"Nucular" Bush-O-Meter: 11 - FINAL

[nshapiro]

Sigh,  I will just point out that any defense of the US vs Iraq on moral grounds had better be taken with a grain of salt.  In the last 60 years the US has used its own citizens - military, inmates, African Americans - as guinea pigs over and over again - testing the effects of exposure to the A-bomb, testing the quality of protective clothing,  infecting people with syphallis just to study the results!

This of course ignores slavery, Jim Crow laws that lasted into the 1960s,  and imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

This "Great Nation" of ours has often flexed our muscles overseas - overtly and covertly, and then either abandoned the locals or installed a puppet who lived well as long as he protected our economic interests, often at the expense of his fellow countrymen.

I see no evidence that Afghanastan is going to end up better off because we invaded.  The US does not have any true intention of installing a democracy, as long as whatever results will not be a breeding ground for more terrorists.  

We were attacked by Osama binLadin, not Saddam.  Any idea that they are interchangeable is laughable.  Osama wants religious fundamentalism, and a religious state. If he thought that the fundamentalist movement could gain a foothold in Iraq he would be there encouraging an uprising.
Saddam is just your garden variety despot who happens to be sitting on tons of oil, so we are taking an interest.  Other than attacking his own people and Kuwait, he has not actually done anything to the US.  Iraq's aggression against Kuwait was stopped by a UN sanctioned, US led force.
He is in violation of UN resolutions.  Any attempt to overthrow him should be UN sanctioned.  

The only reason we are on a war footing with Iraq is that George W did not get his man (Osama), and he needed an issue to distract the American people from this fact.  He also managed to time things so that 11 years of Saddam's defiance became a critical problem just as we approached mid-term elections.  I am really frightened about what critical issue will be concocted to make the American people forget about the economy in 2004.


www.fuckitall.com/bsh

[Robb]

Okay, I'll weigh in here....

I've NEVER taken econ of any kind (high school econ from a football coach doesn't count).  But in my mind, corporations are about creating value: take in raw materials worth X, spend money worth Y (wages), put out products worth 1.2(X+Y).  Government, on the other hand, is purely a conduit for money and does not create value in that way - take in money worth X, spend money worth X (well, 1.2X ::help:: ).  Naturally, there is some sort of "inefficiency" in both processes, so the government is somehow a net drain (if a very small percentage), while corporations are a clear benefit.  Therefore, we're better off if we let the companies keep more of the $$$ so they can go about growing and turning even more raw materials into valuable products.

After all, just as Democratic lawmakers don't burn bags of money in their offices, neither do corporations or taxpayers.  How many jobs are created when a rich dude buys a yacht?  Trust me, most of the folks who build yachts are every bit as blue collar as the next guy/gal.

My $0.02 (can't come up with an appropriate joke here)

[DeltaOne81]

I see your point, but from a more economics point of view, the products put out would really be worth X + Y. Any extra 'profit' is just reinvested into wages for the next round of products, and used as disposable income for the owers.

Yes, even a yatch does pay blue collar workers, but I don't think the economy would be worse off if there were a few less yatch workers and a few more healthy farmers (on the assumption that the income would go to food instead of yatchs).

The whole question here is what is fair, and on that we'll never convince each other. A pure market economy does produce the distribution which doesn't leave waste, but I happen to believe that part of the goal of civilization should be to make sure that no one is left behind. No child left behind in school, no adult left behind in the world. Sure, there will be a distribution of people, but no one should be unable to live. If you're comfortable saying that some poor people will die or live on the streets for the sake of a pure market economy, fine, but that's not the world I want to live in.

[Robb]

Depends on your standard for "left behind."  Will more Americans literally starve to death because of Bush's tax cut?  Dubious.  More homlessness?  More likely, but boy would it be tough to prove.  The economy in general is sucking so badly that there is bound to be more homelessness in the next few years, but that certainly doesn't prove that any tax cut for the rich "caused" it.

The US doesn't need more farmers - we already produce WAY more food than we consume (which is quite scary...).  Why do you think that farmers can't make a decent living?  Supply exceeds demand so prices suck and the government has to prop up the prices to keep the farmers from giving up and getting jobs building yachts.

And those products certainly are "worth" 1.2(X+Y), at least according to the only people who matter - the customers who are willing to pay more than X+Y.  Value = X+Y is not a more "economics" point of view - it's certainly a more Marxist point of view, though....

[DeltaOne81]

I wasn't really talking about the tax cut there, just talking about the general concept of wealth distrution. My problems with the tax cuts were stated above.

Mainly that it would leave a huge federal decifit... but why fix problems now when we can force someone to fix them later, right? This is only increased by the fact that the money wouldn't be going to the people who need it anyway. I'm not proposing some great new social program or form of wealth redistribution. I'm just saying that giving the wealthy more money seems pointless to me. I'd rather use the government money to send a kid to college than to give a $300,000 income family 25 grand back.

If you want to pump money into the economy, then give it to the working class and use the money that would have gone back to the wealthiest to fix our schools. Do you know how many schools the $300 billion dividend tax revenue can build? How many new teachers it could higher or social programs it could run in communities where they're needed.

Okay, I'm repeating myself, I think you all get my point.

[Greg Berge]

Remember Austin Power's To Do list.

#10.  Earn Daddy's respect.

There is way more evidence that the Saudi government has given support to anti-American terrorism than the Iraqis.  Like... the content of their entire educational system.  If we were going to try to clean up the region, we'd start there.  But the Saudis are our hand-picked dictators, so they get to stay, and when the occasional few thousand US citizens get offed because of the Insane Wahabite Cleric of the Week, well... tough.

It will be a better world when Saddam's gone, so I don't have a problem with getting rid of him.  I'd prefer we force the Kuwaitis and Saudis to pay X Billion in petty cash to the Baathistas to go on permanent vacation in Bahrain, but that doesn't make Bush look "Presidential."  So, we do it with our own blood and treasure.

Oh well, it aint like we're gonna lose.

[Robb]

Definitely with you on the tax cut, DeltaOne.  I'm so anti-deficit-spending that I think we ought to RAISE taxes, pay for our past mistakes, and get out of that game forever.  And yes, I realize that this means taking more money from the people who have it (the rich) and giving it to people who currently own T-bills (probably mostly middle), but that is inevitible, brought on by years of excessive spending.  I say we just bite the bullet now rather than later.  Imagine how many schools we could build with the interest payments on the national debt....  

Education is definitely one thing that Government should do for the people, and should do well.  I've voted for every school budget increase I've ever been able to - best possible investment in our future, any way you slice it - economic, political, security, etc.

[Greg Berge]

As long as we keep the small number of crazies on both sides at bay we'll be fine.

When the GOP finally cuts loose from their criminally insane radical donors and promotes decent paleocon policies again then moderates will lean back to the right to save us from the Mommy State totalitarians, just as we did in the late 70's when they were getting too deep into the cookie jar (and the Constitution).  The immediate danger today is coming from the right, and they neither need nor deserve help from the center.