Play this video TWICE

[Mackin USA]

https://www.facebook.com/laurie.william.5/videos/549932461835652/

[ergophobe]

What he doesn't mention is the immorality of living high and comfy and passing debt down to our children and grandchildren to pay for that.

He also doesn't mention that there was a time in most countries when one party sought to increase the role of government (and with good reasons) and the other party was sought to restrain spending (and with good reasons), leading to a healthy tension. Then at some point the second party became a big spender too, just on other stuff.

He also doesn't mention that the English Civil War, the French Revolution and other related events were, setting aside long-term structural issues, triggered by the central govt being unable to shoulder the debt burden from too many ill-advised wars.

I see debt burden and climate changes as huge threats in the future that will dominate the historical narrative in 200 years, and ISIS and Al Queda as things that will become footnotes in history books, largely forgotten except among those who specialize in early 20th century history.

[ergophobe]

Unless ISIS manages to plant a nuke in Paris or New York... and we do need to stop that, though in a 500-year perspective even that may be less significant.

[littleman]

Wow, so much to say on these topics but I don't think I could invest the 40 minutes to get them out.  

On Debt and deficits: People seem to forget that there are two sides to it -- spending and taxation.  In the United States the tax burden has been pushed to the common worker while multi-national corporations like Google and the Oil companies set up shell companies in places like the Cayman Islands.

The cost of the forever war in the Middle East is enormous, Iraq alone is estimated to have an overall cost of $4 trillion so far.  Most of that cost was considered "emergency spending" and wasn't even in the budget during the Bush administration.  Groups like ISIS are a direct result of our interventionist policies.

I see our lack of action on climate change and movements like ISIS related in a way, they are both a situation where belief trumps rational thinking.

BTW, I think it is time to start large scale testing of Iron fertilizing our oceans.

I'll stop here seeings how I am dangerously close to violation the Core's TOS.

[ergophobe]

>>spending and taxation.

Cato Institue (I think) published a study showing that there is a relationship between cutting taxes and increasing spending, which is why they now criticize the "starve the beast" approach. It turns out that when taxation is at a level were you can conceivably balance the budget, fiscal conservative will try. But when it's slashed and you have fiscal conservatives who are also hawks who want to wage expensive wars, they learn that deficit spending is their friend.

Short version: just like the video said, people have to get real about both sides of the equation.

>> belief trumps rational thinking.

Indeed ;-)

[Mackin USA]

Wouldn't it be nice if the media could discuss these issues as we are discussing it here?

[ergophobe]

Wouldn't it be nice if the media could discuss these issues

I'm sorry, were we discussing issues? I thought this was about Kim Kardashian's butt. Please quit wasting my time with this stuff about debt and deficits. Just make sure you cut my taxes and increase my services and keep me informed about the Kardashian family and I'm pretty much good to go.

That is all.

Translation:

I do NOT blame the media, but the consumers of media.
I do NOT blame politicians, but the people who elect them.
I do NOT blame the lobbyists, but the people who let them run the process.

I would blame the SuperPacs, but the success of Donald and Bernie and the flaming disaster Jeb's campaign show that (more than double the SuperPAC money of the next candidates, those being Clinton and Rubio... and it hasn't helped the latter much either), in spite of everything we believed, it's actually hard to flat out buy an election in the United States.

Sadly, we get the news coverage and the leaders we ask for, which may be the most frightening thought of all!