G.O.P. Succumbs To Rare Outbreak Of Sanity

Some budget information for FY2013

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budget

The biggest bear by far is welfare.

Department of Health and Human Services including Medicare and Medicaid : 940.9

Next is social security
Social Security Administration : 882.7

Next is Defense
Department of Defense including Overseas Contingency Operations: 672.9

Then a huge drop off with the fourth being interest payments of 246bn USD.

Now some of those other departments also provide some form of welfare or another, DoE is mostly scholarships and university funding for the states.

Now income is:
Individual income tax: 1,359bn
Social Security and other payroll tax: 959
Corporate income tax: 348bn

Then everything else is pennies comparatively. Now social security pays for itself, currently at least. But medicare doesn't and along with defense is taken out of the other tax earnings. We are running a 900bn deficit due to both defense and medicare inflated spending. Defense is largely a mixture of inflated personal costs and equipment costs related to the wars. Defense spending will go on for a decade after a war close's out due to having to reset and refit all the expended material and pay for the medical and personal costs inherited. Not to mention the R&D programs to develop solutions from exposed problems developed during the fighting. War isn't cheap.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2013USbn_14bs2n_30_051#usgs302

Man - and how long has those Democrats been running the show?


=P

I don't think they are completely incompatible.

I believe in equality of rights and opportunities, but I do not think we are equals. Some of us will always work harder than others and we should be justly rewarded.

That said, I think we should all pay the same tax percentage, with the obvious exception being those who really can't. Those of us who benefit and profit from the laws and safety the government provides have some responsibility to help construct a safety net, a basic standard of living for our poor. Yes some will abuse this safety net, but they are honestly in the vast minority and shouldn't ruin things for the working poor, the poor who simply don't have skills that aren't unnecessary surplus and don't have the means to acquire new ones, the people we should be helping. The people who work just as hard or harder than you and are currently sinking further and further in debt.

Past that, I'm all for any social and economic freedoms as long as they don't infringe on someone else.

The rich who complain about a flat tax saying they're contributing more should simply step back and realize, for the most part they likely wouldn't be rich if not for the conditions afforded them by the American government and the stability it provided them or their progenitors. The system works best when we all pay a set percentage, and that set percentage was fine for you and your forefathers, so you don't get to change your mind about how fair it is after you've benefited from the arrangement.

If anyone wanted to start over from scratch in any unstable, war-torn African country and prove me wrong, be my guest and I'll renounce part of my claim as to their responsibility to pay back for the benefits they received.

yeah I'll get right on that...

because there is nothing I desire more in this world than you renouncing part of your claim... It's what drives me. The hope, the dream that one day you'll give up part of your claim is what keeps me going throughout the day.

Some people focus all their energies on stupid things like work or career or family... when they should really all be focused on you Brain, the most important person in the universe...

/basks in the glow of your awesomeness

Are you HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE or something?

You must be to have missed the point so spectacularly.

yeah... so we're going to need you go ahead and come in for us on saturday... so if you could just fix africa for us then that would be great... mmmmk?... super.

I just might be after reading your post...

And as further proof I continue to be amazed and dumbfounded by the things I read in these threads. Just when I think I have read the stupidest thing anyone could have ever typed there is another post that just blows it out of the water. How can you, on the one hand, be smart enough to type but then only come up the "point" you tried to make. It's astonishing to me. I can't wrap my head around it.

So obviously I'm HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE because I can't even begin to fathom how you have dodged Darwin for this long. What strange an otherworldly power keeps you from chocking when you drink water? How have you lived for so very very long with so little chance of surviving?

I can only speculate you have someone typing these things for you. Perhaps a kind mother or some sort of special needs care giver. It's the only way to explain it scientifically.

Please give them my warmest regards. God bless them and their dedication. Truly they are saints of legend and should be honored.

You do realize that your entire post is a contradiction of itself, right?

Lets see: Equality of rights and opportunities, but we are not inherently equal. Those are your exact words. How can you demand equality if you know we can never be equal?

You then go further and say "Everyone should pay the same percentage in taxes, except those who obviously can't." How can you determine who can or who cannot? Based on reported income? You know that there are more "poor" people than "rich" people who hide their income to not pay taxes/get government benefits. The only reason why you hear about the "rich" people is because they are few and far between, and the amounts they hide are incredible.

You then say that you are all for social and economic freedoms as long as they don't infringe on anyone else's freedoms. You do know that resources are limited, so if I have something, you cannot have that same thing. So, you can argue that I'm infringing on your economic freedom because I have this thing and you don't. That is the entire argument of the "99% v. 1%" war going on right now, the "99%" don't have what the "1%" have and saying that it is infringing on their economic freedom. We all know that what the "99%" doesn't have is knowledge and drive to become part of the "1%."

Your last point was pretty much a reference to Obama's "You didn't build that" comment back in 2012. He basically said that the rich didn't build anything, the government did. He, like you, failed to realize that without investment, there wouldn't be business, which wouldn't pay taxes to build those roads or those pork projects the government totes. Investment doesn't have to be monetary in value either, it can be hard work and drive. The world didn't come with paved streets, the government didn't pave the streets at first either (it was people who paved the streets by creating trails, the government only paved the streets to get various military resources from point A to point B faster. If you don't believe me, then research the reason why we have interstate highways.). Obama can't see beyond 2008, so he automatically assumes that the world came with paved streets and green energy, it was those who destroyed it.

tl;dr version: You do not understand human nature or yourself.

The mass media isn't liberal. At best MSNBC pretends to be.

A few examples of liberal media:

The Nation over 125 years old. A tad to classically liberal.

Rolling Stone Magazine Has the hardest hitting reporter in print.

The Huffington Post Nuff said.

Like Obama isn't a Democrat, but really a Republican in disguise?

That comment would be a lot less depressing if the line between Democrat and Republican wasn't so hard to find, especially when it comes to bloating the federal government. It gets really weird in light of all the fiscal discussion, too.

How about policies then? I think it would be pretty obvious who's what based on their policies and viewpoints.

Polices? I put Obama a bit to the right of Richard Nixon on policies.

Of course you would. Anything to put a "R" next to his name so Clinton can deny being a carbon copy of Obama.

Hillary's platform is going to be "bush and obama both sucked let's go back to the clinton era when everyone was rich and happy"

There's not a damn thing contradictory there. You can be equals in some areas and not be equal overall. Just because you're given the same rights doesn't mean you'll take the same advantages of said rights.

To simplify it for you, say two people are paid 150,000 dollars. Just because they're paid the same doesn't means they're both in the same financial situation, one could have saved his money while the other took weekly trips to the local casino to deposit it.

When it comes to freedoms, we could all have more if people would simply exercise concepts such as moderation and decency. They just need to be shown it first, instead of treating life like a round of Prisoner's Dilemma every chance we get.

I'm guessing it's one of those binary, either/or dealios, which is why everyone here gets labeled European socialists. You're either with me or against me, eh?

Anyway, I don't believe any of what you stated so I guess I don't fit the pigeonhole you're trying to jam me into. You guys have a cartoon definition of liberal, and if any attention was paid to the content of most of our stuff, you'd see how far off the mark you are.

People you don't like are liberals. People you like are Republicans (Real Republicans®, not the fake ones that regularly spout the same nonsense you just did).

/deeply hurt
NOBODY LIKES REPUBLICANS!!! YOU TAKE THAT BACK!!!

Again, another contradiction.

First you are talking about earning power, earning potential. Now you are talking about spending power. It doesn't matter what the 2 people spend their money on, what matters is how they earn it.

Lets use your example then: 2 people are paid $150,000 each. You are demanding financial equality, meaning that they should be paid the same amount as effort put in. What you don't realize is that what you consider "effort" is different in what I consider "effort." In order to simplify this further, lets assume that the 2 people are you and I.

I make $150k, you make $150k. You demand financial equality between the two of us. You work at an oil field busting your butt off drilling/producing crude oil, while I work at (what you consider) an easy job as a comptroller of the same company that is drilling that oil. You demand that my pay is lower/your pay is higher because you do physical labor while I do basically math (in your opinion) and "evil accounting work for the owners to get rich off your blood/sweat/tears."

Now I, who know better, understand that your job is needed to produce, while mine is needed to record and conserve. I work hard to make sure that everything ties, is according to the law, and is properly and correctly recorded and accounted for. I may not do the physical labor aspect of it, but I do keep the company from falling into pieces due to bad decisions made based off of crummy books. I have also invested my time into learning said skills and applying them to the field, while you just woke up one day and said you are going to be an oilman. I do not question your contribution to the company, nor do I make outlandish demands that your pay should be lower/mine should be higher than yours.

So, while I promote financial equality, you are demanding financial inequality. That on itself creates a contradiction and the reason why we can never be equal while attempting to create equality.

So basically yes, you can't have equality period.

Someday, Nik. Someday.

I didn't spend all this time cultivating a sinister handlebar mustache to be liked!

feared? sure
hated? hell yes
respected? not likely

but liked!? Perish the thought!

I'd get kicked right out of the evil country club...
then where could I go to kick people down the stairs?

You think you're a centrist?

I don't think I've ever lol-ed so hard in my life.


Hardcore liberals always insist they aren't really liberal.

Hurray! Nausi is here! and he brought his ginormous brush of broad stroke generalizations with him! whooopie!
/borrows it

all liberals smell like Patchouli and failure!

This thread is about Sally Field now!!!

Better Patchouli than Peloski.

I swear, she must be one of the undead...

You ordered the scalpel and I brought the meat cleaver!




I bet she smells like my grandma, and that ain't good!

It's a tricky concept if your mindset dictates that the political spectrum can't exist.

respect your poor old grandma, swine!

Are they talking about Pelosi? Or is there some peloski roaming out there that I don't know about? I know you all can't help to want to be Polish but settle down...

They dare mock our comrade Pelosi? It'll be 20 lashes and a few weeks in the gulag when we finally suspend the Constitution and bring about the revolucion.

I'll make sure it's the gulag Michelle Obama runs personally. When she's done with you, you'll beg for vegetables and a balanced diet.