BartSimpson BartSimpson:
bootlegga bootlegga:
But, if you want to see Taiwan invaded and/or nuked, then go ahead and recognize them as an independent nation, because that is exactly what will happen.
If China could invade Taiwan they'd do it anyway. Recognizing Taiwan's independence is simply recognizing an existing fact instead of denying it. If the Chinese don't like it then we can cancel their Treasury bonds and buy our cheap crap somewhere else.
That (cancelling Treasury Bonds) wouldn't be as easy as that sounds - such a move would cause a depression in the US as well as everywhere else. And getting your economy moving again after defaulting in such a fashion would be next to impossible because no one else would lend you a dime.
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
bootlegga bootlegga:
The US would win that battle today (although who knows about a decade or two from now) - assuming it intervened - but it would come at a fairly high price as they would probably lose half a dozen or more ships to the massed missile batteries China has across the Taiwan Strait in Fujian province. I doubt too many presidents - even Republicans ones - would be willing to accept 10 or 15 thousand dead sailors and marines for Taiwan. This isn't the 1960s...
I don't think Obama would lift a finger for Taiwan. Good thing then that Bush probably gave the Taiwanese 15 nukes before he left office.
I sincerely doubt that that ever happened.
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
bootlegga bootlegga:
You could probably toss in a second Cold War against China too and a massive hit to the global economy (even more so than the 2008 crisis).
That's an acceptable price to pay to stand on the side of freedom.
It's easy for old people to say let's do it - after all, they will all be dead in a few years and leave their kids to deal with the mess.
Don't get me wrong, I'd be all for helping Taiwan defend themselves, provided they weren't guilty of egging the PRC on.
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
bootlegga bootlegga:
Warren Buffet does NOT pay less taxes than his secretary, he pays a lower percentage on his income tax than she does. In fact, Buffet paid millions of dollars in income taxes, while his secretary paid thousands of dollars in income taxes.
Flat taxes disproportionately benefit the rich (of which Clancy most certainly was). I know this well because Alberta is the ONLY jurisdiction in all of North America with a flat income tax in place.
$1:
An Albertan with a taxable income of $1 million will pay $41,095 less than if they lived in BC and $75,157 less than if they lived in Ontario. However, an Albertan with a taxable income of $70,000 will pay $1434 more than if they lived in BC and $919 more than if they lived in Ontario.
http://pialberta.org/content/provincial ... t-tax-mythA flat tax has no deductions and the jurisdictions that use it uniformly report higher revenues than they had before it was implemented.
If your goal is to fund a government then a flat tax is a very efficient way to do so. But if your goal is to engineer a society then a so-called 'progressive tax' that has to be administered by a Byzantine bureacracy and a tax agency with vast extra-constitutional police powers to enforce so many rules that it's impossible to comply with one without violating another...well, then that's an efficent way to do that.
I'm fed up with the latter system and would not mind trying a 'change' since that's what Obozo used to represent.
It may be easier and more efficient, but it produces far less in revenues. Given the massive bulge in costs the Boomers are going to need to healthcare and OAS/CPP, we need every penny we can get right now.