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On November 07 2010 13:22 Scruffy wrote:
Man, we had no debt after Medicare came around, it truly saved us. Give me a break. Notice the trend in the graph after 1965, when Medicare was enacted. You people know nothing of America's problems. I'll give you a hint. Its Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid.
You are using raw dollar amounts. Using Debt to GDP would probably be a clearer measurement, considering in the 40's where it shows ~1 trillion in debt that was more than the total GDP of the United States.
Edit: Your graphs also fails to take into account inflation.
It should also be worth noting that Bretton Woods kept the raw debt dollar amount fairly low for a long time.
Here, I'll post a Debt-to-GDP graph for you. Oh shit, you mean this started during the reign of conservative icon Ronald Reagan? Clinton was the only one to reverse it? MY LORD! I've turned your world upside down, I know:
![[image loading]](http://i51.tinypic.com/11lhdua.png)
The current Democratic leadership of a few years gets your disapproval for being handed an absolutely shitty situation where revenues are 14% of GDP (As compared to a historical 19%), the economy is slumping, and people are adamantly opposed to cuts (LOL DEATHPANELS, GRANDMA BEING PUT TO DEATH), but Bush and the Republican legislature who turned an SS-robbery backed surplus into a massive deficit with tax cuts and Medicare\Military expansion deserve no credit for this?
Sure is partisan thinking in your post.
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On November 07 2010 13:58 Romantic wrote:
Here, I'll post a Debt-to-GDP graph for you. Oh shit, you mean this started during the reign of conservative icon Ronald Reagan? Clinton was the only one to reverse it? MY LORD! I've turned your world upside down, I know:
You realize this is ridiculous, right?
Take a look at the actual data about Reagan's presidency. He cuts the top marginal tax rate from like 80% to 32% (or something like that?). OH GOD THE DEFICIT MUST BE HIS FAULT, RIGHT?
Oh, wait, tax receipts as a percentage of GDP fall by 1 percent for one year and return to normal after that.
You know what Reagan had to deal with? A political system which makes it almost impossible to repeal anything that has been passed before. A "New Deal" with no expiration dates on any of it, which promised one thing and delivered something entirely different. A Congress/Senate combination that was congenitally incapable of cutting spending.
And, I will grant, a pretty bad understanding of economics.
The current Democratic leadership of a few years gets your disapproval for being handed an absolutely shitty situation where revenues are 14% of GDP (As compared to a historical 19%), the economy is slumping, and people are adamantly opposed to cuts (LOL DEATHPANELS, GRANDMA BEING PUT TO DEATH), but Bush and the Republican legislature who turned an SS-robbery backed surplus into a massive deficit with tax cuts and Medicare\Military expansion deserve no credit for this?
Sure is partisan thinking in your post.
Clinton never actually ran a surplus, due to the genius of American bookkeeping. Thats not to say Bush Jr. didn't massively inflate the deficit/debt (for which he is reviled among conservatives, as well), but Clinton is the beneficiary (lol) of having a Republican dominated Congress/Senate combination led by Newt Gingrich, whose balls are huge. He couldn't have run a larger deficit if he'd wanted to.
And, really, do you mean to tell me you expect Social Security to pay out when you're retired? Because if you are you must be delusional.
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On November 07 2010 10:58 Laevateinn wrote:
[...]
Also:
France, Hungary, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Germany = pretty extreme racism;
What?
All of these have racist parties in government. I threw in Finland cause they have taken like what.. 3 refugees in 50 years? I don't know much about their parties, but something obviously is wrong in the fundamentals there. It's a wealthy western world country, who are known to have super super low immigration rates.
Denmark has the Dansk folkeparti (14%), Norway has Fremskrittspartiet (22%), while we since last month have Sverigedemokraterna (5,7%).
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Excerpt from article disproving Romantic's post:
"When it is claimed that Clinton paid down the national debt, that is patently false--as can be seen, the national debt went up every single year. What Clinton did do was pay down the public debt--notice that the claimed surplus is relatively close to the decrease in the public debt for those years. But he paid down the public debt by borrowing far more money in the form of intragovernmental holdings (mostly Social Security).
Update 3/31/2009: The following quote from an article at CBS confirms my explanation of the Myth of the Clinton Surplus, and the entire article essentially substantiates what I wrote.
"Over the past 25 years, the government has gotten used to the fact that Social Security is providing free money to make the rest of the deficit look smaller," said Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Interestingly, this most likely was not even a conscious decision by Clinton. The Social Security Administration is legally required to take all its surpluses and buy U.S. Government securities, and the U.S. Government readily sells those securities--which automatically and immediately becomes intragovernmental holdings. The economy was doing well due to the dot-com bubble and people were earning a lot of money and paying a lot into Social Security. Since Social Security had more money coming in than it had to pay in benefits to retired persons, all that extra money was immediately used to buy U.S. Government securities. The government was still running deficits, but since there was so much money coming from excess Social Security contributions there was no need to borrow more money directly from the public. As such, the public debt went down while intragovernmental holdings continued to skyrocket.
The net effect was that the national debt most definitely did not get paid down because we did not have a surplus. The government just covered its deficit by borrowing money from Social Security rather than the public."
Full Article: http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16
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On November 07 2010 14:09 kzn wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2010 13:58 Romantic wrote:
Here, I'll post a Debt-to-GDP graph for you. Oh shit, you mean this started during the reign of conservative icon Ronald Reagan? Clinton was the only one to reverse it? MY LORD! I've turned your world upside down, I know: You realize this is ridiculous, right? Take a look at the actual data about Reagan's presidency. He cuts the top marginal tax rate from like 80% to 32% (or something like that?). OH GOD THE DEFICIT MUST BE HIS FAULT, RIGHT? Oh, wait, tax receipts as a percentage of GDP fall by 1 percent for one year and return to normal after that. You know what Reagan had to deal with? A political system which makes it almost impossible to repeal anything that has been passed before. A "New Deal" with no expiration dates on any of it, which promised one thing and delivered something entirely different. A Congress/Senate combination that was congenitally incapable of cutting spending. And, I will grant, a pretty bad understanding of economics. Show nested quote +The current Democratic leadership of a few years gets your disapproval for being handed an absolutely shitty situation where revenues are 14% of GDP (As compared to a historical 19%), the economy is slumping, and people are adamantly opposed to cuts (LOL DEATHPANELS, GRANDMA BEING PUT TO DEATH), but Bush and the Republican legislature who turned an SS-robbery backed surplus into a massive deficit with tax cuts and Medicare\Military expansion deserve no credit for this?
Sure is partisan thinking in your post. Clinton never actually ran a surplus, due to the genius of American bookkeeping. Thats not to say Bush Jr. didn't massively inflate the deficit/debt (for which he is reviled among conservatives, as well), but Clinton is the beneficiary (lol) of having a Republican dominated Congress/Senate combination led by Newt Gingrich, whose balls are huge. He couldn't have run a larger deficit if he'd wanted to. And, really, do you mean to tell me you expect Social Security to pay out when you're retired? Because if you are you must be delusional.
I don't particularly care what Reagan did with taxes specifically, the issue is the debt explosion beginning under his presidency; there are two sides to that equation.
Clinton has an SS-robbery backed surplus. If you want to include future SS obligations you could make an argument for the surplus not being real over the long term, I'd agree to that. I wasn't born until after Clinton was president so I don't know much about his relationship with the Republican congress and how that dynamic worked when he proposed budgets. While ignorant, I am hesitant to give the Republican congress too much credit when all the other Republican congresses have been unable to tame the deficit, even with the presidency.
I think SS will exist in a reduced form; projections, IIRC, show it is something like 77% sustainable well into the 21st century. Simple math problem there; cut benefits or increase the cap so the wealthy pay more into SS.
You are talking to a socialist who wants both Medicare and Social Security eliminated, so you won't hear much defense of the programs from me.
I think we can reach common ground on the fact Medicare is a growing beast and Republicans have been completely unable (and unwilling, see Medicare part D) to deal with the program as it related to the deficit.
@Scruffy: I have said twice this was an SS robbery backed surplus.
Keep in mind government debt is not like personal debt. You can run a deficit every year and reduce your Debt-To-GDP\inflation adjusted down to below 1% if you had the right conditions.
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This kind of turned out to be a democrat vs republican discussion. Either way, to just bluntly answere the thread question, personally I'm the most revolted by the republicans and the christian right, and they tend to get alot of media coverage, which overall gives people the idea that all americans at large are ignorant and don't think people with less money are worth living really.
Religion in politics, and even in general is considered completely mad over here.
Democrats are like very right wing European politicians basically 
I like the discussion alot actually, since it's always a pretty hot topic. Discussing the latest american war, comparing guantanamo bay to a concentration camp etc. I suppose it varies alot where you come from as well, but I do believe that western europe at large has about the same views.
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On November 07 2010 09:30 kzn wrote:Too bad.
Out of the many, many things you said that were completely wrong, this one just blew my mind. Like, holy shit.
There are good reasons to be against the incoming health care legislation, but 'lol people aren't people if they cost me money' isn't one of them. Having a system composed entirely of selfish assholes does not a better economic system make, no matter what the crazier libertarians may say.
Seriously, you attempted to equate human lives to Ferraris from a utilitarian standpoint. Here's an idea: no matter how much a Ferrari improves your life, it will never improve it to the point where an equivalent amount of money will improve the life of an impoverished, dying person with an easily curable disease who cannot afford healthcare. Utilitarian good is defined by allocating resources to best benefit the greatest amount of people. Using your own definitions, you are completely and totally wrong.
It's a really good thing that you're so horrendously offensive when you argue your points because otherwise people might actually listen to you and believe some of what you've said.
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As mentioned before, I can not give a general opinion of all people from my country. But, to clear my opinion I found a carrtoon/caricature in a newspaper.
http://www.rhein-zeitung.de/fotos/karikaturen-galerie_costart,3_mmid,4336.html#pic
So there is the american Sam on his ranch. You recognize him from the old army ad "I want YOU for U.S. Army". So he is on his ranch, having his horse cut 2 legs.
The guy on the fence, the world obv., in his speechbubble starts: " Hey, Sam! Can you tell me, ..:"
And the text under the cartoons translated would be: "... what the hack are you doing to your best/premium horse?"
So yeah.... I think it show real quick at least my opinion.
Cheers
IsilDurrrr
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Doesn't take long for threads like this to go off on tangents eh.
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On November 07 2010 14:12 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2010 10:58 Laevateinn wrote:
[...]
Also:
France, Hungary, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Germany = pretty extreme racism;
What?
All of these have racist parties in government. I threw in Finland cause they have taken like what.. 3 refugees in 50 years? I don't know much about their parties, but something obviously is wrong in the fundamentals there. It's a wealthy western world country, who are known to have super super low immigration rates. Denmark has the Dansk folkeparti (14%), Norway has Fremskrittspartiet (22%), while we since last month have Sverigedemokraterna (5,7%).
wtf man do you even have a clue which parties are in the german parliament? In germany parties that make racist comments dont even get enough votes to get into our parliament. Seriously the only racist I see here is you.
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I would like to preface what i'm about to say with my recognition that American people generally are awesome to hang with. Individually, everyone I have met has been a blast to be with.
Having said that, as a foreigner I think this post is perhaps most indicative about the problems I see in US politics.
On November 04 2010 10:22 darmousseh wrote:
I seriously don't understand why most nations are so liberal. I would have thought they would have learned the lesson by now that government isn't good at anything except taking your money, regulating your life and getting rich. Seriously.
United states does have something unique though, it is the largest democracy in the world and as such it is significantly harder to manage than a smaller nation like the UK. Conditions and environments are so diverse across the united states because of ethnicity (i'm half middle eastern), location, and economics. To try to set a standard is almost impossible. I might be an advocate for small federal government, but i believe that individual states and cities should be able to regulate themselves freely to attract people or businesses. If one state has high taxes, then people will leave to another state.
....
The best way for foreigners to think about the united states is imagine if the EU decided to have a government that had the power to override the individual nations. Each nation would be looking out for its own best interest and there would be tons of ethical conflicts everywhere. That is basically the united states in a nutshell.
Very simply, American politics seem to be under some ill conceived notion that the American situation is unique, and that it needs special solutions, god forbid we take some reference from elsewhere.
1) America is not the largest democracy in the world. It is India.
2) Immigration is not a unique problem to America - it happens anywhere where there are rich countries and poor countries. Singapore is a tiny island compared to America, but we are swarmed with immigrants, something to the tune of 1/3 of the population not even being citizens. The entire point of a government and laws is to set standards... immigrants or not.
3) The EU is able to pass directives that member states need to translate via local legislation. While this isn't exactly overruling member states governments, the federal govt versus state govt conflict in the US also has plenty of rules that need to be adhered to.
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On November 07 2010 21:27 Blobskillz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2010 14:12 Euronyme wrote:On November 07 2010 10:58 Laevateinn wrote:
[...]
Also:
France, Hungary, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Germany = pretty extreme racism;
What?
All of these have racist parties in government. I threw in Finland cause they have taken like what.. 3 refugees in 50 years? I don't know much about their parties, but something obviously is wrong in the fundamentals there. It's a wealthy western world country, who are known to have super super low immigration rates. Denmark has the Dansk folkeparti (14%), Norway has Fremskrittspartiet (22%), while we since last month have Sverigedemokraterna (5,7%). wtf man do you even have a clue which parties are in the german parliament? In germany parties that make racist comments dont even get enough votes to get into our parliament. Seriously the only racist I see here is you.
How does making negative comments about germany make you a racist? -.-'
Didn't Angela Merkel say "multi kulti ist tot" which in English would be "multiculture is dead".
Oh damn.. forgot to mention Holland though.
Edit: found a nice quote for you non racist divine being:
‘THE APPROACH to build a multicultural society and to live side by side and to enjoy each other . . . has failed, utterly failed.’’ This statement at a political rally last week by German Chancellor Angela Merkel was greeted by a standing ovation from her listeners. She was speaking of how Germany’s immigrant population, mainly Turks, remains socially marginal. Using “we’’ to refer to the nation’s majority population, she continued, “We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here.’’ - Angela Merkel.
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wtf man do you even have a clue which parties are in the german parliament? In germany parties that make racist comments dont even get enough votes to get into our parliament. Seriously the only racist I see here is you.
I think he is specifically aiming at Denmark, Norway and Sweden. And it is true that at least FRP (Fremskrittspartiet) is mainly a equivalent movement to the tea-party / value-based-nationality-fear politics in the US, and they did receive about 20-25% of the votes in the last election - which is also pretty scary.
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On November 07 2010 21:46 blomsterjohn wrote:Show nested quote +wtf man do you even have a clue which parties are in the german parliament? In germany parties that make racist comments dont even get enough votes to get into our parliament. Seriously the only racist I see here is you. I think he is specifically aiming at Denmark, Norway and Sweden. And it is true that at least FRP (Fremskrittspartiet) is mainly a equivalent movement to the tea-party / value-based-nationality-fear politics in the US, and they did receive about 20-25% of the votes in the last election - which is also pretty scary.
This shit it going down all over Europe. Take a look at Holland, Germany, France, Italy and so on.. they all have very racist tendensies in their governments. Scary times coming up.
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On November 07 2010 21:45 Euronyme wrote:
How does making negative comments about germany make you a racist? -.-'
Didn't Angela Merkel say "multi kulti ist tot" which in English would be "multiculture is dead".
Oh damn.. forgot to mention Holland though.
Edit: found a nice quote for you non racist divine being:
‘THE APPROACH to build a multicultural society and to live side by side and to enjoy each other . . . has failed, utterly failed.’’ This statement at a political rally last week by German Chancellor Angela Merkel was greeted by a standing ovation from her listeners. She was speaking of how Germany’s immigrant population, mainly Turks, remains socially marginal. Using “we’’ to refer to the nation’s majority population, she continued, “We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here.’’ - Angela Merkel.
my definition of being racist is a bit different then yours. Neither do I feel myself tied to christian values and most germans feel the same. What you quoted here is some babble from a speech given at a meeting of her party. Though I have to agree with her that Germanys approach at immigration utterly failed. But how you deal with immigrants or simply driving them away and giving statements like " they steal our jobs" is a bit different in my opinion and the latter would be racism.
at the moment we have big discussions here how to deal with immigrants and really that has nothing to do with being racist.
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On November 07 2010 13:22 Scruffy wrote:They often say a picture is worth a thousand words. kzn, I salute you for representing reality, something a lot of these people know nothing of. Some guy said "And really you think the US debt comes from some medicare? Correct me if I am wrong but I am pretty sure that medicare stuff was from before Bush era and when Clintons presidency ended the US had a good plus in their money and no debt. And how much money did the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan eat up? Combine that with the problems on the stock markets and you got your deficit." To that, I say this: ![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/8zgkF.gif) Man, we had no debt after Medicare came around, it truly saved us. Give me a break. Notice the trend in the graph after 1965, when Medicare was enacted. You people know nothing of America's problems. I'll give you a hint. Its Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. Also, this doesn't include 2006-2010. The debt has gone up to 13.6 TRILLION now. Man, those democrats know how to spend some money.
Funny, it start to rise dramatically when Reagan gets into power, and the only moment it slows down is during Clinton era.
Now, you know, for me the problem is simpler than that: I don't want to live in a country where nobody care when someone has a cancer. You'll always have lots of people who won't be abme to afford private insurances. You'll always have companies like Enron crashing and destroying the future of thousand of people.
That ain't happening where I live. We don't live in stone age, ffs, there are certain basic things which are the duty of the whole society, namely health and education.
Your graph proves nothing. Every country has had explosion of its debt after the two energy crisis in the 1970. Saying it ahs anything to do with healthcare is just a joke.
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On November 07 2010 04:59 kzn wrote:
And you are laughably wrong if you think that ending the NHS wouldn't instantly chop like 10% off of every marginale tax rate in the UK (and that is a wildly conservative estimate).
10%? So you're saying that at least half the tax I pay goes on the NHS? And the other half is split between defence, education, police, social security etc.?
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I think he is specifically aiming at Denmark, Norway and Sweden. And it is true that at least FRP (Fremskrittspartiet) is mainly a equivalent movement to the tea-party / value-based-nationality-fear politics in the US, and they did receive about 20-25% of the votes in the last election - which is also pretty scary.
FRP can barely defend the views of the Republicans who are very left in their party, let alone the tea party. They might be conservative by Norwegian standards, but they are not racist. They seek to make it harder to get into Norway, because their opinion is that it's way to easy to get into Norway. They support these opinions with how a majority of crime in Norway is done by immigrants and illegal immigrants, despite them being the minority.
Saying FRP is racist because they want to restrict immigration doesn't fit in my book.
The reason they're our most conservative party is because of other reasons, mostly their views on taxes, the elderly and enviromental issues.
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FRP can barely defend the views of the Republicans who are very left in their party, let alone the tea party. They might be conservative by Norwegian standards, but they are not racist....
´mainly a equivalent movement to the tea-party / value-based-nationality-fear politics in the US` =/= racism :/ :/
It's the alienation/fear tendency (with free-market crustings) no matter the semantics.
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United States44381 Posts
On November 07 2010 22:09 jello_biafra wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2010 04:59 kzn wrote:
And you are laughably wrong if you think that ending the NHS wouldn't instantly chop like 10% off of every marginale tax rate in the UK (and that is a wildly conservative estimate).
10%? So you're saying that at least half the tax I pay goes on the NHS? And the other half is split between defence, education, police, social security etc.?
NHS gets about 10% of the budget. My figures are a few years out of date but I believe it was 90B in 2007 lowering down to 70B by 2009. It's really not that much.
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EPT
