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Arianna Talks Debt Crisis, Economic Growth On "CNN's Starting Point With Soledad O'Brien" (VIDEO)

Posted: 02/13/2012 2:58 pm

Hours after Greece's lawmakers approved severe austerity measures, Arianna appeared on Monday morning's edition of "CNN Starting Point With Soledad O'Brien," discussing what it will take to improve the U.S. economy.

"The problem is that if we don't grow the economy, we will not be able to get out of the debt crisis," Arianna said.

Arianna added that Greece's protests are a product of no path to growth, emphasizing that cuts alone are not enough to improve the economic situation.

"The agreement that was passed by Parliament sees Greece growing by 2013," she said. "No way. The same with America. If we don't grow, it doesn't matter how much we cut. We cannot cut enough to fix the debt crisis."

Watch the clip below, courtesy of CNN.

 
Hours after Greece's lawmakers approved severe austerity measures, Arianna appeared on Monday morning's edition of "CNN Starting Point With Soledad O'Brien," discussing what it will take to improve th...
Hours after Greece's lawmakers approved severe austerity measures, Arianna appeared on Monday morning's edition of "CNN Starting Point With Soledad O'Brien," discussing what it will take to improve th...
 
 
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
gerald4
licensed mechanical and electrical engineer
06:18 PM on 02/16/2012
Somewhere along the line, Cities, States, and the Federal Government printed and sold bonds to raise money for immediate expenses and commit future taxes from future generations to pay for this instant money for those taxpayers to spend right now.

Nations, states, counties, school districts, hospital districts and cities should un-incorporate or declare bankruptcy if they cannot pay for the costs of their bureaucratic payrolls, infrastructure construction contracts, and their other bureaucratic benefits and bureaucratic retirement pensions, even if previous elected administrations committed the current taxpayers to pay the bureaucrats whatever previous elected politicians contracted for and obligated the current citizens to pay those costs.

I believe that it would be totally unfair for Federal funds to be spent to pay local public sector bureaucrats salaries and benefits for their teachers, water system operators, sewage treatment plant operators, police, firefighters, street maintenance, infrastructure replacement contractors, and other similar services.

The local residents should limit the number and the cost of these bureaucrats, infrastructure systems and services to the cost that the wealth producing taxpayers could afford.

The costs of local government bureaucracies are destroying municipal and state governments.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
gerald4
licensed mechanical and electrical engineer
06:02 PM on 02/16/2012
Early US citizens such as early pioneers and settlers of the USA had to provide their own military (defense against Indians), police, firefighters, school teachers, medicine, water, sewer, roads, bridges, welfare, social services, and other basic services themselves as best as they could with their limited resources.

Only after the early pioneers and settlers could produce enough necessities of life (food, shelter, clothing) for themselves and had an excess to also support a (rudimentary) civilization, they would then combine their meager resources/or and confiscate taxes themselves to hire public sector bureaucrats as teachers, soldiers, water system operators, police, firefighters, and other services but they limited the cost of these bureaucrats to the number and the bureaucrats pay that the wealth producers could afford and/or wanted to support.

The producers would also pool their resources and hire contractors to construct roads, bridges, water systems, sewer systems, and other infrastructre that allowed the producers to become more productive.

These tax supported government bureaucrats and government contractors did allow the producers to become more productive by relieving the producers of having to worry about providing those services for themselves (and for the producer’s families), but the producers limited their expenses for bureaucratic provided services to the limitations governed by the amount of tax revenues that they wanted to pay.

The principle of limiting the amount of wealth that can be CONFISCATED from the wealth producing workers via taxes to pay for bureaucratic services and government contracts is still applicable.
cosmicdart
paragon of paradigms
08:21 AM on 02/14/2012
If a nation has adequate natural resources, and a good educational system, the representatives elected by the people can also hire its educated people to covert its natural resources into goods, or to provide services. In this way, a government can generate an enormous amount of wealth. When that government sells these goods and services, part of the price would be a tax. Also the government would make an enormous amount of money operating all the finances within the nation. It could employ everyone in this way. We'll wait a little longer, but if private enterprise fails to employ everyone an a middle class income before too long we'll try this method in our quest of survive. They will leave us no choice if they fail to do the same and tens of millions remain unemployed, or underemployed. I hope that private enterprise is up to the task!
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gerald4
licensed mechanical and electrical engineer
06:17 PM on 02/16/2012
What if most of the US College graduates of our "good educationa­l system" have degrees as Historians, Philosophers, Psychologists, Anthropologists, Archeologists, Economists, Social Scientists, Political Scientists, liberal arts, etc., and other degrees that are generally not able to contribute any effort to "converting natural resources into goods, or to providing services" that US citizens need in order to sustain their lives?

Only a tiny percentage of US college students are pursuing STEM degrees that might create US citizens that might be capable of converting "natural resources into goods, or to provide services" to sustain life in the USA.
09:58 PM on 02/13/2012
And likewise - if we do not stop the out of control spending it doesn't matter how much more we burden tax payers - we cannot fix the debt burden.
02:32 AM on 02/14/2012
Many have come to believe that what are essentially governmentally-funded charities are an inscribed right.....at an UNDIMINISHABLE level: The "right to life" is not the right to a living.....
mavpay
I am WE THE PEOPLE
11:57 AM on 02/14/2012
The "governmentally-funded charities" help keep major corporations in business. Corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Dyn-Corp, KBR, and thousands of other government contractors are making money off of taxpayers. Some orecommit fraud while continuing to be awarded no-bid contracts. Many receive taxpayer subsidies known as corporate welfare, while paying little to no taxes.

They are also able contribute that money to their favorite-bought-and-paid-for political representative. I suppose coprporations are people who have a "right to life" and are more deserving of the "right to a living." I suppose corporations and their wealthiest execs are more deserving and, therefore have more rights than WE THE PEOPLE.
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07:25 PM on 02/16/2012
Grimaud, I couldn't agree more. The 51% of us who pay taxes are fiscally incapable of covering the tax debt. If they took each and everyone of us, liquidated our assets, turned us upside down and shook us in case there was a dime in a pocket, and as the sofa is being carried out the door checked and all the cushions for loose change, we would still be billions of dollars short.
Irregardless of political designation, we (the evaporating middle class) can not repair our country financally. Those with money (Congress comes to mind) and those with power (Congress comes to mind) are much more promising prospects.
05:42 PM on 02/13/2012
Arianna you are a very shrewd lady and you are right. If we can't grow we're finished...at least as a capitalist nation. Can anyone imagine an America which is not in bed with capitalism?
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
gerald4
licensed mechanical and electrical engineer
05:30 PM on 02/13/2012
NATIONAL WEALTH needs to be continuously created by industrious private businessmen (and the Corporations) in any nation because that is almost the ONLY WEALTH AVAILABLE to be CONFISCATED in the form of TAXATION by governments in order to create government funds to pay for taking care of those that cannot take care of themselves, building and operating schools, streets, water and sewer systems, repay sovereign national debts, pork barrel projects, green projects, infrastructure projects, wars, streets, bridges, highways, welfare, unemployment, police, courts, prisons, fire fighters, social security and other non-wealth creating government provided bureaucratic services for that family, tribe, city, state, or nation, EXCEPT for borrowing money and obligation future tax collections to repay those loans (Treasury Bonds).

Privately held NATIONAL WEALTH is made, created, and/or acquired mainly (maybe only) when the members of a family (or the citizen businessmen of a nation, city-state, island, tribe, etc.) perform one or more of the following tasks:

1. plant, grow and/or harvest something of commercial value from the earth;

2. extract something of commercial value from the earth;

3. manufacture something of commercial value that is consumable

4. construct a building that is permanently useful for rental income;

5. provide professional services (medical, legal, dental, engineering, architecture, land surveying, technology, accounting, etc.);

6. collect payment for patent and copyright uses;
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
gerald4
licensed mechanical and electrical engineer
06:22 PM on 02/13/2012
and if they then trade, sell, lease or rent these items and/or services to parties outside of their family, in return for a net transfer of gold, currency or commodities from other parties outside of their family into their own family, then that family is enriched.

The members of that family (tribe, state, nation) can then reflect the amount of their real NATIONAL WEALTH and financial security with their net positive accumulation of privately owned grain, gold, cattle, jewels, land, buildings, hotels, casinos, factories, commodities and/or other marketable products that are then available to be used for economic security for reserve use in times of emergency, to raise the standard of living for the members of that family, and also be available as collateral (products, commodities and/or title to locally in-country located assets) for any printed currency that they might care to issue and/or any Treasury Bonds that they might care to print and sell.

NATIONAL WEALTH is almost the ONLY WEALTH AVAILABLE to be CONFISCATED in the form of TAXATION bu governments in order to create funds to build and operate schools, streets, water and sewer systems, pork barrel projects, green projects, infrastructure projects, wars, streets, bridges, highways, welfare, unemployment, police, courts, prisons, fire fighters, social security and other non-wealth creating government provided bureaucratic services for that family, tribe, city, state, or nation, EXCEPT for borrowing money and obligation future tax collections to repay those loans (Treasury Bonds).
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
gerald4
licensed mechanical and electrical engineer
04:58 PM on 02/13/2012
Arianna:

Your economic position is really "on point".

Sustainable Capitalism means that a nation has sufficient NATIONAL WEALTH continuously generated in their nation that is sufficient for the taxing authority to CONFISCATE a portion of that NATIONAL WEALTH that was created by the private sector businesses, plus an additional amount taken through sales taxes, property taxes, tariffs, etc., to pay for their government activities.

The main (almost the only) source of money to pay for federal, state, county, municipal, school district and other various government taxing authority payrolls and contracts is to CONFISCATE a portion of the NATIONAL WEALTH that was created by the private sector businesses, plus an additional amount taken through sales taxes, property taxes, tariffs, etc.

The USA government cannot continue to exist by borrowing money that is raised by mortgaging (selling freshly printed paper US Treasury Bonds that can be redeemed for title to) our privately owned NATIONAL WEALTH that includes businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, distilleries, and other privately owned wealth and assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations prior to de-industrialization in order to pay these foreigners to manufacture our imported products that we consume and also to pay for growing US government expenses that are in excess of our federal tax collections.
cosmicdart
paragon of paradigms
08:26 PM on 02/16/2012
All taxes ultimately end as a surcharges on commodities sold and services performed, a cost of doing business. Everyone either pays their taxes by paying for surcharges, or they pass on their taxes through surcharges added to what they sell. If we had a universal sells tax, it would do the same thing as our present tax system does now in a contorted way.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
gerald4
licensed mechanical and electrical engineer
10:23 AM on 02/17/2012
All of the costs of business taxes, fines, EPA compliance, permits, etc., are (generally) passed on to the consumers as increased prices

Maybe a national sales tax (consumption tax) would allow the Federal Government to lay off most of their IRS employees.

Maybe uncooked groceries and clothing items less thgan $10.00 could be exempted.