Recent content by blicht10069

I read the weekly standard article. That one is from 2011. It's title suggests more economists agree (not most). As a general principal I don't read op-ed pieces in any paper.. I.e. no krugman from the NY Times and nothing from the WSJ. I base my knowledge on factual articles and not from...

You know I couldn't stand George W. Bush (thought his father was great though). I thought literally 99% of his policies were terrible. I thought they were bad for the country and the wrong direction for our nation. However, I never thought he wasn't trying to do what he thought was right and...

Actually, by definition a single article in the new York times would be journalism, but I used a plural there. They wrote several (I don't remember exactly how many, but I know I personally read 2 of them). Not sure where you're getting your statistics about the number of economists who...

I'm not going to convince you of anything on this. The arguments are counter factual in nature. That is, who knows what would have been had the stimulus not been done. I will make two points to this end, not to convince you of the value of the stimulus but to at least get you maybe to accept...

This is fine, I was basically saying, raise the age where applicable, and in other cases we'll need to deal with it. If we can place people into other jobs great, but in the case of jobs based on physical labor, I think we will have a hard time. I agree with your solution so long as it isn't...

If you went back a little further I think you would find that Nixon would also have excluded the voice recorder.

Of course, your right that it is a challenge. However, elections right now are won by small number of people (percentage wise). A 3% swing, rounded, separated the two candidates in the last election. Assuming that those choosing to be uninformed vote randomly, then having 5% or maybe 10%...

I agree with you about this. The budget issue is not currently an emergency. I have made a few posts within this same thread about this issue. It would have been better to have made a promise to reduce the deficit by some percentage once unemployment fell below some percentage (or use another...

My bad. I misread your original post. You DID say expiring. I was thinking more in general. It is true that letting tax cuts that are marked as temporary expire is NOT the same as raising taxes. Allowing those tax breaks to expire would fix most, but not all of the budget deficit. However...

Hi, um, Grandma, I've been trying to think of things we can do that would make things better. Obviously, there are a lot of hard choices, but I think there are at least something that can get reasonable support (although I will be interested in hearing any objections): 1) Raise age by 2...

Hi Franco, Can you be more specific? I would tend to refer to these mostly as deductions, unless you are refering to the way Carried Interest is taxed. In which case, I still wouldn't call that a loop hole, but I would say the IRS and congress is mis-classifing ordinary income. Keep in...

Hi Franco, Are you suggesting that refusal to lift the debt ceiling is a BS crisis? I agree completely that not lifting the debt ceiling is irresponsible and obviously has no impact on the amount of debt we have (well, actually it has a little impact we will have more interest to pay)...

I think they should be considered tax increases, but its not a bad thing. We need to stop applying labels to stuff to make them seem more palitable. For example: "Tax Loophole" is a loaded term. A mortgage interest deduction is a "Tax Loophole". So is the deduction for state taxes. Loophole...

Thank you OKTexas, I wasn't totally sure on what the rules were, but what you're saying make sense to me. In regards to the senate there is apparently a procedural issue here. A simple majority is required to pass a budget, but it requires 60 votes to make it take effect. I wanted to...

Hi, I think you have a valid point here, but with some caveats. I believe, and I could be wrong here, that the House is responsible for proposing budgets. I also think the republicans have filibustered the proposals in the senate (I maybe wrong on this too). Regardless of the two points above...