Worldly Affairs

[minx]

We all know their economy has collapsed of course, but famine is on the horizon.
Many farmers can't obtain seeds, there is no water, and the planting season is about to start.
As it is, the average citizen can't afford food, but at this time, there is still food available - I think that's going to be changing very soon.
Meanwhile, we (the US) are once again meddling in their political affairs, which is preventing aid from coming into the country.


In Mozambique they are having historical flooding, and it's way too early to even begin to try and count the dead.
People are dying because they literally have lost the strength to hold on to the branches in the tree they climbed at the beginning of the storm and have fallen into the water.
The people who have survived have no food or shelter, and are growing desperate.

And in the US, there have also been historic floods in the upper West - entire farms and ranches are underwater and cattle and crops destroyed.
This is just the beginning, since the spring thaws haven't started there.
While the loss of life is lower than in the previous two countries, people from those areas will be hurting.


And the above doesn't account for the millions of people sitting in tent camps who have fled violence in other countries, or the thousands sitting at our border who are also fleeing violence and poverty.


To me, rather than debating on whether Trump should be impeached, perhaps we should all stop, take a breath and listen to Nancy Pelosi - He's not worth the time or effort.
Let's all, Democrat and Republican actually sit down and get some priorities in place at least.  There are a lot of people out there who desperately need help, both here and abroad.  Who are we going to help, and what help are we going to provide?

I know that the Mueller report, and Trump's rant of the day are important, but I read the stories from these areas, and all I can think of is how privileged we are to be able to complain about Trump's latest nonsense - we're not wondering where we'll be sleeping tonight or if there's a chance of food this week.  I wish that as a country we could do better.

[rally2xs]

"I wish that as a country we could do better."

Uh, yeah, that'd be nice, but as a country, we are like a 1st responder with 2 huge gashes across the abdomen with our guts threatening to spill out. Those gashes are the debt and the deficit. At some point, we are going to bleed to death, or our guts are going to spill out and we're going to trip on them and probably die also. IOW, if rescuing the world is up to us, I think the rest of the world is in serious deep s***, 'cuz right now we're not rescuing ourselves. And, we're not going to if we keep approaching the problem in the same way, by jacking or chopping the income tax rates, which hasn't worked since 1957. Y'all know what I'm talking about by now, so I ain't gonna say it again, lest it melt some snowflakes...

[No. 1 son]

Mar 24, 2019 21:53:07 GMT -5 rally2xs said:

Uh, yeah, that'd be nice, but as a country, we are like a 1st responder with 2 huge gashes across the abdomen with our guts threatening to spill out.

I think we're more like a pre-responder, setting fires and then getting burned. Same effect, just different way to look at it. One we can control, the other not so much.

The housing bubble is fast approaching 2008 levels, inflation and debt is eating people alive. This means of course we need a war.

[bobathon]

Imagining that we are first responders is unwarranted flattery. We're sitting in our trailer home in bed clothes watching stupid shit on tv while the trailer park burns around us and cattle stampede through.

[rally2xs]

I'd like to diminish our role as first responders in a lot of cases. Minx's original post I think implies that it is up to us to do something about all these people that need help around the world. She asks the question "Who are we going to help?" I believe that for every country, not just us, that country's first responsibility is to help those it calls its own citizens. Since, with the sum total of all our economic might, we are still unable to help all our citizens, then I believe we should solve that problem first before going off to someplace like Venezuela the next latest "crisis" to help them. The only reason to be "helping" other countries is that, if in the end, it somehow helps US citizens. And then we should only do that if it is the cheapest way to help US citizens. Yes, it will help US citizens to travel to foreign lands and kill those that profess to desire to kill us. It is probably even the cheapest way to save American lives, as simply defending from such attack always loses a war, you can't win by simply defending, and the others are making war, we just have to deal with it. Is it cheaper to simply let the attacks happen, and absorb the losses of human life, and vow to do better defending? What if defending involves giving up most of our Constitutional rights - constant monitoring of everyone's communications, searches everywhere looking for bombs and guns and WMD, etc, and of course the biggie, collecting up all the guns to prevent attacks on citizens. Should we do that instead of going to the middle east, spending 7 trillion dollars according to the President, to defeat the enemy there? How much is freedom worth? Is it worth 7 trillion dollars not to be stopped at a checkpoint and get your car searched, maybe several times a week, as authorities attempt to keep everyone safe from terrorist attack? It doesn't even work in the war zones of the middle east - we search citizens vehicles there without regard to a 4th amendment and car bombs blow up all over the place anyway. They actually banned travel by car on election day to ensure that no car bombs got driven to their targets. Don't know how citizens got to the polls if they couldn't drive there. But anyway, running off to Venezuela to depose the communist dictator? I think not.

[minx]

Thank you Rally - that actually did answer the question I was asking.

There are too many people suffering both here and abroad. And while I would hope that we would want to help all of them if we had the money and manpower, the fact is that we simply cannot.

So to me, the question then becomes how do we help ourselves first, but still take care of at least some of the others? Because our house is certainly a complete mess.

[bobathon]

First, make sure the wealthiest, most comfortable folks are worshipped and not inconvenienced.
Second, the rest of us fight amongst ourselves over tablescraps until we die.

That's always the plan.

[rally2xs]

Mar 25, 2019 8:59:03 GMT -5 minx said:

Thank you Rally - that actually did answer the question I was asking.

You're welcome

There are too many people suffering both here and abroad. And while I would hope that we would want to help all of them if we had the money and manpower, the fact is that we simply cannot.

So to me, the question then becomes how do we help ourselves first, but still take care of at least some of the others? Because our house is certainly a complete mess.

OK, to answer that last part, I will repeat the same answer I've been giving for the last 15 years or so. It is: "The income taxes have a built-in feedback loop that results in damage to the economy when they are raised, which in turn damages the net revenue that we can collect when tax rates are raised, and ultimately results in less revenue being collected when income taxes are raised." The reverse of this, revenues rising when income taxes are lowered is known as the Laffer Curve for the person who discovered the principle that lowering taxes raises revenues. This principle was sketched by Arthur Laffer on a napkin for Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney in 1974, and dubbed "The Laffer Curve" by Jude Wanisiki who was also at that meeting. Arthur Laffer became an advisor to Ronald Reagan who acted on the information and lowered taxes, which caused a boom in the economy such as we're experiencing now after Trump again lowered taxes. Trump went one up on Reagan by lowering the CORPORATE income taxes, which has an even greater effect than lowering just the individual income taxes, and so we are getting all these factories reopening. We'd be getting a better effect if the corporate taxes had been lowered to 15% as Trump asked.

As for how to help ourselves more, and maybe some other people around the world, I still firmly believe that totally abolishing the income taxes would cease their damaging effects as was stated by JFK when he said, "“The largest single barrier to full employment of our manpower and resources and to a higher rate of economic growth is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power, initiative and incentive.” John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963 "

I believe that JFK had it right at a point in time only 50 years after the inception of the income taxes. The Gilded Age, from about 1870 to 1900, preceded the passage of the income taxes in 1913, and was characterized as described in the article in Wikipedia on the Gilded Age, "The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth, especially in the North and West. As American wages were much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 60% between 1860 and 1890, spread across the ever-increasing labor force. The average annual wage per industrial worker (including men, women, and children) rose from $380 in 1880 to $564 in 1890, a gain of 48%." So, that's what can happen without an income tax. Has it happened with an income tax? I don't know, I don't think so. I'm not aware of an economic boom that intense since 1913. I know there was a great depression with a horribly-long recovery period that some say was as long as it was due to the effects of gov't efforts to mitigate the suffering with programs like the WPA. I don't know if that's true or not, but I feel certain the recovery would have been much faster without income taxes, and indeed the crash may not have happened had there not been income taxes.

I believe that you could raise the income taxes as high as you want, and it would still not balance the budget because a great many things would act to lower the revenue collected, the primary being that feedback loop that damages the economy, but also the fact that people become very inventive and felonious in finding ways to lie about their income or hide their income. The rich will ship it offshore or ensure that they only earn it offshore and never bring it into the country. I have access to a study that says that income tax fraud will result in the loss of 9 trillion dollars over the next 10 years in evaded income taxes. What has anyone proposed to do about that? I haven't heard of anything, and believe that it is probably impossible to prevent it. Income taxes, I believe, are simply fatally flawed in many respects, with one of the biggest being that we can trust people to report their income to be taxed. Lots of people are honest and will do so, but lots of people are not honest and won't do so.

The FairTax? I think it will fix things, but even if it doesn't, and we had to try something else, like what we had before 1913, tariffs and excise taxes, with maybe some land sales thrown in (sell the land to those cattle ranchers that have been grazing their cattle on it, for instance) and tax anything other than income. Income taxes are a scourge that damage the economy, I firmly believe.