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Meh, both our taxes and government spending as a percentage of GDP are lower than virtually any other industrialized country and not by small margins either. We had a pretty good budgetary run in 1993-2000 and there's no reason we can't do it again, we just have to actually give a shit about fixing things instead of shouting about them.
I would like to say that using taxes and spending as a percentage of GDP being lower than other industrialized nations is on non-sequitur - so what? Are we going to compare ourselves to the EU which is collapsing under its own weight in un-sustainable socialist (albeit "democratic socialist") platforms? Shall we model let's say: Greece? Spain? Potugal? The UK? France? I would not want to compare myself to any losing proposition whether in business or government. If you are using benchmarks to shoot for would you use metics from profitable "like" businesses or non-profitable "like" businesses for example? I would not aim at the non-profitable ones! Why compare yourself to a losing entity? You can if you want, but you will end up where you are aiming - loses! You might choose Japan - but they are awash in their own quagmire apart from the Sunami and many of their profits come from US based businesses. I wouldn't - it makes no sense.
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Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland are the pretty obvious examples of democratic socialist countries that are doing just fine. Any implication that socialist platforms are unsustainable is going to have to account for them somehow.
On the other side you have Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan proving that it's possible as long as there's enough room for growth.
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Hong Kong was a "laissez faire" capitalist society for years, and was most successful at it (with reduced regulation I might add). South Korea has done well, but tends to be more democratic than "socialist". The Danish communities seem to be holding their own: about like one state in our union and certainly not California or New York. The Netherlands, by personally interviewing citizens of that country, don't really like the "cradle to grave" exchange for 60% of their labor dollars. Germany has done better (like it never had extensive US aid - right!) than some, but has "bucked" the trend fiscally as of late. Having spent two years there, I am aware of many of the pros and cons. And again, without the US economy, none of these countries would be where they are - that's a fact not an op-ed opinion.
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I think you misunderstood my point. Of the ~60 nations with higher tax receipts there are something like 15 that I'd consider successful examples of social democracy. Maybe more, I'm not very familiar with the ex-USSR states.
Of the 117 with lower tax receipts there are four that I'd consider successful examples of laissez-faire.
I would certainly agree that we can do it again. As fact, we had: the .com bubble (which came to an end with a few strong survivors), a Democratic President who knew how to move from more radical positions to a more centristic stance, a Repulican Congress for several of those years who were the architects of the budget surplus (if your can really call it that) namely - Newt Gingrich, John Kasich and Dick Armey and the President actually agreed with them on their pragmatic approaches (this was even noted by, believe it or not, the New York Times and the Washington Post), and a more fiscally conservative Congress and President. Yes, we can do it again without screaming (you may want to download on your i-PAD or Kindle - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon - kind of sounds like the folks who make the most noise in the last 60 years). This is not to mention the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 that saved billiions and added employment for poorer people. These are facts that are verifiable from census tables and the statistical abstract of the US. So, we are in agreement on this point.
True. As much as I get frustrated by Obama the Compromiser, at least he is playing the rational leader. Of course, that will probably dwindle a bit during the next election year, but the shouting and lying is very tiring. I don't want to be sold an ideology, I want to be sold solutions.
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Yes, a state senator who voted "present" 90+ % of the time in the state legislature, a US Senator who made statements that he has totally turned 180 degrees on once he was a the President. A person who votes present most of his politcal life is not taking much of a leadership stance for sure. It is kind of like a "house built on sand" - which way will the political winds make it fall?