by OLD1953 » Sat Jun 04, 2011 9:57 pm
China is burning through capital at a much faster rate than the US. They can't keep up this forcing of the rising wage plus the rising expectations all the time. They are going to run out of money shortly, and they can't run a deficit like most countries can, because not that many capitalists will trust communists to not do whatever is expedient at the time. Not that capitalists won't, but usually they take longer about it.
The US needs someone to get real about the budget. The world can probably accept a 400 billion deficit for the US, which gives a 1 trillion fix that is needed. Splitting the difference between tax increase and cuts gives 500 billion of each, on that decade basis the pols like to use, that's a 5 trillion tax increase coupled with a 5 trillion set of cuts. (Silly, but that's DC.) That could be realized, but people are going to hate it. Nobody seems to ever want to read real numbers like these:
http://www.econdataus.com/efftax05.html
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151
Which show clearly that middle and upper quintile tax rates are too low across the board. Moreover, it's painfully obvious from those figures that the wage increases need to be redistributed downwards, that the whole bottom 4/5 ths needs increasing wages while the top income earners need to slow down. Just MHO, but collections need to increase and the middle class collections need to go up somewhat more sharply than the upper end, simply as a matter of sense. Look at the figures. Rates in 1998 made a lot more sense.
Didn't say any of that was palatable, I certainly don't like it, but what I like and what the country NEEDS are two utterly different matters. I wish they'd pass it tomorrow and get it over with.
Syria is going into overload. Can they avoid all out civil war?
As the Sunni countries become involved at home, they become more and more fearful of Iran. It's my understanding the GCC and Arab League are putting pressure on Iraq to keep a US military presence as a buffer against their feisty neighbor. The chair of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary Gates have been in Baghdad in recent weeks discussing such matters. Boils down to "Iraq wants us to stay, they have to ask, and if they don't ask before August 1, we are gone". Politically, that's unpopular in both countries, as a security matter, it's a lot more important than anything that could happen in Afghanistan. Funny how deficit hawks get so odd when discussing security matters, they want to cut it but they know they can't, and a lot of the time that leads to them making statements the smartest man in the world will never untangle. (There is far too much on this matter in the news for me to post it, just search the news for "Iraq troops" for the last three months and read. Just because CNN and Fox on TV ignore it, doesn't mean it isn't there.)
Hey, gotta love Operation Cupcake! Everyone likes cupcakes!
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/06/04/ope ... rld-huffpoChina is burning through capital at a much faster rate than the US. They can't keep up this forcing of the rising wage plus the rising expectations all the time. They are going to run out of money shortly, and they can't run a deficit like most countries can, because not that many capitalists will trust communists to not do whatever is expedient at the time. Not that capitalists won't, but usually they take longer about it.
The US needs someone to get real about the budget. The world can probably accept a 400 billion deficit for the US, which gives a 1 trillion fix that is needed. Splitting the difference between tax increase and cuts gives 500 billion of each, on that decade basis the pols like to use, that's a 5 trillion tax increase coupled with a 5 trillion set of cuts. (Silly, but that's DC.) That could be realized, but people are going to hate it. Nobody seems to ever want to read real numbers like these:
http://www.econdataus.com/efftax05.html
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151
Which show clearly that middle and upper quintile tax rates are too low across the board. Moreover, it's painfully obvious from those figures that the wage increases need to be redistributed downwards, that the whole bottom 4/5 ths needs increasing wages while the top income earners need to slow down. Just MHO, but collections need to increase and the middle class collections need to go up somewhat more sharply than the upper end, simply as a matter of sense. Look at the figures. Rates in 1998 made a lot more sense.
Didn't say any of that was palatable, I certainly don't like it, but what I like and what the country NEEDS are two utterly different matters. I wish they'd pass it tomorrow and get it over with.
Syria is going into overload. Can they avoid all out civil war?
As the Sunni countries become involved at home, they become more and more fearful of Iran. It's my understanding the GCC and Arab League are putting pressure on Iraq to keep a US military presence as a buffer against their feisty neighbor. The chair of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary Gates have been in Baghdad in recent weeks discussing such matters. Boils down to "Iraq wants us to stay, they have to ask, and if they don't ask before August 1, we are gone". Politically, that's unpopular in both countries, as a security matter, it's a lot more important than anything that could happen in Afghanistan. Funny how deficit hawks get so odd when discussing security matters, they want to cut it but they know they can't, and a lot of the time that leads to them making statements the smartest man in the world will never untangle. (There is far too much on this matter in the news for me to post it, just search the news for "Iraq troops" for the last three months and read. Just because CNN and Fox on TV ignore it, doesn't mean it isn't there.)
Hey, gotta love Operation Cupcake! Everyone likes cupcakes!
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/06/04/operation-cupcake-british-spies-hack-al-qaedas-magazine-to-replace-bombs-with-cupcakes/?xid=rss-world-huffpo