Saturday, December 01, 2012


1955  GRECIAN FORMULA …. 

I spoke to a liberal friend not long ago- she watches all the more progressive news shows [MSNBC].



She was railing against Romney- against the rich fat cat corporate guys.


She went on and on about the rich being the actual cause of all the nations problems.



I asked my friend if she thought the rich pay less taxes than the middle class.


She said ‘of course they do’!


I went on to inform my friend that the tax rate- as well as the actual dollars paid- are much higher among the rich than the middle class.


She could not believe this was so.


I told her that when some say they are not paying their fair share- their talking about Capital Gains taxes being less than the middle class tax rate for income.


And the rich who don’t earn income- well they do pay less- if they are only living off their investments.



But most who are in this category do indeed earn income [the rich now being earning 200 thousand or more].


But it’s the way the debate was framed- blaming things on the rich- this caused my friend to not see the real problem.


Which is no matter how much we tax the rich- that will not solve the problem of our country having promised too much stuff that we can no longer afford.



I saw Ed Shultz the other night- he actually was telling people that the problem was we are not taxing them enough.


If you listen long enough- you would think that we could get out of the hole if we simply taxed rich folk.



I’m for raising the tax on them by the way- I don’t think it’s wrong to go back to the Clinton year’s tax rate.


I’m no conservative about this.


But that does not even come close to fixing the problem.



Our nation is in debt for around 16 trillion dollars.


The largest expense- not counting the military- are the Entitlement programs.


Medicare- Medicaid- etc.


Now- if we do raise the taxes on the ‘rich’ it will bring in about 80 billion a year.


That’s a drop in the bucket- that won’t barely put a dent in the debt.




But the rate of growth for Medicare- if we keep growing at this rate- will eventually swallow up the entire budget- we will be spending everything on Medicare alone.



That’s why I believe the result of the last few weeks has been bad.



After Obama won re-election- many from the more liberal side began putting pressure on him to not deal with entitlement spending.


Yesterday he made an offer to the House Republicans- and it had no real change to these programs.



If we do not make any changes to the programs- like means testing [the rich get less benefit than the poor- which you would think would be a Democrat’s dream come true- yet they are the ones blocking this change].


If we simply keep framing the argument as one being the rich not paying their fair share- then that will give an excuse to not actually fix these programs.


And that’s what the president has decided to do.


Remember- I’m for the tax rate going up on the rich- but that will barely put a dent in the debt.


You must- we must- make some adjustments with the entitlement programs- that’s the only way to really fix the problem.


And the president- and some who support him- have decided to continue the campaign.

They are not going to realistically look at the problem.


And if they keep kicking this can down the road.

Well- it will land in Greece.


Note- Do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on. Thanks- John. Don’t forget to scroll down on the timeline [Facebook] - I have posted lots.







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