While it may seem hopeless, little by little people seem to be waking up and seeing what is happening. While progress is slow, It is encouraging to me to see establishment (Repub's included) senators and reps who have been in control of their seats for decades now being threatened and losing to viable and truly conservative and civil liberty minded candidates and not just some RINO. Progress is slow but Rome wasn't built over night.

 

True, but we're closer to the falling of Rome than the building of it.

 

Lets not forget that Obama is not counting people who no longer collect unemployment, those who gave up and no longer seeking employment, or those that are under employed. If these people were counted the unemployment numbers would be far higher.....

 

Then the same can be said for Bush's number.

 

I remember the press being all upset over the 4.6% unemployment near the end of Bush's presidency. They don't say too much about the 8.2% or higher we've seen under Obummer. The numbers are, as DeeDawg said about twice that high with self-employed, those who have dropped off the unemployment rolls, and those who have given up on work. You can't keep taking money out of the private sector to fund government give aways and expect that the economy is going to improve. The more money left in the private sector the more available to hire workers, build businesses, and thrive. If you spread out the taxpayers' money via the government you add layer upon bloated layer of money sucking entities. If you cut the government layers out and let business do business you immediately take away several layers of unneeded spending.

 

I know this thread is old, but Moose, I urge you to look up the national debt numbers. Obama didn't "Quadruple the national debt". That's not even possible. National debt has gone up 13%, and year over year growth in the deficit is following a downward trend. It's statistics, like him or hate him, Obama isn't doing that bad.

 

So much of the number crunching is done by the CBO, Congressional Budget Office. Time and time again they put out a number, saying a program is going to cost so much money. Time and time again it's usually double what they thought. I'm just saying the spending cannot go on. You could tax the top 10% of wage earners (who already pay 65% of all taxes) on 100% of their income and it won't make a dent in the spending deficit. We have the Dept. of Agriculture boasting that they are giving out more food stamps then ever before while the Dept. of Agriculture's, National Parks program saying, "Please don't feed the animals, they'll become dependent."

Also, roughly 47% of working age Americans are either on government assistance or work for the government. I don't see how these kinds of things can be sustained. Instead of cutting they keep spending more and more. Congress sends a budget with minimal cuts to the Senate and the Senate has either not voted on it or has defeated it for the last 3 years. I believe we're reaching the saturation point. I hope I'm wrong. Every American's piece of the deficit is somewhere around $47,000. We pay over $500 million dollars in interest to the Chinese every week. This is not the America I grew up with. It's insane to keep spending if the money isn't there.

 

If an individual tried what the government does, spending money they don't have, they would soon be in trouble with the law and forced to quit spending. Why doesn't the government have to stop it too? Are they better than us?

 

If you were just saying spending shouldn't go on, then you should have just said that. It's a fabrication to say that Obama Quadrupled the National debt.

Since I'm not entirely sure, I'd like for you to provide to me a concrete number of the combined wealth of the top 10%. I bet it's a lot more than 2 trillion dollars. But of course the majority of that is probably stored in offshore accounts to avoid those oh so horrible taxes.

You just compared Americans who receive Government assistance to Animals... Seems a little dehumanizing. Not very charitable of you. I believe a certain fascist compared a certain segment of a population to sub-humans at one point. You then said that to be 47% of the population. That's a lot of "Animals".

You're right, we need to balance the budget. We should stop giving kickbacks to corporations, and oil companies, and we should raise taxes on the wealthiest, who are most equipped to handle a tax burden (You can't possibly say they aren't better equipped, can you?).

It's not the average American who should be footing the bill, they can't afford it.

 

Honestly, I don't feel like going to all the sources I've either heard or seen this information. It becomes a big game and I'm not interested in getting into it that much. I've done that before with Funride and all it does is show that two people have two different source pools to pull information from.

The top 10% of wage earners are already bearing 65% of all tax revenue in this country. Talk about not being fare. THEY earned the money, not the people with their hands out. The more you tax the less people are going to want to achieve. The fewer achievers the fewer people will be hiring. Before I hurt my back I was in construction. The people hiring me were not the poor but the upper middle class to the wealthy. Taxes are punitive in this country. It's amazing sometimes that anyone has money left to spend. Obama wants a 55% tax on inheritance over a million dollars. That's ridiculous. The person originally made the money and was taxed on that income, any interest on dividends or accounts was taxed, and money spent on necessities was taxed too. Then they want to say that the person descendants should be taxed on that already taxed money too.

I'm comparing what the GOVERNMENT is saying about giving out food. It works that way for both people and animals. If you keep giving things away for "free" (government money coercively taken from citizens to redistribute) people will learn that it's easier to take the freebies. I'm into PERSONAL charity. If I see a need I can meet I try to help out. That does include food for the needy. But, the government takes money by threat of force and gives it out like it's never going to stop coming in. That has nothing or little to do with charity. It's not voluntary. I don't have much of a problem with limited handouts but Obama just with the stroke of a pen (even though Congress is to pass laws, not the President) got rid of many of the reforms that made sense to make it harder to stay on assistance. I am not calling people animals although we are animals. It's a valid comparison to say that people and also, animals, will take the handouts. I am not calling them sub-human by any stretch of the imagination. YOU used that term. They have as much worth to me as anyone else. But I believe we can help people learn how to acquire wealth through hard work and diligence not by penalizing them through taxation when they do make wealth. If someone is ABLE BODIED they should work. They shouldn't expect all the other taxpayers to support them. To me, that's the same as a robber using a gun to steal from somebody. Only, in this case, it's stealing using the government's much bigger gun.

If we are serious about cutting the budget lets start fresh. I agree that kickbacks should be done away with. From the high to the low. How about Obama's friends at Solindra that went belly up after receiving, I believe, $500 million of the taxpayers' dollars? How about the fact the present administration sent our tax dollars overseas to an electric car company that isn't even an American company? I believe the company is in Finland but I honestly can't remember where it as right now.

It's funny that every time the government raises taxes they find new ways to squander the increased income. They call cutting future spending cutting the budget. All they are doing is not spending as much as they proposed to spend in the future. They haven't cut anything. What the government needs to learn is to spend within the amount of money that comes into the government. The only thing the government can do that seriously effects the economy is to either raise or lower taxes. They raise taxes, which takes money out of the private sector, spends it on more layers of government, and doles out the rest. If they cut taxes they have to learn how to survive on less, just like the rest of us do. That also leaves more money in the private sector, cuts away layers of government fat, and helps the economy to grow.