Mahilena's Debunking Libertarianism/Conservatism ...

RIGHTWING LIE ALERT IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family

RIGHTWING LIE ALERT > IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family

THE $20000  is only an estimate of what it cost for a family of 5 to have insurance on the Private Market today using the "Bronze" class of insurance programs

What the IRS says is that its using for its calculation of the Shared Penalty the Average National Bronze coverage plan that can be found in Private Insurance which is ESTIMATED to be $20,000 a year for a Family Plan of 5...THIS IS NOT THE OBAMACARE BRONZE PLAN it is AN ESTIMATE OF THE PRIVATE INSURANCE BRONZE PLAN...currently in the Health Care Markets there are variously rated plans for all carriers OBAMACARE is using this plan estimate TO CALCULATE WHAT YOU WOULD PAY IF YOU DECIDE NOT TO HAVE THE COVERAGE...and guess what this is what you would pay:

A taxpayer must pay the shared responsibility payment for each month that the taxpayer or the taxpayer’s dependents lacked minimum essential coverage and did not qualify for an exemption.

The amount of the tax is the lesser of the applicable national average bronze plan premium or the sum of the monthly payment amounts. 

The monthly payment amount equals one twelfth of the greater of
.
the fixed dollar amounts ($95 for 2014, $325 for 2015, and $695 for 2016) times the number of adults in the household and one half the specified amount times the number of children in the household, up to a maximum of three times the flat amount, or
the amount of the taxpayer’s household income in excess of the tax filing threshold times 1 percent for taxable years beginning in 2013 and 2014, 2 percent for taxable years beginning in 2014, and 2.5 percent for years thereafter.

This penalty payment is NOWHERE NEAR ANY $20,000 which is what the DECEPTION IS trying to get you to think

The tax is due when taxes are otherwise due and is assessed and collected like any other tax, except that taxpayers who fail to pay the tax are subject neither to criminal penalties nor to liens and levies.
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/01/31/implementing-health-reform-shared-responsibility-tax-exemptions-and-family-coverage-affordability/

Words of Liberal Wisdom from past American Leaders (liberal and conservatives)

Many Americans today tend to take the past for granted, and with that, we also tend to take the words of past leaders for granted. We forget what they told us, and as a result we lose our identity, we lose the values that make us who we are. Below is a list of quotes spoken by American leaders, heroes, journalists, and others. You’ll find common themes throughout this list. These are the messages from the American past that we should all remember if we hope to solve our own problems and bring America forward to a better future. The future that these people envisioned.

1.) “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
~John F. Kennedy

2.) “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” ~Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

3.) “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
~John F. Kennedy

4.) “The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

5.) “I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.”
~Robert Kennedy

6.) “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

7.) “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

8.) “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

9.) “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
~Abraham Lincoln

10.) “Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.”
~Robert Kennedy

11.) “It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
~Hubert H. Humphrey

12.) “I believe that there should be a very much heavier progressive tax on very large incomes, a tax which should increase in a very marked fashion for the gigantic incomes.”
~Theodore Roosevelt

13.) “To impose taxes when the public exigencies require them is an obligation of the most sacred character, especially with a free people.”
~James Monroe

14.) “The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for … the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use.”
~Theodore Roosevelt

15.) “The laboring classes constitute the main part of our population. They should be protected in their efforts peaceably to assert their rights when endangered by aggregated capital, and all statutes on this subject should recognize the care of the State for honest toil, and be framed with a view of improving the condition of the workingman.”
~Grover Cleveland

16.) “It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.”
~Theodore Roosevelt

17.) “Today’s so-called ‘conservatives’ don’t even know what the word means. They think I’ve turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That’s a decision that’s up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right. It’s not a conservative issue at all.”
~Barry Goldwater

18.) “The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
~Thomas Jefferson

19.) “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

20.) “Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.”
~John F. Kennedy

21.) “America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal – to discover and maintain liberty among men.”
~Woodrow Wilson

22.) “If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men to capitalize their labor.”
~ Frank Lloyd Wright

23.) “I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education.”
~Thomas Jefferson

24.) “While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment.”
~Barry Goldwater

25.) “Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.”
~Hubert Humphrey

26.) “In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

27.) “As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.”
~George Washington

28.) “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

29.) “Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.”
~Ronald Reagan

30.) “Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice.”
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

31.) “We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate.”
~Ronald Reagan

32.) “Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

33.) “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
~Dwight Eisenhower

34.) “The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need. It utilizes the familiar machinery of our Federal-State government to promote the common welfare and the economic stability of the Nation.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

35.) “Few nations do more than the United States to assist their least fortunate citizens–to make certain that no child, no elderly or handicapped citizen, no family in any circumstances in any State, is left without the essential needs for a decent and healthy existence. In too few nations, I might add, are the people aware of the progressive strides this country has taken in demonstrating the humanitarian side of freedom. Our record is a proud one–and it sharply refutes those who accuse us of thinking only in the materialistic terms of cash registers and calculating machines.”
~John F. Kennedy

36.) “But let us begin. Now the trumpet summons us again – not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need – not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”- a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”
~John F. Kennedy

37.) “We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion suffer by all such interference.”
~Rutherford B. Hayes

38.) “The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community.”
~James A. Garfield

39.) “You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.”
~Harry S. Truman

40.) “I think that being liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, noncomitted to a cause but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it’s a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they’re not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen.”
~Walter Cronkite

41.) “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level – I mean the wages of decent living.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

42.) “Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.”
~John F. Kennedy

43.) “For all my years in public life, I have believed that America must sail toward the shores of liberty and justice for all. There is no end to that journey, only the next great voyage. We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make.”
~Edward Kennedy

44.) “We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

45.) “Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

46.) “The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.”
~Noam Chomsky

47.) “The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.”
~Helen Keller

48.) “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

49.) “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
~Barry Goldwater

50.) “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

You’ll notice that the quotes by American politicians were not solely from one end of the spectrum. Quotes from Democrats and Republicans were included. There are even quotes from our Founding Fathers. Certainly there are more quotes that could be added as is the case with lists of this kind. But the fact remains that we must remember the words of our past and keep them with us as America carves out its future.

http://kstreet607.com/2012/05/08/50-liberal-quotes-which-americans-should-remember/

Teaparty bullcrap! we do not need/want a Balanced Budget Amendment

Rand Paul...just remember WE ELECTED YOUR KING...and most Americans also love their King...other than wasteful excess government spending for the benefits of the American people is not excessive coercion it is things that WE THE PEOPLE WANT America is FINANCIALLY AND FISCALLY SOVEREIGN and can never go bankrupt...sure we must be prudent and effective but what Americans do not want is a DO NOTHING GOVERNMENT as you would prefer...

BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT does not hold and is neither necessary nor a good thing....THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is monetarily sovereign and its abitlity to run a DEFICIT is a moral and much needed necessity in balancing the unpredictable risks, cycles and precariousness of the Private Economy

The Federal Budget is not like a household budget it can spend more that it takes in and it results in good results as the stimulus and the New Deal proved...Also THE HOLDERS OF THE DEBT, mostly American Investors do make money on the Deficit and it helps on their private investments...

TEA PARTY SHOULD STUDY MODERN MONETARY THEORY which is Economics 101
7 Frauds of Conservative Fiscal Responsibility from Mosler Economics http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf

The false belief that federal finances are like yours and mine"Debt hawks", "Fiscal Conservatives" and others...(maybe some Libertarians I know...)
ignorant of Monetary Sovereignty, suffer from Anthropomorphic economics disease

http://rodgermmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/anthropomorphic-economics/

The false belief that federal finances are like yours and mine. Some debt hawks say that a Debt/GDP ratio exceeding 100% puts a nation on the brink of bankruptcy. Yet today, Japan has a Debt/GDP ratio above 200%, and this Monetarily Sovereign nation has absolutely no difficulty servicing its debt. The debt hawks, as usual, having learned nothing from this, continue to wail about the meaningless debt/GDP ratio, which because it is a classic apples/oranges comparison, is devoid of significance (the numerator is a 200-year measure of cumulative T-securities outstanding; the denominator is a one-year measure of productivity. The two are unrelated).

Because a Monetarily Sovereign nation has the unlimited ability to create its sovereign currency, that nation needs neither to tax nor to borrow. Why would it? Further, that nation does not use tax money or borrowed money to pay for spending. Federal income has no relationship to federal spending and so, taxes and borrowing are unnecessary.

When the states, counties, cities, you and I spend, we transfer dollars from our checking accounts to some other checking accounts. When the federal government spends, it creates dollars, because to pay its bills, the government instructs banks to increase the dollar amount in suppliers’ checking accounts. If U.S. federal taxes and borrowing fell to $0, or rose to $100 trillion, neither event would reduce by even one penny, the federal government’s ability to create the money to pay any size bills.

Although Monetarily Sovereign nations need neither to tax nor to borrow, they may choose to do so for many reasons unrelated to financial need. The spending by Monetarily Sovereign nations is constrained only by inflation. However, since 1971, the end of the gold standard and the beginning of Monetary Sovereignty, there has been no relationship between federal deficit spending and inflation. More about this at 


http://rodgermmitchell.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/46/
and at SUMMARY.
http://rodgermmitchell.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/introduction/


At some level, deficit spending could cause inflation. For instance, if the government were to give every American $1 trillion, I am confident we would have inflation. But we are nowhere near that point. (Debt hawks love to propose extreme circumstances, like the $1 trillion gift to each American, as “proof” deficit spending is unsustainable. But that is no more proof than the other extreme circumstance (tax every American $1 trillion) demonstrates taxes are unsustainable.)

Because taxes do not pay for federal spending, FICA does not pay for Social Security benefits. FICA could (and should) be reduced to zero, and benefits could be tripled, and this would not affect by even one penny the federal government’s ability to pay Social Security benefits.

There had been some question about whether the federal government would or should make a profit on its purchases of corporate stock (GM et al). Any such profits come out of the economy, and therefore are anti-stimulative. By reducing the money supply, federal profits = losses for the economy. Federal surpluses = economic deficits.

There also has been talk about the federal government “saving” money by firing, or reducing the pay of, federal employees. Those so-called “savings” would be money not sent into the economy, and therefore, anti-stimulative.

Politicians and the press do not yet seem to understand Monetary Sovereignty. However, no one intelligently can discuss national deficits and debt without understanding the implications of Monetarily Sovereignty. The concept is the basis for all modern economics. Monetary Sovereignty is to economics as arithmetic is to mathematics.

http://rodgermmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/monetarily-sovereign-the-key-to-understanding-economics/

The Libertarian, Teaparty world is not good for America

The Trouble With Liberty

Do we want to live in the Libertarian World? - Libertopia - The Minarchy Government

Libertarians can espouse minarchy all they want, since they’ll never have to prove it works.

There are all sorts of situations the private market isn’t good at managing, such as asymmetrical information (I know my doctor is qualified to treat me because he has a government license) and public goods (it makes sense for the government to cover vaccines, which benefit everyone, not just the consumer). There’s also a consistency problem: Why should the government be responsible for a public good like national defense but not air-quality protection?

Or, say, a stable world financial system? Most of the libertarians I spoke with said they would have let the big banks fail in 2008. “I wouldn’t have done anything,” says French. “The key to capitalism is you have to have failure.”

The financial crisis was not an indictment of their worldview, libertarians argue, but a vindication of it. Letting the banks fail would have been painful. But the pain would have been less than it will be now that the government is propping up the housing, banking, and automobile industries. Plus, the economy would have recovered by now. “You’ve probably never heard of the depression of 1920,” says French. “You haven’t heard of it because it came and went in one year, because the government didn’t do anything to prop up failed businesses.” (Other economists argue that the government’s response was actually consistent with the philosophy of John Maynard Keynes.) Letting banks fail would also avoid moral hazard, say libertarians, since investors wouldn’t take such risky bets the next time around.

It’s a compelling story. But like many libertarian narratives, it’s oversimplified. If the biggest banks had failed, bankers wouldn’t have been the only ones punished. Everyone would have lost his money. Investors who had no idea how their dollars were being used—the ratings agencies gave their investments AAA grades, after all—would have gone broke. Homeowners who misunderstood their risky loans would have gone into permanent debt. Sure, the bailouts let some irresponsible people off easy. But not intervening would have unfairly punished a much greater number.

There’s always tension between freedom and fairness. We want less government regulation, but not when it means firms can hire cheap child labor. We want a free market, but not so bankers can deceive investors. Libertarianism, in promoting freedom above all else, pretends the tension doesn’t exist.

Case in point: A house in Obion County, Tennessee, burned to the ground in September because the owner had not paid the annual $75 fee for opt-in fire protection. As the fire raged, the house owner told the dispatcher that he would pay the cost of putting out the fire. The fire department still refused to come. The house burned down, with four pets inside. Libertarians point out that this is how opt-in services—as opposed to taxpayer-funded public services—works. If you don’t pay, you don’t get coverage. The firefighters can’t make exceptions without creating moral hazard. This makes sense in theory. In practice, not so much. The firefighters showed up to protect a neighboring property. The homeowner offered to pay not just the cost of the fire protection but the full cost of the spray. A court would have enforced that contract. But because the firefighters stuck to a rigid principle of opt-in services, a house was destroyed. Will this serve as a cautionary tale next time a rural resident of Obion County is deciding whether to buy fire insurance? No doubt. But will someone else inevitably not learn his lesson and make the same mistake? No doubt.

And that’s just the government side. Consider the social side of Libertopia. It’s no coincidence that most libertarians discover the philosophy as teenagers. At best, libertarianism means pursuing your own self-interest, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. At worst, as in Ayn Rand’s teachings, it’s an explicit celebration of narcissism. “Man’s first duty is to himself,” says the young architect Howard Roark in his climactic speech in The Fountainhead. “His moral obligation is to do what he wishes.” Roark utters these words after dynamiting his own project, since his vision for the structure had been altered without his permission. The message: Never compromise. If you don’t get your way, blow things up. And there’s the problem. If everyone refused to compromise his vision, there would be no cooperation. There would be no collective responsibility. The result wouldn’t be a city on a hill. It would be a port town in Somalia. In a world of scarce resources, everyone pursuing their own self-interest would yield not Atlas Shrugged but Lord of the Flies. And even if you did somehow achieve Libertopia, you’d be surrounded by assholes.

To a Libertarian, nothing is worth sacrificing principle for—least of all political power. Yet Rand Paul has already made some concessions. The first sign of Paul’s domestication came when he appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show after winning the Kentucky primary. Maddow asked him whether he would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal for businesses to turn away customers on the basis of race. Paul said it all came down to a question of private versus public businesses. “Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant?” he said. “Or does the government own his restaurant?”


http://mahilena.typepad.com/blog/2012/03/do-we-want-to-live-in-the-libertarian-world-libertopia-the-minarchy-government.html

Balanced Budget Amendment is taking us backwards as if we were on Gold Standard

Monetary Sovereign nation whose money is just electronic accounts freed from the GOLD STANDARD does not need A BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

Balanced Budget Amendment is the thinking that made sense when we were subject to the GOLD STANDARD not anymore !!! THANKS TO NIXON in 1971 freeing us from such limits THIS IS REAL LIBERTY

The Biggest Republican Lie : A BALANCE BUDGET AMENDMENT NEEDED 
http://huff.to/12v7Yzs 

The Fatal Flaws of a Balanced Budget Amendment — The American Magazine http://shar.es/YjzZo 

Dangers of a Balanced Budget Amendment | Debate Club | US News Opinion http://t.usnews.com/aF26F 

Balanced Budget Amendment Would Cripple U.S. in a Recession | Debate Club | US News Opinion http://t.usnews.com/aF287 

The Rand Paul and Teaparty bullcrap! we do not need/want a Balanced Budget Amendment http://bit.ly/WkpoOF

Teaparty LIE "national debt will be a crushing burden on our children and grandchildren"

Why Debt Doomsday is a Myth

The debt-doomsday myth goes like this:

The national debt will be a crushing burden on our children and grandchildren.  Whatever we borrow today will require an eventual tax increase somewhere down the road.  If we continue allowing the debt to increase, future generations will face tax rates of 80%, 90%, or 100% (the dreaded “baby tax”), or hyperinflation, or the trauma of debt repudiation.  Financial doomsday will be inevitable, unless we elect fill-in-the-blank to save us from that disaster. 

It’s a myth advanced by people on all sides of the political landscape.  It invokes unfounded fear in voters everywhere.  Democrats use it as a potent political weapon; tax rate hikes to "fix it" are at the top of their fiscal agenda.  Republicans also use it as a potent political weapon; spending cuts to "fix it" are high on their agenda.  Entire presidential campaigns by independent candidates have been predicated on widespread, unfounded fear of the debt. 

But debt doomsday is a myth.  Its fundamental flaw is that it ignores two very important financial mechanisms:

•  debt rollover; and 
•  growing tax receipts in a growing economy.

Walter Wriston, former Chairman of the Citicorp Bank,put debt rollover this way:

If we had a truth-in Government act comparable to the truth-in-advertising law, every note issued by the Treasury would be obliged to include a sentence stating: "This note will be redeemed with the proceeds from an identical note which will be sold to the public when this one comes due."

So here’s the whole truth:  Although it’s true that too much debt can be damaging or even disastrous, it’salso true that just the right amount of ever-increasing debt can be, in Alexander Hamilton’s words, “a national blessing.” 

How come our politicians never explain that second possible outcome to us? 

Put yourself in the place of an investor who’s considering investing in our country’s treasury securities, such as savings bonds, or a ten-year Treasury note.   Your fundamental analysis would be something like this: 

"Let’s see:  Will the USA be able to cover its interest payments comfortably?  If so, my principal will be safe, because on the date my bond matures, plenty of other investors will be thinking the same way I'm thinking today; the money they pay for their new bonds will be used to pay me for my maturing bond—heck, I might even just exchange my old bond for a new one. If not, however, history teaches us that countries in that situation are likely to inflate their currency; in that case, I should either build a higher inflation premium into my desired rate of return, or simply avoid the risk by investing my money elsewhere.”

Key question:  Will the USA be able to cover its interest payments comfortably if its debt continues to grow and grow?  Short answer: Yes, if its tax receipts continue to grow and grow at least at the same pace as the interest payments.  The chart below shows how much of our tax receipts it has been taking to make those interest payments. 

Click to enlarge.

Here’s the anti-debt-doomsday argument, point-by-point:

•  The outstanding treasury securities will not all mature simultaneously, not even close;
•  When an old bond matures, it is exchanged for dollars that the government gets from selling a new, fresh bond;
•  The steadily-increasing number of bonds held by the public requires a steadily-increasing number of tax dollars each year to be paid out as interest;
•  A steadily-growing economy generates steadily-growing federal tax receipts, even with no change in tax rates;
•  Therefore, in reality, it's not an inevitable disaster, it's a race between two growing numbers: interest payments and tax receipts;
•  For several years, tax receipt growth has outpaced interest payment growth; in other words, the burden of debt has decreased. 

Conclusion:  If interest payment growth stayed even with tax receipt growth, year in and year out, our grandchildren's debt burden would be no greater than ours is today. 

Two things cause interest payments to grow: interest rates, and debt growth.  Keeping inflation low and steady will help hold interest rates down.  Debt grows steadily when we run perennial deficits—but tax receipts grow in tandem with the growth of the economy.  Bottom line:  If the economy grows at least a fast as the debt grows, and inflation is low and under control, our ability to make growing interest payments will increase at least as fast as our obligation to make those interest payments. 

If we can sustain those conditions, our grandchildren will have much larger incomes than we do, but will have a debt burden that is no worse than ours.  Do you like that scenario as much as I do?  Then why is there so little discussion about how to sustain those conditions?  Why is all the talk focused on how to cut this or cut that? 

Debt doomsday is a myth.  The national debt has used up more than its share of the national debate on fiscal policy.  Let’s press our politicians, on both sides, on the question of how best to grow the economy. 

 

http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2005/10/why_debt_doomsd.html

 

Claim that Sequestration is Obama's idea is technically false read/share this

Obama did not proposed the idea...the most that has been alledged is that Obama's team in particular Lew was thinking of a trigger..Bob Woodward admitted this in his book

(Some of the most detailed reporting on sequestration is from Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and his book The Price of Politics.)

"On page 326, Woodward describes Jack Lew, then the president's budget director, pitching the idea to the Senate's Democratic leader.

WOODWARD: Jack Lew said we have an idea for a trigger (although at the time Woodward does not elaborate what kind of a trigger Lew had in mind...either...a trigger is not equal sequestration)

and Jay Carney admitted last night in an interview with Bret Baier on Special Report that the sequester idea was put forward by the president’s team but even Carney is wrong, the trigger idea came from Obama's team but not the full description of the sequestration..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AIGCWLqQaAE

certainly there is nothing that proves that it was an original Obama idea...

the Republicans immediately developed the trigger idea into the sequestration idea as necessary and agreed to it overwhelmingly

When President Obama signed the bill shortly after it was passed by the Senate.

In doing so, the president said, "Is this the deal I would have preferred? No. But this compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need, and gives each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of the year."

Obama went along as a way to compromise but he did not himself came up with the idea
so the claim that it is Obama's idea is categorically FALSE

MAKING THE ASSOCIATIVE RELATION OF LEW = OBAMA TEAM = OBAMA IS JUST THAT A PROVOKING ASSOCIATION but not A TRUE ASSOCIATION they are related but you cannot make it equivalent... OBAMA'S TEAM IS NOT OBAMA

Conservative Lip Service To Freedom - Negative Liberty, Self Interest and Misery

The Conservative Idea of Freedom > Self Interest The Trap - 1 - F*k You Buddy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa1Ezq7e0MA

The Conservative Idea of Freedom > Self Interest The Trap - 2 - The Lonely Robot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2ch3idJL9Y

From Positive Liberty to Negative Liberty to Oligarchy Conservative Self Interest The Trap-3 Will Force U2 Be Free: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7yYQUH0YSM

 

@whitehouse Congratulations Mr. President on President's Day

Congratulations Mr. President on President's Day

Barack Obama May Go Down As the Only President Who Excelled In the Face of Racism

"In 1885 a special day was set aside to honor George Washington as the first president of the United States, or as he is referred, the father of this country. The reality is that regardless which Founding Fathers won the highest office in the young democracy, they would invariably be given a special place in history. Today, Presidents’ Day is more a day to celebrate all U.S. presidents, past and present, after it became part of the 1971 Uniform Monday Holiday Act to give Americans more three-day weekends, but little regard is given to the current president regardless who they are. Throughout America’s history, there have been presidents who are singled out for special regard, but it is more due to their actions in troubled times than any extraordinarily noteworthy achievements, and unfortunately little regard is given to the men who supported them in perilous times out of love of country and the people. The current President, Barack Obama, may go down as the only president in the nation’s history who excelled in spite of hostility borne of racism, and an opposition party intent on sabotaging his presidency, the economy, and the government.

No president expects universal support for their agenda from an opposition party, but they assume that despite differences in political ideology and approach to governance, members of Congress have the nation and its people’s best interest at heart. Over the past four years, it is obvious that not only have Republicans engaged in calculated obstruction of this President’s agenda, they have made it their life’s goal to destroy the economy, inflict harm on the people, and subvert the operation of the government out of hatred for President Obama and the American people"

http://www.politicususa.com/barack-obama-president-excelled-face-racism.html

Conservative LIE: The Federal Budget is like a Household Budget: Here’s Why not

L. Randall Wray takes the fear and loathing out of understanding federal budget deficits.

"Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and neither can the federal government”. On the surface that, might appear sensible; dig deeper and it makes no sense at all. A sovereign government bears no obvious resemblance to a household. Let us enumerate some relevant differences.

1. The US federal government is 221 years old, if we date its birth to the adoption of the Constitution. Arguably, that is about as good a date as we can find, since the Constitutionestablished a common market in the US, forbade states from interfering with interstate trade (for example, through taxation), gave to the federal government the power to levy and collect taxes, and reserved for the federal government the power to create money, to regulate its value, and to fix standards of weight and measurement-from whence our money of account, the dollar, comes. I don’t know any head of household with such an apparently indefinitely long lifespan. This might appear irrelevant, but it is not. When you die, your debts and assets need to be assumed and resolved. There is no “day of reckoning”, no final piper-paying date for the sovereign government. Nor do I know any household with the power to levy taxes, to give a name to — and issue — the currency we use, and to demand that those taxes are paid in the currency it issues.

2. With one brief exception, the federal government has been in debt every year since 1776. In January 1835, for the first and only time in U.S. history, the public debt was retired, and a budget surplus was maintained for the next two years in order to accumulate what Treasury SecretaryLevi Woodbury called “a fund to meet future deficits.” In 1837 the economy collapsed into a deep depression that drove the budget into deficit, and the federal government has been in debt ever since. Since 1776 there have been exactly seven periods of substantial budget surpluses and significant reduction of the debt. From 1817 to 1821 the national debt fell by 29 percent; from 1823 to 1836 it was eliminated (Jackson’s efforts); from 1852 to 1857 it fell by 59 percent, from 1867 to 1873 by 27 percent, from 1880 to 1893 by more than 50 percent, and from 1920 to 1930 by about a third. Of course, the last time we ran a budget surplus was during the Clinton years. I do not know any household that has been able to run budget deficits for approximately 190 out of the past 230-odd years, and to accumulate debt virtually nonstop since 1837.

3. The United States has also experienced six periods of depression. The depressions began in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1929. (Do you see any pattern? Take a look at the dates listed above.) With the exception of the Clinton surpluses, every significant reduction of the outstanding debt has been followed by a depression, and every depression has been preceded by significant debt reduction. The Clinton surplus was followed by the Bush recession, a speculative euphoria, and then the collapse in which we now find ourselves. The jury is still out on whether we might manage to work this up to yet another great depression. While we cannot rule out coincidences, seven surpluses followed by six and a half depressions (with some possibility for making it the perfect seven) should raise some eyebrows. And, by the way, our less serious downturns have almost always been preceded by reductions of federal budget deficits. I don’t know of any case of a national depression caused by a household budget surplus.

4. The federal government is the issuer of our currency. Its IOUs are always accepted in payment. Government actually spends by crediting bank deposits (and credits the reserves of those banks); if you don’t want a bank deposit, government will give you cash; if you don’t want cash it will give you a treasury bond. People will work, sell, panhandle, lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to obtain the government’s dollars. I wish my IOUs were so desirable. I don’t know any household that is able to spend by crediting bank deposits and reserves, or by issuing currency. OK, some counterfeiters try, but they go to jail.

5. Some claim that if the government continues to run deficits, some day the dollar’s value will fall due to inflation; or its value will depreciate relative to foreign currencies. But only a moron would refuse to accept dollars today on the belief that at some unknown date in the hypothetical and distant future their value might be less than today’s value. If you have dollars you don’t want, please send them to me. Note that even if we accept that budget deficits can lead tocurrency devaluation, that is another obvious distinguishing characteristic: my household’s spending in excess of income won’t reduce the purchasing power of the dollar by any measurable amount.

If you put your mind to it, you will no doubt come up with other differences. I realize that distinguishing between a sovereign government and a household does not put to rest all deficit fears. But since this analogy is invoked so often, I hope that the next time you hear it used you will challenge the speaker to explain exactly why a government’s budget is like a household’s budget. If the speaker claims that government budget deficits are unsustainable, that government must eventually pay back all that debt, ask him or her why we have managed to avoid retiring debt since 1837-is 173 years long enough to establish a “sustainable” pattern?"

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster L. Randall Wray is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

http://rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/federal-budget-not-household-budget-here-s-why

Another Conservative LIE: national debt will be a crushing burden on our children and grandchildren

Why Debt Doomsday is a Myth

The debt-doomsday myth goes like this:

The national debt will be a crushing burden on our children and grandchildren.  Whatever we borrow today will require an eventual tax increase somewhere down the road.  If we continue allowing the debt to increase, future generations will face tax rates of 80%, 90%, or 100% (the dreaded “baby tax”), or hyperinflation, or the trauma of debt repudiation.  Financial doomsday will be inevitable, unless we elect fill-in-the-blank to save us from that disaster. 

It’s a myth advanced by people on all sides of the political landscape.  It invokes unfounded fear in voters everywhere.  Democrats use it as a potent political weapon; tax rate hikes to "fix it" are at the top of their fiscal agenda.  Republicans also use it as a potent political weapon; spending cuts to "fix it" are high on their agenda.  Entire presidential campaigns by independent candidates have been predicated on widespread, unfounded fear of the debt. 

But debt doomsday is a myth.  Its fundamental flaw is that it ignores two very important financial mechanisms:

•  debt rollover; and 
•  growing tax receipts in a growing economy.

Walter Wriston, former Chairman of the Citicorp Bank,put debt rollover this way:

If we had a truth-in Government act comparable to the truth-in-advertising law, every note issued by the Treasury would be obliged to include a sentence stating: "This note will be redeemed with the proceeds from an identical note which will be sold to the public when this one comes due."

So here’s the whole truth:  Although it’s true that too much debt can be damaging or even disastrous, it’salso true that just the right amount of ever-increasing debt can be, in Alexander Hamilton’s words, “a national blessing.” 

How come our politicians never explain that second possible outcome to us? 

Put yourself in the place of an investor who’s considering investing in our country’s treasury securities, such as savings bonds, or a ten-year Treasury note.   Your fundamental analysis would be something like this: 

"Let’s see:  Will the USA be able to cover its interest payments comfortably?  If so, my principal will be safe, because on the date my bond matures, plenty of other investors will be thinking the same way I'm thinking today; the money they pay for their new bonds will be used to pay me for my maturing bond—heck, I might even just exchange my old bond for a new one. If not, however, history teaches us that countries in that situation are likely to inflate their currency; in that case, I should either build a higher inflation premium into my desired rate of return, or simply avoid the risk by investing my money elsewhere.”

Key question:  Will the USA be able to cover its interest payments comfortably if its debt continues to grow and grow?  Short answer: Yes, if its tax receipts continue to grow and grow at least at the same pace as the interest payments.  The chart below shows how much of our tax receipts it has been taking to make those interest payments. 

Click to enlarge.

Here’s the anti-debt-doomsday argument, point-by-point:

•  The outstanding treasury securities will not all mature simultaneously, not even close;
•  When an old bond matures, it is exchanged for dollars that the government gets from selling a new, fresh bond;
•  The steadily-increasing number of bonds held by the public requires a steadily-increasing number of tax dollars each year to be paid out as interest;
•  A steadily-growing economy generates steadily-growing federal tax receipts, even with no change in tax rates;
•  Therefore, in reality, it's not an inevitable disaster, it's a race between two growing numbers: interest payments and tax receipts;
•  For several years, tax receipt growth has outpaced interest payment growth; in other words, the burden of debt has decreased. 

Conclusion:  If interest payment growth stayed even with tax receipt growth, year in and year out, our grandchildren's debt burden would be no greater than ours is today. 

Two things cause interest payments to grow: interest rates, and debt growth.  Keeping inflation low and steady will help hold interest rates down.  Debt grows steadily when we run perennial deficits—but tax receipts grow in tandem with the growth of the economy.  Bottom line:  If the economy grows at least a fast as the debt grows, and inflation is low and under control, our ability to make growing interest payments will increase at least as fast as our obligation to make those interest payments. 

If we can sustain those conditions, our grandchildren will have much larger incomes than we do, but will have a debt burden that is no worse than ours.  Do you like that scenario as much as I do?  Then why is there so little discussion about how to sustain those conditions?  Why is all the talk focused on how to cut this or cut that? 

Debt doomsday is a myth.  The national debt has used up more than its share of the national debate on fiscal policy.  Let’s press our politicians, on both sides, on the question of how best to grow the economy. 

 

http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2005/10/why_debt_doomsd.html