My parents live over there. I live on the other side of sheridan.
On topic: Workers making $30,000 will take a bigger hit on their pay than those earning $500,000 under new fiscal deal
relevant:
CRaaPPP!!!
I kind of knew how much will be taken from my paycheck this week but… $37 (per week) seriously??? The government needs cut back on Section 8 HUD and Food stamps. All these degenertes only need some essentials to live is: cheese, milk, peanut butter, bread and a tent…Stop being a parasite!
I agree! lol. Fucking A…it breaks down to 34% of what I make goes directly to taxes and SS.
And probably 80% of what you make goes indirectly to taxes but that is another story.
Fuck alot of the welfare shit, but also let’s look at the military might and wars we’re forced to pay for. And maybe I’m nuts but I don’t see why the executive branch got raises, before they “saved” us from the fiscal cliff no less.
If “conservatives” that bitch about welfare want the programs to go away they need to start demanding their capitalist bros bring back American jobs.
Tinfoil banter! 
Another often overlooked fun fact about this whole fiscal cliff/deficit debate. The biggest contributor to our current deficit is not the war, nor the social safety net program, nor tax cuts/deductions. It’s the reduced revenue the government is receiving from us being in a recession. So we can argue about tax rates and social programs til we’re blue in the face, but in reality bringing down unemployment whether it’s through government spending or giving companies incentives to bring their operations back to the U.S., should be our highest priority.
We have also paid over a trillion dollars interest to a bank in just the last few years. Riddle me this: How do you pay off interest to a bank when the money you are paying with comes from the bank? Where does the interest money come from?
It sounds like a ponzi scheme, but with only one victim. And that victim has alzheimers.
Well logic would suggest government spending needs to be pruned as their revenues decline, granted fractional reserve lending isn’t exactly logical. Actually from what I understand, Keynes called for a surplus to be built during the good times to cover stimulus spending should a recession hit. The American version of Keynesian economics seems rather bastardized IMO. Government spending if not applied towards developing private sector infrastructure is going to produce inflation. I don’t mean to make this sound simple, this is actually a very delicate situation. If the “capitalists” were to bring their money & jobs back quickly the inflation they would produce would devastate much of middle class and all of the poor.
In recent times tax revenues (even during good times) weren’t extinguishing the interest burden our national debt produced. Easy money borrowed at interest eventually drives serious inflationary issues, interest is an exponential function. What happens when the rates drop to 0%, can we then print enough to cancel out the debt because interest is no longer a factor? Food for thought if nothing else.
There are no words to describe how rediculously insanely pissed off the part in bold makes me. Here we have our government talking about how in dire straits our fiscal situation is in and how important of an issue that is to address, but then give themselves a raise while basically kicking the stone of a problem further down the road (as they repeatedly have) and pass a bill that not only doesn’t resolve our spending issues, but puts us a bunch more trillion dollars further into debt over the next projected decade. “BOY, OH BOY…WE DUN DID SUCH A GOOD JOB AVOIDING THE FISCAL CLIFF WE SHOULD REWARD OURSELVES WITH A RAISE!!!”
I totally agree here, but I feel like it should be a gradual transition to avoid teeter-taughtering(sp?) from one extreme to another like Traders_Base mentioned…
I think we’re in way bigger trouble then our government leads on. We are leveraging our entire country against foreign money, paying back less than accruing interest to foreign economies, and “paying” for our military and governmental funtions using a someone else’s money…the way I see it, we don’t even own america anymore. Interest isn’t going to stop accruing, and with debt continuing to climb the hole is getting deeper and deeper and soon the walls are going to cave in on us.
The problem is that you can’t apply the basic logic of balancing a persons checkbook to balancing the federal budget, that’s like comparing driving to the mall to landing on the moon. Your understanding of it is a basic description of keynesian economics. As far as the American version being bastardized, it really depends how you mean that. There are plenty of American economists who follow traditional keynesian economics, but our government definitely doesn’t listen to them, and it shows in the stimulus spending that they approve. Handing over a big check to banks to keep them from failing is not, and has never been keynesian. If the capitalists brought back their money and jobs quickly the inflation would absolutely have that affect.
As far as the taxes not covering interest, I’m not really surprised. What I can tell from just doing a basic search is that budget surpluses have been pretty rare over the past 40 years. Literally. Since 1970, we’ve only had four years where there was a budget surplus, which was at the tail end of the Clintron administration and were trashed by Bush pretty quickly. Source: How Big is the US Deficit?
Of course we can’t pay the interest on our debts, we can’t even cover the cost of our expenses.
Edit: Another fun fact, in that 28 year stretch from 1970-1997 where we had deficits every year, 9 of those years we had a democrat president, 19 of them we had a Republican. I don’t think they understand the definition of fiscal responsibility.
Here’s the thing about the raises congress got… No ones going to do a fucking thing about it but bitch and moan. Instead people murder firefighters and little preschoolers…
I’d like to see all of congress publicly executed
how do we do something about it? what will YOU do about it? The real problem is no matter how vocal we are the real problem is that information on the candidates that run for these positions is too hard for the average citizen to read up on a candidate and be an informed voter. People end up just checking all the boxes under their registered political party.
It’s also my opinion that truly honest polititians don’t exist because the crooked polititians never let them succeed in becoming a prevelant power in any level of government. I REALLY think our entire governing structure as a country needs a MASSIVE overhaul.
The only thing you can do is vote congress members out of office. That won’t do a whole lot though. Nobody in their right mind would vote against a rise for themselves.
I disagree, people are just lazy. If I can juggle work full time and classes full time while searching for houses I’d think most people workin 9-5 can.
I don’t think honest is the right word to use here, imo it should be whether or not they have the general publics best interest in mind when voting on/submitting bills. And I think there are some that do. The problem is that running a political campaign is fuckin EXPENSIVE. Politicians have to get that money from somewhere, and corporate lobbyists aren’t going to donate to the campaigns of politicians who are going to look out for the interests of the average everyday voter.
This is sadly far too acurate. most people are too lazy to give a shit to elect the right person. The kicker here is these are the positions that really ARE all about the popular vote, there’s no electoral college BS for people to say shit like “meh, my vote doesn’t REALLY count anyways”
^ yeah, you worded that much much better haha. it’s a shame that money really does make the world go 'round.
2012 did it for me, after the election, the fiscal cliff, etc I decided to just be an obedient slave of the NWO.
/tinfoil hat on
Does that happen before or after skynet kills us all?
/tinfoil hat off
The purpose for government in a capitalist society is to fabricate a reasonable money supply, assure government spending goes towards growth producing infrastructure and then work to keep the economy moving in a balanced fashion. Some monetary elasticity is needed to fuel growth, surely. But when a government borrows at interest and injects massive regulation & bloat into the system they facilitate inflation…not growth. Please note I didn’t compare balancing a checkbook to government spending, not sure why that was brought up against me.
Considering we closed the USD’s convertibility to gold in the early 70’s we’ve technically been fundamentally bankrupt since then. For the record I’m not really a gold standard guy, I’m only basing “bankruptcy” on the measures & promises we defaulted on. Any “surplus” our government claims post default is artificial in the eyes of a realist. Clinton planted the seeds of destruction with Greenspan, to paint his presidency in a positive light is comical to me. NAFTA, repeal of Glass Steagall, altering the CPI equation and other questionable economic policy changes suggest Clinton may be the biggest culprit rather than a surplus hero. Bush was also catastrophic, please don’t think I’m favoring parties…our economic problem is VERY bi-partisan!
The bold is where our system has gone HORRIBLY wrong! Anyone that votes for a big budget candidate is a fool that deserves what they get, the problem is this is the majority now. The majority is taking this country down through ignorance, we can’t really blame the corporatocracy when WE elect their henchmen.