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Herman Cain: Liberals Want to Destroy America
- Thread starter Falvlun
- Start date
Shermana, the direct quote is "the objective of the liberals is to destroy this country." No one is omitting anything by taking that quote verbatim. When Herman Cain responds to the interviewer's question of "To destroy this country? How so?", he states "Economically". He is not tempering the statement that he believes that the liberals are deliberately attempting to destroy the country when he says "Economically". He is merely answering how the liberals are going about their deliberate destruction.
He then makes it clear that he believes destruction of the economy would destroy this country. They are one and the same, according to Cain.
Watch the video, with the relevant portion starting around 11:05. Cain confirms that he meant precisely what he said:
Interviewer: "Do you think that liberals actually seek to do that, that that's their mission to destroy the economy?"
Cain: "Yes, that is the conclusion I have drawn."
Interviewer: "Not mismanagment?"
Cain: "No, that is their mission."
So your dog on the Persian carpet analogy does not work. Cain is adamantly claiming that liberals are purposefully attempting to destroy this country, using the economy to fulfill their "mission".
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Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
Things probably would have gotten very bad if the auto industry wasn't bailed out. There is a Delphi, Chrysler, and GM plant all within a 20 mile radius here. Had they all closed, this area would have sunk.
That actually is an issue that has been in the spot light for awhile now. But when the courts have been ruling in favor of corporations, what can you expect?
Maybe in some places, but unemployment has remained stable, GDP and stocks have went up and down, and the recession has been declared to be over. And there are smaller indications such as novelty spending that has slowly been on the increase. I know a director that is selling more tickets to his stage productions, and even a Pure Romance sells rep has been reporting her best grossing years in awhile.
Considering Warren Buffet pays about a 15 - 17% rate, as does everyone else he asked about it, yeah I would say that is a considerably lower number than back then.
I think it may be fair to state Herman Cain wants to destroy America, or at least civil-rights and liberties, with his change of position regarding gay marriage just to gain support. Now there is not one serious Republican competitor (Ron Paul I don't consider serious due to his lack of support) that doesn't want an amendment banning gay marriage. And add on top of how many far-right Republicans think that all Muslims hate America, I think it's potentially more of a devastating consequence than trying to make the wealthiest of Americans pay more in taxes than they do.
Shermana
Heretic
The Absurd Report » Inconvenient Tax Truths BY PETE DU PONT
This should clear up misconceptions on the Bush tax cut. Less taxes = greater revenues. Simple.
This should clear up misconceptions on the Bush tax cut. Less taxes = greater revenues. Simple.
If the Liberals in power are aware of these numbers, then their policies for greater taxes on those who circulate the most wealth to be taxed from can only be seen as ignorance or deliberate attempts to lower total revenues for the sake of their ideology base and thus economically destroy America. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that the Liberal politicians simply aren't aware of the raw numbers involved with the #1 priority.
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Most Liberals I know have the best of intentions, they just don't understand that we do not have unlimited resources.
Taxing the rich seems popular but what do we do when we run out of other people's money?
Taxing the rich seems popular but what do we do when we run out of other people's money?
That reminded me.....
"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."
Margaret Thatcher, in a TV interview for Thames TV This Week on Feb. 5, 1976
Alceste
Vagabond
I guess Thatcher never heard of Denmark.
Yes Alceste, you raise a good point. The thing is, are you willing to adopt all the Danish rules and regulations that makes their country so great or do you just want to cherry pick what you like and abandon what you dislike?
My next question is, do you believe the way Denmark is ran can be replicated on a much larger scale?
T-Dawg
Self-appointed Lunatic
This seems quite silly, but your numbers are intriguing, so I decided to take a minute to look into it.
I may just be looking at the wrong set of numbers, but I'm not seeing what your article describes. Revenue does rise from 2003-2007, but only after a serious drop earlier, and the revenue spike is eerily immediately before a huge drop.
Our revenue:
Government Taxes and Revenue Chart in United States 1950-2015 - Federal State Local
Government Taxes and Revenue Chart in United States 2000-2015 - Federal State Local
Our deficit:
Government Taxes and Revenue Chart in United States 1950-2015 - Federal State Local
Government Taxes and Revenue Chart in United States 2000-2015 - Federal State Local
The belief you are describing is known as the "laffer curve," but you have left out part of it: Revenue will only rise when taxes are lowered if you are already to the right of the curve's peak. To my knowledge, there's not a way to tell where the peak of the curve is (besides trial and error), but given how low our tax rates are, I'd be incredibly surprised if we were in a position where lowering taxes would still raise revenue.
The thing is, the rich already have money. That's why they're called "the rich." If they don't think it's profitable to invest their money into more jobs, giving them more money to invest won't change that.
This chart doesn't track total revenue, but revenue as a percentage of GNP.
This chart does show total revenue, & shows an effective tax increase during most of Dubya's years. The fall near the end would be due to the crash, IMO.
Projections that the deficit will fall in the future are bogus. We can't predict the future until it happens.
I say that the Laffer Curve would apply more to marginal tax rates than to tax revenue. Our tax system has high marginal rates with lots'o deductions.
To keep taxes down, taxpayers are inclined to spend money in areas which garner these deductions. If we made a revenue-neutral change to much lower
marginal rates & eschewed deductions, then there would be much more incentive to increase productivity. This is where I say Dubya screwed up with his
tax changes....& accomplished little if anything. It appears to me that Cain understands this, but masks it by couching this view in simplistic sound bites.
(I hate the pandering & posturing in primaries even more than the actual election.)
But they don't let their money sit idle....that's why they stay rich. Whether they put it in the bank, lend it out, invest it or spend it....It's put to use.
I've known a couple filthy rich guys (in the hundreds of millions), & their capital is never idle.
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I am enjoying watching you grow and learn Dawg. Keep making common sense posts like this and your going to become not just smart but wise. There is a difference.
Smart is having a 500 hp motor under the hood, wise is actually starting it up and keeping it under control.
Great post
T-Dawg
Self-appointed Lunatic
This is something I learned a long time ago.
I find it significantly disturbing that you think I'm learning and growing, given that the only thing that's significantly changed about me in the past several months is that the voices have taken over a lot of my posts on RF.
Oh, I know, I was trying to focus on the relevant years. The bracket went from 2000 to 2015 for some reason.
I'm not sure what you mean. The marginal rate is the tax rate applied to an additional dollar on a person's income, right?
(So that if $10,000 was taxed at 20% and $20,000 was taxed at 40%, the marginal rate for $20,500 would be 40%)
But whatever it is they're doing with it, it doesn't seem to be going to create jobs, at least not American jobs. It's more profitable to invest in cheap foreign labor.
Hmm. I wonder if we could solve the problem by encouraging economic growth in third world countries, which would drive living standards, and thus the demand for wages, upwards. This should cause foreign labor to become more expensive as foreign economies grow, encouraging businesses to invest in America as foreign prices grow higher. In addition, as these economies produce products and demand more products, our imports and exports should both increase, leading to a net benefit for everyone if done right. (This assumes, of course, that environmental damage can be minimized enough so that it does not offset the material gains made by economic growth.)
... Of course, that policy would never happen, as no business would donate to a candidate who would effectively increase their costs of labor...
That's it.
Some investment will be domestic, while some will be abroad. If tax policy makes investment more attractive, then both would increase.
In addition to marginal tax rate issues, investment has asymmetric risks.....you pay tax on gains & profit, but deduction of losses is limited
(depending upon circumstances.) Moreover, many businesses must be depreciated over many decades, even if they have a life of only several
years. This discourages investment because you can end up paying taxes even when suffering a net loss, as has happened to me at times.
This makes expansion costly & dangerous.
This is already happening....witness the PRC.
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T-Dawg
Self-appointed Lunatic
We can't really dictate WHERE the investment goes just with income taxes. Now, if we put taxes on specific goods (like we've done with alcohol), we could influence investment in specific products, but to encourage investment HERE and not "THERE," we would need to institute some sort of tariff (or reduce our wages to rates so that they compete with third world countries), which from my understanding would violate all sorts of treaties and make other country's angry, who would then make their own tariffs in response, hurting our export market.
Ah, is that what's going on with how I keep hearing about China keeping their currency artificially low? They're trying to devalue the yen so that their exports cost less, so that we continue to invest in their markets?
I haven't addressed the effects of tariffs here yet. But their enactment has unintended consequences, eg, retaliatory tariffs which hurt our exports.
I see our foreign competition as useful, & our failure to compete as a symptom of our becoming less productive & competitive. Whatever the tariff
policy is to be, we must fix basic anti-competitive problems at home.
I see that they want to sell more products abroad. But note that their pay & living conditions have risen as a result of overseas commerce.
For some reason, I'm not getting e-mails to let me know when someone responds to my subscribed threads, so I'm sorry for the delayed response.
Well, sure, I would put some of the blame on the current politicians, too, and in any case, some of the same ones today were still around 20-30 years ago. We're talking about whole generations of political leaders, and whatever economic problems we're having at the moment, they didn't just spring up overnight.
In all fairness, there were a few people back in the 1980s and 90s who could clearly see where all this short-sighted mismanagement would lead. What we're experiencing now has been long predicted and should have come as no surprise to anyone.
Economics is a social science, which puts it in the same general category as sociology, political science, history, philosophy, etc.
Reminds me of a few jokes:
A mathematician, an accountant and an economist apply for the same job.
The interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks "What do two plus two equal?" The mathematician replies "Four." The interviewer asks "Four, exactly?" The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says "Yes, four, exactly."
Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question "What do two plus two equal?" The accountant says "On average, four - give or take ten percent, but on average, four."
Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question "What do two plus two equal?" The economist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says, "What do you want it to equal"?
Here's another:
Q: How many conservative economists does it take to change a light bulb?
A1: None. If the government would just leave it alone, it would screw itself in.
A2: None, because, look! It's getting brighter! It's definitely getting brighter!
A3: None, they're all waiting for the unseen hand of the market to correct the lighting disequilibrium.
Okay, one more:
A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Lets smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Lets build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Lets assume that we have a can-opener..."
Economics Jokes
Greenspan and Reagan were devotees of the economic philosophy espoused by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School. Prior to their influence, America's political leaders (since FDR, at least) tended more towards Keynesian economics. This was especially true during World War II when America ran under a virtual command economy with strict wage and price controls. That's how we got out of the Great Depression, and it also led to the post-war economic boom which increased Americans' standard of living by leaps and bounds. (Of course, it was also a plus that our industries remained mostly intact after WW2, while the rest of the industrialized world was pretty devastated.)
Terms like "liberal" and "conservative" tend to get misused a lot anyway, and there are also differences on social issues versus fiscal issues. A person can be a social liberal and support gay marriage, while also being a fiscal conservative: anti-union, anti-welfare, etc. I've often heard that a libertarian is nothing more than a Republican who likes to smoke pot.
Then there are those fiscal liberals who might be pro-union, pro-medicaid, pro-social services, but also against gay marriage, abortion, and other social
issues commonly associated with liberals.
Yes, although I tend to think that sloth and ignorance are common in any era. What seems to characterize this era is that people don't seem to have any real inner strength or backbone anymore. People seem far too passive, weak-willed, and easily led. People expect "change" to happen, but they don't know how (or even why, for that matter). Politicians will tell them whatever they want to hear, and they'll eat it up like milk served to kittens.
Well, Perot was just one example. He wasn't exactly the ideal candidate, but there really wasn't much to choose from. I actually supported Jerry Brown when he was a Democratic candidate for President in 1992, but unfortunately, most Democrats went for Clinton that year.
But one could even go further back and look at the election of 1980. What you say about those who didn't vote for Perot might be said of those who didn't vote for Anderson in 1980. (I was too young to vote in 1980, but I would have voted for Anderson if I could have.)
If you want a humorous look at where politics was going at that time, you might want to check out a skit from "Saturday Night Live" (Season 5, Episode 17, with Strother Martin). It was called "Invasion of the Brain Snatchers," and it showed how people were turned into pro-Reagan zombies by these Reagan "pods" which were being distributed door to door. (It kind of sums up the political atmosphere at the time.)
I can see why young people today might resent the older generations. I'm 47, and looking back, I can see that there were areas where people of my generation (and older) could have done a better job. I think that we've somehow deluded ourselves into thinking we could have our cake and eat it, too. The only reason we could get away with it for so long is because we had an awful lot of cake, but now, it's just about gone.
Well, sure, I would put some of the blame on the current politicians, too, and in any case, some of the same ones today were still around 20-30 years ago. We're talking about whole generations of political leaders, and whatever economic problems we're having at the moment, they didn't just spring up overnight.
In all fairness, there were a few people back in the 1980s and 90s who could clearly see where all this short-sighted mismanagement would lead. What we're experiencing now has been long predicted and should have come as no surprise to anyone.
Economics is a social science, which puts it in the same general category as sociology, political science, history, philosophy, etc.
Reminds me of a few jokes:
A mathematician, an accountant and an economist apply for the same job.
The interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks "What do two plus two equal?" The mathematician replies "Four." The interviewer asks "Four, exactly?" The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says "Yes, four, exactly."
Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question "What do two plus two equal?" The accountant says "On average, four - give or take ten percent, but on average, four."
Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question "What do two plus two equal?" The economist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says, "What do you want it to equal"?
Here's another:
Q: How many conservative economists does it take to change a light bulb?
A1: None. If the government would just leave it alone, it would screw itself in.
A2: None, because, look! It's getting brighter! It's definitely getting brighter!
A3: None, they're all waiting for the unseen hand of the market to correct the lighting disequilibrium.
Okay, one more:
A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Lets smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Lets build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Lets assume that we have a can-opener..."
Economics Jokes
This is so great^^^.
Greenspan and Reagan were devotees of the economic philosophy espoused by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School. Prior to their influence, America's political leaders (since FDR, at least) tended more towards Keynesian economics. This was especially true during World War II when America ran under a virtual command economy with strict wage and price controls. That's how we got out of the Great Depression, and it also led to the post-war economic boom which increased Americans' standard of living by leaps and bounds. (Of course, it was also a plus that our industries remained mostly intact after WW2, while the rest of the industrialized world was pretty devastated.)
Terms like "liberal" and "conservative" tend to get misused a lot anyway, and there are also differences on social issues versus fiscal issues. A person can be a social liberal and support gay marriage, while also being a fiscal conservative: anti-union, anti-welfare, etc. I've often heard that a libertarian is nothing more than a Republican who likes to smoke pot.
Then there are those fiscal liberals who might be pro-union, pro-medicaid, pro-social services, but also against gay marriage, abortion, and other social
issues commonly associated with liberals.
Yes, although I tend to think that sloth and ignorance are common in any era. What seems to characterize this era is that people don't seem to have any real inner strength or backbone anymore. People seem far too passive, weak-willed, and easily led. People expect "change" to happen, but they don't know how (or even why, for that matter). Politicians will tell them whatever they want to hear, and they'll eat it up like milk served to kittens.
Well, Perot was just one example. He wasn't exactly the ideal candidate, but there really wasn't much to choose from. I actually supported Jerry Brown when he was a Democratic candidate for President in 1992, but unfortunately, most Democrats went for Clinton that year.
But one could even go further back and look at the election of 1980. What you say about those who didn't vote for Perot might be said of those who didn't vote for Anderson in 1980. (I was too young to vote in 1980, but I would have voted for Anderson if I could have.)
If you want a humorous look at where politics was going at that time, you might want to check out a skit from "Saturday Night Live" (Season 5, Episode 17, with Strother Martin). It was called "Invasion of the Brain Snatchers," and it showed how people were turned into pro-Reagan zombies by these Reagan "pods" which were being distributed door to door. (It kind of sums up the political atmosphere at the time.)
I can see why young people today might resent the older generations. I'm 47, and looking back, I can see that there were areas where people of my generation (and older) could have done a better job. I think that we've somehow deluded ourselves into thinking we could have our cake and eat it, too. The only reason we could get away with it for so long is because we had an awful lot of cake, but now, it's just about gone.
Most of the Liberals I know have the best of intentions. The problem is, they don't step up. They want someone else to do their heavy lifting for them.
Another issue I have is they keep acting like we have this unlimited supply of everything and life would be so much better if we just handed everything over to them.
Government is not this great big do everything for everyone super power.
To quote Ron Paul, "we are broke".
Another issue I have is they keep acting like we have this unlimited supply of everything and life would be so much better if we just handed everything over to them.
Government is not this great big do everything for everyone super power.
To quote Ron Paul, "we are broke".
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
And to be completely fair, they really just wanted some real hope and change and McCain obviously wasn't going to provide it, so they had to pin their hopes on someone who might possibly turn out to be more than your average politician.
All right, then I guess you should be able to explain what has been so bad about Obama.
dust1n
Zindīq
So that's why she choose to continue what was left of the British Empire in the Falklands, huh? Or is that why she closed down 150 public mines and put half a million people out of work in a decade?