Refresh Tag(s): Commission; Default; Jobs; Money; Money; Taxes
Add to My Group
View Ratings | Rate It
The deficit scolds are eagerly pushing their “catfood commission” (They just LOVE the idea of impoverishing all of our senior citizens to the point where they have to live on cat food).
In an entirelypredictable move, the “catfoodcommission” (Their obvious goal is to reduce all of our seniorcitizens to eating catfood) has proposed that America should considermaybe perhaps defaulting ongovernment debt:
In other words “Hey, we’ve got $2.6 trillion saved up that isguaranteed to keep Social Security paying full benefits until 2044.Surely, there must be somethingbetter for us to do with all that wonderful cash!” I mean hey, ifAmerica is “cash-strapped,” well heck, why do we want to spend all thatglorious money on mere *ugh* Social Security recipients? One might alsoconsider, of course, that for America to default on its debts and todeclare that it’s an unreliabl payer of its debts would not be a veryintelligent idea.
One of the really obvious ways to reduce the deficit is for health careto get truly fixed. The public option wouldhave helped even more than the Affordable Care Act does in itscurrent configuration. Another way is to fiximmigration, as America has “…12 million people working in thiscountry and not maximizing their contributions to the economy” by beingundocumented and therefore, outside the income tax rolls (They paysales taxes and Socal Security, Medicare, etc.), though of course, thatconsideration has to be balanced off by the fact that they don’t usequite as many services, either. Heck, getting rid of the IMF wouldbe a great way to start fixing the financial picture of the US asit relates to the rest of the world.
Normally, the wealthy countries send capital out to the poorer parts ofthe globe, capitalists make investments and then bring the profits backto their home country. By supporting IMF policies, the US is makingitself poorer by making speculation more profitable than actuallymaking useful things for people to purchase. Senate candidate CarlyFiorina defends her “right-shoring” or sending American jobs overseas.This practice may be fine for the company’s top layer of management andfor stockholders, but the working men and women who toil for thosecompanies are less thanenthusiastic about the practice.
There are many, many choices available to the US that would improve ourfinancial picture. Cancelingthe Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 would be a great start as justabout our entire current deficit can be traced to just those actions. Aspeculationtax, that would “slow the churning of stocks and financialinstruments on Wall Street” would also be a great way to raise money.By charging a “quarter-percent tax on stock trades, and a commensuraterate tax onother instruments, [it] could raise more than $100 billion a year.”Simply putting more Americans to work through the spending of money bythe government, i.e., by extending the stimulus bill of February 2009,a bill that Republicanskeep insisting they hate, but gee, wow, amazingly enough, everytime the stimulus money is usedfor a project that benefits theirstate, they’re right there claimingcredit for a bill they opposed and didn’t vote for. RepresentativeBarney Frank (D-MA) has put forth a proposal that the Pentagon cutspending by around a trillion dollars over the next decade as thePentagon is currentlyspending huge amounts of money on seriously wasteful items.
Arbitrarily reducing Social Security obligations to our citizens is notonly a very, very bad idea as that would call into question thecreditworthiness of the United States of America, but it would also bea grossly ineffective methodof fixing the economy. There are many,many better ways to go about doing that.
PN3(Ret), USN, 1991-2001. Done a number of clerical-type jobs. Computer “power user,” my desktop is a Windows machine, but my laptop is an Ubuntu Linux.
Articles usually cross-posted at
prawnblog.blogspot.com
Personal details at (more…)
