Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Short Quiz

Post by johnkarls »

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SHORT QUIZ

1. Are our authors irresponsible by giving the American electorate permission to blame America’s political stalemate on the American political system, rather than taking responsibility for their own dysfunctionality? [You have permission to consider the other questions before answering this one!!!]

2. Which American President popularized the phrase “Starve the Beast”? What is meant by the phrase?

3. Has either major political party since Ronald Reagan stood for fiscal responsibility?

4. Who is Grover Nordquist? What is the text of his famous pledge?

5. How many Republicans have signed Grover Nordquist’s no-tax-increase pledge?

6. Why is Grover Nordquist so effective?

7. Would the Republicans have control of the Senate if Grover Nordquist were not so quick to field such candidates as “The Witch” in Delaware in 2010 and to “throw under the bus” such stalwarts as former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair and current ranking-minority member Richard Lugar in 2012?

8. For our 6/13/2012 meeting on “The Submerged State: How Invisible Governmental Policies Undermine American Democracy,” we recognized that there are three types of governmental expenditures = (A) appropriations, (B) tax expenditures and (C) mandates. Would attacking (A) or (B) violate Grover Nordquist’s pledge? Would attacking (C) have any impact on the federal deficit even though doing so would comprise a reduction in governmental expenditures?

9. How many tax expenditures are identified annually by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation and what is their annual total cost?

10. Even though the JCT annually recognizes approximately 200 tax expenditures, does the JCT recognize all of them or are quite a few left un-recognized for political reasons?

11. Of all the tax expenditures that could be halted in order to raise revenue without violating Nordquist’s no-tax-increase pledge, why are charitable contributions and mortgage deductions the only two that receive publicity?

12. Does the lack of limelight for the other couple hundred tax expenditures mean that the threat of their elimination is merely an opportunity for the pivotal politicians to shake down for “campaign contributions” the clients of lobbyists who are pushing for maintaining those tax expenditures?

13. What is the historical level of federal governmental appropriations in terms of GDP?

14. How much will that percentage have to increase to cover the cost of the Obamacare (the term embraced by the President) extension of Medicaid to cover 16 million additional Americans?

15. How much more would that percentage have had to increase if Obamacare had not excluded from the federal budget the cost of covering another 16 million additional Americans (for a total of 32 million additional Americans per the Congressional Budget Office estimates) by means of the famous insurance “mandate” upheld by the Supreme Court which saddled healthy young people with that cost in the form of unwarrantedly-high insurance premiums paid to private insurers?

16. How much will that percentage have to increase to bail out under-funded pension plans of Blue States and of their local governments?

17. How much would that percentage have to increase to provide a French-style universal educational system where the entire cost of all French universities (including graduate-level education) is shouldered by the French government and all French students are eligible for university or technical/trade schools based on competitive examinations?

18. Does the fact that no French citizen has to worry about the cost of medical care or the cost of college for her/his children reduce stress (and, as a result, reduce medical costs for treating stress-induced illness) and increase life expectancy?

19. Now that our national debt has surpassed our GDP and reached the percentages of GDP typical of Europe’s “problem children” (Greece, Spain, Italy, etc.), how much of current federal appropriations would have to be diverted to paying interest at “junk bond rates” if the U.S. dollar goes “in the toilet”?

20. What does President Obama’s “base line” (none of his proposed budgets for the last three years has received a single vote in either the Senate or the House) show as the percentage of national debt to GDP 10 years from now?

21. Although Europe’s “problem children” pay interest on the order of 8%, that is due to the market perception that Germany will continue to “bail out” the “problem children” -- does Germany have the capacity and the will to “bail out” the United States to shield us from full “junk bond rates” (north of 20% if we can even find lenders)?

22. Who is hurt if the U.S. dollar goes “in the toilet”? American corporations? American workers? American retirees? Owners of stock? Owners of bonds? Savings account depositors?

23. What does the answer to Question 22 say about a society that is busy converting the cost of retirement from employer-funded “defined benefit” pension plans to personal Sec. 401(k) plans that give retirees ulcers over the fear that they will live too long?

24. Because of the likelihood that the U.S. dollar will go “in the toilet” (because of our deficits and our accumulated debt, if not the shenanigans of the Federal Reserve for which we recommended following our 12/14/2011 meeting the prosecution of Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke), isn’t the best investment any American can make at this time a NEGATIVE investment in dollars (in other words, borrowing soon-to-plummet dollars) to finance assets that will retain their intrinsic value (vs. their nominal value as measured by plummeting dollars)?

25. So now what is your answer to whether our authors are irresponsible by giving the American electorate permission to blame their political system rather than taking responsibility for their own dysfunctionality?

26. In other words, aren’t Americans nothing more than children who regularly vote for Santa Claus and who don’t have the maturity to pay for what they want? And isn’t Grover Nordquist playing the role of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas?

27. And isn’t the real solution to our dysfunctionality not the “band aids” suggested by our authors but a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

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