Posted on 07/13/2011 11:10:34 AM PDT by Vintage Freeper
Polls show that most Americans are opposed to raising the federal debt ceiling. Even when the Pew Research Center included the consequences in its question a national default that would damage the economy slightly more people were against raising the ceiling than were for it...
Free lunchism is ultimately the problem with the no-new-taxes pledge that so many politicians have adopted. A refusal to raise taxes, no matter how principled, cannot take us back to the good old days. It would instead lead to a very different American society. For taxes to remain where they are, Washington would need to end Medicare as we know it, end Social Security as we know it, severely shrink the military or do some combination of the above.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Medicare, Medicaid, government provided unemployment benefits are going away. The questions are how? And how soon? Raising the debt ceiling and/or raising taxes may prolong the agony, but the pain will be far worse when it finally has to be borne. And the price tag then could include the existence of the United States.
Taxpayers always take it “in the end.”
I wouldn’t call 67% “slightly”
Nor will they admit that it is the entitlement beneficiaries who are getting the free lunches of which LEONHARDT complains.
Uhm, raising taxes will make the USA unrecongnizable as to what we know it as.
No New Taxes!
I suggest any “default” of US debt instruments or any hint of such action would absolve taxpayers of the moral obligation to pay taxes at all.
Yeah, it's called the welfare state. We have run out of other people's money.
Let me see, not raising taxes further will result in a far different American society then today? You mean the half of American society that is dependent upon big government?
Here’s a thought: The Repubs had better NOT agree to ANYTHING that raises taxes cause I, for one, am seriously looking for that different American society. =.=
I don’t think you understand: WE LIBERALS SPENT YOU SUCKERS INTO A QUAGMIRE.
Now you have to pay for it.
You can thank us now. :)
/sarc(?)
Or why smart people will just leave the country.
Go back in time and whoever voted yes on the unified budget act, which combined social security into general revenues, and dump their butts in the high desert to have their bones picked clean.
“Free lunchism” refers to those robbed by the IRS who want to keep what they worked hard for. Not to those getting goodies from big government.
wow.
How long will it take and what will it take before a large portion of this country just decides that the federal government or any government no longer has any legitimacy whatsoever?
This article isn’t that bad. He is liberal but points out the problem clearly — Americans want a free lunch. His solution is a tax hike. He says the Republicans won’t be able to force a spending cut through because Middle America won’t stand for entitlement cuts. He sees a general tax increase with a pretty severe tax increase for the “rich.” Quite frankly, as much as I hate it and as much as I’d fight it, he may be right. Way too many Americans want a free ride paid for by “the rich.” We can’t get around that. Its depressing but true.
We have the inflation tax from devalued currency.
This thinking is dangerous and plays right into the statist hand, increasing taxes never increases revenue until you are on the left side of the laffer curve inflection point.. What idiot thinks we are there?
Then reduce all government by 10-25%. The states have been reducing their employees, and adjusting retirement benefits, and combining departments to shrink the number of high paid employees at the top.
Roll all spending back to 2008 levels this year then to 2004 levels next year, then 2000 levels the year after that.
All of that stuff should be done, before they start to impact programs that old people have been stuck with due to government mandate. Some way must be found to help young people too.
There should be more choices than Social Security, and Medicare, but there should be an orderly phase-in and transition period. Those age 55 and older are pretty much stuck with the ponzi scheme, but that is no reason to doom younger workers to the same.
If Congress Critters can't figure out how to do this with out unduly harming the current recipients, then doom lies ahead. It will all come crashing down sooner or later.
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