-----Original Message----- >From: Eric Yost` <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> >Sent: Feb 24, 2007 4:09 PM >To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx >Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: '08 Democrats > >Government deficit's going down because of the tax cuts. Explain this please. Deficit's not going anywhere in any case. It was deliberately over estimated, so when it came in normally, it looked lower and was peddled as going down. >Trade deficit >remains huge because of three factors: cars, oil prices, and China. > Trade deficit remains huge because Asia lends, America spends. We don't manufacture anything except military equipment. No point in having such a big military if one doesn't use it, right? On the other hand, we do export guns, we're the world's largest exporter of guns. Basically we're borrowing money from China, giving it to companies like General Dynamics and Lockheed who function as contractors for the U.S. government. General Dynamics turns around and employs Americans to make state of the art WWII military hardware and other useless things. Their employees then turn around and buy Chinese manufactured goods at the local Walmart, where the rest of Americans work. Put another way, we borrow money from China to pay our people to dig a hole and fill it back up again, i.e., create nothing anyone can buy, then people take their wages and buy Chinese made goods, so Chinese workers have plenty of jobs. We have nothing to export, except guns and food, so we have a trade deficit. A different take on guns and butter... >One way to get guns and butter is to restrict corporate offshoring and >tax shelters. Fantasy, fantasy, fantasy. Corporations own the government. They write their own legislation. How do you propose to get them to do this? >That would immediat>ly pump a huge amount of money into >the system. Would be nice, wouldn't it? So would taxing people fairly instead of "tax cuts". So would curbing the huge amount of waste going on with contractors virtually writing their own checks, billions allocated to Iraq being unaccounted for, and on and on. >Another would be to carefully restrict entitlement programs >while making them more effective at helping people. Those bothersome citizens. Cut their benefits. >In the latter case, >abuses of the Medicare system in part encouraged by big pharma, should >be halted and punitive fines possibly imposed. No medicare for illegals, >etc. > Pharma writes their own legislation. They're not going to shut down their gravy train. Illegals are doing business's dirty work cheap. They're not going anywhere. >Guns and butter would thereby mean growing the military, enhancing >military R&D, while at the same time improving infrastructure and >education. Problem with getting true guns and butter is that every >special interest group would oppose it -- from big pharma to illegal's >lobbyists. Yes, because they're feeding on taxpayers' money, and they own the government. There is no distinction anymore between lobbyists and government. It's a revolving door. Look at General Dynamics developing that amphibious thing and getting an $80 million bonus for it. The U.S. is up to its ears in debt with nothing to show for it, not even a useful military. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html