Maggie's Farm

The Left today is not "liberal" I was a "liberal" in the 50's and today without changing a single opinion I am a conservative. Today's liberals are Marxist/socialist. Perhaps you don't know this and still believe today's "liberal" means something good. Today's Liberal has broughht our country to bankruptcy, forced jobs and companies off shore and stolen/taxed people into serfdom.

Liberalism brought us the mortgage crisis that created our current great depression. Liberalism has choosen to follow Keynesian economic theory to borrow $6 trillion since Obama took office to try to hide the fact we are in a great depression. Liberalism will bring us higher confiscatory despotic taxes that will extend the great depression just as FDR's policies extended his great depression.

What Liberalsim is noted for is creating destructive programs with high sounding names and then appointing judges and bureaucrats who implment in dystopian ways. Liberalism cannot help itself from falling into a Marxist/Leninist mold which inevitably leads to a oppressive dictatorial government that fears their own people and locks them up and "disappears" them to protect the liberal form of government.

You have fallen in love with a lie and cannot bring yourself to see what Liberalism is, what it becomes and what it has done.

Some of my opinions have changed but not my opinions about right and wrong.

"Very few Marxists"!!! Most of Obama's hand picked cabinet and bureaucrats are openly communist and Marxist. Are you just unaware of this?

So you are still saying it is Bush's fault?? We haven't had a budget in four years is that Bush's fault? We have printed about $4 trillion dollars to reward left wing Obama voters is that Bush's fault? We have borrowed $6 trillion to continue to reward the takers since Obama was first elected, did Bush do that?

Obama is doing everything he can to destroy our economy and he is doing that with the willing help of many Democrats in congress. I don't honestly know if citizens in this country will ever wake up or like you continue to believe it is all Bush's fault. But soon the reality of what Obama has brought us will become clear to all. So while you can have your own opinions you cannot have your own reality. When that reality comes down on our heads I fully expect you and many mind numbed lefties to parrot that famous excuse "it's Bush's fault".

I guess you are implying you have learned that racism is bad while I am saying I always knew that. What else have you recently learned?

So economics is not your strong suite! If the recovery had been handled correctly we would be beginning the third year of a strong recovery today. Keynsian economics fails where ever and whenever it is tried.

Obama seems incapable in your opinion and that seems to be the only area we agree on. The Democrats and Obama took $200 billion a year deficits and created $1.5 trillion a year deficits. Yet you blame this on Bush. I am only suprised you did not try to blame it on racism since that is what the left seems to go to first.

The economy will collapse of that you can be sure. Our debt is too great now to recover. We can kick the can down the road as long as we can borrow and print but sooner or later that will no longer be possible. I cannot predict how long the Democrats can push off the inevitable if I could then I could make millions by timing my investments. But it is rather naive to look at our massive debt, our massive printing of money and all of the negative indicators of our economies health and believe that it will be all right if we keep doing what we are doing. As Obama's favorite mentor once said "America's chickens are coming home to roost". Most intelligent people can see this about the only area of disagreement would be that I believe Obama has created this mess intentionally. A left wing wet dream would be a crisis so big they could sieze power and usurp the constitution and that is exactly where we are headed.

We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

We could have mitigated the financial meltdown if Clinton's administration and Dodd & Frank had not forced lenders to make sub-prime loans.

100% of the deficit since Jan 20th 2009 was because of policies Obama and a Democrat congress had 100% control over.

You don't get it! Not only can't we pay our debt but we can't and won't be able to pay the interest or stop borrowing. We are on a fast track to bankruptcy. We would have to implement a $2.3 trillion budget immediately JUST to keep it from getting worse. Just doing that is HUGE, so difficult that we clearly won't do it. No one thinks we will. So we intend to borrow and spend into the future with no end in sight. This is not sustainable! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that. Then if you also take into account that we have been printing close to $1 trillion a year for the last four years you begin to understand the magnitude of the problem. The simple fact is that about three years ago we passed an event horizon in our debt, once we crossed that point of no return we began a spiral which can only end in an economic collapse. Worse, everything we do to mitigate the effects between now and then will make it worse. Raising taxes will equate to fewer jobs and more people needing welfare. Raising taxes will also stifle business and create a diminishing return effect which will encourage the government to raise taxes even more (see California to see this in action today). Borrowing more money will increase our total debt AND increase our budget. Printing money will create inflation which will increase the interest on our debt and increase our total budget. There is no acceptable set of policies that will see us avoid the inevitable economic collapse. Having said that I do believe that it is possible to pay off the debt and stop borrowing money a but I also know our politicians and voters are unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices. So we will all ride this runaway train together over the economic cliff.

Zach I'm starting to think you are quite young and were perhaps not paying attention in the 90's. No I was not talking about the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. That is going to bite us in the ass big time but hasn't been fleshed out yet by the anti-business bureaucrats. I am obviously talking about the Clinton era effort to force private banks to make mortgages to people who could not afford mortgages. You could not have been alive and sober in the 90's and be unaware of this.

It does not matter what you ascribe the deficits to the fact remains that 100% of the deficit since Obama's election is 100% his fault. I might add that his continued use of failed keynesian policies of borrow and spend does not constitute fighting the meltdown and ending the recession. It is nothing more then a convenient policy to loot the treasury and give the assets to friends and supporters. when this era/error is over we will look back at the most dishonest criminal administration in our history.

To your last point I say prove it!! Not on paper and not by opinion but by action. Cut the total federal budget to equal revenues (about $2.3 trillion) and then allocate a substantial portion of that (say 10%) to actually paying off the debt. Prove it!! Put your money and actions where you mouth is. The simple answer is we won't do it and we can't do it. We are absolutely locked into a deficit budget that grows by 10% a year into the foreseeable future. We are "screwed" !

Interesting that you think the increased debt is due to social security and medicare. Social security takes in about $840 billion a year and pays out about $825 billion. SS is solvent and if it was run under generally accepted accounting principles it would remain solvent forever.

Medicare does not take in enough to fully fund costs but that could easily be fixed. A combination of increased payroll taxes dedicated to medicare and a increase in the amount the beneficiaries pay as their cost share would fix it. But you did not mention medicaid. medicaid is 100% paid for from the general fund and you somehow missed that fact when you were scouring the budget to discover why the costs went up. You also missed welfare! Welfare cost the federal budget about $1.2 trillion I don't understand how you missed that. Welfare consists of 2400 programs administrated by five cabinet level departments of the federal government; now that's a lot of bureaucracy. That doesn't include the state's share of welfare which is roughly the same amount. That is a lot of money to support the 49% who can't seem to make it in a country full of opportunities. Why do you suppose they hid 2400 different welfare programs under five departments? Oh never mind, I'm sure it had nothing to do with making it impossible for voters to know how much welfare costs us.

In a nutshell the deficit is a result of welfare spending, excessive federal bureaucracy, payoffs/bailouts for Democrat cronies, Obamacare and waste.

You have bought the meme that somehow it is SS that is going to bankrupt us. This is a diversion/red herring and simply not true. Welfare is 100% paid for from the general fund whereas SS is fully funded by a dedicated revenue stream, i.e. the payroll tax. The problem that SS has always faced is congress. Congress has "awarded" people SS for the rest of their lives without regard to what they might have paid into the system. For example if you come here as a immigrant at age 67 you can retire on SS without ever having worked in this country or paid any payroll taxes. There are numerous examples of SS eligibility that are outside the basic rule of having worked and contributed for 40 quarters (ten years).

So to save SS make it a semi-private system run by accountants and get congress out of it. Second: treat it like an annuity, that is if you did not contribute then you get nothing, if you contributed a little then you get a little where if you contribute more you get more; simple and fair. Third Invest the "clients" money!! If you contributed to SS for 45 years and the money was invested like a 401k or IRA then the average worker would have a nestegg worth in excess of $2 million. If these changes were made SS would never go broke, never need support from the general fund and would be a better retirement for those who participated in the system.

Don't buy into the lie that it is SS that is our fiscal problem that is pure left wing misinformation.

Obama's connection with communism:
http://www.keywiki.org/index.php/Barack_Obama_and_the_Communist_Party

Is the blonde available?

Every business passes on their costs to their customers. All corporate taxes are passed through and the people pay them; that is "real persons". Government likes this because it becomes a hidden cost. A starbucks coffee might cost you $2-$4 but it never occurs to the buyer that the high price has anything to do with taxes. But taxes are like a parasite, they make the host weak and less able to perform essential functions and in most cases if the parasite infestation becomes to great they cause death. The government will if unchecked levy taxes until they kill the golden goose. Where it is possible a company takes their business off shore where the business environment is more welcoming. I would lobby for zero business taxes. This would make American based companies more competitive and increase job opportunities. I would also lobby for greatly reduced government bureaucracy and regulation as well as requiring all regulatory bodies to actively assist companies in meeting regulations, but that's another arguement for another time.

If you want more of something then tax it less, if you want less of something then tax it more. We need to decide if we are happy with higher prices and our companies and jobs moving offshore or if we would prefer to downsize government. Sadly it won't get better because in our system it is the parasites who decide.

That's correct! SS is not the problem. AND if it were managed under generally accepted accounting rules it would never be a problem. The congress in it's desire to buy votes with our money keeps expanding SS both the benefits and the eligibility. Run it like an annuity and take it out of the hands of politicians.

We are facing bankruptcy because of expanding and expanded welfare, excessive federal bureaucracy, payoffs/bailouts for Democrat cronies, Obamacare and waste. Cut the federal budget so that we can live within revenues. Eliminate 5 or 6 cabinet level departments and fire the employees. Roll the handful of legitimate programs from the eliminated departments into the few remaining departments and then cut the staff in the rest of the federal bureaucracy. Set some reasonable pay scales at least 20% lower then current pay. CUT, CUT, CUT; NOT TAX, TAX, TAX and SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!!!