No offense guys, but if we had the "real" solutions we would be active in politics, not filmmaking (unless combining the two of course). Quite often I see things being broken down in such simplistic terms, when in reality fixing these problems is complex, requires cooperation from both sides of the aisle, etc. I don't pretend to have any well prepared plans either, but I know it will take some really smart, ambitious folks to get this thing moving in the right direction again. And if the two parties continue to want to outsmart each other, and get stuck in their tunnel vision this mess could go on for quite a while. Hopefully people come to their senses sooner rather than later, because the longer this goes on, the less cooperation we see from our politicians the greater the chances for a huge collapse. I don't want to see that day.

Welcome to the Age of Austerity. Everyone knows that. But how? That's the question.

Which has failed miserably in the EU. Precisely the wrong strategy.

Depends on how you figure it and how you define the classes, but sure, the top 1% in the U.S. earns a hugely disproportionate percentage of the national income, have enjoyed virtually all income gains of the last 30 years, and own most of the national wealth,

Talk about dogma. Sheesh. Nobody "owns" wealth. They have "accumulated it"... and wealth is also non-zero sum. I know it's easier for most people's brains to understand that if some people are poor, it's because someone else "has" all the wealth. But just look at basic math, bell-curves, and biology... most people are poor and have shitty jobs, because most people are average or below in terms of intelligence and capabilities. Sure, there are some fucked up systems and corruption we need to deal with... but this fantasy of "if all the rich people weren't so greedy, and didn't have all the wealth, then everyone would have amazing jobs and there would be no poverty" needs to end. It's simply isn't true. This is very childish logic. Sorry. There is no system on earth that could be put in place that guarantees every human the same output regardless of ability or input. Until we are all exact genetic copies, and have unlimited energy... this is just chasing the unicorn.

@svart

I'm sorry, but your claim that the NYT is "left-wing" is proof positive you have no idea what "left-wing" means and are in no position to comment on left-wing thought or counter-arguments to your own right-wing dogmas.

No matter what the left wing and media say, the rich already pay more taxes than both the middle and lower classes do(combined).

Depends on how you figure it and how you define the classes, but sure, the top 1% in the U.S. earns a hugely disproportionate percentage of the national income, have enjoyed virtually all income gains of the last 30 years, and own most of the national wealth, and have lobbied for themselves huge tax cuts, paying far less today than they did under Saint Ronald Reagan -- and look at the income gains of the top .1%, and their reduced tax rates, and the disparities are even worse.

So where else do you go for tax revenues, when nearly half the U.S. population earns so little, that the personal and standard deduction, which everyone, including the very rich take advantage of, eliminates all Federal tax liability? Or do you want to force people making $8 an hour to pay 15% of it in Federal tax -- on top of the 15% they're already paying in SS and Medicare withholding taxes, plus local sales tax, utility tax, property tax (in the form of rent), etc.

And on and on it goes. There's absolutely no point to these arguments, when we all live in different factual universes.

let me just rephrase to make it more clear.

While sticker on the hood derailed whole train by getting moved slightly to the left, it remains to be seen what he'll choose to do next.

While Obama derailed the plan by getting re-elected, it remains to be seen what he'll choose to do next. If he picks a contrarian like Krugman for Treasury Secretary, it'll signal a formal break with the Wall Street moguls who turned their backs on him this election. And If Obama replaces Petraeus with an outsider who quietly purges the CIA, it'll suggest he's taking a proactive approach to assassination hazards.

This was really, really good weed.

I'll take Krugman's track record over the one-percenters' perfidy. This "crisis" is simply the latest attempt to fear-monger the public into passively accepting a grand theft heist of Social Security and Medicaid. The real cliff that we just narrowly dodged was the vulture capitalists' attempt to bankrupt the US economy with a leveraged-buyout-style hostile takeover of the federal government. Here's how the scam was supposed to work:

1. Bush converts the Clinton surplus into a massive national debt via tax cuts combined with two multi-trillion-dollar wars.

2. Wall Street crashes the economy with derivatives swindles which Obama then underwrites with multi-trillion-dollar Federal Reserve bailouts.

3. Romney plunders the Treasury with a private-equity-style dismemberment of the federal government's multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure.

While Obama derailed the plan by getting re-elected, it remains to be seen what he'll choose to do next. If he picks a contrarian like Krugman for Treasury Secretary, it'll signal a formal break with the Wall Street moguls who turned their backs on him this election. And If Obama replaces Petraeus with an outsider who quietly purges the CIA, it'll suggest he's taking a proactive approach to assassination hazards.

Yeap yeap.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/obama-climate-change_n_2131419.html

LOL NYT. Another left wing agenda outlet. I mean, is that guy angry or what? His article is dripping with vitriol and passes over numbers and facts for fantastic hearsay and shoulda-coulda-woulda theory that claims this was "brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage." rather than pointing out that most of this fiscal mess was a shared responsibility between both of the inept and overtly self-centered political parties.

The problem is that the "scolds"(nice use of negative name calling/terminology to elicit an emotional response instead of a logical one..) were right all along, we shouldn't have been in DEFICIT before the recession even started, but we were.. Now we are in huge DEBT, with INTEREST! So how do we pay for the interest and the principle debt when our tax revenue can't pay down the debt alone? We can't. We'll try to tax our way out of it, but we can't tax enough to pay down the debt because the majority of the debt is owned by the citizens of the USA. So how do you tax the people you OWE money to, to pay back the people you just borrowed from, with interest? It's impossible because the government doesn't "make" money, they just "take" money.

EVERYBODY knows that credit card debt is designed to keep you in debt, to generate interest revenue to the company that let you borrow the money. It is not designed to help you, although the companies will tell you that they are there to help. The government fell for the same trap. We went into great debt because of stupidity while running a deficit for unneeded wars, bailouts, etc. Now we are stuck in the "credit trap" that bankrupts consumers all the time. Do we have a Credit Counseling Service large enough for the US government to help us structure our payment plans to pay off the debt?

@mark_the_harp BINGO. They don't quite understand it because they were taught that this is the "correct" way to do things, because it helped in the past. They don't analyze and do things based on the data, they do knee-jerk fast reactions in an effort to try to clean up the problem before it becomes worse (and people figure out how stupid they are). The people who DO know everything, are definitely making money. Those are the bankers who are now making money on the debt of the US government. They like it just how it is.

The von Mises and Rothbard crowd knew it wasn't going to work.

Yep, but this guys are even worse than Krugman :-)

@LPowell

LOL. Kurgman, with usual "economic theory said we needed more".

Thing is that all charts and all facts show that shit didn't worked.

The ONLY way to fix this is cutting the spending. LOCK the government spending for FY2013 to FY2008 levels and then start scaling back active military programs(read: wars) and foreign aid(read: bribes for other governments to do what we want) and start a 3rd party audit of both the federal reserve and military(starting with the pentagon). Claims of fraudulent accounting are rampant in both.

No, it is not the way. Any cut to military or stopping upcoming wars will hit US extremely hard.

Generally, the only existing solution in current paradigm is forced globalization. But it'll be interesting globalization. It'll be combined with extreme segregation for individuals and small business, combined with green passage for corporations and some goverments.

All this will be combined with two new paradigm properties - all resources belong to powerful ones, and anyone who'll start building independent manufacturing will be bombed out with "it induce climate change" words.

Of course, it still means middle class elimination.

All other exits require current elites elimination.