EPTNot likely to happen though.
S&P Downgrades US Credit - Page 17
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johanngrunt
Hong Kong1555 Posts
Not likely to happen though. | ||
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Zergneedsfood
United States10671 Posts
On August 06 2011 23:52 Tien wrote: Stop pointing fingers at the rich as if they are the problem to American deficits. Pointing fingers at the rich and demanding more tax revenue from them completely ignores the massive amounts of out of control spending that American leaders engage in. This is 100% the responsibility and fault of American leadership in the last 10 years. Some of us aren't even talking about raising taxes on top tier income earners. Some of us are just saying we end the tax cuts that we've given to them since 2001 because...you know...prosperity ended a long time ago? The Bush tax cuts amount to $1.3 trillion dollars in deficits in the last decade. Ending them alone would've pushed closer to the $4 trillion needed to avoid a downgrade. | ||
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jon arbuckle
Canada443 Posts
On August 07 2011 00:55 Zergneedsfood wrote: Some of us aren't even talking about raising taxes on top tier income earners. Some of us are just saying we end the tax cuts that we've given to them since 2001 because...you know...prosperity ended a long time ago? The Bush tax cuts amount to $1.3 trillion dollars in deficits in the last decade. Ending them alone would've pushed closer to the $4 trillion needed to avoid a downgrade. Yeah. Well, with the Bush tax cuts set to expire late next year, and with the real possibility of Obama losing the presidency, the Bush tax cuts expiring is not even a probability to be taken into account at this point. Anyone trying to present the credit downgrade as anything other than S&P saying sternly "you guys are straight fucking retarded for not raising taxes" - not verbatim, obviously - is delusional or ignorant, purposefully or not, willfully or not. To the point where it's not worth arguing with them: if you rob government on the base of falsified claims re American taxation of the right to raise revenues, you rob them of the ability to properly deal with budgetary problems, and therefore rob the government of their ability to actually lead the people anywhere beyond eating themselves. It reflects poorly on S&P to continue to endorse the country. You gave yourselves an austerity plan when you didn't have to; you could have raised taxes but you didn't. You do it to yourseeeeeeeeeelf. Like, for real: On August 5 2011 apocalypsetime S&P wrote: Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act. Key macroeconomic assumptions in the base case scenario include trend real GDP growth of 3% and consumer price inflation near 2% annually over the decade. | ||
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
On August 07 2011 00:38 johanngrunt wrote: Limit all politicians to one term, then they don't have to worry about re-election and just do what's good instead. Not likely to happen though. That's not going to necessarily help, since they could get in to office and have no reason to do what's good since they'll never get back in anyways. | ||
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Tien
Russian Federation4447 Posts
Start over with the 10% good ones. Politicians in Washington make lawyers look like saints. | ||
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Phenny
Australia1435 Posts
On August 07 2011 01:23 Tien wrote: I'd be happy with putting 90% of politicians in Washington on a boat and then sinking it. Start over with the 10% good ones. Politicians in Washington make lawyers look like saints. Well reducing government size significantly is most definitely beneficial but that's maybe not the best way to go about it :p | ||
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stepover12
United States175 Posts
On August 07 2011 00:38 johanngrunt wrote: Limit all politicians to one term, then they don't have to worry about re-election and just do what's good instead. Not likely to happen though. That would just make politicians push harder their ideological agenda instead of caring about what voters want. The tea party has good intention but their way of doing it is just destructive. | ||
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Manimal_pro
Romania991 Posts
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RandomAccount#49059
United States2140 Posts
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dave333
United States915 Posts
On August 07 2011 00:38 johanngrunt wrote: Limit all politicians to one term, then they don't have to worry about re-election and just do what's good instead. Not likely to happen though. Or they do everything to benefit themselves in one term, accept bribes, and be sleazier in general because they won't need to run again. | ||
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sekritzzz
1515 Posts
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xXFireandIceXx
Canada4296 Posts
On August 07 2011 01:51 sekritzzz wrote: This video suits the general American sentiment here: Funny enough, it probably would work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNEp7q30JCw Yah, unlikely politicians are going to take that risk for themselves. | ||
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cfoy3
United States129 Posts
How to fix Congress: 1.)strong term limits 2.)get districting out of the hands of the political parties 3.)place limits on Special Interest funding of elections | ||
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mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
On August 07 2011 01:51 sekritzzz wrote: This video suits the general American sentiment here: Funny enough, it probably would work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNEp7q30JCw Actually on the first glance I would say nothing would really happen. Since one side knows that the other side knows that they will lose reelection possibilities, they would gamble on the chance that the other side capitulates first. But since both sides do that, we get the current scenario. And going deeper into the mind games you do not get any different result. But I might be wrong, someone needs to analyze it through game theory perspective  | ||
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turdburgler
England6749 Posts
 american politics seems so far removed from the european model that its hard for some one like me to even comprehend the things half the US politicians are even saying. its just that crazy/stupid | ||
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Quesa
United States304 Posts
On August 07 2011 01:49 dave333 wrote: Or they do everything to benefit themselves in one term, accept bribes, and be sleazier in general because they won't need to run again. This. Re-election is just part of the kickback game. | ||
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VGhost
United States3618 Posts
1) You can find many articles pointing out how revenue increased (that last actually with references) despite the cuts. Whether or not the increases were due to the cuts or just to general economic growth is a different question of course, but this brings me to 2) "Tax income losses" are almost entirely hypothetical. People say $1.3 trillion, or $1.8 trillion, or whatever number of dollars, were "lost" because of the cuts. However, since revenue increased, what this actually means is the following: assuming all the people who were paying taxes after the cuts had instead been paying taxes at the non-cut rate, we would have had brought in the one-point-whatever trillion more. This is a reasonable assumption to make (and I'm not privy to the models used to justify it), but has to be subjected to the common sense test. Do we know what was actually done with the money instead of paying it into the IRS? If it was mostly spent or invested, then turning it into tax revenue instead would have meant less money in the private sector, and therefore less growth, and the actual tax revenue growth would have been similarly smaller. On the other hand if it was mostly saved, then maybe the figure's legitimate, since the money wouldn't have been "active" (although it would still have increased the banking reserve). (Although, without double-checking all the sources, maybe the $1.x trillion figure is the end result after adjusting for the possibilities mentioned above.) 3) It seems to me almost impossible to reconcile the two charts in the original article. The first gives projected deficits for the Obama administration, every one of which is greater than any Bush deficit, and the first two of which have already come up short of actual deficits. Yet somehow the second chart manages to suggest that the Obama administration will only add about 1/3 of what Bush did? (Honestly that seems so weird that I'd appreciate an explanation, as I'm convinced I'm missing something there. Even "biased reporting", not that I suspect that here, wouldn't leave a gaping hole like that.) 4) One way or another, if Bush's policies led us into big holes, one of Obama's responsibilities should have been to get us out - like he campaigned for, among other things, pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which (unless I've missed it, and it would have been huge news) have happened yet. So at least part of the blame for continued Middle East war costs falls on the Obama administration's shoulders at this point (and the entirety of the Libya thing). On August 07 2011 02:07 turdburgler wrote: the thing that i find... so strange, about all of this is that america, with one of the smallest public service sectors in the developed world is talking about budget cuts as much as tax rises. and yet the countries with the biggest public sectors dont have debt problems american politics seems so far removed from the european model that its hard for some one like me to even comprehend the things half the US politicians are even saying. its just that crazy/stupid The essential problem in the USA is that most of the public sector is on the Federal level at this point in time. This would essentially be like the EU trying to oversee, administer, and regulate welfare programs for every country on the same model regardless of population dispersion, local income levels, any local programs, and so forth. There are some residual state programs, but the majority of aid to citizens is administered at the federal level, which creates huge inefficiencies. It wasn't always this way: states and even local counties and townships used to pick up most of the public works thing, but over the course of two world wars and public safety scandals and growing nationalism most of that ended up in federal hands. So now you have a situation where a significant number of people want to end the overweight inefficient federal programs, and a significant number of people want to keep "help for the unfortunate" without looking at the inefficiencies, but because of the slow political demise of state and local programs very few are even thinking in terms of re-localizing the aid and welfare programs, even though that's probably what needs to happen. (Also, while there are countries with bigger public works that are fine, the countries with the biggest, as I understand it - Greece, Italy, Ireland, etc - are definitely also having problems. At some point it becomes at least as much an issue of how competent the administration is as what the model they're pursuing is. Geniuses can make almost anything work; idiots can screw up anything.) | ||
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Holy_AT
Austria978 Posts
This whole rating shit is just horrible and nothing more then throwing dice and betting and has nothing todo with the actual market. | ||
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Nerdslayer
Denmark1130 Posts
On August 06 2011 10:37 FarmI3oy wrote: You can't tax the rich without hurting the poor that's a fact. Taxing the rich just means less jobs. lol says who? Its only in US where the rich pays so little taxes its allmost 0. In alot of countries lats take my country Denmark the rich pays huge amount of taxes and they still create jobs. And im preatty sure our "poor" well we dont really got any poor people but those with low income got a hell of alot higher living standard then the poorest in the US. My oppinion as an outsider when I look at US is its not a democracy anymore its run by mega corporation and there only concern is maximise profit for the rich. What needs to be done in the US for the American people is first get rid of the lobbiest make sure electors cant get money from private donators and then you can start get things done thats good for the country and american people and not just the rich and mega corporations. | ||
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RvB
Netherlands6272 Posts
On August 07 2011 02:37 Holy_AT wrote: In my honest opinion the whole stock market should be outlawed. This system with stocks has nothing todo with the real market, it is a hinderance to the real market and people working in this sector are useless parasites sucking of from the real industry and market. This whole rating shit is just horrible and nothing more then throwing dice and betting and has nothing todo with the actual market. The stock markets have existed since the 17th century... It's never one thing that goes wrong in these kind of crisis there are a lot of causes and it's certainly not as simple as to just outlaw a whole system... | ||
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