Which country should we be like?

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Wednesday April 20, 2011 · 11:08 AM PDT

2011/04/20 · 11:08

I saw a recent chart showing that the U.S. has relatively lower taxes than most western industrial nations:

http://www.facebook.com/...

I believe the opinion of most anti-tax people is that the countries we are listed under are not worth imitating -- France, Belgium, Sweden, etc. They are all welfare states on the decline and should not be our models.

Fine.

So ... what countries worldwide should the U.S. be emulating?

Here in Minnesota, Republicans often cite the more attractive tax climates of South Dakota. the joke is obvious. South Dakota has low taxes, and not much else besides.

So who is the point of comparison worldwide? What country should be be using as our model?

If you can get anyone to answer that, you will have a hook to hang your hat on forever.

Essentially, you are asking self-described patriots which country is better than ours.

Also, many of the lower-taxing industrial democracies are nevertheless "liberal" in the benefits they offer citizens -- U.K. Switzerland, Japan.

If these are the target nations, why don't we offer the same kind of health venefits, etc. that they do?

Republicans are the world's best managers, by their own reckoning. It should be easy for them.

Request for a lifeline

mfinley98

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Wednesday April 20, 2011 · 8:16 AM PDT

2011/04/20 · 08:16

Who do we ignore the fact that our economic catastrophe was caused almost entirely by one of our political parties?

It is staring us in the face. We know it to be true. But for some reason we're not allowed to say it.

I don't mean we=DKos. I mean, we=the U.S.

The party that was in power, the Treasurer, the SEC, the banks, investors, speculators, the insurance companies, the mortgage companies, the legislators, the hedge fund managers, the corporate lawyers ... these are the people, 99% from one specific party, who ruined us.

This is the party of the managerial and corporate ownership class.

It is also the party of most of the people who issued the layoffs ... whose investments were protected by the layoffs ... who foreclosed on people's homes ... who are fighting tooth and nail to prevent people from getting basic health services.

They made the world we now live in. And they continue to make it into a world that is tilted toward their needs and wants ... lower taxes for themselves ... cheaper labor ... fewer rights ... options out the wazoo to abandon American workers and hire those in labor-cheap nations ...

And no one but Bernie Madoff has been made to pay. The real perpetrators have been bailed out, and bonused up. They are too big to chip in. Their liability is limited. They can't be allowed to fail.

mfinley98

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Wednesday April 20, 2011 · 7:37 AM PDT

2011/04/20 · 07:37

Here is an idea I have been developing the last few days.

Why doesn't the U.S. honor the people who fell in the Great Emptying Out of 2008?

In the space of a single year 12 million people lost their jobs.

From all reports, they will never work again, certainly not for benefits.

And yet, the U.S. has done little to thank this enormous group for their gift to the country.

Poll

30 votes Show Results

My current status

30 votes Vote Now!

My current status

Employed with benefits

13 votes

Employed, with out major benefits

4 votes

Unemployed, receiving unemployment insurance

4 votes

Unemployed, benefits expired

0 votes

Enemployed, never qualified for unemployment insurance

0 votes

Working only occasionally, without benefits

3 votes

Unemployment, looking for work

3 votes

Unemployed, given up looking

1 vote

Self-employed

2 votes

Retired

0 votes

Poling through DKos

mfinley98

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Sunday April 03, 2011 · 2:04 PM PDT

2011/04/03 · 14:04

I think the new design is handsome. But, as a loyal reader of the site, I have one little gripe. The design is so splendiferous, that it seems to me writers are "writing longer" -- that some key writers have become more verbose.

What i like about other sites is that you get an idea, at the first screen, what is available below.

That doesn't happen now. I seem to spend a lot of time hitting PAGE DOWN to get past some very long entries -- often four or five clicks apart.

Poll

7 votes Show Results

To me, the site

7 votes Vote Now!

To me, the site

cannot be improved upon

1 vote

is sometimes tiresome to pole through

6 votes

Civil War

mfinley98

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Saturday February 19, 2011 · 4:37 AM PST

2011/02/19 · 04:37

I haven't felt like this since ... Kent State.

That we were all, as a country, staggering toward the edge of something no one wants to see.

Poll

0 votes Show Results

0 votes Vote Now!

Enjoying the Economy?

mfinley98

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Sunday August 02, 2009 · 5:03 AM PDT

2009/08/02 · 05:03

I have been casting about for some wisdom on how to cope with the crush of unemployment, lack of confidence, and psychological sluggishness in the economy.

I think I found it in, of all places, the drawings of R. Crumb.

I always enjoyed his desperate characters in the olden days. But if you peer deeply into their furrowed crania, there is also this spirit of optimism, a will to the good, that I find inspiring.

To this end, and to cheer everybody up, I made this homage:

http://mfinley.com/...

Thank you, Robert Crumb, for all you have done.

Poll

21 votes Show Results

GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME. Is the economy ...

21 votes Vote Now!

GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME. Is the economy ...

Getting better?

2 votes

Getting better for everyone but you?

1 vote

Getting better but too late to save you?

0 votes

Getting better and you are primed to capitalize on it?

1 vote

Getting better but the beans are still burned into the pan?

4 votes

Getting better and good luck to the survivors?

3 votes

Getting better and it should be its old self in another 75 years?

4 votes

Getting better and pennies are falling from heaven making divots in our skulls?

6 votes

Sarah Palin: a panic attack?

mfinley98

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday July 03, 2009 · 2:49 PM PDT

2009/07/03 · 14:49

Watching her resignation speech, I had the feeling that Sarah Palin is struggling with anxiety issues, and feels like she may be coming apart.

mfinley98

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday May 25, 2009 · 2:09 PM PDT

2009/05/25 · 14:09

Just the other side of the airport, on a bluff overlooking the Minnesota River, is Fort Snelling National Cemetery. It's a classic military cemetery, with thousands of identical markers laid out like poppies in Flanders fields.

The cemetery abuts the area where I walk my dog, so I walk through there frequently. Few people buried there were killed in battle. If you served in the armed forces, it's your right to be interred here, and your spouse's.

mfinley98

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Wednesday March 11, 2009 · 7:30 AM PDT

2009/03/11 · 07:30

I write a daily essay about the psychological state of unemployed people.

Today's story asks if anyone knows of any public apology issued to all the people whose lives have been ruined, whose homes have been lost, whose futures have been imperiled, by the practices of America's banks.

The column is here
.

Poll

25 votes Show Results

What should be done with banks?

25 votes Vote Now!

What should be done with banks?

Wash mouths out with soap

0 votes

Take them to the woodshed

1 vote

Strip them of everything, including their pride

8 votes

Make them give away toasters again like in the old days

1 vote

Limit their services to Christmas clubs

3 votes

Have them break big rocks into little ones

11 votes

Convince them to never do this again, on their honor

1 vote

A 90-Year Depression? Say it ain't so!

mfinley98

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday March 06, 2009 · 5:32 AM PST

2009/03/06 · 05:32

This is from a piece i am writing for the Examiner. If you click on the link, I get something like two cents.

I have a buddy who's also my guru, the historian/poet Charles Potts, of Walla Walla, Washington. Thirty eight years ago he was driving through Minneapolis and found my name on a telephone pole -- advertising for a writers group. I was amazed at his fierce clarity then, and have been locked onto his visions ever since.

mfinley98

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday March 05, 2009 · 9:32 AM PST

2009/03/05 · 09:32

I was laid off from my job as a website writer in January, so I have returned to freelance status. My newest venture is a column about the psychology of unemployment. It is published in a blog-cafeteria called The Examiner.

Here is part of the first story, comparing the laid-off generation to Woodstock, only humongously bigger.

Back in his office, as he filled a cardboard box with his things, tearful employees lined up to wish him well, and to offer suggestions for finding a great new job in the month of March, 2009.

Poll

80 votes Show Results

Out of work, or just not happy to see me?

80 votes Vote Now!

Out of work, or just not happy to see me?

I am personally out of work

25 votes

I am worried I soon will lose my job

16 votes

Someone in my immediate family has lost his or her job

12 votes

My company is laying people off left and right

4 votes

My industry is layoff-proof

8 votes

I was laid off in the past year but am employed again

8 votes

I don't consider myself laid off, rather, freed from the constraints of servitude

7 votes

Is it right to push debt onto our children?

mfinley98

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday December 29, 2008 · 7:15 AM PST

2008/12/29 · 07:15

I know that the conventional wisdom on both right and left is that a depression is a terrible thing.

But we used to be in horror when the Bush administration ladled debt for the war and the tax cuts onto our children's heads.

Why is it OK now?

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Which country should we be like?

Request for a lifeline

A Monument to the Unemployed

Poling through DKos

Civil War

Enjoying the Economy?

Sarah Palin: a panic attack?

Memorial Day in Minnesota

Have banks apologized yet?

A 90-Year Depression? Say it ain't so!

Bigger than Woodstock: The overnight city of the unemployed

Is it right to push debt onto our children?