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Congressman Introduces Bill To Ban Minting of Trillion-Dollar Coin
Dainsanefh writes with news that the new Congress isn't wasting any time getting back to work. From the article: "Lawmakers are still positioning themselves for a debt ceiling fight in a few months, but one Republican congressman wants to snuff out a particular idea immediately: the U.S. Treasury minting $1 trillion platinum coins to avert a debt ceiling showdown. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) has introduced a bill to specifically ban President Barack Obama from minting the coins. The trillion-dollar coin has been previously discussed on Slashdot:"
Actually it would require a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate to override a presidential veto. Unlikely.
More American voted for Democrats than for Republicans in the house. The only reason the kept the house is because of gerrymandering.
That's why it's not a national popular vote.
This might work in the short term, but infrastructue is a durable good; once built, it lasts a very long time. Look at the national highway system. Still there,
You may want to use a different example, since almost all the bridges of that highway system now need complete replacement.
Your logic is flawed. It is perfectly possible for more people to vote for Democrats and yet Republicans (or vice versa) to win the house by a landslide without any gerrymandering. You have to win more congressional districts, not more overall votes. Republicans traditionally have support in far more geographical areas (break it down by states, or counties or whatever) than Democrats: http://cdn.theatlanticcities.com/img/upload/2012/11/07/CountyMap2012.main.jpg Democrats get their votes from a small number of densely populated areas.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
America can, and hopefully will again.
Balancing the checkbook is good, but there are times when it might be a good idea to grit your teeth and take out a loan. Imagine waking up one Monday morning in a muddy ditch with a missing front tooth and a vague recollection of your wife clearing out your joint accounts and running off with some musclebound thug, in your car. You painfully make your way home to realize that she's burned down the house. What are you going to do? Not balance the checkbook. Not get all high and mighty and track them down in South America either. (OT, ever read Dog of the South? Great book.) No, you're going to say good riddance and get on with your life. You're going to find a phone, call in sick, get your damn tooth fixed, buy a cheap suit, rent a car, get a hotel room, and get back to work as soon as possible. And you're going to do it all on credit. If you're not willing to go into debt here, you'll be severely impacting your future earning potential, ie, you'll be a filthy toothless bum forever.
This is a pretty good metaphor for the shape the country was in when Obama took over, btw. It's even got a car in it. I'm not about to go blaming it all on Bush, either; there's plenty of blame to go around. Anyway: We're in an emergency. Balancing the budget through spending cuts, as righteous as some of those cuts may sound, is likely to decrease economic activity and make things worse. It's important for us to realize that deficit spending should be a last resort, and the goal should be to stop it ASAP. But it's not time yet.
Your logic is flawed. It is perfectly possible for more people to vote for Democrats and yet Republicans (or vice versa) to win the house by a landslide without any gerrymandering.
That may be so, but gerrymandering is what happened.
Exactly. The reason the Senate isn't like that is because you can't gerrymander states's borders every 10 years.
And how much of the income do they earn?
If you have one CEO making 200x what his workers make - say, $40,000, so $8 million - that CEO is paying 50% of all taxes. And yet that's hardly unfair.
What was it that Mitt Romney said he paid? 15%? Their tax rate might be 35% but they're not paying 35%
It was 13.9% for the 2010 and 14.1% for 2011 (after not taking all of his deductions; don't worry he'll amend to get his proper lower rate).
Most of the debt is owed to people in the US or between branches of the government. China, for example, owns only about 8% of the debt. The foreign part of the equation is nearly irrelevant and needs to stop being brought up.
Ugh... if you stockpile gold then the cost of gold goes up and you have currency deflation. The gold standard was a hell of a lot more volatile than you suggest. Switching to our current system slowed the bubbles and bursts and stabilized our economy giving us a platform to grow. I hate hearing the old Ron Paul argument that the gold standard would end any problems. The current system isn't perfect but it's certainly a world better than the gold standard.