doesn't cover anything real. Better to beg in the streets. You might make more.

Everybody interested in this should read John Budzinski's article of a few years ago on this topic. His optimism in this article sprung from the surprising turnaround in annual federal budgets from deficits to surpluses. In the last years of the Clinton Administration the Government took in more than it spent for the first time since 1969 and actually looked like we would start paying off the Federal debt accumulated during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s - a total of SIX TRILLION DOLLARS OF DEBT. But hey, Dubya won, tax cuts passed, and now the US is back in deficit spending. Now the GOP has got bills in Congress to raise the debt ceiling and it's back to business as usual... Not many people remember that the real thing that made Apollo possible was a net federal SURPLUS in the treasury from the boom in the 1950s - we had to spend the money on SOMETHING, and part of what we spent it on was going to the moon. We also spent it on Vietnam, touched the tarbaby, and BANG we haven't seen a net federal surplus in the Treasury since. Currently we have a net Federal deficit of SIX TRILLION DOLLARS and it is going UP. With Social Security threatening bankruptcy in the 2020s or 2030s, we probably won't ever get back to a surplus in the Trasury for a very long time... This basic structural difference in the US Treasury from the 1960s and the 2000s is why any talk now of getting to Mars is just a sham. I get very depressed on this subject. During the late 1960s and early 1970s as a teen, it seemed the sky was the limit and it was VERY exciting. Now, as a middle aged man, I truly believe I will go to my grave without ever seeing humans on another world again. I truly feel sorry for those alive today that never have seen humans walking on other worlds for real, not in the movies, and have NO IDEA of the uplift to the heart and soul it brings...

They are rich damnit, why do i care if they cant buy a new mansion or another car for their collection of hundreds?

So why is it that you are so filled with hate for people who have a better lot in life? That's the problem with people like you, is that you think you haves should be punished to satisfy the have nots. You spend so much time mired in jealousy that you don't even bother to try and better yourself. Instead you'd rather engage in class warfare and start an "us against them" division.

Rich people pay most of the taxes because they make most of the money, that is fair.

No, it's not "fair". First of all, lets forget the word "fair". Life isn't fair, and it's not up to big brother to make life fair for whiney little pusses like yourself. Secondly, there is no reason a person should have to pay a higher overall percentage of their income just because their income is higher. FAIR would be everyone paying the same damn amount, but that simply isn't feasible. A MORE FAIR solution is that everyone pays the same percentage, regardless of whether they make $24k per year or $24m per year.

Everyone should pay a percentage of taxes based on how much they make,

I perfectly agree with that, but it's not what reality is. Reality is that the rich pay some times as much as 50 to 60% of what they make, whereas people like you and I (assuming you're in my tax bracket) pay on the order of 20 - 25%.

the poor deserve tax breaks because most people are poor, the majority should overrule the top 1 percent.

First of all, your argument that the poor deserve tax breaks for simply being poor is about the second most ludicrous thing I've heard in my entire life, and it's symptomatic of the mindless hatred that exemplifies people like you. So is the notion that ANYONE deserves a "tax break". All a tax break is is a caveat; a doggy treat that allows big brother to control people through their pocket books. If you vote the right way, and pander to the right politician, maybe they'll loosen the grip on your wallet. No, if anyone deserves any kind of break, it would be those people who use their wealth to give jobs and economic security to others.

Then there's this misnomer that "the majority should overrule the top 1%". That is the most disgusting perversion of democratic principle I've heard, and it's down right communist. This country (which is a republic, btw) is set up to gaurantee that the majority cannot EXPLOIT a minority. At one time blacks consisted of a mere 1 - 2% in this country, so by your logic keeping them as slaves should be okay? Of course it's not, and neither is dumping on the top 1% of income earners to support the bottom 50%.

Most people NEED social security, healthcare, public schools etc because MOST people arent rich.

Most people *don't* need SSI, Healthcare, OR public schools. The public school system is a nice thing, but in truth the way it's being run is a dismal shadow of actual education. Kids graduation nowadays don't have enough basic math skills to balance a checkbook or read a contract. Which leads to the next problem: SSI and Healthcare. I spend less on my health care plan each month than most people spend buying the latest Brittany Spears CD. Social Security? It's a fucking joke, and the reality is it's a failed system that's barely solvent and requires a greater burden on ALL tax payers to support it's recipients. Meanwhile, aside from the constant hemmorage of cash flowing into SSI's cut of the general fund, there's no guarantee that SSI will be around by the time I need it, and if it is I guarantee it'll be incredibly bereft of benefits. If SSI is so great, why do people invest privately in their retirement? Probably because even for the most meager incomes, private investments in publically held IRA's will lead to a more robust retirement and secure life than the trove of government money pits with their bureaucratic pitfalls. As it stands now, even with my shitty income I have great health care, and in spite of all the fucked up shit that's happenned to me in the last 3 months, I've still only had to pay out a miniscule copay for getting great medical care from doctors of my choice. Getting back to public education, the numbers show that government is the least effective, least responsive method of providing education for our kids. Private schools do for children at a fraction of the cost what public schools do, and they provide a higher standard of achievement. Best of all, it allows the parents a greater level of control and choice. I've grown up in public schools and I was fucking bored. My best friend growing up went to catholic primary schools, and he was taking TRIG when I was barely grasping Algebra (something I've since picked up and realized was mindnumbingly simple).

Why do the rich need to save money on taxes? So they can waste their money on junk they dont even need?

Who CARES, it's THEIR FUCKING MONEY, not yours, and not the governments. I don't care if they take their entire fortune use it to pay for wild sex parties in swimming pools filled with liqour. The problem with people like you is that you spend too damn much time worrying about other people and what they do with their lives. Maybe if you worried a little bit more about your life and money, and quit bitching about how unfair life is, you could join them. That's even if your goal is to be "rich".

The point, dear friend, is not how much money you have in life. Money is worthless, it's little bits of paper that are only as good as the entity issueing it. I'd like to see you buy a car in the US with a suitcase full of British pound notes. Get that one immutable concept out of your head, MONEY IS WORTHLESS. It won't make you happy, it won't make your life easier, all it does if facilitate the acquisition of material posession. If you're so narrow and petty that that is what you want, then you will spend the rest of your life in darkness and dispair bitching about the "evil rich folk".

While some poor person cant retire anymore and cant get free health care or decent schooling because of it?

You see, therin lies the problem with your flawed logic. Hell, we'll ignore the obvious question of a "poor person" having to choose between retirement and decent schooling. It's already established that you'll rarely - if ever - get "decent schooling" from the government. Can't get "free healthcare"? If it's free, then whats the problem? Personally, I've seen "free healthcare". It's crap my friend. Nothing is ever free, and when the government pays for it it'll always come from the lowest bidder. You can ask people who server our country in the military about how good the "free" healthcare provided by tricare is. You can also ask all the canadians and europeans who can afford to fly to the US and get their healthcare. Finally, this little rant you're on about "retirement" - fucks sake if you can't retire after 20 years in the work force then you need to get off the pot/crack/heroin habit. One thing they don't teach in public schools is the majic of investing and compound interest. Opera Winfrey once did a show about people who became millionaires from poor backgrounds (I believe the title was "The Millionaire Next Door"), and the secret isn't winning lifes lottery. In every case they pinched pennys, lived frugally, and used the savings to invest in their retirement smartly. That's all it takes is self sacrifice and a little (very little) hard work. Instead of educating people and enabling them to provide for themselves, people like you want to play Robin Hood. The old saying goes "give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day - teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime". The reverse is also true. Give a man a fish, and he'll never know that he can get his own damn fish, and he'll be waiting on you for smelly trout for the rest of eternity. That's a recipe for slavery.

The rich SHOULD pay most of the taxes because the poor are the workers of society who allow the rich to be rich in the first place.

Aaaah, the old communist inspired fallacy that the rich get rich on the backs of the poor. I'm afraid spouting that just shows your complete and utter ignorance on the true breadth and depth of economy. Let me ask you something, the "poor" (a term I take umbrage to) aspire to have jobs so they can have income right? Who provides those jobs? Other poor people? Sometimes, but very rarely. It always takes someone with more wealth than you to provide you with income. Newsflash bucko: The RICH are the reason the poor have jobs. The money the rich earn by starting, managing, and succeeding in business is what goes into the salaries of the average joe. It's a mutually beneficial system, and if the rich guy is smart, he/she rewards the employees according to what they provide (if they're stupid and work them like a dog, they lose that employee and the revenue stream they provide).

I'm going to make a leap and say that you're poor, or at least you consider yourself poor. I say that because of your ignorant attitude towards basic economics. You bitch and moan about the rich people taking from the poor (an illogical premise at best), and instead of looking for ways to better yourself you look for the next politician who will pander to you by playing robin hood and offering you the government tit to suckle. With that, you'll always be poor, because you will always do what poor people do. Someday, I hope to be rich (or, more precisely, "wealthy"), and when I get there, I'll be more than happy to show you how I did it and help you get started.

Regean did horrible, socalism?

Nice sentence...expresses a complete and coherent thought. NOT. You have know precisely how successful Reagan was because people like you and the people you look to for your opinions are STILL talking smack about the Gipper nearly 14 years after he left office. The fact was, the 1980's was the greatest period of economic growth in peace time in history, even till today. Even the prosperity of the last few years (which can be entirely traced to Reaganomics). Al Gore would've never been able to Invent the internet without the massive funding for defense projects Reagan got passed. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the 80's. I was very young, but I remember my parents had no problem putting food on the table (in fact, a little *too much* food). People were proud to be American, and the world still looked to us for leadership because our leadership was strong.

Socialism is not a bad thing, theres benifits to Socialism, in fact if technology keeps going the way its going, Capitalism leads to Socialism and theres no way around it really.

Is that all you're able to conceive of? I'm sorry to bust your bubble, but Socialism depends on capitalism to survive. Socialism does not and cannot replace capitalism the way communism tried to. The simple fact is that people (much like yourself) are still too petty and money grubbing to give a shit about anything other than their own personal well being. A socialism depends on everyone working towards a better society. In reality, however, most poeple only work for a better self, and when you remove incentives such as free markets and wealth potential - or even worse, punish achievement with higher taxes - then people have no reason to try any harder then what is minimally expected of them. That is why communism fails *miserably* every time it's tried. Socialism may not always fail, but it never fully succeeds, and it traps EVERYONE in mediocrity.

The Regean Economic boom or whatever crap you talk about, helps the top 10 percent of business execs, and people who are already rich, the tax cuts help people who are already rich, so having a good economy = helping the rich? What about the working class? I'm not rich, most people arent rich, how do we benifit by these tax cuts when we only get a few hundred bucks, big fucking deal!


That is easily the most incoherent waste of text I have ever read. I got a newsflash for you dipshit, a bad economy RARELY hurts the rich, but ALWAYS hurts the working class. Let's take a quick EASY example. Motorola's 3rd quarter profits are down because they had to pay more taxes. They don't have enough money to keep doing everything, so they have to cut something out. They decide that a new cell phone they were making won't be worth making, so they don't make it...which means all the factory workers in Tempe and Scottsdale Arizona who would've otherwise been making $17.50/hr putting cell phones together are now JOBLESS. Get it through your thick little skull that the higher up you are on the pay ladder, the more valuable are to the company you work for, and the less likely you are to get laid off. It's called "value", and if you have value and your employer is smart then you'll make the coin and avoid the layoffs. If you're some dumbass who turns a screwdriver 8 hours a day, and there are plenty of you in the world, then you're expendable. That's life baby.

I'm not saying tax cuts are bad, I'd take a few hundred bucks extra any day,

Okay, so THATS the difference then. Tax curts aren't bad if they benefit YOU, but if they help anyone else - especially someone who god forbid makes more money than you - then it's BAAD. Grow the fuck up already.

but when tax cuts happen when we dont even have the surplus for a tax cut anymore, i think its stupid.

Oh my god you are such a MORON! THERE NEVER WAS A SURPLUS! It was a numbers game - smoke and mirrors. It was a projected surplus over a number of years - IT NEVER EXISTED!!! It would only have existed if everything stayed the same was when the numbers were run. Regardless, having a tax cut and having a surplus are not related items in any way. A surplus is what you get with uncle sam takes TOO MUCH money from everyone.

So we are having the war on terrorism.
Homeland Security is created (wheres this money going to come from?)

Raised Military Budget (wheres this money coming from?)

Increaded R&D for Nano Technology (where is this money coming from?)


Same place it comes from whenever big brother needs money - the American tax payers. The difference is, defending this country is the constitutionally mandated job of government - providing you with your daily handout is not. It is the job, first and foremost, of this government to defend the borders of the us and the citizens within those borders. After, and ONLY AFTER that do we get down to squabbling about who is going to pay for midnight basketball and birth control for teenagers in Malaysia.

Increased Budget for schools (where do they find free money?)

The American tax payer? The RICH? You love punishing them so much, you can always take more right? Why don't we just tax everyone at 95% when they make more than a $100K a year?

Bailout for Airport companies (why the hell are we paying for this?!)

Because a significant amount of our economy depends on the Airlines for everything from getting people from one end of the world to the other, to moving the mail. It makes SENSE for a government who itself has to rely upon the airlines to move troops alot of times to float loans to airlines (loans which get paid back - it's not like a handout).

If you are so pro capitalist, dont you agree we should have proper budget management?

The president and you, seem to think we can pull money out of our asses without taxing anyone, but newsflash, we dont have enough money to pay for all of this, and perhaps if we DIDNT have tax cuts we would have been able to pay for it easier.


The president, and people like me, have a realistic expectation. The problem with people like you, is that you don't realize that percentages always result in sums which are never an excess of the whole. Spending, on the other hand, stays constant. The *idea* is not to have the government confiscate more money from the american tax payer, the idea is to reduce the spending spree government is on. If you got a bigger than usual electric bill, do you go to you employer and make them give you more money? NO, you find something in your budget less necessary than Electricity and eliminate it.

But no, not government. Your pork happy congressman are busily cutting deals to pay for shit like an $80,000 sled to rescue people off of frozen lakes in Michigan (which, honestly, is Michigans problem not mine).

You want to know what happenned to the "surplus"? For starters, the recession (which started WAY back in March of last year). Then, 9/11. But in spite of all that the economy STILL GREW, just at a lesser rate. Well, when the economy slows down, so do federal revenues. In fact, Bush's tax cut counted towards a mere 13% of the loss of revenue (41 bn). But, because your Senators still want funding for statues of Carl Marx (Ohio), they do the old smoke and mirrors trick and convince you, the unwitting public (who can't be bothered to pinch a few pennies for healthcare, much less actually get off your ass and find out this stuff for yourself), that it was Bush's tax cut that killed the surplus - a surplus which should'nt exist to begin with.

I'm not saying keep taxes raised for the sake of keeping it raised, and I'm not saying its bad to lower taxes in a recession, What I am saying is, when theres a Surplus, lower taxes, use the Surplus money to pay for all of the emergency expenses, war, defense, and security.

Do you even do your own finances? You don't "plan" for emergencies - otherwise they would'nt be emergencies dunce! And another bold, yet to you incomprehensible concept - is that lowering taxes stimulates the economy, and therefore leads to the same or greater revenue. It's been proven to work time and time again when used responsibly. Unfortunately, everytime a tax cut comes along the tax and spend crowd has to spend more to balance out the lack of taxing.

When theres no surplus there should be no tax cut.I mean if we cut taxes while trying to fund a war with money we dont have, this money is coming from lets see the Education Budget, Social Security, HealthCare, etc etc that benifit the poor and middle class MAJORITY.


Your pathetic logic is disgusting. Newsflash dumbass, the top 1% of income earners pay 50% of taxes. That means the rich are paying for well over half of what the government spends. The POOR pays less than 5%. Of couse, your kind prefers to overlook logic and play the class warfare card because it works.

As for the money coming out of other parts of the budget, I'm certainly glad you don't do the national budget. Any idiot can see that the increase in spending is such a tiny amount that it would barely effect all other spending. The same idiot can already see that in spite of their shrill and panicked shreiks, we still spend more on social programs (which don't help the rich, in case you did'nt know) than on defense.

So its taking from the Majority who need these benifits, to pay for the war on terror?


The "majority" does not need these benefits. Its' a scant minority that are sucking up the resources we devote to social spending in this country. The majority of poeple pay for themselves.

Why should we do that when we can just raise taxes and let rich guys likee Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others pay for it? Why should someone not be able to retire, or get medicine over unpredictable events?


Guys like Jobs and Gates are ALREADY PAYING FOR IT! They pay more in taxes in one year than you make in a life time. Do you not yet understand that the incomprehensible sums of money we are confiscating from people for no better reason then they are rich are simply coming out of everyone elses pockets? Do you not realize that when the government taxes Gates to pay for housing for crackheads, that it means Bill Gates can't afford to hire another software engineer who actually deserves the money? Get a damned clue already.

Taxes are for Security,

Taxes are to fund the services which the government provides.

In a world with absolutely no taxes at all, meaning a pure capitalist anti socialist world that you want.

What? You have to be a dumbass to think that capitalism, unlike socialism or communism, has anything to do with government at all. The reason capitalism succeeds is because it can operate independantly of government. When a government fails, an economy can largely keep on chugging along. When an economy fails, government fails, and in the case of socialism (which is nothing more than "Communism Lite©" if you have a clue about the principles of Marxist-Leninist theory), when either fail, the other fails as well. In a democratic society with a free market economy, both systems are sufficiently robust to exist independantly upon one another. That being said, governments will form where there is not - it is a constant. And wherever you have government, you have taxes.

Oh and the terrorist attacks? Rich individualist capitalist types likee you would only defend yourself, your own home using your money to do so, while the people with less money would have less defense and be victims of terrorist attacks.

You could'nt be more wrong. But then, individuals such as you, with narrow minds and little intelligence, are left to their preconceived notions of the world because they don't have the intellectual capacity to see things for themselves. You assume I'm rich? I make $24k a year. today is payday, and having missed a day of work last week I only see $704 on my check. Only defend myself? I put off my plans for starting my own business, and last wednesday I was sworn in as a United States Army soldier for the next 5 years of my life. I will actually make less working longer hours, but I am willing to make those sacrifices for my country.

You, on the other hand, are content to sit on your ass behind your computer and complain about how you aren't rich, and someone else is, then expect the government to give you their money for no better reason than because you don't have it. You're pathetic, ignorant, and a waste.