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Poll Finds Americans Favor Ending Tax Cuts


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I realize this is Wikipedia, but its not contrary to what I learned in Economics1301...

"Economists generally agree that high rates of inflation and hyperinflation are caused by an excessive growth of the money supply.[6] Views on which factors determine low to moderate rates of inflation are more varied. Low or moderate inflation may be attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services, or changes in available supplies such as during scarcities, as well as to growth in the money supply. However, the consensus view is that a long sustained period of inflation is caused by money supply growing faster than the rate of economic growth.

In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. "

all true.

So, yeah, it does affect me and everyone else because the dollar that went so far just 5-10 years ago isn't worth crap now...

that inflation happened years ago. Decades in fact.

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Just curious, but who exactly did the Pew Research Center interview in terms of those to participated in the poll? Was it business professionals who are involved in accounting, economists, CFO's of small and large scale businesses, or did they interview a bunch of chimps who had no idea what they were talking about? Chances are, the latter. Take this poll with a grain of salt.

The only thing that worries me is the principle of **** flowing downhill. The rich usually find creative ways to dodge tax hikes, which ends up nailing the middle class in different ways. So, in essence, there isn't really much of a point.

Edited by Spid3rCyd3
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No that's not what I said. I said if we print more money that would be a bad thing and that there would be monetary consequences by the government, FED, etc. that have not happened.

I apologize if I mis-stated your position. I thought I asked you if you thought that the US couldn't go bankrupt because we can print as much money as we need and you replied yes. I then asked if you were serious and again you replied yes.

So why can't we (the USA) go bankrupt? If you say because we can print as much money as we need, then I have to go back to my original statement of your position, which you said is incorrect.

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While some of you continue with your pizzing contest, let me give you some historical data to ponder over.

The Roman Empire lasted approx. 1,000 years. Let's look at just the final 75 years to examine some of the more important factors which lead to the great disaster and total colapse of Roman civilation.

75 years before the colapse, a roman coin could buy you a horse. A year before the colapse, you would need 50 roman coins to buy a horse.

In this 75 year timeframe, the rich got richer and the poor required more assistance. The Roman Empire was able to manage the population by giving them free pork and bread. To help keep the peace, the Empire furnished free entertainment with circuses and arena competitions. As the years went by, the Empire could not keep up with the costs and in the end ran out of money and the masses rebeled and/or left to find a way to survive. This inflation also extended to other aspects of the Empire such as the military. Fewer and fewer coins to train let alone hire new troops.

Let's look at the United States of America.

In 1950, $1 could buy you a widget. In 2010 it would cost you $50 to buy the same widget. Look familiar?

You can check my facts by reading about the fall of the Roman Empire and looking up the historical value of the dollar.

We currently have 50% of our population that requires some form of government (Empire) assistance. Sound like the Romans?

If our dollar colapses overnight, we could see milk selling for $50 per gallon, then you will see the total colapse of our civilation. Just like the Romans, it will be every man for himself and a new dark age will emerge.

Edited by Pyridium
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Give it up. Ninja is convinced that we can just print as much money as we need with no consequences to speak of. Why he would think this when all, and I do mean all, the historical evidence says otherwise is beyond me.

Well. Printing as much money as you want would be kind of rude.

That said - the American Money supply increased by around a Trillion dollars last year. As you can see - the entire American money supply has doubled a couple of times since the 1980's.

M2_Max_630_378.png

In short - given 15 or so years, the money supply will naturally expand by an amount able to cover today's government debts, without any inflationary effects over and above the ones that are currently in play.

Given that the dollar is still the world's reserve currency - then the only way, realistically, that the United States will go bankrupt is if the people ever elected a Congress that refused to raise the debt ceiling, which would cause America to become de facto bankrupt.

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Man Tiggs, that chart is disturbing. The line should be going down instead of up. <_<

Why would you want deflation to happen?

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Given that the dollar is still the world's reserve currency - then the only way, realistically, that the United States will go bankrupt is if the people ever elected a Congress that refused to raise the debt ceiling, which would cause America to become de facto bankrupt.

What he said more clearly than I. In fact, not raising the debt ceiling is voluntarily not paying your bills. An immoral event. Immoral as in Congress not doing it's job. Maybe even impeachable or recall elections for members of Congress. And again there are other remedies the executive branch could invoke in that case. The possibility of this de facto bankruptcy is remote indeed.

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What he said more clearly than I. In fact, not raising the debt ceiling is voluntarily not paying your bills. An immoral event. Immoral as in Congress not doing it's job. Maybe even impeachable or recall elections for members of Congress. And again there are other remedies the executive branch could invoke in that case. The possibility of this de facto bankruptcy is remote indeed.

Or we cut the budget and do not need to raise the debt ceiling. If I had a credit card and I maxed it out should I ask them to raise my limit or spend less. They might agree to raise my limit, but if my spending continues to out pace my income, all I am doing is getting into a deeper hole. At some pint they will refuse to raise my limit. Then what? When trying to get out of a hole the first step is to stop digging.

As for the US dollar being the world's reserve currency, what if that changes? Wasn't the English pound once the reserve currency? I bet the English never thought they would see it replaced either.

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Man Tiggs, that chart is disturbing. The line should be going down instead of up. <_<

If it goes down the economy is either shrinking or the Fed is provoking a deflation. The reason why there are (supposedly) independent central banks is to provide the amount of money in circulation to neither under or oversupply the demand by the economy.

That is, until the politicians started "stimulating" the economy by printing more money...

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Or we cut the budget and do not need to raise the debt ceiling. If I had a credit card and I maxed it out should I ask them to raise my limit or spend less. They might agree to raise my limit, but if my spending continues to out pace my income, all I am doing is getting into a deeper hole. At some pint they will refuse to raise my limit. Then what? When trying to get out of a hole the first step is to stop digging.

The debt ceiling is not a credit limit and cutting the budget would do nothing. These are debts already acquired. The analogy is that you have 1000.00 in debts and refuse to pay.

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Raising the Debt Ceiling does not have anything to do with the Budgeted minimum payments the US makes. That is considered Untouchable, like Social Security. If more was needed to make that payment, then other things would have to be lowered, like military spending. The Deficit is only connected to the Debt in that it is money being spent that the US Fed Gov does not have. Making cuts in the Budgets Discresionary Spending totally would lower the Deficit and thus reduce the astounding fast growth of the National Debt and thus would reduce future Debt payments.

Not raising the Ceiling is not automatically going to hurt the Debt Payment. That is leftist Propaganda. And Democrat versus Republican politics. Like Medicare, it will always be paid, even if the Debt Ceiling is not raised. They would simply have to cut the military entirely and all other discresionary spending.

If what you are saying is that even with the discresionary spending being cut,that not raising the Debt Ceiling will prevent the Debt payments from being paid, then this nation is in too much hurt already, and there would be no point to the illusion of the ceiling at that point.

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The debt ceiling is not a credit limit and cutting the budget would do nothing. These are debts already acquired. The analogy is that you have 1000.00 in debts and refuse to pay.

Cutting the budget would do nothing? How about it would save money so we wouldn't need to raise the debt ceiling. The analogy is that if I had a 1000.00 in debts I need to spend less and pay off my debts. Not just keeping spending more and passing my debts to my offspring. This is what I understand least. Most libs say they are all about the kids, yet are willing to stick them with our massive debt. All for the kids my ass, it is all about them.

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Cutting the budget would do nothing? How about it would save money so we wouldn't need to raise the debt ceiling.

Nothing as far as the debt ceiling goes. The debt celing is for money ALREADY spent.

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Nothing as far as the debt ceiling goes. The debt celing is for money ALREADY spent.

And if they had spent less we wouldn't need to raise the ceiling, right? I thought raising the debt ceiling was to pay for the current budget. Are you saying that if we had no additional spending this fiscal year (not possible I know) we would still need to raise the debt limit? In other words we don't take in enough money to pay for the things we already "bought"? If that is true then we need to "return" some of our purchases. I just do not think it is possible to continue to spend more than we make.

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Not raising the Ceiling is not automatically going to hurt the Debt Payment. That is leftist Propaganda. And Democrat versus Republican politics.

Even a technical default is likely to have dire consequences for the US economy.

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I'm confused about something. All the talk I hear is about balancing the budget / closing the debt deficit. Is there a plan to pay part of that money down? I don't hear anyone saying "let's bring down the debt from 15 trillion to 6 trillion" or anything like that. Due to compound interest, is it going to be 100 trillion in another 30 years? What would eventually happen? Many times in history when a country's debt got too high they've invaded whoever they owed the money to in order to erase the debt :hmm: At any rate, this seems unsustainable and no one seems to care.

Edited by ranrod
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I'm confused about something. All the talk I hear is about balancing the budget / closing the debt deficit. Is there a plan to pay part of that money down? I don't hear anyone saying "let's bring down the debt from 15 trillion to 6 trillion" or anything like that. Due to compound interest, is it going to be 100 trillion in another 30 years? What would eventually happen? Many times in history when a country's debt got too high they've invaded whoever they owed the money to in order to erase the debt :hmm: At any rate, this seems unsustainable and no one seems to care.

Ron Paul was always talking about that. And he basically wanted to cut all Departments of the Government by 1/3rd and eliminate many wholesale. And he was going to half the military and end military research.

The Deficit is so big that fixing that alone is a humungous task. The current Budget (2012) has about 2.5 Trillion of Revenues, and 3.8 of Expenditures. So Expenditures are 1.50% of Revenue. That is scary enough, don't you think?

To reduce the Debt, we'd need to get to something like 2.5 Trillion in Revenues and 2.0 Trillion in Expenditures. That would leave 500 billion to go to the Debt, and then we'd have it paid off in like 25 years (given compounding interest) at that rate. But that would require cutting government spending in Half!!

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Ron Paul was always talking about that. And he basically wanted to cut all Departments of the Government by 1/3rd and eliminate many wholesale. And he was going to half the military and end military research.

The Deficit is so big that fixing that alone is a humungous task. The current Budget (2012) has about 2.5 Trillion of Revenues, and 3.8 of Expenditures. So Expenditures are 1.50% of Revenue. That is scary enough, don't you think?

To reduce the Debt, we'd need to get to something like 2.5 Trillion in Revenues and 2.0 Trillion in Expenditures. That would leave 500 billion to go to the Debt, and then we'd have it paid off in like 25 years (given compounding interest) at that rate. But that would require cutting government spending in Half!!

Hmmm.... would 500 billion a year be enough to pay off more than the interest on the debt? What is the yearly interest on 15 trillion, anyway? :D

I totally agree with you, spending has to be cut significantly in order to get anywhere on paying down the debt.

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The current payment on the National Debt... really just a payment on the interest... is 225 Billion. So yeah, 500 billion would cover that.

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Ron Paul was always talking about that. And he basically wanted to cut all Departments of the Government by 1/3rd and eliminate many wholesale. And he was going to half the military and end military research.

The Deficit is so big that fixing that alone is a humungous task. The current Budget (2012) has about 2.5 Trillion of Revenues, and 3.8 of Expenditures. So Expenditures are 1.50% of Revenue. That is scary enough, don't you think?

To reduce the Debt, we'd need to get to something like 2.5 Trillion in Revenues and 2.0 Trillion in Expenditures. That would leave 500 billion to go to the Debt, and then we'd have it paid off in like 25 years (given compounding interest) at that rate. But that would require cutting government spending in Half!!

Is anyone other than Ron Paul talking about paying down the debt (even if to a manageable degree), rather than reach equilibrium? I'm told zero debt is also bad. I don't know what an appropriate amount of debt is.

What about a compromise? Increase revenue to 3.0 Trillion, decrease spending to 2.5 T? I don't hear numbers for debt vs revenue being thrown around. Just quotes like, "zero tax increases", "must reduce spending", "must increase revenue", etc. The general public doesn't get much exposure to the particulars of the politicians' plans.

It does sound like Bush Jr reduced revenues substantially and then when we couldn't pay our bills anymore and the debt started skyrocketing, the republicans cried out, "gee whiz democrats, why are you spending so much?". Meanwhile Bush spent more than Clinton or Obama. Not saying we aren't spending too much, but "starving the beast" as they call it constitutes gambling with our lives. As I understand it, Republicans believe that cutting spending first, then cut revenue will not work because once we have a surplus, politicians will find a way to spend it. So cut revenue first, and as the beast starves politicians will be forced to cut spending to match.

I'm not convinced we're all not just being toyed with by both parties, but what's the solution? I'm not sure Ron Paul is the answer either (not sure in how many states he can be written in to begin with).

Edited by ranrod
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The current payment on the National Debt... really just a payment on the interest... is 225 Billion. So yeah, 500 billion would cover that.

Thanks :)

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Is anyone other than Ron Paul talking about paying down the debt (even if to a manageable degree), rather than reach equilibrium? I'm told zero debt is also bad. I don't know what an appropriate amount of debt is.

What about a compromise? Increase revenue to 3.0 Trillion, decrease spending to 2.5 T? I don't hear numbers for debt vs revenue being thrown around. Just quotes like, "zero tax increases", "must reduce spending", "must increase revenue", etc. The general public doesn't get much exposure to the particulars of the politicians' plans.

It does sound like Bush Jr reduced revenues substantially and then when we couldn't pay our bills anymore and the debt started skyrocketing, the republicans cried out, "gee whiz democrats, why are you spending so much?". Meanwhile Bush spent more than Clinton or Obama. Not saying we aren't spending too much, but "starving the beast" as they call it constitutes gambling with our lives. As I understand it, Republicans believe that cutting spending first, then cut revenue will not work because once we have a surplus, politicians will find a way to spend it. So cut revenue first, and as the beast starves politicians will be forced to cut spending to match.

I'm not convinced we're all not just being toyed with by both parties, but what's the solution? I'm not sure Ron Paul is the answer either (not sure in how many states he can be written in to begin with).

I'm not sure that zero debt would be possible because that would remove some of the more steady and stable investments people use. I think a reasonable goal would be no greater than 40% GDP.

Edited by karmakazi
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I'm not sure that zero debt would be possible because that would remove some of the more steady and stable investments people use. I think a reasonable goal would be no greater than 40% GDP.

Making debt at the cost of all to favor a few capable of investing in it is just a continuation of socialism for the rich.

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Making debt at the cost of all to favor a few capable of investing in it is just a continuation of socialism for the rich.

I'm not talking about a few rich people who enjoy playing the market for the fun of it. I'm talking about people of many different pay grades, who have 401k or retirement plans which frequently include bond investments as a stable long term, low risk growth option. People whose needs will not be covered by social security.

That particular debt, when sold as bonds to US Citizens, pays interest to those citizens and that is how their money is grown. I don't have a problem with that. Debt to foreign countries... yes that should be eliminated.

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