Oh, give me a BREAAAAAK.

Clinton is not an “exception” in any way, shape, or form. NET FEDERAL DEBT ROSE UNDER CLINTON, albeit slower than other times. Why?

Because of the then-not-RINO Republican Congress’ spending policies, that’s what.

And it’s really, really trivial to find the description of how Clinton managed to “balance” the budget… he got cash advances off the Social Security Credit Card and used them to make it appear as though he was spending within the budget.

THIS crap all ties to the fact that governments imagine that they don’t have to adhere to GAAP — Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (or Principles). They figure they can play fast and loose with the numbers with no consequences.

Well, the butcher’s bill is knocking on the door. And in some places, like Greece, it wants in REAL BAD.

We are seeing the final looting of the West, the game has moved on to Asia. In 50 years, Africa.

> Polls show that while most French see a pension overhaul as necessary, up to 60 percent say working past 60 is not the answer.

“Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree…”

.

Arguments, at last. Took a while.

To jon baker’s and T’s assertion that consumption generates wealth is a myth — that’s a bit puzzling to me. jon-baker, you say “that is the crux of the issue-the false idea that consumption, rather than production ,generates wealth.” But if you produces something without having one to buy it, how does that generate revenues? You’ll end up like GM with a lot of cars no-one is buying. Accordingly. production without consumption seems a strange thought. It may be different in other areas in which you do not produce things but create or deliver services, financial products etc., but even there you’ll have to have someone to buy it or you go bust. So I don’t see how you can sidestep the consumption-part.

@ T

You state that “…that the spending policies of a U.S. RINO congress are not representative, especially spending on social programs invented by former Democratic congresses. This was a case of beltway Republicans thinking that it was now their turn to spend like Democrats. It was not the spending policies that led to the economic boom of Reagan through Bush (43) but the reduced taxation which encouraged new development, which in turn encouraged new production, which in turn generated new revenues, which in turn generated greater tax revenue for the govt.”

This is indeed a nice summary, but three questions remain:

1) How could the fiscal policies of Reagan through Bush (43) be successful despite a Republican dominated Congress (at least 1994) that you denigrate as RINOs? Did Reagan govern against Democrats and Republicans at the same time? How did he do that? And if all theses Republicans are not representative for the true republican / conservative fiscal policy you prefer, than the onus of telling who the true representative are lies on you, not me. Simply because you never state and I don’t know your preferred conservative sect — that does not invalidate my talking in general about Republican / conservative fiscal policy

2) And where did Reagan, Bush 1 and later Bush 2 end up? – The affluence of the late 80s and 90s was on credit! (The exception is Clinton, whom everyone from the Right fought as mad as hell. So don’t claim his fiscal policy as part of your argument). Neither was there much worth created, nor was the rosy times at any rate paid for. It was ordinary tax-reduction-paid-for-by-deficit-spending. In a word: the high time for the free riders and free lunchers in the USA. Reagonomics (and in Great Britain Thatcherism) worked via privatization, tax-reduction, spending-cuts, deficit-spending, de-regulation of markets abroad.

The results (be it in Great Britain or the USA) are same: privatization of former public- and government-run services delivered on the whole worse quality than before; de-regulation of work- and safety standards took there human and environmental tolls; tax-cuts yielded the volitional explosion of deficit so that Republicans had their desired excuse for cutting social programs and reduce government. (Ironically every Republican president, bloated government, agencies and public-sector-workforce.)

3) You say that “…the reduced taxation … encouraged new development, which in turn encouraged new production, which in turn generated new revenues, which in turn generated greater tax revenue for the govt.” New developments and new production were not encouraged by reduced taxation. The rise of the computer-technology as a main branch of production and revenue wasn’t helped by tax-reduction, but by risk-affine entrepreneurship combined with the help of risk-capital. Most advances in medicine, pharmacy, nano-technology, biology, bio-engineering that let to new products where achieved through years of public spending in pure research at universities, not from tax-exempted entrepreneurs in the private sector. (Those were only the ones who benefited from the public paid research.) So it is simply an unsupported claim to say that tax-reductions had anything to do with new developments reaching to new products.

Your next point is about incentives to work, and the effects redistribution has on those willing to take their chances. “Redistribution not only contributes no economic incentive, is discourages whatever economic incentive already exists in the very people most equipped to create it.” We can hair-split over this sentence long and wide (especially about the ideological undertone), but I think the problematic feature here is the belief that taxation is a kind of redistribution. That would be the case if taxation would equal dispossession. There are many arguments about this claim, I think it is false and I suppose you think it is true. But a middle-ground is possible if you admit that there has to be at least some form of taxation to generate the revenues to pay for public endeavours like infrastructure, defense, etc. How much and for what the money should be spent, who should spent it in the name of whom, are further questions.

Victimized taxpayers: It’s mostly the better-offs who complain about high taxation. And it’s the american right who presents itself for decades now as victims of a witch-hunt and smear-campaign. Being a poor victim is very comfortable: You have no responsibility for your actions, because everything you do is in pure self-defense. So you’re never a culprit, what means: the enemy is. So the only ones who constantly present themselves as victims are the right wings, the conservatives, the tea-*******, the Limbaughs, the FoxNews-watcher. And those feeling unfairly taxed. I don’t see this attitude on the left.

Whether envy is the motivating factor behind much ‘tax the rich’-claims, I cannot say. Usually you hear this kind of claim from the better-offs, who simultaneously claim that all they have achieved they have achieved on their own, through their own labor. Equally the claim that welfare provokes laziness (dependence) and eschews personal responsibility is a common one. And there is something to that one, but I think as a generalization it is plainly wrong and untenable. Normally it is used to belittle others, and as a psychological claim it is unsubstantiated. Such claims do not prove anything, they simply show ones attitude.

Concerning your appeal to my personal egoism: Well, I earn below average; I work for my money; I don’t accept hand-outs even if I could have; and I pay my taxes willingly, because I think it is necessary and fair. I don’t think about other people as above or below me in a tree. There are some who are better off, other who are less so. As human being we have to help others in need. And even if fraud and laziness occur, that’s not an argument from refraining to pay taxes. It’s even not an argument for perfecting the distribution systems: Fraud, laziness, free rides and squandering always occur in social services. But to prevent that is to abolish the service at all or to introduce means of controls that are condescending to the majority of people using these services properly. Services to which people are entitle to by law.

In the end it’s always amusing to see how you and other people like PlatoBunker (11:53) turn nuts when term “tea-bagger” occur. First of all: There was that picture of the lady with straw-hat, tea-bags attached to it, on a rally of the “Tea-Party” in 2009. So the image comes from your vicinity, not mine. And second: Be honest, do you really think Limbaugh, Beck, Hanity, Coultier would have missed the chance to use such a term and image to ridicule their political enemy on the left? You would have cheered him on! (Or do you really have a problem with Limbaughs “regime”-tag for the Obama-administration?) So accept the fire that you and your friends are willing to spread on your foes. Or is it that only the conservatives are allowed to blare their invectives around, but everyone else has to behave nicely and decently? As I reminded PlatoBunker above: Who was it that yelled “traitor”, “Kill him”? Who spat at Representatives of the Congress, who turned nuts in the Town Hall Meetings in 2009? Tea Baggers, pure and simple.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article7136407.ece

and having a distributed system in which every processor is used to its fullest in local space and so the computing power of 100 million computers make it all work.

[arbitrary large number for the point]

the idea that some percentage of people that amounts to less than 1% could cover all the choices and reasons of the rest of them is inane for quantities above planning in a family or local group, which do so voluntarily (which becomes a important limiting factor coordinating all those separate computational elements: people)

even if they could do all that we would still be faced with the immoral point that they shouldnt do that. and that their own ideology (nihilism) actually concludes taht they shouldnt.

after all, if we are going no where slowly, and there is no where to actually go, then grabbing the wheel to take us nowhere faster (but end up going no where even slower than before) makes no sense.

it doesnt even make sense from a comfort level as it did during aristocratic past… today a person can with moderate wealth live very comfortably many times better than in prior history. wasting all your life in a struggle to get control to steer us to a different nowhere, is not really enjoying what your acquiring. so accept that these people hare an unreformable compulsion

or as heinlein put it
“Political tags-such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth-are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” — Robert A Heinlein

and the latter tend to lose to the former and be enslaved as they are not willing to fight as high to prevent them as they are willing to fight to succeed.

Following up on our earlier exchange, hre is a link you might want to read;

http://article.nationalreview.com/434943/death-of-the-postmodernist-dream/victor-davis-hanson?page=1

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