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[Jhriad]

A) *snip* The German government spends its money much more wisely than the US government.

B) *snip* but reasonable tax increases still will not pay for the US deficit and massive new government programs at the same time.

It would be a lot easier to pay the US deficit, provide stimulus to necessary sectors, and create "massive new government programs" if our defense spending were at less than 1.5% of GDP like the German defense budget. Not saying that we should slash our defense budget by more than 60% but it's worth pointing out.

The way the US currently spends its tax dollars and the inherent higher costs of healthcare and college education in the US means Americans will never have a full fledged universal healthcare system

A full fledged universal healthcare system would likely correct some of those 'inherent higher costs' to more reasonable levels. One good example being hospital ER costs. They have to distribute the cost of their ER departments because so many low income individuals without health insurance use those departments as their only source of healthcare and then skip out on the bill. That lost revenue then feeds back into the system further increasing cost of care.

 

[Death Dealer]

I'm watching Corolla on the Tonight Show. His whole opening act tonight was about how hard it is to be rich. What with the mean 99%ers out there. He reminded the audience at least twice that he is rich.

Adam tells Jay, you have to act poor, even if you're rich, like us. 0_o

I think he's got a complex about not really being talented or famous anymore.

And than he's complaining about having to look at shirtless men working out on Thanksgiving. What do they say about outspoken homophobes ?

 

[BocoDragon]

I'm watching Corolla on the Tonight Show. His whole opening act tonight was about how hard it is to be rich. What with the mean 99%ers out there. He reminded the audience at least twice that he is rich.

Adam tells Jay, you have to act poor, even if you're rich, like us. 0_o

I think he's got a complex about not really being talented or famous anymore.

And than he's complaining about having to look at shirtless men working out on Thanksgiving. What do they say about outspoken homophobes ?

He's honest about being rich, and trolling the fact that most celebrities pretend they're not even though they are, and you think it's a bad thing?

 

[Death Dealer]

His 'trolling' sounded like whining. I guess I just don't find him to be that funny. He didn't get much positive reaction from the audience. He was visibly nervous during the interview, his hands were shaking.

 

[Rabbit Lord]

I'm watching Corolla on the Tonight Show. His whole opening act tonight was about how hard it is to be rich. What with the mean 99%ers out there. He reminded the audience at least twice that he is rich.

Adam tells Jay, you have to act poor, even if you're rich, like us. 0_o

I think he's got a complex about not really being talented or famous anymore.

And than he's complaining about having to look at shirtless men working out on Thanksgiving. What do they say about outspoken homophobes ?

When he was on the radio he talked a lot about how much money he made and always commented on how he disliked how most wealthy people in hollywood try to pretend they aren't super wealthy. I didn't see the Tonight Show, but I'm guessing his was joking around with that idea.

 

[BaltimoreLarry]

While he's brushing with broad strokes and isn't right about everyone that is participating in Occupy, he's still right.

 

[Trent Strong]

I'm watching Corolla on the Tonight Show. His whole opening act tonight was about how hard it is to be rich. What with the mean 99%ers out there. He reminded the audience at least twice that he is rich.

Adam tells Jay, you have to act poor, even if you're rich, like us. 0_o

I think he's got a complex about not really being talented or famous anymore.

And than he's complaining about having to look at shirtless men working out on Thanksgiving. What do they say about outspoken homophobes ?

He's not a homophobe. He's said many times on his podcast that he supports gay marriage. He's also said on his podcast pretty much what you just said in your post, that outspoken homophobes are almost always secretly gay, and that straight guys who are secure in their sexuality don't care whether someone else is gay or not. There are plenty of good reasons to get pissed off at Carolla, he says a lot of stupid stuff, but he's liberal on nearly every social issue and isn't a homophobe.

 

[BocoDragon]

His 'trolling' sounded like whining. I guess I just don't find him to be that funny. He didn't get much positive reaction from the audience. He was visibly nervous during the interview, his hands were shaking.

I think he's getting pretty uncomfortable with all this attention he's been getting over his comments recently... Taking a toll on his ability to perform, I'd imagine. He's now aware that his working class "shut up and get a job" humor is being construed as some serious right-wing ideology, and he doesn't like it.

But maybe he just bombed by his own accord. The Tonight Show and it's audience are pretty light and fluffy. Not quite his audience.

 

[985boi]

I'm watching Corolla on the Tonight Show. His whole opening act tonight was about how hard it is to be rich. What with the mean 99%ers out there. He reminded the audience at least twice that he is rich.

Adam tells Jay, you have to act poor, even if you're rich, like us. 0_o

I think he's got a complex about not really being talented or famous anymore.

And than he's complaining about having to look at shirtless men working out on Thanksgiving. What do they say about outspoken homophobes ?

Carolla may be a lot of things but he's not a homophobe.

 

[Socreges]

Totally fine that Corolla has that opinion. What surprised me was how many people agreed with him "completely/totally" and/or are trying to use his argument to undermine anyone that disputes what he's said.

 

[Mgoblue201]

1) Many things happened between 2000-2007. The rise of the Euro gave investors/banks throughout the world much more confidence in bringing into Europe. European countries utilized such confidence/higher credit rating by printing money, selling and buying debt- much like the US had done for the previous decades (minus the buying of debt part). However, not all European countries had the tax base and economic growth to sustain such debts, as the global currency market overrules all governments. Also, much of Europe's real growth has been mainly centered in Germany, due to it's premiere education standards, relatively reasonable fiscal practices, and elite manufacturing base. Much of southern Europe does not have such things, and currency traders are calling "bullshit" on their debt.

2) There have been/currently are multiple bubbles at play. The US housing bubble is different from European nation debt bubbles, US state debt bubbles, and the US federal debt bubble. The foundations of the former were laid in the 90s, encouraged by the US federal government and many state governments (California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida in particular) and later exacerbated by the US and global financial industry and credit agencies. The facing of the government debt bubbles were accelerated by the US housing bubble. Such debt was never going to be forgotten, as the rest of the world is not going to allow the US and Europe (and Japan) to just print money without any repercussions.

3) Even though my previous may not have made this apparent, but I do not view "capitalism" or "socialism" in the ideological sense that many on GAF do. Those kinds of views should been left in the high school civics class. The modern economies in this world have many complex mechanisms, which defining them en masse as either "capitalism" or "socialism" is a useless exercise. "Free market capitalism" didn't fail anything- it's simply a term to generally describe people buying and selling goods and a specialization of labor. A lot people made a lot of bad decisions which led up to the US housing bubble bursting. In the end, it gave us an important lesson: do not use the housing market as the main source for economic growth- which some still haven't learned.


4) I never said all of our economic problems started with Obama. However, I will say the Obama administration has done the wrong things to achieve meaningful economic growth. Obama himself is a poor leader and his indecisiveness has created much uncertainty within the US markets- prolonging economic stagnation.

The current European crisis isn't just about the ability to sustain higher deficits through the Euro. Nor is it just about social spending (Germany actually has higher levels of social spending relative to GDP than Greece). As Martin Wolf points out, public debt and fiscal deficits do not necessarily correlate with the present crisis countries. What does correlate is current account imbalances, even if the nation in question had stable public debt beforehand. The mechanisms to help solve this problem, such as changes in the exchange rate, are currently unavailable to a sovereign country in a currency union with other sovereign countries. There are still options available to the Euro zone. But one solution that probably won't work is to say that the problem is profligacy, therefore the solution is to slash public expenditures.

Second, as Rogoff and Reinhart point out in their book, This Time Is Different, liberalization of the financial system is correlated with a greater likelihood of busts soon after. That factor, when combined with the housing bubble, helped start the present crisis. I agree that it's lazy thinking to speak of a vague thing such as "free market capitalism" as if it has failed, especially given the success of economically liberal countries, but one can definitely argue that some elements of our current economic system have led to failures that shouldn't have occurred, so they must be corrected.

 

[Puddles]

While he's brushing with broad strokes and isn't right about everyone that is participating in Occupy, he's still right.

What is he right about?

 

[Oblivion]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLqVFDn5Jtg


Btw, is it just me or has the OWS movement fizzled out? Was fun while it lasted.

edit: oh crap, didn't meant to post this in this thread.