Budget talks: This is getting nasty

What's the "real problem"?

Real estate still remains a huge problem. Until the hosing market recovers, we won't have a strong economy. But again, the government's attempts to stabilize the housing market, have only prolonged the problem.

They needed to let it shake out, find its footing, and start to come back.

I'm not sure how someone else paying higher taxes makes anyone else's life any better though, or will make them any more "confident".

That money isn't going to end up in their pocket. It's not going to create any new jobs.

 

Leading from behind.

 

51 % of Americans are pro life. Does that mean we should should pass anti abortion laws?

Obama choosing the $250,000 number is strictly political.

For a tax increase to be fair it should hit everyone, not just those making over $250,000.

 

Blather.

I made lots of points, distilled your central argument down to what it is - The old deregulation trope we've been hearing since the 1970s - and given two examples of how a totally deregulated environment has been/is an utter disaster.

You're not much of a debater. You drop points clean, return to a central personal experience, and keep pounding away with the same rhetoric that is very nice in theory but shuddering in practice.

You're a business guy. Ask some coaches what they think of "select" sports teams. Or AAU hoops. Or Willie Lyles. Or Columbus tattoo parlors. What you're suggesting in the business world is <i>precisely</i> the kinds of things that go on in youth and college sports daily thanks to the puny, lazy enforcement staff of the NCAA. Rules? None of these coaches follow the rules. Terrelle Pryor has about nine sugar daddies - and all of them will get a cut of him.

Baseball with steroids? You for that? You'll get the equivalent in the business world. Psycho tennis dads who drive their daughters into the dirt by 25. You for that? That's what you're suggesting.

Government is not, as you argued earlier, about altruism. IMO, it's about order, a kind of two-way protection between parties. You protect the weaker party from the abuse and poor stewardship of the smaller stronger party, and you protect the stronger party from the eventual, vicious reciprocity of the larger, angrier weaker party. Government operates that basic transaction in various complex forms daily. There are times when the buffer between the parties is too great and wasteful. But to argue there should be no buffer - that the stronger party asserts its total will and the weaker party depends almost totally on the benevolence of the strong - that's like arguing for 1957 Cuba. Or 2011 Egypt. And America can't be one of those banana republics. It has to be wiser than that. And if that means, well, businessmen and women putting up with some stuff to run their business, then maybe, as frustrating as that may be, it's just their cross to bear.

Right now, certain rich people just don't want to bear the cross. Call it America Shrugged. But this is no Ayn Rand novel.

 

If the Bush/Obama tax cuts are allowed to expire, it will hit everyone.

 

My mother is a Republican and self employed, she owns a preschool. Her biggest complaint hasn't been about regulations, but about lack of revenue. The state raises minimum wage, but doesn't increase the amount of money that it pays so that poor kids can have daycare and education. Then the state legislature was considering cutting the money it provided for those same kids, which would have crippled, and possibly caused the closure of my mother's school.

2008 ring a bell? Securities?

Do you think that business will create significant jobs with a tax cut?

 

Big business may be able to put up with it. (Though, in some cases they can't either.)

But small business can't get off the ground.

And that hurts competition and causes higher prices for everyone.

High regulations are a barrier to entry. In many cases, it's a protection racket run by the government at the behest of big business.

Don Corleone would be envious.

 

It could happen whether or not you're sure about it. Maybe poor Americans want to see the rich soaked. Or maybe they're spending less out of prudence, because they know social services could be drastically cut.

I'm just saying be mindful. What you want may not be what others want. There's a difference between saying "well, I'd prefer" and "the will of the people is." I'd prefer America had a much smaller army and got the hell out of everywhere. But the will of the people is to have a much greater pride in the troops' work than I probably do.

 

A nugget of truth.

 

I don't understand how this is considered fair. A universal tax increase makes rich people give up some luxury, while middle class people struggle to pay, say, a medical bill because of it.

 

That NYT poll that Alma put up a few pages back certainly proves that theory.

 

We've all been shot soldier, just get in the truck and drive.