Got my letter published in the Inky today

It's the first one of the day!

A balanced budget will have to wait

Hate to admit it, but I completely agree with the tea-party folks about the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. It's an absolutely worthless waste of time, taxpayer money, and our attention.

Dana Milbank concedes Republicans on the commission will never agree to any sort of tax increase under any circumstances ("A sober effort to tame debt," Tuesday). Even if Republicans on the commission agree to anything, the rest of their party will never go along.

The first priority of policymakers should be to get Americans back to work. To do that, the government needs to engage in heavy stimulus spending. The budget should, eventually, be in some sort of balance. But there is no urgent need to do that anytime soon.

Richmond L. Gardner

Naturally, the statement that I agreed with the teabaggers should be read as "Yeesh, the Cat Food Commission is so unbearably awful, I even agree with these guys!"
Got stuck on what a commenter said, though. And yes, in the comments, I'm rich2506.

Posted 07:24 AM, 10/07/2010

taxmancometh

"The first priority of policymakers should be to get Americans back to work. To do that, the government needs to engage in heavy stimulus spending. The budget should, eventually, be in some sort of balance. But there is no urgent need to do that anytime soon.--Richmond L. Gardner" ---It's now official folks. We may as well turn out the lights. We have had nothing BUT government 'stimulus' since 'The New Deal'. Trillions upon trillions upon trillions. We have destroyed our currency. (Our 'dollar', which is actually a Federal Reserve Note, has lost 95% of its value since the creation of the non-federal, Federal Reserve in 1913). We have destroyed our industrial infrastructure in the name of 'environmentalism', we have spent (stimulated) over 7 TRILLION since the enactment of Johnson's phony 'war on poverty', yet we have more people living in poverty today since the great depression. We have 41.8 MILLION people on Food stamps. Another Obama record! That's one in 7 Americans. We don't need any more government 'stimulus' and debt creation. We need to balance the budget by cutting spending. It is just that simple. We need to return wealth to the private sector and drain that swamp called Washington, DC. The time for action is NOW! The decades of 'stimulus' have left us all BANKRUPT, morally and fiscally.

Posted 07:28 AM, 10/07/2010

taxmancometh

Mr. Gardner, please PLEASE watch this video if you do not believe me. PLEASE. It's seven minutes long and is NOT partisan, and THEN come back and talk to me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MQ2pk7kkm4

Posted 07:54 AM, 10/07/2010

rich2506

@taxmancometh Yep, sho enuff is a sca-a-a-areee videeeo! Pfft. Not. Look, the problem is that private enterprise does a lot of things and does them well, but it doesn't do everything. Never has, never will. The income of all US citizens has risen at the usual rates for the last 40 years, but the income of the bottom 90% of taxpayers has been flat. President Reagan didn't begin that problem, but his policies certainly contributed to it and have maintained that. Reaganomics, not overspending, is the REAL problem here.

Posted 08:39 AM, 10/07/2010

taxmancometh

Well Rich, have fun in the bread line. And I didn't say anything about private enterprise. Your comment about the bottom 90% flat lining was not true from the period of 2002 to 2007. During that period ALL incomes rose between 3 and 4%. But those gains were the result of inflation caused by the printing of massive amounts of worthless paper fiat currency, which is what I pointed out in my first post. But we are now entering the end game phase, where Congress has overspent the ability of Maericans to produce enough wealth to correct the problem. It is happening all over Europe as we speak. Even England is starting to cut welfare benefits as they are out of money. Cuba is laying off 500,000 government workers because Castro's own brother admitted their economic model is a failure. There is a somewhat humorous video from two Australian comedians that is a great watch! It discusses the fiscal problems in Europe and the debt incurred to finance ever enlarging social 'entitlements'. It runs about 2:36 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D0VhS8qXT0

Posted 08:42 AM, 10/07/2010

taxmancometh

For more research on American taxation as it relates to income levels, please visit this IRS page, http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=96679,00.html#_grp9 --- and scroll down to the section marked, 'Individual Income Tax Returns with Positive "1979 Income Concept" Income'. There you can pull up the totals from IRS tax returns and determine who paid what percentage taxes, which income bracket grew (all of them) and you will see that the bottom 50% of wage earners saw their tax burden fall, which means the tax cuts were not just 'for the rich'. Enjoy the read.

The video simply made the point that government costs money. Duh! Next thing ya know, he'll tell me that the sun rises in the East. Now, the idea that everyone's income rose a bit during the Bush Administration is one that I have a hard time with as Bush's term was generally a complete flop in just about everything connected to economics and the failure to create enough jobs to keep up with population growth was a continual problem.

Now, I would think that the IRS table that taxman refers to, when it says "top 50%," would mean that it would include all the other groups above the 50% line, I found the definition of "1979 Income Concept" and it's not helpful at all. If there had been a table of "quintiles," that would have been meaningful as quintile means five separate groups. To compare the bottom four quintiles to the top one would tell us whether everyone advanced during Bush's term or whether, as I strongly suspect, the top quintile advanced, the second quintile did well, but not as well, and the bottom three remained static or lost ground. I suspect the way the statistics are defined, it just looks like everyone's income advanced.

My web searching uncovered lots of quintile data, but it usually just goes up as far as 2000 or 2003. Can't find anything up to the present. Anyway, that's why I only have one comment up there today.