Community | April 19, 2011 | 20 comments

A simple country boy’s solution to the budget “crisis” | Scholars and Rogues

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hoosierdaddy
I know, I’m just a simple country boy. And I didn’t major in math by any stretch. But it looks to me like this plan has us up over a trillion dollars in five years (maybe a whole lot sooner, depending on how we parse item #4).

From where I sit, it just doesn’t seem right to go after the little guy first just so we can make sure that Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton and the Koch brothers can have a tax cut.
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20 comments // A simple country boy’s solution to the budget “crisis” | Scholars and Rogues

  • Ian_Judge_Lord
  • Ian_Judge_Lord
    • +1
      Ian_Judge_Lord  
    • Image
    • If we CUT taxes of the Wealthiest 1% or Richest 2% of all Americans, that means that the people who are the most able to give the government the MOST money, are paying FEWER taxes, and are therefore giving it LESS than they should be otherwise
      HOWEVER
      if we were to CUT the taxes for the MIDDLE income class, and those living just above the poverty line
      (there are GOVERNMENT-funded poverty shelters and food stamp banks for all of the rest)
      THEN, the people who are able to give the LEAST money, and who are ALREADY paying the LEAST taxes
      have MORE of their own money left over AFTER taxes in order to spend on the things that they NEED to maintain their middle-class standard of living
      (something the Richest 1/100 of all people most likely do NOT have ANY difficulty with)
      [how many multi-billionaires have you ever seen in line at food stamp banks?]
      if we were to reduce Department of Defense and Department of Homeland security to roughly approximately 5% (1/20) of the current levels
      which we could easily do by simply stopping payment to private-sector for-profit privately owned corporate company contractors, such as Halliburton and BlackWater (Xe) in Iraq and Afghanistan, and foreign corporations such as AirBus
      and we could and would still have the singular best-trained and most technologically advanced military armed fighting force the world has ever seen
      and restore tax rates to what they were in the middle of the 1960′s {Marginal Tax Rate: 90% on all income over 200K in 1964] (taxes have been going down since the late 70′s; 50% in 1982, 28% in 1988), we would not only just have a balanced annual yearly federal government budget, and most likely than not a significantly substantial budget surplus, in perpetuity
      but, beginning effectively immediately, we could very easily have, at the very least, the proportion of our nation’s debt to other nation that is owned by China (44% of foreign-owned debt -> $772 Billion–May 2009; $846.7 Billion–July 2010 [20.8% US Treasury Securities]) (by the middle of this century (the 2050′s or 2060′s)
      even if we do nothing else, we could effectively have our ENTIRE national debt paid off by the end of the next century (the 2100′s)

    • 2 years ago
  • hoosierdaddy
    • 0
      hoosierdaddy  
    • "Neo-con" is another animal altogether - that refers to pro-military domination war hawks. Although you certainly find a lot of overlap between neo-con and neo-liberal.

    • 2 years ago
  • fernweher
  • remanns
    • +1
      remanns  
    • hoosierdaddy:

      "Neo-cons" would bitch slap to DEATH the "Neo-liberals",....if it came to a respectable Roman death match,......but perhaps my imagination simply wanders.

      Added to the "Culture" group. Sigh. Cant be helped. It is.

    • 2 years ago
  • remanns
  • hoosierdaddy
    • +1
      hoosierdaddy  
    • Delas: you might want to go look "neo-liberal" up. It doesn't mean what you think it does and you don't want to embarrass yourself here.

    • 2 years ago
  • delas78
  • remanns
    • +2
      remanns  
    • hoosierdaddy:

      Neo-Liberal n.
      1. ) a liberal from the Matrix, thought to be derived from proper name usage ....[ see - Thomas A. Anderson (alias Neo, also known as "The One", "The Anomaly", or "Mr. Anderson" ] related to non-loquacity, working within the "system" for change,...and neo-headgames.

      2.) n. a sexy plutocrat aka " big money boy" or "pimp daddy" known for the disproportionate and exaggerated size of their wallets and attractiveness to "whores of Babalon".

      also frequently associated with an unintelligible sophistic neo-loquacity and political solipsism. May be related to "Newspeak ;1984".

      glad to be of help.

    • 2 years ago
  • remanns
  • delas78
    • 0
      delas78  
    • "1. The crisis isn’t real. It’s been fabricated by the neo-liberal politicians whose goal is to eliminate all taxes on rich people and bust structures like unions..."

      Neo-Liberal??

      I think you may be barking up the wrong tree country boy.

    • 2 years ago
  • Schnookums
    • +1
      Schnookums  
    • The fact is, we could cut the Federal budget by 100% (eliminate it entirely) and it still wouldn't solve the underlying problem in our economy and monetary system. I know the simple country-boy solution looks evocatively simple making it seemingly a no-brainer to institute.......but it isn't. Even with no Federal Government, no borrowing, no spending, and no debt, the system itself still fails by design.

    • 2 years ago
  • lazloman
  • Plue
  • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM
    • 0
      COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM  
    • Not enough being cut from DoD

      Take half of that and create new, sustainable and independent energy supplies, and we don't have to protect oil interests in the middle east, which well end middle eastern terrorism against us!

      National referendum vote to end this bullshit!

    • 2 years ago
  • Schnookums
  • iowawashington
    • 0
      iowawashington  
    • Schnookums:

      Remember that all those bombs/guns/planes/tanks are a significant source of good-paying factory jobs. That's why all the politicians want to cut defense spending, except in their state. Weaning our economy off the military-industrial complex will take some time.

    • 2 years ago
  • hoosierdaddy
    • +3
      hoosierdaddy  
    • If you click on the pie chart image at the story, it takes you to the source. Here's the quick answer:

      The big red slice at the top that accounts for more than half our federal budget is our military spending. The 15% X is a proposed decrease in this spending being proposed by the Common Sense Budget Act (CSBA). The proposal of the Common Sense Budget Act proposes we cut military spending by 15% and apply this $69 Billion dollars to:

      Provide health insurance to 9 million American kids who lack it
      Rebuild or modernize our public schools over 12 years
      Retrain a quarter million workers
      Cut our reliance on foreign oil in half over 10 years
      Restore recent cuts in life-saving medical research
      Invest wisely in Homeland Security by inspecting cargo containers entering our ports
      Save 6 million children who die of hunger-related diseases in impoverished countries annually
      Begin to reduce the deficits

    • 2 years ago
  • mitekillem
  • angliss
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