Burning carbon is only cheap in relation to nuclear because we don't put a price on the externalities caused by burning carbon. Nuclear plant operators have to pay to store their waste indefinitely while carbon burners just pump their waste straight into the air. Once the costs are all accounted for and priced correctly (most efficiently via a carbon tax) nuclear may well be cheaper. Also, please stop using the word socialism to mean "a private company that uses any some publicly financed loans to acquire capital".

That sounds like a +1 to me. Humans are fickle meat bags. I want my services provided by a no nonsense automaton. One with a sexy voice, though. It makes my impending destruction at the hands of GoogleBots that much easier to bare.

The answer is quite straight forward...don't vote Republican or Democrat. Or, nominate Democrats or Republicans you actually have, you know, sound ideas to solve our problems. This of course requires the will of the governed.

Actually, since our politicians have power only by consent of the the governed, we really only have ourselves to blame. Decades of apathy, ignorance, and greed (among other factors) have created the abomination that is now the government in the United States. If we really wanted to we could replace every elected official in the federal government within 18 years, but we won't.

Northrop Grumman is only the third largest defense contractor. Lockheed Martin and Boeing are even bigger spenders.

For Chrome users there is an extension that adds a 'Share to Google+' button at the bottom of each post in Reader.

Yes, but only because you have Macs! =P

I was born in Plantation, FL. I've lived in Sarasota, Tampa, Tallahassee, and Melbourne. I have relatives in Ft.Lauderdale and Miami. I've pretty much been everywhere in the state of Florida. Of course many people don't consider Florida "southern", especially south of I-4, but my point still stands. The state government of Florida is worse than the federal government, however hard that may be to fathom. But what should one expect from a state that chooses to elect a governor, Rick Scott, who was at the center of the largest Medicare fraud case of all time? The South continues to lag behind in most quality of life standards. This is not due primarily to the incompetence of the Federal government, but rather the incompetence of the people and governments of the South.

You must not live in the South.

The pedant in me wants to change that 100% to 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999%.

So the tax payer is on the hook regardless. Why not cut the bullshit and just implement single-payer healthcare? At worst it's as expensive and ineffective as what we have. At best it is cheaper and more efficient.

Of course not. They check the bovines, too.

Your post is nearly pure idiocy. Juding by the complete lack of any supporting linkage, bullet point ready adages, and general misunderstanding of how our federal book keeping actually works I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you're one of those fair tax rally going big-C conservative types. About the only thing worth salvaging from is that, indeed, we have a spending problem as well a taxation problem.

This means setting PERMANENT rates that are not subject to a vote to maintain.

No law or statute in this country is permanent, including those codified in the Constitution. Furthermore, a session of Congress cannot be bound by any previous session of Congress. The best one could hope for would be an amendment to the Constitution, but again, this is reversable.

Bring down our business tax rate, ours is one of highest in the world and one of the few that taxes income made outside of the country.

Our corporate tax rate is one of the highest but is one of the lowest in revenue. This rate could be lowered if all/most deductions are removed. Some charts to mull over.

CAP income tax rates. Set them in stone. None of this "we will renew it next year crap"

See my previous response.

Flatten tax rates.

Having a flatter tax rate does nothing but give the wealthiest Americans more money. If giving more money to wealthy people was such a fantastic driver of economic prosperity I suspect we wouldn't be having this convesation. There a any number of ways we could reduce spending and increase revenues. None of the things you posit will balance our books.

I've always wondered why we have so few marginal tax brackets. I'd like to see a progressive income tax function created and everyone would pay the integral of that function. Perhaps it could be asymptotic at some maximum income. Of course this would mostly rule out filing by paper. I wish.

Jesus, where to begin.

> No. But it will help. Cut spending and you relieve pressure on the credit system, increase confidence that we aren't going to collapse like the PIIGS currently are and generally move in the right direction. If the cuts also relieve government meddling in the economy so much the better.

I don't think you'd appreciate the finer points of fiscal and monetary policy or how the PIGS economies are so much different from ours the comparison is at best laughable so let's just call this bullshit and move on.

> Recessions tend to do that. When people and corporations have less income there is less taxes collected. Which is why economic growth is the only viable way out.

More half-baked truths here. Corporate profits at the end of 2010 were soaring. Third-quarter 2010 saw the steepest year-over-year corporate profit surge since they started recording data 60 years ago. GDP grew nearly 3%. Linkage: Profits Are Booming. Why Aren’t Jobs? and GDP Data

> Revenue increased through the naughties although there dips during the downturns. Spending increased more than revenue.

Again, this is complete bunk. Please look at this chart U.S. federal revenues for years 2000-2010. Under what situation would this be considered increasing revenues? Spending did increase quite significantly. You can mostly thank the Republican in congress for that, though. They blew a hole in the budget with Medicare Part D and the Bush tax cuts which were both entirely funded by debt. Of course I didn't mention two failed Middle East wars that are also unpaid. Read it and weep.

> Second we gave loans to people with little probability of repaying, mostly because of government intervention in the home loan process via Freddie and Fannie.

Right effect, wrong cause. Lots and lots of folks got mortgages they couldn't really afford because the there was a huge incentive to make them. The giant investment banks that underwrote these sub-prime loans quickly bundled them up and sold them as investment vehicles. Once they investments were sold the originating banks had zero skin in the game. Freddie and Fannie both are terribly flawed, but they weren't the cause of the problem. This is one solid case where we need more government, lots more. Dodd-Frank was an attempt at getting the shit hole that is Wall Street cleaned up, but the Republicans are hell bent on repealing/neutering that.

I know I am coming off like a huge asshole here, but I get very pissed off when I hear party ideologues espousing bullshit. I'm not hear to tell you that the Democrats are our saving grace or even a good choice, but for Christ's sake this Tea Parry/Republican pseudo-intellectual bullshit has got to stop.