[quote name='thrustbucket']Well I'm going to ask you to TRY and look at it from my point of view.
I firmly believe the government needs to be reduced AT LEAST 40%, including military. I strongly believe that being too large is the center of most of our problems.[/quote]
What do you base the 40% measurement on? If you're using numbers, then clearly you have researched a baseline in federal expenditures. You have discovered what the ideal size of government is, and can point to why it is more efficient and helpful at that size.
Or does the 40% number have no actual basis in reality, with you manufacturing it as a feel good number out of thin air?
Ok, so as extreme as you think that makes me, try to imagine that as a starting point.
It's not extreme, but it is arbitrary and ideological. You do not have facts on your side.
Why would I entertain any notion of increasing revenue? It's not even about whether we can it's about whether we should. Why should I support any candidate that will entertain a revenue increase compromise?
When you do not, you then restrict yourself to supporting candidates that aren't willing to govern. Who aren't willing to make concessions. Who are tied to belief systems, steadfast in their ways, and wholly unalterable by any presentations of fact or data. You're electing petulant children at that point, with the hope that they remain petulant children; people who want their dessert, who refuse to eat their vegetables to get their dessert, and yet still demand their dessert, claiming others as the oppressor if they do not, in fact, get their dessert.
Opposition to revenue increases, like everything else about you, is rooted in the *faith* that your belief system is how society works. Devoid of science, devoid of mathematics, devoid of proof. It is feel good mumbo jumbo. You practice politics the same way Christian Scientists practice medicine. Understand?
When we've cut government spending by about 25%, and you can still prove that we need more revenue - then I might be willing to talk about tax increases.
More numbers. Wasn't it 40% before? Why 25% now? Why are you unwilling to spend more at a time, like now, when interest rates are ridiculously low? When we need to shore up our infrastructure to remain competitive in the global marketplace?
You're proving my point; your mind starts and stops at "spending high." You can't get beyond that hurdle; as you are unwilling to consider contextual variation. You are steadfast in your ways, relaying on the old "common sense" canard.
To you, borrowing money at a lower interest rate, or in this case, a negative interest rate, is never better than borrowing money at a higher interest rate. Borrowing bad, thrustbucket's brain is done.
When I've maxed out all my credit cards, it's irresponsible of me to be trying to figure out how to get more. The responsible thing to do is to start cutting my expenses, luxuries, and just make sure I can feed and house myself. I expect the same of government.
Government is not your family, it is not a business. The debt limit is arbitrarily established and moved time and time again. This "credit card" metaphor truly exposes how shallow your thinking on this is.
So yeah, I guess that makes me a hard-line nutter around these parts but that's largely why I've bowed out of these discussions the past year or so - because what I would consider middle ground most of you would consider unimaginable.
"Once I get everything I want, then we'll maybe talk about giving you a pittance of what you want" is not middle ground - yet you seem to be telling us that it is responsible and moderate to do so. You are a indeed a hard-line nutter in complete denial. At least I've always had the self-respect and vision to recognize how far to the left I am; you're just a simpleton with no deep sense of perspective such that you uncritically absorb every bit of blithering right wing idiocy as gospel truth. You accepted, uncritically, for instance (and continue to accept) that the health care policy proposed by The Heritage Foundation in 1993 and passed by Obama in 2010 is "socialism." That's not quite nutter. It's more like half nutter half village idiot.
But I'm just voicing my opinion, because it's an opinion and all opinions deserve to be heard. I'm not here to convince people that they should think like me.
Nonsense. All opinions do not deserve to be heard. Birthers do not deserve to be heard. People unwilling to make the basest effort to make empirical decisions on policy do not deserve to be heard (that means people like you, who admit to basing virtually all their decisions on some vague demigod of uncritical socialized experience masquerading as a fairy tale you call "common sense," do not deserve to be heard). Someone who thinks spending is too high should be heard, after they've done their homework - not before. Someone who thinks "They Live" was a documentary does not deserve to be heard. And some crazed conspiracy theory Paulistinian does not deserve to be heard, like this guy:
[quote name='packerfan10']Ron Paul did well yesterday.
NAFTA super higher way through Texas and the rest of the nation.[/QUOTE]
riiiiiiiiiiiight. "Google building 7" much, friend?