Seems like all I’m hearing this days is folk whining about George Bush (I for one see no point in adding the W., since he’s our Chief Executive, simply call his father George Bush, Sr.)and his tax cuts.
Why exactly are you people so angry about reduced taxes? Do you enjoy financing the Department of Agriculture and Communism? Welfare? The Congressional Helium Fund? Since you typically dislike military spending, seems like a tax cut is win-win. The government gets some much-needing trimming, and you get more money with which to provide for your families or what have you.
Please try and explain to me why it would be preferable to have our money filter back to us via social spending (in which case government employees get to take out their cunk anyway)?
My problem with the tax cut and the check I’m going to be getting (and donating to charity) is that the United States is hugely in debt. Pay off the debt before you think of returning the money. It’s that simple.
Mythos45: Welcome! You may want to do a search on threads on tax cuts here over the last several months. This subject has pretty much been argued to death and then some.
My personal reasons:
(1) I think the majority of the cuts are going to people who don’t really need them. [And, by the way, I count myself in this category.] The result is that this nation, already more stratified economically than probably any other First World nation, will be made moreso.
(2) I think there are some very real needs to be addressed with this money that are more important than giving additional money mainly to people who have made out at least well, if not like bandits, over the last several years.
(3) I think it is important to continue paying down the debt and not robbing the social security trust fund. The social security “crisis” is more myth than reality, but it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy if we don’t use these flush times to build up the fund for when the baby boomers start retiring en mass.
Because the experience over the last twenty years is that cuts are made not to the bloated, useless programs you mention (but have not necessarily exemplified), but to social services that make life more humane.
But his father isn’t named “George Bush, Sr.” His father is named George Herbert Walker Bush. The current president is named George Walker Bush, not “George Herbert Walker Bush, Jr.” I could see getting irritated by “Dubya”–“Algore” really got under my skin, so I try not to use “Dubya” myself–but what’s wrong with “George W. Bush”? Do you also object to “John Quincy Adams”?
Sheeesh.
[/total nitpicking hijack]
Oh, and I’m proud to be a member of the Party of Fiscal Responsibility! We liberal Democrats believe that people ought to pay their debts! None of this borrow-and-spend, spend-and-borrow Republicanism!
Why not have the best of both worlds? Give tax cuts to the American working man and pay off debts with the money that we are currently giving to the people too lazy to get jobs? Damn liberals, I don’t get you people. Social programs to make life more “humane”? Imagine if everyone in the country just quit their job and lived off welfare. How humane do you think that would be?
That’s three times that you’ve said that the unemployed are lazy. I’m asking you again: how do you reconcile that view with the effect that the prime rate has upon unemployment?
So first we’re “morons,” now we’re “damn liberals.”
Personally, I say we need more money for the Department of Communism! Communism is failing everwhere because we’re not funding it enough! Instead we’re giving tax cuts to billionares so that they can starve poor children! This must be stopped!
In all seriousness (and I’m not much of a liberal), my problem with cutting taxes now is that, as other people have mentioned, it’s fiscally irresponsible. A small government debt is healthy. It helps stabilize the market and adds confidence in the fiscal stability of the country. However, when a debt starts getting to the size ours is, it starts to become a problem, as more and more government revenue goes to paying interest on the debt. This leads to inflation and can rapidly spark a fiscal crisis, as taxes need to be increased as a source of government revenue, and spending needs to be drastically cut. By taking more of the surplus and using it to pay off part of the debt, this helps reduce governmental expenses, because it will reduce the amount of interest that accrues every year, and, as this goes on, the size of the government will shrink, allowing taxes to be lowered. The tax code needs reforming…there’s no question about that, and a lot of the changes Bush and the congress passed were probably, in the abstract, not bad ideas, but they were badly times, and I’m concerned that this heralds a return, economically, to the 80’s, where deficit spending was made into an artform.
I don’t think you’re morons(at least not in greater #'s than any other party), but I don’t “get you people” either. When I was doing AmeriCorps*VISTA last year I was placed with a community action program, which did great things for people. BUT, everyone was moaning about the new Welfare-to-work program our state instituted. I never could figure that out. They were upset that the women were expected to work part time. Daycare for their children was subsidized(so it wasn’t an additional expense) and they got work experience. The biggest thing the people were complaining about was that the women didn’t get great jobs. So what? With most jobs there is a chance of eventual promotion, along with a sense of accomplishment one doesn’t get when not working (or am I the only one who feels useless when unemployed?) By not working there’s 0% chance of job advancement, so how is it worse to work your way up?? I really fail to see how working towards self-sufficiency is a bad thing.
Or, if we have to spend the money, I guess we could try to improve the education budget for math so that people wouldn’t actually believe that the amount spent on welfare could actually make a dent in the debt.
(And if we limited the debt payments to only money not spent on those people who were on welfare for being lazy, we could probably service the debt for about an hour and a quarter on a slow day.)
Republicanism is benighted drivel. The fact that not quite half the population voted for the bloated, fat, white, fascist, male party in the last presidential election is a testament to the monumental and pandemic stupidity of the inhabitants of this country.
Read some of this site with an open mind and you might untie the sick neo cortical knot which prevents you from being a compassionate human being.
I like the “best of both worlds” part. I agree that the American working people (it is not only men who work) deserve a break, especially if we’re talking about lower and lower-middle class laborers. (I come from a long line of them.)
But even putting aside the part about unemployed people being “too lazy to get jobs,” I wonder why we couldn’t instead pay off debts with the money that we are currently not getting enough of from the wealthy. It is clear that Bush’s tax cuts are helping the rich far more than the poor. The rich already benefit substantially more from the government and its policies, in my view. They should be able to contribute substantially more to its maintenance. It’s their world; let them pay for it.
And I do not believe that the wealthy, or even the comfortable, can justifiably begrudge some of their wealth being used to the benefit of the less fortunate. I don’t begrudge it, and I’m far from rich. I’m not even particularly comfortable.
Maybe what you don’t get about liberals is that they tend to be a lot nicer than conservatives.
Those who go on about the people who are “too lazy to get jobs” should really read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America. Barbara’s own foray into wage slavery is not as interesting as her stories of the others who are trying to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Going by definition, less than 20% voted for him. When trying to understand American politics, it’s useful to remember that half the people who are registered to vote don’t bother, and then you’ve got millions of people who can’t even take the time to register.
Which, as I keep telling people, is an expression coined by Marx; its significance lies in the fact that to literally pull yourself by your own bootstraps is impossible.
Nobody seems to realize this, which I find amusing.