pork the other white meat that keeps stealing money.

1. The war machine itself is not. The perpetual war since WWII.

2. The Afghanistan war alone is 1% of the federal budget. I'd imagine many of the proposed budget cuts are significantly less than that - yet we talk about them.

Earmarks are less than 1%. Guess people should stop using that as a talking point too?

Not saying I don't think the wars shouldn't be ended or that they help our fiscal situation. But it seems like a goofy place to prioritize in budget cuts. You're rallying for focus on something that takes up ~1%, with behemoths like the low SS entitlement age or the inefficiencies of American healthcare swallowing up more than that every month.... Again I think we need to look at everything, but ending the war is more of a moral talking point than a huge fiscal burden....

ah, how nice it would be to work on wall street.

http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_GrowTogetherOrPullFurtherApart_20101213.pdf

I will have to chew through this throughout the day like a dry steak...

But, I was just talking to my gf about this literally last night, and I think it's a relevant point in the context of this discussion...

Wall St provides a service... essentially its a big machine that charges a commission to take money and use it to make money. If people want to talk about the favoritism the gov't shows, or actual ways Wall St has stolen money from people (which has happened), I think the anger needs to be focused there... not on the fact that people on Wall St are making big bucks...

Not to mention... the whole compensation structure isn't understood... people cry about Wall St bonuses, because in whatever line of work they're in bonuses aren't the norm. Then to add to that, the press sensationalizes big figures like "Wall St pays out 150 billion in bonuses"... not bringing up the number of people those bonuses are split amongst, the distribution of those bonuses, or the fact that the bonuses are performance based; essentially tying a huge part of one's salary to their performance....

And of course nobody wants to address a huge reason wealth is slipping from the middle class... in that report, they talk about how from 52 to 82 the top 1% held a minimal amt of weight... well in the 80s, unless I'm mistaken, middle America got hooked to credit, and has been pissing away much of the money it should have been saving (aka its WEALTH) ever since. Now in some cases, it was unavoidable... i.e. medical emergencies, or paying for the exponentially more expensive costs of college... but a lot of it is largely in part due to us overextending ourselves to live a quality of life we feel entitled to but cannot afford...

NOBODY wants to talk about THAT... because we've come to the point where its politically incorrect to insist that people take responsibility for their own actions, and the status quo is shifting all the blame for one's problems on some mystery group ("I have no wealth, because someone made a billion dollars on Wall St..." Really????). THIS, not welfare or tax breaks or the war or any other hollow talking point is the cancer tearing America apart... sorry for the rant.

Again I think we need to look at everything, but ending the war is more of a moral talking point than a huge fiscal burden....

I'm talking about the war/terrorism machine. The 20% of the federal budget. (obviously not all 20% could be cut)

Also I was saying (not to you directly) that when anyone (republicans) talk (republicans) about earmarks (republicans), they should talk about Afghanistan too - if not ALL of our warring.

Wall St provides a service... essentially its a big machine that charges a commission to take money and use it to make money.

earlier in our country's history Wall St provided purely a service that made our country, economy and society better. but the explosion of investment banking and complex financial instruments (especially from the 1980s on) has moved far beyond the realm of simply a "service".

Exhibit A for the excess in growth of financial industries and instruments is the sub-prime mortgage crisis, which ruined people's lives and retirements and almost brought the global economy crashing down.

I agree with you w/r/t to bonuses. It's a point I only came to understand b/c some of my good friends are bankers.

but a lot of it is largely in part due to us overextending ourselves to live a quality of life we feel entitled to but cannot afford...

and also due to predatory practices of credit card companies. both are factors.

because we've come to the point where its politically incorrect to insist that people take responsibility for their own actions

politically incorrect? there's an entire political party devoted to this rhetoric. in fact, there's TWO.

Both. But I'm also not giving a simplistic rant against teh ebil corporations.

credit card companies have very ugly & intentional practices that promote people going into debt.

American pathology also chooses to inadequately regulate various industries, lest we become a communist state.

Both. But I'm also not giving a simplistic rant against teh ebil corporations.

credit card companies have very ugly & intentional practices that promote people going into debt.

But Americans play right into said practices, voluntarily. Somehow saving has become a 4 letter word.

If you were tzar, would you start "forcing people to save" at the government level or the personal level?

As a tzar, I would have a hard time telling people they can not make stupid decisions with their own money.

I might try to stop them from making their first stupid decision, but after that, I would assume they had suffered negative consequences from thier prior stupid decisions and even participate in taking their money from them too.

I might be truly evil.

People are too impulsive/willfully uninformed for their own good IMO...

I would create a program to incentivize saving... it would be something like a 401K, but with a time dependent penalty. I.e., if you save some amount of money in a year, but then use it the next year, it would get taxed like regular income. But for every year you hold onto it, the lower the taxes on it would be. Of course there would be a limit on what one could save, so it would only be used for stuff like retirement, yadda yadda, and rich people couldn't sock away all their earnings. Govt could use those reserves the issue loans at interest, maybe. IDK. As is people don't save, and even the damage of CC debt isn't enough to stop people from taking on debt.