[GCFL-discuss] Prodigous!

Tue Sep 2 19:27:09 CDT 2008

My dear friend and sparring partner Jeanene,

Please forgive me for thinking that you are a Republican. I will never
insult you like that again. Not unless you yourself tell me that you are
one.

The national debt is not your fault. It is not any of our fault
individually. It is the product of a whole series of decisions, theories
and philosophies, ranging from Keynesian economics, employed by the
Roosevelt administration, to what Ross Perot called "voodoo economics,"
employed by the Reagan administration, and various shades in between by
one or another congress or administration. GWB has been the most immature
and thoughtless of all.

Unfortunately, if the United States of America is EVER going to pay off
our national debt, there has to be sufficient TAX revenue to do so. None
of us like to pay taxes. All of us can find something in the federal
budget we would rather NOT pay for. Unfortunately, we can never all agree
on which things we do or do not want to pay for. But taking a tax cut
when we have a huge national debt is very much like maxing out a credit
card when we just took a pay cut. Maybe we could do something like this:

1) Allow the 2001 tax reductions to expire.
2) Mandate that one half the revenue from a return to 2000 tax brackets
be allocated to paying down the national debt. (Why not 100%? Because we
do have a lot of infrastructure falling apart, like that bridge that
crashed into the river in Minnesota, and we can't defer that, or a new
electric power system, forever.)
3) Exempt the first $20,000 of income from tax, period, and $50,000 for
families with children under 18 or in college.
4) Everyone below the level affected by the expiring tax reductions,
those who didn't get the benefit and won't pay more now, accept a  1%
surtax allocated solely to paying off the national debt, and when it is
paid off, we all get a 2% tax reduction, permanent, since we won't have
all that INTEREST to pay to the Bank of China anymore.

There are lots of sensible ways to do it. But something like this would
make sense.

Siarlys

P.S. I also hate personal debt, a trait I inherited from my mother, and I
also give money away when I have it, not all of it, I save too, but hey,
I don't have any dependents and I make twice the minimum wage. There are
single mothers supporting three children on half what I make. My little
brother's mother is one of them.

On Mon, 1 Sep 2008 21:52:52 -0700 "Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies
List" <gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net> writes:
> What makes you think I am a Republican?
> My husband and I have no debt other than our single mortgage.  We 
> have been 
> very blessed with a good family business (my husband's family) and a 
> lack of 
> desire to amass.  I have been referred to as the Queen of Over-Doing 
> 
> Everything, and it is true with money too:  I am guilty of being too 
> 
> generous.  Always have been, always will be.
> I HATE taxes, I hate personal debt AND national debt.  But I don't 
> know how 
> to make a difference there.  I don't think I am part of the problem, 
> but I 
> fear being ignorant makes me somehow guilty.
> Jeanene
> 
> Every once in a while, it's a good idea to call out
> "Computer, end program," just to check. - D. Noelle
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> > (OK, I don't expect this to change your mind. I'm really waiting 
> to see
> > how it grabs Lance. And whether Jeanene will be able to come up 
> with
> > anything in reply, except for "Oh, so what, I max out my credit 
> card all
> > the time, and somehow life goes on." That's the modern Republican
> > philosophy after all.)
> >
> > Siarlys 
> 
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> http://gcfl.net/mailman/listinfo/gcfl-discuss
> 
> 
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