Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Some words of wisdom from Paul Ryan

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6 comments:

PBM said...

His Roadmap is pretty nutty.

March 22, 2011 at 3:16 PM
Megan said...

At least he's got one!

March 22, 2011 at 4:27 PM
Ross Perot said...

Good to see we've got the bar set high, then.

March 22, 2011 at 4:35 PM
PBM said...

Yeah, Megan, I agree. It's pretty ballsy for him to put it out there, but I'd say it's going nowhere.

March 22, 2011 at 4:48 PM
PL said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
March 22, 2011 at 8:46 PM
PL said...

First, a factcheck: Young people in France are not rioting about deficits- they are rioting about discrimination, a lack of opportunity (i.e. where are the jobs), and limited economic prosperity. Those riots are seperate from the marches and rally's over France's decision to raise the early retirment age from 60 to 62. Greece is a much poorer country than the U.S., so the comparisons between us and them are very limited. Our country could easily maintain the standards of living/government services without the need for the deficit-financing the Greeks had to do. The decision of students -in the U.K.- (forgot to say this in my intial comment) to protest the MASSIVE increases in their expected contribution to their education is reasonable, especially when you consider that education is an important factor for long-term economic growth.

The U.S. does not have as much upward mobility as European countries, so I'm not sure its self-evident that moving away from that model towards less spending is necessary to prevent us losing social mobility.

But to the article and his "words of wisdom," I'm not sure Ryan qualifies as a paragon of moral virtue since his RoadMap massively (more than the Bush tax cuts) cuts taxes on the wealthiest Americans, increases taxes on low- and moderate-income Americans, privatizes Social Security, and converts all of the government health programs largely to vouchers and tax credits which will certainly get these programs costs of the federal government's budget but won't cost control- thus likely massively shifting costs to the low and moderate-income Americans dependent on Medicaid, CHIP, and Medicare for their health care. Basically he shifts the burden from the federal government's books and high-income Americans to low- and moderate-income Americans.

March 22, 2011 at 9:36 PM

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