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[Capntastic]

Tax capital gains 102% because the damage done by rent-seeking, the sheer disruption caused by abusing markets to play arbitrage games and 'jack up prices', needs to be disincentivized to the point that you should have to pay money to do it.

[portaldruid]

yep i think Mitt Romney is the man

[Flare]

You make a lot more claims than you provide sources.

Shouldn't you have the sources, what with supporting Ryan's economic plan? The two main crutches of his argument is thus:

1. That the government will give block sums to the states as opposed to now where the government reimburses medicare costs however high they are.

2. The block sums will lower as time goes one.

The first one as, being a responsible voter you should already know, is widely touted on sites like these: http://budget.house.gov/settingtherecordstraight/medicaid.htm

"The Path to Prosperity modernizes the Medicaid benefit by converting the federal share of the Medicaid payment into a block grant"

This is probably what you're not asking him to source, it's probably the second point.

The second point hinges on the plan making this block sum adjust to inflation by the consumer price index average to adjust for inflation every year.

From the same site "The initial allotment would be exactly as much as the states are receiving to pay for Medicaid today, and it would grow every year to account for inflation and population."

The prickly details are in the published plan itself. The main issue though is that the consumer price index is the average rate of inflation of all goods and services in the year. Medical services have always been one of the goods that experience a great deal more inflation than the costs which shouldn't be a mystery to you. Due to this, the block grants to the states will then get smaller every single year as medical inflation outstrips the consumer price index inflation the plan would set the inflation amount to.

[GreatJustice]

Do you know why all those projections of the economy crashing go to 2037?

http://ruk.ca/content/us-budget-and-2037

In this well-produced video about the U.S. budget, U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan says “I asked the Congressional Budget Office to model the economy going forward, so they have these computer programs that simulate the U.S. economy; the computer program crashes in 2037 because it can’t conceive of any way in which the U.S. economy can continue because of this massive burden of debt.”

This may very well be true. But I’m wondering whether the simulator might be crashing, instead, because of the well-known 2038 problem, described in Wikipedia like this:

The year 2038 problem (also known as the Unix Millennium Bug, Y2K38, Y2.038K, or S2G by analogy to the Y2K problem) may cause some computer software to fail at some point near the year 2038. The problem affects all software and systems that both store system time as a signed 32-bit integer, and interpret this number as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on Thursday, 1 January 1970. The furthest time that can be represented this way is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038. Times beyond this moment will “wrap around” and be stored internally as a negative number, which these systems will interpret as a date in 1901 rather than 2038. This is caused by Integer overflow. The counter “runs out” of usable digits, “increments” the sign bit instead, and reports a maximally negative number (continuing to count up, towards zero). This will likely cause problems for users of these systems due to erroneous calculations.

I’ve no idea whether this is the case, but hearing “2037” and “crash” invoked in the video has got me wondering.

There we go, they've even politicized the end of the 32-bit UNIX system clock.

You guys are making a big deal over this, considering the fact that computer predictions of the economy have a distinctly poor track record.

Back to the budget though, it's pretty obvious that Obama's present spending is unsustainable under any circumstances, and cuts have to be made somewhere. In the long term, something does have to be done about Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as well. Eventually, the most reasonable thing to do is to get rid of the three altogether, though the government does still have to pay back those who paid into the system. Paul Ryan's plan cut from these programs, but doesn't balance the budget until 2040 and basically hangs the recipients out to dry to boot. He's also a coward who won't touch "Defense" spending, which is probably the easiest thing to cut in terms of practicality and doesn't have the problem of screwing over people conned by the government.

Frankly, balancing the budget in a short period of time is a matter of cutting defense spending, getting rid of certain departments (especially the DHS and so on), cutting from other programs, and making SS, Medicare and Medicaid optional programs.

[mainiac]

Funny that it's "pretty obvious" that Obama's spending is to blame despite the fact that we would have a budget surplus without those tax cuts and the economic downturn.

[RedKing]

Do you know why all those projections of the economy crashing go to 2037?

http://ruk.ca/content/us-budget-and-2037

In this well-produced video about the U.S. budget, U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan says “I asked the Congressional Budget Office to model the economy going forward, so they have these computer programs that simulate the U.S. economy; the computer program crashes in 2037 because it can’t conceive of any way in which the U.S. economy can continue because of this massive burden of debt.”

This may very well be true. But I’m wondering whether the simulator might be crashing, instead, because of the well-known 2038 problem, described in Wikipedia like this:

The year 2038 problem (also known as the Unix Millennium Bug, Y2K38, Y2.038K, or S2G by analogy to the Y2K problem) may cause some computer software to fail at some point near the year 2038. The problem affects all software and systems that both store system time as a signed 32-bit integer, and interpret this number as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on Thursday, 1 January 1970. The furthest time that can be represented this way is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038. Times beyond this moment will “wrap around” and be stored internally as a negative number, which these systems will interpret as a date in 1901 rather than 2038. This is caused by Integer overflow. The counter “runs out” of usable digits, “increments” the sign bit instead, and reports a maximally negative number (continuing to count up, towards zero). This will likely cause problems for users of these systems due to erroneous calculations.

I’ve no idea whether this is the case, but hearing “2037” and “crash” invoked in the video has got me wondering.

There we go, they've even politicized the end of the 32-bit UNIX system clock.

You guys are making a big deal over this, considering the fact that computer predictions of the economy have a distinctly poor track record.

I think it's more that it's an intellectually dishonest/ignorant (take your pick) attack based on a technical glitch. It's akin to saying "The Mayan calendar ends in Dec 2012. OMG WERE DOOMED".


Maybe it's just the wave of negative ads I've had to endure during the Olympics (at about a 10-1 ratio, btw....all the crap about Obama's "wave of negative ads" is bullshit. Every time I turn around there's a Crossroads GPS or Restore Our Future attack ad.), but I'm increasingly convinced that we're just fucked no matter what who wins. The system is so goddamn dysfunctional that it really doesn't matter which ineffectual figurehead is stuck at the top.

I mean, I think Obama's a pretty cool guy, eh kills Osama and doesn't afraid of anything but he has a hostile, obstructionist Congress and the Dems just do not have his back. Too many blue-dogs mean any perceived majority the Dems might have used from 2008-2010 pretty much didn't exist. And even if miracles happened and the Dems regained Congressional majority in 2012, they'll still be too busy being Democrats to give him a unified force to back him up.

While I don't think Romney/Ryan are a pair of baby-eating lizard people, they wouldn't be my first choice. Or second. Or even third. In part because of their membership in a political party that has become a shining, festering beacon of everything wrong in the US political system. I will never be a Democrat, but I have long considered myself an Anti-Republican.

And third parties at the Federal level are just a semi-dignified way to piss in the ocean.

I think our best days as a nation (in terms of standard of living, global preeminence, etc) are behind us. We're the British Empire, circa 1930. My concern now is how well we handle the demotion and how gracefully we accept the end of unipolarity.

[Drunken]

Tax capital gains 102% because the damage done by rent-seeking, the sheer disruption caused by abusing markets to play arbitrage games and 'jack up prices', needs to be disincentivized to the point that you should have to pay money to do it.

No the best way to do this is with a very small financial transaction tax. Capital gains are fine in a healthy system, and while I believe they should be taxed, this will not prevent abuse unless it prevents investment altogether as your >100% suggestion would. A small tax (0.5-5%) on all financial transactions would prevent dangerous and destructive speculation by making it no longer profitable, while simultaneously having little or no effect on legitimate investment in meaningful areas.

[Urist_McDrowner]

At its core, if you define a good president as one who is able to solve problems, then by definition Barack Obama is not a good president. You gave it a good shake, Mr. President, you did your best, no one can fault you that, but it just wasn't enough. You couldn't solve the problems. Now it's time to let someone else try.

Since the Democrats don't have a prayer of keeping the senate or gaining the house, everyone should vote for Romney because we can all agree, getting SOMETHING done is better than getting NOTHING done.

BTW, on Paul Ryan's medicare, he's giving everyone the same system that Congressmen have. Debbie Wasserman-Schutlz was basically saying "The Public is just too stupid to pick out their health care" when she kept repeating "It won't work for Americans" on loop as Paul Ryan kept asking her if it was good enough for Congressmen, why not the general public?

[Heron TSG]

Since the Democrats don't have a prayer of keeping the senate or gaining the house, everyone should vote for Romney because we can all agree, getting SOMETHING done is better than getting NOTHING done.

The elections are far from decided, sir. Beyond that, I would rather crawl forward than run backward.

[Urist_McDrowner]

Since the Democrats don't have a prayer of keeping the senate or gaining the house, everyone should vote for Romney because we can all agree, getting SOMETHING done is better than getting NOTHING done.

The elections are far from decided, sir. Beyond that, I would rather crawl forward than run backward.

You're right, let's keep taking out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our kids, driving up our national debt. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

[Zangi]

Since the Democrats don't have a prayer of keeping the senate or gaining the house, everyone should vote for Romney because we can all agree, getting SOMETHING done is better than getting NOTHING done.

The elections are far from decided, sir. Beyond that, I would rather crawl forward than run backward.

You're right, let's keep taking out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our kids, driving up our national debt. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

Of course, let us give up our ideals to allow those we disagree with to do whatever the heck they please, while at the same time saying its patriotic and progressive.  How patriotic.

[Urist_McDrowner]

Since the Democrats don't have a prayer of keeping the senate or gaining the house, everyone should vote for Romney because we can all agree, getting SOMETHING done is better than getting NOTHING done.

The elections are far from decided, sir. Beyond that, I would rather crawl forward than run backward.

You're right, let's keep taking out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our kids, driving up our national debt. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

Of course, let us give up our ideals to allow those we disagree with to do whatever the heck they please, while at the same time saying its patriotic and progressive.  How patriotic.

That seems to be how Barack Obama wants Republicans to compromise.


But thank you for admitting the whole point you want to reelect Barack Obama is to shut down change. Have fun being the party of "no"

[Jervill]

Didn't you know Zangi?  You can only be patriotic by voting straight ticket Republican.

[Urist_McDrowner]

Didn't you know Zangi?  You can only be patriotic by voting straight ticket Republican.

You're certainly unpatriotic if you vote to keep the debt going up this fast. It's irresponsible and unpatriotic to add 4 trillion to the debt, let alone more. We're taking out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our kids, running up the national debt.

[Zangi]

Since the Democrats don't have a prayer of keeping the senate or gaining the house, everyone should vote for Romney because we can all agree, getting SOMETHING done is better than getting NOTHING done.

The elections are far from decided, sir. Beyond that, I would rather crawl forward than run backward.

You're right, let's keep taking out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our kids, driving up our national debt. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

Of course, let us give up our ideals to allow those we disagree with to do whatever the heck they please, while at the same time saying its patriotic and progressive.  How patriotic.

That seems to be how Barack Obama wants Republicans to compromise.


But thank you for admitting the whole point you want to reelect Barack Obama is to shut down change. Have fun being the party of "no"

Oh Jah... that is freaking hilarious...  Grade A
+1 to ya man.

Didn't you know Zangi?  You can only be patriotic by voting straight ticket Republican.

You're certainly unpatriotic if you vote to keep the debt going up this fast. It's irresponsible and unpatriotic to add 4 trillion to the debt, let alone more. We're taking out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our kids, running up the national debt.

Is this a tactic now?  Demonizing people because they don't agree with you?