Characterizing the U.S. economy as “out of the emergency room,” Warren Buffett shared his latest worries in a New York Times commentary, suggesting that with the annual deficit expected to rise to about 13 percent of gross domestic product this fiscal year, “we are in uncharted territory.” The Berkshire Hathaway CEO went on: “With government expenditures now running 185 percent of receipts, truly major changes in both taxes and outlays will be required.” And he called on Congress to “end the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio and keep our growth in obligations in line with our growth in resources.”
Buffett concluded: “The dollar’s destiny lies with Congress.”
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38 Comments
Of course we’re in uncharterd water, bush was asleep at the helm and we’d drifted terribly off course.
Obama will find a way for us.
Obama will find a way for us.
=============================
Phantom,
Please put all of your eggs in that basket.
Bush’s deficits were bad, Phantom. Bush spend like a drunken sailor. And caught a great deal of criticism from both the right and the left.
Obama’s are off the charts, into “uncharted” territory; he’s spending like a drunken sailor who just won the lottery and holds an unlimited credit card. The short term “stimulus” . . .
(which according to CBO wasn’t needed anyway, and without which the economy would have recovered at about the same time it looks like it will. Which begs the question: did the stimulus actually stimulate recovery, or would it have happened anyway?)
. . . will be VERY expensive long term. And the president now wants to add another massive entitlement to the trillions in unfunded liabilities gov’t currently carries.
And you wonder why Americans are skeptical?
“keep our growth in obligations in line with our growth in resources.”
Do you see that happening? I don’t.
BTW – if you want to know what happens when we don’t “keep our growth in obligations in line with our growth in resources,” look at California, which is literaly handing out IOUs.
Is that where the US is headed? In fact, what are T-Bills, if not fancy IOUs? How long will the “full faith and credit of the United States” last with a fiscal balance sheet like the present and foreseeable one?
The current fiscal path is unsustainable, and it has been for a great while. We were driving toward a cliff before the Obama administration’s spending spree (under administrations by both parties); Obama just hammered on the accelerator.
But “95% of Americans will get a tax cut.”
Right. And monkeys will fly out of my a**.
O’BAMA’s guide to financial ruin
The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.
Vladimir Lenin
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
Vladimir Lenin
Bring the tax structure back to what it was under Eisenhower–adjusted for inflation–would not be a bad idea.
Let the hand-wringing and cries of “socialism!” begin, because the fact is the Reagan and W. deliberately bankrupted the country to give huge tax savings to people who were already comfortably affluent.
Despite the obligatory nonsense of ‘redistribution,’ the real choice is whether Americans will pay for our government, or if we continue to outsource its funding to the Chinese and Japanese.
Cutting waste is always good, but those who think that gaping hole in revenues can be offset by cutting government don’t grasp basic mathematics.
But even as we need to work toward balancing the federal budget, we need to work on reducing the extreme levels of private debt, courtesy largely of a broken healthcare system.
And, some anonymous White House idiot in the WaPo notwithstanding, it is not “the left of the left” who wants and needs a public option the most. It is the sick of the sick, who tend to be the most quiet in this debate, as it quite enough for them to deal with the struggles of surviving in a broken economy with a broken healthcare system.
Buffet gives praise to Obama for avoiding a complete meltdown of the economy. Buffet also would like to see taxes raised for the rich. Buffet is a smart man.
“But even as we need to work toward balancing the federal budget, we need to work on reducing the extreme levels of private debt, courtesy largely of a broken healthcare system.”
Rage – what do plasma TV’s, the latest I-Phone, new cars, homes they couldn’t afford, $300 pairs of jeans, Nike Shox, jet skiis, etc, etc,…have to do with healthcare? Consumer debt is out of control, but it’s not mostly due to healthcare. Something like 20,000 people died of the flu in the US last year..doesn’t mean millions more didn’t have it too. Focusing solely on bankruptcies, ignores all those families holding debt in credit cards, mortgages, school loans, car loans, etc. and the fact the entire economy runs on debt fueled buying.
As for Buffet’s comments, was nice to see him recognize the dangers of inflation/debt..would’ve been nice to see even a single suggestion for slowing down either. Kinda smelled to me, more of an attempt to provide cover for impending tax increases in the face of unsustainable spending. Timing’s a little too convenient (not like this some brilliant new revelation about inflation/debt) for him to go public on the heels of Geithner’s request to increase debt limit (and failure to find private buyer’s of govt debt) and Obama’s falling poll #’s. Haven’t seen Volcker out there at all. Occasionally seen Summer’s pop his head up…but Buffet’s gotta carry more weight nationally than the cartoon character Christy Rohmer they keep putting out there in the media…hard to take her serious.
“Buffet also would like to see taxes raised for the rich. Buffet is a smart man.”
Buffet doesn’t care about income taxes going up on rich..he doesn’t pay them. He uses cap gains/losses to shield as much income as possible and pay as little tax as possible. He’s bragged about it many times in the past. Btw, cap gains only type folks don’t pay in SS/Medicare & associated matching either…again, not exactly a new revelation, strategy’s been widely known/employed for decades.
Rage – what do plasma TV’s, the latest I-Phone, new cars, homes they couldn’t afford, $300 pairs of jeans, Nike Shox, jet skiis, etc, etc,…have to do with healthcare? Consumer debt is out of control, but it’s not mostly due to healthcare.
Uh huh. The picture is complex, but health care costs are a big part of it. And, notwithstanding the excesses of the “bubble,” most people were not running out and charging such ridicuous expenses on their credit cards.
Still waiting for the original source of that supposed James Madison quote (and, by the way, do you think the “common defense” is an equally meaningless phrase?).
Rage – geez..are you serious??? I’ve posted the sources for Madison quotes like 3 times now…go back and look at the Nazi thread…or I’ll freaking post it again for you…
“Politically Incorrect Guide to US History”, page 32/33.
Keep in mind, when Madison was helping author the Federalist Papers, he was on the same side as Hamilton/Jay. Also coincides with Jefferson, his main man Thomas, was in France as the Ambassador. Madison did “flip flop” a few times on his points of view, and when Jefferson returned, Madison became an Anti-Federalist. Joseph Ellis confirms this shift, in “American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson” pgs 97-105. Same conversion back to Virginian view of govt, vs nationalistic Federalist view is supported in “The Age of Federalism” by Stanley Elkins & Eric McKittrick, pgs 77-92.
So you’re telling me the “housing crisis” that just brought the banking industry to its knees, was mostly healthcare cost driven?? You guys need to make up your mind who the boogie man is…last summer it was “big oil” that caused it as well as when selling cap & tax…then it’s greedy banks/mort brokers when TARP/stimulus/regulations are being sold…now that healthcare’s on the sales block, healthcare is the key debt crisis…seriously, which one is it?
As for nobody charging ridiculous things on credit cards…really?? Just wait for the credit card crisis that’s coming. Their defaults are skyrocketing. Same with commercial loans…let me guess, those businesses who took out loans to develop property/build a strip mall/etc, their defaults are due to healthcare too?
I’m not saying healthcare bills aren’t a problem, they’re just not the biggest consumer debt issue. Catastrophic when they occur yes, but no less lethal to personal budgets than the cuts from the swipes of a thousand credit cards…it just takes a little while longer to bleed out in the latter.
“(and, by the way, do you think the “common defense” is an equally meaningless phrase?).”
Rage – common defense is no different…they took great efforts to spell out the meaning of fed govt powers in terms of raising/funding/etc a military. Even added the 3rd Amend to prevent quartering troops. So, yeah, it’s the same argument…if it too was meant to be just a vague, anything goes comment, why go to the trouble of spelling out enumerated powers for it…and 1 amend in Bill of Rights…no diff than gen welfare did in Art 1 with 2 amendments in Bill of Rights (9th & 10th).
No worries DFB, Rage only sees what he wants to see.
Heck, he can’t even see that Tri-West, a multi-billion dollar health care company is located in his home state and in the city of Phoenix.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…He’s just there to puff out some smoke and hit the flame button.
Rage – geez..are you serious??? I’ve posted the sources for Madison quotes like 3 times now…go back and look at the Nazi thread…or I’ll freaking post it again for you…
“Politically Incorrect Guide to US History”, page 32/33.
Translation: You don’t have an original source, and trust Mr. “Politically Incorrect”’s quote as genuine. I thought as much.
Madison’s argument is actually quite a parochial one. He viewed those terms as holdovers from the Articles of Confederation relating to payments of public debt, and were irked at the degree to which the Federalist were using it. Contrary to the invented rant you produced, it was more of an argument about federalism than the supposed infinite taxing power of the US government.
This is a different and distinct argument from considering what the authors of the Articles might have thought constituted “general welfare” in the first place. In each instance, though, America did not have a true national government–it took a civil war to make that happen, and thus must be understood in context.
The inference from the use here made of the terms, and from the proceedings on the subsequent propositions, is, that although common defence and general welfare were objects of the Confederation, they were limited objects, which ought to be enlarged by an enlargement of the particular powers to which they were limited, and to be accomplished by a change in the structure of the Union from a form merely Federal to one partly national; and as these general terms are prefixed in the like relation to the several legislative powers in the new charter as they were in the old, they must be understood to be under like limitations in the new as in the old.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_1s27.html
Madison also offers some cautionary advice:
However disinclined to the discussion of such topics, at a time when it is so difficult to separate, in the minds of many, questions purely constitutional from the party polemics of the day, I yield to the precedents which you think I have imposed on myself, and to the consideration that, without relying on my personal recollections, which your partiality over-values, I shall derive my construction of the passage in question from sources of information and evidence known or accessible to all who feel the importance of the subject, and are disposed to give it a patient examination.
Rage – gee…guess that’s why I gave you two more lib references, right?
Good thing Time Magazine & Univ of freaking Chicago are non-partisan sources….
The lame argument about how the Civil War crushed the 10th amend, and made us a true “federal” govt is pretty weak progressive talking pts. They didn’t change any language from the Const signed in 1790, but claim they changed its use because Lincoln tramped on a lot of it.
GMC: “Obama’s are off the charts, into ‘uncharted’ territory; he’s spending like a drunken sailor who just won the lottery and holds an unlimited credit card. The short term ’stimulus’ . . .
“(which according to CBO wasn’t needed anyway, and without which the economy would have recovered at about the same time it looks like it will. Which begs the question: did the stimulus actually stimulate recovery, or would it have happened anyway?)
“. . will be VERY expensive long term.”
Baloney. The CBO made no such absolute pronouncement. In its report on the ARRA, the CBO provided a range of estimates as to the effectiveness of the CBO versus doing nothing, and was also careful to divide the likely effects of different aspects of the stimulus. The high range indicated that it could make a substantial difference in reducing the severity of the downturn and that some of the measures could offset the long term costs of the program. The low range was much more pessimistic. Could the stimulus have been better? Absolutely, and ironically, some of the best measures that were left out
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10008/03-02-Macro_Effects_of_ARRA.pdf
By the way, notice the most problematic aspects of the stimulus act: The tax cuts.
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=10008
And no, the CBO is not necessarily saying the end result would be the same with this graph. Yes, some degree of recovery would be expected regardless of what was done, but the confidence of predictions are reduced over time, and the purpose of a stimulus is to relieve the effects of a severe economic downturn. And if the stimulus also results in the building of infrastructure for future economic growth, so much the better, and such results are difficult to accurately predict.
“Bush’s deficits were bad, Phantom. Bush spend like a drunken sailor. And caught a great deal of criticism from both the right and the left.
“Obama’s are off the charts, into “uncharted” territory; he’s spending like a drunken sailor who just won the lottery and holds an unlimited credit card.”
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/stan-collender/1021/2009-deficit-would-have-been-same-under-bush
In spite of Multi-Billion Dollar Government Bailouts of Banks, Banks still not lending money as directed. Bailout for the Banks, not the customers.
National Mortgage News
Federal Reserve Survey: No Return to Normal in Near Term
By Steven Sloan
Despite some encouraging economic signs, a clear majority of bankers surveyed by the Federal Reserve Board do not expect underwriting standards for residential real estate, commercial mortgages or credit cards to normalize before 2011.
In the central bank’s survey of 55 senior loan officers at domestic institutions, some said it could take even longer for standards to return to the levels that prevailed before the crisis hit. Four in 10 bankers told the Fed that underwriting standards for even investment-grade commercial mortgages would not normalize for “the foreseeable future.” Another 20% said that such a recovery would not happen for at least two years.
Such pessimism was evident across loan categories. A little more than 41% of respondents could not predict when standards for prime borrowers seeking residential mortgages would return to normal, and 32% said the same for credit card borrowers. More than 12% of officers said it would take until 2011 for residential mortgage standards to normalize; 25% said the same about credit card loans.
http://economistmom.com/2009/08/and-why-is-the-obama-fy2009-deficit-the-same-as-the-bush-policy-extended-deficit/
“This bottom line isn’t at all surprising to me, and by the way, I predict quite confidently that it will hold true well beyond the current fiscal year. Because as I’ve said a few times before, the Obama Administration is insisting that its own policy initiatives be deficit neutral, and yet (for some odd reason having something to do with campaign promises I suppose) wants to extend most of the Bush fiscal policy agenda and continue to deficit finance that agenda.”
Deficit finance = keep tax cuts for all but the most wealthy.
Let the Bush tax cuts lapse. All of them.
At the very least.
Government supposedly gave the money away to the banks with a mandate to go out and loan money.
Yes, the Government solution to the problem of lending too much money was – yes to lend too much money. (The hidden goal was to control the banks.)
The policy may be right or wrong, but Tight Credit leads to continued Recession.
The Odacity of Government is to give away Billions to Banks, promising to help consumers, and having this turn into pure corporate welfare for the rich, without having the money being then loaned to the people.
But that’s OK as long as THE ONE is doing it.
New Jobless Claims Rise Unexpectedly to 576K
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The number of first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly for the second straight week, a sign that jobs remain scarce even as other data show the economy is stabilizing.
The Labor Department said Thursday the number of new jobless claims rose to a seasonally adjusted 576,000 last week, from a revised figure of 561,000. Wall Street economists expected a drop to 550,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,540982,00.html?test=latestnews
Jobs Created or Saved by Obama?
Buffett’s job for Congress?
Bring some Landshark beer!…Oops, wrong Buffet.
” And he called on Congress to “end the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio”
The Obama hero during the campaign speaks and warns. Obama didn’t listen to the CBO. Will he listen to the capitalist in his pocket?
This is something CapnAmerica and I agreed on. Well we did, until Obama started spending………..
“Let the Bush tax cuts lapse. All of them.”
Ag – I’m guessing you do, but don’t want to assume, so you do realize that Bush’s cuts were to all tax brackets, right? I don’t necessarily disagree, as the debts aren’t going to pay themselves, and I don’t see any signs of growing our way out of it, with cap & tax, card check, amnesty, healthcare all on deck, but this would mean increasing taxes on all taxpayers, not just the evil rich.
As a man who enjoys the study of financial and economic history, and I must say that tax cuts are ridiculous to discuss. How do all of you expect to pay for all of this?
The government is going to print money, so this talk of “passing debt on to future generations” is garbage. You will currently be paying for this deficit with loss of purchasing power. There is no passing on, whoever we borrowed from is wanting to get paid now, not at some future date. If we borrow from our purchasing power, it will not wait for the next generation. If we want to borrow from China, they will not wait for the next generation. The debt must be cut down. Spending cuts and taxation are the only way to get out of this rut.
Where should we cut spending? Let’s start with our foreign policy. We could save 1 trillion a year if we brought the troops home and stopped being world bullies and policeman.
Next would be the departments. Education, energy, transportaion. All inefficient and wasteful. They provide no visible benefit, nor have they since their inception. The war on drugs will go too.
The very last thing I would cut is national entitlement spending. I would phase it out over the course of a decade or two, maybe three. This would become money back in the peoples pockets to help grow the country with real savings.
Take real close notice to my plan to not cut entitlement spending now, or even all at once. The foreign spending is what must be reigned in. Christ, at least take care of your own people if you are going to take their money from them and represent them.
Going on in the background you will have a shrinkage of government and more freedom given back to the citizens of our great nation. Slowly, but surely we would correct the big government mindset we’ve had for the last century.
On a sweet sidenote, MIT is giving away an MIT education for free. They have listed all 1900 courses along with study guides and notes for free on their website. Talk about a revolution in education. They are telling us that they are the best and they are putting their money where there mouth is. They are giving you the education if you have the desire.
The only thing you lack will be real certification in the end, but that will be easily fixed by certification testing instead of degrees and a revival of apprenticeships in this country. Only the powers that be are holding that roadblock up. Once it is torn down, this country will be rich with knowledge. Quite an amazing thing MIT are doing really.
Rage – since you don’t like 3 other books referencing Madison’s view on a weak fed govt & what general welfare meant, how about the Federalist Papers, #45
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvemente and prosperity of the State.”
And that was from the period, when he as part of the big govt crowd.
AE – while I don’t generally disagree with your plans..the likelihood of them coming to fruition are somewhere between slim & none. A couple modifications I might add to fill out the wish list:
Foreign Policy – cut UN/NATO/IMF funding in half to start with. Let the world buy their own big brother who passes out handouts for a while. Also would look to close down a few foreign bases, starting with the ones in countries that enjoy pounding us from their self-righteous pulpits, while benefitting from our presence & as an ally.
Departments – couldn’t agree more. Several agencies would go as well. All govt employees would no longer get defined benefit pensions ($5.3T unfunded for fed employees/military retirees as of May or so this year), and they would be offered a 401K with partial matching, as private sector employees most often get. One page tax return developed, with shift to some form of flat/fair tax structure to reduce collection/enforcement/preparation costs.
Subsidies – all of them go..ag, energy, non-profits, faith based, etc. No more price fixing, winner/loser picking, social engineering, vote buying spending as subsidies.
Foreign held US $’s – offer one time incentive, for a period of 5-10 yrs, with flat fed income tax of 10-15% to incent US company foreign operations, along with their US $’s back into the country. This would be a spike in fed/state revenues, as well as capitalization infusions into banks/markets as they’d have to invest somewhere. Could help real estate as well, as it’s obviously a buyer’s market.
Federal Bal Budget – add Const amendment for federal balanced budget, and mandatory fed reserve audits by the FDIC. Fed Reserve, being granted a monopoly, should be under more strict oversight..not zero oversight. We can’t hold anyone there accountable for poor monetary policy…but we can hold congress accountable at the ballot box…
Rage – oh, and since obviously partisan sources are all good, figured you could appreciate this one:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj16n1-11.html
Remember that Buffett isn’t “clean.” He invested $5 billion in Goldman.
The Kings of Wall Street have long coveted the absolute supremacy they now enjoy over the largest economy in the world. The debt is a problem, but vast change is necessary throughout the banking system. A radical change is needed on Wall Street.
It starts with the taxpayer’s attitude adjustment.
http://pacificgatepost.com/2009/08/america-end-your-fear-of-wall-street.html
“Spending cuts and taxation are the only way to get out of this rut.”
Ohmigosh! I agree with the libertarian.
“Where should we cut spending? Let’s start with our foreign policy. We could save 1 trillion a year if we brought the troops home and stopped being world bullies and policeman.”
Well, yes, to a point I agree. However, I do think it is in our best interest and the world’s to remain engaged with the world, and we would need to continue, at our best, to be the muscle for the values of freedom in the world. However, we don’t need to nearly as much muscle as we have been flexing, and we need to be far more…intentional and discriminating in how we flex our muscle. As for international spending, we need to be engaged in other parts of the world. The days of the US consuming most of the world’s resources are coming to an end, and we will have to compete with other countries to deal with still other countries, and also all nations will have a stewardship obligation with regards to the world’s resources. For example, the idea of leaving primary trading partner status with sub-Saharan Africa to the Chinese is chilling. And problems with famine, disease, etc. in other parts of the world will catch up to us. The days where we can delude ourselves that we can isolate ourselves are long gone.
“Next would be the departments. Education, energy, transportaion. All inefficient and wasteful. They provide no visible benefit, nor have they since their inception. The war on drugs will go too.”
Strongly disagree, particularly with Transportation, and leadership in Energy and Education from the fed is a good idea. That being said, Education in particular has been a little too much of a political football, and increasing the science in education is one trend that the fed should continue to encourage. It might be possible to consolidate Education and maybe Energy under other departments, but it would be a grave mistake to do away with them entirely. They are not all inefficient and wasteful, and they certainly haven’t been “since their inception” in particular farming out what Transportation does to the states or even private entities would be less, not more, efficient.
“The very last thing I would cut is national entitlement spending. I would phase it out over the course of a decade or two, maybe three. This would become money back in the peoples pockets to help grow the country with real savings.”
Entitlements are necessary, and they won’t go away later any more than now. Reform and yes, painful choices concerning entitlements (particularly Medicare) will have to be made, but they won’t go away, they can not be replaced by charity, and that’s a fact. The provision of human services for people with developmental disabilities requires a consistent and reliable funding source, and the only such source in history has been government funding. This won’t change. Ever. If it does change, it means that the country has other, very very serious issues.
“Going on in the background you will have a shrinkage of government and more freedom given back to the citizens of our great nation. Slowly, but surely we would correct the big government mindset we’ve had for the last century.”
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. You can not run a post-industrial country of over 300 million people on the cheap. We will have to reign in spending, and we will have to increase taxes, and nothing else will work. However, the idea that we can starve the federal government, even a phased in starvation, and have smaller units of government much less the private sphere take over at reduced cost, is a pipe dream. Big government in some areas is the most efficient solution. For example, having different rules for all areas of transportation safety, or not having a federal transportation infrastructure, would be a disaster.
That being said, AE, I appreciate your post.
“Ag – I’m guessing you do, but don’t want to assume, so you do realize that Bush’s cuts were to all tax brackets, right?”
Absolutely.
“I don’t necessarily disagree, as the debts aren’t going to pay themselves, and I don’t see any signs of growing our way out of it, with cap & tax, card check, amnesty, healthcare all on deck, but this would mean increasing taxes on all taxpayers, not just the evil rich.”
I think to get people to take the debt seriously, everyone should sacrifice. That being said, no one should be deluded into thinking that raised taxes on the rich will have the same impact on them that raised taxes will have on people who are not rich.
But yes, I think the tax cuts, across the board, were very ill advised.
Rage – gee…guess that’s why I gave you two more lib references, right?
Good thing Time Magazine & Univ of freaking Chicago are non-partisan sources….
How curious. I’ll leave aside the silly Time slam; those of common intelligence can judge what was written in context. That, however, does not refute the basic (and obvious) point: far from issuing dictatorial decrees, General Johnson simply played political hardball. That’s significant only when one considers just how limp and accomodating Democrats are these days.
More fascinating: You divide the world into ideological references, and include a major university as a “lib reference.”
I could quibble that the notoriously conservative school of economics at the U. of Chicago destroys its lib cred, but I’m more bothered by the far dumber point, mainly, that you can’t trust historical documents coming from a friggin’ university perceived (rightly or wrongly) as “liberal.”
I suppose I might look askance at the conservative evangelical institutions (as they’ve been known to less than truthful), and certainly a university–any university–has its certifiable types.
But ya know what? If Liberty University or Oral Roberts University produced a Madison document declaring that helping the poor was the embodient of evil, my first instinct would be to seek either confirmation or refutation of its authenticity. I would not dismiss it out of hand.
Because you see, I don’t live in a bullschit universe where ideology determines reality.
P.S. The Cato link was quite interesting, actually.
P.S. I agree with Agnatha. I’m still paying off my tax liability, but I would pay more to bring back America.
Because you see, I don’t live in a bullschit universe where ideology determines reality.
Of course you do. You just BS yourself.
“I could quibble that the notoriously conservative school of economics at the U. of Chicago destroys its lib cred, but I’m more bothered by the far dumber point, mainly, that you can’t trust historical documents coming from a friggin’ university perceived (rightly or wrongly) as “liberal.””
Rage – if the Univ of Chicago’s business school did the research on Madison…that’s one thing, and your point is legit. They didn’t, and the rest of the school is filled with Obama/Khalidi/Ayers like minded profs, so yeah, I stick by my point that it’s a liberal school.
I think the major difference between us, is that when I’m reading, I don’t just read one side and proclaim it perfect. I can watch Fox or MSNBC and know that it’s got a biased slant and filter accordingly. Is it ideological, sure it is. No different than your instantaneous discount of Thomas Woods, PHd, author of PIG on Hist, as a “genius” (sarcastically of course) partisan. I recognize he comes from one angle, which is why I’ve read other history books from authors like Joseph Ellis who lean left..and gave you those references as well, as they came to similar conclusions about Madison’s weak fed govt stance.
Was Madison a complex character, that played both sides of the fence at various times, yes. Not saying he didn’t. What I’m also saying, and that you’ve never answered, is why go to the trouble of enumerating powers of congress, adding the 9th/10th amendments to the Bill of Rights, if the intent of the COTUS, was to grant congress vague powers at their disposal, making all the enumeration/amendments meaningless? It doesn’t matter what any individual congressman/COTUS signer/etc says, when that one simple fact is never addressed, it’s just ignored. Any reasonable person would think they were really stupid for purposefully putting such a dicotomy in the COTUS. I lean the other way, in that I think they were brilliant, and took extra steps to make sure it was clear…and it was still spun by the courts to fit that ideological divide you speak of.
As for “historical documents”, apparently the Federalist Papers don’t count?
Btw, I thought the Cato paper was interesting as well.
“I think to get people to take the debt seriously, everyone should sacrifice. That being said, no one should be deluded into thinking that raised taxes on the rich will have the same impact on them that raised taxes will have on people who are not rich.”
Ag – couldn’t agree more. Figured that was what you were saying earlier, but didn’t want to assume. Your first sentence says it all. The bankrupt state our fed govt balance sheet is in, will never be taken seriously, until all parties have some skin in the game. And we can’t just raise taxes to get out of the mess. Spending cuts need to be far more aggressive than tax increases. Someone’s got to break the chain of incenting the practice of spending other’s money as a platform for creating a vote buying mechanism. And until all parties are impacted, the formula for candidate election success at the expense of the entire country failing will never be corrected.
I agree that the Bush cuts were dumb..in that they didn’t cut spending. If they’d done both, I’d be behind them more.
On your last comment about effecting the poor disproportionately, I agree. However, the govt’s busting their hump to make sure there isn’t deflation that would disproportionately help the poor in buying power, in favor of inflation that aids debt laden entities and favors the govt. I struggle mightily with a govt policy of ramping up inflation to save itself, when the poor/working poor/retirees are eaten alive by the practice. That practice doesn’t require a vote (ie, to print money) and is just as dumb as not controlling spending while offering tax cuts (Obama ran on that too..”95% get cuts..”). Neither party is guilt free of this atrocious fiscal policy.
?Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance?