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| A NEWS SNIPET CHALLENGE |
| Sunday, November 12, 2006 |
| This is an opportunity for my friends on the left and right to weigh in on a New Snipet Challenge.
Here is the challenge:
Please name as many Bush Admininstration policies and initiatives that are "conservative" |
posted by Jack Mercer @ 11/12/2006 08:57:00 PM   |
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| 3 Comments: |
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First and maybe only- privatization of social security. On the surface though- really this was just all about politics and I dont think this administration was serious enough about it. Bush's conferences that he held around the country on social security were limited to certain states- mostly states that he had taken in the election that had at least one Democrat Senator.
That, and the audiences were handpicked so there was absolutely no room for open discussion or dialogue on it. Obviously Bush spent a little too much listening to his advisor and not enough listening to principle. It was all too easy for anyone against privatization to shut it down given the way they tried to suppress debate and discussion on it.
We had a posting on this I believe, and my objection to it was that it would cost a lot of money to make the transformation to private accounts, when we are bogged down in a war and in an enormous amount of debt. For the time being, with all of the retirement account options out there to the public- even if you arent provided a 401k or 403b, the Roth and Traditional IRAs (preferably the Roth if your MAGI isnt over 115k a year- I think thats close to the cutoff) are a solid investment to make- people can survive without the privatization for now.
What wasnt propaganda was that the social security fund will go dry by 2015-2020 I believe (a little fuzzy on some exact figures and dates here). I cannot see the problem with privatization down the road, or at least some changes to the program- they should at least be able to reallocate the current investments to get more profit out of the money they steal from our paychecks every other week.
And regarding that old post, you, Jack, had posted a quote by FDR himself regarding his vision for the program. It essentially said, "once we get out of this mess, there's no reason people cant take control of their own social security." I'll look it up in the archives.
Other than that, I wouldnt say that Bush is prolife- I mean, he seems to love the death penalty and I am not so sure what he has done regarding abortion in this country, agree or disagree with it.
As far as the tax cuts, more could and should have been done for more people. Were the tax cuts mostly for the rich? Yeah, sure, but they were already paying about 40% and I believe Bush slashed that down to about 33-34% or something. Mochi had a great post one time about taxation in this country, and how we could easily get by with taxing everyone and all businesses at a rate of 10% and still have enough money to go around, and do well, with a fiscally responsible congress. Which, we may never ever see in our lifetimes.
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Hi CH!
Great input. If we could consider forced contributions to a retirement fund as being conservative, I guess the closest thing one could get to that would be smart investment of those funds into annuitized funds--that would make the current system less like welfare, and more like a retirement fund. I posted a new article from Ralph on the topic and put a note down at the bottom--it is interesting that private accounts were the idea of Democrats up until President Bush acted on the recommendation.
Of course now that you are in finance and understand the time value of money, you can see the prudence of investment of the funds, rather than letting it decline in value.
Bush is not pro-life nor claimed to be. He is for conditional abortion and made no effort to hide this going into his campaign. But people hear what they want to hear I'm afraid, so you are 100% correct there.
As far as the tax cuts, this could be the only move I would consider "conservative". Just to break it down, the to 50% wage earners pay 96.54% of all income taxes, the top 1% pay 34.27%. It is mythic that the middle class now share the burden of income taxes and of course anyone in the lower socio-economic classes pay none, but instead receive credits (welfare) while working. If there was going to be any % cut it would be the rich who got the bigger cut because they naturally pay more. I'm sure the rich in this country would love to see a more equitable code.
Now here's the kicker--where is it best for the money to be? In the government's hands or the economy? Even a 1st year econ student can answer that question intelligently, (although I don't believe most of our politicians can:)
Oh, here's one from the twisted mind of Jack that you need to keep in mind. The government really has only the ability to impede and economy, not stimulate it. When looking at economics over a long-term, a government stimulates an economy by leaving it alone and not interfering. (My friend Light and I were discussing this in a previous post) When government involves itself in business (and how can it do that-regulation and taxation) it only impedes it. Since our standard of living is based on productivity and the strength of the economy then it is in our best interest to keep the government largely out of business.
Unfortunately our Democrat friends understand this least of all, so expect our economy to begin looking like the Carter years if they assume complete control. (This would be a bit before your time, CH, and most of my peers have forgotten how awful and disasterous those economic times were)
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Legislation for a fence to keep illegals out of the US is one big one. In California much of their fieldhands are illegals. I just heard this yesterday on abc news, but in Dallas Texas, there's this school that teaches illegals and legals at night. The principal said it didn't matter if they're illegal or not, they have the right to get an American education. Five students graduated last year and plan to go to college. He didn't seem to care about immigration authorities coming to investigate.
Tax breaks for businesses
A side joke: What is it with Republicans and officials who can't make sense? There's foot-in-mouth Rumsfeld, Quayle from Bush Sr, Bush Jr.,Coulter, Limbaugh...am I missing anybody?
Light
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First and maybe only- privatization of social security. On the surface though- really this was just all about politics and I dont think this administration was serious enough about it. Bush's conferences that he held around the country on social security were limited to certain states- mostly states that he had taken in the election that had at least one Democrat Senator.
That, and the audiences were handpicked so there was absolutely no room for open discussion or dialogue on it. Obviously Bush spent a little too much listening to his advisor and not enough listening to principle. It was all too easy for anyone against privatization to shut it down given the way they tried to suppress debate and discussion on it.
We had a posting on this I believe, and my objection to it was that it would cost a lot of money to make the transformation to private accounts, when we are bogged down in a war and in an enormous amount of debt. For the time being, with all of the retirement account options out there to the public- even if you arent provided a 401k or 403b, the Roth and Traditional IRAs (preferably the Roth if your MAGI isnt over 115k a year- I think thats close to the cutoff) are a solid investment to make- people can survive without the privatization for now.
What wasnt propaganda was that the social security fund will go dry by 2015-2020 I believe (a little fuzzy on some exact figures and dates here). I cannot see the problem with privatization down the road, or at least some changes to the program- they should at least be able to reallocate the current investments to get more profit out of the money they steal from our paychecks every other week.
And regarding that old post, you, Jack, had posted a quote by FDR himself regarding his vision for the program. It essentially said, "once we get out of this mess, there's no reason people cant take control of their own social security." I'll look it up in the archives.
Other than that, I wouldnt say that Bush is prolife- I mean, he seems to love the death penalty and I am not so sure what he has done regarding abortion in this country, agree or disagree with it.
As far as the tax cuts, more could and should have been done for more people. Were the tax cuts mostly for the rich? Yeah, sure, but they were already paying about 40% and I believe Bush slashed that down to about 33-34% or something. Mochi had a great post one time about taxation in this country, and how we could easily get by with taxing everyone and all businesses at a rate of 10% and still have enough money to go around, and do well, with a fiscally responsible congress. Which, we may never ever see in our lifetimes.