Saturday, December 4, 2010

Obama Slashes Transportation Budget; In Other News, Obama Unveils New Transportation Plan


Obama Replaces Costly High-Speed Rail Plan With High-Speed Bus Plan

11 comments:

Richard Thornton said...

Why does your side constantly want to "punk" the President, but never actually unveil any concrete proposals to fix the country's problems? None of the current issues we face began after 1/21/2009 and if you were intellectually honest, although you never seem to be, you would admit to this fact. Most of these problems began as far back as 1973 when Nixon was in office perhaps even prior to that point as there was a major recession in the 1970 period. You see, I have a memory too.

I am not sure - do you want high speed rail or not? Apparently Christie does not, but he still wants the federal money, interesting ideological contradiction; we have no money in NJ for high speed rail, but we do have money to bail out Atlantic City. When your side gets honest, perhaps I will be less confrontational, and more willing to support your ideas.

Anonymous said...

Just because you are intentionally ignorant about what the Republicans propose doesn't mean that they have no proposals.

Healthcare is one example, but there are dozens of others.

The Democrats never even passed a budget for next year, in case you didn't know, and they had COMPLETE CONTROL OVER THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH.

They did not need the Republicans to...cough, cough..."solve problems" by spending us into oblivion.

People like you never learn because your mind is "unfettered by reality." The only cure for people like you is misery and poverty perpetrated by a boundless state. Only then will you realize that though you want to help yourself remedy your condition, you are forbidden from doing so.

Richard Thornton said...

Republicans propose nothing concrete and what I mean by concrete is a statistical model which shows by year X, when we will have a balanced budget, < 5% unemployment with their proposed tax cuts and solid budget cuts and label it "their plan" and contrast it with our plan. All your side ever does is refrain back to he Laffer curve and call it sound economic theory. I suppose you have it easier to some extent coming up with solid cuts because apparently you do not want EPA, Dept. of Education, FDA, Medicare, Medicaid, or clean air and water regulations, and although I do not know you at all, I would guess you choose not to live near any dumps, or landfills.

Healthcare can never be fully solved because we have developed a major sector of our economy around spending more and more money on healthcare but have yet to raise the theoretical maximum life expectancy even one day. The only answer is to learn to live with less healthcare, not more. I am all for that since many out of work teabaggers might die off quicker.

Richard Thornton said...

There are only two ways the Kemp/Laffer/Reagan economic theory can work as I see it:

1) we sell significantly more than we buy, unlike the current situation where we buy all goods from China and simultaneously buy 700B dollars in foreign oil on an annual basis. We probably bleed a trillion a year in assets this way.

2) we have a net gain in our domestic assets through some sort of technology boost. We had this in the 1980's and 1990's with computer technology, but we do not have it anymore.

Otherwise we have X dollars in the total economy and fractions of it move around from person to person. In this scenario, if one sells more stuff, some other guy had to buy it, and if it was a domestic sale, how has the total sum of wealth changed? Therefore how will lowering taxes on the rich improve the economy without drastic cuts in military spending and other large budget programs? And some of these cuts will be in education and if we do not start growing more educated people in the arts, sciences, and engineering, we will continue to slide relative to China and India. My son plays piano and he does contests every year; without taking an actual census, I would estimate the majority of his musical peers are Chinese. I am beginning to think Caucasians are stupid or something, because we are more concerned with the "YES" network being available than with a relaxing Dowland lute work being broadcast on radio or TV. While we are bullshitting around arguing over how much to cut taxes and hanging in Afghanistan and Iraq, trying to locate bin Laden, the Chinese are laughing at us.

Lemming Master said...

A free economy is predicated on trade, not mandates from elites.

This means people input labor value in order to buy what they personally want, not what elites want them to have.

Is what I want the same as what you want? No. That's the point.

But if I work and earn money and buy what I want, how is that any of your business, or the government's business, for that matter?

With sound currency, and without a welfare scheme of forced exploitation of the productive class, you have to work to earn money, thus you value that money. Therefore you buy what you want.

That whole scarcity, supply and demand thing is a concept that elites find very hard to wrap their big brains around. Capitalism is not just a facilitator of demanded production, but pricing is a restraint on waste.

Alternatively, one can make a product that people want to buy or facilitate through investment or provide capital loans at interest.

People don't want to work for elites. That is why productivity drops in a command economy. They don't want to work for you, or your egghead friends like Paul Krugman. We don't care about your musical tastes. That is between you and your lutes.

Richard Thornton said...

Buy whatever you want; you are changing the subject. if you want a society based around a self organizing scheme such as libertarianism, so be it; just tell me how it will set us up to directly compete against the Chinese and the Indians? And how will it pay for it and how will it pay off the debt we have already accrued over the last 230 years?

Lemming Master said...

I'm changing the subject? LOL.

How in the world do you think the Chinese got to where they are? By access to the American (relatively) free market. Same goes for the Indians.

America still has the biggest economy in the world. And yes, we have debt. Establish a flat tax, cut out the wasteful welfare programs, get employment back to 95%, and we will have a roaring economy and the ability to pay off the debt.

Keep strangling the economy with government regulations, and we will continue to decline economically. This isn't clear to you from your reading of history? I find this hard to believe.

Richard Thornton said...

"America still has the biggest economy in the world. And yes, we have debt. Establish a flat tax, cut out the wasteful welfare programs, get employment back to 95%, and we will have a roaring economy and the ability to pay off the debt."

What level of flat tax??

Anonymous said...

Good question, Richard.

Russia, for example, has a 13% flat tax. But they are a relatively primitive petro-dictatorship (I know, after 70 years of forced communism you'd think they'd catch up!). We have a relatively modern sophisticated society, so I would think the government could be run on about 22%.

(According to recent levels of GNP, that would be about $3 trillion dollars, or about $1000 for every man, woman, and child in America. Of course, the new transparency would increase GNP output, since businesses could work relatively free of the fear that IRS auditors will bust in and "go gangsta" on them. We would also semi-privatize and phase out the giant racketeering schemes of Social Security and Medicare privatize retirement and medicine for 95% of the people. This also would also make illegal immigration a moot point. The millions of people who come to the United States fleeing their oppressive socialistic governments would know they'd have to work their way up. And you know what? THEY'D LIKE IT.

Reaganx said...

=so I would think the government could be run on about 22%.=

The government can be run without any income tax - in the 19th century it was run on excises.
I'd prefer the total abolition of taxes though.

Richard Thornton said...

Under the Obama tax plan from yesterday, I should get about a $5k tax break....more would be better, but it works for me.