M2RB: Barry McGuire
Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
Can't you see the fears that I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
A h, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Can't you see the fears that I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
A h, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
You can’t have American-sized taxes and European-sized government.
By Mark Steyn, as "Kindly Note the Impending Bankruptcy"
Previously on The Perils of Pauline:
Last year, our plucky heroine, the wholesome apple-cheeked American
republic, was trapped in an express elevator hurtling out of control
toward the debt ceiling. Would she crash into it? Or would she make some
miraculous escape?
Yes! At the very last minute of her white-knuckle thrill ride to her
rendezvous with destiny, she was rescued by Congress’s decision to set
up . . . a Super Committee! Those who can, do. Those who can’t, form a
committee. Those who really can’t, form a Super Committee — and
then put John Kerry on it for good measure. The bipartisan Super
Committee of Super Friends was supposed to find $1.2 trillion dollars of
deficit reduction by last Thanksgiving, or plucky little America would
wind up trussed like a turkey and carved up by “automatic
sequestration.”
Sequestration sounds like castration, only more so: It would chop off
everything in sight. It would be so savage in its dismemberment of poor
helpless America that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that
over the course of a decade the sequestration cuts would reduce the
federal debt by $153 billion. Sorry, I meant to put on my Dr. Evil voice
for that: ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS!!! Which is about
what the United States government currently borrows every month. No
sane person could willingly countenance brutally saving a month’s worth
of debt over the course of a decade.
So now we have the latest cliffhanger: the Fiscal Cliff, below
which lies a bottomless abyss of sequestration, tax-cut-extension
expiries, Alternative Minimum Tax adjustments, new Obamacare taxes, the
expiry of the deferment of the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate, as well
as the expiry of the deferment of the implementation of the adjustment
of the correction of the extension of the reduction to the proposed
increase of the Alternative Minimum Growth Sustainability Reduction
Rate. They don’t call it a yawning chasm for nothing.
As America hangs by its fingernails wiggling its toesies over the
vertiginous plummet to oblivion, what can save her now? An Even More
Super Committee? A bipartisan agreement in which Republicans agree to
cave and Democrats agree not to laugh at them too much? That could be
just the kind of farsighted reach-across-the-aisle compromise that
rescues the nation until next week’s thrill-packed episode when
America’s strapped into the driver’s seat of a runaway Chevy Volt
careering round the hairpin bends on full charge, or trapped in an
abandoned subdivision overrun by foreclosure zombies.
I suppose it’s possible to take this recurring melodrama seriously,
but there’s no reason to. The problem facing the United States
government is that it spends over a trillion dollars a year that it
doesn’t have. If you want to make that number go away, you need either
to reduce spending or to increase revenue. With the best will in the
world, you can’t interpret the election result as a spectacular victory
for less spending. Indeed, if nothing else, the unfortunate events of
November 6 should have performed the useful task of disabusing us poor
conservatives that America is any kind of “center-right nation.” A few
months ago, I dined with a (pardon my English) French intellectual who,
apropos Mitt Romney’s stump-speech warnings that we were on a one-way
ticket to Continental-sized dependency, chortled to me, “Americans love
Big Government as much as Europeans. The only difference is that
Americans refuse to admit it.”
My Gallic charmer is on to something. According to the most recent
(2009) OECD statistics: government expenditures per person in France,
$18,866.00; in the United States, $19,266.00. That’s adjusted for
purchasing-power parity, and yes, no comparison is perfect, but did you
ever think the difference between America and the cheese-eating
surrender monkeys would come down to quibbling over the fine print? In
that sense, the federal debt might be better understood as an American
Self-Delusion Index, measuring the ever widening gap between the
national mythology (a republic of limited government and self-reliant
citizens) and the reality (a 21st-century cradle-to-grave nanny state in
which, as the Democrats’ convention boasted, “government is the only
thing we do together”).
Generally speaking, functioning societies make good-faith efforts to
raise what they spend, subject to fluctuations in economic fortune:
Government spending in Australia is 33.1 percent of GDP, and tax
revenues are 27.1 percent. Likewise, government spending in Norway is
46.4 percent and revenues are 41 percent — a shortfall but in the
ballpark. Government spending in the United States is 42.2 percent, but
revenues are 24 percent — the widest spending/taxing gulf in any major
economy.
So all the agonizing over our annual trillion-plus deficits overlooks
the obvious solution: Given that we’re spending like Norwegians, why
don’t we just pay Norwegian tax rates?
No danger of that. If (in Milton Himmelfarb’s famous formulation)
Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans, Americans are
taxed like Puerto Ricans but vote like Scandinavians. We already have a
more severely redistributive taxation system than Europe in which the
wealthiest 20 percent of Americans pay 70 percent of income tax while
the poorest 20 percent shoulder just three-fifths of one percent. By
comparison, the Norwegian tax burden is relatively equitably
distributed. Yet Obama now wishes “the rich” to pay their “fair share” —
presumably 80 or 90 percent. After all, as Warren Buffett pointed out
in the New York Times this week, the Forbes 400 richest
Americans have a combined wealth of $1.7 trillion. That sounds a lot,
and once upon a time it was. But today, if you confiscated every penny
the Forbes 400 have, it would be enough to cover just over one year’s
federal deficit. And after that you’re back to square one. It’s not that
“the rich” aren’t paying their “fair share,” it’s that America isn’t. A
majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it’s
not willing to pay for.
A couple of years back, Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise
Institute calculated that, if Washington were to increase every single
tax by 30 percent, it would be enough to balance the books — in 25
years. If you were to raise taxes by 50 percent, it would be enough to
fund our entitlement liabilities — just our current ones, not our future
liabilities, which would require further increases. This is the scale
of course correction needed.
If you don’t want that, you need to cut spending — like Harry Reid’s
been doing. “Now remember, we’ve already done more than a billion
dollars’ worth of cuts,” he bragged the other day. “So we need to get
some credit for that.”
Wow! A billion dollars’ worth of cuts! Washington borrows $188
million every hour.
So, if Reid took over five hours to negotiate those
“cuts,” it was a complete waste of time. So are most of the “plans.” Any
“debt-reduction plan” that doesn’t address at least $1.3 trillion a
year is, in fact, a debt-increase plan.
So given that the ruling party will not permit spending cuts, what
should Republicans do? If I were John Boehner, I’d say: “Clearly there’s
no mandate for small government in the election results. So, if you
milquetoast pantywaist sad-sack excuses for the sorriest bunch of
so-called Americans who ever lived want to vote for Swede-sized statism,
it’s time to pony up.”
Okay, he might want to focus-group it first. But that fundamental
dishonesty is the heart of the crisis. You cannot simultaneously enjoy
American-sized taxes and European-sized government. One or the other has
to go.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2012 Mark Steyn
Sophie:
Like I said the other day:
DOUBLE ALL TAX RATES and start taxing social security (regardless of
additional income), medicare, medicaid, food stamps, Obamaphones, you
name it.
The country voted for a European-style welfare state. Fine. It’s time that it got European-style tax rates to pay for it.
Eliminating the Bush tax rate cuts on the top 2% will raise about $80 billion per year. THAT’S IT.
The
“We can have all of this and get the ‘evil rich’ to pay for it” BS that
Obama the Medicine Man sold to the country needs to be exposed for the
cr@p that it is. Time to belly up to the bar and pay the tab. From now
on, pay first, drink later.
It’s time that EVERYONE put some skin in the game… including Peggy Joseph and the Obamaphone woman.
If Americans want a big
government, make them pay for it. We’ll see just how big of a government
they really want. I suspect that we will find that they want a much
smaller government once they are on the hook for the taxes needed to
support it. Right now, they believe that they can have a free lunch and
stick the “evil rich” with the tab. Unfortunately for the clueless,
there aren’t enough “evil rich” people to pay for the lunch to which the
moochers believe they are entitled.
For FY2012, the government spent $3,795.6 trillion. Eliminating the Bush tax rates on the top 2% is estimated to bring in $80 billion, ceterus paribus.
$3,795.6 / 365 = $10.4 billion
80 / 10.4 = 7.69 days
Your end of the Bush tax rates on the top 2% will pay for 7.69 days of Federal government spending.
Like I said, let's fly this fiscal cliff. It ain't nothing compared to the debt cliff on the horizon.
For FY2012, the government spent $3,795.6 trillion. Eliminating the Bush tax rates on the top 2% is estimated to bring in $80 billion, ceterus paribus.
$3,795.6 / 365 = $10.4 billion
80 / 10.4 = 7.69 days
Your end of the Bush tax rates on the top 2% will pay for 7.69 days of Federal government spending.
Like I said, let's fly this fiscal cliff. It ain't nothing compared to the debt cliff on the horizon.
The Eve of Destruction - Barry McGuire
The eastern world it is explodin',
violence flarin', bullets loadin',
you're old enough to kill but not for votin',
you don't believe in war, what's that gun you're totin',
and even the Jordan river has bodies floatin',
but you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
Can't you see the fears that I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
and you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin',
I'm sittin' here, just contemplatin',
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
handful of Senators don't pass legislation,
and marches alone can't bring integration,
when human respect is disintegratin',
this whole crazy world is just too frustratin',
and you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama!
Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space,
but when you return, it's the same old place,
the poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace,
you can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace,
hate your next-door-neighbour, but don't forget to say grace,
and you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,
you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
no no you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
violence flarin', bullets loadin',
you're old enough to kill but not for votin',
you don't believe in war, what's that gun you're totin',
and even the Jordan river has bodies floatin',
but you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
Can't you see the fears that I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
and you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin',
I'm sittin' here, just contemplatin',
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation,
handful of Senators don't pass legislation,
and marches alone can't bring integration,
when human respect is disintegratin',
this whole crazy world is just too frustratin',
and you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama!
Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space,
but when you return, it's the same old place,
the poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace,
you can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace,
hate your next-door-neighbour, but don't forget to say grace,
and you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,
you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
no no you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
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