Absolutely true. I have some evangelical friends here in the [agency that does some government DoD thing] and they rail against waste, fraud and abuse on the Washington Post for the 6 hours a day they are not in meetings. One guy was a marine before he was a contractor, and I asked him when he was ever going to get a "real job" and stop mooching off the government. Didn't go over well. Wander the parking lots, and there are a lot of european imports and large japanese SUVs. And they complain about Obamacare and taxes being too high. So in other words, they siphon all the cash they can out of the government and taxes, doing as little work as possible, while complaining about how wasteful the government is and how high their taxes are. I love it.
You must work in the Reston area.. Probably my new brother in law sits next to you... That is the way we figured out after the bubble bursted in 2008. We have to pay for housing anyways, call it rent or mortgage. We're still underwater, but luckily we were able to refinance last month to a very low rate, so in a few years we might be able to sell the house without losing money. Off course all this works as long as our incomes are not heavily disrupted. I was "lucky". When we bought the house we knew a new roof was required in the next 2-3 years; Wilma blew off like 40% of our shingles, so my insurance company paid for it. I was not so lucky with my AC unit, $4500 but it actually works and the electricity bill went down a little.
which is precisely why they rail against government social programs, but don't let anyone touch the welfare state for America's military industrial complex! It's hypocritical, but I don't blame them. it's self interest. when I worked for NASA and the USAF, I was in that corner as well - though I foolishly still insisted on voting on principle (libertarian), but only because I knew that my vote didn't really matter anyway, and that whether it was Dems or Reps that won, the military industrial complex would remain intact. so I can feel good about voting on principle, and still not worry about the practical effects of my vote (i.e. possibly losing my gov't job if a libertarian actually was elected and started putting libertarian principles into action). it's the best of both worlds.
What's the word on this atm? Over here we're rather split between getting out the beer and sandwiches out whilst watching the impending disaster or following one of two reactions, both from the old 'Dad's Army' TV show on the BBC. They had a character, a scot, who never saw a situation he couldn't imagine could be any worse, so... ... or the English fella who always wanted to look on the bright side and thought it was important to remain calm and ... Not sure which I'm gonna do but I'm getting on a bit now and, hey... I like both beer AND sandwiches, so...
C. Grimes leading his American Fascist Union blazes like a bright light through the crisis, takes over and restores ORDER.
So for everything I hear looking like the cliff will happen, I guess we will find out if it was just fear mongering or if the economy really tanks. As @brumie once said, the tax hike should be already be priced into economic projections by wall street and corporate America.
I don't understand why the fiscal cliff is so horrendous. It's basically the cuts that the Republicans have been asking for. Oh, right. They ask for things, they just don't WANT them.
No body wants the cuts, as someone said before we the people are mostly hypocrites when it comes to balancing the budget.
BS. Just raise the taxes on everyone else but me and cut all the programs that I don't use/care about. Budget Balanced.
Republicans have always been fine with cutting Democratic programs. It's cutting Republican programs and paying taxes that give them a problem.
My take - Boehner seems to be trying, although now he's talking tough McConnell is not trying Cantor is not trying Krugman, predictably, is more caustic yet - .
Funny I just finished reading an article on this. Interesting stuff http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-cliff-lots-of-pointing-and-laughing/?hpid=z3
Republicans were fine with Keynes until they weren't fine with Keynes, but once military cuts were threatened they were fine with Keynes again.
Obama wants the fiscal cliff. He will get a whole bunch of new taxes to spend and to cut the military. The trickle down misery just to my family will be bad. We will have $350 less to spend, which means no new car for my wife. And, the would be salesman will have less income to spend on Christmas presents or food or daycare, etc. There is a program that economists have run to gauge the affects of the fiscal cliff. Best case scenario has a loss of 1.9 million jobs and another recession. Obama does not care.
You mean, a whole bunch of next taxes which which to pay down the deficit that the GOP creates and moans about, then a Democrat needs to fix. Otherwise, your comment is spot on.
If I was a member of the United States House of Representatives or United States Senate, and I wanted to keep my job, I would act to let the country go right over the fiscal cliff. Any Democrat who agrees to slash Medicare and Social Security enough to satisfy the Republicans will lose his job in the next Democratic primary. Any Republican who agrees to raise taxes (especially on their #1 constituency) enough to satisfy the Democrats will lose his job in the next Republican primary.
A wonky, detailed-filled discussion, with an optimistic outlook - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/10/the-five-keys-to-a-fiscal-cliff-deal/ Unsurprising that the negotiations have been hampered because the Republicans don't really know what they want. The GOP needs to get its collective act together and settle on a plan. Bomb throwing is not a plan.
Create your own deficit reduction plan - http://projects.wsj.com/my-deficit-plan/ I went from a projected $1 trillion deficit in 2020 per current approaches, to a modest surplus. The tool wouldn't let me cut defense as much as I would like, all I could do was freeze spending for a bit, so I had to do it by repealing the Bush tax cuts and a few other tax increases. Was pretty easy to do. If you actually want the deficit to disappear, as opposed to just whine about it, new revenues are a godsend. You'll also notice from the exercise that the Republicans aren't even trying. Their current big idea, that of raising the age of Medicare eligibility, saves a whopping $30 billion -- less than 3% of the projected deficit. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire, in contrast, is $550 billion per year right there. Not that you'd learn any of that from even the mainstream press, never mind Fox & Rush, who will have you convinced that the Medicare change is massively important to the deficit.
I'm sorry, that tool has no basis in reality, because it did not let me cut taxes on everyone even more, which would magically let us grow our way out of the deficit.
No worries, the Heritage Foundation will create that version of the tool. It will be called the Paul Ryan planner. You can cut top marginal tax rates to 15% and watch tax revenues grow, grow, grow.
I heard an interesting discussion on raising Medicare eligibility age the other day. The gist of it being that raising it from 65 to 67 would reduce government expenses by $5.7b a year and increase the cost to the economy (everything not government) by $11.4b a year. "All told, the cost to the system of raising the Medicare age to 67 would be $11.4 billion in 2014, which is a high price to pay for $5.7 billion in federal savings. It’s exactly a factor of two too high. That’s a massive cost shift. Let’s put it this way, how much would you want to pay for the federal government to save $5.7 billion? I hope your answer is no greater than $5.7 billion. (If not, I’ve got a business proposition for you.) Paying $11.4 billion is a rip off." http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/monkeying-with-the-medicare-eligibility-age/