I'd agree with the fact that our rights are being eroded, but to call the United States (assuming that's the country you're talking about) a police state is really an exaggeration.

Take your assertion that the government can track you with GPS. There's a case, as you may know, currently under consideration by the US Supreme Court, that questions whether warrantless use of a tracking device violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

This case is in the Supreme Court because the Obama Administration is seeking to overturn a thrown-out conviction. A US Court of Appeals threw out the conviction of some drug dealer because it found the police violated is fourth amendment rights. Would this ever have happened in a police state?

Seriously consider the question. In a police state, would someone the executive branch wanted to put in prison be able to have his conviction overturned because his rights were violated?

The case is an example of the executive branch of the government petitioning the legislative branch to change its decision. In a police state the executive branch doesn't petition anyone. It does whatever it wants.

Like I said, I'm with you on the erosion of our rights, but it doesn't help your cause when you use hyperbole. Not even Ron Paul thinks we currently live in a police state. He thinks we're heading toward being one, but that's different.

Edit: Anyway, this is off topic. PM me if you want to discuss it more.

my question is this: will closing the Bush AND Obama tax cuts (I benefit but don't agree with in principle) really have the job-draining effect both parties claim it will?

my second question is this: can you really have SS, Medicare, and Medicaid reform without first preventing the gov't from borrow from/against those programs? (which in fact adds to the debt and eroded those programs quicker).

my question is this: will closing the Bush AND Obama tax cuts (I benefit but don't agree with in principle) really have the job-draining effect both parties claim it will?

my second question is this: can you really have SS, Medicare, and Medicaid reform without first preventing the gov't from borrow from/against those programs? (which in fact adds to the debt and eroded those programs quicker).

1: It depends on what you mean by the claims of each party. For the Republican side, almost certainly not.

The idea behind tax cuts as economic stimulus is twofold: that people will spend the extra money, increasing consumption and generating jobs and related economic growth. This is not especially helpful right now because people are generally indebted or afraid of decreased earning power in the future. In the first case, they use the extra money to de-leverage. That's good for them in several ways, but it doesn't help the economy because it doesn't buy anything-- it just pays for production and consumption that already happened. In the second case, people tend to hold their money and keep it liquid, in savings accounts and so on. That's also money that isn't spent or invested, and in addition it generates little to no growth for the saver, current interest rates being what they are.

The second fold is the idea that for wealthier people the preference will be to invest a lot of the extra money, which generates capitol for businesses and also creates jobs, as well as fostering innovation. It's a nice idea, except that it often doesn't work that way. Investments can be made in bonds or commodities, and even worse (macroeconomically) rampant speculation. Even if the investments really did go to businesses, businesses aren't creating jobs because (among other reasons) there's anemic consumer demand to produce revenue that will produce a return. Worse still, businesses are using money to pay investors bigger dividends (to keep stocks attractive despite often lackluster performance), ramp up executive pay (greed), and fund operations in different countries (jobs, but no real help to the US in the immediate term).

Democrats haven't been talking about tax increases costing jobs (not that I recall, at least), but they have said that it will make it more difficult for people to get by (or if you want to be cynical, consume). For a lot of people that's not an inaccurate analysis. But a feeble economy makes it awfully hard for people to get by as well.

The jobs issues in the US are complex, but taxes are far from being the pivotal reason. For all but the highest tech manufacturing, for example, it will always be more cost effective to do so in another country, where you can hire workers for a fraction of the price of a US worker. No amount of pleading is going to get a factory set up here under those conditions, and providing an incentive to do so would require imitating the low pay, low safety, no benefit sort of labor labor pool other countries can provide. That doesn't really mesh with the American standard of living.

2: Yes. But I don't think it's likely to happen. Creative accounting is a basic skill in government, and trying to safeguard funds for programs will probably not outmatch the skill of those who don't care about doing so. But that isn't so critically important, because the government has no shortage of options for borrowing. Programs like those are easy to pillage, but they're only replacing cash in an account or a budget that Congress itself sets (the programs don't all work the same way) with debt held by the public, redeemable for cash at a fixed point in the future. The only way to deal with such a pattern is to fix the underlying issue, which is that politicians (of all stripes) tend to be intellectually dishonest in pursuing their goals. But what's being discussed now in Congress isn't even reform in any meaningful sense. It's just slashing expenditures.

That is a very weird thing to write. First of all, it does seem like progressives are letting the crisis go to waste. The policies that are being implemented in response to the crisis are incredible anti-progressive.

The progressive movement has nothing to do with progress(whatever that means), just like five wars Obama has nothing to do with Hope and Change(whatever that means).

The only thing the progressive movement is about is more government control...So an elite few can become even richer and more powerful.

Create a crisis = Progressives helping the poor to progress through poverty by giving them loans they can't pay back.
Exploit = Things predictably go south and only politically connected people get the bailouts and make a profit from the mess. New regulations are passed to protect these people and end competition. More too big to fail companies. What caused the problem isn't fixed, rinse and repeat.

And this is just one example.

Second, the current situation has nothing to do with Weimar

Food prices are spiking, energy prices are spiking, etc. So far 16 states have considered having their own currency due to what this government is doing to our dollar.

Hyperinflations are mostly a political phenomenon, not an economic one

This government isn't going to cut it's spending, the Fed isn't going to stop printing money and jobs are going to continue to move overseas. The writing is on the wall. (Just sit back and enjoy the ride)

The progressive movement has nothing to do with progress(whatever that means), just like five wars Obama has nothing to do with Hope and Change(whatever that means).

The only thing the progressive movement is about is more government control...So an elite few can become even richer and more powerful.

Create a crisis = Progressives helping the poor to progress through poverty by giving them loans they can't pay back.
Exploit = Things predictably go south and only politically connected people get the bailouts and make a profit from the mess. New regulations are passed to protect these people and end competition. More too big to fail companies. What caused the problem isn't fixed, rinse and repeat.

And this is just one example.

And it's a preposterous one. I'll be the first to agree that "progressive" is a term amorphous enough to be mostly useless, and that applying standards used when the term first became popular leaves a lot of politicians short of the mark. For the record, the term originally came from reformers in the Industrial Revolution seeking progress like child labor laws and safe working conditions. They favored government regulation to achieve this for a variety of reasons, including their adroit observation that private industry was perfectly happy to hire children to work 14 hour days around dangerous machinery with no safety measures. But anyways, the idea that anyone who claims (or has applied to them) the description "progressive" is some sort of monstrous, Orwellian autocrat by default is absurd. I'm all for cynicism, but the narrow-view paranoia tinge is too much.

Fannie and Freddie did free up a lot of capital for banks by buying (though not originating, it should be noted) mortgages. It's undeniable that this was a factor in the bubble and bust of residential real estate. But is it really your position that the express intent of such action was to inflate and burst a bubble? That they somehow forced (or perhaps colluded with) private lending and investment firms to issue subprime mortgages to borrowers that couldn't possibly pay them off? With the end goal of increased government control? That the hyperconsolidation of large firms who flouted regulations at every opportunity were following in line with a progressive agenda? And that it was progressives that were the masterminds, or at leas at the helm, meaning that the scheme was theirs through and through?

It's a bold claim, to say the least. There's plenty to dislike about the bailout. There's also plenty to dislike about the toothless regulations. There's plenty to dislike about the conditions that preceded the recession, whether they contributed directly or indirectly. But to go from that crappy-ness to a cabal of Big Brothers in the making is an extraordinary leap. There is without question a body of wealthy, powerful, and influential people who are working constantly to make themselves moreso in each regard, even at the expense of most others (by the way, that can be described as "rational self-interest" if you want a libertarian-esque line). But the idea that it's only people with the progressive mantle, or even that the progressives are the driving force of all of these efforts doesn't hold water.

Food prices are spiking, energy prices are spiking, etc. So far 16 states have considered having their own currency due to what this government is doing to our dollar.[/quote]

Prices are increasing in many areas. Are you saying that this is because of inflation/devaluation of the dollar, at least moreso than other factors, such as speculation in commodities? Aside from a relatively modest bump in real prices (below what the Fed would might have resisted with a rate hike 20 years ago), I haven't seen a huge surge in inflation. Perhaps you're saying that the curve accelerates so sharply under current conditions that this relatively low increase is cause for concern?

And I'm not impressed that 16 states have "considered" minting their own currency. Some states also considered unilaterally nullifying the ACA and/or seceding, and various other stupid and broadly illegal things. It's not going to happen.

This government isn't going to cut it's spending, the Fed isn't going to stop printing money and jobs are going to continue to move overseas. The writing is on the wall. (Just sit back and enjoy the ride)
[/quote]

I guess I'm still not seeing the crux of your issue. I'm sorry, I'm sure that you're tired of typing out explanations of this, but could you lay out for me why the government running deficits right now is so horrible (under the presumption that they will be paid down, as in the 90's) compared with slashing public expenditure? Is it that you're certain the US isn't going to recover productivity, or that you think runaway inflation will occur first, or that the loss of jobs cannot be corrected?

So many of these discussions break down into facts versus nonsense.

Seriously:
Hyperinflation is not a threat. Look at actual inflation, compared to historic rates.
Government spending didn't cause this downturn, or today's market crash.
Higher taxes would bring more revenue, we're on the left side of the Laffer Curve.
If you look at Treasury yields, they're falling. Investors don't think default is a risk, as long as the government is allowed to borrow.

And it's a preposterous one

Well if you say so then it must be so.

I'll be the first to agree that "progressive" is a term amorphous enough to be mostly useless, and that applying standards used when the term first became popular leaves a lot of politicians short of the mark

I wasn't questioning the term progressive. I was questioning what their idea of progress is. (In the past it has been a horrible nightmare)

(US specific, I don't know or care about other countries): A progressive is someone that seeks to use an all powerful purified government to progress America past all its ills(Constitution and natural rights be damned). Which means coercively sterilizing some 60,000 Americans because they're not that periods version of the master race and are supposedly a drag on humanity. I think if most progressives really knew their history, knew what the progressive movement had been responsible for, they would call themselves liberals. (Oh wait, they do...Which is why the word no longer means what it used to )

For the record, the term originally came from reformers in the Industrial Revolution seeking progress like child labor laws and safe working conditions

And led to forced sterilization, forced human experimentation, segregation, Japanese internment camps, prohibition, our current drug war, etc.

I'm bored with the rest of the discussion and I'm going to drop it. (If you're one of those people who needs to declare victory in discussions like this, you win. )

Higher taxes would bring more revenue, we're on the left side of the Laffer Curve.

So would removing tax loopholes without increasing the actual rates. I would much prefer that we clean the tax code to increase revenue than to leave it in the state it's in and just charge more. Rich people and corporations will just keep using the loopholes/incentives as long as they are there regardless of their tax rate.

Or we could just legalize and tax marijuana...

[quote name='BenThereDoneThat' timestamp='1312518154' post='4844860']
Higher taxes would bring more revenue, we're on the left side of the Laffer Curve.

So would removing tax loopholes without increasing the actual rates. I would much prefer that we clean the tax code to increase revenue than to leave it in the state it's in and just charge more. Rich people and corporations will just keep using the loopholes/incentives as long as they are there regardless of their tax rate.
[/quote]

Agreed.

[quote name='BenThereDoneThat' timestamp='1312518154' post='4844860']
Higher taxes would bring more revenue, we're on the left side of the Laffer Curve.

So would removing tax loopholes without increasing the actual rates. I would much prefer that we clean the tax code to increase revenue than to leave it in the state it's in and just charge more. Rich people and corporations will just keep using the loopholes/incentives as long as they are there regardless of their tax rate.

Or we could just legalize and tax marijuana...
[/quote]
I think everyone would agree to a leaner, cleaner tax code, but that would take some time. As of right now, the tax loopholes need to be closed. Bush and Obama.