[adios]

"I can only hope that the perspective of history will reveal to those people, the big picture that they were missing during these last few years."

My post wasn't about what you want to cut in government spending it was about Kerry being disingenous.

"First off that sentence doesn't entirely make sense, but a clear objective of your post was to point out flaws in the democratic candidates, without balancing this with any similar comments on Bush. "

Huh? Kerry states that he can cut the budget deficit in half and I point out where what he, Kerry, proposes will increase the deficit by $265 billion to show how Kerry's being disingenous. Why are comments about Bush relevent to Kerry's being disingenous?

"If you're going to quote that extensively then you should include other relevant information."

Not sure what your point is here. Are you stating that the NTU study is erroneous? If so that should be easy to demonstrate.

"Questioning every thing I say without explicitly defining it is a weak way to argue."

I'm not questioning everything you say. To be quite honest I don't follow your reasoning very often. It's hard to disagree with someone's point of view when you're not really sure what is.

"I will try to be more specific, but you know what I meant by the model of either side (ie the economic policies). "

A model and a policy are two different things. You're asking way to much of me anyway to be able to discern your meaning when you play so fast and loose with terminology.

"You are the one obfuscating now, discrediting the vague parts of my arguments without making any actual arguments of your own."

I didn't discredit any of your arguements. I can't discredit something I don't know or understand.

"Similarly the answer I refer to is obviously meant as the "answer" to solving the economic problems of today."

It wasn't obvious to me at all what you were reffering to. What are the economic problems as you perceive them? Let's start there. Do you think it's at all possible that you and I might have different perceptions as to what the economic problems are?

"The importance of the difference between corporate and individual taxes is that corporations might be more able and more willing to utilize extra capital in a more constructive manner than individual billionaires. "

You're reffering to the amount of taxes paid I assume on a percentage basis and what I stated what constitutes taxable income. What are you specifically proposing here? Increases in the long term capital gains rate? More marginal tax brackets? Not a discredit to your post, just don't understand what you want.

"In your post you said, "wrong it's possible to modify all tax laws." Ok I'll give you this one (sorta), I was vague, but do you really think I'm dumb enough to think all laws can't be changed?"

You're someone I know nothing about and someone's posts aren't very clear to me as to what points you're addressing. It's not an excercise in putting you down, it's an excercise in trying to understand your points. Too bad you take it personally.

"I meant that a selective review of the type of taxes raised or lowered can be a useful and legitimate way of doing things as opposed to a unilateral decision of raising/lowering all taxes (or maybe this is done, but in a way to benefit only certain people. Yes, this is opinion, not fact)."

In my opinion that's in part what's behind all tax legislation.

"I'm not trying to refute the NTU model, I'm only doing what you are trying to do to me with your response, and that is cast a question over the ultimate truth provided by it."

I don't understand this statement. There's no NTU model (models have a very specific meaning to me) involved. Perhaps you mean the models used in the NTU study. I'm not trying to do anything to you. You responded to my post originally. If you have some data, studies, even models that shows Kerry will actually reduce the budget deficit with his proposals on spending I'd be highly interested in reading them.

""BTW the difficulty in defining taxable income for each and all categories of income earners is the reason the tax code is so complicated." I couldn't agree more. I know I just mentioned selective review under our current system, but ultimately I think the tax code is in dire need of extensive simplification."

Ok how do you propose doing that given the difficulties that you and I agree are inherent in defining income? This isn't a challenge or a put down. It's an inquirey as to what you ideas are.

"Also there's no need to make obtuse comments to my observations."

Like what?

"Everyone is indeed entitled to their opinion and I was just stating mine."

Ok

"And yes, I do say so: criticism is an integral part of politics (unless you prefer the soviet Russia model)."

Ok and I don't

"History will tell (more about) how things really are now because that's how history works."

Ok, hard to argue with that one [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

"I'm not so vain as to claim I know what that will mean. I do know that there are far more people that want tax cuts because they want more money, than care about the environmental health and future of our planet."

Your assumption to me is that higher taxes necessarily means better environmental health and a better future for the planet. Am I right about your assumption?

"And then there's the people who complain to high heaven about the probles with public education, but refuse to pay the taxes needed to bring about any improvements."

Again your assumption seems to be that higher taxes will necessarily lead to a higher quality public educational system. Am I right about your assumption?

"Maybe if they just redirected the military budget, we could solve most of these problems, but that seems unlikely in the current political climate."

I've touched on the military budget in some posts about the budget about 6 or 7 months ago. IMO all aspects of the military budget are open to debate. Perhaps it would be time to do some sort of in depth post on that. If you look at defense expenditures in the Clinton administration you'll see that in normalized terms (normalized for GDP), defense expenditures had not been that low since post WWII. I might add I acknowledge that there's some justification for this given the end of Cold War (commonly called the peace dividend). For obvious reason defense spending has increased significantly in normalized terms under the Bush administration. However, in normalized terms it's not even close to a other periods (like WWII for instance). Don't get me wrong, the DoD still knows how to waste major money on pet projects etc. but what is need is scrutiny of the various programs on a strategic basis IMO. Here's something that I believe history has shown us, that Defense spending is controllable.

I've posted about this so many times I'm sure many are sick of it. If you want to reign in budget deficits, the problems with non-linear growth in Medicare/Medicaid spending (currently much higher than GDP growth) have to be rectified as well as what I call the structural flaw in Social Security. I've post about this before, the Clinton administration had a better record than anyone I can remember in controlling Medicare/Medicaid spending. Basically during the Clinton administration the growth in Medicaire/Medicaid outlays grew at a rate around GDP (I think slightly less). The "structural" problem with Social Security is this. The system is based on people who will be receiving benifits in the future paying for those who are eligible today. The "trust fund" is a total sham or accounting gimmick to put it more politely. Social Security is a regressive tax. The demographics of the baby boomers is such that unless something changes, the amount paid out will be much higher than what is paid in the retirement years of the baby boomers. Social Security is running at surplus now but it won't be in the not too distant future.