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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (132413)	3/28/2013 12:03:47 PM
From: Alex MG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

it's not exactly rocket science is it... as Bill Clinton said, it's pretty simple... "arithmetic!"

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (132413)	3/28/2013 5:55:08 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 149317

I don't think high taxes on the rich are in and of themselves a root cause of the accelerating rich / poor divide in this country. You may have forgotten, but I'm a proponent of taxing the rich more. In fact, I have vociferously argued that we should get rid of both of Bush Jr's tax cuts and go back to the higher tax era of Bill Clinton. I was also against Obama's Payroll Tax Cut as something that was irresponsible and hurts the viability of Social Security, which many of our old people depend on. I think three of the main root causes of the accelerating rich / poor divide are the following: 1) increasing financialization of our economy...a larger and larger share of the profits in this country are derived by bankers skimming off the profits of everyone else. Bankers and the Fed, chief among them, act as a colossal tax on the rest of our productive society. 2) out of control and increasing military spend...the spending on foreign wars, global military bases, and now Homeland Security is quite literally bankrupting this country. Can you imagine what we could do with all the money we'd save by going back to the Clinton era military budget? That alone would take care of almost half of our deficit. 3) increasing favor placed by the American public on growing socialism and the welfare state in this country. I am a firm believer that a society that embraces the right of the individual to work hard and excel through ingenuity and that hard work, and then gets to keep a goodly portion of the benefits of that, is what generates an amazing amount of wealth for a country. The more we embrace massive transfer payments and grow the entitlement state, the more we destroy our growth potential. Once again, Clinton was a model for us. He actually SHRUNK the welfare state during his two terms in office and he generated millions of jobs and unequaled prosperity, even in the midst of a higher tax structure than today! Think on it. Clinton did a lot right. I only wish we'd elected Hillary. I doubt we'd be where we are now, if we had. Obama is a replay of Bush in so many ways. I am very disappointed.