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On August 12 2012 00:00 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 23:54 Signet wrote:On August 11 2012 23:38 radiatoren wrote:
Ahhh, but then we are getting into the field of mandate distribution (which europeans have been thundering about for ages): It is inherently unfair to make a winner takes it all since it favours the preelection assignment of nominees for 80+% of the population (red state, blue state, nothing inbetween). A mandate representation is the only way to make each vote worth more in the coloured states (the more mandates, the greater the resolution and the greater the value of each vote!). The mandates does not even have to be real people in the primaries since they are just a way of assigning value to votes.
In Denmark and Netherlands (among about 26 other democracies) we see a D'hondt system of assigning mandates and it gets to be a good distribution for the majority parties even though it basically is direct percentage assignment.
Sainte-Laguë is an improvement for the minorities and is therefore far less used. Denmark (Yes, Denmark uses both for every general election! It is obviously extremely complicated to find a winner of an election), Germany, Sweden and Norway are examples of countries using it.
In US primaries it is a more or less a random system of mandate distribution depending on the state and party.
In terms of primaries, USA is fortunately moving away from winner takes it all and caucases to higher resolution techniques. Now it only needs to happen in the house of representation elections too and US is on its way to becoming a modern democracy! I agree that this is a problem, however the two most likely changes that have been put on ballots in the US don't make the system better. One is to split the electoral votes by congressional district, the way Maine and Nebraska do already. The problem here is that our districts are extremely gerrymandered so whichever party most recently drew the maps will have an enormous advantage. The other is to split the electoral votes by proportion, rounding to the nearest vote. This was proposed in Colorado back in 2004, but the ballot measure was defeated. The problem with this is - say a state is worth 3 electoral votes. In most circumstances, it will split 2-1. A state worth 4 electoral votes will split 2-2 in most circumstances. A state worth 5 will split 3-2, a state worth 6 will split 3-3. Only the really large (or extremely partisan) states will deviate from this. That makes it valuable to win the states with an odd number of electoral votes, and worthless to win a state worth an even number of electoral votes. Going to a direct popular vote doesn't seem that likely, since such changes are far easier to block than to implement. See but that just shows the underlying problem with American elections. If most states would go 50-50 then are are currently excluding the opinion of a little under half your population.
But the thing is the US is a Republic not a Democracy so its a little different the president like the House and Senate only represent majorities from all over. So Senators represent majorities of states, Representatives are areas of states, and the president is the majority of the country usually. (with the electoral college its not always but most of the time the go the same or close to the same way) I do agree parts of it are pretty bad if it were up to me we'd keep the system but states wouldn't be winner take all it'd actually matter how well you did from each party. That would make swing states a lot less important because even if you lost you could still carry large portions of them but have majorities in all the smaller states and win.
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Paul Ryan pick will just move the Republican party more to the right than they are now.
I suspect Romney won't get enough from PR to win in the end. I suspect many of the same tactics that made PRs budget plan look like shit (which it partially is), and made his own party run away from it, can work again.
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On August 11 2012 15:49 BluePanther wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 15:38 aksfjh wrote:On August 11 2012 15:03 BluePanther wrote:On August 11 2012 14:24 DannyJ wrote:
Well, he's well spoken and doesn't seem like someone pulled out of a trailer park. It's certainly a step up from past republican picks. I don't think it's a bad choice considering the options. There's some sticking points that could bother people on both sides, but at least this guy can hold his own overall. He's very well respected amongst fiscal matters (he's educated and has a degree in economics). He's the leader of the only serious austerity plan in the United States. Romney has just made this an election about substance instead of semantics, finally. He picks Ryan, I might swap my vote back to him. Most people (economists) wouldn't call it a "serious austerity plan." IIRC, the revenue portion is essentially what Romney put forward in his tax plan (tax rate decrease, reduction in tax credits), but promises much larger revenue generation, seemingly out of nowhere. when i say serious, I mean as it's the only one that has a realistic chance of being passed. It's also detailed and fleshed out more than any other plan. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's the only option currently on the table aimed at balancing the deficit long term. Obama and the democrats do not have a plan. The Ryan plan makes changes to the medical funding, if I'm not mistaken. Also, tax rate decreases DO increase total revenue (at least to a point).
Tax decreases decrease revenues, it was voodoo economics when Reagan proposed it and today its a filthy lie thats been disproven repeatedly. You talk about intellectual dishonesty and then try to make that bogus claim?
Also if we are talking about history, name a powerful empire that has retained its status.
Ryan is a fiscal hawk the way all Republicans are: he wants to give the rich tax cuts, slash the programs for the poor and then when the debt is deeper than ever, rinse and repeat because next time, it'll work. It won't solve any problems, revenues don't appear from the sky. His budget is an awful thing, condemned by everyone from the Catholic church to most economists and the CBO as either morally flawed or full of bullshit, or both.
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Ryan vs Biden is going to be interesting....
Ryan = all numbers
Biden = all yelling/passion
Pretty sure Biden will get outclassed in debates
Edit: On a side note Ryan is much firmer on his principles than Romney, but I guess anyone would qualify for that
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On August 12 2012 00:00 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 23:54 Signet wrote:On August 11 2012 23:38 radiatoren wrote:
Ahhh, but then we are getting into the field of mandate distribution (which europeans have been thundering about for ages): It is inherently unfair to make a winner takes it all since it favours the preelection assignment of nominees for 80+% of the population (red state, blue state, nothing inbetween). A mandate representation is the only way to make each vote worth more in the coloured states (the more mandates, the greater the resolution and the greater the value of each vote!). The mandates does not even have to be real people in the primaries since they are just a way of assigning value to votes.
In Denmark and Netherlands (among about 26 other democracies) we see a D'hondt system of assigning mandates and it gets to be a good distribution for the majority parties even though it basically is direct percentage assignment.
Sainte-Laguë is an improvement for the minorities and is therefore far less used. Denmark (Yes, Denmark uses both for every general election! It is obviously extremely complicated to find a winner of an election), Germany, Sweden and Norway are examples of countries using it.
In US primaries it is a more or less a random system of mandate distribution depending on the state and party.
In terms of primaries, USA is fortunately moving away from winner takes it all and caucases to higher resolution techniques. Now it only needs to happen in the house of representation elections too and US is on its way to becoming a modern democracy! I agree that this is a problem, however the two most likely changes that have been put on ballots in the US don't make the system better. One is to split the electoral votes by congressional district, the way Maine and Nebraska do already. The problem here is that our districts are extremely gerrymandered so whichever party most recently drew the maps will have an enormous advantage. The other is to split the electoral votes by proportion, rounding to the nearest vote. This was proposed in Colorado back in 2004, but the ballot measure was defeated. The problem with this is - say a state is worth 3 electoral votes. In most circumstances, it will split 2-1. A state worth 4 electoral votes will split 2-2 in most circumstances. A state worth 5 will split 3-2, a state worth 6 will split 3-3. Only the really large (or extremely partisan) states will deviate from this. That makes it valuable to win the states with an odd number of electoral votes, and worthless to win a state worth an even number of electoral votes. Going to a direct popular vote doesn't seem that likely, since such changes are far easier to block than to implement. See but that just shows the underlying problem with American elections. If most states would go 50-50 then are are currently excluding the opinion of a little under half your population.
I don't really agree with that.
What's the difference between a national popular vote, versus an electoral college where the entire US is one "state" worth 538 electoral votes? Nothing. They would always produce the same result given the same set of individual votes; therefore they are the same thing.
But by what you're saying, the one mega-state scenario "excludes the opinion" of a little under half of the population. Therefore the popular vote does the same thing.
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On August 12 2012 00:18 CajunMan wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2012 00:00 Gorsameth wrote:On August 11 2012 23:54 Signet wrote:On August 11 2012 23:38 radiatoren wrote:
Ahhh, but then we are getting into the field of mandate distribution (which europeans have been thundering about for ages): It is inherently unfair to make a winner takes it all since it favours the preelection assignment of nominees for 80+% of the population (red state, blue state, nothing inbetween). A mandate representation is the only way to make each vote worth more in the coloured states (the more mandates, the greater the resolution and the greater the value of each vote!). The mandates does not even have to be real people in the primaries since they are just a way of assigning value to votes.
In Denmark and Netherlands (among about 26 other democracies) we see a D'hondt system of assigning mandates and it gets to be a good distribution for the majority parties even though it basically is direct percentage assignment.
Sainte-Laguë is an improvement for the minorities and is therefore far less used. Denmark (Yes, Denmark uses both for every general election! It is obviously extremely complicated to find a winner of an election), Germany, Sweden and Norway are examples of countries using it.
In US primaries it is a more or less a random system of mandate distribution depending on the state and party.
In terms of primaries, USA is fortunately moving away from winner takes it all and caucases to higher resolution techniques. Now it only needs to happen in the house of representation elections too and US is on its way to becoming a modern democracy! I agree that this is a problem, however the two most likely changes that have been put on ballots in the US don't make the system better. One is to split the electoral votes by congressional district, the way Maine and Nebraska do already. The problem here is that our districts are extremely gerrymandered so whichever party most recently drew the maps will have an enormous advantage. The other is to split the electoral votes by proportion, rounding to the nearest vote. This was proposed in Colorado back in 2004, but the ballot measure was defeated. The problem with this is - say a state is worth 3 electoral votes. In most circumstances, it will split 2-1. A state worth 4 electoral votes will split 2-2 in most circumstances. A state worth 5 will split 3-2, a state worth 6 will split 3-3. Only the really large (or extremely partisan) states will deviate from this. That makes it valuable to win the states with an odd number of electoral votes, and worthless to win a state worth an even number of electoral votes. Going to a direct popular vote doesn't seem that likely, since such changes are far easier to block than to implement. See but that just shows the underlying problem with American elections. If most states would go 50-50 then are are currently excluding the opinion of a little under half your population. But the thing is the US is a Republic not a Democracy so its a little different the president like the House and Senate only represent majorities from all over. So Senators represent majorities of states, Representatives are areas of states, and the president is the majority of the country usually. (with the electoral college its not always but most of the time the go the same or close to the same way) I do agree parts of it are pretty bad if it were up to me we'd keep the system but states wouldn't be winner take all it'd actually matter how well you did from each party. That would make swing states a lot less important because even if you lost you could still carry large portions of them but have majorities in all the smaller states and win.
Republic and Democracy do not exclude each other. You have a representative democracy with a president as head of state and a majority voting system ("winner takes it all").
Wiki says it's a constitutional republic and that's right.
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On August 12 2012 00:29 biology]major wrote:
Ryan vs Biden is going to be interesting....
Ryan = all numbers
Biden = all yelling/passion
Pretty sure Biden will get outclassed in debates
I'm pretty sure numbers mean nothing to the majority of people who vote in elections. Just saying.
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On August 12 2012 00:26 TheFrankOne wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 15:49 BluePanther wrote:
when i say serious, I mean as it's the only one that has a realistic chance of being passed. It's also detailed and fleshed out more than any other plan. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's the only option currently on the table aimed at balancing the deficit long term. Obama and the democrats do not have a plan.
The Ryan plan makes changes to the medical funding, if I'm not mistaken. Also, tax rate decreases DO increase total revenue (at least to a point). Tax decreases decrease revenues, it was voodoo economics when Reagan proposed it and today its a filthy lie thats been disproven repeatedly. You talk about intellectual dishonesty and then try to make that bogus claim? Also if we are talking about history, name a powerful empire that has retained its status. Ryan is a fiscal hawk the way all Republicans are: he wants to give the rich tax cuts, slash the programs for the poor and then when the debt is deeper than ever, rinse and repeat because next time, it'll work. It won't solve any problems, revenues don't appear from the sky. His budget is an awful thing, condemned by everyone from the Catholic church to most economists and the CBO as either morally flawed or full of bullshit, or both.
I think it can be done - for example if taxes were 95% of income, decreasing that to 80% would surely cause a huge amount of economic growth, enough to offset the cut.
However, the US is likely not at rates high enough for these kind of effects to appear. Looking at the recent tax cuts, if you adjust for inflation, only in 2006 and 2007 did federal revenue equal the amount that was brought in in 2000.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
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On August 12 2012 00:34 Signet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2012 00:26 TheFrankOne wrote:On August 11 2012 15:49 BluePanther wrote:
when i say serious, I mean as it's the only one that has a realistic chance of being passed. It's also detailed and fleshed out more than any other plan. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's the only option currently on the table aimed at balancing the deficit long term. Obama and the democrats do not have a plan.
The Ryan plan makes changes to the medical funding, if I'm not mistaken. Also, tax rate decreases DO increase total revenue (at least to a point). Tax decreases decrease revenues, it was voodoo economics when Reagan proposed it and today its a filthy lie thats been disproven repeatedly. You talk about intellectual dishonesty and then try to make that bogus claim? Also if we are talking about history, name a powerful empire that has retained its status. Ryan is a fiscal hawk the way all Republicans are: he wants to give the rich tax cuts, slash the programs for the poor and then when the debt is deeper than ever, rinse and repeat because next time, it'll work. It won't solve any problems, revenues don't appear from the sky. His budget is an awful thing, condemned by everyone from the Catholic church to most economists and the CBO as either morally flawed or full of bullshit, or both. I think it can be done - for example if taxes were 95% of income, decreasing that to 80% would surely cause a huge amount of economic growth, enough to offset the cut. However, the US is likely not at rates high enough for these kind of effects to appear. Looking at the recent tax cuts, if you adjust for inflation, only in 2006 and 2007 did federal revenue equal the amount that was brought in in 2000. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
I don't really have a problem with that theory in general, and taxes have a dead-weight loss effect on the economy. In practice tax cuts at higher rates have failed to actually do that. Since taxes are lower now than they were when it was tried before, the plan is obviously full of fail.
The plan is also inherently nonstimulative, it raises taxes on those with a lower marginal propensity to consume while cutting them for those with a lower propensity. Its awful policy, I'd really like someone to show me it isn't but Republicans seem to have no capability to present rational fiscal proposals.
"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." Thomas Sowell
To use the (retarded and awful) comparison to a family budget people seem to love, if you make less but then don't offset that entirely, it leads to more debt. For encouraging economic activity, deficit financed tax cuts are better if you aren't concerned with targeting economic activity but they don't magically balance the budget in practice.
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On August 12 2012 00:31 Doublemint wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2012 00:18 CajunMan wrote:On August 12 2012 00:00 Gorsameth wrote:On August 11 2012 23:54 Signet wrote:On August 11 2012 23:38 radiatoren wrote:
Ahhh, but then we are getting into the field of mandate distribution (which europeans have been thundering about for ages): It is inherently unfair to make a winner takes it all since it favours the preelection assignment of nominees for 80+% of the population (red state, blue state, nothing inbetween). A mandate representation is the only way to make each vote worth more in the coloured states (the more mandates, the greater the resolution and the greater the value of each vote!). The mandates does not even have to be real people in the primaries since they are just a way of assigning value to votes.
In Denmark and Netherlands (among about 26 other democracies) we see a D'hondt system of assigning mandates and it gets to be a good distribution for the majority parties even though it basically is direct percentage assignment.
Sainte-Laguë is an improvement for the minorities and is therefore far less used. Denmark (Yes, Denmark uses both for every general election! It is obviously extremely complicated to find a winner of an election), Germany, Sweden and Norway are examples of countries using it.
In US primaries it is a more or less a random system of mandate distribution depending on the state and party.
In terms of primaries, USA is fortunately moving away from winner takes it all and caucases to higher resolution techniques. Now it only needs to happen in the house of representation elections too and US is on its way to becoming a modern democracy! I agree that this is a problem, however the two most likely changes that have been put on ballots in the US don't make the system better. One is to split the electoral votes by congressional district, the way Maine and Nebraska do already. The problem here is that our districts are extremely gerrymandered so whichever party most recently drew the maps will have an enormous advantage. The other is to split the electoral votes by proportion, rounding to the nearest vote. This was proposed in Colorado back in 2004, but the ballot measure was defeated. The problem with this is - say a state is worth 3 electoral votes. In most circumstances, it will split 2-1. A state worth 4 electoral votes will split 2-2 in most circumstances. A state worth 5 will split 3-2, a state worth 6 will split 3-3. Only the really large (or extremely partisan) states will deviate from this. That makes it valuable to win the states with an odd number of electoral votes, and worthless to win a state worth an even number of electoral votes. Going to a direct popular vote doesn't seem that likely, since such changes are far easier to block than to implement. See but that just shows the underlying problem with American elections. If most states would go 50-50 then are are currently excluding the opinion of a little under half your population. But the thing is the US is a Republic not a Democracy so its a little different the president like the House and Senate only represent majorities from all over. So Senators represent majorities of states, Representatives are areas of states, and the president is the majority of the country usually. (with the electoral college its not always but most of the time the go the same or close to the same way) I do agree parts of it are pretty bad if it were up to me we'd keep the system but states wouldn't be winner take all it'd actually matter how well you did from each party. That would make swing states a lot less important because even if you lost you could still carry large portions of them but have majorities in all the smaller states and win. Republic and Democracy do not exclude each other. You have a representative democracy with a president as head of state and a majority voting system ("winner takes it all"). Wiki says it's a constitutional republic and that's right.
That's what I said but Constitutional Republic does not equal Democracy.
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On August 12 2012 00:53 CajunMan wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2012 00:31 Doublemint wrote:On August 12 2012 00:18 CajunMan wrote:On August 12 2012 00:00 Gorsameth wrote:On August 11 2012 23:54 Signet wrote:On August 11 2012 23:38 radiatoren wrote:
Ahhh, but then we are getting into the field of mandate distribution (which europeans have been thundering about for ages): It is inherently unfair to make a winner takes it all since it favours the preelection assignment of nominees for 80+% of the population (red state, blue state, nothing inbetween). A mandate representation is the only way to make each vote worth more in the coloured states (the more mandates, the greater the resolution and the greater the value of each vote!). The mandates does not even have to be real people in the primaries since they are just a way of assigning value to votes.
In Denmark and Netherlands (among about 26 other democracies) we see a D'hondt system of assigning mandates and it gets to be a good distribution for the majority parties even though it basically is direct percentage assignment.
Sainte-Laguë is an improvement for the minorities and is therefore far less used. Denmark (Yes, Denmark uses both for every general election! It is obviously extremely complicated to find a winner of an election), Germany, Sweden and Norway are examples of countries using it.
In US primaries it is a more or less a random system of mandate distribution depending on the state and party.
In terms of primaries, USA is fortunately moving away from winner takes it all and caucases to higher resolution techniques. Now it only needs to happen in the house of representation elections too and US is on its way to becoming a modern democracy! I agree that this is a problem, however the two most likely changes that have been put on ballots in the US don't make the system better. One is to split the electoral votes by congressional district, the way Maine and Nebraska do already. The problem here is that our districts are extremely gerrymandered so whichever party most recently drew the maps will have an enormous advantage. The other is to split the electoral votes by proportion, rounding to the nearest vote. This was proposed in Colorado back in 2004, but the ballot measure was defeated. The problem with this is - say a state is worth 3 electoral votes. In most circumstances, it will split 2-1. A state worth 4 electoral votes will split 2-2 in most circumstances. A state worth 5 will split 3-2, a state worth 6 will split 3-3. Only the really large (or extremely partisan) states will deviate from this. That makes it valuable to win the states with an odd number of electoral votes, and worthless to win a state worth an even number of electoral votes. Going to a direct popular vote doesn't seem that likely, since such changes are far easier to block than to implement. See but that just shows the underlying problem with American elections. If most states would go 50-50 then are are currently excluding the opinion of a little under half your population. But the thing is the US is a Republic not a Democracy so its a little different the president like the House and Senate only represent majorities from all over. So Senators represent majorities of states, Representatives are areas of states, and the president is the majority of the country usually. (with the electoral college its not always but most of the time the go the same or close to the same way) I do agree parts of it are pretty bad if it were up to me we'd keep the system but states wouldn't be winner take all it'd actually matter how well you did from each party. That would make swing states a lot less important because even if you lost you could still carry large portions of them but have majorities in all the smaller states and win. Republic and Democracy do not exclude each other. You have a representative democracy with a president as head of state and a majority voting system ("winner takes it all"). Wiki says it's a constitutional republic and that's right. That's what I said but Constitutional Republic does not equal Democracy.
You are thinking of the use of "democracy" studied in political philosophy. The U.S. is a democracy according to the definition of the word both featured in dictionaries and used in political science.
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lol paul ryan, at least its not as hilarious as palin was
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On August 11 2012 21:34 Vega62a wrote:
I think the larger conversation that the country needs to have - by which I mean, that the democrats need to force - is whether or not we consider the government to be more than just a business concerned with maintaining a balanced budget, or whether it can honestly be a force for good, not just for low taxes.
That strategy would lose, and it would lose big. There is a reason dems don't run on that platform unless they are in districts they KNOW they can win despite running like that.
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On August 12 2012 00:18 CajunMan wrote:
That would make swing states a lot less important because even if you lost you could still carry large portions of them but have majorities in all the smaller states and win.
That's exactly why most states do winner-take-all. They like to be important. The states are welcome to allocate their votes in any manner they choose.
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress"
Most states just let the winning party in the Pres vote select all the delegates. But there's nothing that says it can't be done in different ways.
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On August 11 2012 23:16 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 22:56 CajunMan wrote:On August 11 2012 22:53 oneofthem wrote:
so between bat shit crazy and really fucking crazy, what a decision to be made for the vp If that's what you call him what is Biden lul? Pretty moderate, and very experienced?
LOL what? Biden is not a moderate.
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On August 11 2012 23:31 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 15:00 sam!zdat wrote:On August 11 2012 14:58 BluePanther wrote:On August 11 2012 14:31 sam!zdat wrote:On August 11 2012 14:26 xDaunt wrote:On August 11 2012 14:21 sam!zdat wrote:
Can you explain the thinking behind that position? I don't really understand. Is it because of demographic that is skewed in terms of military-related employment? The military is the most respected government institution in the country. Among conservatives, there is a very strong sense of patriotism, if not outright nationalism. We want a strong military, we like knowing that our troops are the best in the world, and we want to keep it that way. Do you have a recommended way to dissuade people from this absurd ideology? edit: I mean, I feel like we already had ww1, it was fun and all, but more of that? name one powerful empire in the history of the world that got it's status without a renown military. one. go. I'm kinda against the whole "powerful empire" thing Have you heard of the Pax Americana?
Nope. Last I checked, "Pax" meant "peace," and I haven't seen much of that around lately.
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On August 12 2012 01:34 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 23:31 DoubleReed wrote:On August 11 2012 15:00 sam!zdat wrote:On August 11 2012 14:58 BluePanther wrote:On August 11 2012 14:31 sam!zdat wrote:On August 11 2012 14:26 xDaunt wrote:On August 11 2012 14:21 sam!zdat wrote:
Can you explain the thinking behind that position? I don't really understand. Is it because of demographic that is skewed in terms of military-related employment? The military is the most respected government institution in the country. Among conservatives, there is a very strong sense of patriotism, if not outright nationalism. We want a strong military, we like knowing that our troops are the best in the world, and we want to keep it that way. Do you have a recommended way to dissuade people from this absurd ideology? edit: I mean, I feel like we already had ww1, it was fun and all, but more of that? name one powerful empire in the history of the world that got it's status without a renown military. one. go. I'm kinda against the whole "powerful empire" thing Have you heard of the Pax Americana? Nope. Last I checked, "Pax" meant "peace," and I haven't seen much of that around lately.
That's because its a dated reference that applies to the period between the civil war and WW1. The time period where we obtained several colonies through war and then went on to fight wars against those colonies.
American peace is a little different than what most people think of as peace.
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Well doesnt it originaly come from the Roman empire which did pretty much the exact same thing?
Sounds like a correct use of the term to me.
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On August 12 2012 00:34 Signet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2012 00:26 TheFrankOne wrote:On August 11 2012 15:49 BluePanther wrote:
when i say serious, I mean as it's the only one that has a realistic chance of being passed. It's also detailed and fleshed out more than any other plan. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's the only option currently on the table aimed at balancing the deficit long term. Obama and the democrats do not have a plan.
The Ryan plan makes changes to the medical funding, if I'm not mistaken. Also, tax rate decreases DO increase total revenue (at least to a point). Tax decreases decrease revenues, it was voodoo economics when Reagan proposed it and today its a filthy lie thats been disproven repeatedly. You talk about intellectual dishonesty and then try to make that bogus claim? Also if we are talking about history, name a powerful empire that has retained its status. Ryan is a fiscal hawk the way all Republicans are: he wants to give the rich tax cuts, slash the programs for the poor and then when the debt is deeper than ever, rinse and repeat because next time, it'll work. It won't solve any problems, revenues don't appear from the sky. His budget is an awful thing, condemned by everyone from the Catholic church to most economists and the CBO as either morally flawed or full of bullshit, or both. I think it can be done - for example if taxes were 95% of income, decreasing that to 80% would surely cause a huge amount of economic growth, enough to offset the cut. However, the US is likely not at rates high enough for these kind of effects to appear. Looking at the recent tax cuts, if you adjust for inflation, only in 2006 and 2007 did federal revenue equal the amount that was brought in in 2000. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
Revenue as a percentage of GDP would still go down. The only revenue increase would come in the absolute form of total dollars.
The real problem is that each "stimulative" action by the government, including tax breaks, have different economic returns. When the government is getting in the way of private investment and consumption via taxes and regulation, reducing them would give economic gains far larger than the cost to the government. The thing is, we tried this with the stimulus package. One third of it was tax breaks, and analysis showed that most of the tax breaks had a benefit to cost ratio of less than one. On the flip side, the spending programs were hitting ratios in the 1.5-2 range.
http://mediamatters.org/mobile/research/2012/06/14/us-could-use-more-infrastructure-spending-not-l/158635
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EPT
