Guys this is not brain surgury here is the spending side for 2011 -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U...._-_FY_2011.png

And here is the income side -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U...._-_FY_2007.png

Erase the 1.2 trillion in difference.

Raise taxes on businesses is out of the question as people then leave the money overseas like we have now. So you can raise income tax and lower spending. If militay, interest and social security are off the table, it does not leave much.

You expect 1.6T in taxes with no spending cuts to be the final deal passed?

Yes, and I expect Santa Claus to leave me a new Gulfstream in my hangar.

Then why the hyperbole? Deductions will likely get capped, the Buffet rule in some form will be adopted and pending cuts of an about equal amount will also get passed (mostly from the military sector). Then both 'sides' will claim victory. Nothing outside the known universe is about to happen. The fiscal cliff is the 2012 version of Y2K and the media is juicing it for ratings more than anything else.

The real issues that need to be addressed, like: means testing for SS and a possible age increase, shortening the work week to 4 days to promote greater employment, 'stay home tax credits' for one parent per household, etc etc etc are not even going to be addressed in this round of negotiations. We have a population 10-15% larger than we need and that number will continue to rise as a basic function of how technology works. Until that problem is addressed all the rest is a big dog and pony show.

LOL good luck with that :1orglaugh

This worked out great in France.

"Hey guys, let's keep the go-getters out of the workforce so that the losers actually get a fair shot!"

I'll pass on that one, thanks.

Yes because being wealthy automatically equals happiness lol. Even after Mitt's crushing defeat you are still you.

seriously? "real issues"? are you sure you didn't get trolled on theonion.com or something?

It would be one thing if it was just a failure on the bank's part to assess risk as far as loan applications, then your argument might hold a minuscule amount of weight, but it wasn't - it was intentional and systematic fraud. They INTENTIONALLY gave loans to people they knew weren't going to be able to pay them back so they could bet against those loans on the stock market and make even more money. The worse the loan, the more money they made.

Yep aint that the truth. But its easier to blame the little guy. I mean how could anyone say well they signed with a straight face. When you see the games this industry alone has pulled on consumers, who didn't take the time to think. And we are considered douche bags by the world as a whole and people werent careful. A banker was a professional you could trust.

How is that fraud? it's a simple contract, person agrees to pay $XXXX per month, then fails to pay...
it's perhaps a bit sleazy to give loans to people who likely will have trouble making payments, but not illegal in any way, and certainly nothing new in the business world...

The only party in the whole scheme that may have been defrauded was probably the investors that bought assets they were tricked into believing were less risky than they really were... but this is debatable too, one could argue that investors failed to correctly asses the risks of those assets... or perhaps rating agencies were involved in the "scam", or maybe someone just made a mistake, which is very possible too, since this type of asset was relatively new and difficult to asses risks on...

it's not clear at all that anyone was truly defrauded here, and certainly not the home buyers, they came in for a loan, agreed to the terms, signed the contract...

there is this pretty well known quote, which sums up the whole situation quite well:
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
Napoleon Bonaparte

It's not like going to a car dealer and getting tricked into buying a car they can't afford by a smooth talking salesman... process of buying a house takes weeks, sometimes months, the buyers had plenty of time to think, get 2nd opinion, ask advice of others, etc... and it's not like you need a PhD in Finance to workout that paying $2k mortgage on a $3k/month salary isn't going to work or that home prices will not continue going up by 10% year forever...

it saved Volkswagen in the 90ties, i once wrote a thesis about that. but it wasnt to get more people into work, it was to not having to fire any.

We have more people than we need. The number of people needed to produce more than we consume will continue to shrink. That is a simple fact. Until you solve that, the rest is just shuffling around and mumbling things that address symptoms without curing anything.

So, what's your solution to the problem? We used to have plagues and wars of attrition. We don't anymore. We refuse to limit population and many even fight the notion of birth control. When 25% of people aren't needed unemployment will hit 30+% and the problems will become much worse. No amount of spending cuts or taxes or both in the current system would solve that eventuality.

why are you so sure that "we have more people than we need"? unemployment has been under 10% for decades... do you have any stats to show that unemployment has been steadily rising? or any other evidence to support your viewpoint?

A friend of mine works at a distribution center locally that runs 36/hr work weeks. It's 3x 12 hour shifts and they run 6 days @ 24hr. This means they only need 4 shifts to cover round the clock work week 6 days a week.

if it works for some companies, then great, nothing wrong with that...
but trying to change labor laws to make 4 day work weeks the standard is ridiculous...

it's NOT happening - dramatic changes like you are suggesting just don't happen in our society - because no political party is going to stick their necks out on issues that are sure to outrage and frighten the public. And screwing with SS, 4 day work weeks etc are idea that the public will not accept unless things totally unravel.

those type of changes don't come overnight, they come in baby steps over years and even decades.

I'm pretty sure someone representing the banks also had to sign their name on a dotted line. It goes both ways and that mess was certainly just as much the bankers fault as it was people over buying.

The difference in the two signatures was one of the parties was a paid professional that represented a company that was required by law to do it's due diligence prior to offering up loans guaranteed by the federal govt.

I was in the market for a house during the lead up to the housing crash and I can tell you for certain that the mortgage brokers did everything possible to try and up size the mortgage I was looking for.

Well, no wonder why Minte is pissed. They are going to raise HIS taxes. He wants to raise taxes on the top earners, just like he said he would during the election.

Directly from Minte's article:

I wasn't trying to imply that it's 100% buyers fault, it's not, but most people seem to omit the detail that buyers were involved in it too and so the buyers certainly are at least partially responsible for the whole mess too...:2 cents:

Yes, we voted the Republican party into the White House and told them to give us the biggest recession we've had since the Great Depression.

I don't think the Republican party understands what just happened here. During the second Bush term, we were brought down to our knees and we dragged down the rest of the world with it. This isn't a little boo boo. This isn't a little mistake. This is worst case scenario and a massive colossal fuck up. Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs and their houses. This isn't something that is going to be forgotten or forgiven in the near future. And this isn't something that any President on either side can fix in four or even eight years.

Thus, The Republican party lost the white house twice in a row.

But why can't the top 1% pay a little more. If you can afford a $200k car and a $600 oil change, you can afford to pay a little bit extra.

Minte has told us that if his taxes are going to be raised it won't affect his lifestyle at all. If that's the case, why don't we do it? He will still be driving a $200k car and still going on vacation. He won't notice the money missing at all.

People that are educated like yourself understand that Obama is posturing. However, there is not much time left to negotiate a deal. If the two sides are this far apart publically, the odds get slimmer every day that a deal will get cut.

Consider the make up of the house. There are a lot of people there that are in that $250k and up salary level. If I were there as a representive I might just say fuck him(Obama). No deal and walk. It's Obamas side that has more to lose if a deal isn't cut. So I lose my seat in the house at the next election. Big deal. I could convince myself I tried my best and it just wasn't enough,

This country is more divided than it was during Vietnam. Obama won by 3 million votes. That's less than 1% so these people here that are saying he won a mandate don't really understand that the mandate is smoke and mirrors. Take out the illegal aliens and Romney would've won. Obama does not have the support from the people that are important in this economy.

Coming out to negotiate like this is only hardening his opposition.

We all need to fact facts, this system of government does not work, no matter how you spin it or try to legislate, or tax it. It never has. In fact, the only people it works out for is the central bank. You cannot have a Democracy within Capitalism. It's impossible.

We need to criminalize cronyism and nepotism, then move toward more of a meritocratic society with the power in the hands of local government, not Big Brother.

And you think that this is the right thing to do? Going after business people who are just starting to come back after a tough 5 years is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Obama will have to sign the dream act now for illegals. The republicans saw what happened and won't fight the democrats on this. Now imagine 12 million illegals coming into the work force legally. I know how many applications we have on file from Mexicans that don't pass E-verify. We could easily populate our entire workforce and easily triple the size of our workforce with Mexicans at minumum wage. If the govenment is going to tax us, make us buy insurance or fine us what do you think I will do? The same thing that every businessman in the US will do if possible. And that is hire CHEAP labor.

How will that help those people that lost their homes?

they probably can pay the 1%, but why can't everyone pay 1%? At least that way everyone will have a skin in the game, so there will be some motivation to find better ways to fix the problem, instead of just temporarily fixing it by having someone else pay for it... :2 cents:

no one is going to get effected by 1% increase in any meaningful way, rich or poor, lets not kid ourselves... 1% increase to middle class will mean they will have to cancel HBO or get a new ipad every 2 years instead of every year....

Are you as mouthy to your employer that you advertise in your signature?
There is a reason children should be seen and not heard. Go play with your Xbox or something.

So you expect a teacher to earn how much? Keep in mind that they went to college.

I used to think teachers made decent money and had summers off until I had a kid in school and I saw how their worked. They work eight hours a day at school, and after hours they grade papers and plan out the following day's lessons - being as they can teach five or six classes, that's a bit complicated to do on a daily basis and after hours at at that. Then, more often than not, they have to attend after school events. They also coach our kids in after school sports programs. Summers off aren't summers off; They attend classes to keep their education up to date, and also spend time planning out the next year, etc.

Pretty crappy job for $50k a year really. Then you figure the average cashier at Wal Mart makes $40k a year and doesn't have school loans, and well, you get what you pay for.

Cops are so underpaid it's not funny. $75k a year so you can people beat up on you every day. I have four friends that are police officers - two CHP, one sheriff, and one a local officer - and they all tell me every day they get hit, punched, slapped, kicked, spit on, and stabbed at. Of course, this doesn't take in to effect that they might get shot and killed at any moment.

The CHP officer who lives across the street from me just bought himself a little BMW, cute car. Good for him. He deserves it for what he puts up on a daily basis.

You said it yourself - these business owners won't notice the extra taxes or the money missing. They will still take vacations and drive $200k sport cars. Nothing is going to change for them.

I said I won't. I don't speak for all the small businesses that employ a few people. How many restaurant owners, service stations, conveniance stores..etc out there WILL notice it.

Why can't everyone pay the 1%? Because someone making $38k a year can't afford it.

My kid had a sports event out of town yesterday. Last moment two parents tried to pull out saying they couldn't afford it. You figure $60 of gas, $30 for two adults to attend, another $75 in food (figure lunch and dinner for three in a stadium where hot dogs are $6 each), then a $20 shirt for their kid.... That's nearly $200, and too rich for some people to spend on a Saturday afternoon. (My wife and I ended taking both kids and paying for everything.)

What Minte doesn't get is that a 3% tax increase for him means he still gets to go to Hawaii for vacation, and he still will be able to afford that $600 oil change for his $200k car. On the other hand, a 1% tax increase will hurt the guy who sweeps the floors at Minte's plant. He won't be able to afford a new Kia for his daily transportation, and surely won't be able to send his kid to college.

When you are making $250k a year you don't notice a $2k difference in your taxes.

so obviously they won't be able to buy a $20 shirt for the kid or will have to pack sandwiches instead of going out to eat, and problem is solved... it's not like $1000s/month is at stake here... there is a problem to be solved, you seem to think raising taxes is the best solution, so lets do it, but I don't see any reason why everyone shouldn't make some sacrifice...

you and everyone else seems to think: lets raise taxes, but not my taxes... :1orglaugh

DO you really believe the stuff you type? Or is this a way to get page views for your employer in your signature.

And to keep it real. The $600 oil change is actually $800. And that is for only one of my cars. I won't even type what it costs for the annual on my plane. You will hyperventilate.

I don't understand why you can't have a discussion about relevant issues without constantly flaming me. The fact that I don't go into attack mode with every post I make doesn't mean I can't. It only means I prefer not to.

It's my taxes that will be raised. And I'll feel it a lot more than Minte.

I would never ever hyperventilate. I might laugh, but I wouldn't hyperventilate.

I am having a discussion, and I am not flaming you. I'm also not attacking you.

It just blows me away that you sit here and you complain like a little girl that your taxes will go up when it's not going to affect you at all. In the mean time, the guy who sweeps your floor can't make the payments on his little two year old Kia Sportage.

It boils down to this: You are saying "Don't tax me, tax the poor people" and I'm saying "Tax me more because I can take the hit".

No one is saying: "Don't tax me, tax the poor people"

I'm saying IF taxes were to be raised it would only be fair to raise them for everyone...
but ideally, focus should be on cutting spending, raising taxes should be used only as a last resort...

I just don't agree with the solution that the left is proposing:
- raise taxes on the rich
- with no or very limited spending cuts


focus should be more on cutting spending, not on who we can squeeze more $$ out of without creating too much drama...

No. It boils down to this. You don't know how to read.

I have never said. don't tax me, tax the middle class.

I have said, . Do you get it now?

And if you say tax me(Rochard) more I can take the hit, you are a complete and utter fool.

If you personally gave a loan to someone who couldn't pay it back who would you blame? Who would your friends blame? You'd be the idiot in the situation. Now let's say you gave all of your money to people who couldn't pay you back and a family member had to bail you out. Who would be the idiot? Who would the person bailing you out blame?

Now imagine you put ads on Craigslist saying you'd give a loan to anyone that would ask. That would make you fucking stupid.

That is what the banks did.

The banks had the homes as collateral. What no one anticipated was the rapid devaluation of the properties.

I did. Years before. Give loans to ten million people that will leave you an empty home your collateral isn't going to be worth shit.

They knew what they were doing which is why they kept the servicing and the best tranches and sold off everything else.

You keep the servicing and the best loans and as servicer you will still be paid by investors when home is empty. In fact you will be paid a lot more than you would managing a good loan.

We didn't vote "the Republican party into the White House"
Just like we didn't vote the Democrat party in.

We voted BUSH into the White House. He's a great candidate and a likeable guy.

We voted OBAMA into the White House. He's a great candidate and a likeable guy.

In my opinion this election was once again NOT about the issues...but who we think was the guy we would like to have a beer with. :(

And Obama won that hands down. Just like Bush did.

When Bush won re-election against John Kerry, it wasn't about ideas...it was because Kerry was stiff and looked like he had a Frankenstein head. Bush meanwhile was loosey-goosey and confident and just looked at ease in his own skin.

Same thing this year. Romney was too vanilla and too stiff. Obama is smooth, confident, and feels great in his own skin.

Nobody voted an entire party into the White House. Obama does not 100% represent the Democrat party. Yes, their leaders will fall in line publicly for the sake of politics.

And Bush in no way represented the Republican Party 100% either. His spending spree was the exact opposite of what fiscal conservatism is.

EDIT: And no....we were not "brought down to our knees" during the second Bush term. What the fuck world were you living in? Unemployment was at record lows. The market was at record highs.
The crash came during the last few months of his term. He took over in a mini-recession as the tech bubble busted. And then there was 9-11
But Bush did show some good leadership in the months after 9-11...and the economy and the country did great after that.

If not for the wars, we wouldn't be running a deficit. And if not for the housing market collapse (I don't know how many times you need to be told this to understand it), the economy would still be good.
And Bush did not cause the housing market to collapse and the economy with it. Congress during the 1990's passed the bills that led to our current economic problems.

We didn't actually vote Bush in the first time. We voted Gore in. We did the second time. I don't know why but we did.

And Obama actually only won the vote by 61,173,739 or 50.5% to 58,167,260 or 48.0%

And yet, you have people in this thread calling it a "landslide" and "lost BIG" because it's the electoral vote that counts.

Reality is...Obama won a little over half. Which means about half the country voted the other way. :)

I really think that all 50 states should be required to dole out their electoral votes based on the popular vote.

As it stands now...if a candidate wins the popular vote by ONE vote in a state...he gets 100% of the electoral votes.

That's just wrong.
And if it were changed...you're right, Al Gore would have won in 2000. (god help us, we'd all be riding bicycles and have no electricity so we would be "green", while he would still be riding in limousines and flying private jets. lol )

I know Romney is a rich guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth but I thought he was more likeable than Obama. Barack Obama isn't really known for being a friendly guy, even in his own party he's known for being standoffish and cool.

Bush is a much more friendly guy, another guy born rich.

Obama is the first president in my lifetime who IS 'one of us'. Pretty much just a regular guy like millions of others who grew up to be a Yuppie.

in hindsight of course it's all so simple... the whole setup was a lot more complicated than just banks lending out money to some deadbeats, there were numerous different parties involved, everyone from mortgage brokers, to investors, to other bank, and of course the government had a hand in all this too... no one knew what the default rates would be, no one knew what the property prices would be, etc... the whole venture turned out to be a bit more risky than everyone thought...

lending money to people on craigslist isn't actually as stupid as you make it sound, it's not unlike lending money to a bunch of people with a pipe dream or sob story on prosper.com... some default, some pay it back, but at the end of the day you should end up with reasonable return on your investment... 1000s of people lend on there, and I actually considered doing the same myself...

so if I was to lose money by lending on prosper.com, you would consider me "fucking stupid"?

Yeah, that's what I've read that all the people in his cabinet say about him too. But he is very good at being "likeable" onstage in front of a crowd. And that's what really counted.

Yep riding bicycles and 3000 people wouldnt of died. We wouldnt of went to war. Yeah if Gore won it would of been awful. lol By the way obama won by more than bush did for this second term and your pundit buddies called it a mandate.

Are you as upset over the 2000ish coalition forces that died in Afghanistan? And the number is still rising daily. Or do you believe Gore would've just looked the other way after 9/11