Paul Ryan: Cut, Cap & Balance the Budget; Grow the Economy;

[Hiker]

http://youtu.be/Se3n1ighsC8

Well worth the time to watch.

[m gardner]

Ryan is trying to get us going in the right direction but our monetary system is based on debt and the rapid expansion of credit, and that senario always fails eventually. Ludwig von Mises said that if a system like ours is not ended voluntarily and we take our beating, it will end in a total collapse of the currency system involved. Either way it's a disaster and it looks like they are going for the latter out of fear. This started in 1971 under Nixon and we cannot generate the revenue to keep this afloat any longer. This beast needs a continual fix of cash and it looks like we won't be borrowing any more money because the debt ceiling can't be raised or we will be devalued as a bad risk. The next sensible step is to generate more money through taxes and that's going to hurt.

[Hiker]

Mark, I agree with you, this is not a new problem. Read what Ryan said about future tax increases. "Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing about balance. We keep hearing about the need to raise taxes as we cut spending - $3 for $1, or something to that effect. The red line shows Congressional Budget Office projections on spending, the green lines are taxes. Basically what this says is there is no way you can tax your way out of this problem. We asked the Congressional Budget Office, 'if we try to do that – have balance, raise taxes – the tax rates on the next generation would be this: the lowest income tax bracket that lower income people pay which is 10% now, goes to 25%. Middle income tax payers pay a 66% rate. And the top tax rate, which is what all those successful small businesses that create most of our jobs pay would go to 88%.' That is according to the Congressional Budget Office. That is the path we are on right now. This is unsustainable. "

The USA is in much worse shape than most people realize.

[sneekeepete]

Great post Hiker & Mark! The sad part is that most folks who read this will just move right along and ignore the shape our nation is in and keep signing up for more debt themselves! What a mess we as the American public have allowed to take place.
As Dave Ramsey says We are being enthusiastically stupid to this sittuation.

[m gardner]

I know one thing the money is running out. I ride a motorcycle and I've never seen the roads this bad. It's not so noticeable in the truck or car but it is on the bike. The fed and state budgets are really beginning to crumble. The last news I heard was that the CBO wasn't invited to rate some of the new legisaltion so they must be trying to slide something pretty bad by us. I heard some talk of the huge savings projected using a datum of sorts that was unsustainable and anything below that imaginary line was a savings, but it would put us under in a hurry!

[TheGreatwhitehunter]

Very informative

[Jeff]

By cutting too much they would in a sense be cutting the hand that feeds them. They're in so thick with special interest spending, getting "campaign contributions" , or kick backs from those they give the money to, there is no way any one of them is going to vote for any cuts. In my own perfect world I would fire every last one of them and try to find some honest people, that care about the country more than their own personal gains, to do the job.

[m gardner]

If you read history you'll realize that will happen eventually. They will all be fired. Hopefully here in America that will entail elections. The French and Bolshevik revolutions were nasty. I'm not at all sure that our Benevolent Dictator is not setting the stage for the collapse of our government so the final changes can be made. Everyone is to the point of agreement that this is not working so there would be less and less resisitance to the idea all the time.

[Hiker]

Read this quote...my how things change.

A quote from a former U.S. Senator:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

-- Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

[m gardner]

He's a real prize package isn't he? I was reading a manufacturing engineering magazine today and saw where Obama said he was supporting the training and credentialing of machinists and he was hoping to have another 500,000 in the labor force in the next ten years. It can't happen unless government gets out of the way of businesses so they can run themselves efficiently and somehow the capital investment for manufacturing needs to materialize too. Another problem is that most people don't really want to work that hard anymore. A recent study conducted shows that 70% of the people know that manufacturing is critical to our growth and recovery and general prosperity but 30% look at it as a good way to make a living. Sad.