Posted on 02/22/2010 2:06:45 AM PST by Cronos
A small news item from Tracy, Calif., caught my eye last week. Local station CBS 13 reported: “Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 911 for a medical emergency.
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Yes, sir, we’ve just had our 70 fat years in America, thanks to the Greatest Generation and the bounty of freedom and prosperity they built for us. And in these past 70 years, leadership — whether of the country, a university, a company, a state, a charity, or a township — has largely been about giving things away, building things from scratch, lowering taxes or making grants.
But now it feels as if we are entering a new era, “where the great task of government and of leadership is going to be about taking things away from people
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oddly enough, I pretty much agree with this column.
I disagree pretty strongly with what he proposes, in other columns, as the solution, but his diagnosis of the problem is spot on.
I believe his solutions will make the problem worse, not better. In fact, I think the partial implementation of his solutions is exactly what got us into this mess.
Very strange that such a smart guy doesn’t see this.
Well said. But when things get truly rough, we will finally get smaller government. :-)
But the various levels of government will have some strange lists for the orders of cuts. ...defense cuts first, with regulatory and social busybodies probably last to be laid off.
If he wants to raise taxes, he is missing the forest for the trees.
But, no, after reading the article (from the New York Times, no less), it's apparent that Friedman has once again misidentified the problem. Having done so, he has not a clue as to what the real solution is.
Pity.
Oh, well, the news is not all bad. I noticed that at the very end of the article, the Times notes that Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd are off today.
This fat idiot wants the country to go rumbling off into the government controls everything global warming fantasy. Interesting that he hides his number one concern behind the neutral mention of “energy,” I’m sure he would have painted the barn with it before Phil Jones barfed up the truth. Republicans irresponsible, no solutions ? I wonder how many folks in NJ will go out to their driveways to pick up this fish wrap this morning and wryly note the difference between the true path to the 21st century under Christie vs. the praiseworthy Obama and his fantasy “corpse” of Reid , Pelosi, Holdren, etc. Amazing the number of half positive comments on this thread. It’s Friedman’s usual triple-barfer.
They're always off. Less often, we catch a break and they stop writing for a day or two.
“Instead they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.””
I will make sure not to call 911 for obama worshipper friedman should he need it. He ain’t worth $3 much less $300.
Yo, raising taxes is part of the problem, not the last solution. See NJ.
Let me just say this about the “greatest generation” that Krugman praises. They have drunk the kool-aid too, and expect entitlements from the gov’t to the department store and even from restaurants. This year, in order to placate them, since there was no COLA (which for many of us working was also a reality in our paychecks) the gov’t sent them a “bonus” check so they wouldn’t raise a stink. They are a strong voting block and one of the reasons SS and Medicare have not been revamped to this point.
Europe and Asia had no industry to compete with the US in the 1950’s because we had destroyed their industries. With tools like the B-17 and B-24.
In the 1930’s, there was a surplus of productive capacity around the world, which led to under-utilization, trade wars, etc. WWII solved the problem of “what to do with the over-capacity?”
Today, we have a similar problem. Look at the worldwide over-capacity in auto production. Some auto companies simply need to die, especially in Europe, but because their auto companies are government jobs programs (just as GM and Chrysler are now here), they’re not going to do it. They’re going to keep Fiat, Opel, etc around forever, even as new auto companies with lower costs of production are coming online in India and China.
This is the part that I agree with most. If we don't 'man up' now, there is going to be a whole lot of suffering later.
First of all, there was no greatest generation. Second, this feeling of pessimism still isn’t as bad as it was under Carter.
But, no, after reading the article (from the New York Times, no less), it’s apparent that Friedman has once again misidentified the problem. Having done so, he has not a clue as to what the real solution is.
Pity.<<<<<
It is ideology that prevents these people from understanding what the solutions are. They will keep hammering their Keynesian economics hoping that someday they will actually work! They will continue to believe that socialism done right will work as well. They will never admit that they are wrong even when the evidence is perfectly clear. They only begin to turn when they are getting burned themselves and there is no one else to blame!
Friedman, like the zombie leftist he is, thinks Obama is failing because his message is not properly constructed. He can’t see that people oppose his policies on merit.
If people return to a belief that producing things is more impressive and praiseworthy than pushing paper we can turn things around in seven years, no sweat. What are the odds, though, after forty years of brainwashing people to think that actually making things is both beneath “the enlightened” and an attack on mother earth? The War on Poverty was the start of our current dismal situation, and unless we finally recognize that only productive work ends poverty, we’re never going to turn things around. As long as people grant a gang like “Barry and the Crats” the majority every few election cycles we’re doomed to decay.
Will the generation that slid along on the greased rails their parents built for them be smart enough to shed the democrat leftist bunk they’ve supported for decades and then stay the course by not electing leftists thieves anymore? It remains to be seen, but given the fact that they’re insistent on passing out Social Security to the wealthy as well as to those in need, I’m not optimistic. We may well be in for multiples of seven years before a generation willing to look reality in the eye takes over and sets things aright. Friedman seems like a bright enough guy, but he’s nothing other than an apologist for whatever the current leftist situation requires.
It wasn’t all that long ago, you may recall, that Friedman was sure we’d see a generation of riches and huge new industries in return for the massive Cap n’ Trade taxes. With Cap’n Trade looking like a dead end, well dang, seven years of gloom just hopped out of his bedroom closet and shocked him into an entirely different reason for the large tax increases he feels will be required. Anyone who can see that we have a problem but can’t see that the tax and spend addiction of the government loving democrats and liberals isn’t the main cause still flunks the reality test. In fact, they’re probably deliberately trying to keep people from recognizing the root cause of our situation by substituting rationalizations for reality.
Regards
It has been proved time and time again that raising taxes decreases gubmint revenue and lowering tax rates increases gubmint revenue. If you raise tax rates the gubmint will not have as much money flowing into its coffers. This is not even debatable anymore. The evidence is quite clear. See the Treasury receipts in the Hoover, Kennedy, Reagan and Bush II terms for clear evidence of this fact. Increased spending during these periods is what brought deficits and debt, not the lack of tax revenue. There is absolutely no evidence that increasing taxes increases revenue to the gubmint. Exactly the opposite is true.
High taxes and irresponsible, excessive spending are what brought us the problems we face. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, i.e., raising taxes and expecting increasing gubmint revenue, is the very definition of insanity. Raising taxes will only make things worse by putting additional burdens on the people who make the economy work. We must reward success and achievement if the country is to prosper again.
The only way we are going to turn this mess around is by dramatically cutting spending, reducing income tax rates across the board while broadening the tax base by having everyone pay their fair share. We must entirely eliminate taxes that punish achievement and reward failure. It is really no more complicated that that.....
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