When is Reality more important than your Political Ideology? With graphs.

He didn't even say that, plus he was the leader of the Government. Kind of hypocritical isn't it. Like saying "Drugs are bad" then going out and snorting coke.

http://saf.org/pub/rkba/general/BogusFounderQuotes.htm

 

They are embarrassing. This thread pretty much lived up to my initial hypothesis. I mean they simply can't even admit what real data there is. You can show them a graph of the past century and they will select 3 years, probably in the early 1920s were government spending went down but GDP went up and claim that proves their theory. Despite the other 97 years, lol. They are an absolute gong show. Never have been to a classroom in their lives just driven by silly ideologies.

 

no, they gave plenty of power to presidents, you don't do that if you fear them

thats a fear of war, not presidents

there aren't any reliable sources that attribute that quote to washington

the earliest known source is a christian science journal in 1902

 

They did not fear presidents, lol. They made the president Commander-In-Chief, they gave the president plenty of executive privileges. They feared a monarchy and they took pride in state rights which is why they placed a huge responsibility on Congress. You are just making up history to push your failed ideology.

 

The Founding Fathers DID fear presidents. That's why the power to declare war was given only to Congress. The President is only the "Commander of Chief" when he is "called into service" i.e. once Congress has declared war.

 

just admit you posted a spurious quote

 

What is meant by cutting spending, is to fund legetimate and productive functions in government, and not fund the rest.

So many things the federal government is sticking its fingers into are the responsibility of the local and state governments, and the feds need to stay out of them.

 

Doesn't prove me wrong. Just admit you're clinging to a spurious argument.

 

except that you are wrong

you posted a spurious quote and my argument is correct

 

I think as a liberal I would be too passive if I didnt go socialist one in a time. So to fish or cut bait, I would increase private spending by distributing wealth from the wealthy to the poor..
I wouldnt do it in a massive scale.

 

The USA is like a Carnival Cruise ship, and the Tea Party is like a small group of passengers threatening to sink the entire boat, because there is one item on the Buffet menu which they insist must be removed permanently, EVEN if the MAJORITY of the other passengers of the ship want the item to remain on the menu, have voted for it to remain, have elected to keep the Captain of the ship who added the item to the menu , and the item passed scrutiny of a council of Master Chefs.

 

You never made an argument. You made a statement with no evidence to back it up.

I pointed out that the original Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress, not the President. This was because the Founding Fathers didn't trust the President with that power. Abraham Lincoln pointed this out when he said, "Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our [1787] Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."

What evidence do you have that the Founding Fathers didn't fear presidents?

 

While I agree that the analogy is not identical, I disagree that the length of time the process can go on for is the same as "forever", especially when the process length is going to be less than 500 years, and in particular (for whatever the length of time) during the last few decades of the process. Given your 500 yr time line (or any time line) while it may be somewhat true for the first 470 yrs it eventually fails as well because people start to see their children as taking the brunt of the fiscal policy and eventually themselves. What about the people alive after 499 years? What if it is only 49 more years? 9 more years? It is exactly this type of thinking that exacerbates the problem, making it harder and harder to overcome the closer one gets to this magic year, until it is finally inevitable.

As far as the second part of your argument I would also disagree. Raising taxes would be much more like a family seeing that there could be no second job they could attain that would make up the windfall in their finances, and instead turning to robbing other people/businesses. The closest thing a government could do to getting a second job would be trying to reduce unemployment. Coincidentally this can be done by promoting business growth (either through tax incentives (see reductions) or lowering regulations).

We seem to have a fundamentally different take on what government is/should do ...

 

that's just not true

 

The point remains valid, a government is not a family.
At least not anymore, it used to be a family, the royal family, and they raised taxes, or forced people to work for them, whatever it took to make ends meet.
If you want pursue your analogy, then lowering taxes is like lying on the couch, watching TV and turning down work.....

 

Is a 100% tax rate like working four jobs? Who would work with a 100% tax rate?

 

Who would work 24/7?

I am suggesting that if the government is like a family, where one expects the breadwinner to have a little ambition, to work a little overtime, to not call in sick to watch a ballgame, but to maximize his income, to work a little extra if it means a bonus.
What kind of family man lies on the couch and tells his wife and kids they got to do without shoes because he's taking it easy.
Now just like you expect the breadwinner to pursue opportunity, you would expect the government to maximize long term revenue, to get as much as they can without killing the economy. And lets face it, the government can reduce the deficit big time if it just asked a little more from the wealthy.
We are nowhere near the maximum sustainable tax rates on the wealthy, isn't that the equivalent to our breadwinner loafing on the job and getting fired, because that would cause the family to go into debt..

 

and if one person in that family tries to intentionally sabotage the families credit rating, that helps no one as the interest on all the cards goes up taking longer to pay them off

 

there's no 100% tax rate in the usa

 

I would agree that if a government was running itself like a business it would try to maximize its income (much like a family getting a second job) by finding the magical tax number that doesn't inhibit commerce too much and doesn't leave it bankrupt, BUT there are some big differences after this.

1.) There is not 30 or 40 other potential US governments competing with it to be our government, thus reducing its productivity as it has no competition.

2.) It can increase its money supply at will, further causing problems with fiscal insolvency, and essentially no need to increase productivity.

My problem isn't that government tries to find this magic number, or even that this slightly higher tax rate on the rich is a bad move, but rather that it won't matter either way. Government will spend beyond its means whatever its income level because it doesn't have constraints that the real world has. The government can force everyone to go poor very slowly (or quickly if it chooses the political suicide of default).

 

in reality, the idea is to increase the money supply when inflation is below target rates (2%)

and decrease it when it's above the target rate