Re: NASA moon trip video

On Fri, 3 Feb 2006 20:41:54 +0000 (UTC), "Vorlonagent"
<jt@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:r1n6u153kpk34c1scmujhmhaqbf57g1165@xxxxxxxxxx
On Fri, 3 Feb 2006 07:40:10 +0000 (UTC), "Vorlonagent"
<jt@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:g653u1pdg7fpob9f9ls7tegsiepqh14taf@xxxxxxxxxx

"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u4d1u1tk4dq5mfvfde89gi22uecbhjo559@xxxxxxxxxx

Nipping Bush's tax cut will raise revenue in the short trem (over next
18
mos or so), but it also slams the brakes on an economy already
beginning
to
falter under high oil prices.

The real answer is to get serious about cutting spending.

It seems to me that there were, from a macroeconomic perspective,
several serious problems with Bush's tax cuts, chief among them the
fact that they were targeted largely at the wealthy, who unlike the
poor and middle class tend to invest rather than spend. Since
investment isn't what we need in an economic downturn when cheap
capital is plentiful, for a given reduction in revenue, Bush's tax
cuts provided significantly less of an economic stimulus than they
would have had they been targeted towards consumption.

The counter point is, "if the rich aren't making money, nobody's making
money."

Otherwise, I refer you to the US GDP growth figures.

But that isn't the dichotomy! Check out this site --

http://www.faireconomy.org/press/archive/1999/Divided_Decade/divided_decade.html

There's a lot of class-warfare noise. Would you care to point out the
signal?

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I was referring to the big bar
graphs -- Rising Together: Changes in Family Income, 1947-79 and
Drifting Apart: Change in Family Income, 1979-98, as well as the bar
graph below, Change in After-Tax Family Income 1977-99.

...and what point are you making with this?

That your original point, "if the rich aren't making money, nobody's
making money," isn't apropos in our society as it now stands.
Pre-Thatcher England, maybe. But the distinction we've seen here is
that during progressive periods, both the rich and regular folks make
more money, whereas during conservative periods, just the rich make
money. In that, the conservative years have been a betrayal of the
American dream, of the great New Deal conveyor belt that moved the
working class into the middle class from Roosevelt through Johnson and
did so not by impoverishing the middle class and rich, but by making
everyone richer.

Much of government spending -- the entitlement programs -- is of this
sort. Not only is it more efficient than other government spending, it
is unique in that it's frequently more efficient than comparable
efforts managed by private enterprise, which is one of the reason's
Bush's Social Security privatization scheme failed.

Then there's a second class of government expenditure, what one might
call necessary but inefficient. Such expenditures are necessary -- we
can't do without highways or the military -- but they're wasteful,
because the funds are disbursed in a corrupt or political manner.

Finally, there's a third class, what one might call the pork category
-- the infamous $100 million bridge to an uninhabited island in
Alaska, midnight basketball programs we could do without, and various
endeavors that might be accomplished more efficiently by individuals,
non-profit organizations, or private enterprise. Such spending is IMO
wasteful, but I see no evidence that the government is going to reduce
it, since We The People don't seem to want to eliminate our cut of it
(as Reagan found out when he tried to eliminate the
reviled-by-economists home mortgage exemption), or to take the time to
determine which of our representatives are dispersing pork to special
interests.

Well, we don't want it bad enough to throw the rascals out. Finding a set
of non-rascals to install has proven difficult when both parties are
spendthrifts.

On the spending front, the Republicans were supposed to be the
non-rascals,
but that hasn't held up under the temptations that come with control of
the
pursestrings.

It's a lot easier to claim virtue when your party is out of power.

...regardless of which party is out of power.

True.

If it were up to me, we'd retain and expand categories A and B, while
eliminating category C.

First we need a common or at least workably common definition of each
category.

If I work with you to streamline the military and cut back on corporate
welfare, will you work with me and do the same with social programs?

Absolutely! I believe that if we did so with both, we could
accommodate pressing and unaddressed needs like medical care, defense
against terrorism, poverty, education, and energy independence without
raising taxes. But I don't think it will happen -- Congress is
becoming more rather than less corrupt, and unlike his Republican and
Democratic predecessors President Bush has made no effort to curb
pork, which is running rampant.

Agreed. Bush's domestic passivity has been very inexplicable to me. I
believe Bush's lack of intervention concerning domestic spending to be him
doing "uniter not divider" stuff. Spending in every sector of government
has mushroomed. I would be curious about how much Democratic goodwill or
practical cooperation it has bought him. It doesn't look like much.

I mean, the Iraq War has cost to date "only" something like $175 Billion..
If you see the war as I do (a vital component in the War on Terror that is
generally moving in the right direction toward a fovorable result), that's
cheap at twice the price.

It's not the war that's pushing defecits to record levels. It's a lack of
discipline at home.

It fits with Bush's general tendency towards inaction . . . even when
he makes a major commitment, as in Iraq, he tends to let things slide.

Read an excellent take on this by Paul Krugman today:

"We are ruled by bunglers. Every major venture by the Bush
administration, from the occupation of Iraq to the Medicare drug
program, has turned into an epic saga of incompetence. In retrospect,
the Clinton years look like a golden era of good government.

"Given the Bush administration's evident inability to govern,
Democratic electoral victories should be a sure thing. But they
aren't. Why?

"Before I try to answer that question, let me justify my assertion ?
which is sure to generate a lot of angry mail ? that Bill Clinton knew
how to govern, while George W. Bush doesn't. All you have to do is
consider the rise and fall of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"Under the elder George Bush, FEMA was used as a dumping ground for
political cronies, with predictable results. Descriptions of FEMA's
response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992 sound just like the response to
Katrina: for three days FEMA was nowhere to be found, and when it
finally arrived its relief efforts were utterly incompetent.

"Bill Clinton changed all that by choosing James Lee Witt, who knew a
lot about disaster management, to run FEMA, and encouraging him to run
the agency professionally. The result was a spectacular improvement in
performance. FEMA, formerly considered one of the worst agencies in
the federal government, won praise for its quick and effective
responses to events like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

"But George W. Bush restored the practice of stuffing FEMA with
cronies; the ludicrous Michael Brown is gone, but others remain. And
the agency has reverted to impotence and incompetence.

"As FEMA went, so went government as a whole. . . . "

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/06/opinion/06krugman.html

Which is a long way of saying that it seems to me that your dichotomy,
while valid in principle, isn't applicable in practice, because the
cleavage doesn't really occur along that face. Rather, in practice,
Dems tend to push up demand and shift income from rich to poor, both
of which are good for the economy except when we're in an inflationary
period, which, historically, has been the exception rather than the
rule.

Push up demand how?

Government spending, tax cuts, grants -- it doesn't really matter how
you do it, as long as the money gets spent rather than ending up in
the stock market (which if you think about it is like the La Brea Tar
Pits in that most of the money just disappears).

Taken over time, money in the stock market grows.

Not really. The value of the companies that are bought grows, but the
"invested" money mostly disappears because it isn't really invested in
anything -- the company never sees most of it.

Moreover, tax cuts spur activity better because smaller bites are taken out
of the dollar as it circulates around the economy.

Not sure what you're saying here . . .

And "shifting income" defines out as taking money the rich earn and giving
it to the poor who don't (earn it). This discourages innovation by both
groups. When your needs are taken care of and you aren't doing something
to
earn it, it's easy to get comfortable. At the same time, why burn the
midnight oil when the government's going to take an disproportioonate
chunk
out of your success?

Let's be realistic, though -- do you know any rich people who have
stopped working or investing because of taxes? That /can/ happen -- it
did forex in pre-Thatcher England -- but only with confiscatory tax
rates, and we aren't anywhere near that: the rich in the US pay little
more, perhaps less in taxes than the middle class.

I'm not referring to investment. I'm referring to entrepenurship <sp>.
However, if I'm investing, the tax rates tend to dictate what and how much I
invest where. Lower tax rates encourage investment in business as opposed
to real estate or hard currency, which makes money available to the business
for making its own investments in the hope of making more money.

IIRC, the upper two tax brackets are pretty close, so it's hard for the rich
to pay a huge amount more by percentage.

That's been true since Reagan. The highest tax rates used to be much
higher. Now they seem to think that the middle class should pay more
than the poor but the rich shouldn't pay more than the middle class.

There are also fair and foul means
of reducing taxes. Fair means are things like charitable giving.

That isn't always fair. In many cases, people donate worthless junk so
they can taken an inflated deduction. Lots of old computers are being
sent to third world countries now for tax deductions. Most of them are
useless -- they don't work. Why? Not only are they taking the tax
deductions, but they avoid the cost of recycling toxic components like
lead by dumping the machines in these countries.

There are
plenty of foul means as well. "Taxes paid" is not the whole story.

Eliminating fair means of reducing taxes is one of my lingering doubts about
flat-tax proposals.

I've heard it said by flat tax advocates that the rich would, under a
flat tax, actually pay more than they do today -- which means (if we
don't know it already) that they're already paying less than their
fair share.

Some anti-poverty programs, OTOH, have created perverse incentives and
welfare dependency.

It's hard for me to think of it as anything besides outright co-dependency
designed to produce a permanent Democrat voting bloc.

I'm guessing you don't know how bad that slander is. I have /never/
met a Democrat who favored aid to the poor in order to win votes,
never. Is it inconceivable to you that some people are concerned with
helping those less fortunate than themselves?

That was, to some extent, addressed by the welfare
reform of the Clinton years. I'd go it one further, and replace
welfare entirely, along with a wide array of inefficient, demeaning
programs like public housing and food stamps, with a program of
guaranteed jobs, preferably through private enterprise (via tax
credits) but as a last resort through public works. The jobs would pay
enough to lift recipients out of poverty, and as such set a de facto
minimum wage.

You do realize that even admitting government social programs are
inefficient is heresy to not-trivial amounts of people on your side of the
aisle, right?

Sure. I'm a left-of-center Democrat but I'm hardly an ideologue. There
are times I've been almost as frustrated with the left as I am with
the right.

Having spent much of my life in New York City I've seen the effects of
liberalism gone awry -- I remember when there were more than a million
welfare recipients in a city of seven and a half million, when it was
considered rude to suggest that able-bodied welfare recipients might
work, when criminals ruled the streets. I've seen welfare dependency
destroy entire generations, robbing them of self-respect and a sense
of possibility. I've seen high taxes drive out so many businesses that
revenues fall. And so forth.

But, by the same token, I've seen the effects of want, I've seen what
we've done by abandoning and exploiting our cities as tax sources and
dumping grounds for the poor. And I've seen the success, sometimes
fabulous, of social programs in alleviating need and giving people a
leg up.

My liberal friends hated him, but I thought Giuliani was a great
mayor. But that sort of fiscal, law-and-order conservatism, or the
principled conservatism of a John McCain, or the good-government
moderation of an Eisenhower, or the progressivism of a Teddy Roosevelt
or a Nelson Rockefeller, seem for the most part to have been forced
out of the national GOP and replaced by an ugly combination of Tammany
Hall corruption and profit-center televangelism.

I generally agree with you. I'd like to put public works a bit closer to
the top because you'd be paying companies to take on often-unskilled
employees and some people will see this as a way of warehousing people for
profit, which doesn't benefit the person being warehoused. I play with the
notion of replacing some or all illegal-immigrant workers with
public-assistance recipiants but labor in the agricultural sector can be
arduous, something a recipiant can't always handle.

The reason I put private employment at the top was because I think
it's usually more productive and efficient and offers more room for
advancement -- stories abound of people who started out in shipping
and worked their way up, but public works programs tend to be too
highly structured to encourage that. Of course, there are many people
who will never hold a private job.

There's plenty of distasteful but honest work to be done raking leaves,
picking up litter and painting over graffiti. The inevitable children would
need day-care and theoretically recipiants could tapped for child-herding if
under proper supervision, though that raises all kinds of potential risks as
well.

Sure, but if it were handled well -- why can't the most responsible
and capable parents take care of those who are less responsible,
ideally under the supervision of a trained educator?

I've long favored intervention in the lives of these kids /before/
they start going wrong -- which is typically long before they get into
kindergarten. I've seen kids with crack-addicted parents and it isn't
pretty.

Ideally, recipiants would rotate through different jobs, with one set of
jobs being basic government officework. Many companies first hire people as
temps then make them permanent if they like them. The government could do
the same thing.

That's one of the reasons I think private enterprise is a better
choice, though if you could figure out how to get government to do the
same thing, it would work too. Or offer a choice and incentives. But
that's another reason I like private enterprise.

There is also the transition from the formlessness of public assistance life
to the minimal discipline required to show up to work on time. I don't find
jobs easily myself and haven't found a job that lasted more than 5 years or
so. I have been unemployed for long periods of time as a result of those
two factors. I've had to get my mind refocused every time I've had to make
the transition. It's worse for someone who hasn't had any structure to
their day since high school.

They seem to manage, though. Low expectations can destroy people.

Does that constitute wealth transfer? Sure, but we already have wealth
transfer, and in this case the poor would be producing wealth as well
as consuming it. And philosophically, I believe on a number of counts
that a certain degree of income reapportionment is justified:

1. Decency -- Let's face it, not everyone grows up with the advantages
we had. If my neighbor is willing to do his best, I'm willing to help
him out.

As long as the recipiant is held accoutable for actually "doing his best",
which is where the current system appears co-dependent to me.

Saying "oh you poor person society is against you here's some money" is not
a recipe for success. I'm willing to help someone out of a difficult place
in life. I am not willing to give them a lifestyle. With public assistance
long since become multi-generational, it's a lifestyle.

This is a huge unintended consequence of Johnson's "Great Society". And has
fostered a dependency of the Democat party on the status quo. If the poor
actually ever do get ahead, they'll have something to lose and will become
more likey to vote Republican.

I don't think it began with Johnson, but earlier. Really, it didn't
begin with anything -- what was intended as a temporary relief program
started to produce dependents, and society had to adjust to the new
circumstances. Republicans sometimes use that adjustment to slime the
New Deal and Great Society, using some easily fixable failings to hide
the huge, measurable successes these programs had.

I don't think the poor will ever vote Republican, though their
children or grandchildren may, after they make it to the suburbs and
forget who fought for their grandfolks.

2. Practicality -- The guy who pumps gas is unlikely to hold up the
gas station: our country is strongest when we have an educated,
responsible citizenry, and I believe that gainful employment, and the
self-respect that come with it, is the key to that, to working a
transformation on the self-destructive, defeatist subculture that
arises among welfare recipients and ghettoized groups.

I'm all for paying for his eduation and fueling him toward trying to make
his dreams happen. I might be persuaded to help her/him though their
college years so they can focus on education.

That's hard to turn into a permanent lifestyle, but it can be turned into a
temporary one, which bothers me.


Nor do I think it's in our national interest to allow the middle class
to disappear in the face of low-wage foreign competition. America
became rich and powerful not just through size and an abundance of
resources -- a country like Brazil has that as well -- but because her
citizens were able to create their own wealth. It was in America that
the working man first left the poor and joined the middle class. The
alternative, seen in places like the aforementioned Brazil, is to have
islands of wealth above a sea of poverty. Do we really want a society
like that?

I consider the alternative to be worse: Taxing the rich and handing out the
money to "make people middle class". It doesn't create a true middle class.
It creates a "leech class". Moreover paying people to be any class makes
the transition upward out of paid-class all the more difficult. We don't
want to make upward mobility difficult. We want to make it easier. It will
never be easy.

I disagree. We had enormous success at moving the poor into the middle
class. Unions played the major role. Now that's being undone.

It does not fit Republican ideology, but a complete "meritocracy" is
/not/ the ideal economic mover by a long shot. In a modern,
demand-limited economy one must find ways to increase spending and
that means redistributing wealth. If one doesn't, the economy will
fail. If one does, one will create more wealth than in a meritocracy
alone.

And that's just meritocracy. I've noticed that Republican enthusiasm
for meritocracy doesn't extend to children who receive inherited
riches.

3. Equity -- While many wealthy individuals became so through
perspicacity and hard work, if we're honest, we'll also recognize that
many attained some or all of their wealth through unscrupulousness and
advantage. Forex, the CEO of a large company can set his own benefits
and compensation (who ever hired a compensation consultant known for
being stingy with salaries?), and CEO's have in recent years used that
power to push up their wages and benefits far beyond what the market
would pay: it's not unusual these days to read that even the failed
CEO's of money-losing companies, people whom no one in his right mind
would hire, are earning millions and getting paid millions even for
being fired!

This is where we part company. I am NOT comfortable with executive
compensation, especially if/whem it runs so at-odds with performance.

Unfortunately, it's a free country. People get paid what they get paid.
Try to cap it and people simply find devious ways around it. I'm not sure
what can be done but you can end up making far worse problems in the name of
"equity". Simply letting companies set executive salaries as seems best and
requiring the information be made public (in the case of publicly-traded
companies) seems a good start. Shareholders should be the first people to
look at an overpaid idiot and demand change.

I'm not talking about capping salaries, but rather about progressive
taxes that effect a more gradual income distribution and make up for
this departure from the market.

Or a child may be born a wealthy aristocrat, like George W. Bush. You
spoke of perverse incentives -- how is a vast inheritance different n
effect than welfare dependency? It has much the same effect on
motivation (some extremely wealthy people are actually writing their
kids out of their wills after seeing some of the effects of inherited
wealth) and it carries with it a far greater cost to society, since
the scion of a wealthy family taxes us to the tune of millions while
the welfare recipient takes mere thousands.

How does a million-dollar albatross of a rich kid chew thorugh *tax* money?

That rich kids' income comes from right out of your pocket as surely
as the pittance that goes to little Thelma in Harlem. It is indeed a
tax -- a tax levied by an aristocrat rather than a government of, by,
and for the people.

At least Bush has worked to be where he is. I'm sure I can find a lot of
Kennedys that fit your description completely.

That's a slur and it's total bull*** besides! It's only a slight
exaggeration and simplification to say that Bush was a lazy kid who
went to a famous high school that he couldn't have gotten into on his
grades and then to a famous college that he couldn't have gotten into
on the basis of his grades. His Daddy got him out of the draft and
into the rich kid's unit of the National Guard. His Daddy got him a
pilot's gig though he performed at the bottom on the test. His Daddy
got him out of actually having to show up.

He partied and drank to excess and did all sorts of bad things under
his own steam, ultimately becoming abusive and forcing his Daddy to
ask a religious counselor to intervene. His Daddy got him an oil
company and he ran it into the ground and made an illegal stock sale
to get his money out before the investors knew. Then his Daddy quashed
the SEC investigation of the illegal stock sale. His Daddy got him a
governorship although he was the first to admit that he was
unqualified for it:

"You know I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation.
I've never done anything. I've worked for my Dad. I worked in the oil
business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get
elected to public office." - George W. Bush, 1989

Then his Daddy bought him the Republican presidential nomination by
spending a fortune for campaign ads and a vicious Rove/Bush smear
campaign against a better qualified -- and before the smears, more
popular -- candidate who /did/ get where he was on his own, John
McCain.

Kennedies are as with any family a varied lot, but many or most of
them have worked harder and been a good deal more capable than George
W. Bush -- as, for that matter, have most Bushes. Mentioning the
Kennedies is in any case a red herring: both families are privileged,
but it's a measure of their respective stature that the Kennedies
opposed the economically irresponsible tax cuts that would benefit
them personally while Bush fought to get them enacted.

4. It's everybody's sky -- Property rights are something that we have
imposed on the order of things: a few personal possessions aside, they
aren't natural to human affairs; tribal societies tend to be fairly
egalitarian.

You may be idealizing tribal scieties. Only when people congregate in
sustainable large groups do you get civilization. And people innovate best
when the means and desire are both at hand. That means property rights,
freedom from government interference, a bunch of stuff. That's why modern
civilization originates from europe and creates comparative economic
vibrancy in the USA.

"Isn't natural" is very unsteady ground. Remember what it has been invoked
against in the past.

I'm not arguing against civilization -- whatever its drawbacks, its
inevitable. But I think there's much to be said for the notion that
we're happiest when we're closest to our natural state, and, mostly, I
think that this provides a powerful argument against those who imply
that it is somehow unnatural or unusual for the strong to share with
the weak. When we do that, we are merely doing what human beings do,
only to a lesser extent than our ancestors did.

I happen to favor capitalism because observation tells me that large,
advanced societies like ours are better off with a market economy than
a command one. But I don't believe we were created to live by greed
alone.

Certainly greed isn't the most spiritually-healthy way of living. But greed
isn't just a sin for the rich. It is as much a sin of the individual who
tricks successive churches out of handouts.

Can't say I agree with that. The man who is struggling to feed his
children has a greater need than the man who just wants a bigger
yacht. I don't advocate laziness and welfare dependency, and I don't
advocate fraud, but despite what Ronald Reagan wanted us to believe I
haven't seen many welfare recipients driving Cadillacs.

Money is a fact of life. Preoccupation with it is bad news however it
manifests.

What then do we make of democrats who preen over nothing more than the
amount of money they got for a project? Or scream bloody murder at any hint
of reduction in the built-in increases to same?

I think there's a big difference between a project that helps others
and personal greed. Morally, they're on different planets.

The moral justification of a system lies in what it does for society
and the people in it, not the other way around. Insofar as it provides
incentive and rewards hard work, I'm all in favor of the market. But
when we let the tail wag the dog -- when we confound Adam Smith's
invisible hand, self-interest working for the benefit of all, with
mere greed -- we lose sight of the only possible moral justification
for an economic system, the betterment of a nation and the people in
it.

We are in agreement here. We may differ on what constitutes "confounding
the invisible hand" or what a proper remedy would be.


Moreover the money is the people's to begin with. Government must leny
a
share of it to provide for the common good. I think there is an
attitude
of
entitlement, as if its Government's decision to make how much money it
*allows* its people to spend.

I don't think this last is applicable in a democracy. It's our money
whether we have the government spend it or spend it ourselves, and
there are times when it makes sense for the government to spend it on
our behalf, since some activities -- building highways or outfitting
the military, say -- are by their nature group endeavors.

My tax money doesn't belong to me, it belongs to everyone. Therefore it
also belongs to noone, including me.

Do you own any stocks? Have money in a mutual fund? Would you say that
part of the company or the fund and the companies it owns doesn't
belong to you because others own shares as well?

By definition I *own* a share of the money that the mutual fund invests and
can exercize limited control over it. I can pull my money out of a mutual
fund if I don't like how it is run. Some day in the future, I can withdraw
that money and dictate how it is spent.

I cannot refuse to pay my taxes. I have limited ability to send my money
elesewhere. I have no control over how the money is spent.

Show me what part of a B-2 bomber I bought with my money. Show me what part
of my money went to scoial programs. You can't. My tax money is melted
down and mixed with yours and poured out again.

Just as it is in the mutual fund. You don't have individual personal
control of your tax money, of course, but that doesn't mean it doesn't
belong to you any more than in the case of the mutual fund. And while
you might make an argument for rugged individualism, do you really
want to live in a society where other people aren't willing to traipse
about Afghanistan to defend you with less of an opportunity to
withdraw than you have to withdraw your money? We are, to some extent,
dependent on the group.

The
balance between government and private spending should, I think, be
based upon an analysis of our needs and the most efficient way of
meeting them, rather than an ideological obsession with small (or
large) government. Except in unusual circumstances such as a world
war, when our needs increase as they have because of the Iraqi war,
the flood in New Orleans, and the Medicare drug benefit, taxes should
be increased to cover them, with the decision to run a deficit or
surplus based on purely economic considerations.

A logical exreme of this point of view is the government sticking its
nose
into every buying decision I make (with lobbyists lining up behind to
try
to
prejudice the government's decisions for someone's profit).

An alternative method from raising taxes to cover spending is to reduce
spending in some areas to free up money for new needs. Ideally,
Congress
uses both, raising taxes if there isn't resources to transfer. The
problem
with just about any tax is that the government can never get around to
ending the tax once it has been put into effect.

Well, I'm not sure that that's true -- IIRC the Federal tax bite has
gotten smaller as a percentage of income -- but even if it is, there's
probably a good reason for it, in that we're getting richer and can
afford to spend a higher percentage of our income on government
endeavors while still being ahead at the end of the day. Real per
capita income, forex, has increased IIRC five times since the 30's. We
spend more on taxes, but we still take home more, and in return for
our expenditures, we receive benefits the people of that era didn't
get or expect -- everything from medical care when we grow old (do we
really want to do without that quadruple bypass?) to superhighways to
a vast military establishment.

Just because the government *can* tax us more doesn't mean it is entitled
to.

Why would government not be entitled to tax us? The Constitution
allows it, and I don't think it can be argued that a country can
survive without taxes. I do think it can be argued that some taxes and
levels are counterproductive while others are beneficial, but that's a
different matter.

The government is entitled to tax us. I never disputed that. I am saying
it is not entitled to however much money as it desires. It's my damn money.
I earned it. The government gets a share becuase it needs a share to do
what I want it to do and some things you want it to do that I don't.

That's different than thinking about it as how much government money that it
is allowing me to spend.

I'm not sure I see the distinction. Taxes have to be levied, and
everyone has to pay the same, given their circumstances. I can see
arguing for higher or lower taxes, but I don't think one can put an
arbitrary upper or lower limit on it. Besides, most of us are by
historical standards filthy rich. Sure, I'd rather spend my property
tax money on a cool new computer, but I can't claim to be suffering or
even undergoing some kind of hardship due to those taxes: even after
taxes, we're richer than our parents and richer than everybody else on
the planet.

Also, I think it's dangerous to speak without qualification about
reigning in government spending. That isn't going to happen because we
don't want to eliminate the valid things that government spending
provides -- things like education, R&D, a strong military, Social
Security, and Medicare. The problem as I see it is that legislators
are reluctant to cut the spending that /should/ be cut -- pork like
farm subsidies, bridges to uninhabited islands in Alaskaand,
anti-terrorism money for cornfields, the huge and largely unnecessary
cold war nuclear arsenal, and the like. Since the President and
Congress haven't been willing to cut out pork, the conservative
"starve the beast" reductions in government financing have had the
unfortunate effect of depriving government of the funds it needs for
productive and necessary investments such as energy independence,
reconstruction in Louisiana and Iraq, and comprehensive health care
reform, as well as shifting a burden to states and local communities,
which has the effect of magnifying economic inequality, since poorer
localities and large states (which are underrepresented in Congress)
end up with higher taxes and inferior services, driving business
elsewhere.

The tax cut was not intended to "starve the beast". It was intended as
economic stimulus, right in line with your thinking of how tax decisions
ought to be made.

Are you sure about that? Reagan spoke of trickle-down economics, but
IIRC conservative journals were at the time discussing using tax cuts
as a weapon to force the dismantling of social programs. It seems to
me possible that Reagan fell for his own group's guff, as I think Bush
does sometimes as well. That's the disadvantage of having a president
who is (in Bush's words) a "retail politician."

I'm sure.

Evidence?

Bush's own words from the time saying that the tax cut was intended as
economic stimulus. (amid much press derision, I might add). Since I see
2004-2005 as economic good times for the US, despite issues such as the
ongoing defecit, connecting the dots isn't a big stretch.

The tax cut had a much smaller effect on the economy -- the sort of
good times came about mostly because we're spending like crazy on the
war. And as I recall Bush didn't come up with the economic stimulus
thing until long after he'd proposed the tax cut. It was initially a
sop for his rich supporters and a way to get elected, a repeat of his
father's famously successful at getting him elected and just as
famously gone back on "Read my lips, no more taxes." Cynical, given
that there's no more reason to believe that Bush Jr. believes in
trickle-down "voodoo economics" than his father did.

My complaint from the start of this thread was about the disconnect
between
receipts and spending and the fact that Congressional Republicans have
shown
no appetite for restraint.

My definition of fiscal restraint is something Republicans and
Democrats use to condemn the other party when they're out of power . .

Both are correct. It's been interesting to see "tax and spend" democrats
playing at being budget hawks.

Truth is, I haven't seen any evidence that Republicans, when in power,
acted differently. And I think it's worth pondering the reasons for
that. My hypothesis:

1. Republicans like pork -- gifts that they can take back to their
constituents, contributors, and deluxe all-expenses-paid vacation
providers -- at least as much as Democrats. In fact, last I checked,
the average red state received $2000 more per capita in Federal
spending than the average blue state.

2. Much of what government spends is necessary or beneficial or
politically popular, and Republican legislators know that. Which is to
say that while "tax and spend Democrats" makes a good campaign phrase,
Republican congressmen aren't about to eliminate Social Security or
Medicare and Medicaid or the military -- the big items in the Federal
budget -- because their constituents would tar and feather them and
run them out of town on a rail.

Nor are democrats. Republicans made themselves a majority through claims to
want to control the expense of these areas of government. Democrats did
not. hence "tax and spend" was a valid reference to Democrats because that
was their formula for solving problems.

Also hence my continual mentioning of my disappointment with the
Repubublicans.

I don't like expedient hypocrisy. That means I'm especially *not* fond of
spendtrift Republicans and mean-spirited Democrats.

In what sense are Democrats mean spirited? I'd use that to describe
some conservatives, but most Democrats seem to be me the very
antithesis of mean-spirited, while neocons seem almost its definition.

Here's the government's official breakdown:

Interest on debt 8%

Military, domestic security 19%
Social Security 21%
Medicare 13%
Medicaid 8%

Nonmilitary discretionary pending 18%
Other 13%

So miscellaneous and discretionary spending make up less than a third
of the budget, including things that we wouldn't want to live without,
like highways and airports.

I'm not sure what your point is.

"Much of what government spends is necessary or beneficial or
politically popular, and Republican legislators know that." There just
isn't that much that can be cut outside of pork -- and they aren't
going to do that if they can avoid it.

--
Josh

"Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe: And if then you doe not like him,
surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him." - Heminge and Condell

.