All of you: Please vote for Donald Trump

[Lune]

Originally Posted by maskedmelon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What do you mean by this? Are you arguing that the government should spend more, tax more, or both? Right now, the US has a larger debt to income ratio than any other state with the exception of perhaps Greece. Not sure where they sit after their third bailout though... That is not conservative fiscal policy.

US fiscal conservatives are not spendthrifts. Like I said before, in spite of their rhetoric they just spend differently (Defense, medicare, agriculture subsidies, etc). With our status as a reserve currency, it works in our interest to accrue a healthy amount of debt. That is not the case with other countries, and will change as soon as other powers are able to mount an effective challenge to the dollar.
Perhaps we have too much debt, but what you need to understand is that it isn't a Democrat-Republican issue. Both sides are equally capable of fiscal irresponsibility. Don't forget who ran it up so high in the first place. In California, after so many years of Schwarzenegger, it took Jerry fucking Brown, a Democrat, to get our budget under control.

The government should absolutely tax more and spend more, but intelligently and honorably. Unfortunately, with the current state of corruption that has permeated both sides of our political system, this is not possible. Taxing and spending have simply become means with which to plunder the country. Compare this to places with functional institutions, such as Denmark, Germany, Canada, etc, and I don't see how you can embrace American-style conservative economics. These places hardly even have higher taxes than we do, it's just that instead of spending tax dollars on flying helicopters around Afghanistan, they spend it on universal healthcare, tuition, labor benefits, infrastructure, etc, which are all evil things to the American right.

[TarukShmaruk]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

US fiscal conservatives are not spendthrifts. Like I said before, in spite of their rhetoric they just spend differently (Defense, medicare, agriculture subsidies, etc). With our status as a reserve currency, it works in our interest to accrue a healthy amount of debt. That is not the case with other countries, and will change as soon as other powers are able to mount an effective challenge to the dollar.
Perhaps we have too much debt, but what you need to understand is that it isn't a Democrat-Republican issue. Both sides are equally capable of fiscal irresponsibility. Don't forget who ran it up so high in the first place. In California, after so many years of Schwarzenegger, it took Jerry fucking Brown, a Democrat, to get our budget under control.

The government should absolutely tax more and spend more, but intelligently and honorably. Unfortunately, with the current state of corruption that has permeated both sides of our political system, this is not possible. Taxing and spending have simply become means with which to plunder the country. Compare this to places with functional institutions, such as Denmark, Germany, Canada, etc, and I don't see how you can embrace American-style conservative economics. These places hardly even have higher taxes than we do, it's just that instead of spending tax dollars on flying helicopters around Afghanistan, they spend it on universal healthcare, tuition, labor benefits, infrastructure, etc, which are all evil things to the American right.

You have to deal with the world you have not the world you want.

You're never going to get some benevolent government that taxes and spends honorably. It's just not going to happen.

Also, there's an amount Americans are paying out whether we like it or not to be the premiere superpower as well as world police.

Denmark and Germany and Canada don't spend what we do on defense - and they don't have to. You could argue we don't have to either.

But the fact remains that a lot of these countries - especially the smaller nordic ones - essentially live under the umbrella of safety that the USA foots the bill for. That frees up a lot of money to spend on other shit.

Again, I am not arguing either way whether that is good or bad, it's just how it is. The USA is big daddy and other first world nations have no fear of being invaded or conquered because of it.