[Rhodes22-list] Economics

[brad haslett]

Slim,

Don't sell yourself short as an economist!  Anyone
who's heard your music knows you can count to four
quite well and perhaps your talent is exactly what we
need in charge of the national budget.  Balancing a
budget is pretty simple, you raise revenue, cut
expenses, or both.  As has already been stated on the
list at least once today, some peoples solution is to
pull the string on their Chatty Cathy doll and repeat
the mantra "raise taxes, raise taxes, raise taxes".
That's a popular solution when 80% of the taxes are
paid by 20% of the voters.  What is less popular but
even more necessary is to cut spending.  When
corporations get into trouble it is not uncommon to
cut spending accross the board and figure out where
the cuts were excessive later.  I personally like the
approach we teach for aircraft performance as a model
for fiscal responsibility, "measure it with a
micrometer, mark it with a grease pencil, cut it with
an axe".  Often the people who sing the same tune over
and over, "Raise Taxes" are actually promoting another
agenda far removed from fiscal responsibility.  No
political party is without guilt on this issue.  We
WILL be owned by China if we continue down this path. 
Don't worry about going to jail in China, just do what
the Chinese do - "Oh, we're having a party?  Oh, you
mean that Party, oh they're great too!"

Brad

--- Slim <salm at mn.rr.com> wrote:

> I'm no economist (Duh!) I'm a musician and most
> musicians only have to be
> able to count up to four, then start over.  But even
> an idiot like me can
> smell a big rat.  Our national deficit is 
> ____________fill in the blank--it
> changes daily.  And our debt is almost 8 TRILLION! 
> If I have this straight,
> the "deficit" is just for the current fiscal year
> and the "debt" is the
> accumulated total.
> 
> As an individual, I know I can just throw down the
> plastic and spend more
> than I have, but at some point there will have to be
> a day of reckoning.
> Sure, I can borrow from one card to pay another,
> robbing Peter to pay Paul,
> but how long can that go on?  Apparently Bush seems
> to think, forever.
> 
> Now, China is holding the paper on most of our debt.
>  China is paying for
> the war in Iraq and China will pay for NOLA
> reconstruction.  US taxpayers
> will bleed too but there's no way there's enough
> money in the general fund
> to even remotely come close to funding what our
> government has committed us
> to spending.  So thanks to China we continue to
> float, but for how long?
> 
> China wants Taiwan.  Japan wants Taiwan, or at least
> the South China sea.
> If it comes to blows, we'll side with Japan. 
> Economically speaking, what
> then?  Personally, I'd love to go work in China but
> I'd hate to be there
> when this goes down.  Can't you just see me sitting
> there in a Chinese
> prison playing the harmonica?
> 
> Isn't anybody else doing the math here?  The polls
> show Bush's approval
> rating at an all-time low of what--38% or something?
>  It seems to me that
> figure is way too high!  How can 38% of our
> population be so hoodwinked into
> thinking that Bush is taking us in the right
> direction when even a stupid
> musician like myself can clearly see the
> irresponsibility and out and out
> insanity of spending money you don't have! 
> Especially when you're relying
> on a country that we're not really allied with and
> could go to war with at
> any moment.
> 
> And the Democrats--the lousy Democrats--sit around
> ringing their hands
> wondering how to win the next election.  All it
> should take is just one damn
> candidate to do the math and stand up and tell the
> truth.  Do we need Ross
> Perot to show us a few more pie charts before we get
> it?  We're about to
> hear a giant sucking sound coming from China.
> 
> Slim
> 
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