Midpack
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Interesting article that I haven't seen here (apologies if I missed it), though some/many here probably read it already. I'm not hoping to debate policy here at all, just some interesting objective information for perspective. https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/article/red-ink-092012
A few excerpts:
A few excerpts:
I don't think the typical taxpayer understands the federal budget for two reasons. One is, it's really enormous. Four hundred million dollars every hour is a lot of money. The second reason they don't understand it is because a lot of the political rhetoric is designed to make it less clear rather than more clear. When you look at the surveys of the public, you find out that they think we spend way more on foreign aid and food stamps than we really do. A lot of people who are on Medicare and Social Security don't think they're on a government program. One Cornell poll found that 40% of the people on those programs said they weren't receiving any government benefits. So people are pretty misinformed, and I think that may influence the way they vote.
We're paying a lot of interest on the federal debt, and that's money we give to other people. Used to be we paid it to other Americans; now we're paying it to other people and the rest of the world.
Basically, we have to decide what we're going to do about taxes. Are we going to raise them, and if so, how much and on whom? If we get health care, defense, and revenue settled, the rest is actually pretty easy.
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