Re: The real deal....

You have an interesting idea of what the advantages of doing business in the US are.

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Read Freakonomics sometime on the actuall advantages of living - and doing business - in big and prosperous cities. That's what drives the high property prices - and high rents - in places like New York, London, Sydney, Paris and Amsterdam.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Or have the US navy blow a hole through your already empty skull before the skuttle the boat you stole to be a pirate.

The military is a special case though. Financially, it's costly--we support it because it's a vital function. We must support a portion of our population to do that. What the civilian part of the country does makes that support possible.

But, it operates at the public expense. That's why minimizing such functions is equally important.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

The military feeds a hell of a lot more people than a couple hundred fat politicians. I wonder if any fast food chain serves more meals per day than the military?

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You're not understanding their statement...

(FYI, it's a b.s. scenario, with absurdly optimistic assumptions about everything. It's not close to realistic.)

translation: the tax system suppresses GDP.

translation: As a result of reducing GDP, [constant or lower revenue] =3D a bigger percentage of GDP.

translation: spending on [the biggest items] will increase even more rapidly than everything else, gobbling an even bigger share. Therefore, the *share* of spending devoted to [smaller items] shrinks.

We're "decreasing" the percentage of fat calories in our recipe by adding two pounds of sugar. The total number of calories is still increased.

It is and was one of the largest budget problems to start with-- government spending on healthcare, which Obamcare allegedly would solve. Obama said so. CBO reports here that under Obamacare medical costs increase faster, not slower.

(Even that's a gross understatement--they're leaving out many other costs of O-care.)

If you'd compute the actual numbers instead of parsing the CBO bureaucratese you'd conclude differently.

Cheers, James Arthur ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. Oh, here, re "extended baseline scenario," CBO says pretty well what I got from reading your quote:

"That significant increase in revenues and decrease in the RELATIVE magnitude of other spending would offset much=97though not all=97of the rise in spending on health care programs and Social Security. As a result, DEBT would increase slowly from its already high levels relative to GDP, as would the required interest payments on that debt. Federal debt held by the public would grow from an estimated 69 percent of GDP this year to 84 percent by 2035. With both DEBT and INTEREST RATES rising over time, INTEREST payments, which absorb federal resources that could otherwise be used to pay for government services, would climb to 4 percent of GDP (or ONE-SIXTH of federal revenues) by 2035, compared with about 1 percent now."

I remember an anti-Clinton protest in about 1996 (the film of which was only shown on Drudge's TV show) where a union rep walked up to a protester and put a derby on the guy's head. That was to mark him. A few seconds later a guy with 400 pounds and a 40 IQ ran at the marked man and pulverized him.

Deficits only matter when there's a Democratic administration. IOKIYAR. Republican in the White House? Anybody who questions dumping tons of cash (literally, tens of billions of dollars) onto the tarmac in Iraq isn't patriotic enough.

"Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." -- Dick Cheney, 2004

Except, of course, that's only the case in an alternate reality.

According to this, McDonalds serves 58M people a day.

I like living here. But its impossible to compete with foreign corporations who don't suffer under our confiscatory tax regime. So the best solution is to be an employee of those foreign firms, with an income < $250K and let them keep the rest of the profits offshore.

Wait for the civil war... you'll love it. ...Jim Thompson

Small businesses aren't hiring because a "hire" saddles the businessman with paying unemployment insurance (*).

So they automate instead. Works for me ;-)

(*) I muse what changes in the economy would result if the _employee_ had to pay his own unemployment insurance. ...Jim Thompson

'Had to pay'? Smart people put some of their revenue away for lean times. But most people aren't that smart, so the state figures that a mandatory insurance system will keep them off the welfare rolls. That makes sense.

The major improvement would allow deposits into that mandatory system to roll over into a retirement fund. That way, people between jobs would have some living money. But they'd see their balance start to go down and that would be motivation to go out and find work. And they'd see their personal balance go up or down as they paid (or didn't pay) premiums.

The problem with such a program is that it would hamper the state's abilities to transfer funds between individuals. A true insurance plan can pay the new guy who just lost his job some benefits out of the pool even if he doesn't have equity built up yet. But such insurance/annuity products already do exist, so its feasible.

Yeah, but could they do so under combat conditions?

This was (is) the major error in contracting out such support functions to outfits like Blackwater (or whatever they call themselves now). Sure, they can feed the troops for less overhead than the military can itself.

But what happens if you have to do so under fire? The contractors will just drop the soup pots and run. They have no obligation to stick around. And with a military organization, the cook is another soldier who can pick up a rifle when things really get hot (not just the kitchen).

Doesn't every military kitchen have a cook like Steven Seagal that can single-handedly defeat an entire terrorist force?

Notwithstanding if there were no "welfare rolls" in the first place, nobody would be on them.

But, I have no problem with taking care of the truly needy and feeble- minded, but just by way of private charities like churches, Salivation Army [SIC], and so on.

People are surprisingly generous when Big Nanny doesn't confiscate the lion's share of the fruits of their labor.

Thanks, Rich

Did the proper authorities prosecute the perpetrators for conspiracy to commit mayhem?

Thanks, Rich

Besides the point, but if there was money to be made, quite possibly. Note that the military doesn't feed all that many (if any) "under combat conditions", either.

Then you didn't hire Blackwater. ;-)

Why did we need the troops, anyway? ;-)

There will be no civil war. There will only be Andrew Breitbart bloviating and Ben Shapiro demonstrating he can't construct a coherent argument.

But that's show bidness.

-- Les Cargill

Allow people to dip into their 401K without penalty.

Yes, and with that the loss of power to control people.

A true insurance plan wouldn't subsidize the people who are regularly unemployed (seasonal workers, even some teachers). Their rates would more truly represent their risk of becoming unemployed.