A Debt Ceiling Lesson from Europe
After decades of over spending, European nations are now being forced to adopt serious debt control measures.
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A Schuldenbremse-styled constitutional cap on the federal deficit in the U.S. would both constrain spending-by forcing Congress to make necessary cuts to the budget to meet the debt brake, including entitlement liabilities-while at the same time slowly bring down the aggregate public debt outstanding over time.
Congress could choose to raise taxes instead of cutting spending. But the reality is that Congress already taxes American citizens when it overspends revenues, forcing Treasury to issue more debt. Since this debt will have to be paid off eventually with taxpayer money, running a debt-financed deficit is in effect raising taxes on future generations. The debt brake would just force Washington to be more honest with voters if Congress decided to try and sell a tax hike to the America people.
In an ideal world, Congress should adopt a constitutional limit on the size of the federal budget itself, instead of just focusing on debt and deficits. The average federal budget over the past 60 years has been 17.8 percent of GDP, meaning at the very least we could pare the budget down to around that level without the horrific Social Darwinism so feared by progressives. In lieu of this reform, a constitutional debt brake is the next best option that has shown some real world results.
The real take away from Europe is that weak debt control mechanisms ought to be strengthened—not weak ones such as the debt ceiling eliminated, especially if we want to avoid Europe's current miserable economic fate.
This article
originally appeared at RealClearMarkets.
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http://www.breitbart.com/Insta.....ounoLister
Blind squirrel discovers acorn.
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Entrepreneurship—even on the smallest and most banal scale—turns out to be a time-consuming pain in the you-know-what. My personal inconveniences aren’t a big deal, but in the aggregate, the difficulty of launching a business is a problem and it may be a more important one as time goes on.
Gosh, who knew? The fact that he didnt' get this already just shows what a fantasy world these dipshits live in 24/7.
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Can't be. It's:
1) Find some money somewhere
2) Hire people for no pay
3) Something, something
4) Get rich.
See? It's easy. -
Reminds me of this http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/.....04JN2-163:
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Also, to enforce a balanced budget you have to require this year's spending to not exceed LAST year's receipts (not this coming year's projected receipts)
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If only Reason's limey-in-residence could write with half as much insight into European politics. Or US politics for that matter.
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Morgan Fairchild turned 62 today. Sure hope Dunphy took her somewhere nice for dinner.
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Maybe he bought her an echo chamber.
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Why? Who needs two?
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63
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Maht is hard. English is ardher.
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Ardbeg? Don't mind if I do. Damn that Uigaidael is tasty
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Everything in Europe would be wonderful if only every country could mint their own trillion dollar coins.
/Krugnuts
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progressive cheerleaders echoed his demands
What. A. Surprise.
Idiot TEAM partisan parrot sheep gonna parrot. You can set your watch by it...if anyone had a watch any more. Where's my phone?
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What. A. Surprise.
The individualist-anarchist hauled out his content-free TEAM schtick again. -
All right, poll time: Ravens or Niners? I want the Ravens to win, but I feel like if Kaepernick and crew have a good day, they are going to beat the Ravens pretty bad. Opinions?
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Ravens win 27-21, Flacco MVP. Kaepernick will play a solid game but will make a few mistakes to make the difference.
The only thing I really care about is winning some money in my workplace Super Bowl squares pool.
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Your profit motive is therefore suspect. I can't listen to a word you say.
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Those aren't my numbers. I've played this game for four years and have't won anything yet.
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I put $20 on the Niners.
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I don't like the points you have to give for them.
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Modell is dead, so at least he won't get a second championship in Baltimore, no matter what.
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Modells win 42-9, because football always does what I want it to the least.
FUCK ART MODELL AND FUCK RAY LEWIS AND FUCK ART MODELL
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At the press conferences, I wanted Lewis to say something like, "PEDs? I walked on a murder charge, I ain't worried bout no PEDs."
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Jesus told him to take dat dere IGF-1.
...Which is a ridiculous thing to have on the banned list. Does the NFL ban drinking a gallon of milk a day? But regardless, FUCK RAY LEWIS.
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Didn't the Browns relocate to Baltimore or something at one point? You should be a Ravens fan, Warty.
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No, Art Modell, who was completely the nicest dude on Earth and totally a philanthropist and in no way a conman, left the Browns name in Cleveland totally out of the goodness of his enormous heart and totally not part of a settlement or anything, so that means the Browns are completely continuous and the team playing in Baltimore is in no way illegitimate or anything like that. Why do you ask?
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So Ray Lewis should be the murderer-in-chief for the Browns and not the Ravens, is what you're saying.
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Precisely. We sort of tolerate Jim Brown even though he disgusts most of us, don't we? Beating women is at least half as bad as throwing away a bloody suit and threatening witnesses.
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Look, Ray said that God wanted the Ravens to win, so that means stabbing some people to death is OK. This is irrefutable logic.
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I heard Osama Bin Laden was (is?) a Ravens fan, so you may be on to something.
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No point throwing in the fresh meat, he's already in a frenzy.
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This meat isn't fresh. He prefers it rotten anyway.
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Warty and Cleveland: Eternal losers, but world champs at holding a grudge.
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I have yet to figure out the fascination you people have in watching grown men in tight pants throw a ball around.
Don't get it.
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You don't heterosexually like the pileups and the buttsmacks? I would have thought you would love watching piles of sweaty African men. In a totally non-gay way, I mean.
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It's a real-life violence fantasy. What's not to get?
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I'm looking forward to the Kate Upton ad more than the game itself.
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Based on the teaser they gave it seems pretty meh. Carls Jr routinely has the most risque commercials.
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Grew up with it (fuck Modell) and still don't get it.
Don't care who wins the Game After The Game (a.k.a. five-hour commercial-fest), I'm just more disappointed with the result of The Game this afternoon. Fucking referee...
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I hate both of them, but I want the Ravens to win since John Harbaugh went to Miami while Jim went to that school up north.
And I'm in a bind here. I'm one game back in the overall Reason Pick-Em* and think the 49ers will win like most people, but want to go with the Ravens. Now, I think the leader may pull a Serbian Jew Double Bluff and pick the Ravens, figuring I will since the Niners are heavy favorites, just to ensure a victory. If that's the case, I could pick the 49ers and tie him. But if he goes with the conventional wisdom and picks the Niners, my only chance is to pick the Ravens and hope for an upset.
Basically, it's like I'm playing a game of Space Chess, but with myself.
*I didn't get to pick a Thursday game earlier in the season because I couldn't get an internet connection while on the highway. The game was picked by everybody in the league, and was a sucker bet with the Colts against the Jags, so I believe I'm already tied since I wanted to make that pick. And with that in mind, I could go with the Niners since I expect them to win and declare myself tied if Ghost's Boasts goes with them as well or the outright winner if he picks the Ravens. But I might not do that either.
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What's this about Space Jews?
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FUCK SPACE ART MODELL
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I don't believe I ever mentioned the Ferengi.
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WWWD-What Would Watto Do?
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Episiarch| 2.3.13 @ 2:37PM |#
"All right, poll time: Ravens or Niners?"
Yeah, I live in SF but it's been a while since I picked the team.
Dunno the score (good defenses on both sides), but Kaepernick means they got 12 guys on the field when they have the ball. -
OT:, but just look at what old Mikey Bloomberg and his gun control group is going to air during the Super Bowl.
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Comment disabled on the video, go figure.
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And they disabled the ratings. Fucking pussies.
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Tolerant people can't tolerate dissent. You should know that by now.
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Fuck those assholes. Anybody that donated to that idiocy just so they could run an ad during the Super Bowl ought to file suit for wasting their money.
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That ad is lame.
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Didn't see this one - watched from about 5ish EST & didn't stick around for much of the postgame. Did it actually run?
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Mayors Against Legal Guns will protect you. Don't worry your pretty little head.
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And what mayor isn't against "illegal" guns? These dickheads should be forced to change their little group's name to "Mayors Against Legal Guns" or "Mayors Against The Second Amendment Right To Defend Oneself Against Violent Crime Or A Corrupt And Evil Government."
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I jumped in my time machine and sailed back to 1991, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, to pick up this artifact.
Rep. CHARLES E. SCHUMER, (D-NY): Oh, I think the President's bill will go through. There'll be some changes. But mostly there'll be some additions. Because the President's bill doesn't really deal with the whole panoply of the crime problem. He deals with crimes after they occur, but what about while crimes are occurring? You know, what we did - and the President makes the analogy to the Persian Gulf war. The first thing we did to immobilize our enemies in Iraq was take away their weapons. We should be doing the same to the criminals in the streets.
-From Evans & Novak, March 16, 1991So, according to the "Schumer test", if the US government tries to take away your weapons, you can safely consider yourself its enemy.
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Is anybody else enjoying watching the Capitals slip further into the proverbial toilet?
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its joyous.
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Come on, Ken. Hockey is for Canadians, women, and people currently undergoing electroshock therapy. Really, what are you thinking?
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why do you hate what you don't understand?
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You know who else hated what they didn't understand?
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charlemagne?
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People like me who think Bob Dylan is a shitty singer and vastly overrated song writer?
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"Take it up to 30 this time, eh?"
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6-3. It's time for the bloodbath that would ensue if these two teams weren't such a collection of douchebags.
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I want the Ravens to win,
You're worse than Eva Braun.
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I'm not going to dispute this.
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You know who else hated what they didn't understand?
Cheetah, the Chimp?
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OT: Any chance Phil blows the rest of this lead?
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All guns not under the control of His Tyrannous Eminence Bloomberg's security detail should be illegal.
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..."it requires the nation's "structural deficit" to be nil over the course of a business cycle so that surpluses generated during boom periods can defray the deficits during bust periods to keep the overall debt manageable."...
Some economist early in the 20th century claimed this was workable; what was his name?
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The first thing we did to immobilize our enemies in Iraq was take away their weapons. We should be doing the same to the criminals in the streets.
"Criminals" of course being defined in Chucktopia as anybody not on the government payroll sworn to preserve and protect Chuck Schumer and his co-conspirators. And that obnoxious douchebag Chris Wallace said laPierre was crazy to imply "universal background checks" are a necessary precursor to "universal registration" and eventually "universal confiscation".
*laPierre IS crazy, and is an obnoxious douchebag of the highest order; but you can't be wrong all the time.
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Chris Wallace said laPierre was crazy to imply "universal background checks" are a necessary precursor to "universal registration" and eventually "universal confiscation".
This is just a variation of the handwave "it[tyranny] could never happen here!"
Unfortunately, if you are Black (Black Codes, Jim Crow, illegality of black firearm ownership even for free blacks), Chinese (anti-Chinese laws), or Japanese (Korematsu), it already has happened here.
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Let's not forget Women's Suffrage only came about completely in 1920.
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Let's not forget how BOOOOSH was an incipient tyrant since he was TEAM RED.
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Enjoy your superbowl http://imgur.com/gallery/yDZrS
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What's this about a superb owl?
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Nice!
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Speaking of crazy shit Wayne laPierre believes;
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Fucking Puppy Bowl, bitchez!
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Puppy Bowl is more entertaining than 93% of the shit CBS will have on TV today.
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It's more entertaining than the Super Bowl.
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But doesn't a debt ceiling threaten the world's natural right to free stuff from America?
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Walking Dead marathon, bitches!
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AKA "ABC Afterschool Special With Zombies"
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No shit, I had high hopes for the show, but just like Jericho my hopes were dashed as it turned into a fucking insipid soap opera.
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Since 1940 Congress has run a deficit nearly every year (62 of 72 years).
Looking at http://www.treasurydirect.gov/.....stdebt.htm I only see 5 years without deficits: 1947, 1948, 1951, 1956 and 1957. What are the other 5?
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I didn't read this article, but does it mention that since many European nations have reduced their deficits their economies have completely tanked?
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Mr. Randazzo, fratello mio, while my peers, ahem, here are a tad obsessed with the Washington Capitals and the Super Bowl, I would like to add to the discussion regarding Italia:
I first defer to a Financial Times article back in the summer of 2012:
"At the end of 2009 the gross wealth of Italian households was estimated at €9,448 billion and their
net wealth at €8,600 billion, corresponding to about €350,000 per household.
… Recent studies put Italian households’ share of global net wealth at 5.7 per
cent, larger than the country’s share of world GDP (3 per cent) or population
(1.1 per cent).By international standards Italian households have relatively little debt.
Household debt is equal to about 78 per cent of disposable income, compared
with 100 per cent in France and Germany and 130 per cent in the United
States and Japan."Some food for thought in relation to its debt being "127% of GDP." Add to the fact it has a massive black market and one will notice Italy isn't exactly "cash strapped" like Spain, Portugal or Greece.
It's poorly managed and a bureaucratic nightmare but have you ever been to Italy? Splendid chaos butit seems to work for them.
I dare say, maybe Italy is the LEAST worrisome of the bunch in some twisted way?
Just saying.
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A discussion and/or debate about the size of our deficit relative to GDP is appropriate, but only after the operational realities of our monetary system are fully understood. The USA is an autonomous issuer of its own fiat currency, which exists iwth a floating exchange-rate system. It's a mistake to compare our system with Europe (at least with those countries that are part of the Euro). I submit that the euro is a flawed currency system and that the EU is facing problems caused by those flaws more than by a debt crisis. For example, Greece is a currency user --- and is constrained by that system. Japan's system is similar to ours. They've been fighting deflation for decades, with every increasing deficits --- yet they've had no trouble keeping rates low on government bonds. This is not to say that deficits don't matter. They do, but mostly within the context of the total productive capacity of the economy. Solvency is not the constraint, inflation is the constraint. A balanced budget amendment is a bad idea. The federal government (unlike households, states, or businesses) is not currency constrained. I find it interesting that the first 6 times the federal government had a budget surplus, we fell into an economic depression within 2 years. The 7th time (with the Clinton surplus), we had the tech stock bubble and the residential real estate bubble that (I believe) delayed the problems caused by the budget surplus --- but then we had the "great recession".
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