[The One and Only...]

Originally Posted by KevinTheHerbivore

By what standards? The 1950s (POST New Deal), NOT the teens, proved to be the decade of greatest American wealth, meaning the decade that most Americans lived a steady life, and poverty remained low. Before 1913...? What are you talking about...?

Something to look at.

The pre-1913 era is arguably the best in the history of the american economy: not just because of the amount of wealth, but because of other factors as well. However, how much these other factors really count is subjective, so I'll just leave it at that.

It should also be noted that during the 1950's, the payroll tax rate for the average american family was only around 2-3% compared to 15.3% today.

Please, we give a microscopic amount of money in international aid, and we owe years of back payments to the UN in dues.

What dues? Membership dues? Dues that the UN would use to fight off poverty?

If it's anything other than aid to our country, I don't think we really owe it. I don't think we should be in the UN at all to begin with, so I don't see how this is an argument against me.

Go ahead and dig it up, and all you'll do is support his argument for progressive taxation. Social Security is failing because for the past 20 years or so, the tax burden has slowly been taken off of its traditional source (nanely the top wage earners and corporations), and has been placed upon the working middle class.

And if ss is failing, doesn't that make two massive tax cuts highly neglegent on President Bush's part,....?

If you think I make you laugh, imagine how silly you seem now. The fact is, SS hasn't done anything but grow in funding. Put simply: SS can simply know grow fast enough to compensate for our population. It would take tax increases, not just progressive tax rates.

If anything, SS's failing should mean that Bush listens to the alternative, uses the alternative as an option for those already in SS, and prevents newer generations from opting in the program. That way, we can get rid of it rather than pump money into a failing system.

Absurd. Again, a tiny % every state's budget, compared to other expidentures and corporate bailouts.

It's true that welfare costs very little in taxes. I would argue that it goes further than that in effect, however.

Traditionally, recession is followed by periods of growth. Tax cuts are supposed to speed up that process. Bush's tax cuts don't look to be doing that, nor do any no-partisan projections look to verify such results.

My point is that for all we know, the economy would be a lot worse right now without those tax cuts. Thus, they may not have been enough to make the recession end, but they might have speed up the recovery without even looking like it.

[quote]Maybe because even under our current system, roughly 50 million Americans even today go without healthcare...? Maybe because prior to the New Deal, ya know, your "golden age," the elderly did comprise a large portion of our nation's impoverished....?[/url]

I would ask you to support your statement - and even if you do, ask yourself this: is it really government's job to support the elderly because they didn't save any money for the future?

Yeah, speculation on the Wall Street Journal's OP-ED page. Speculation by the Heritage Foundation, and that lunatic Grover Norquist.

Yes, because we all know just who unbiased Paul Krugman is.

http://www.amatecon.com/gd/gdcandc.html

America's Great Depression by Murray Rothbard (my avatar) is also supposed to be an excellent read about how the Great Depression was caused by the government.

Just to provide a counterpoint.

They also weren't depressions on the scale of that faced in the 1930s.

Yes, but then how would we know how the free market would have handled the Great Depression? Based on previous information - and how long it takes us to get out of modern recessions - it seems as though it would have taken less time.