What All Countries With AAA Rating Have In Common

Universal Healthcare, not to mention most of them have free college, great infrastructure/mass transit, and a multitude of wonderful social programs that enrich the lives of their people. There's enough money here people- The looters (military contractors, banks, etc etc etc) should be panicing. Not us. Stop the Wars, cut the defense budget, let the Bush tax cuts expire, means test SS and Medicare and WE ARE GOOD TO GO.

Switzerland
Hong Kong
Sweden
Germany
Canada
Denmark
Britain
Netherlands
Finland
Norway
Austria
France
Australia

Gee, They're also all UNIONized.

What, no Japan, Greece, Spain, Portugal on that list? I bet some of the countries on the list will be downgraded in the future too. Nice try VL. We do have Universal Healthcare, its called Obummercare.

I noticed you forgot to mention the countries that offer all that to their people who have massive debt issues like:
Japan
Italy
Ireland
Spain
Portugal
& Greece.

lol
And it is easy to cut defense spending when American troops are protecting your country like Japan.

BTW, one of your examples Britain, is having to make massive cuts to their "free" college education and the socialized medical care. And taking a cue from the US is exploring dropping the current 50% rate on those who earn over 250K USD down to something more reasonable. (Economist this week.)

Well I know one thing they DON'T have in common. None of them have a Vice Lord....not a one. Come to think of it, none of them have a Lady Jazzer, an Archer, a Kate or an Aspen Valley either. How can this be?

I know you have a passport so you can leave for Canada this morning. If your car is big enough, you can take LJ, Archer, Kate and Aspen Valley with you. All of you can be in "heaven" by nightfall. Or we can set a date, do a little planning and throw an awesome bon voyage party for all of you. I really think it would be easier for you to just move to one of those countries and save all that energy trying to turn America into a socialist society. Don't you? rofllol

Lionshead, you should practice what you preach. From another thread:

"Our Nation has been through many trials and I'm confident once we tone down the rhetoric and focus on finding solution collectively, we will resolve this problem too.c

I still believe in American Exceptional ism and can't think of any place I'd rather call home. It will be a bumpy ride but I'm certain we will solve the problem. All we really need to do is stop pointing fingers and stop arguing long enough to listen to each other."

Socialists are like Arabs. 95% of the Middle East are Arab nations but they want to take over the 5% that is Israel.
America is the last great conservative nation, but they want to make it just like Europe.

Soulshiner wrote: Lionshead, you should practice what you preach. From another thread:

"Our Nation has been through many trials and I'm confident once we tone down the rhetoric and focus on finding solution collectively, we will resolve this problem too.c

I still believe in American Exceptional ism and can't think of any place I'd rather call home. It will be a bumpy ride but I'm certain we will solve the problem. All we really need to do is stop pointing fingers and stop arguing long enough to listen to each other."

I think it's pretty interesting that very often on this forum, whenever fingers are being pointed at the Right, suddenly the Right wants to tone down the rhetoric. But ONLY then.

Know what else they share in common? Austerity measures being put into place. Reductions of the amount paid to pensioners, raising of the retirement age, decreases in the amount of tuition the state will pay towards education - all of the spending cut measures that Democrats here were totally unwilling to accept to maintain the AAA rating for this nation. Those nations didn't raise taxes in an effort to raise revenue to match obscene spending levels, they cut spending so that their revenue was closer to their spending - and they kept their AAA rating by being willing to do so. Guess that pretty well covers why they still have their AAA and we lost ours, doesn't it VL.

BERLIN — Germany will cut welfare benefits, introduce new taxes and shed government jobs to save as much as euro80 billion ($96 billion U.S.) through 2014 and set an example to the rest of Europe, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday.

In drawing up its package to tackle the deficit, it steered clear of cutting education spending or increasing income tax.

Planned overall spending in this year’s budget is euro319.5 billion.

http://www.thestar.com/business/money91 ... ises-taxes

Let's see here. E$320 Billion divided by 82 million in population is about E$3,900 per citizen, times the exchange rate of $1.42 USD makes it about $5600 per person to fund the German government. The US on the other hand, at $3.8 Trillion for 330 million residents spends about $11.5K per citizen, roughly twice as much. Think the US could have kept it's AAA rating if the DC spending was half of what it currently is VL? I do too. That's why the problem is spending, not revenue. Starting to get that point yet? At $2.2 Trillion in tax revenue, the DC government received $6667 per citizen, over $1,000 more per citizen than Germany is currently spending, and it still fell short of what DC spent by over $1.5 Trillion. I'm with you VL, we need to get the spending of our federal government down to what Germany spends. That would be a surefire way of getting our AAA rating back.

The main thing they share is an absolute commitment to paying their bills, just as we did at one point. I find it humiliating that this was put on the table. You pay your obligations people.