Lisa Benson for September 28, 2011

Does anyone learn grammar anymore? “Your” is a second person possessive pronoun. “You’re” is the contraction for “you are”. How I hate laziness!!!

Shouldn´t there be at least one more fuse burning on those sticks?

It’s also interesting that “conservatives” point to the effect; rather than their 25 years of low to no tax, added to massive credit spending, which was the CAUSE! Every element of their “conservative” economic model has failed, and they won’t change course- oh wait, for the moment the ultra-rich have been scraping off the cream from the sacred cow, and they still haven’t noticed they killed it.

Methinks you need to go back to school.

Nope, you’re wrong. Stating “YOUR cartoons are my favorite!” or "YOU"RE my favorite cartoonist!" rather than “Your my favorite cartoonist!” would have been correct.Always be careful when pointing a critical finger at someone else, there usually are three pointing back at you.

Surplus of 2 trillion dollars in 2000, then massive tax cuts for ten years. And then we have a massive debt! Republicans can’t figure that out? They also think spending cuts will help pay off the debt. Not using my credit card or using it less has no effect on what was already borrowed. You actually have to pay that down..Republicans used to understand economics, not anymore. Or they are not serious about the debt. If they win in 2012, the debt ceiling debacle will just be the opening act of the Keystone Coservatives…….

Bruce: Watch that “you”, please. I haven’t “owed” anyone, or had installment payments in over 15 years. I use a “credit” card rarely, only for convenience, and pay them off every month.(Which means they hate me!) I use a debit card (but NOT “on line”) as a convenience. I spend LESS than I earn, and don’t run up debt. Gee, what an amazing process!

Spending cuts are needed, but with care, not a club, mostly aimed by Teapublicans at resource agencies and social services, while banks and oil companies continue getting “freebies”. No, I haven’t forgotten “defense”, our greatest economic burden, ever, and needlessly so.

Wraithkin: What Bloomberg doesn’t point out is that total “defense” spending is roughly (at least) twice the “announced” $850 billion annually. Guess what, “defense” doesn’t also have contributions coming in from what are supposed to be separate funds from the “general fund” to support it, as does Social Security AND Medicare. It is the constant confusion of Apples with hard cider that allows Teapublicans to keep their followers drunk, with “power”, and following.

“That is all the TEA Party people are asking of the government. Balance your Budget!!!!!!!!!!!”And let’s be clear… you can’t do that by only stripping out defense spending. You can wipe out the entire defense budget and you still don’t eliminate the deficit. And that’s not accounting for all the unemployment checks and severance payments you’re going to be making to the military and the support structure. So really you won’t be saving jack squat if you do that.I find it interesting how not a single liberal on this board has answered the most pressing question: Once the “rich” and corporations have been soaked for all they have, and the spending still continues to increase, where will the government get the money next?

@ Bruce: I agree. There’s no cognizent plan being laid out by anyone of the liberal mindset of when the reality will set in: The money will run out. It will, because income isn’t infinite. The rich only make xyz dollars. Corporations need to earn a profit to stay in business, so that limits how much government can take without crushing employment further. At some point either a) you need to stop spending or b) you start taking from other people. That’s the danger of this whole “class warfare” or “demonizing” of the rich. Ok, they’re rich. So what? Many of them got there of their own accord, through their own efforts and actions. And now you want to punish them for that success? That seems somewhat counterintuitive. We want to encourage people to better themselves, not sit content to live in squalor. If people live a good life by not doing anything to earn it (i.e. 3 years of unemployment benefits, welfare, food stamps, etc), what incentive do they have to try harder? And what waits at the end of the “try harder” road? Higher taxes and more of your income taken away. Wow, what an incentive! Never considered by the liberals. The well will run dry. If we don’t stop now, there won’t be any rope left with which we can pull use to pull ourselves out.

you know whats NOT going to help. spending cuts on the middle class when oil company’s getting billions of tax payer dollors when oil is 80 dollors a barrel and gas is 3.50 a gallon.

The problem with your assumption is twofold. One, you assume that having the “rich” pay their “fair share” will solve all our debt woes. Let’s take a look at the math of that assumption.Those who make over 250k earn approximately 24.1% of all income, but pay 43.6% of income taxes. Now, assuming you believe that’s still not “fair” enough, let’s sieze all of their earnings. How dare they have the audacity to be rich!? 2% of households earn over that. So let’s reverse extrapolate that. So we have $900 billion in collections in FY 2010. 43.6% of that is $392 billion. Now let’s assume that their marginal tax rate is only 25% (to be kind, because after all, they aren’t paying their “fair” share). So let’s quadruple their contribution amounts to say that’s 100%. $392 billion x 4 = $1.5696 trillion, a surplus of $1.177 trillion. Siezed. At 100%. And what was our deficit this year alone? It’s projected to be $1.6 trillion. So even if you took all their money, you still can’t eliminate the deficit. And that’s quadrupling their tax burden. These are real numbers, not pretend ones. Taxing the rich will not solve the problem.The second flaw is that you assume that government is going to curtail spending to meet up with our needs. With the unfunded liabilities for public social programs (SS, medicare/aid) in the tens of trillions of dollars, the debt is going to get worse, not better. As the above math proved, raising taxes will not eliminate this problem. Reforming the system will. Congress won’t learn anything if we keep dumping more money at the problem; we need to teach them to live like we do: Within our means. And so I go back to the original question: Where do you think government will turn when the “rich” well runs dry? Because as it stands now, they don’t seem to have any sort of self-control, and they won’t cut back spending… at least not if liberals remain in charge.

Regardless of your points, you need to work on your grammar, capitalization and punctuation. :P Reading your posts hurts my eyes.

^^ The problem is that while you may be a fiscal moderate, those in charge aren’t. They spend their time demonizing the rich and the corporations, the very people who pay the majority of taxes in this country. While you may not like me painting with such a broad brush, my painting is more true than it’s not. Here’s why I categorize the liberal argument like I do: the liberal establishment (and I use that term to define the groups, not you specifically) pushes for more and more social programs, more and more governmental spending, and more and more entitlement programs. The problem is they don’t answer the fundamental question truthfully: Where will the money come from? Hey, I’m all for helping people who can’t help themselves, but not at the expense of everyone else. As my math pointed out, quadrupling the taxation on the top 2% of earners (those making over 250k a year) still won’t pay for the deficit spending that’s been going on for the last 4 years. Every year this administration has been in charge, the deficit has exceeded that amount. So it boils back down to the question: Where will the money come from? No serious discussion has been had to answer that question from our leadership.SBW: We did just fine when the rich were taxed at 90%? You mean when they found loopholes to not pay anywhere near that amount, and when tax receipts were lower after the 90% tax rate was enacted than before? Go look up some statistical information in our history. Every example of tax hikes is met with an equally large bottoming-out of tax receipts. So your argument to tax them at 90% only serves one purpose: To make your ego feel bigger than it really is. “I SHOWED THEM!” Bullcrap. You’re just looking for a scapegoat to explain away the current problems instead of having the serious discussion to the question I posted above. So I challenge any of the liberals on these boards to show me how soaking them at 90% will pay for our woes, as SBW proposes. Show me how we can afford to continue on our current path without changing our largest two albatrosses: Social Security and Medicare/aid. If you can back it up with math and not rhetoric, I’ll eat my words. But, I know that it can’t be done, and so do you.

Sorry all for being gone. I don’t check the toon threads from home. In order: @ Canuck: That’s a tough question. You have two lines of logic: The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few, but at the same time you have what’s fair for everyone is the opportunity to succeed. I believe that everyone has a choice. Everyone has the freedom to act upon themselves. So what would I do? I would pro-rate all the SS for how long everyone’s paid in (calculate their payments, add in interest, no index for inflation) and then create a CD or separate tax-exempt fund for them with government-bonded interest rates. You pay in more, you get more. You paid in less, you get less. That simple. Then I’d subtract the payments you’ve received from that total and there you have it. If you are too young to collect it, you can’t pull it yet. Yes, it’d be a glut of debt to pay at once, but then all SS recipients are off our books. That’s 20% of our budget right there gone in one shot, and ends unfunded liabilities. Then all future payments made to the SS fund are no longer collected. People will pay in what they want. The only exception to this would be disabled children who qualify for SS (which is a very minute percent of the population) would be able to pull before paying in. This essentially becomes a defined-contribution retirement fund, instead of a defined benefit fund. There’s a reason the private-sector has gone away from defined benefit plans: They are too expensive.Here’s my rationale: This way it puts people in charge of (and responsible for) their own retirement. If people are foolish enough to blow their retirement funds on other things, that’s their own problem. It is the government’s job to empower you to save for your retirement, not provide one for you. “To promote the general welfare,” not “To provide the general welfare.” @ Heavy B: Don’t talk to me about loopholes when nearly half the US Population doesn’t pay any federal income taxes, and a large percentage of those actually get more money back than they paid in. I don’t advocate loopholes. I advocate a simple system that doesn’t give anyone any breaks. Strangely, Cain’s 9-9-9 plan makes a whole lot more sense than our current tax code. And if the math backs it up, why not? It’s all about what’s fair to everyone, not just to those on the receiving end of the government dole. Here’s another example: We have private businesses paying into the unemployment insurance fund. Employers, especially small businesses, have no say in how long the unemployment benefits are to be handed out. 3 years now is how long they are being passed out. So you have a vast number of people sitting on their rears for 2 years before they even start looking for work. The premiums go up for businesses, and here’s the kicker: Small business owners only get 4 weeks of unemployment benefits if their businesses go under. 4 weeks. So these owners cough up more and more every year for people who sit on their rears, but when they lose their livelihood, they only get 4 weeks. That’s fair?

Sorry for not getting back to you yesterday… had an appointment at the VA regional hospital. Stupid disability claims. Anyway… to answer your question. I (personally) wouldn’t. But the government should. The government is not supposed to be there for everyone making a dumb mistake. That’s what charities, communities, and neighborhoods are for. I know that a lot of people and businesses I talk to are contributing less to charities (they are hurting across the country) because they know their tax dollars are being used forcibly to supplement needy people. The more government takes, the less people voluntarily give. Kind of a see-saw effect. There should be community charity programs to educate people how to save. There should be programs to assist those who can’t help themselves. What’s happened is because of government’s intrusion, the sense of “community” has disappeared. And it’s truly a shame.