WorldTraveller

Me doubts that

Because Paul Ryan stands for fiscal responsibility and has the gravitas and courage tto attempt to address our countries most pressing and burdensome liabilities, whereas you support a party that would rather kick the can down the road and made the cynical calculation to not produce any credible long-term plan and would rather demagogue Ryan's serious plan in order to rile the leftist sheeple base like yourself. Congratulations, you fell for it.

I caught that as well. When I read that, it seemed characteristically self centered. But this shouldn't come as any surprise, he does this quite often.

So even though, public sector unions brokered back room deals with politicians for over bloated unfunded pensions, less accountability for the quality of education through ineffective tenure programs and massively over budgeted public services at the expense of the taxpayer , in order for these politicians to get campaign funds, you want to enable this behavior by bailing them out with federal tax funds? That's your idea? What happens when those funds run out? You want the state and local taxpayer to pay for this? You do realize that once the funds run out, that those layoffs will have to happen right? You do realize that is what the first "stimulus" from president Obama did right ? Now that those funds ran out, those layoffs are presently occurring. But no, it's those conservatives who are to blame for the cuts right, even though they weren't the ones who brokered these deals. There is a reason why there is a huge backlash against these unions, and your solution is to keep bailing out these corrupt public sector unions and crooked politicians. Sorry, that's just not gonna happen.

Do pension funds invest in mutual funds? How about properties? Regarding capital formation, who cares if from your POV it's a "1990s" term? It still applies.

You are woefully misinformed.

Bill Clinton understood the importance of capital formation and lowering the cost of capital. Raising capital gains taxes effects 401ks, pension retiree funds and most importantly negatively impacts capital formation which in turn deincentivizes expansion. If you wanted to have a healthier economy, this would not be a good idea.

That's ok , your parents may have been bigots, but mine certainly are not.

I had this discussion yesterday with my parents. We went out for dinner and the topic came up, I told them that if I had to vote one way or another, I'd Vote to allow them to marry. What do I care? I figure why should I get in the way of the pursuit of happiness of someone else's future? Very simple approach. My parents on the other hand, who harbor no ill-will towards anyone, have a different view than I do. My mother, a devout catholic has a view that is derived from religious teachings. Without going into detail, just that she has a moral compass that is guided by the bible. My father, not nearly as religious, has a different take, which is that he opposes gay marriage because he is more of a traditionalist. He is an old-school sorta guy. I've never heard them speak negatively towards gays or any other minority group, just that they have a different view that you and I have. I think it's ok to disagree with people without referring to them as "bigots". I find this sort of view as one of intolerance and I wouldn't generalize that people who are opposed to gay marriage as such. Are there a lot of bigots out there? Certainly, but to cast a net on everyone who is opposed to gay marriage as bigots is a view that I find to be quite narrow.

That's actually quite astounding. Walker with virtually no opponent , which logically gave hardly any incentive for his supporters to show up and vote, had more votes than not just the two main candidates, but the third place finisher combined. That's quite amazing, I would say that his supporters are extremely energized.

What would you say are some of the reasons for the falling prices of crude?

Somehow I feel less intelligent after reading this post.

Umm, that is a central bank.

So if i am to understand you correctly, Exxon and other large multinationals control the "world"? Now when you say "world" , does that include the US, Germany,China and Australia? And if so, can you give some actual evidence in how they are "running" the world?

They are called "central banks"

That doesn't make sense. I'd be interested in seeing the indivdual break down state by state. You gotta figure Obama has a wide margin lead in Michigan and new Mexico, and probably a decent lead in PA and Wisconsin , and probably a lead in CO and NV. . Considering the margin was two points and Obama having the lead in the six states I just mentioned, that most likely gives Romney the lead in NC, Ohio, Florida, NH and Iowa . If that is the case, which Im pretty I'm not too far off, that would give Romney exactly 270 electoral votes, assuming he takes Indiana as well, which he will. Then there is still virginia, which could go either way. Like it or not, this race right now is 50/50 race. If the economy continues to stagnate as it has over the past two months, Romney will win. If the economy improves from where we are, Obama wins, it's that simple.

I'm not following where you are going with this. If you don't mind, could you clarify your point?

Sorry, I'm not talking about how people feel, I'm talking about the actual technical definition of a recession which is two straight quarters of negative GDP I agree completely

Iwhile I agree that there need to be structural reforms for deficit spending cutting measures, if this guy had it his way, we'd certainly fall into another deep recession. It's very simple, id you take too much money out of the economy too swiftly, demand for goods and services fall, which in turn effects tax revenues.. The solution is to have pro growth policies in the near to mid- term and structurally reform long term spending.

That would come off as insensitive.

That's an odd party, sort of a hybrid of a super anti immigrant right wing kind of party meshed with uber left wing social policies. A conglomeration of extreme opposing views.

The problem was that there was too much austerity, so painful, and devastating to their economies that they continued to fall In a vicious circle of sorts. While the proble is too much structural spending, the solution isn't as obvious as most peole believe. The common answer is to cut spending through strict austerity measures. The problem with that is if done in such a draconian fashion that you take away demand from the economy which in turn reduces tax receipts, which in turn the bond markets would ask for more cuts, which would create even less growth and so on and so on. Sort of like a negative feedback loop. So it was quite unpopular from the nations that were adopting strict austerity measures and somewhat expected that thosepresident would get foted out. typical swing of the political pendulum. The problem is that what Hollaind is proposing includs more structural debt problems by reducing the retirement age and adopting an absurd tax rate for the wealthy which will undoubtedly decent icicle risk taking. I don't have a problem with short-term targeted spending to stimulate an economy, but these are structural long-term budget busters

On the bright side, with all the mounting debt concerns over in France, they will look to tax income above $1 million at near a 90% marginal rate and lower retirement from 62 to 60 under the new president.

Well, Ross Douthatts views aren't shared by the ny times editorial board. I did read a ny times editorial piece the other day, acknowledging the weakness of the labor market, what I found to be very amusing isn't so much their proposed remedy, which of course was more soending, and that is to be expected from them, but rather that they had the gall to ask politicians to stop the partisanship and not be so ideological. The irony was dripping