Thread in which the world laughs at America

[Asher]

This whole financial crisis is pretty awesome for me.

I just got a 12-month rate hold on a 3.09% 5 year fixed mortgage. With very flexible prepayment options. I don't even need the mortgage til January at the earliest.

And Alberta is expected to lead the way with salary growth this year. Again. Unemployment is dropping like a rock.

[DaShi]

I always suspected that you had something to do with it. Your time at Lehman was no coincidence.

[Dinner]

They need to stop pandering and repeal ALL of the Bush tax cuts not just for the wealthy. Put everything back to the Clinton levels as that would half the deficit in one stroke plus it is pretty absurd that we have half the population not paying any income taxes so it's time for them to get some skin in the game. The other half needs to come from a combination of military cuts (around $300 billion a year sounds about right), killing farm subsidies (that's around $125 billion per year saved; the bastards can make their own ways through life without hand outs), ending ethanol subsidies, ending all tax deductions for political donations, halfing the corporate tax rate but eliminating just about ALL tax deductions and credits for corporations, ending worthless oil subsidies (the profits from the oil business are monstrously large so there is all the profit motive in the world to drill even without subsidies), and likely a dozen other things. It wouldn't hurt to raise the SSI retirement age and the medicare age to 68.

[Asher]

I always suspected that you had something to do with it. Your time at Lehman was no coincidence.

I am hoping for more stimulus money. It's huge for my company.

[giblets]

Where did you get the $125 billion figure for farm subsidies?

[Dinner]

Where did you get the $125 billion figure for farm subsidies?

I read that in the economists but they were including all manner of price supports and other indirect assistance as well as subsidies. Kill it all.

[Dinner]

http://ncseonline.org/NLE/CRS/abstract.cfm?NLEid=2272

Actually, it looks like it was $284 billion over five years (estimated at $608 billion over ten years just for the new stuff in the bill not counting the old stuff in previous bills) just for the 2008 farm bill but I'm positive there is more in there then just what was in that one bill. There is always more hidden away.

[Dinner]

It seems $125 billion was a very conservative estimate; The Economist usually uses conservative numbers. Our farmers are the most pampered *****es in the world, hell, most of it goes to just a handful of large corporations anyway so let them justify their existence without sucking from the tax payer's teets.

A Canadian report claimed that for every dollar U.S. farmers earn, 62 cents comes from some form of government, with total aid in 2009 from all levels of government adding up to $180.8 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy

[Tupac Shakur]

End all government transfers except those to the poor/unemployed.

[Dinner]

I am hoping for more stimulus money. It's huge for my company.

I'm hoping for more stimulus money but written so that foreign firms don't get a damn penny. Especially if you work there. Make it 100% American firms which only do the work in America because that will employ the most Americans.

[Guynemer]

End all government transfers except those to the poor/unemployed.

My God, Drake is becoming a radical leftist.

[Riesstiu IV]

I believe part of Drake's master plan is euthanizing people over 60 and using their remains as fertilizer, thereby lowering food prices for the poor and unemployed and solving S.S. and medicare expenditure.

[Asher]

I'm hoping for more stimulus money but written so that foreign firms don't get a damn penny. Especially if you work there. Make it 100% American firms which only do the work in America because that will employ the most Americans.

We're very buddy buddy with the US gov't, who is our biggest client. Don't you know how American politics works?

[Lorizael]

I believe part of Drake's master plan is euthanizing people over 60 and using their remains as fertilizer, thereby lowering food prices for the poor and unemployed and solving S.S. and medicare expenditure.

If I understand my Apolyton Finance class correctly, the only way to lower food prices for the poor is to lower their wages.

[DaShi]

Of course. Once they are all subsistence farmers, they'll have all the food they need. For free!