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[Renault]

Sorry to have offended. For what its worth, I never meant it seriously. I'd hope my character isn't too terribly tarnished, but I guess I will grant I can have a poor sense of humor. My bad.

[Duuvian]

What the hell?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mike Simpson: "We have to go through this process of not using earmarks for a couple of years ... There's going to be things that are legitimate that they want to do in their districts that are appropriate, that are the reason we are here--one of the reasons we are here--[that] they're not going to be able to do."

Earmarks

[Grakelin]

I think it says a lot about you that you can't take a joke

Jokes, I can take.  I guess I didn't find it funny.

When I was in Boy Scouts, we went to camp, and all had to do our own dishes after we were done eating. One kid didn't finish his food, and he apparently didn't do his dishes, either, because we got called up into a line and told that this wasn't cool. Now, they had the plate in their hand, and I knew exactly whose plate it was. I didn't snitch, of course, because that's not what you do, but I could tell it was this specific person because I remembered how the contents of their plate were arranged.

So, they said "Look, we just want to know who it was. Nobody's going to be in trouble. They just need to throw out their leftover food and wash the plate."

And suddenly, from behind me, I hear the kid yell "IT WASN'T ME!" in such a way that us youngsters all chuckled nervously, and the Leader said "I think doth thou protest too much".

And yeah, I was just reminded of that incident for some reason.

[Andir]

I think it says a lot about you that you can't take a joke

Jokes, I can take.  I guess I didn't find it funny.

When I was in Boy Scouts, we went to camp, and all had to do our own dishes after we were done eating. One kid didn't finish his food, and he apparently didn't do his dishes, either, because we got called up into a line and told that this wasn't cool. Now, they had the plate in their hand, and I knew exactly whose plate it was. I didn't snitch, of course, because that's not what you do, but I could tell it was this specific person because I remembered how the contents of their plate were arranged.

So, they said "Look, we just want to know who it was. Nobody's going to be in trouble. They just need to throw out their leftover food and wash the plate."

And suddenly, from behind me, I hear the kid yell "IT WASN'T ME!" in such a way that us youngsters all chuckled nervously, and the Leader said "I think doth thou protest too much".

And yeah, I was just reminded of that incident for some reason.

I'm not protesting anything.  I was just sitting here reading and I don't remember laughing and saying: "Oh boy, that was funny."  Maybe if the punch line was more defined.  Maybe if there was a little [/rimshot] tag after it... I don't know.  I don't see where the humor is.

[Earthquake Damage]

I don't see where the humor is.

Isn't that more or less what Aqizzar said?

[nenjin]

I think we need a new thread, wherein we link the start of a thread to some random page, or the page where it officially fucked up, so people can see how far the disjoint has gone.

We went from having a grown up conversation to, getting offended by pedo jokes is it?

I can just see the first post now. The American Question: Does laughing at pedo jokes make you a horrible person?

[Andir]

I think we need a new thread, wherein we link the start of a thread to some random page, or the page where it officially fucked up, so people can see how far the disjoint has gone.

We went from having a grown up conversation to, getting offended by pedo jokes is it?

I can just see the first post now. The American Question: Does laughing at pedo jokes make you a horrible person?

I'm not offended.  (for the record...)

[Mictlantecuhtli]

We went from having a grown up conversation to, getting offended by pedo jokes is it?

I find it to be a good analogue for the American public. Going from an actual discussion to that which does not matter.

[zilpin]

We went from having a grown up conversation to, getting offended by pedo jokes is it?

I find it to be a good analogue for the American public. Going from an actual discussion to that which does not matter.

<rhetorical-irony>
Wake up America!
Don't you see the "actual discussion" is just a commie fascist ploy to cloud your mind!
Those élites say this discussion "does not matter"!
You know what I say... *takes off prop glasses* ...this discussion is the ONLY one that matters!
What are they hiding?!  Are they hiding their secret socialist gay pedo agenda, maybe?
I don't know, I'm just asking questions!
Questions about their secret socialist satanist gay plot to corrupt your children and pets!
</rhetorical-irony>

[Sowelu]

WAKE UP BAY12!!!

[Aqizzar]

Why?  Thirty hours without fighting over politics wasn't good enough for you?

Okay fine, here's some fuel for you.  Moody's Credit Rating, the guys who rate big name bonds and stocks and know more about money than almost anybody, have said they may downgrade the American government's credit rating if the tax cut deal goes through.  Basically, banks and other institutions both foreign and domestic invest in government bonds because they're supposed to be rock solid investments - they don't gain much, but they always pay back.

Moody's is basically in the business of selling money, and they are anything but ideologues or enemies of the American government, and are also about the biggest name in credit appraisal that the world looks to for deciding what to invest in.  The package altogether is expected to cost about $900billion dollars over whatever measure of time the Congressional Budget Office measures these things in.  About $500billion of that is the continuation of 35% income tax for $250k and up incomes, compared to the current rates expiring and raising to about 39%.  Moody's official assessment is that whatever positive effect throwing money at the already wealthy might have on business investment and activity, the core economic policy America has pursued for about thirty years, would be so totally subsumed by the crippling debt as to be meaningless.  And therefore, they're threatening to stop recommending American bonds as a sure investment.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is the tipping point.

[Earthquake Damage]

article

Wait.  Our debt is reaching 70% of our GDP?  Isn't that where Latin America was when shit went down in the 70s/80s?

Or am I thinking % of export revenue?

[Aqizzar]

article

Wait.  Our debt is reaching 70% of our GDP?  Isn't that where Latin America was when shit went down in the 70s/80s?

Total American debt actually accounts for nearly 400% of GDP (which is to say, total held public and private debt is more than four times the size of the whole economy).  Here's a graph-



The Federal Line is a little outdated.  This probably isn't the best named graph, but the sourcing is accurate enough to get the point across, compared to the myriad Debt-GPD% graphs you can find-

Spoiler: As of 21 months ago. (click to show/hide)

Most of that spike right at the end was first the bank bailout and then the business bailout behind it, Federal Debt as % of GPD has been about stable since then, right about where that graph shows.  The U.S. government has operated at a higher percent-debt-of-GDP before, but during WWII when we were basically the only functioning industrial economy standing.  I'm not sure it's the percentage of GDP that's really important, so much as the prospect of it ever reducing again, if we continue blowing it up and up by reducing government revenue with no possible chance of reducing expenditure to compensate.

[Sowelu]

Cookie for whoever posts a chart of historic national tax rates, including the last world war at least.  I've seen one before and it was pretty darn surprising--though they're hard to get right, because there's always loopholes (is a 90% tax rate really that high when you can exempt yourself from 90% of it?)

[Aqizzar]

Cookie for whoever posts a chart of historic national tax rates, including the last world war at least.  I've seen one before and it was pretty darn surprising--though they're hard to get right, because there's always loopholes (is a 90% tax rate really that high when you can exempt yourself from 90% of it?)

Yeah, that's the thing.  During the 1950s, the top marginal income tax was 91% (yeah, that's right, 91% income tax rate on millionaires, at the height of our ideological war with the Communists, figure that out), but rich people had no real right to complain, because they had lawyers and accountants to get out of most of it.  (Fun little point about that, which I can't find the video for at the moment: Bill O'Reilly went on Bill Maher's show, and said tax-dodging is the patriotic thing to do.)  It was down to like 76% in the 1970s, and dropped in half over the next fifteen years.  It's some real food for thought when talking about what top-marginal-income taxes have on business growth and investment.