In order to best understand the troubles that face our nation from a balanced left/right perspective, we’ve enlisted liberal Glossy News satirist and editor Brian K. White from the left to talk with conservative columnist and statistician Dean Chambers from the right.
READ ALSO:
– Exclusive Interview with Dean Chambers from UnSkewedPolls.com
– Dean Chambers Interview Part II
RIGHT: Boehner and Obama don’t even pause, they just head forward and stroll right off the fiscal cliff… not sure what makes this image ‘fiscal’ exactly, but I trust it is. (CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE)
Today we’re discussing the Fiscal Cliff.
BRIAN K. WHITE – GLOSSYNEWS.COM: It’s time to get serious about deficit reduction, and there are only two ways to do it. Deep cuts in spending and serious increases in revenue. That means we need to gut our bloated budget for defense, while also raising the taxes on the top 2% of tax payers.
The top 2% like to call themselves “job creators” but the truth is that very few of them actually do. What they really are is cash hoarders and that doesn’t benefit the economy at all. Our military budget is already bigger than the next 19 nations combined. We must trim it, rather than cut benefits to grandma, who paid into the system for decades. She deserves better.
DEAN CHAMBERS – UNSKEWEDPOLLS.COM: Congress has rarely cut spending while under control of either party, and on average Congress has a tendency to spent $1.40 for every dollar of revenue. If that continues, giving Congress more revenue (regardless of the source of the revenue) is no more effective than giving booze to an alcoholic.
We need to pursue sensible military reform that allows us to strengthen our defenses on a smaller and more efficient budget. We need to reduce bureaucracy in all entitlement programs to similarly reduce their budgets through efficiencies of operation. Raising marginal tax rates on the top two percent is politically popular but not economically feasible as it might fund the government for seven days. Significant increases in real revenue will come from robust economic growth, not the raising of tax rates that will cause more income to be sheltered from taxes. The combination of robust economic growth and real budget cuts is the road to a balanced budget.
BRIAN K. WHITE – GLOSSYNEWS.COM: I disagree with the analogy of the drunk. I think our economy is more like a junky. Do you give a junky more opiates to help him get off heroine? Yes you do, because if you don’t, he will promptly die. And if he doesn’t he’s going to have the longest, slowest, sickest recovery, which is what massive austerity measures would do to the tepid US recovery. We’ve seen austerity in action across Europe and only exacerbated the already fragile economic systems.
I agree that the defense budget needs to be reined in, but I still assert that taxes must go up, especially on those in the top 2%. It won’t effect their spending. They already have all the disposable income they can realistically use. These are not job creators, they are cash hoarders. That this increase will only fund the government 7-days is no reason not to do it. If we’re only short 40-cents on the dollar then that actually makes up the difference for 17.5 days. We need to take every success we can find, even if it only spans a fortnight. Taxes must go up.
DEAN CHAMBERS – UNSKEWEDPOLLS.COM: The economy will not “die” for lack of further excessive spending. The record levels of federal spending, historically unprecedented, have lead already to the longest, slowest, sickest recovery. This excessive spending is much like medicating a patient with medicine that doesn’t treat the symptoms or the disease itself while it merely makes the patient more sick. It is the failure to cut spending that will assure the United States of coming closer to Greece type status. No country have ever spent it’s way into prosperity, whether it is spending based on taxing and/or borrowing.
The tax the rich religion is not economic policy but political policy. Even most on the left admit increasing taxes on the top two percent, who are mostly small business owners that create 66 percent of all new jobs according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, will make no significant dent in the deficit. Despite this, the left continues to demand raising taxes on these job creators.
This is because, as President Obama said when asked about if he still favored raising taxes on the wealthy by Charles Gibson even if such tax increases didn’t significantly affect the deficit, Obama said, “yes because it’s a fundamental issue of fairness.” In other words, it doesn’t reduce the deficit, but the left has to placate the envy among its base that demand the tax code is used to punish those who succeed regardless of how little revenue it raises or how many jobs it destroys. This is politics and religion for the left, not economics. It’s a policy for failure based on irrational envy of those who are economically successful.
Wow. There's some tasty bias right there.