Since Mitt Romney announced his candidacy last June, he has continually made two core claims about Obama’s economic record, each of which contradicts the other. Depending on the moment, Romney has said either:
1) Obama didn’t cause the recession, but he made it worse; and his policies have destroyed jobs.
or
2) Yes, the economy is recovering, but only in spite of Obama’s policies, not because of them.
Today, in response to the better than expected jobs numbers, Romney tried out a third line: The economy may or may not be recovering, but one thing is certain: Obama’s policies are preventing a “true” recovery.
Here’s Romney’s statement, just released:
“We welcome the fact that jobs were created and unemployment declined. Unfortunately, these numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery. We can do better. Last week, we learned that the economy grew only 1.7% in 2011, the slowest growth in a non-recession year since the end of World War II. As a result, the percentage of Americans in the job market continues to decline and is now at a level not seen since the early 1980s. Nearly 24 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or have just stopped looking for work. Long-term unemployment remains at record levels. I am running for president because I have the vision and experience to help rebuild the economy and put us on a path toward greater prosperity for all Americans.”
The use of the passive voice here — “jobs were created” — is a nice touch. Now, in fairness to Romney, this statement, parsed carefully, could be read as being in sync with position number two: Yes, the economy is recovering, but only in spite of Obama’s policies. But ultimately, Romney’s claim today that “Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery” is inconclusive about the question of whether any kind of recovery is underway. So this reads like a third position.
On February 03 2012 10:37 aksfjh wrote: With the exception of housing, which is widely under debate at this moment, the programs you list do things cheaper than the private sector. Education tuitions rose because state budgets have refused to increase funding based on demand for nearly a decade. Military costs went through the roof because we turned to the private sector to help fight the war, instead of sticking to tradition and conscripting.
My argument is that when private sector is forced to the compete with the government the prices go up disproportionately to the quality.
So all my examples basically on point. I'm talking about costs both private and public. Government drove up the price of education with easy credit, housing with easy credit, medicine with guarantees and subsidies, and military with contracts.
These types of economies don't work, you either need to have the whole thing nationalized or privatized without government incentives, and when you're dealing with a situation of individual customers private sector tends to be better, while for something like the military, you obviously want that fully nationalized, but the point is that when you have the two compete you get basically the worst possible situation.
I might agree with you on this partially. But I would add that private sector tends to do better only if the customer has at least some ability to actually judge the service at least somewhat objectively. Healthcare is one of those where that is not true and consequences of error are often fatal. Education also but for somewhat different reasons.
The first part is definitely true. However you underestimate the effiency of the free market. When its difficult for the consumer to understand how the industry works, they have a need. The market can satisfy that need, and new companies will (probably) specialize in explaining how the health care industry works, and how they minizimze their costs in relation to their needs.
However when government is in involved in the market, consumers tend to feel "safe". Like believing that government will fix their problems, and hence their isn't a strong enough demand for private companies to deliever a product that makes it easy to judge the services of the health care sector.
Operation of healthcare industry is the easier part to explain. The medicine is the hard part. Those meta-companies will be as useless to the consumers as the original ones. And as all private companies in a market where consumer is not able to judge the product even after he used it, they will just be ripping everyone and most successful will be the ones with best PR department that provide least service, but make it look good. It is easily seen in the privatized parts of the healthcare sector all over the world. Of course you can take a hardcore libertarian stance, that the consumers get what they wanted, no matter if they got totally ripped off compared to the "forced choice" of public system. But if you think that displayed preference is always equal to the real preference I do not think we have any common basis to continue without getting into an even bigger tangent.
People complain all the time about healthcare system, so no, people are not complacent, but their complaints are mostly totally wrong and just highlighting my point.
If those meta-companies doesn't work they go bankrupt. Why wouldn't they work? They will do everything in their power to make the market easy to understand and analyze for their consumers, because that is their product. And if they are to make money some people have to buy their product.
Since Mitt Romney announced his candidacy last June, he has continually made two core claims about Obama’s economic record, each of which contradicts the other. Depending on the moment, Romney has said either:
1) Obama didn’t cause the recession, but he made it worse; and his policies have destroyed jobs.
or
2) Yes, the economy is recovering, but only in spite of Obama’s policies, not because of them.
Today, in response to the better than expected jobs numbers, Romney tried out a third line: The economy may or may not be recovering, but one thing is certain: Obama’s policies are preventing a “true” recovery.
Here’s Romney’s statement, just released:
“We welcome the fact that jobs were created and unemployment declined. Unfortunately, these numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery. We can do better
How does anny of these statements contradict eachoter? I fail to see. Imagine this situation:
Usa economy was in recession before obama came to power. Obama came to power and implemented bad policy wich made the recession worse. (2-3 years ago) Now the economy starting to recover (at least on paper lol) due to monetairy easing of fed and maybe just "natural" cycles of pessimism and optimism. The bad policys of obama are still in place and the economy is NOW recovering despite thoose bad policys There are jobs beeing created all the time (and destroyed) i guess he just takes the official numbers for this. At the start of obamas presidency the number of jobs fell, And now, due to the recovering of the economy there are beeing jobs created. There could however be more jobs created if better policys where imlemented.
In the above hypothetical and not extremely unlikely case all romneys statements hold true and none of them realy contradicts one of the other? Romney said the same thing all along,obamas policy could have been better. His statements about jobs and economic recovery are a bit unlucky and it could have been smoother but when you read them closely i dont see anny real contradiction Annyway i dont realy care, obama is destined to win.
Capitalism has been desastrous for healthcare and the cost of healthcare. Americans pay the by far highest cost for healthcare (i heard 1 hospital bed for 1 day already is over 3000$ and then you have not even seen a doctor) Us healthcare is a prime example of where capitalism does not generate the most efficient system imo
Since Mitt Romney announced his candidacy last June, he has continually made two core claims about Obama’s economic record, each of which contradicts the other. Depending on the moment, Romney has said either:
1) Obama didn’t cause the recession, but he made it worse; and his policies have destroyed jobs.
or
2) Yes, the economy is recovering, but only in spite of Obama’s policies, not because of them.
Today, in response to the better than expected jobs numbers, Romney tried out a third line: The economy may or may not be recovering, but one thing is certain: Obama’s policies are preventing a “true” recovery.
Here’s Romney’s statement, just released:
“We welcome the fact that jobs were created and unemployment declined. Unfortunately, these numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery. We can do better. Last week, we learned that the economy grew only 1.7% in 2011, the slowest growth in a non-recession year since the end of World War II. As a result, the percentage of Americans in the job market continues to decline and is now at a level not seen since the early 1980s. Nearly 24 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or have just stopped looking for work. Long-term unemployment remains at record levels. I am running for president because I have the vision and experience to help rebuild the economy and put us on a path toward greater prosperity for all Americans.”
The use of the passive voice here — “jobs were created” — is a nice touch. Now, in fairness to Romney, this statement, parsed carefully, could be read as being in sync with position number two: Yes, the economy is recovering, but only in spite of Obama’s policies. But ultimately, Romney’s claim today that “Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery” is inconclusive about the question of whether any kind of recovery is underway. So this reads like a third position.
First of all, NFP prints are laughable. I think 90% of them over the past year have been revised negatively the following month. Just wait until this number gets downsized and people realize how many more people have become so-called "disgruntled" because they have been looking for jobs for so long.
Second of all, I don't see how this is a logical fallacy. Romney has said a lot dumber things in recent times.
On February 04 2012 07:22 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: This is from the Washington freaking Post:
Since Mitt Romney announced his candidacy last June, he has continually made two core claims about Obama’s economic record, each of which contradicts the other. Depending on the moment, Romney has said either:
1) Obama didn’t cause the recession, but he made it worse; and his policies have destroyed jobs.
or
2) Yes, the economy is recovering, but only in spite of Obama’s policies, not because of them.
Today, in response to the better than expected jobs numbers, Romney tried out a third line: The economy may or may not be recovering, but one thing is certain: Obama’s policies are preventing a “true” recovery.
Here’s Romney’s statement, just released:
“We welcome the fact that jobs were created and unemployment declined. Unfortunately, these numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery. We can do better. Last week, we learned that the economy grew only 1.7% in 2011, the slowest growth in a non-recession year since the end of World War II. As a result, the percentage of Americans in the job market continues to decline and is now at a level not seen since the early 1980s. Nearly 24 million Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or have just stopped looking for work. Long-term unemployment remains at record levels. I am running for president because I have the vision and experience to help rebuild the economy and put us on a path toward greater prosperity for all Americans.”
The use of the passive voice here — “jobs were created” — is a nice touch. Now, in fairness to Romney, this statement, parsed carefully, could be read as being in sync with position number two: Yes, the economy is recovering, but only in spite of Obama’s policies. But ultimately, Romney’s claim today that “Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery” is inconclusive about the question of whether any kind of recovery is underway. So this reads like a third position.
First of all, NFP prints are laughable. I think 90% of them over the past year have been revised negatively the following month. Just wait until this number gets downsized and people realize how many more people have become so-called "disgruntled" because they have been looking for jobs for so long.
Second of all, I don't see how this is a logical fallacy. Romney has said a lot dumber things in recent times.
If there is even the beginnings of economic recovery (however temporary) it could not be more perfectly timed for Obama's re-election. Obama can out-hawk their hawk rhetoric with his "I killed Osama' trump card. And so much has been centred around the economy- especially Romney's 'we don't need a President, we need a CEO' even the beginnings of economic recovery knocks a lot of wind out of the the CEO argument. After that, what do they have left? Social conservatism? Obama can out-Christian Romney if he wants to as Romney's a Mormon. If Obama can steal some thunder from the Occupy movement on Lobbyists/ Big Money in government there's not much left except electric fences and nuking Iran... oh and moon bases.
On February 04 2012 08:05 Rassy wrote: Capitalism has been desastrous for healthcare and the cost of healthcare. Americans pay the by far highest cost for healthcare (i heard 1 hospital bed for 1 day already is over 3000$ and then you have not even seen a doctor) Us healthcare is a prime example of where capitalism does not generate the most efficient system imo
16% of all government revenue is spent on healthcare in the USA. 45% of personal health expenditures were paid for by the federal and state governments. Capitalism is not traditionally defined as being state controlled.
On February 03 2012 10:37 aksfjh wrote: With the exception of housing, which is widely under debate at this moment, the programs you list do things cheaper than the private sector. Education tuitions rose because state budgets have refused to increase funding based on demand for nearly a decade. Military costs went through the roof because we turned to the private sector to help fight the war, instead of sticking to tradition and conscripting.
My argument is that when private sector is forced to the compete with the government the prices go up disproportionately to the quality.
So all my examples basically on point. I'm talking about costs both private and public. Government drove up the price of education with easy credit, housing with easy credit, medicine with guarantees and subsidies, and military with contracts.
These types of economies don't work, you either need to have the whole thing nationalized or privatized without government incentives, and when you're dealing with a situation of individual customers private sector tends to be better, while for something like the military, you obviously want that fully nationalized, but the point is that when you have the two compete you get basically the worst possible situation.
I might agree with you on this partially. But I would add that private sector tends to do better only if the customer has at least some ability to actually judge the service at least somewhat objectively. Healthcare is one of those where that is not true and consequences of error are often fatal. Education also but for somewhat different reasons.
The first part is definitely true. However you underestimate the effiency of the free market. When its difficult for the consumer to understand how the industry works, they have a need. The market can satisfy that need, and new companies will (probably) specialize in explaining how the health care industry works, and how they minizimze their costs in relation to their needs.
However when government is in involved in the market, consumers tend to feel "safe". Like believing that government will fix their problems, and hence their isn't a strong enough demand for private companies to deliever a product that makes it easy to judge the services of the health care sector.
Operation of healthcare industry is the easier part to explain. The medicine is the hard part. Those meta-companies will be as useless to the consumers as the original ones. And as all private companies in a market where consumer is not able to judge the product even after he used it, they will just be ripping everyone and most successful will be the ones with best PR department that provide least service, but make it look good. It is easily seen in the privatized parts of the healthcare sector all over the world. Of course you can take a hardcore libertarian stance, that the consumers get what they wanted, no matter if they got totally ripped off compared to the "forced choice" of public system. But if you think that displayed preference is always equal to the real preference I do not think we have any common basis to continue without getting into an even bigger tangent.
People complain all the time about healthcare system, so no, people are not complacent, but their complaints are mostly totally wrong and just highlighting my point.
If those meta-companies doesn't work they go bankrupt. Why wouldn't they work? They will do everything in their power to make the market easy to understand and analyze for their consumers, because that is their product. And if they are to make money some people have to buy their product.
Oh they will make money, and people will buy their products, but not because those companies will offer anything worthwhile, but because people are gullible and have extremely limited ability to judge those products. How do you know if you need CT, you ask the company and they will tell you exactly that what will maximize their profit, which is rarely linked to what is necessary to maximize your health benefit. Why can they do so ? Because in areas where products if they are faulty do not leave much space for punishing bad providers by changing preference (you cannot move to another provider if you are dead) and where quality of the product cannot actually be reasonably judged at all by the customer, because even unsuccessful treatment might be the best possible product, how do you leave market forces any leverage to work. Market forces will work as they always do to maximize "market efficiency", but unlike in many other areas that goal is not at all aligned with the goal of providing good medical care, because the feedback loop from customers to providers is highly unstable and unreliable.
That was what I was saying that if you consider displayed preference as real preference that is the only way you can make the claim that the system works. Which in this case means that when scared patient buys snake oil from a dealer his displayed preference was to buy a snake oil. You can say since he showed preference for snake oil, market works, as it delivered him exactly what he wanted. Of course I would say that his actual preference was to get healthy, but was too stupid, uneducated, desperate, poor and that transformed his actual preference into buying snake oil instead of buying 1 dollar cheaper antibiotics in the store 10m away.
Of course not all people are terminally stupid so the system would not be completely hellish nightmare, but most people are not equipped to make rational decision about most of the medical field, not only because of lack of knowledge but also because of lack of criteria to judge the product in the first place. In the end system would somewhat work, but would be completely inferior to the standard public system in use today. Other things to consider are that moral hazard is much less than in other areas, because of the nature of the offered service. People prefer not to undertake most of the offered services unless they really need to, especially not the most expensive ones.
I do not understand why some of you continue to engage the libertarian types on the health care issue.
they are wrong. all of the statistics have been posted. they are wrong. they will always have excuses for why the data doesnt apply. they are wrong.
it would be more useful to shift the discussion towards how the race for the nomination develops with recent developments such as the jobs report or the sooner - than - expected timeline for Afghan withdrawal.
You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out?
On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote: You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out?
I think Marxist were very prominent on the internet from 96-02, but as people mature and learn more about alternatives they changed their view points.
On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote: You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out?
I'm guessing marxists see reason. There's not a lot of smart marxists left, as far as I'm concerned. Pretty much everyone has a mix of something or the other and some form of capitalism. The only real hardcore camp left seems to be the Libertarian/Austrian Economics people, as you put it. Don't know why.
On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote: You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out?
I actually think that over the last couple of years quite a few ideas that originate from marxism have made it into the mainstream of economic and public debate. The idea that crises are inherent to the system is widely accepted, it's just that people disagree with marx's solution (communism into socialism) because it failed empirically, and it has been replaced with varieties of social/liberal democracy. Control of the means of production, overinvestment and overproduction are originally marxist concepts that have made it into the mainstream too, and are still important arguments against unrestrained capitalism.
In certain academic fields this holds true also, most global political economy literature in recent years has been dominated by a resurgence of marxist forms of analysis. It's proven to be quite the useful method of analysis too, if you forego the normative prescriptions marx makes.
On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote: You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out?
I think Marxist were very prominent on the internet from 96-02, but as people mature and learn more about alternatives they changed their view points.
I think Marxism got ruined by practice. The fundamental shift to true communism never took place, partially because it is likely not possible, but also because once the dictatorship was in place, it wasn't really interested in reaching truce communism. (so Marxism ends up being Leninism/Stalinism)
The advantage of Capitalism is that it is self-maintaining (it might shift from free capitalism to crony capitalism to socialist/welfare capitalism, but those tweaks ... taking Some of the means of production through taxes/regulations are much more effective than wholesale taking of them... because any government that wholesale takes the means of production is in danger of getting wrapped up in its own power)
On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote: You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out?
I think Marxist were very prominent on the internet from 96-02, but as people mature and learn more about alternatives they changed their view points.
I think Marxism got ruined by practice. The fundamental shift to true communism never took place, partially because it is likely not possible, but also because once the dictatorship was in place, it wasn't really interested in reaching truce communism. (so Marxism ends up being Leninism/Stalinism)
The advantage of Capitalism is that it is self-maintaining (it might shift from free capitalism to crony capitalism to socialist/welfare capitalism, but those tweaks ... taking Some of the means of production through taxes/regulations are much more effective than wholesale taking of them... because any government that wholesale takes the means of production is in danger of getting wrapped up in its own power)
In marxism, communism is the transitional state into socialism, which is the end goal. It might be nitpicking, but its an important distinction to make when it comes to discussing variants of marxism such as leninism, which sees communism as the end state.
On February 04 2012 09:14 HellRoxYa wrote: I'm guessing marxists see reason. There's not a lot of smart marxists left, as far as I'm concerned. Pretty much everyone has a mix of something or the other and some form of capitalism. The only real hardcore camp left seems to be the Libertarian/Austrian Economics people, as you put it. Don't know why.
because their school eschews econometrics.
I am not accusing them of doing so. it is their tenant and something that allows them to hold onto their beliefs despite the existence of a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.
I really hope Obama get reelected for a second term. I can't imagine how bad things will get with Romney. It's pretty much a sure thing that he'll be the republican candidate, right?
On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote: You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out?
Well, i'm a pretty big fan of big government (socialism i guess you could call it). Obviously there is no perfect government i just think it's stupid that lots of people have in their minds
On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote: You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out?
Well, i'm a pretty big fan of big government (socialism i guess you could call it). Obviously there is no perfect government i just think it's stupid that lots of people have in their minds
BIG GOV = 1984
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
America brainwash are youth in school with small government, capitalism etc. Books, poems, its indoctrinated. If your not 100% for it you are Marxist evil communist. Republicans think of democrats as that.
EPT
