US debt default

Just Playing, I think I have been clear in my dislike of both of the major parties in our gubment. I certainly don't look at Bush as a model president.

"Originally Posted by Fred_G
Well said Riky. I would add one thing. Not sure about the gubment in England, but in the US, it is massively inefficient and rife with fraud and waste. So the money taken from the citizens as taxes, then re-spent by the gubment for healthcare is not a good thing. Lots of those tax dollars went to things other than healthcare.

I've yet to see anyone put up the supporting statistics demonstrating these assertions."

JP, do you honestly think there is little or no fraud and waste in the us gubment?

If there is no waste, then I can prove fraud right here: http://www.justice.gov/usao/dc/divisions/criminal_fraud_public_corruption.html

If there is no waste, then why do we have a us DOJ Department of Fraud and Public Corruption? Surely the gubment would not have an unnecessary department. Would they? :-D

Here is gubment proof of a $14 Million Dollar Medicare fraud... http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2008/June/08-crm-573.html

Only $8 Million in this fraud conviction in CA. http://newsroom-magazine.com/2011/e...rnia-medicare-fraud-case-ends-in-convictions/



Rikky: I agree there is no magic way to stop fraud and waste. I think the main reason it is so hard to stop, is the gubment is way to big. Make it a lot smaller, and it would be easier to spot waste and fraud.

The reason I bring up cutting waste and fraud in entitlement programs is that I think both liberals and conservatives can agree on it. The only people who would be for it would be people scamming the gubment.

 

Heck yeah, tax the rich. Wait, now how can you hate on her? She is helping support almost 50% of the us population... :-D:-D You would think with that much money her daughter would not be in a Section 8 house living on food stamps. You would think she would help her daughter. Oh... Wait.... Seems Palin Jr. makes money also.

Conservatives, such hateful people. roflmao

 

Cmon Fred that's not what he said, you said money government money for medicare is a bad thing and I quote "lots" of money doesn't go to people who need it.

Unless you have numbers that show the amount of fraud in the medicare system,inefficiency and how that relates to the amount current US debt there is now way to know how much fraud and inefficiency there is its just a guess,a few isolated cases does not a truth make.

And in any case the private sector has just as much fraud if not more after all they are the same humans running it.

I see we are determined to go down the route of arguing about old left verses right policies::tired

 

Rikky, I did not say money going to medicare was bad.

"Cmon Fred that's not what he said, you said money government money for medicare is a bad thing and I quote "lots" of money doesn't go to people who need it."

And I quickly found 2 examples of $22 million in fraud. Small number when you look at the debt, but that is $22 million that did NOT go to the people that need medicare.

My point is, that whether you believe social programs should be eliminated, or if you believe they should be expanded, I would think you could agree that waste and fraud are bad.

Cutting waste and fraud is not a conservative or liberal agenda. I would think both would agree with it. Would make some cuts in gubment entitlement programs, without affecting the ones who qualify for the programs.

Honestly, do you see that as bad? Of course won't solve the US debt problem, but would be a start.

"The total amount of Medicare fraud is difficult to track, because not all fraud is detected and not all suspicious claims turn out to be fraudulent. According to the Office of Management and Budget, Medicare "improper payments" were $47.9 billion in 2010, but some of these payments later turned out to be valid.[1] The Congressional Budget Office estimates that total Medicare spending was $528 billion in 2010,[2] so this gives a very rough estimate of about 9% waste."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_fraud

OK, so let's say it is only 9% fraud. Drop in the bucket no? But it is a drop in the bucket, and granny does not have to live on cat food, just cuts fraud. Only effects the people who are stealing from the us taxpayers.

 

Rikky is right, I never said there was no fraud or corruption whatsoever, you are taking things to a ridiculous extreme. Those are examples of private citizens violating the law. Unless you are taking the "We the people' argument to it's most ridiculous extreme, these are not examples of a government "rife with fraud and waste". If you want examples of governments "rife with fraud and waste", look at Russia and Mexico.

Private insurance providers are also defrauded on a regular basis despite being significantly smaller than the US government.

 

Just Playing, you did not answer my question. "JP, do you honestly think there is little or no fraud and waste in the us gubment?"

And, do you not agree that liberals and conservatives could unite to reduce waste and fraud? Citizens violating the law is fraud! Making illegal insurance claims also raises the price of insurance.

You seem to resist reducing fraud and waste in the US government. I can't understand why. This is a bi partisan way to reduce the gubment spending, without cutting entitlement programs. Is it a magic bullet, no. Will it alone solve the debt crisis? No. Is it a step in the right direction? I think so.

 

"Rikky is right, I never said there was no fraud or corruption whatsoever, you are taking things to a ridiculous extreme. Those are examples of private citizens violating the law. Unless you are taking the "We the people' argument to it's most ridiculous extreme, these are not examples of a government "rife with fraud and waste". If you want examples of governments "rife with fraud and waste", look at Russia and Mexico."

OK, I give you 2 examples of $22 Million in convicted fraud, with 2 cases. You don't see fraud? Do you support citizens defrauding the gubment?


"Those are examples of private citizens violating the law." = fraud. PERIOD. Should be stopped. Russia, Mexico? Come now SIN. See title of thread, is not Mexican or Russian debt. Shift Ignore Name Call.

"We the people"??

I think I am out of this conversation, I see no learned discussion in the future. Good conversation though. :cool

Interesting topic, and nice that we can have a bit of dialog without needing mods.

 

I hate no one because it takes too much energy to hate. My sword is my mirth at them. Let's pray (insert custom term) away!roflmao

 

-raise the income taxes on everyone progressively

-remove the cap on SS tax (AND STOP SPENDING THIS MONEY ELSEWHERE!!)

-Cut subsidies to people who dont need them nor do they really help us, like giving exxonmobil taxes rather than them paying us taxes, farm subsidies ETC

-Military spending is a very tricky and delicate one to cut, but if we focus on overpricing and get real market prices we would save a lot. A little competition never hurt no one.

 

Cheap bullets never hurt no one either:-D

Where have ya been murder? Did someone send you an email about a US deficit thread going down in the lounge:-D

 

Will these bullets hurt? Look at these *Holy Smoke* bullets, they ain't exactly cheap and a way to blast off your loved ones. :-D http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2011/07/28/cremated-ashes-as-ammunition/ Perhaps these bullets should be donated to the military to reduce costs?

What's next?

 

Strange:-D At first I thought it would be kinda cool,from beyond the grave a dead soldier is still taking out enemy.

But then I thought the final resting place of your loved one,soldier ect. would be inside the rotting remains of an enemy body:confused

 

same bullets, just at a lower price forced by the market

my politicking senses tingled :-D

 

Anyone notice our debt exceeded the 2010 GDP? That is not a good thing.

Good to hear from you Murder. Raising taxes is not the answer.

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/39534

 

lol@ 25% income tax:-D Our taxman would take about 50% of that,if rich people even paid the right amount of tax:major You don't get rich by giving all your earnings to the taxman:-D You get rich by hiring a team of accountants to divert money through charitable donations in return for tax breaks.

I'm not hating on rich people at all,I hope to be one one day and I will stop at nothing to keep those thievin liberals away from me gold argghhh! No sarcasm intended.

Don't hate the playa hate the game:cool

The dow was up 0.5% at the end of trading today,maybe it will stabilise.

http://www.google.co.uk/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI

 

But Rikky, did you read the article? If they tool 100% of every American who made over 10$ Million dollars, they could run the country for about 24 days. Would be less, cause they pay 25% tax already...

I don't recall the exact number, but I think the top 10% of the wealthy pay like 30% of all US federal income taxes. So, if you took 100% of EVERYONES income, you could run the US for 2.5 to 3 months...

The problem is spending, not revenue. Well, spending is one of the problems, I will stay on topic. :-D

Plus, with the current baseline budgeting system, the gubment grows 8% every year, AUTOMATICALLY!

 

Just heard on the radio, that the USA credit rating has been re-rated from from AAA to AA+. Already 380,000 links on Google.

See http://www.google.com/search?q=USA+rating+from+AAA+to+AA+&hl=en&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images&tbs=

It will be very interesting to see what happens to the world financial position.
Already stocks have fallen by around 4% on world markets just before this was announced.

The Aussie dollar v the USA dollar has already fallen from $1.10 to $1.04 in the last week.

When the USA sneezes, the world catches cold.

Bazza

 

Sorry Bigbazza, but we are not going to sneeze, we are going to have the flu soon. Get ready. :major

/liberal How can they dare downgrade us! We raised our debt ceiling! We can borrow more money! Hey, we got more money to spend! /liberal rolleyes

 

I don't think this is going to be pretty. Prepare for it, while you can. :cool

 

I would think they would mix the ashes in with the gunpowder, they wouldn't put the ashes in the actual bullet, so the cremated person's ashes would probably burn up/fly out with the rest of the gunpowder.

 

Thanks, Tea Party. rolleyes

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-cavnar/sp-downgrade-tea-party-wi_b_920016.html

Warren Buffet disagrees with S&P and bets $40 billion on it.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/08/05/buffett-to-fbn-sp-downgrade-doesnt-make-sense/

 

Ashes would most likely not be mixed into the propellant (gunpowder). Would most likely be the projectile, or part of it. Hollow bullets can be filled with what you want in them.

 

JustPlaying, this has been coming for a while. You want to blame the tea party?

If we take all income from everyone who pays taxes, you can't run the gubment for more than 3 months. I am talking take 100% of all tax payer's income.

You want to blame the Tea Party for that? OK.

Your solution is...

 

Who is taking 100% of everyone's income? I must have missed that news.:confused

My solution: Ignore things that never happened.:-D

 

The effect is starting to be felt in Europe.
The base rate for government borrowing has just been raised in Belgium to 4.25% and we have a AA+ rating but are very badly exposed to the US debt crisis, only Germany and France are unaffected and that is just for the moment.
I really feel we have not yet seen the worst, there is a train wreck just around the corner and guess who will feel the most pain "Joe public" because the people who are running the economy are sitting in their ivory towers and not addressing the true facts because they do not want to be remembered as the villains of the script.

 

Emphasis mine, but that's an interesting point of view.

Again, emphasis mine. It would seem that S&P thinks all factions involved are complicit.

In Mr. Cavnar's quotes of S&P, there doesn't seem to be any statement or inference of the Tea Party as being the culprit.

Yup, yup.

 

I know and I read it.

I don't really have anything else to add,I'd just be repeating what's already been said,I'll try but I feel like I'm preaching to the unconvertable



In the same vein if you cut all spending the economy will slump due to instability in the market as witnessed in our country,this goes back to the two different philosophies of getting county out of debt,if you scream "Our country is going down!" You country will go down.

This problem is compounded when the banks of your country will not give business's credit,hence the stimulus packages,the stimulus packages 'spending' is a governments only real answer when even when the government gives the banks money to hand out they are so scared of losing they still won't hand it out.

Without some way of fuelling the country's growth revenue plummets and you have even less money to spend,if you keep all the money and don't spend anything you society will cease to function as a society,the instant you cut spending you think "Hmmm we have more money." Its soon offset by the decrease in revenue as your society declines.

Notice I also haven't even mentioned the real world effects of cutting spending.

These are the problems we are faced with at the moment,you can scream its stupid,the growth model doesn't work but its what we have,you can't focus on one aspect and say "This is he problem!" when it clearly isn't' Think about it? If it were that simple every country would do exactly the same thing,follow the same philosophy to bring a country out of recession. "I've said this many times before too!"



I think I'm done now,I wish this recession would come to a head already so I can go MadMax with a few molotov cocktails.

 

it has to be atleast a little, no realistic way to cut that much spending without ending entitlements (which Im sure you would approve of:-D) but they are way to popular with Americans. Want to guarantee a crazy rich hating lib a win? cut down or end entitlements

saw this in the last post, everytime their is "shared sacrifice" the burden of sacrifice is always on working class.

yea good to hear from yall, Im a really quiet person but politics makes me go nut with the talking and typing.

 

Some very interesting links about the T-Party and Who Rules America:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html and
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tea_Party#Financial_support

How come that for instance GE paid NO taxes yet made billions in profit? That's only 1 company out of many that escaped paying taxes.

Donny T-Trump was blasting China yet he has his manufacturing clothing businesses in China? :-D

The rest of the world is scratching their heads how the USA couldn't get their act together regarding the manufactured debt limit crisis. The minority T's are/were holding the Republicans and therefore the entire country hostage.

Ike would have been considered a commie nowadays by his own party. :-D

 

Oma, did you you know the head of GE is bo's job czar? And he is moving part of GE to China and investing a lot of cash to train Chinese people to work?

http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-..._ge-healthcare-x-ray-business-china-last-year

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com...306/Letters-Obama-s-job-czar-sends-jobs-China

 

Nobody is talking about taking 100% in taxes. But it shows that tax increases will not really help. It is the massive spending DC does. Cash = crack, and our politicians are addicted. An addict will lie and defy logic to get their fix.

 

Spending has to be cut. As I posted above, if you took 100$ of all of the people who pay Federal taxes, you could only run the country for approx 3 months. Do the math. What if all your income could only pay your bills for 3 months? Would you plan a vacation and go buy a new car?

 

Rikky, what drives the economy? The gubment, or the private sector? Companies have to make a profit, they are not like the gubment which can run up massive debt and still exist. Companies are not expanding because of threats of tax increases and gubment regulations.

Getting the private sector back on track is the only way our of this. Gubment spending does nothing.

 

What you say Fred is the logic of any private company that profit is necessary to survive but in the current situation they are better holding onto any cash surplus because of the uncertainty in the financial sector and that uncertainty is due to government not instilling confidence in the market.

Most of the press over here are saying that both Democrats and Republicans should have reached a compromise much earlier instead of waiting until the 11th hour thereby making the markets jittery and now for the first time in the history of the USA the credit rating has been downgraded. and trillions wiped off the markets, the very people who make the money.
This is just one man.

Every president wants to be remembered for some event in their term of office but i doubt Obama will want to remember this.

 

Good point Bill. But the US hit the 'debt ceiling' in May. It should have been handled long ago. Maybe with one of those pesky budget things... :-D Both parties have ignored the debt ceiling, and raised it at their convenience, instead of dealing with the issue.

Here is where $44 million federal dollars went: http://www.cio.com/article/546714/U...king_And_He_s_Giving_Away_BlackBerrys_to_Help

OK, sure, it is only $44 million, but multiply that times all the corruption in DC, and you got a budget problem! And add in over the last what, 20 years the 'debt ceiling' has just been raised when we near it. Why do we have a 'debt ceiling'? Why not just a yearly spending suggestion?

I have been screaming for smaller gubment for years. But, silly me, that would be what, unkind? Gubment can do it more better for you!?? :-D

 

Warren Buffet is not the only one. http://robertreich.org/ Excerpt:

 

Its incredible the amount of power Warren Buffet has.

When the crisis first started the government wanted Warren Buffet to say one good word about the failing banks to restore confidence in them to stop the banking run,IIRC it was something like 300 million in shares,for just a few words.

I don't think there is anything wrong with that,I think he's quite an incredible human being.

 

very telling statement from Robert Reich

But he is very politically bias he was a Clintonite.
They once had a financial so called expert in the UK who said "squeeze the rich till they bleed".
After doing that who will supply the jobs for the "poor" to have some cash in their pockets.

 

Small example of what people do when taxes are lower. This weekend in Louisiana was was a state sales tax 'holiday'. State tax is 4% in LA. I did not go near the mall, but heard it was packed.

Seems Arkansas had the same idea: http://news.yahoo.com/first-tax-free-holiday-arkansas-boon-business-230602230.html

Now, if you had a double sales tax weekend, how crowded would the stores be? Lower taxes lets the people keep more of the money they make. Then they go spend it, and it helps retail, which then needs to reorder, which helps the manufacturers! Well, and China too as well.

 

I suppose all the overweight soon to be married lady's were out in force.:-D

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_economy



The amount of revenue lost has to be re-garnered at some point unless government spending/entitlements are cut.
Also the shopping hysteria aspect distorts the numbers so much they don't reflect anything in the real world,even if revenue appears to go up it will drop for the rest of the year,there's also the problem of debt are people really spending their own money?

There's only one way to give people more money and that's to increase productivity,people need to offer goods or services that are unique but I don't really think this can be controlled by government,not as much as most people believe anyway.

 

All that shopping on tax free *holiday* won't do any good for the economy if those products were manufactured outside of the USA, except for the company owners and perhaps some for the shop owners. American JOBS is all what counts to get the economy going again because then people can and will spend again. That will lift up the economy more than anything else and will raise the government revenue as well=paying towards the debt.

 

The point was not revenue. The point is people spend more when taxes are lower, spend less when you increase taxes on an activity. I think the people can better spend their earnings than the gubment can redistribute them.

I have seen where some wish to raise corporate taxes. That will just raise the cost of goods, because corporations don't really pay taxes. The factor them into the cost of producing a good. The only real way out of this mess is to get the economy going, and massive cuts in gubment spending.

 

When the unemployment and underemployment is as high as it is now, people won't have the money to spend after the necessary expenditures. That's when tax holidays, even at a mere 4% reduction, will cut their expenses. Additionally, people who do have a job are afraid that they'll be laid off, so spend less. People will spend more if their income from a job is higher than the unemployment benefits, that is - if they still qualify for it.

Here are some links about the unemployed and underemployment figures.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/learn-how-to-invest/The-real-unemployment-rate.aspx Year is 2010 so the #'s could be higher now.
http://helpfixamericafirst.blogspot.com/2011/03/create-success.html

 

Im not a government nor do I work like one so ofcourse not but If I could at any time increase my budget and cut spending, then yes Id plan a vacation and buy a new car.

and of course we gotta cut spending but that wont be enough, people like medicare and SS way too much. Raising taxes is a necessity.

why did bush only make 1 million jobs in 8 years with lower taxes than Clinton? Because people will invest more to save on taxes which grows the economy.

we also have to tariff any company that wants to have employees overseas to save on taxes, while at the same time make a tax cut for any business that hires Americans.

 

Well, Murder, I agree with this more or less: "we also have to tariff any company that wants to have employees overseas to save on taxes, while at the same time make a tax cut for any business that hires Americans"

:-D

I mistyped on my previous post. If you took 100% of all the taxpayers money, you could only run the gubment for 3 months or so. Taxes are not the answer, cutting spending is one of the answers.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

 

I'm beginning to think this whole mess is an international 'bank run' on a world scale,or a better description would be a "Country Run"

Sure the US has a large deficit and there's been as recession due to sub prime crisis but it doesn't really explain the mass loss in confidence of the US economy,it seems everyone is pulling out just in case.

I have no doubt if the deficit ceiling wasn't used as leverage by the opposition and it was just raised quietly as it has in the past a lot of this could have been avoided.

The Dow is down another 4.5% today,where will it end? The more confidence is lost the more people pull out and the more unstable the economy becomes,its a self fulfilling prophecy.

Hopefully in the next couple of days people will begin to buy buy buy! Again:-D

http://www.google.co.uk/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI

 

These mofos are taking us to the cleaners again man! I ain't got no f'in lint left in my pocket! Go to Somalia and sell them something you greedy mofo bastards!:mad

 

I prefer to say what's on my mind Augie roflmao

 

...and you so eloquently say it well too.