Politics Judges striking down laws & executive orders, Senators filibustering . . .

The whole system is rigged to work as it is now. Do we keep things as is or make drastic changes?

 

I guess it all depends on how many individuals we feel forced to imprison, how many wars we feel the need to fight, how many politicians we need to overpay and otherwise subsidize, how many countries we need to prop up, how many farms we need to subsidize, how many (and how big of) tax breaks we need to give corporations.......the list just goes on and on. The average citizen would have a much better quality of life and and taxes would certainly be lowered if these questions were actually addressed. One thing that is unarguable; our national priorities suck and that sucking sound just gets louder and louder under the current administration.

 

Yet you choose to look at all of these items and declare "it's the price we pay for living in a civilized society". I don't need government to civilize me or the society in which I live. If you don't like these expenditures, you should seek to starve the beast by pushing for lower taxes and an end to deficit spending.

 

.01% is 1/10000, which is wrong

its more like almost 1%. and probably triple that on parole or some other sort of supervision. that shit aint free dog!

 

FORREAL

 

best guesses are around 10 billion a year to jail drug offenders. and another 30 billion to arrest, and try to convict.

that amount of money could literally end world hunger. If i have to pay taxes, in the richest nation in the world, i guess id rather it go to that.

 

He smiles like a 4-year-old.

 

did somebody say it did? That's 8.5 trillion dollars. That's a lot of prisons!

 

I like the first. The second should become law.

 

Wrong again, my friend MarAzul. Public debt is a good thing. One reason is that

"issuing debt is a way to pay for useful things, and we should do more of that when the price is right. The United States suffers from obvious deficiencies in roads, rails, water systems and more; meanwhile, the federal government can borrow at historically low interest rates. So this is a very good time to be borrowing and investing in the future."

I know, I know, you can't stand Paul Krugman. Argue with his Nobel Prize in Economics then!

"Having at least some government debt outstanding helps the economy function better. How so? The answer, according to M.I.T.’s Ricardo Caballero and others, is that the debt of stable, reliable governments provides “safe assets” that help investors manage risks, make transactions easier and avoid a destructive scramble for cash."

 

The DNC stripped Michigan of all its delegates because of Michigan changed the date of their primary which the DNC decided that moving the primary violated the partys rules, they also did this to florida. Because of this Obama chose to not even have his name on the ballot. Both Clinton and Obama both agreed that Michigan and Florida wouldn't be counted and agreed not to campaign in either state, Hillary flipped on that later when she won both states and it was a close race so she tried to get the DNC to count the two states.

 

Fruit Loop fuckin post of the century.

20 trillion FUCKING dollars aint "at least some government debt"

Read this...

 

Maybe I'll finance a Ferrari and a yacht I can't afford AND a used Elantra because I need a car to get back and forth to work. Jesus H Christ.

 

As a pretend economist (ABD), I will take issue with Prof. Krugman's Nobel Prize. It was an interesting insight into international trade with his assumed "preference for diversity" combined with his research on economies of scale (an extension of the work of David Ricardo and his comparative advantage). However, further research has disproved his theory. His Nobel Prize was given more for his insight (opening new fields of research) and systhesis of two competing ideas than his actual accomplishments.

Krugman is brilliant, but too often he violates the first rule of academic research: Don't arrive at a conclusion until you have all your data.

 

Public debt can be useful, but not as a structural component. It's really too bad people who love to quote John Maynard Keynes understand so little of his work. I would invite anyone interested in his research to read "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money". Keynes was a budget hawk. His primary insight was when all else failed, it was incumbent upon governments from time-to-time to deficit spend to kickstart the economy. Keynes would look at our structural budget deficits and wonder how his ideas could have been so perverted.