It is good to see someone embrace reality and step away from what never was. The rich can afford to pay a bit more in taxes, yet Grover Norquist and his hordes of Tea Party Republicans refuse to budge, insisting that $16 trillion in debt can be payed off through spending cuts in all fields except the military and tax reform in everything except capital gains and mortage reduction. It's good to see the so called "monetary arm" of the Republican party veer away from a flawed ideology.

Good old Keynesian rhetoric ..... can't beat it

Taxes aren't the issue, it's spending.

Can you say, "Cloward-Piven boys and girls?" Swamp the fiscal ship with entitlement spending to usher in communism. Taxes are about control NOT revenue generation.

@MichiganMan: Not necessarily...the government's only real revenues are gained from from taxes. Reducing those revenues and contracting the government would be counterproductive to economic regulation.

The equation is unsound and only sustainable via unprecedented and reckless money creation. One cannot spend their way out of debt. It was designed to fail, designed to deliver the Republic to the bankers. The rhetoric coming from DC is meant to placate the people until its too late. Spending will continue to go unchecked, taxes will continue to rise, the dollar will continue to debase until a new currency, heralded as our economic savior, is introduced. Problem, reaction, solution in its finest form!

djakarta that's probably what he means by "control."

Righties are weird like that.

Rightie?!? You know nothing about me YJ.

How about we do something radical here...

TAXES AND SPENDING ARE BOTH THE PROBLEM!

Wow. Can't believe a non-politician was the first to say that.

Sorry, mm, but that sounds to me like so much libertarian hogwash.

Am I wrong?

I'd say it sounds pretty libertarian.

*Ron Paul conservative libertarian-ism, that is

Sorry, supply side kids, its been wrong for thirty years, and its still wrong.

Supply of money isn't the limiting factor. Demand for products is. The middle class is getting screwed, the working poor have decrease opportunities to be a consumer, and there result is a shitshow for everybody except the top ten percent.

You ever wonder why the stock market recovered pretty quick, but the state of the average joe continues to be kind of shit? Because the rich aren't doing badly at all. They get to pay cheaper wages and salaries, after all, and there is plenty of "You should be lucky to even HAVE a job" shit floating around.

The greatest con of all time was convincing middle and lower class angry white men that the rich cared about them. Or that they'd do anything for them, other than to manufacture a moral crisis to get them to vote against their own interests.

I'd be more impressed if it didn't depress me so much.

+1 bosox
+1 michigan man too. I might differ in that I don't think it's a conspiracy by the bankers, I think it's more a convergance of forces, mostly involving financially undisciplined people electing financially undisciplined politicians.

You know all about hogwash. I don't label my views with divisive terms. Some are liberal, some conservative, some libertarian, some down right anarchist. You're stuck in your labels and cannot see past how brainwashed you are.

So, would you consider yourself a man of many ideologies (ie. liberal about social issues, conservative about fiscal issues, fascist about the military, libertarian in foreign policy)?

Political labels are for those who like to be divided and conquered.

True, that is the essence of our political system. Don't we divide and conquer "red" states and "blue" states during election season?

No ethos is without faults. Just because I'm conservative on one issue doesn't mean I have to accepts all the tenets of conservatism. Forcing that upon people is about division and polarization. A divided population content to squabble over pointless partisan issues is woefully easy to manipulate.

Jack Klein has basically got it. Until wage equality (or at the very least wages that are reasonably close together exist) capitalism will continue to be a win-lose scenario.

Seriously, I don't begrudge CEOs to be paid more, or even way more than their average worker... but when the top is being paid several thousand times more than their average worker, its a bit fucked

And when wage equality comes into being (I hope that is never), communism will rule and capitalism will be no more. For it is the wage difference that encourages man to strive to better himself. If the CEO and the janitor make the same money, no one will want to take the job that comes with the responsibility of guiding a company. And when the President of the US pays the same as the burger flipper at McDonald's, no one will want the stress of being responsible for making the tough decisions.

The exception to those two statements are the people who get an ego rush/trip out of power and those are the people most easily corrupted and the ones you least want in power.

@Jack - I can agree with that to a point. Reducing the wage gap is good. Wage equality is not.

Hey Draug, you ever heard of a man trying to better himself through his own pride and honor rather than a fake piece of paper that you can make worthless with a printer?

Says the 17 year old that never has had to work to pay the mortgage, utilities, car payments, health insurance, gas, food, clothes, etc.

MM, you make yourself sound like a 17 year old plenty of times. If your only pride in yourself is coming from money, there's something wrong with you. There's a lot to be said for someone that takes less money for doing something they want to do with their life.

The biggest problem for the US is the fact that
1) They don't pay enough tax
2) People think they are paying too much tax
There seems to be the notion that rich people deserve to pay less tax, some kind of reward for being financially successful, it's a fallacy. Economic growth is not sustainable if all the money in circulation ends up with rich people because the spending/consumption stops, is this a tough concept to understand?
Maybe if the US govt were not so profligate with their tax revenues people would be happier to pay more.
One unanswered question, 67 years after the end of the 2nd World War why are their US bases in the UK, Germany et al, what are they actually doing apart from costing the US taxpayer a lot of money, so wasteful.
An estimated US$2-3bn was spent on the recent presidential election campaign, did all that money spent effect the way you voted, probably not. They money would have been better spent on infrastructure projects than filling the coffers of the TV fat cats with all those wasteful ridiculous propaganda ads.
Does the average American citizen sleep easier in their bed knowing that Afghanistan is being sorted out, I wager they care more about having a job than the Afghan people people free of the Taliban tyranny, and as soon as the troops leave who will be in charge, the Taliban.
If I was a US taxpayer I think I would be frustrated not about the level of tax I pay but the value for money I am getting. Could the govt do better, yes. Will they, probably not.
They say that pride goes before a fall, so while the US has spent the last 50 years convincing themselves they are the greatest show on Earth and chucking US tax dollars around the world like Guinness at an Irish wake the world has moved on, the internet happened, you can't buy friends and favour nowadays unless you can produce a quality song that goes viral on youtube, social media and network sites on the net now have more power than any govt ever did. The times they are a changin' isn't it time to wake up and smell the choca mocca skinny latte.
Stop subsidising the world, let them sort themselves out for a while. Remember America is not Great, it is just United, Britain is Great.

As MM implies... Money makes the world go round and, no, you can not make it worthless with a fake piece of paper. You will eventually get caught and become some guy named Bubba's bitch.

Money pays for all the things you would like in life. Want a nice house? Better make a better living than flipping burgers. Want to drive my Jeep or the Mercedes I'm thinking about buying in the Spring? Better make a *hell* of a lot more than the cashier at Walmart.

Pride doesn't buy jack. I take pride in doing the best job I can, but I also expect to get paid for it and paid well.

Stop getting your money supply from a private, for profit banking cartel....than will fix the problem. Tax revenue is irrelevant.

The problem with the US is that people are often idiots and think the problem is as simple as taxes or as simple as budget cuts. The other problem is that there are two political parties - both radically supporting only one of these options. They flip power every four or eight years. Congress keeps third parties that have something to say out intentionally. We elect people who make sure that their word is what's heard even if it's not what's best.

Britain's no better; you know that as well as I do.