Wow, I thought this kind of thing was done away with years ago

[kandrathe]

The majority of the current fiscal trouble is still directly attributable to Bush's mad spending - even if we don't blame him one iota for the financial crisis. Pelosi and Reid are responsible for only a tiny fraction of it, and that's the fraction that's helping put the economy back together.

What did the mad spending get us? Other than the wars, which are certainly not budgeted, and an unaffordable prescription drug program, I don't recall any other expensive Bush initiatives. The mad spending is actually the ballooning growth of social programs under the weight of retiring baby boomers.

Are you familiar with the work of Steven Landsburg? "More sex is safer sex"? If people who use condoms had more sex, it actually would prevent pregnancies. But fun libertarian logic games are neither here nor there.

No. And, it doesn't surprise me that some guy tried to sell that snake oil. Were I 18 again, I might have been a proponent.

Unemployment is still way up. States are cutting back programs drastically to meet their budget targets. More stimulus directed at bailing out states would help end the haemorrhage of jobs, and help the economy return to normalcy, to quote the not-great Warren Harding. Without more stimulus, I sure know who is getting screwed - the millions of people getting laid off.

With the current debt, and existing stimulus and deficit spending, everyone's future is bleak. Do you agree that the focus (80%) of the prior non-stimulus on propping up the failing state budgets was the core of our current problems? Had the government spent a trillion dollars on industrial outcomes that would improve the non-government side of the US GDP, then we might have averted the malaise we are in currently. Giving the money to the states to enable them to avoid their budget cuts only delayed that decision for a year, meanwhile the private sector is still unable to satisfy the growing appetite of government.

It is a pretty simple problem. People view government jobs as equal to private sector jobs. Realistically, it takes X amount (probably about 8 to 10) private sector jobs to provide the funding for one government job. Then also, the government needs to spend money on actual products and services, which require more private sector jobs to fund. In these down turns, people actually consume more services thus propelling government spending even higher, and requiring more people to actually manage the demand for services.

When the size of government exceeds about 10% it becomes unsustainable.

http://www.deed.state.mn.us/lmi/tools/ces/Results.aspx

If you look at Minnesota (MSA specifically), as an example, Government supplies about 14% of the jobs. Those jobs are funded by the health of the other 86%, but a large portion of the private sector jobs are in the service sector (non-manufacturing), and so they are reliant on their customers willingness to consume services. Once the slope of the economic curve points negative, most companies get conservative and the death spiral ensues. Eventually, the amount of revenue collected in taxes drops to a level where the amount of government we have is unsustainable.

The way I look at it is that government is a parasite on industry. A necessary parasite when kept small and focused on the one side effect we need, which is keeping civil order. But, it easily grows to a point where it jeopardizes the health of the host by sapping resources which are needed for growth and sustenance.

After-afterthought: how does Islam fit into all this? "Trampling over the nation" how?

That was a comment on *real* threats, as opposed to the phantom threats we are focusing our energies upon by traveling the golf courses of Asia.