More evidence of how dumb Americans really are...

[Alondro]

Well, I couldn't not notice this telling poll.

Taxing the rich is ALWAYS the solution!

How can I even tolerate such inane minds?  Do they even realize how much money a trillion dollars is?  The rich can't possibly fill the gap of this monstrous deficit!  Forget annual income, you could take every penny they have and still not close the gap!  Bill Gates is worth, what, $50 billion?  You'd need 20 of him to cover it!  Or 1000 regular billionaires! 

The government NEEDS TO STOP SPENDING.  There is no reason for the budget to keep exploding as it has this past decade!  Spending went up 18% in just one year!  Why do we keep demonizing the rich when it's the federal government that keeps raping us all?!  It's like we get finished with one year's molestation, and then turn back to our abuser and say, "Please, sir, I'd like some more!"

Just 3 expenditures make up nearly 2/3 of the $3.5 trillion federal spending:  $782 B for defense, $678 B for Social Security, and $676 B for Medicaid and Medicare.  The Social Security Trust Fund is broke; it's filled with nothing but worthless IOU's, bound up by government bonds and non-marketable securities hardly worth the paper they're printed on.

The total government debt is now $13.9 trillion!  97% of our annual TOTAL GDP!!!  Only during the peak of WWII was it higher!  And spending projections have the debt DOUBLING again in 13 years!  And this does not include the $5 trillion in mortgages by Fannie and Freddie now supported and backed by the US government.  No one is even sure what the cost of that will end up being.  The Keynesian economics model, which shaped the current belief in massive government spending with no regard to debt load, is an utter failure. 

For some perspective: "A total of 161,000 tonnes of gold have been mined in human history, as of 2009.[32] This is roughly equivalent to 5.175 billion troy ounces, which, at $1350 per troy ounce, would be $7.0 trillion."

In other words, all the gold ever mined would cover little more than half the US debt.

Stop blaming the rich.  Blame the assholes in the government and do to them what you have to do with all addicts: cut their supply.  STOP them from taxing more, FORCE them to spend less.  Is it any surprise that the states with the highest and most oppressive taxes also have the biggest debts and deficits?  Taxes just give politicians more money to spread around to guarantee they'll win the next election, they NEVER use it as promised.  I live in NJ, and have witnessed this first hand:  gas taxes squandered, school building funds raided and stolen, road tolls misused, additional taxes on tires, alcohol, cigarettes... every bit of it wasted, and every time the debt just kept rising faster and faster, spent on more handouts to cronies, big pensions for those in high positions, high-paying no-show jobs, outrageously expensive contracts to well-connected unions.

The government is not the answer, it is the problem!  And the problem will never be fixed until Americans remove their heads from their asses and realize that even though WE HIRED THEM, they're taking OUR MONEY, and telling us to keep quiet and obey them because they're better than us while they continue ruining the country's future with increasingly complicated and expensive bureaucracy and the stranglehold of red tape not even they understand (because they actually didn't write any of it, or in most cases even read a tiny fraction of the thousands-of-pages-long bills they sign which keep costing us more and more).  How can you support a bill you haven't even read?  A bill which is non-stop legalese from start to finish and is longer than the entire "Harry Potter" series put together?

Tax the rich!  Tax the rich!  The battle-cry of the ignorant, whom the government fat-cats gladly use to fill their own pockets.

Class envy leads to class warfare... then communism.  The policy of selfishness and envy has no good ending.  Responsibility, thrift, frugality, wisdom, and common sense must return to government, and soon, or else there is no dawn for the next generation of Americans. 

[Darkmoon]

*sigh* It's one thing to come to a forum to share and discuss opinions. A topic like this will only bring out the trolls and the flamers.

I know we've discussed this before, Alondro. If you want to do this in the future, get a LiveJournal. That, or actually post a topic for discussion, not ranting and flamebait.