[clue-talk] How do CLUEbies vote?

[Nate Duehr]

David L. Willson wrote:
> Just to throw another stone in the bucket:  Has the national debt become
> a non-issue?  Isn't there ~anyone~ else who wants to wean this country
> off deficit and pay off the debt?  I'm so old-fashioned...

Count me in on that one.  I do see the "value" in leveraging monetary 
situations with loans when they make fiscal sense, but just like in 
business... if a loan is taken, a plan for paying off that loan with a 
real time-frame must be agreed to by the leadership.  And the 
cost/benefit analysis must show that the capital borrowed will have a 
return on investment greater than the cost of the loan.

> All I ever hear anyone talk about is lower taxes and/or better programs;
> I literally never hear anyone talk about paying off the debt.  

Because that would require higher taxes and less programs.  :-) 
Absolutely impossible to get around that, economically.

> I brought
> it up in another place, and the only thing that was said was, "I don't
> know what the solution to that is, but it's NOT higher taxes for an
> already struggling work force."  

The definition of "struggling" needs to change in people's minds.  The 
difference between "struggling" here in the U.S. and "struggling" in 
other places in the world is night and day.  Our expectations of "the 
good life" are out of whack with reality.

> Huh...  Am I the only person able to
> track standard-of-living?  We're NOT struggling!  We're richer than
> we've ever been, AND if we ever fall on thin times, we have no
> compunctions about maintaining the standard of living on credit, and
> then claiming bankruptcy just before things get better.

Yep.  The American Way, these days.  Not wise at all, but the 
businesspeople are making a fortune off of it and don't want any of us 
paying off our long-term personal debts either...

40-year mortgages are coming...

http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20060309_mileage.htm
(And yeah, the site has annoying pop-ups and crap.  Sorry.)

I'm not so worried about paying off national debt, as I am worried that 
individuals are up to their eyeballs in debt from gross mismanagement of 
their budgets.

People don't get amortization schedules.  They talk about how their 
"house is their largest investment"... honestly, it's almost every 
middle class family's largest liability, and people don't get that.

What you're really doing in most cases, is renting the thing from the 
bank, where they force you to carry enough insurance to replace their 
asset if you damage/destroy it, and then the average American "sells" 
house within 7 years, with the hope that they can pay off the the 
mortgage debt they've accrued.  They claim the housing market is "bad" 
if they can't, not taking actual value of the property into account.

The government encourages this behavior by lowering your taxes if you 
take on mortgage debt.  The government gives you a break on taxes if 
you're paying interest on a loan.

Anyone else see anything wrong with that picture?  Think we're giving 
people the wrong fiscal incentives?  I do.


Nate