Deficit Reduction Comission Eliminates America's Asshole Deficit

[01d55]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/us/politics/11fiscal.html?_r=1&hp
The plan would reduce Social Security benefits to most future retirees — low-income people would get a higher benefit — and it would subject higher levels of income to payroll taxes to ensure Social Security’s solvency for at least the next 75 years.

But the plan would not count any savings from Social Security toward meeting the overall deficit-reduction goal set by Mr. Obama, reflecting the chairmen’s sensitivity to liberal critics who have complained that Social Security should be fixed only for its own sake, not to balance the nation’s books.

[Fifthfiend]

ITT: Deficit commission recommends cuts to social security even though it admits those cuts have nothing to do with the goddamn deficit.

Also, TAX CUTS

The proposed simplification of the tax code would repeal or modify a number of popular tax breaks — including the deductibility of mortgage interest payments — so that income tax rates could be reduced across the board. Under the plan, individual income tax rates would decline to as low as 8 percent on the lowest income bracket (now 10 percent) and to 23 percent on the highest bracket (now 35 percent). The corporate tax rate, now 35 percent, would also be reduced, to as low as 26 percent.

lolfartz

[Jagos]

Great way to help bring in revenue.

Unban drugs and regulate it.

[shiney]

Drop in the bucket, unfortunately. It would reduce spending but not necessarily increase revenue that much, and the impact of the spending no longer being poured into local economies in re: enforcement could have unforeseen consequences as well.

I'm all for legalization but yeah, doing it as a means of improving our financial situation is a lot more complex.

[Jagos]

I'm not so sure... Link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsk8R_j5zzg#t=28m42s)

It's fast forwarded to the most prevalent part, where you get into statistics.

There's the ideas that you start looking for new revenue streams and you invest in new types of drugs.

That's just one avenue.

Basically I believe the situation is that people are using too much law to regulate the market, without allowing it to grow and support people.

I mean seriously, there's only so many ideas that can work and we need all the help we can get as a nation.

[Fifthfiend]

Worrying about generating new revenew is even beside the point deficit reduction is a dumb thing to worry about that nobody anywhere is actually worried about, the reason they're flogging this shit is pushback against the possibility of anyone suddenly thinking government should do anything actually sane like stimulating the economy via deficit spending to pull us out of fucking 10% unemployment.

I mean look at their proposals, cut social security and cut taxes? If anybody actually cared about deficits or thought they were important they would never be proposing clownish shit like this, this is all about shouting DEFICITS as loud as possible to make sure that nobody notices that their actual motivations are to continue blowing out social services and fuck over the middle class for the benefit of rich people.

[01d55]

ITT: Deficit commission recommends cuts to social security even though it admits those cuts have nothing to do with the goddamn deficit.

My favorite part is where they say that this reflects sensitivity to liberal critics. Like these are the recommendations that they were clearly appointed to produce and they went ahead and produced them. But then they went around and trolled everyone who thought that was a shitty thing to do while they were doing it.

[Fifthfiend]

Yeah it is actually pretty fucking A-grade trolling.

I started writing a post unpacking how full of shit that line is and I hit the third paragraph before I said fuck it, it's that densely packed with malign stupidity.

[Magus]

I like how they always say they can offset increased tax cost to the poor and middle class with their regressive as hell gasoline sales tax by decreasing income taxes on those parts of the population despite the fact that this means only a 2% decrease for those parts whereas rich people get a huge-ass 9% decrease besides the fact that if you look at the percentages of income that are paid out in sales taxes it's always higher for poor and middle class people, making the entire plan regressive as hell, especially since so many poor people with dependents don't even pay any federal income tax in the first place, so it's just a straight-up tax increase on the backs of the working class.

I enjoy the fact that there is actually "serious" talk of cutting the military budget (insofar as it has actually been stated as an option in public before it is quietly removed from discussion as I'm sure it will be soon), but why not cut the military budget by a significant amount instead of cutting all the social programs by significant amounts and cutting the military budget by a little bit? Why must all the tax breaks on earned income be abandoned (via increasing payroll taxes as my new Governor Tom Corbett says is totally okay (http://www.conservativedeclaration.com/2010/10/tom-corbetts-no-tax-pledge/) because, um, it's not...it's not a tax it's...it's...yeah) and by increasing sales taxes while leaving that on investment income alone by decreasing income tax for the rich? Oh, I know, rich jerks run the country. I forgot for a second (jk).

[Kim]

Let's reduce military spending by half. I would be ever so happy. (I do realize that that would cause non-military problems though, so we need to figure something out to do with that)

[Fifthfiend]

Yeah it is actually pretty fucking A-grade trolling.

I started writing a post unpacking how full of shit that line is and I hit the third paragraph before I said fuck it, it's that densely packed with malign stupidity.

I think I've finally got it summarized:

Liberal critics are the ones who have continually argued for no changes whatsoever to social security, as there are none needed.

It is conservatives who have continually argued that they need to slash Social Security benefits for the sake of Social Security, because they want to destroy Social Security.

Nobody has ever said anything about Social Security needing to be cut for the sake of the budget deficit, because that is flatly fucking insane.

The budget panel advocates destroying Social Security as conservatives want, in adherence to the reason conservatives have said they wanted to do this, while pretending that this is actually what liberals wanted, setting up a strawman position which nobody wanted so they can pretend that their conservative assault on our nation's most successful program is a concession to 'sensitive' liberals.

That is pretty much the amount of sheer stupid assholery packed into that one short trolltacular sentence.

[Magus]

Yeah, I was just listening to the chairman (a Democrat for some fucking reason) talk about how they have to "spread the sacrifice" to everyone by slashing the shit out of social security and raising taxes on gasoline to tax the working class...but also lower income taxes for rich people because um...rich people...if you lower the taxes you get more revenue to cut the deficit with because uh...uh...supply side economics...'cause see they get money from the interest on their investments and then...um...but some of them have companies that make stuff...some of them, y'know. And since they lower the costs of their products by investing the money they aren't paying out in taxes, y'know, I mean, if they don't just pocket that extra income, if they invest it in their company...uh..,people buy so much of their products at this lower price that the sales tax is more than the income tax would have been, right, even though the consumer is going to have even less money to spend under this plan...uh...well, 2% of small businesses would have their taxes go up if we let the Bush tax cuts expire, and that would...that would uh...decrease the amount of money coming in to the government because...uh. Yeah.

So as you can see it is extremely important that to cut the deficit we cut rich peoples' taxes. There is a clear mathematical formula here where rich people give the government less money and then the government magically has more money to spend on paying off the deficit (because they use their magical powers to tax the shit out of the middle and working class by cutting tax creidits and increasing gasoline sales tax and cut their SS and Medicare benefits).

[01d55]

Wow, it's just about a year later and what do I see on Krugman's blog? (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/superfraud/)

[Jagos]

I don't think there's a facepalm picture created that exemplifies this kind of fail...

[Magus]

I know, I started reading this topic and I was like "hmm, this sounds pretty damn familiar, must be a new topic about the new supercommittee shit" and lo and behold it's just a necro'd topic on the same freaking thing from last year at this same freaking time that basically, if it were a new topic, would come to the same freaking conclusion! I mean I had two damn posts in it and they still state exactly what I have to say to the current situation! Staggering! In one year they have made zero progress on actually understanding why the deficit is so freaking massive, which is, once again, that they want to continue doing what caused the deficit in the first place, a ballooning military budget in combination with tax breaks for the rich.

Just like let this topic sleep another year and we'll see if yet again all our posts are once more still completely and utterly salient.