shakran

Are you forgetting to include the cost of the war?

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Second, I don't know where you're getting the 4 or 5k figure but regardless, there's little evidence that there's inflation, so your spending power is not decreasing.

the 4 or 5 k figure was mentioned by someone in a post above. I was just using it.

No, there's not much inflation now, but there will be when the economy takes a nosedive.

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Third, which would you feel better about in the face of a tanking economy, having that 4 or 5k you speak of or the government having it?

Woah, hold on. Sure in your hypothetical situation I'd feel better about me having it. HOWEVER, in the real world I'd rather the government have it if it means that the economy WON'T tank.

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Fourth, can you honestly say that the economy isn't going to tank again if the government just had more money? Of course it's going to tank again and there's not a person alive who can control it.

Just having more money isn't the only answer - you have to have responsible spending as well. I know that the republican mantra is smaller government, but that's not what they're actually going for. They love to rail on the dems for wanting to spend money on social programs, but when they seize the reigns of power, they cut the social programs but increase the spending on the military.

I'm all for national defense, but Bush has turned it into the Department of War again. This little adventure he's forced us in to in Iraq has cost us a fortune. Then he wants to dick around with Star Wars, which doesn't work even when they cheat on the test. This is not smaller government folks, this is just reallocation of resources. If you insist on paying for all this crap, you gotta have a means to earn enough money to do so.

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3. I'm a Republican and I've been saying the Pres has virtually no influence over the economy. Your brethren point to Bush as being the cause of the downturn, does that mean the election of a President retroactively effects the economy? Please. The economy moves in cycles the President simply suffers or prospers at the hand of the economy's performance.

No. Sure, the economy was in a standard cyclical downturn when Bush took control, but he's made that downturn much worse. The economy does move in cycles, BUT you can mitigate the downturns if you have intelligent fiscal policy. Bush is not interested in doing that.

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And lastly, why would we want to make the government rich?

Oh. OK. I guess you're saying you want to stop driving (government pays for the roads) and eating relatively safe food (who do you think inspects the meat you're eating?). I suppose you also want to revert to an anarchic system of vigilante justice, because the government pays for the police too. Hope your house doesn't catch fire, because you don't want to make the government rich so we'll have to kill off all the fire departments.

Live in an area that gets snow in the winter? There's two strikes against driving. The government funds the plowing, but we can't make the government "rich" so we'll just cut the plows as well. Might as well, because we no longer have any roads to plow anyway.

Let's not forget city sewer, trash collection, etc.

In short, if we don't "make the government rich" we'll quickly find ourselves living in one giant craphole. People want all these services but balk at paying for them with taxes. That's absurd.