JUUUUUUMP!Well, it's time to pay the Piper and reset taxes back to circa 2001. You can't have tax cuts, and have two wars without someone paying the bill. Thanks George W Bush.
Can I return that crummy 150 dollar check you gave me back in 2002 and call it even?
It's definitely not an invention. It's sensationalistically named, but Bush instituted a series of tax cuts and raised government spending in 2001 and they were ment to be a temporary stopgap measure to kind of "ride out" the recession. The problem is that we aren't fully recovered from that recession yet and if something isn't instituted, next year, everyone will be paying higher taxes across the board, by quite a lot. It will also lower federal spending. Rather than try to explain the role of government spending in Keynesian economics, I'll just leave this link here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
), and decent budget cuts on topics where money is being wasted left and right. Of course, where to cut spending is another issue.I think the most simplistic (and personally relatable) explanation would be to imagine that you had some bills, but your payday wasn't going to be until next week, so you bought stuff on your credit card, not realizing that your statement was going to be due the day after payday and that the finance charge would put you over your limit. So now that payday is right around the corner, you have to decide whether you want to keep your entire paycheck and suffer the over limit fees, or whether you pay your statement to prevent the fees but then have less money to work with until next payday.
Why are you blaming Bush? He signed the first one before the wars were a twinkle in Osama's eye. Congress created and passed them, and it was a bipartisan effort. The senate was 50/50, and the republicans only held 9 more seats in the house than the democrats.
I'm open to alternative methods of getting people to understand the impact and importance of other people's decisions.
Except, you know, it doesn't. It creates a false idea on how government budgets work and their impact on the economy as a whole. It's a view that has brought us to the stupidity we see in the House and Congress, where neither party is willing to do what is best for the country in a misguided attempt to 'balance the budget' while ignoring what is best for the country in an effort to cut every program and not raise any revenue, a move which would cripple the economy in the same way the fiscal cliff would.
...which is why I solicit an alternative. I know that when I try to discuss finances with people, I can see that once I try to talk about anything outside their personal finances, they just stop paying attention. It's my experience that your average person doesn't seem to realize that their financial universe is just a raft in a big, big ocean, and they pay so much attention to their little bubble that they can't see how the motion of that ocean pushes their raft about in whorls too big for them to directly see. In order to explain the Ocean, I could try and build something really, really complicated, but it seems easier to just talk about something they're more familiar with, like their bathtub.
I do firmly place the blame for our current predicament on all presidents for the last 20 or so years, regardless of party affiliation. They've all allowed the banks to whittle away at the restrictions set up by FDR in the New Deal. It's entirely the reason we had the housing market crash due to all the junk loans that were allowed to go through and out of control loan policies that would have previously been not allowed. Regan, Clinton, Bush Sr, Bush Jr, all these presidents are responsible for allowing this to happen.
I know what you mean. If the government ran their budget like some people run their household, we'd be several decades past the fiscal cliff and well and truly at the bottom of the fiscal Laurentians.
Except the alternative doesn't help. It's so oversimplified it might as well be "Spend bad, tax bad!"
I do have a friend that refers to taking his insulin as 'partying' so..
And that's just it, both parties are complacent in what has happened. Democrats need to be willing to cut spending while Republicans need to be willing to raise taxes. All of this should be done in small increments so as to prevent an economic free fall from the shock.
Isn't the Republican position on this light on tax rises and heavier on spending cuts/freezes, though? I believe the fiscal cliff is what was under discussion here.
Defence yes, though it is my understanding that the Republicans are generally viewed to be against entitlement programs, and have on several occasions been accused of 'attacking' Medicare and Social Security, Romney's campaign rhetoric to the contrary. I could of course be wrong, seeing as US domestic politics is of limited interest to me, but my quick google search does seem to support this.
Agreed, a balanced approach would seem like the best way forward. Now we'll just have to see if sufficient political will exists to bring that compromise about.
