[ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine"

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Sun Oct 20 16:43:24 UTC 2013


On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 11:52 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > I am a Tea Party member.
>>
>
> And I too have a confession to make, although I'm embarrassed to admit it
> I'm still a registered Republican. In fact, I actually agree with about
> half of what the Tea Party says, the problem is that in the other half
> they're not just wrong they're BAT SHIT CRAZY WRONG.
>

Again, the stuff that makes the Tea Party wrong is not officially part of
the Tea Party, but rather positions that members of the Tea Party often
take. It's a matter of being highly correlated, but not causal.

For example, the Tea Party itself says nothing about creationism that I am
aware of. Yet, a high number of Tea Party advocates believe in creationism.
The question though is can you hold your nose and be in the room with that
level of craziness in order to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington?

The Republicans and Democrats have both shown a disregard for spending
money and love growing government. We have to have a real alternative.
Personally, I'm a Libertarian, which reflects my thoughts that the Tea
Party has it right on fiscal issues, (even though defaulting on the debt is
clearly not something anyone is really going to let happen) and that the
social liberals have it right on the social and science side of the ledger.



> > you are conflating right wing religious zealots with the people who just
>> want lower taxes and smaller government. They are NOT always the same. I
>> give myself as a prime example.
>>
>
> I want lower taxes and smaller government too, but the way to do that is
> to vote to buy less stuff, not to vote to refuse to pay for stuff you've
> already voted to buy. And if I don't get my way I'm not going to try my
> very best to set off a economic H bomb that would destroy the world as the
> hillbilly Tea Party did.
>

But with the juggernaut that is Washington, how else do you slow it down
other than throwing bodies under it? This is a serious question. How the
hell do we slow it down?


>
> > It's the level at which we're doing it now that is of concern.
>> This chart shows the situation really clearly.
>> http://bit.ly/19TizJy
>>
>
> That chart is really not a very good argument that debt is bad, according
> to it the largest percentage of debt to GDP happen in 1946, just before the
> 1950's boon times and the largest increase in economic activity in history.
> And the second largest economic boon happened during the Clinton years, a
> time of increasing debt.
>
>
And yet it shows a trend towards levels of debt that we haven't experienced
since the TRUE emergency of WWII. Does anyone other then Eugen think we are
currently facing a crisis that rises to the level of WWII?

-Kelly
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