patrick.net

HousingWatcher says

Why do you support cutting the estate tax Ray?

Why should the government have a claim on your estate when you die? What has accumulated in an estate (for the most part) has already been taxed. Why do liberals love taxation so much? What exactly is it?

RayAmerica says

The goal is to reduce the deficit by massive spending cuts

Fine. You're 1/3 of the way there with your plan. What's your plan to get the other 2/3?

"The goal is to reduce the deficit by massive spending cuts."

If that is the goal, then you have failed miserably. First off, foreign aid and earmarks make up about 1% of the budget. Way too small to have an impact. You also said to end the bailouts, but those already ended last year. You can't balance the budget by cutting phantom spending.

FYI: You could cut ALL domestic spending to ZERO and you would still have a $1 trillion deficit. Not to mention that Social Security and Medicare have about $100 Trillion in unfunded liabilities. That's right, $100 trillion. And you honestly think your going to make a difference by cutting earmarks and the Dept. of Education?

In Ray's conservative utopia, we will get things like this:

Florida Senate approves business tax cut that shrinks unemployment benefits

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/03/2199530/florida-senate-approves-business.html#ixzz1Ln6TXE2u

Apparently Ray supports wealth re-distribution just like liberal Democrats do, except that he wants wealth re-distribution in the opposite direction... from the bottom to the top.

Liberals beleive in raising taxes. Conservatives beleive in cutting spending. But there is a 3rd way to reduce the deficit, which is the way the Fed believes in: Substantially devaluating the dollar. We could pay off our debt in useless dollars worth 75% less than the dollar is currently worth.

HousingWatcher says

But there is a 3rd way to reduce the deficit

Nope. 1970s-style inflation would stiff our debt-holders, but do nothing for the deficit.

Plus if our bond rates start going up due to inflationary feedback, we've got to pay interest on $10T+ of debt (plus another $4T+ held in trust) and much of our debt is pretty short-term and thus we're vulnerable to interest rate shocks.

Going forward our dominant expenses are going to be feeding our war machine ($1T/yr), Welfare State ($1T/yr), retirees ($1T/yr) and Medicare ($1T/yr).

Can't inflate our way out of those -- gonna have to raise taxes.

HousingWatcher says

Apparently Ray supports wealth re-distribution just like liberal Democrats do, except that he wants wealth re-distribution in the opposite direction… from the bottom to the top.

TBH, neither the dems nor the republicans really understand anything. We might as well call them Blue Team and Red Team for all the real-world signficance they have.

The Red Team rightfully fears that the US will make the mistakes of Greece, Spain, and the other socialist economies of Southern Europe. These economies over-promised benefits to all and under-taxed to provide it, and now all of them are screwed.

What the Red Team steadfastly eliminate from their understanding, though, is that there is a Northern Europe tier of states that actually did establish this high-tax / high-service economy, and these demonstrably work well.

The bottom line, of course, is that if you're rich you want to keep your loot and not actually pay the progressive tax burden that the rich of the Nordic countries shoulder.

So they argue for cutting back the socialism we have now, to defend their own economic interests.

Technically, we could actually raise taxes on everyone, not just the rich like the Blue Team wants -- "widening the base" as it were. What would happen over time, I think, is all these extra taxes would just come out of rents and land values, which is why I'm a tax proponent.

Raise payroll taxes to FULLY cover people's health and pensions, like they do up in Communist Canada. Raise taxes across the board to pay for the national security state (the top 20% of this country make over half of the income, so they'll be on the hook for most of it anyway).

I think we'd see rents and home price fall dollar for dollar. Win win!

Well, in honor of Mother's Day, I'll share my story. I realize this is adecdotal and maybe some of the suggestions in this thread that statistics show welfare doesn't work might be connected to information with which I'd agree. Still, I was born to a teenage mother who, at the time, was a waitress at Pizza Hut. After a divorce with my father, she struggled. Her struggles resulted in a personal bankruptcy even though by that point she'd worked her way up to a supervisor position at a bank. She moved my sister and me to a small town where she began to waitress at a truck stop. I've not asked about many of the details, but now that I know how people sometimes struggle through their twenties, especially as a single parent, I figure she was just finding the weight of her responsibilities difficult.

Around this time, I remember our family beginning to use food stamps. We ate very simply. My mom developed strong habits around using coupons and buying sales. From what I remember, we only used food stamps for a short time as my mother once again worked into a job as an assistant to a small CPA firm.

Her example and responsibility eventually(there's much more to the story), led to me being the first in my immediate family to start and finish a Bachelor's Degree after high school. My sister would do the same. My mom and dad also both went back to school and got Bachelor Degrees.

Now I realize it might take someone like my mom, to whom, of course, I think few compare, but just wanted to relate a success story for welfare as they don't often come up in discussions like this one.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

>Raise payroll taxes to FULLY cover people’s health and pensions, like they do up in *Communist Canada*.

LoL! I know many Americans think like this...