Anybody hope the US defaults on its debt?

[Raype]

I don't feel that it is a problem due to capitalism by any stretch. The states that are in the best situations in terms of revenue and employment are the ones with the lowest and most business friendly tax rates. Look at Virginia. Most of these states tend to also be right to work states. This means that unions don't have to exist in manufacturing environments. Say what you want to say about workers rights and such, but when businesses are doing everything it takes to get away from unions in order to stay in the black, something needs to be looked it. History has shown that unions can actually kill the parent company. What happens then, no jobs. Generally speaking again, the states with the highest rate of unemployment and the most debt are the ones with the highest tax rates. What tends to happen in high tax areas are the companies start to leave along with the jobs. Then the people that are left behind are the ones that were paying the lower tax rates or were dependent on the government for a living. However, at this point there aren't enough of the higher bracket tax payers left to support the poor. What the Republicans are trying to say about this is that there needs to be a balance of the tax rates and the government assistance programs. As you start the raise taxes, unemployment eventually does drop which then means there are less taxpayers and more people on government assistance. The system then gets unstable and starts to collapse. Similar can be said about Europe's problems as well. You can raise taxes today and have increased revenue tomorrow, but what you will have in the future is a crapshoot. You can try to make this country more business friendly (the only country with a higher corporate tax in the world is Japan) and try starting to cutting fluff from the government, and the odds to coming out ahead in the future are better. However, it won't be a fix that you will see the results tomorrow. However in this day and age, politicians want their results tomorrow in order to make themselves look better for the next election.

As for social security and medicare, those two programs should not be hurting financially by design, but it's the same politicians that are wanting to raise taxes that are using the money from those two programs and are in turn hurting them. According to my pay stub I get every two weeks, I have around $30 per week of my paycheck go into each of those programs. That's $60 per week or about $120 per period. My company pays in even more then that on my behalf as their contribution. The federal income tax is then even higher.

I don't feel that the country should default, but I truly believe that we need to head in a different direction then what we are going in now.

Problem is, the tax rates were cut substantially a while back without an economic boost happening afterward. All it did was cause the government finance problems. Going back to the tax rates as they were prior to these cuts? Sounds like a good idea. Bell curves and all that.

I don't believe it's so much a problem that there's a limit to the number/amount of taxation that can happen to the upper brackets. It's simple a matter that they both are not being taxed adequately and there's plenty of ways to drastically lower taxation rates. To put it simply, people don't stay rich by handing over huge chunks of money every time tax season rolls around.

And as for the general claim that low taxes are inherently the best thing here...

Greece is in the worst trouble right?

He's pretty much right.

Now take a guess which european nation has pretty lax tax laws especially regarding corporate tax rates. To the point where they're lower than America's (which is pretty low itself).

outsourcing is the reason we are in such a mess, until that changes we will never properly recover.

Good to see there's still people out there that have yet to pass macroeconomics 101.

[Dr Mario]

Part of Greece's problem stems not from the tax laws themselves but from the fact that enforcement of them has historically been quite hit and miss. Very much a patronage-driven system at the top, that one.

[Corey]

with Obamer keep on spending money like no tomorrow, I seriously doubt it.

and Obama talking to the people? more campaigning and lies, just so idiots will vote for him again.

http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/

[crimsonedge]

Once people figure out the debt is just a bunch of 0s and 1s, it could simply be erased. Of course it would crash the world banking system, but the country could simply adopt a Nationalized banking system to replace it as well as a new currency. If the debt gets out of control, something like this would be a viable solution, seeing as how after a certain point you would just be walking on a tread mill. Once debt gets to around 200% of GDP we will be pushing it. We still got a ways to go before that happens.

I would favor a nationalized banking system in the US.

The Nazis did something similar to this in Germany after the Weimar Republic went fubar, which was the biggest fail economy in human history. They simply changed the currency to something else. Any nation could do this.

[Raype]

Once people figure out the debt is just a bunch of 0s and 1s, it could simply be erased. Of course it would crash the world banking system, but the country could simply adopt a Nationalized banking system to replace it as well as a new currency. If the debt gets out of control, something like this would be a viable solution, seeing as how after a certain point you would just be walking on a tread mill. Once debt gets to around 200% of GDP we will be pushing it. We still got a ways to go before that happens.

I would favor a nationalized banking system in the US.

The Nazis did something similar to this in Germany after the Weimar Republic went fubar, which was the biggest fail economy in human history. They simply changed the currency to something else. Any nation could do this.

They kind of tried that before.

It didn't take. That's what happens when your economy is heavily reliant on import/export and multinationals. And if you want to mimic some of the stuff the nazis pulled off, you'd have to vastly boost government control. People would fight that tooth and nail, because, y'know, socialism is eeeeevvvviiiillllll and all that.

As for smaller scale versions, the current president already walked that road. While somewhat effective, it also didn't take the way he hoped. And he certainly wasn't the first to figure out that throwing a bunch of tax money back into the economy doesn't immediately fix the problem. Economics got complicated in the last 60 years.

[lizard81288]

http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/

lol, I hate when people say, "what did he do? He's just a Black president, thats all. Where are the Jobs then?!"

I know he's done so much more, but people quickly forget this stuff as soon as its passed.

[skullpoker]

I think that any enlightened adult begins to realize that there is a psychological deficiency in people who place more value on material objects than on more lofty ideals, but that is how limited a lot of people's perceptions are.

"If I can just step on enough people's necks and GET that shiny "thing," then I will be happy forever."

So we should lock CEOs and bankers up with the psychotics and scizophrenics? Interesting.

[DoomKefka]

were broke because we wasted money on fake weapons of mass destrucition and a 10 year manhunt with osama...before bush came into office and kept this war going america was thriving..bush and obama have failed...we want bill clinton back!

[lizard81288]

The wars aren't generating money, like most people think it should. A dood from the Daily Show said why, forgot his name, but it was an interview. He said WWII worked so well, because after we blow up Germany, They paid us to build stuff for them, and they had to import tools and metal, ect. Now, look at the middle east. They live in mud houses, so we don't need to export mud to them. They are poor and don't have allot of technology like we do. Shoot, the Libyan rebels don't even have Walkie Talkies to communicate with each other. Thats why the 3 wars aren't generating as much money compared to WWII.

[Dr Mario]

That's about as far from how it happened as you can get and still be speaking coherent language. WW2 cost the US a ton of money to fight, then even more in loans to various countries in Europe post-war.

[Josh]

were broke because we wasted money on fake weapons of mass destrucition and a 10 year manhunt with osama...before bush came into office and kept this war going america was thriving..bush and obama have failed...we want bill clinton back!

I'm sorry, but the current bailout situations have cost this country much more than the wars. And at least the wars actually provided some American jobs because of the needs to produce goods and such for the military. On another note, the economy started going down at the very end of 1999 and the very beginning of 2000. That is more than a full year before Bush even took office. The actual large downfall that occurred in 2008 had started right after the Democrats took control of Congress.

The wars aren't generating money, like most people think it should. A dood from the Daily Show said why, forgot his name, but it was an interview. He said WWII worked so well, because after we blow up Germany, They paid us to build stuff for them, and they had to import tools and metal, ect. Now, look at the middle east. They live in mud houses, so we don't need to export mud to them. They are poor and don't have allot of technology like we do. Shoot, the Libyan rebels don't even have Walkie Talkies to communicate with each other. Thats why the 3 wars aren't generating as much money compared to WWII.

What are you trying to say? Wars aren't supposed to generate money...

[Gulcasa]

*Watches the USA go down the toilet from his ice palace up in Canada.*

Ha!

[garrendesares]

what gets me is our banks are in england (some if not all). anyways nothing will get better if they dont want it to. george carlin once said that this was a club and your not in it! lol i hate to say it but its true. anyways i am finishing there.

[crimsonedge]

They kind of tried that before.

It didn't take. That's what happens when your economy is heavily reliant on import/export and multinationals. And if you want to mimic some of the stuff the nazis pulled off, you'd have to vastly boost government control. People would fight that tooth and nail, because, y'know, socialism is eeeeevvvviiiillllll and all that.

As for smaller scale versions, the current president already walked that road. While somewhat effective, it also didn't take the way he hoped. And he certainly wasn't the first to figure out that throwing a bunch of tax money back into the economy doesn't immediately fix the problem. Economics got complicated in the last 60 years.

There are some things IMO that are good ideas with Socialism, but I wouldn't take the entire package and adopt.

You cannot just simply print money and throw it into the economy and expect to get good results, you do nothing but inflate the currency and make what everyone already has, worth less. Prices on everything rising during a recession isn't just a fail idea, its epic fail. What Ben Bernanke calls quantitative easing, or QE1, QE2, QE3, etc, is just printing more money. In fact I can't think of one example in history where just printing money and throwing it into the economy has gotten good results. Someone as smart as Ben Bernanke should know this, unless he has another intention.

[Mistral]

*Watches the USA go down the toilet from his ice palace up in Canada.*

Ha!

*snrk* I'd love to see your face if your ice palace melts down. If the American economy goes down, the global economy will follow in a very tidy handbasket, and Canada will be right up with China as one of the worst hit. American consumerism accounts for a significant percentage of global economic trade, and the American trade deficit (to the tune of around $500 billion USD) exists in the trade surpluses of Japan, China, OPEC, and Europe, as well as helping counter Canadian and Mexican trade deficits. If the American economy collapses and all that consumption is curtailed sharply, supply will drastically outstrip demand, creating an economic tailspin that will not be recovered from easily. Of course, if you're fine with eating snow, feel free to pretend it won't affect you.