[Borodog]

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And AGAIN you are playing fast and loose. Tax revenues do not cover spending *right now*. Where does the extra money come from *right now*? Why do you insist on comparing the spending level to *only* tax receipts when that isn't a relevent comparison?

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Of course it's a relevant comparison. The amount of money the government takes in vs. how much it needs to spend isn't relevant to what kind and amount of taxes should be collected? Come on. It's the comparison to the current state of affairs that is fallacious. Ron Paul is planning a revolutionary change (it's on the T-shirts!). He then goes around and justifies it, not on absolute numbers, but on a pay-as-you-go projection, like you would for a 3% cut in the income-tax rates?


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Dude, as far as I can tell your argument against Paul's statements that you could eliminate the individual IT and return to 199X spending levels amounts to this:

3 - 1.3 != 1.7

It isn't hard. Current spending level - individual income tax receipts = spending level from 199X.

This is trivially, obviously true.

The rest of your mumbo jumbo just seems designed to avoid losing an argument on the internets.

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And do you really think the government could finance a quarter-trillion a year (minimum) on an income base of a trillion dollars, most of which is earmarked for social-insurance programs that are themselves projected to head into deficit soon?

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Yes. Do you see why?

You're really missing a much, much, much larger picture. Current obligations of the US Federal government (not debt, obligations) are at least $60T. There is no way that is going to be paid unless the government just prints enough money to destroy the currency. In short, something has to give somewhere, whether you like it or not, no matter who gets elected. Somebody is getting [censored] out of what they have been promised. This is not Ron Paul's fault. What has caused the problem is out of control spending on welfare and warfare, and Ron Paul is the only one not only pointing this out, but that has a plan to actually do something about it. 3 things contribute to out of control spending: taxation, debt issuance, and inflation. The US's credit rating is about to go into the toilet, so that is going to leave taxation and inflation. Paul wants to radically reduce the former and eradicate the latter.

Will that allow the Federal government to continue to consume a quarter of the productivity of the nation? No, but then again that's the [censored] point, isn't it?

So Paul's plan is to reduce the Federal level of taxation by around 50%, which will allow that wealth to be put back into economic recovery. He will do this by saving roughly 40% of current spending. That leaves the current entitlement programs untouched. You would probably also have to freeze benefit levels, although I've never heard Paul comment on this one way or the other. You allow young people to opt out of those plans, which immediately wipes out a large chunk of the projected future obligations.

That still leaves inflation. You have to get rid of the Fed. But that's ok, because the Fed is going away no matter what, whether you want it to or not. The world fiat currency system is unstable and has required multiple radical interventions to save it in the past, and those kinds of interventions (gold dumping by central banks and the IMF for example) are simply no longer available. At least 82% of the world gold stock is now in private hands, and possibly as much as 91%, after 45 years of gold dumping. Even if they manage to avoid a collapse with another massive gold dump, where does that leave them for the next time? Eventually the flight from inflation cannot be stopped by dumping, because there isn't enough gold to dump, and at that time, gold remonetizes, whether you like it or not.

So the REAL question is:

When you can no longer issue debt because the nation's credit rating is shot, and you can no longer print money because the fiat currency system has collapsed, and you cannot tax the remaining productive 2/3 of the population at 100% to pay the 1/3 of the population that are feeding off of them, how do you maintain the system?

The answer is that you can't. So do you try to bring the system down in a controlled landing, or do you let it nose dive into a corn field?

Ron Paul is the only candidate that has ANY understanding of what's coming, and the only one with ANY sort of plan for a non-disastrous transition. ALL of the rest of them have their heads stuck into the sand.

Wake the [censored] up.

/participation