YOU ballance the budget!

[Freeky]

I crashed the budget, then sold the entire military to China as mercenaries.  What do I win?

The screams of jingoists, to lull you to sleep at night.

I consider that a victory.  I'm also going to seize the assets of the Fortune 500, sell Wall Street's debt to a dummy corporation based in Costa Rica as part of a deliciously smart shell game which will involve an already doomed and sinking South Pacific microstate assuming the collateral debt of the entire world, and use the profits to distribute hookers and blow to the population at large.

Cain for President, 20-whenever.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

Cain for President, 20-whenever.

I like this, but we have to work around that whole not being born in the US bit.  I understand that Hawaii Vital Records will create an official birth certificate for anyone who asks for one, and also that it is notoriously easy to get backdated birth announcements inserted into old Hawaiian newspapers, so maybe we can go that route.

[Cain]

Did Britain ever formally declare it recognized the sovereignty of the USA?  We could argue it did de facto, for sure, but de jure?  In which case, all Americans are British citizens, and any Commonwealth citizen may run to become Prime Minister of the USA.  Since the USA has no MPs currently, that makes my position a rather easy one to acquire.

[Freeky]

YAY!

I for one welcome our new genius overlord.

[Cain]

All we have to do is arrange for someone I know to become Governor-General of the USA and you can technically appoint me Prime Minister.  Perfectly constitutionally legal move, incidentally.  One Australian government was deposed that way.

[Kansai]

Domestic Programs and Foreign Aid
-Cut foreign aid in half
-Eliminate earmarks
-Eliminate farm subsidies
-Reduce the federal workforce by 10 percent
-Cut 250,000 government contractors
-Cut aid to states by 5 percent

Military
-Reduce noncombat military compensation and overhead
-Reduce the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 60,000 by 2015

Health Care
-Increase the Medicare eligibility age to 68
-Reduce the tax break for employer-provided health insurance
-Cap Medicare growth starting in 2013

Social Security
-Reduce Social Security benefits for those with high incomes
-Tighten eligibility for disability
-Use an alternate measure for inflation

Existing Taxes
-The Lincoln-Kyl proposal
-President Obama's proposal
-Allow expiration for income above $250,000 a year
-Payroll tax: Subject some incomes above $106,000 to tax

New Taxes and Tax Reform
-Millionaire's tax on income above $1 million
-Eliminate loopholes, reduce rates (Bowles-Simpson plan)
-National sales tax
-Carbon Tax
-Bank Tax

The above is the only correct way to balance the budget: keep the military strong, tax the rich, tax the middle class, and tax polluting industries.

ALL HAIL THE GOD EMPEROR!

[East Coast Hustle]

Anyone who would institute a national sales tax should have their toenails pulled out slowly by hungry street children.

As should anyone who wants to raise taxes on the middle class.

[Remington]

We (Canada) have a national sales tax. Personally, I don't notice it much.

[Requia ☣]

At 23%, on top of province level sales taxes?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I'm not sure what sort of national sales tax is being proposed here, or what it's like elsewhere, but here in MA, sales tax does apply to food, clothes, etc...

However, your unnecessary electronic gizmo will be an extra 5%. I don't really see a problem with that.

[Remington]

I'm not sure what sort of national sales tax is being proposed here, or what it's like elsewhere, but here in MA, sales tax does apply to food, clothes, etc...

However, your unnecessary electronic gizmo will be an extra 5%. I don't really see a problem with that.

This is what we have in Canada. 5% Federal sales tax, with varying Provincial sales taxes (usually 6-7%, so 12% overall). It doesn't apply to food.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I'm not sure what sort of national sales tax is being proposed here, or what it's like elsewhere, but here in MA, sales tax does apply to food, clothes, etc...

However, your unnecessary electronic gizmo will be an extra 5%. I don't really see a problem with that.

This is what we have in Canada. 5% Federal sales tax, with varying Provincial sales taxes (usually 6-7%, so 12% overall). It doesn't apply to food.

Whoops. Doesn't apply to food and other essential items here either. Missed typing the negative.

12% sales tax is negligible. Again, I really don't see what the big deal about it is. Plus, MA has tax free weekend, when the sales tax is suspended. It's like a second Black Friday, but far less frenzied. Pretty good actually, if you remember that it's coming up.

[Phox]

It does apply to that in Illinois. And at least here it's 8-10% most places. The county I live in has the lowest in the area (6.5%), and refuses to raise it 1% so we could afford to keep our fucking ambulance service. 

[Remington]

Reddit explains 21st century economics:


Mary is the proprietor of a bar in Dublin . She realises that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronise her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around about Mary's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Mary's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Dublin .

By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Mary gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Mary's gross sales volume increases massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognises that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Mary's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Mary's bar. He so informs Mary.

Mary then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts.Since, Mary cannot fulfil her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Mary's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion euro no-strings attached cash infusion from their cronies in Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Mary's bar.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

It does apply to that in Illinois. And at least here it's 8-10% most places. The county I live in has the lowest in the area (6.5%), and refuses to raise it 1% so we could afford to keep our fucking ambulance service. 

Well, sure. I mean, it's not like anyone is using that ambulance or anything. I've never used an ambulance. So why should my taxes support ambulance services? 

They could also do something like increase income or property tax to cover such things. But quibbling over 1% is silly, especially where, I imagine, goods are less expensive in Illinois County about to give up its ambulance service.