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

[spike]

>. On Behalf Of John Clark
Subject: Re: [ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are
"asinine"

 

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 3:23 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

 

>. I have never observed more irresponsible behavior by a American
politician than what I observed from the Tea Party Republicans on Wednesday
night.

 

 Indeed?  The persistent deficit spending for the past 14 years doesn't
qualify?

 

>.No that doesn't qualify and doesn't even come close to the level of
irresponsibility and just raw stupidity that I observed on Wednesday; only
one congressional vote in the last 14 years, or in my lifetime for that
matter, threatened to destroy the economic world in the next 90 minutes.

 

John, clearly you have bought into the flaming rhetoric that was fed to us
by some in the mainstream press.  Not only is that idea wrong, it is pi
radians wrong.  The ninety minutes to flaming apocalypse scenario wasn't
threatening the end of the world's economies; in fact I am surprised they
didn't run it closer than that for a nice melodramatic climax.  Perhaps the
senators wanted to go home and go to bed.

They had to make this whole thing appear dramatic, but it was all for show.
They need to do things like this in order to support the value of the
dollar, rather than threaten it.  Reasoning: think of the opposite scenario,
where there is no one in government opposed to more borrow and overspend,
borrow and print more money.  What if they just rubber stamped the debt
limits?  Then the government has open ended permission to print as much
currency as it needs or wants, for anything it needs or wants.  How would
foreign debt holders see that?

If we just borrowed and overspent with no controls, that is what would tank
the dollar, not the opposite, where we are doing at least show struggles, to
pretend some in government will fight and try to hold overspending in check.

That's all it is John, and here's how you will know I am right: we will have
something like a repeat of this whole thing in December, a phony "shutdown"
which is really just a needed government slimdown, the treasury secretary
will start doing "extraordinary measures" to handle the borrowing until the
real deadline arrives, just as before.  This time of course it will not be
as extraordinary.  I doubt they will call it ordinary measures, because they
need to keep up the show.  I don't know if they will go all the way to 2230
this time, or just go ahead and make it a normal working day, or call it
around 2100.  They might take it all the way to nearly midnight, but I doubt
it.  We are not buying this time.  Most of us didn't buy it last time.  We
know what they are doing.

In any case, these lawmakers are not terrorists.  Terrorists are terrorists.
Guys with bombs and guys who shoot up shopping malls are terrorists.  The
lawmakers are not threatening to destroy the world.  The armed governments
simultaneously launching every nuke they have would destroy the world.  But
lawmakers pretending to control the overspending will not destroy the world.

Brits, did you feel worried last Wednesday that the US was about to utterly
destroy the planet?  Germans, Italians, did you have a nail biter that day?
Neither did I.

My contention is that the US federal government could find ways to operate
on about three quarters of what it is now spending, which is what it is
taking in.  Keep federal tax structure as is, at the current level.  They
would hand the National Parks down to the state governments.  They would
call in the troops everywhere and cut armed forces in half, for starters.
They would come up with one of their phony inflation numbers to adjust
pensions.  Keep the ACA but put no federal government money into it; rather
they would take whatever tax funds are collected from the opt-outs and use
that to subsidize the poor, at the state level.  Set up state government-run
clinics funded by the opt-outs, and staff them with nurses as well as full
doctors.  Run all these at the state level, with the feds out of the picture
completely: the feds don't have the authority that states have.  Import all
foreign doctors who apply for immigration, all of them.  Let the foreign
doctors prove themselves in the free clinics.  Scale back Medicare part D
and put its administration at the state level.  Give all current federal
government workers an across the board pay cut.

Note that none of this requires knowledge of evolution, just a little common
sense.  These steps would not destroy the world, but they would support the
dollar and save the world, for it would establish that we recognize we have
a serious problem.  The previous paragraph would demonstrate that we also
have some serious solutions to go with the serious problem.  We would then
be past the denial and anger stages John, and on to bargaining and
depression, with some of us already into the acceptance stage.

spike 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20131022/165b246e/attachment.html>