Waking Up To Economic Realities
Last week the financial markets were roiled by Standard & Poor’s announcement that they will change their outlook on the fiscal health of the United States over the next two years from “stable” to “negative”. The administration decried this decision as political. However, it seems the only political thing about this decision is the fact that it took so long. The Washington Post recently reported that the White House and the Treasury Department put tremendous pressure on S&P not to do this. However, if S&P made its ratings based on political pressures rather than economic reality, it would cease to have any relevance to the business community. Even if S&P delayed its announcement that U.S. government bond market would be downgraded, at some point it would become obvious that the finances of this country are out of control and our leadership is out of touch. All credibility would be lost if S&P simply continued to assign U.S. debt a AAA rating.
S&P noted in its announcement that negotiations among leaders in Washington to address deficit concerns did not sound promising, and expressed skepticism that politicians could agree to any viable budget compromise. Of course this has been obvious for years but in the midst of the current debate over raising the debt limit it is perhaps the wake-up call that Washington needs. For decades politicians and government officials have been able to maintain their denial about our real financial situation, patching the system together by passing emergency and supplemental funding bills, issuing more debt, and allowing the Federal Reserve and foreign creditors to paper over deficits with more monetary expansion. I’ve said many times the real day of reckoning comes when fiscal and monetary tricks no longer work and there are no buyers for our debt.
Even the most conservative budget that has been proposed by Republican leadership requires raising the debt ceiling by an additional $9 trillion by 2021. This demonstrates absolutely that no one in power right now has any real intention of addressing our spending problems or paying down the debt. They simply expect to continue to borrow and run up more debt forever, without limit. Yet they always imagine our dollar will have value no matter how many we print. This expectation is foolish and naïve. I guarantee that those buying our debt are not foolish and naïve enough to go along with this charade forever.
The S&P announcement may just be the harbinger of economic realities acting as a restraint on government expansion. Government is not anxious to cap its own growth, in spite of misnomers like “debt limit” or “deficit reduction”. Government will continue to grow like a cancer, sapping our country of its wealth and freedom until the laws of economics no longer can be ignored.
Thank You Congressman Paul
Obviously, ...... the Federal Budget must be put on a diet. That means getting Rid of what we can't afford, don't need, and is hellishly Counterproductive.
Smoking cigarettes is an official “incurable mental illness” according to the American Psychiatric Association.
Quitting cigarettes is Also an “incurable mental illness” according to the same crowd.
DSM-IV-TR Billing Code: 305.10: Nicotine Dependence
We've posted on the Psychiatric FRAUD of cigarettes as an incurable insanity already:
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/search/label/Cigarette
Clearing The Air has another look at the RWJF/J&J MONEY behind Risperdal: which will take 25 Years off your life if you allow a Flying Monkey Reviewer and his Sales Team to Defraud you into an impossible to biologically prove exists, disability.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The bogus claim that smokers cost society money is once again proven false
The government estimates smoking-related illness costs about $300 million a year. But it collects $5.8 billion each year in tobacco excise duty (taxes).
Read more:
More here:
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-smokers-cost-state-money.html
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2008/02/new-study-logically-proves-non-smokers.html
posted by marcus aurelius @ 3:01 PM
ED: correction April 29: $5.9 Billion is in Australia, The American figures are of course higher and the US Treasury has:
About Budget Performance (pg 4)
Collect the Revenue - This activity collects alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and ammunition excise taxes. These products generate nearly $15 billion in tax revenue annually, making TTB the third largest tax collection agency in the federal government. With the passage of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act legislation, the anticipated annual revenues will climb to $22 billion.
The excise taxes collected by TTB come from approximately 8,500 businesses, and the taxes are imposed and collected at the producer and importer levels of operations. Members of the regulated industries paying excise taxes are distilleries, breweries, bonded wineries, bonded wine cellars, manufacturers of cigarette tubes, manufacturers of tobacco products, and manufacturers and importers of firearms and ammunition. Approximately 200 of the largest taxpayers account for 98 percent of the annual excise tax collected. In FY 2008, the majority of taxes collected were from alcohol (51 percent) and tobacco (47 percent), with the remainder from firearms and ammunition (2 percent).
Which of course is only the Federal Sin Tax.
Wiki has the State by State Additional Pig Pile Onto Smokers
Cigarette Taxes In The United States
Is there Anyone over the age of 3 today who Hasn't already been Shock Mongered into understanding that smoking isn't actually a shot of vitamin B-12? A single pack of non filtered Camels, in some States, is now Over $9.00. And has raising taxes to $9.00 a pack effected an appreciable benefit to the public’s health?
Cigarette Taxes, Black Markets And Crime, Lessons From New York's 50 Year Losing Battle
If you call Increasing Violent Crime a benefit to public health, then yes, raising taxes on cigarettes Has had a beneficial effect on the public health, just like behavior modification drugs, …..
Mental Health: Comes With FREE Homicide
Mental Health: Comes With FREE Suicide
And of Course, the UK Also has its own Kleptocracy of Govt. Redistributors creating Crime by economically punishing individual Freedom of Choice.
Tobacco Taxes Set To Boost Smuggling
And Where has that $5.8 Billion in Australia and over $10 Billion in US Federal Alone tobacco excise tax been ending up? Into public schools improving education: the way most of it was promoted onto smokers backs? Partly, but it's been in a back handed, pharmaceutically manipulated fashion corrupting our institutions of higher earning with disability peddling excuses, as we're seeing in San Francisco, to buy votes.
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/search/label/San%20Francisco
The Psych Drug cover story is Suicide Prevention, which has been ably Exposed as an obscenely expensive & wasteful FRAUD.
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/2009/05/throwing-billions-down-psych-drug-rat.html
And if you think this Industry of disability dispensing drug peddlers are only breaking America's back:
Mental health disorders don’t only affect adults. In fact, it is estimated that up to 20 percent of Canadian children and youth may be affected. These ailments can alter development and functioning at home, at school, with peers and in the community; they are most disabling of all disorders worldwide. The good news is early diagnosis and treatment can make a life-long difference.
Yes, it certainly Can make a Life Long Difference
Teen Screen, The Link Between Psychiatry, Drugs And Suicide
20% is as FRAUDULENT a number as Psychiatry itself is. How the Hell can 1 of every 5 children be born with a defective, out of whack, chemically imbalanced brain? The entire human race would have gone the way of the dodo ages ago if it were That chemically unbalanced. If 'Mental Health Behaviorists' let the truth slip that they're after 100% of Everybody they'd never get away with it.
20% is simply the most they figure they can sneak in without setting off the public's Shit Detector.
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