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ORIGINAL: bestbabync

cjan

i have only 2 cows.  you have 4 cows and uncle sam is coming to take one of yours for me and all i have to do is sit on my lazy ass and wait!  uncle sam is even gonna give me the extra feed to get all my cows fat..hehehehe!.....yipppeeeeeee!!!!!!

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ORIGINAL: kittinSol

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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth

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Who else is on the "bailout" list?

Obviously any family who has an income less than $250k 

Yay us [:)]!

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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth

 No disincentive just an artificial ceiling at best. Once I'm at my quota why work to be penalized? 

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Red herring. Many like you try to scare the uninformed into believing that "wealth will be redistibuted" through welfare and government agencies. Obama has never said anything like that. His economic plan and plan to rebuild the US infracstructure and invest in green energy technologies will create many good paying jobs that , by their nature, can't be exported. His plan to penalize ( read not give tax breaks ) to corporations that export jobs and industries will also help. His plan to provide quality education to all children will prepare them to get good paying jobs. No need for trickle down. These workers will spend on goods and services, of course, stimulate local economies and pay taxes.

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ORIGINAL: samboct

Oh good grief-

I for one, would rather pay more taxes and have a chance at making more money.

If we ignore all the red herrings posted above, what's happened in the last several decades has been pretty clear-

1)  The role of gov't has to be to provide an infrastructure to let an economy flourish.  There are plenty of unregulated economies out there- look at most of the countries in Africa as an example.  Neither democrats nor republicans have done a good job of building infrastructure- Clinton did a better job of maintaining what we had, but all the republican administrations from (and including that vile SOB Reagan) have done a great job of dismantling the regulations and structures that were built during the 30s-60s.
2)  Specific examples-
a) the FDA is a mess- it takes way too long to get drugs through the pipeline. 
b) The patent office is a mess- there are tons of overlapping patents which means that VC people won't invest in new companies- patents are often a significant part of a company's valuation. 
c) Health care costs are crippling both citizens (if one more @#$%@$#% politician calls me a consumer, I'm going to feed him/her various body parts, very, very, slowly.....) and businesses. 
d) Essentially our legal system has run amok. 
e) Defense is a mess.  We have a navy that could take on the rest of the world and defeat all countries handily  (probably the same for our air force), but we don't have good body armor for our troops on the ground.  We also haven't used our technology to spot and defuse roudside bombs without rolling our troop carriers over them- a tactic which must have Zhukov chuckling in his grave.  (He just marched his troops over minefields and accepted the casualties.)  We've spent billions on idiotic weapons systems which are only useful at night and during bad weather (B-2) and the COTS program (commercial off the shelf technology) has meant that all that defense spending hasn't had much success creating commercial spin offs. 
f)  Our highways are a mess- they were designed in the 50s and we've got 50% more traffic since then.  Our bridges are collapsing and there are potholes in major traffic arteries that limit speeds and damage vehicles.
g)  Our free press is collapsing- we've got corporate censorship because we've thrown away the regulations that prevented the formation of oligopolies.
h)  Our science and engineering institutions are crumbling.  We used to get a steady supply of students from China because US students knew that a career in science sucked.  Well, now the Chinese students in our schools are returning to China when they graduate because there are better opportunities there.  (India's a bit different, but the far eastern students made up a larger percentage of our grad students IIRC.)  However, lawyers and finance majors are not in short supply.
3)  The end result of this republican assault on brainpower has been a dismantling of our meritocracy.  We've had a system where for the past decade certainly, the lack of wealth mobility has meant that our best and brightest people are picking up the trash of rich morons who were either born wealthy or got lucky.  (Anybody see the piece in the NYTimes on the guy who isolated the green fluorescent protein that two other guys got the Nobel for?  He's driving a courtesy minivan at a Toyota dealership.)
4)  Anybody who bellyaches about the redistribution of wealth and ignores social security/medicare has managed to tiptoe around the elephant in the living room.  The biggest redistribution of wealth the world has ever seen has gone to the elderly getting social security- not means tested because that would make it welfare, but the folks that are collecting it often never put in the amount they're getting out.  Never mind that its a rob Peter to pay Paul system.
5)  The end result of taxing the wealthy will be a renewed chance for a meritocracy- bright people who work hard may actually be able to make a decent living again, instead of watching McMansions get built.  It doesn't translate to government handouts- it does translate to a chance to build wealth instead of allowing the rich to get richer- which is what's been happening for decades.
6)  Old, rich money is useless money.  It's risk averse, it wants guaranteed rates of return with no risk.  That doesn't exist, but led to the nonsense of believing that financial companies could actually deliver it.  Anybody wanna buy a bridge in Brooklyn.  Financial companies may accumulate money, but they certainly don't build wealth- wealth comes from an educated work force and manufacturing goods.  This is why China is rapidly becoming a wealthy country and we're going downhill- fast.  Money is a lousy way to measure wealth.
7)  Good investment money comes from pensions of the working class- money that has a long time horizon and isn't risk averse.

McCain seems to promise more of the same.  Obama's prescription of replacing fossil fuels, tackling tort reform, education etc, means that he's at least identified a bunch of the major problems and has offered some solutions.  They may not be the best solutions- but it's a better start than anything I've heard from anyone else.  If we get our economy growing (for real this time, instead of the paper growth of the past 8 years) we might have a chance of earning more money.  Yes, we'll have to pay more for the infrastructure for this chance, but in my book, that's money invested wisely.

Sam

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ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth

... The hell with working trying and failing; the polls seem to show a desire to penalize success and reward failure. Housing, food, medical care, are no longer something to be worked for to obtain, but given by a benevolent nanny government ...

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ORIGINAL: cjan

... Have you bothered to inform yourself on where Obama stands on the issues, or do you just insist on regurgitating Rush and such ?

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ORIGINAL: rexrgisformidoni

*stocks up on beer and steak*

In the end, nothing will be done about anything. Thats the way of things, its been the way of things for almost 30 years. Democrats, Republicans, Hot dog stand vendors, used car salesman. Its all their fault. Well maybe not hot dog man and car salesman. I think if a business is failing it should be allowed to fail. If an animal is dying in the wild, it dies and is either eaten or becomes the earth and tree grows on it. Obama may be a nice man and great speaker and all the jazz, but I can throw random numbers out and ignore the frickin bottomless pit of the defiect. It will never go away, basically the government needs to quit spending money on b.s. and get some shovels to fill the hole. Both McCain and Obama want to send people to make the hole deeper. Thats the sad fact. Even with the money from ending the Iraq war, its like a few shovels of dirt every year. Anyhow, I've read both economic plans and got out the pen and paper and it doesnt add up, but of course I am not running for president. My ass would be in jail for digging such a hole and to propose keep spending would  get my ass kicker by the judge. Plus, where is the money for these marvelous things promised by both hombres going to come from? The magic money making, inflation machine?
Anyways, I am tired and feel old even though I am not. Plus remeber this the rambling of a sleep deprived crazy person. Be nice to each other please.

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it's a pleasure to read something reasonable