but money does grow on the printers of the US federal bank, tonnes and tonnes of money is printed all the time.

it's almost free, it is used to service the national debt, and pay for services. It is also a major national security/sovereignty issue.

At least he's presented a plan. Virtually all other Republicans and Democrats are still in denial over the extent of America's fiscal crisis. Come up with a plan of your own to save entitlements and the federal government from insolvency and then you can go ahead and demagogue over the bits of Paul Ryan's plan that aren't too great.

The one thing we cannot do is nothing.

Money dont grow on trees. Its created out of thin air. Mostly by huge banks (not firms) in form of a credit. This way of monley supply is the reason why there is such a huge national debt. The american government has to change this ruisance to prevail an economy crash. If they dont succeed its the duty of his inhabitants (its is the duty read the constitution) to overthrow this administartion and establish one which can get rid of this failure.

"Money don't grow on trees"

Thank The Lord it doesn't. Inflation would be even more ridiculous.

Please, don't steer the thread in the "fractional reserve banking bad, asset backed currency good" direction, I encountered too much nonsense today for me to bear already, another load of it could actually kill me.

That was @elMuro.

No elMuro was proposing that if the government doesn't act the way we want it to act, it is our duty to launch a coup and install one which does act the way we want. I'm guessing his country has only been a true democracy for 16 years or so. And not much longer if he really acts on his beliefs :)

"At least he's presented a plan"

if this post was meant as parody, then i apologize, but wtf. just presenting a plan does not suffice. the fucking underpants gnomes had a plan. in order to get credit the plan has to have a chance in hell of working. ryan's plan is pretty much on the level of the underpants gnomes. it does not pass the laugh test.

All Ryan's plan does is cut social programs so they can keep their precious tax cuts for the wealthy. I call bullshit.

to add, if you consider the goal of ryan's "plan" to cut taxes on the top 1%, then maybe it grades out as a B. if you take it as face value--as an attempt to balance the budget, then it doesn't get a passing grade.

I have a plan.

Flat tax of 15 % on income across the board. You never get more in welfare than you pay in. But because of the way food stamps and the like work, it still ends up helping you. Only two deduction remain, charitable donations, and the homestead deduction. Once the debt is serviced, the tax rate can be cut to whatever current spending is.

15% may seem a bit low in comparison with the current 34-40% rate, but with no loopholes or deductions it actually lowers cost and increases revenue.

here we go: http://dealbreaker.com/_old/2009/09/03/underpants%20gnomes.jpg ... that's my plan.

Parody? Hardly. The only way criticism of Ryan's plan is legitimate is if the other side presents its own alternative. If nothing is done about this looming entitlement crisis then the United States will default on its obligations. Under Ryan's plan I'll get Social Security and some sort of Medicare in my old age (if I don't get too rich to qualify). With our current trajectory that will not happen. He's also said he's willing to talk about tax increases.

We could bleed the wealthy dry and it would not solve the crisis. The low estimate of America's total debt (which includes entitlement obligations) is $70 trillion. The world money supply is estimated to be $60 trillion. The way things are set up now we own more money than exists in the world. That's why making a plan, however flawed and imperfect, is an important step. It defines the debate so that our legislators realize (hopefully) that things really need to be changed. That's a welcome shift from decades of denial and "third-rail" avoidance of the issue at all.

@ Invictus

The more I read your comments on various threads, the more I agree with you.

Invictus + 1

To add on to what Invictus said, I would like to point out that Obama's plan does not cut nearly as deeply as Ryan's Plan. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and right now the federal government is in deep, deep shit.

"Money dont grow on trees. Its created out of thin air. ...This way of monley supply is the reason why there is such a huge national debt."

money, debt, credit, are all just forms of trust. We trust that the US dollar is a solid currency, and thus will in the future be a useful medium of exchange, and is thus useful to hold. We are thus also trusting that other people feel the same way, and that they therefore will accept US dollars as a medium of exchange.

If the US prints money out of thin air, are they creating trust? if a US bank lends Dollars (which don't 'exist') they are merely giving tangible form the 'trust' which they have in their lendee (ie the trust that they will be paid back)

Now as for the 'plan' i say default! it's time you accept that you're screwed and see what happens, at least it will shake things up a little :p

However the thing is that if we cut too deeply then we risk dropping our country back into an even worse recession than before. Our best ways of solving the deficit would be to increase taxes across the board, while especially making sure the wealthy pay a fair amount correllating to what they're worth. Also, if we could cut our defense spending, then that would not only save us a bunch of money initially but in the long run that would cut trillions from the deficit.

However, deep cuts into programs that benefit most Americans are not the way to solve our country's problems. While it may take away from our deficit, will it really help us in the long-run since other countries will be providing programs like ours and more to their citizens? If we did make the cuts Ryan proposes then we would not be living in the same state that we currently are, but rather in a nation that is not looked to as resembling a top society at all. Our deficit has existed since the 80's and while it is a problem, we need to keep our heads about how we solve this and not make any irrational cuts that we'll be regretting in the future.

"No elMuro was proposing that if the government doesn't act the way we want it to act, it is our duty to launch a coup and install one which does act the way we want."

"right now the federal government is in deep, deep shit. "

The shit we have has to go. They wont solve our problem. Because their kind of thinkin created this shit. No matter how hard you guys try to discuss. When you guys dont change your way of thinking youll never find a solution and agree with each other.

@elMuro: If I'm reading you correctly, you're suggesting a revolution. How is the revolution going to cut the debt?

wait i dont get it obama proposed an alternative yesterday. $4 trillion in reductions.

that doesnt acknowledge that problem?

because honestly i've been 100% won over the democrats when it comes to taxing the wealthy.

trickle-down has been proven false.
it costs us something like $1 trillion
they really dont need tax breaks to begin with


why exactly do they get even MORE tax breaks? that's crazy! to be honest i dont care what other ideas ryan had, as long as shit like that is in there, it will be a dud.

"because honestly i've been 100% won over the democrats when it comes to taxing the wealthy."

now we just have to convince the democrats...

@elMuro: If I'm reading you correctly, you're suggesting a revolution. How is the revolution going to cut the debt?

Revolution is not the goal. Reforms are. Reforms are more powerful and effective than Revolutions. The american financial system has complettle to be reformed. Not just cutting taxes there, raise/lower them. You have to change to way how money is getting into the financial system. A financial system by which money is brought in with credit has to fail after an amount of time.

The funny side is, the financial system in the USA has to become like it was 200 years ago. Due to reforms we came to this criplled system we have now.

Obama's 4 Trillion in cuts haven't been detailed. He proposed a blanket statement with a few budgets he would cut, but no info of what he would cut in those budgets or what other budgets would make up the 4 trillion. It would be like me going to my wife and saying "we are going to cut $4000 from this year's budget" but not saying where or how. Sounds great, but without details we have no idea how to do it (and it would be impossible to cut nearly $350 a month from our budget anyhow). Obama likes these broad sweeping proposals with no details because he can not implement it and say "the other side didn't agree to cutting this or that" when "this *and* that" wouldn't have made up his shortfall anyhow.

Unless Obama is proposing entitlement reform his proposal is nothing but window dressing. I'd be happy to flush a few hundred billion dollars down the toilet in lesbian poetry communes, bridges to nowhere and back, etc., so long as that means politicians from both parties can come together and pass the reforms needed to save this country from peonage.

Anything besides entitlement reform (and defense cuts, to a lesser extent) is a distraction from our real problems.

Btw- if it's paper money, then technically it DOES grow on trees lok

This is not entitlement "reform". This is entitlement privatization/gutting. You cannot seriously claim this is an attempt to address the so-called 'fiscal crisis' when Congressman Ryan is simultaneously cutting the taxes of the superrich by a huge margin. You address the deficit you need revenues. This is another attempt to destroy social services and attack the poor while pretending it's about fiscal discipline. Yeah, just like Kasich's efforts to repeal the estate tax in the middle of a so-called deficit crisis is an example of "fiscal discipline". Nobody is buying what the Republicans are selling. Ryan's plan is a massive redistribution of wealth. Tax the poor and feed the rich.

Revenues of the size needed to save entitlements as they exist now are impossible. We owe more money than exists. The plan affects what entitlements people will get IN THE FUTURE, meaning that it is people who are currently working who will be in the new system. No one is losing anything since current retirees are grandfathered in.

As for the tax parts, this thing isn't even a bill yet. I'm confident Ryan put loads of things into his proposal that weren't necessary so as to strengthen his negotiating position as this (potentially) works its way through Congress. I find it hard to see how abolishing the capital gains tax hurts anybody rich or poor, but if that's so egregious then it and other sections could be dropped so the wider pan goes through.

The point here is to save Medicare and Social Security from itself. If we want entitlements to survive we need to look at them in a way we haven't since the 1960s and 1930s when they were enacted. Indeed, if we want America to go back to something approaching fiscal sanity this issue needs to be addressed somehow. Kudos to Ryan for at least drafting a plan to deal with this problem. Let's hope something comes out of it.

I don't know how old you are, Putin33, and I also have a hard time pinning down what country you live in, but me and anyone my age who I have ever discussed the subject with assume that we will not be getting any Social Security or Medicare. Right now, that's a reasonable perdition. The chance that I will get anything back from the money I've already had taken from my paychecks in my old age is a refreshing hope.

I don't know what needs to happen exactly, but we need radical reform so that Americans have a prayer of getting any sort of entitlements in the future. Is the Ryan Plan the complete answer? No, but it is closer to right than doing nothing.

"Perdition" should be "prediction." A Freudian slip if ever there was one.