All I did was explain the math behind your numbers. But, I guess math is hard and you want to change the subject. Fine.

And now we we have a government spending bubble. And interest rates are at rock bottom. And no recovery in sight.

In fact, we are doing the exact same things that Japan did in the 1990's and look at where they are. Increased government spending? Check. Zero interest rates? Check. Tax increases? Check. Stimulus plans? Check.

Tax revenues this year are only 54% of spending. Their national debt is more than 225% of GDP (we're at 101%) and going up. The only thing that is saving Japan is that 95% of that debt is owned by Japanese. Once they have to go overseas for more money, they are doomed.

Why am I wasting time explaining this to you?

You obviously don't understand what Arthur Laffer was descibing. So, I'll explain it to you. What he was describing was the general relationship between tax revenues and tax rates.

The simple case is a tax rate of 0%. What are the revenues at that rate? Obviously it's zero.

What about a tax rate of 100%? The revenue again would be zero. Why? Because if everything someone made was taken as taxes, there wouldn't be any point in working or running a business. So people would stop working and businesses would shut down. Alternatively, the entire economy would go underground and all transactions would be "off the books". This happens a lot now even with current rates. The incentives to do this are worth the risks of being caught.

So, what Laffer is saying is that somewhere between 0% and 100% is the "sweet spot" rate where you get the maximum amount of revenue. Historically, that has been around 18% of GDP no matter what rates were at the time.

This makes sense if you want to use tax policy for the purpose of raising revenue. If you want to use tax policy for satisfying your own envy or for social engineering, that's a different story.

The Conservative Party is anything but conservative and hasn't been since they ousted Margaret Thatcher. The UK doesn't even have control of its own laws anymore. About 70% of the laws in the UK are mandated from the EU. The unofficial motto of the Conservatives is: "We can run the welfare state better than Labour can."

I guess you slept during math class.

When you express something as a percent, you are describing a ratio. That is, the size of x divided by the size of y. So when the size of x gets bigger, the ratio gets bigger too. When y gets bigger, the ratio gets smaller. Got that so far? If not, keep re-reading until you understand it.

Now here's the fun part: If x gets bigger but y gets bigger even more, the ratio gets smaller.

So what you just described was that the Bush tax cuts actually increased the size the economy faster than tax revenues were able to keep up.

So, thank you for providing proof that the Bush tax cuts were good for the economy.

I'm going to get dumped on for this, but I'm not going to apologize for telling the truth. I'm thinking in terms of tactics and, in case anyone here has forgotten, the goal of making sure Obama and his ilk are gone from power.

This election will be won or lost in the "mushy middle", those so-called independents and moderates, aka the people who haven't decided what they believe yet. The excerpt of this speech couldn't be any better for Obama if the Obama people wrote it for Santorum. I've said before, that IMO, the Obama people think Santorum is the easiest to beat. With stuff like this, it will be simplicity itself to portray Santorum as a religious kook to the mushy middle. Obama then wins and we all lose.

Any of the Republicans is better than Obama. Even Ron Paul. Anybody who says they won't support candidate (pick any one) is by default conceding the election to Obama.

Pre-1982 pennies are 95% copper, Just saying.