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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (602982)	3/10/2011 12:48:38 AM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574849

The states with lower tax rates as a whole are doing better with economic growth than those with higher tax rates. As for defense cuts, they can't be more than a relatively small part of the needed budget cuts because they are a relatively small part of overall federal spending going forward, entitlements are where the big money is even now, and much more so in the future. Defense has already dropped from a solid majority of all federal spending to under 20 percent. Even if it not cut (not even in the sense of not growing as quickly as previously planned) it will be a noticeably smaller part of the budget in the coming decades, unless it there is a huge defense expansion push that I don't see happening (and which under conditions like those in the world today, I would oppose). Listen....if this country doesn't raise its gas tax... ...we are screwed. That's a rather ridiculous statement. Eliminating or quintupling the gas tax would perhaps have noticeable effects, but not on the level of scewing the whole country. Its just not big enough in a $14+ trillion dollar economy. That and the fact that an increase (at least without offsetting cuts somewhere else) would be harmful not helpful, but help or harm its to small to be as big of factor as you make it out to be. It was $25bil as of 2006. Quintupling that would only be $125bil, and the difference only $100bil. A large amount of money, but not a "screw the country amount" (either in its generation or lack their of) in a $14+tril economy with almost $4tril of federal government spending, and approaching $7tril in total government spending. If we need more for road and bridge construction and repair we can just increase the percentage of the federal gasoline tax that goes there, its only about 60% now. Or we could budget money from somewhere else. I'm not saying we should, just that if the alternative was somehow that we would all be screwed, it would be relatively easy to prevent, without raising gasoline taxes.