On September 14 2011 06:23 FakeLife wrote: I don't see how the Republicans have much chance of winning the election as is. How can you win when your top two candidates are:
1. A guy who's trying to run as a Republican, but supported universal healthcare in his home state. 2. The Texas Governor who took Bush's place when he was elected.
And I'm even being kind and ignoring Sarah Palin. It's like they're trying to fail. Realistically, I'm going to be voting for Herman Cain if he's still around be the time the primaries roll around to me, but I'm probably pretty biased, being from Georgia. He's been consistently putting up excellent favorability numbers, but the real issue is his name recognition.
Under more normal circumstances, Obama would have 300 electoral votes easily. However:
a) the economy is terrible. b) Obama's approval is something like 42%. (see: a) c) enthusiasm gap - people who don't like Perry might just stay home rather than vote for Obama. People who don't like Obama will vote for Perry/Romney/Bachmann since the alternative is the socialist Muslim Antichrist.
Without a serious economic rebound, however, said candidate will be defeated in 2016 if the Democrats can find a competent candidate. (hardly a guarantee, see: Gore, Kerry)
There's no doubt that Obama is facing some pretty terrible favorability numbers, but I think the Republicans face some unique issues too. I'm having a lot of trouble finding a good, recent poll, but the Tea Party is resposible for a good chunk of Republican enthusiasm. I think the numbers could take a big nose-dive if the Republicans end up running someone like Mitt Romney, especially with a nice, long campaign cycle with tons of candidates hammering on each other. It's just hard to get behind moderate establishment candidates who have already failed, when you've had over a year to get sick of them.
But as you rightfully point out, the real decider of this election is going to be numbers like job growth and consumer confidence, and so far, there's not much evidence that things are going to improve very quickly.
On September 13 2011 22:49 SySLeif wrote: Religious fruitloop? Religious people live longer, more happy and fullfilling lives. Also most of the greatest men of all time were religious.
According to whom?
If your referring to another as in another "Bush" then I would rather see another Bush than any democrat. I would rather keep my freedoms than have them taken from the government. America is to diverse to have a single set of rules an laws for everyone, hence more power should be dispersed into more local communities.
Yeah, the Patriot Act was a monumental win in the battle for freedom... Sigh
Now why was Bush a bad president? When the democrats took over in 2006 (House and Senate) unemployment was still just above 5%?
Thank the housing bubble for that one, and how was Bush a bad president? Can you seriously ask that question with a straight face?
It took Barack Obama 2 years to make the debt that Bush did in 8.
Amazing to think that in some cases you actually have to spend money to dig yourself out of a hole - why is this so tough to comprehend?
Also since you seem to love the Rove kool-aid: "deficits don't matter" - Dick Cheney.
Even though we had 9/11 he still stood strong when he said we were going to war. It takes a man to do that, and he did it with 70% of Americans behind him.
It takes a real 'man' to go awol during your national guard tenure. It takes a real man to paint your opponent (a true war hero in John Kerry) as a liberal pussy as well. Probably 70% of the world was behind the U.S. after 9/11 - nobody had any problem with Afghanistan, Iraq was the issue. While you and your ilk sat there flag waving and fist pumping about some imaginary weapons of mass destruction (forget the fact that they even tried to tie in an Al-Qaeda link first) the rest of the world was face-palming.
Also Bush had to cleanup a huge mess Clinton left behind... You know the mess where "O well nobody should be discriminated against during a loan application on how much they make a year."
Yeah, thank god Bush figured away to get rid of that huge budget surplus.
And now America is in a debt recession where most of the country is paying debts instead of buying things with their money earned.
Oh Jesus, you think this is something new? This shit has been going on since Reagan (probably the worst president in US history) was in office. You can thank him for putting in the policies that slowly started to flush your country down the shitter.
Stop trolling the republicans and get on with your life.
Get informed.
Reagan was one of the best presidents of the modern times economically. FDR and Carter were some of the worst.
Clinton's policies were a major cause in the housing bubble.
Bush did over-spend on military, and he tried to stop the bubble from bursting with bad monetary policy so he could get reelected, which made it bigger, but Clinton is the one who helped start it. He wasn't at all a great president economically.
and no, you don't need to spend money to get out of the hole. The hole is that we're spending too much money. Stimulus doesn't work at all even on a theoretical level, and Obama continues to push for more. and spending money on Obamacare isn't a way to get out of this hole ever.
you're the one who needs to get informed.
You're so wrong it's astounding.
Reaganomics were so full of shit it's not even funny. BTW, Reagan increased taxes when he was in office. Surprise!
The housing bubble? Yeah, that's a result of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act. Yes, Clinton did sign it, but it was also passed under a Republican congress. And again, we had a surplus under Clinton as a direct result of his policies. Don't make shit up. And yeah, to get out of a hole, you need to promote economic growth. Economic growth only occurs in times of increased demand for consumption. Increased demand for consumption only occurs when people have more disposable income. In other words, the only way to promote economic growth is to make sure people have more money to spend, which is what the stimulus bill did. And according to a number of institutions (including the Princeton Review), the stimulus was a great idea that wasn't big enough to work because it got cut down repeatedly due to demands from the Republicans in congress, because Obama wanted to compromise and work with them instead of telling them to go fuck themselves.
BTW, Obamacare? Yeah, another word made up by Republicans to make it sound like something really bad and dangerous. Surprise surprise, it's actually amazingly good for insurance companies, and it's not at all a liberal policy.
Get your shit together.
the second half of Reagan's presidency wasn't as good as his first I agree.
of course there was surplus during Clinton that was the bubble growing.
Stimulus doesn't fucking work, how can it. You're taking money from people and giving it back to them but less of it.
The economy doesn't grow from increased consumption... Consuming more than producing leads to debt... What people need to start doing is consuming less than we're producing, then export our excess, pay off our debt, then save real capital, and then invest that money so that we can produce more... There needs to be a recession because continuously giving people money to buy shit doesn't improve our economy, because buying shit doesn't increase the total number of shit to go around it simply redistributes it, and continues to send false signals to business that consumers can still afford more.
health care bill is longer to type than obama care, and it's terrible either way.
It's called the money multiplier. Person A is given $100 from the government. Government spending? $100. He then turns around and saves $20, but spends $80 of it. Person B gets that $80 now has $80 to spend. He saves 20% of it like person A, and now spends $64 of it. Person C gets $64 and saves 20%, spending the rest. $51.2 goes to person D who then spends some. End result? The government spent $100, net gain in production and consumption is MUCH HIGHER. This spending is also taxed, so the government gets some of it back.
The two reasons why the stimulus bill didn't work are as follows: One, the stimulus bill wasn't big enough, they underestimated people's tendency to save money rather than spend, and it needed to be larger. To be fair, Obama's original plan was much bigger, but it was cut down in size drastically in compromise with the Republicans. Secondly, a lot of the jobs it did create went overseas because nobody seems to be interested in making the companies doing business in America hire Americans. This is the biggest problem with our economy right now, all the money goes out of country, and unemployment is high because companies find cheaper labor elsewhere. We need to do something about THIS, but it's not high on anybodies agenda.
To be honest, I don't much like Obama either, but it's important to give credit where credit is due and not make stuff up.
Where does the government get this money? They're already in huge deficit. They either print the money in which case there's inflation, or they go further into debt which also weakens the dollar.
The weakened dollar loses people their purchasing power, so of course people spend less. Especially since they're already in debt.
The solution isn't to spend it's to save... the principle of global economics dictates that if you're consuming more than you're producing you're going to be falling into debt. Either literal debt, or it loses purchasing power of the currency with respect to other currencies. In the end you can't make something out of nothing, and the efficiency of this obviously sucks because whenever money goes through the government tons of it gets stuck.
By giving people money to spend we're not improving our economic fundamentals, our production or industry, and the artificially low interest rates aren't helping. There's an obvious arbitrage going on with the US dollar which makes it foolish to save currency (which is why commodities and precious metals have kept going up in price as they're a way to hedge inflation.) How can money be so cheap (low rates) when everyone is in debt, it doesn't make sense.
The spending doesn't create any more products or wealth it simply allows some people to keep jobs that provide americans with goods and services that the americans shouldn't be able to afford in the middle of a recession. The market needs to go through a contraction to pay off its debt, and the more we keep spending the harder the contraction will be to deal with when it comes.
Short term debt is unimportant, long term debt is. Think about the long run, not the short run. Yes, deficit spending while in debt increases your debt in the short run, but if it increases employment, it leads to a long term recovery. Unfortunately, it won't do that now, because all the jobs that get created still are going overseas, and nobody fucking wants to do anything about it. Nothing pisses me off more than watching big companies get tax breaks to create new jobs and then hire people outside the country because it's cheaper. Hilariously, if this were fixed, it'd be the biggest factor in helping the economy, but not a single candidate has it on their agenda at all. Go fucking figure. (Yes, I'm legitimately angry about this, and it's almost the only thing that has me actually pissed off rather than irritated).
You need real savings to create jobs. While interest rates are kept low savings will be minimum. all the money that gets saved will only be used to pay the interest on the current debt, which is basically just another form of spending. But if the government stops controlling the interest rates like they should, then all of a sudden this short term debt that you say is unimportant will become incredibly important.
and it doesn't lead to long term economy growth, because the money is still originally coming out of the private sector or out of the printing press. The government doesn't create any products (well technically it does like roads and some infrastructure, but it's not that significant on this scale.)
Money is meant to represent wealth which is the ownership of actual stuff. Whenever money is in the hands of the government it's already money that the government forced from the people/businesses, because it's the people that create the products. They are redistributing money amongst those that are most likely to spend it because yes it keeps more people in their jobs, but it also sends a false signal to the businesses. Businesses that are creating services that the american people shouldn't be able to afford SHOULD be contracting. That's why it's called a recession. The more stimulus there is the more people will be able to get the wrong type of jobs, so in the end when the government decides to stop borrowing money and debasing our currency, almost everyone will be in a non-essential job, and they will have to lose their jobs, and then even more people would suffer than if the recession would have been allowed to occur sooner. It's the standard boom and bust cycle.
What are you suggesting they do about companies hiring overseas? You can't stop the companies from hiring where they want to hire. If the american employee has lost his competitive advantage perhaps he's demanding too much of a compensation? minimum wage laws need to be abolished.
Also, right now, inflation isn't a bad thing at all, we're below our target inflation number. I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up as a negative. Also, a lot of people can't afford to wait during a contraction period for the economy to recover: people are losing their homes because they can't find a job due to high unemployment.
It IS a negative, the longer it continues the worse things are gonna get if recession is allowed to hit fully, and if it's not then we'll eventually hit hyper-inflation.
What do you think is gonna happen if China stops inflating their currency along with ours? all of a sudden all the cheap chinese shit we buy will be completely unaffordable because they have so much more exports to us than we have exports to them, that their currency should actually be worth way more than ours, sure they'll lose us as customers, but their quality of living would jump the hell up if they stopped buying our treasury, because their purchasing power would considerably.
On September 13 2011 22:49 SySLeif wrote: Religious fruitloop? Religious people live longer, more happy and fullfilling lives. Also most of the greatest men of all time were religious.
According to whom?
If your referring to another as in another "Bush" then I would rather see another Bush than any democrat. I would rather keep my freedoms than have them taken from the government. America is to diverse to have a single set of rules an laws for everyone, hence more power should be dispersed into more local communities.
Yeah, the Patriot Act was a monumental win in the battle for freedom... Sigh
Now why was Bush a bad president? When the democrats took over in 2006 (House and Senate) unemployment was still just above 5%?
Thank the housing bubble for that one, and how was Bush a bad president? Can you seriously ask that question with a straight face?
It took Barack Obama 2 years to make the debt that Bush did in 8.
Amazing to think that in some cases you actually have to spend money to dig yourself out of a hole - why is this so tough to comprehend?
Also since you seem to love the Rove kool-aid: "deficits don't matter" - Dick Cheney.
Even though we had 9/11 he still stood strong when he said we were going to war. It takes a man to do that, and he did it with 70% of Americans behind him.
It takes a real 'man' to go awol during your national guard tenure. It takes a real man to paint your opponent (a true war hero in John Kerry) as a liberal pussy as well. Probably 70% of the world was behind the U.S. after 9/11 - nobody had any problem with Afghanistan, Iraq was the issue. While you and your ilk sat there flag waving and fist pumping about some imaginary weapons of mass destruction (forget the fact that they even tried to tie in an Al-Qaeda link first) the rest of the world was face-palming.
Also Bush had to cleanup a huge mess Clinton left behind... You know the mess where "O well nobody should be discriminated against during a loan application on how much they make a year."
Yeah, thank god Bush figured away to get rid of that huge budget surplus.
And now America is in a debt recession where most of the country is paying debts instead of buying things with their money earned.
Oh Jesus, you think this is something new? This shit has been going on since Reagan (probably the worst president in US history) was in office. You can thank him for putting in the policies that slowly started to flush your country down the shitter.
Stop trolling the republicans and get on with your life.
Get informed.
Reagan was one of the best presidents of the modern times economically. FDR and Carter were some of the worst.
Clinton's policies were a major cause in the housing bubble.
Bush did over-spend on military, and he tried to stop the bubble from bursting with bad monetary policy so he could get reelected, which made it bigger, but Clinton is the one who helped start it. He wasn't at all a great president economically.
and no, you don't need to spend money to get out of the hole. The hole is that we're spending too much money. Stimulus doesn't work at all even on a theoretical level, and Obama continues to push for more. and spending money on Obamacare isn't a way to get out of this hole ever.
you're the one who needs to get informed.
You're so wrong it's astounding.
Reaganomics were so full of shit it's not even funny. BTW, Reagan increased taxes when he was in office. Surprise!
The housing bubble? Yeah, that's a result of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act. Yes, Clinton did sign it, but it was also passed under a Republican congress. And again, we had a surplus under Clinton as a direct result of his policies. Don't make shit up. And yeah, to get out of a hole, you need to promote economic growth. Economic growth only occurs in times of increased demand for consumption. Increased demand for consumption only occurs when people have more disposable income. In other words, the only way to promote economic growth is to make sure people have more money to spend, which is what the stimulus bill did. And according to a number of institutions (including the Princeton Review), the stimulus was a great idea that wasn't big enough to work because it got cut down repeatedly due to demands from the Republicans in congress, because Obama wanted to compromise and work with them instead of telling them to go fuck themselves.
BTW, Obamacare? Yeah, another word made up by Republicans to make it sound like something really bad and dangerous. Surprise surprise, it's actually amazingly good for insurance companies, and it's not at all a liberal policy.
Get your shit together.
the second half of Reagan's presidency wasn't as good as his first I agree.
of course there was surplus during Clinton that was the bubble growing.
Stimulus doesn't fucking work, how can it. You're taking money from people and giving it back to them but less of it.
The economy doesn't grow from increased consumption... Consuming more than producing leads to debt... What people need to start doing is consuming less than we're producing, then export our excess, pay off our debt, then save real capital, and then invest that money so that we can produce more... There needs to be a recession because continuously giving people money to buy shit doesn't improve our economy, because buying shit doesn't increase the total number of shit to go around it simply redistributes it, and continues to send false signals to business that consumers can still afford more.
health care bill is longer to type than obama care, and it's terrible either way.
It's called the money multiplier. Person A is given $100 from the government. Government spending? $100. He then turns around and saves $20, but spends $80 of it. Person B gets that $80 now has $80 to spend. He saves 20% of it like person A, and now spends $64 of it. Person C gets $64 and saves 20%, spending the rest. $51.2 goes to person D who then spends some. End result? The government spent $100, net gain in production and consumption is MUCH HIGHER. This spending is also taxed, so the government gets some of it back.
The two reasons why the stimulus bill didn't work are as follows: One, the stimulus bill wasn't big enough, they underestimated people's tendency to save money rather than spend, and it needed to be larger. To be fair, Obama's original plan was much bigger, but it was cut down in size drastically in compromise with the Republicans. Secondly, a lot of the jobs it did create went overseas because nobody seems to be interested in making the companies doing business in America hire Americans. This is the biggest problem with our economy right now, all the money goes out of country, and unemployment is high because companies find cheaper labor elsewhere. We need to do something about THIS, but it's not high on anybodies agenda.
To be honest, I don't much like Obama either, but it's important to give credit where credit is due and not make stuff up.
Where does the government get this money? They're already in huge deficit. They either print the money in which case there's inflation, or they go further into debt which also weakens the dollar.
The weakened dollar loses people their purchasing power, so of course people spend less. Especially since they're already in debt.
The solution isn't to spend it's to save... the principle of global economics dictates that if you're consuming more than you're producing you're going to be falling into debt. Either literal debt, or it loses purchasing power of the currency with respect to other currencies. In the end you can't make something out of nothing, and the efficiency of this obviously sucks because whenever money goes through the government tons of it gets stuck.
By giving people money to spend we're not improving our economic fundamentals, our production or industry, and the artificially low interest rates aren't helping. There's an obvious arbitrage going on with the US dollar which makes it foolish to save currency (which is why commodities and precious metals have kept going up in price as they're a way to hedge inflation.) How can money be so cheap (low rates) when everyone is in debt, it doesn't make sense.
The spending doesn't create any more products or wealth it simply allows some people to keep jobs that provide americans with goods and services that the americans shouldn't be able to afford in the middle of a recession. The market needs to go through a contraction to pay off its debt, and the more we keep spending the harder the contraction will be to deal with when it comes.
Short term debt is unimportant, long term debt is. Think about the long run, not the short run. Yes, deficit spending while in debt increases your debt in the short run, but if it increases employment, it leads to a long term recovery. Unfortunately, it won't do that now, because all the jobs that get created still are going overseas, and nobody fucking wants to do anything about it. Nothing pisses me off more than watching big companies get tax breaks to create new jobs and then hire people outside the country because it's cheaper. Hilariously, if this were fixed, it'd be the biggest factor in helping the economy, but not a single candidate has it on their agenda at all. Go fucking figure. (Yes, I'm legitimately angry about this, and it's almost the only thing that has me actually pissed off rather than irritated).
You need real savings to create jobs. While interest rates are kept low savings will be minimum. all the money that gets saved will only be used to pay the interest on the current debt, which is basically just another form of spending. But if the government stops controlling the interest rates like they should, then all of a sudden this short term debt that you say is unimportant will become incredibly important.
and it doesn't lead to long term economy growth, because the money is still originally coming out of the private sector or out of the printing press. The government doesn't create any products (well technically it does like roads and some infrastructure, but it's not that significant on this scale.)
Money is meant to represent wealth which is the ownership of actual stuff. Whenever money is in the hands of the government it's already money that the government forced from the people/businesses, because it's the people that create the products. They are redistributing money amongst those that are most likely to spend it because yes it keeps more people in their jobs, but it also sends a false signal to the businesses. Businesses that are creating services that the american people shouldn't be able to afford SHOULD be contracting. That's why it's called a recession. The more stimulus there is the more people will be able to get the wrong type of jobs, so in the end when the government decides to stop borrowing money and debasing our currency, almost everyone will be in a non-essential job, and they will have to lose their jobs, and then even more people would suffer than if the recession would have been allowed to occur sooner. It's the standard boom and bust cycle.
What are you suggesting they do about companies hiring overseas? You can't stop the companies from hiring where they want to hire. If the american employee has lost his competitive advantage perhaps he's demanding too much of a compensation? minimum wage laws need to be abolished.
Also, right now, inflation isn't a bad thing at all, we're below our target inflation number. I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up as a negative. Also, a lot of people can't afford to wait during a contraction period for the economy to recover: people are losing their homes because they can't find a job due to high unemployment.
It IS a negative, the longer it continues the worse things are gonna get if recession is allowed to hit fully, and if it's not then we'll eventually hit hyper-inflation.
What do you think is gonna happen if China stops inflating their currency along with ours? all of a sudden all the cheap chinese shit we buy will be completely unaffordable because they have so much more exports to us than we have exports to them, that their currency should actually be worth way more than ours, sure they'll lose us as customers, but their quality of living would jump the hell up if they stopped buying our treasury, because their purchasing power would considerably.
Disband minimum wage laws? Are you serious? Do you know how low minimum wage already is in this country? Do you realize how poor the poor actually are? It's not like they can take another salary hit.
Why don't we abolish other so called entitlements then? How about repealing the Fair Labor Standards Act? I mean, kids need to work too, right? And we shouldn't have regulations about what we're allowed to pay them, cause that'd be socialism.
8 hour work days? Pshhhh, profits will be higher if we make them work 10 or 12 hours a day.
Time and a half for working overtime? Wow, did Marx himself come up with that one? We can surely do without that.
The weekend? If they want a job they can learn to come in on Saturday and Sunday too.
Sick days? Whatever, just replace sick workers. They're risking their jobs having the audacity to want a few days off to recover.
Safety standards? Look I know the machine sometimes backfires and occasionally takes a thumb or two with it, but honestly it's all part of the risk. They'll get over it.
Please please please have a look at the numerous charts/graphs I posted probably more than once earlier in this thread. The wealth disparity in our nation is unforgivable. Our worker benefits pale in comparison to other civilized nations. And you seriously want to remove minimum wage laws all together? You seem to be advocating some crazy form of neo-feudalism.
On September 13 2011 22:49 SySLeif wrote: Religious fruitloop? Religious people live longer, more happy and fullfilling lives. Also most of the greatest men of all time were religious.
According to whom?
If your referring to another as in another "Bush" then I would rather see another Bush than any democrat. I would rather keep my freedoms than have them taken from the government. America is to diverse to have a single set of rules an laws for everyone, hence more power should be dispersed into more local communities.
Yeah, the Patriot Act was a monumental win in the battle for freedom... Sigh
Now why was Bush a bad president? When the democrats took over in 2006 (House and Senate) unemployment was still just above 5%?
Thank the housing bubble for that one, and how was Bush a bad president? Can you seriously ask that question with a straight face?
It took Barack Obama 2 years to make the debt that Bush did in 8.
Amazing to think that in some cases you actually have to spend money to dig yourself out of a hole - why is this so tough to comprehend?
Also since you seem to love the Rove kool-aid: "deficits don't matter" - Dick Cheney.
Even though we had 9/11 he still stood strong when he said we were going to war. It takes a man to do that, and he did it with 70% of Americans behind him.
It takes a real 'man' to go awol during your national guard tenure. It takes a real man to paint your opponent (a true war hero in John Kerry) as a liberal pussy as well. Probably 70% of the world was behind the U.S. after 9/11 - nobody had any problem with Afghanistan, Iraq was the issue. While you and your ilk sat there flag waving and fist pumping about some imaginary weapons of mass destruction (forget the fact that they even tried to tie in an Al-Qaeda link first) the rest of the world was face-palming.
Also Bush had to cleanup a huge mess Clinton left behind... You know the mess where "O well nobody should be discriminated against during a loan application on how much they make a year."
Yeah, thank god Bush figured away to get rid of that huge budget surplus.
And now America is in a debt recession where most of the country is paying debts instead of buying things with their money earned.
Oh Jesus, you think this is something new? This shit has been going on since Reagan (probably the worst president in US history) was in office. You can thank him for putting in the policies that slowly started to flush your country down the shitter.
Stop trolling the republicans and get on with your life.
Get informed.
Reagan was one of the best presidents of the modern times economically. FDR and Carter were some of the worst.
Clinton's policies were a major cause in the housing bubble.
Bush did over-spend on military, and he tried to stop the bubble from bursting with bad monetary policy so he could get reelected, which made it bigger, but Clinton is the one who helped start it. He wasn't at all a great president economically.
and no, you don't need to spend money to get out of the hole. The hole is that we're spending too much money. Stimulus doesn't work at all even on a theoretical level, and Obama continues to push for more. and spending money on Obamacare isn't a way to get out of this hole ever.
you're the one who needs to get informed.
You're so wrong it's astounding.
Reaganomics were so full of shit it's not even funny. BTW, Reagan increased taxes when he was in office. Surprise!
The housing bubble? Yeah, that's a result of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act. Yes, Clinton did sign it, but it was also passed under a Republican congress. And again, we had a surplus under Clinton as a direct result of his policies. Don't make shit up. And yeah, to get out of a hole, you need to promote economic growth. Economic growth only occurs in times of increased demand for consumption. Increased demand for consumption only occurs when people have more disposable income. In other words, the only way to promote economic growth is to make sure people have more money to spend, which is what the stimulus bill did. And according to a number of institutions (including the Princeton Review), the stimulus was a great idea that wasn't big enough to work because it got cut down repeatedly due to demands from the Republicans in congress, because Obama wanted to compromise and work with them instead of telling them to go fuck themselves.
BTW, Obamacare? Yeah, another word made up by Republicans to make it sound like something really bad and dangerous. Surprise surprise, it's actually amazingly good for insurance companies, and it's not at all a liberal policy.
Get your shit together.
the second half of Reagan's presidency wasn't as good as his first I agree.
of course there was surplus during Clinton that was the bubble growing.
Stimulus doesn't fucking work, how can it. You're taking money from people and giving it back to them but less of it.
The economy doesn't grow from increased consumption... Consuming more than producing leads to debt... What people need to start doing is consuming less than we're producing, then export our excess, pay off our debt, then save real capital, and then invest that money so that we can produce more... There needs to be a recession because continuously giving people money to buy shit doesn't improve our economy, because buying shit doesn't increase the total number of shit to go around it simply redistributes it, and continues to send false signals to business that consumers can still afford more.
health care bill is longer to type than obama care, and it's terrible either way.
It's called the money multiplier. Person A is given $100 from the government. Government spending? $100. He then turns around and saves $20, but spends $80 of it. Person B gets that $80 now has $80 to spend. He saves 20% of it like person A, and now spends $64 of it. Person C gets $64 and saves 20%, spending the rest. $51.2 goes to person D who then spends some. End result? The government spent $100, net gain in production and consumption is MUCH HIGHER. This spending is also taxed, so the government gets some of it back.
The two reasons why the stimulus bill didn't work are as follows: One, the stimulus bill wasn't big enough, they underestimated people's tendency to save money rather than spend, and it needed to be larger. To be fair, Obama's original plan was much bigger, but it was cut down in size drastically in compromise with the Republicans. Secondly, a lot of the jobs it did create went overseas because nobody seems to be interested in making the companies doing business in America hire Americans. This is the biggest problem with our economy right now, all the money goes out of country, and unemployment is high because companies find cheaper labor elsewhere. We need to do something about THIS, but it's not high on anybodies agenda.
To be honest, I don't much like Obama either, but it's important to give credit where credit is due and not make stuff up.
Where does the government get this money? They're already in huge deficit. They either print the money in which case there's inflation, or they go further into debt which also weakens the dollar.
The weakened dollar loses people their purchasing power, so of course people spend less. Especially since they're already in debt.
The solution isn't to spend it's to save... the principle of global economics dictates that if you're consuming more than you're producing you're going to be falling into debt. Either literal debt, or it loses purchasing power of the currency with respect to other currencies. In the end you can't make something out of nothing, and the efficiency of this obviously sucks because whenever money goes through the government tons of it gets stuck.
By giving people money to spend we're not improving our economic fundamentals, our production or industry, and the artificially low interest rates aren't helping. There's an obvious arbitrage going on with the US dollar which makes it foolish to save currency (which is why commodities and precious metals have kept going up in price as they're a way to hedge inflation.) How can money be so cheap (low rates) when everyone is in debt, it doesn't make sense.
The spending doesn't create any more products or wealth it simply allows some people to keep jobs that provide americans with goods and services that the americans shouldn't be able to afford in the middle of a recession. The market needs to go through a contraction to pay off its debt, and the more we keep spending the harder the contraction will be to deal with when it comes.
Short term debt is unimportant, long term debt is. Think about the long run, not the short run. Yes, deficit spending while in debt increases your debt in the short run, but if it increases employment, it leads to a long term recovery. Unfortunately, it won't do that now, because all the jobs that get created still are going overseas, and nobody fucking wants to do anything about it. Nothing pisses me off more than watching big companies get tax breaks to create new jobs and then hire people outside the country because it's cheaper. Hilariously, if this were fixed, it'd be the biggest factor in helping the economy, but not a single candidate has it on their agenda at all. Go fucking figure. (Yes, I'm legitimately angry about this, and it's almost the only thing that has me actually pissed off rather than irritated).
You need real savings to create jobs. While interest rates are kept low savings will be minimum. all the money that gets saved will only be used to pay the interest on the current debt, which is basically just another form of spending. But if the government stops controlling the interest rates like they should, then all of a sudden this short term debt that you say is unimportant will become incredibly important.
and it doesn't lead to long term economy growth, because the money is still originally coming out of the private sector or out of the printing press. The government doesn't create any products (well technically it does like roads and some infrastructure, but it's not that significant on this scale.)
Money is meant to represent wealth which is the ownership of actual stuff. Whenever money is in the hands of the government it's already money that the government forced from the people/businesses, because it's the people that create the products. They are redistributing money amongst those that are most likely to spend it because yes it keeps more people in their jobs, but it also sends a false signal to the businesses. Businesses that are creating services that the american people shouldn't be able to afford SHOULD be contracting. That's why it's called a recession. The more stimulus there is the more people will be able to get the wrong type of jobs, so in the end when the government decides to stop borrowing money and debasing our currency, almost everyone will be in a non-essential job, and they will have to lose their jobs, and then even more people would suffer than if the recession would have been allowed to occur sooner. It's the standard boom and bust cycle.
What are you suggesting they do about companies hiring overseas? You can't stop the companies from hiring where they want to hire. If the american employee has lost his competitive advantage perhaps he's demanding too much of a compensation? minimum wage laws need to be abolished.
Also, right now, inflation isn't a bad thing at all, we're below our target inflation number. I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up as a negative. Also, a lot of people can't afford to wait during a contraction period for the economy to recover: people are losing their homes because they can't find a job due to high unemployment.
It IS a negative, the longer it continues the worse things are gonna get if recession is allowed to hit fully, and if it's not then we'll eventually hit hyper-inflation.
What do you think is gonna happen if China stops inflating their currency along with ours? all of a sudden all the cheap chinese shit we buy will be completely unaffordable because they have so much more exports to us than we have exports to them, that their currency should actually be worth way more than ours, sure they'll lose us as customers, but their quality of living would jump the hell up if they stopped buying our treasury, because their purchasing power would considerably.
Disband minimum wage laws? Are you serious? Do you know how low minimum wage already is in this country? Do you realize how poor the poor actually are? It's not like they can take another salary hit.
Why don't we abolish other so called entitlements then? How about repealing the Fair Labor Standards Act? I mean, kids need to work too, right? And we shouldn't have regulations about what we're allowed to pay them, cause that'd be socialism.
Minimum wage law destroys jobs. Let's be serious now. Businesses need to make a profit. They aren't gonna hire someone for 8 dollars an hour if that person isn't able to produce more than 8 dollars an hour worth of profit to the business... Its not like employers maliciously hate giving people jobs, no... they just don't want to lose money and go out of business.
8 hour work days? Pshhhh, profits will be higher if we make them work 10 or 12 hours a day.
No they won't be. people will get tired and make mistakes.
Time and a half for working overtime? Wow, did Marx himself come up with that one? We can surely do without that.
The weekend? If they want a job they can learn to come in on Saturday and Sunday too.
Overtime pay is terrible for the workers. In fact right now employers don't want people to work overtime even when they can (see example above except for the person didn't get tired and is still needed on the job.)
You will get clocked out when your shift is done, because he'd rather have someone else do that job without having to pay you extra money.
Sick days? Whatever, just replace sick workers. They're risking their jobs having the audacity to want a few days off to recover.
Terrible idea. Workers need training to be efficient.
Safety standards? Look I know the machine sometimes backfires and occasionally takes a thumb or two with it, but honestly it's all part of the risk. They'll get over it.
Some safety liabilities that get put on the employers by the government can be pretty stupid but in the end, it is in the employer's favor to maintain a safe environment for his workers, because once again having to hire new un-experienced employees will end up costing him more.
Please please please have a look at the numerous charts/graphs I posted probably more than once earlier in this thread. The wealth disparity in our nation is unforgivable. Our worker benefits pale in comparison to other civilized nations. And you seriously want to remove minimum wage laws all together? You seem to be advocating some crazy form of neo-feudalism.
I'm not advocating feudalism. The point is right now if your work isn't bringing in more than 8 dollars worth of profit an hour you won't get hired anyways, so if you're in a job chances are you are useful on your job and a pay-cut isn't as likely as you think it is, because you're pulling your weight.
a lot of minimum wage jobs are provided by small businesses... I like how you think that small business owners are some kind of sick freaks that are rolling in cash and are just licking their lips at the idea of cutting their workers' pay even more....
actually if you get rid of minimum wages a kid out of high school with like no skills instead of running up a huge debt going to college and coming out with a degree with which it's still incredibly hard to find a job nowadays can get a very low paying job doing something as simple as passing tools to a mechanic at a car service center, and learn actual valuable marketplace skills that are actually useful, and then he will be able to do a job that's actually worth a higher pay, and he will be able to get hired because he's not totally useless at stuff.
So, you're saying if we give companies the right to make all those decisions; that
-they could set wages as low as they wanted, -could demand whatever hours they pleased -they don't need to pay overtime, (if such a thing exists) -they don't need to give any sick days/benefits -whatever safety standards or lack thereof they wanted -right to hire/fire people for whatever reasons they wanted -etc etc
You're saying that if they could do all those things, without any rules or regulations, that they would arrive at policies which benefit the *worker*, not through any philosophical or moral means, but simply because it would naturally occur in the pursuit of profit? What?
Has something like that happened? Ever? In like, all of history?
This is more evidence of why it's hard to dispute that Obama is on a trajectory towards a Carter-like landslide defeat next year:
Democratic officials and President Obama’s advisers expect Weprin to lose the election to upstart Republican Bob Turner in the contest to fill the 9th District seat vacated by Democrat Anthony Weiner.
Obama won the district, which spans southern Brooklyn and Queens, by 11 percentage points in 2008. His approval rating there is now 33 percent.
On September 14 2011 08:17 Haemonculus wrote: So, you're saying if we give companies the right to make all those decisions; that
-they could set wages as low as they wanted, -could demand whatever hours they pleased -they don't need to pay overtime, (if such a thing exists) -they don't need to give any sick days/benefits -whatever safety standards or lack thereof they wanted -right to hire/fire people for whatever reasons they wanted -etc etc
You're saying that if they could do all those things, without any rules or regulations, that they would arrive at policies which benefit the *worker*, not through any philosophical or moral means, but simply because it would naturally occur in the pursuit of profit? What?
Has something like that happened? Ever? In like, all of history?
Well there's unions now. You have to separate the small business from the large business here.
a factory for example will have a union of laborers that give workers more bargaining power with the owner.
But what about a small business. My friend's dad owns a diner in the New York area, they have several employees, they live from paycheck to paycheck almost...
If he decided to go... ok I need to have more profit so I will pay my employees less, and they quit... the business will go down in smoke in just 2-3 days... a small business often times needs its workers way more than the workers need the business.
You're looking at everything from the point of view of the employee, like employer is the big enemy but you have to realize that they're the ones that have to provide employees with jobs.
and yes, we've had the industrial revolution where tons of people got hurt in factories and etc. but let's not forget that people willingly MOVED to the cities to get these jobs in factories, and of course no one is ever gonna start worrying about safety when something new like this happens until people actually start getting hurt... That's just the way the world works. In the end industrialization allowed for way cheaper goods for everyone, and the overall wealth of the nation rose, because as low paying as the factory jobs were, the goods were cheap enough that anyone could afford them.
People could actually afford buying clothes at a store whereas before that you would either have to make your own or pass everything on for generations...
Try watching the video.
and as for all the things that you mention such as hours, sick days, etc. they can all be negotiated in the contract. With a small business you negotiate your contract with the owner, and with a larger business either manager or a union negotiates the contract for you.
On September 14 2011 08:28 xDaunt wrote: This is more evidence of why it's hard to dispute that Obama is on a trajectory towards a Carter-like landslide defeat next year:
Democratic officials and President Obama’s advisers expect Weprin to lose the election to upstart Republican Bob Turner in the contest to fill the 9th District seat vacated by Democrat Anthony Weiner.
Obama won the district, which spans southern Brooklyn and Queens, by 11 percentage points in 2008. His approval rating there is now 33 percent.
The Nevada special election may be more of a troublesome indicator than the New York one, since it's pretty representative of the country as far as demographics and NV is considered in play in the electoral college.
Then again, I've also read that McCain's campaign abandoned NV in 2008 and Obama's margin of victory there may have been exaggerated by it.
On September 14 2011 08:17 Haemonculus wrote: So, you're saying if we give companies the right to make all those decisions; that
-they could set wages as low as they wanted, -could demand whatever hours they pleased -they don't need to pay overtime, (if such a thing exists) -they don't need to give any sick days/benefits -whatever safety standards or lack thereof they wanted -right to hire/fire people for whatever reasons they wanted -etc etc
You're saying that if they could do all those things, without any rules or regulations, that they would arrive at policies which benefit the *worker*, not through any philosophical or moral means, but simply because it would naturally occur in the pursuit of profit? What?
Has something like that happened? Ever? In like, all of history?
I think a better question than has it ever happened? is what was it like when it did happen? Before minimum wage and workers' rights? That's pretty well documented, the market was very free and it wasn't pretty. One can try to make the argument that it would be different these days but the burden would be on him to convince the rest of us, it shouldn't be the other way around.
I'm looking at things from the view of the worker because that's the majority of the workforce. There are more people on the lower rungs of the totem pole, and historically and to date they're the ones who get screwed. I'm sure your friend's dad is a swell guy, but Walmart doesn't practice quite as ethical hiring standards.
Yeah, the Patriot Act was a monumental win in the battle for freedom... Sigh
[quote]
Thank the housing bubble for that one, and how was Bush a bad president? Can you seriously ask that question with a straight face?
[quote]
Amazing to think that in some cases you actually have to spend money to dig yourself out of a hole - why is this so tough to comprehend?
Also since you seem to love the Rove kool-aid: "deficits don't matter" - Dick Cheney.
[quote]
It takes a real 'man' to go awol during your national guard tenure. It takes a real man to paint your opponent (a true war hero in John Kerry) as a liberal pussy as well. Probably 70% of the world was behind the U.S. after 9/11 - nobody had any problem with Afghanistan, Iraq was the issue. While you and your ilk sat there flag waving and fist pumping about some imaginary weapons of mass destruction (forget the fact that they even tried to tie in an Al-Qaeda link first) the rest of the world was face-palming.
[quote]
Yeah, thank god Bush figured away to get rid of that huge budget surplus.
[quote]
Oh Jesus, you think this is something new? This shit has been going on since Reagan (probably the worst president in US history) was in office. You can thank him for putting in the policies that slowly started to flush your country down the shitter.
[quote]
Get informed.
Reagan was one of the best presidents of the modern times economically. FDR and Carter were some of the worst.
Clinton's policies were a major cause in the housing bubble.
Bush did over-spend on military, and he tried to stop the bubble from bursting with bad monetary policy so he could get reelected, which made it bigger, but Clinton is the one who helped start it. He wasn't at all a great president economically.
and no, you don't need to spend money to get out of the hole. The hole is that we're spending too much money. Stimulus doesn't work at all even on a theoretical level, and Obama continues to push for more. and spending money on Obamacare isn't a way to get out of this hole ever.
you're the one who needs to get informed.
You're so wrong it's astounding.
Reaganomics were so full of shit it's not even funny. BTW, Reagan increased taxes when he was in office. Surprise!
The housing bubble? Yeah, that's a result of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act. Yes, Clinton did sign it, but it was also passed under a Republican congress. And again, we had a surplus under Clinton as a direct result of his policies. Don't make shit up. And yeah, to get out of a hole, you need to promote economic growth. Economic growth only occurs in times of increased demand for consumption. Increased demand for consumption only occurs when people have more disposable income. In other words, the only way to promote economic growth is to make sure people have more money to spend, which is what the stimulus bill did. And according to a number of institutions (including the Princeton Review), the stimulus was a great idea that wasn't big enough to work because it got cut down repeatedly due to demands from the Republicans in congress, because Obama wanted to compromise and work with them instead of telling them to go fuck themselves.
BTW, Obamacare? Yeah, another word made up by Republicans to make it sound like something really bad and dangerous. Surprise surprise, it's actually amazingly good for insurance companies, and it's not at all a liberal policy.
Get your shit together.
the second half of Reagan's presidency wasn't as good as his first I agree.
of course there was surplus during Clinton that was the bubble growing.
Stimulus doesn't fucking work, how can it. You're taking money from people and giving it back to them but less of it.
The economy doesn't grow from increased consumption... Consuming more than producing leads to debt... What people need to start doing is consuming less than we're producing, then export our excess, pay off our debt, then save real capital, and then invest that money so that we can produce more... There needs to be a recession because continuously giving people money to buy shit doesn't improve our economy, because buying shit doesn't increase the total number of shit to go around it simply redistributes it, and continues to send false signals to business that consumers can still afford more.
health care bill is longer to type than obama care, and it's terrible either way.
It's called the money multiplier. Person A is given $100 from the government. Government spending? $100. He then turns around and saves $20, but spends $80 of it. Person B gets that $80 now has $80 to spend. He saves 20% of it like person A, and now spends $64 of it. Person C gets $64 and saves 20%, spending the rest. $51.2 goes to person D who then spends some. End result? The government spent $100, net gain in production and consumption is MUCH HIGHER. This spending is also taxed, so the government gets some of it back.
The two reasons why the stimulus bill didn't work are as follows: One, the stimulus bill wasn't big enough, they underestimated people's tendency to save money rather than spend, and it needed to be larger. To be fair, Obama's original plan was much bigger, but it was cut down in size drastically in compromise with the Republicans. Secondly, a lot of the jobs it did create went overseas because nobody seems to be interested in making the companies doing business in America hire Americans. This is the biggest problem with our economy right now, all the money goes out of country, and unemployment is high because companies find cheaper labor elsewhere. We need to do something about THIS, but it's not high on anybodies agenda.
To be honest, I don't much like Obama either, but it's important to give credit where credit is due and not make stuff up.
Where does the government get this money? They're already in huge deficit. They either print the money in which case there's inflation, or they go further into debt which also weakens the dollar.
The weakened dollar loses people their purchasing power, so of course people spend less. Especially since they're already in debt.
The solution isn't to spend it's to save... the principle of global economics dictates that if you're consuming more than you're producing you're going to be falling into debt. Either literal debt, or it loses purchasing power of the currency with respect to other currencies. In the end you can't make something out of nothing, and the efficiency of this obviously sucks because whenever money goes through the government tons of it gets stuck.
By giving people money to spend we're not improving our economic fundamentals, our production or industry, and the artificially low interest rates aren't helping. There's an obvious arbitrage going on with the US dollar which makes it foolish to save currency (which is why commodities and precious metals have kept going up in price as they're a way to hedge inflation.) How can money be so cheap (low rates) when everyone is in debt, it doesn't make sense.
The spending doesn't create any more products or wealth it simply allows some people to keep jobs that provide americans with goods and services that the americans shouldn't be able to afford in the middle of a recession. The market needs to go through a contraction to pay off its debt, and the more we keep spending the harder the contraction will be to deal with when it comes.
Short term debt is unimportant, long term debt is. Think about the long run, not the short run. Yes, deficit spending while in debt increases your debt in the short run, but if it increases employment, it leads to a long term recovery. Unfortunately, it won't do that now, because all the jobs that get created still are going overseas, and nobody fucking wants to do anything about it. Nothing pisses me off more than watching big companies get tax breaks to create new jobs and then hire people outside the country because it's cheaper. Hilariously, if this were fixed, it'd be the biggest factor in helping the economy, but not a single candidate has it on their agenda at all. Go fucking figure. (Yes, I'm legitimately angry about this, and it's almost the only thing that has me actually pissed off rather than irritated).
You need real savings to create jobs. While interest rates are kept low savings will be minimum. all the money that gets saved will only be used to pay the interest on the current debt, which is basically just another form of spending. But if the government stops controlling the interest rates like they should, then all of a sudden this short term debt that you say is unimportant will become incredibly important.
and it doesn't lead to long term economy growth, because the money is still originally coming out of the private sector or out of the printing press. The government doesn't create any products (well technically it does like roads and some infrastructure, but it's not that significant on this scale.)
Money is meant to represent wealth which is the ownership of actual stuff. Whenever money is in the hands of the government it's already money that the government forced from the people/businesses, because it's the people that create the products. They are redistributing money amongst those that are most likely to spend it because yes it keeps more people in their jobs, but it also sends a false signal to the businesses. Businesses that are creating services that the american people shouldn't be able to afford SHOULD be contracting. That's why it's called a recession. The more stimulus there is the more people will be able to get the wrong type of jobs, so in the end when the government decides to stop borrowing money and debasing our currency, almost everyone will be in a non-essential job, and they will have to lose their jobs, and then even more people would suffer than if the recession would have been allowed to occur sooner. It's the standard boom and bust cycle.
What are you suggesting they do about companies hiring overseas? You can't stop the companies from hiring where they want to hire. If the american employee has lost his competitive advantage perhaps he's demanding too much of a compensation? minimum wage laws need to be abolished.
Also, right now, inflation isn't a bad thing at all, we're below our target inflation number. I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up as a negative. Also, a lot of people can't afford to wait during a contraction period for the economy to recover: people are losing their homes because they can't find a job due to high unemployment.
It IS a negative, the longer it continues the worse things are gonna get if recession is allowed to hit fully, and if it's not then we'll eventually hit hyper-inflation.
What do you think is gonna happen if China stops inflating their currency along with ours? all of a sudden all the cheap chinese shit we buy will be completely unaffordable because they have so much more exports to us than we have exports to them, that their currency should actually be worth way more than ours, sure they'll lose us as customers, but their quality of living would jump the hell up if they stopped buying our treasury, because their purchasing power would considerably.
Disband minimum wage laws? Are you serious? Do you know how low minimum wage already is in this country? Do you realize how poor the poor actually are? It's not like they can take another salary hit.
Why don't we abolish other so called entitlements then? How about repealing the Fair Labor Standards Act? I mean, kids need to work too, right? And we shouldn't have regulations about what we're allowed to pay them, cause that'd be socialism.
Minimum wage law destroys jobs. Let's be serious now. Businesses need to make a profit. They aren't gonna hire someone for 8 dollars an hour if that person isn't able to produce more than 8 dollars an hour worth of profit to the business... Its not like employers maliciously hate giving people jobs, no... they just don't want to lose money and go out of business.
Time and a half for working overtime? Wow, did Marx himself come up with that one? We can surely do without that.
The weekend? If they want a job they can learn to come in on Saturday and Sunday too.
Overtime pay is terrible for the workers. In fact right now employers don't want people to work overtime even when they can (see example above except for the person didn't get tired and is still needed on the job.)
You will get clocked out when your shift is done, because he'd rather have someone else do that job without having to pay you extra money.
Safety standards? Look I know the machine sometimes backfires and occasionally takes a thumb or two with it, but honestly it's all part of the risk. They'll get over it.
Some safety liabilities that get put on the employers by the government can be pretty stupid but in the end, it is in the employer's favor to maintain a safe environment for his workers, because once again having to hire new un-experienced employees will end up costing him more.
Please please please have a look at the numerous charts/graphs I posted probably more than once earlier in this thread. The wealth disparity in our nation is unforgivable. Our worker benefits pale in comparison to other civilized nations. And you seriously want to remove minimum wage laws all together? You seem to be advocating some crazy form of neo-feudalism.
I'm not advocating feudalism. The point is right now if your work isn't bringing in more than 8 dollars worth of profit an hour you won't get hired anyways, so if you're in a job chances are you are useful on your job and a pay-cut isn't as likely as you think it is, because you're pulling your weight.
a lot of minimum wage jobs are provided by small businesses... I like how you think that small business owners are some kind of sick freaks that are rolling in cash and are just licking their lips at the idea of cutting their workers' pay even more....
actually if you get rid of minimum wages a kid out of high school with like no skills instead of running up a huge debt going to college and coming out with a degree with which it's still incredibly hard to find a job nowadays can get a very low paying job doing something as simple as passing tools to a mechanic at a car service center, and learn actual valuable marketplace skills that are actually useful, and then he will be able to do a job that's actually worth a higher pay, and he will be able to get hired because he's not totally useless at stuff.
Basically what we have here is a difference of loyalty. I believe that the most valuable part of the economy is the people who work in it. If you believe this then all the logistics of the economy from corporations to finance and the jobs and services they create are only as valuable as their ability to provide a good quality of life to those involved. Now "good" is a subjective assessment which is under constant debate (as it should be) but it takes somebody very out of touch to believe a company that hires the desperate masses for well below a poverty rate isnt being abusive. There may be companies, small businesses especially, which could prosper in such an environment. But I put forward that not all businesses should exist, and if you can not generate enough profit to pay employees a wage which provides for their basic needs then your business model is not good enough to function in the market.
This leads me to the line of reasoning many conservative anti-regulation people have which is that "some>nothing and beggars cant be choosers". The idea that a person who makes 4 dollars an hour is better off than somebody unemployed soothes the conscious of those who favor this kind of system. The main problem with this is that those desperate people who are propped up ever so slightly by this approach become trapped by the debt burdens of their very existence. To me at least this is not only counterproductive (we should always hope to move people into a self sustaining state) but also cruel.
tl/dr: A sad reality of the world is that there will always be disadvantaged and disenfranchised individuals. How we treat them is a measure of our character. The market is ruthless and will treat them accordingly. Regulations and social welfare programs offer a little protection from this. It all comes down to what we are willing to sacrifice, people or things.
On September 14 2011 07:30 FakeLife wrote: There's no doubt that Obama is facing some pretty terrible favorability numbers, but I think the Republicans face some unique issues too. I'm having a lot of trouble finding a good, recent poll, but the Tea Party is resposible for a good chunk of Republican enthusiasm. I think the numbers could take a big nose-dive if the Republicans end up running someone like Mitt Romney, especially with a nice, long campaign cycle with tons of candidates hammering on each other. It's just hard to get behind moderate establishment candidates who have already failed, when you've had over a year to get sick of them.
Maybe... I could see it going either way. In my opinion, rage against Obama wins out. But we saw rage against Bush fail to give Kerry a victory in 2004, so who knows. Kerry also allowed himself to be attacked and branded by the opposition in a way that I don't think Romney/Perry would.
That said, Romney won't win the nomination. Like you've said, he's way too moderate and it's typically a party's most dedicated members that vote in the primaries. Besides that, he's Mormon. I'm not suggesting that most GOP voters hold religious prejudices, but there's a large enough percent that do that I can't see someone who isn't at least nominally Christian winning the primary. You can't punt on the entire evangelical vote and still win that party's nomination - not unless your opponent is somebody like Bachmann who pretty much only appeals to the evangelicals.
As soon as Bachmann drops out, most of her supporters will back Perry. He's in a much stronger position to secure the nomination than the polls suggest.
On September 14 2011 08:39 Haemonculus wrote: I'm looking at things from the view of the worker because that's the majority of the workforce. There are more people on the lower rungs of the totem pole, and historically and to date they're the ones who get screwed. I'm sure your friend's dad is a swell guy, but Walmart doesn't practice quite as ethical hiring standards.
and I bet walmart is the type of business to clock out its workers right on the dot to avoid over-time pay as well.
Walmart is a really crappy company to use as an example, because they provide the types of jobs that aren't going to last unfortunately.
Walmart sells things that are made outside the US. as the purchasing power of the dollar keeps falling less people will be able to shop even at walmart, because for other countries like China it will stop making sense to export their goods to us for our worthless dollars.
Walmart jobs are unfortunately exactly the type of jobs that the stimulus protects. They are service related jobs which help bring foreign products into the homes of americans. The prices at Walmart will eventually rise greatly, and people won't be able to afford them, and Walmart will fire the fuck out of everyone anyways, and unfortunately this is inevitable if you want the economy to ever recover. That's just the shit that we're in.
Yeah, the Patriot Act was a monumental win in the battle for freedom... Sigh
[quote]
Thank the housing bubble for that one, and how was Bush a bad president? Can you seriously ask that question with a straight face?
[quote]
Amazing to think that in some cases you actually have to spend money to dig yourself out of a hole - why is this so tough to comprehend?
Also since you seem to love the Rove kool-aid: "deficits don't matter" - Dick Cheney.
[quote]
It takes a real 'man' to go awol during your national guard tenure. It takes a real man to paint your opponent (a true war hero in John Kerry) as a liberal pussy as well. Probably 70% of the world was behind the U.S. after 9/11 - nobody had any problem with Afghanistan, Iraq was the issue. While you and your ilk sat there flag waving and fist pumping about some imaginary weapons of mass destruction (forget the fact that they even tried to tie in an Al-Qaeda link first) the rest of the world was face-palming.
[quote]
Yeah, thank god Bush figured away to get rid of that huge budget surplus.
[quote]
Oh Jesus, you think this is something new? This shit has been going on since Reagan (probably the worst president in US history) was in office. You can thank him for putting in the policies that slowly started to flush your country down the shitter.
[quote]
Get informed.
Reagan was one of the best presidents of the modern times economically. FDR and Carter were some of the worst.
Clinton's policies were a major cause in the housing bubble.
Bush did over-spend on military, and he tried to stop the bubble from bursting with bad monetary policy so he could get reelected, which made it bigger, but Clinton is the one who helped start it. He wasn't at all a great president economically.
and no, you don't need to spend money to get out of the hole. The hole is that we're spending too much money. Stimulus doesn't work at all even on a theoretical level, and Obama continues to push for more. and spending money on Obamacare isn't a way to get out of this hole ever.
you're the one who needs to get informed.
You're so wrong it's astounding.
Reaganomics were so full of shit it's not even funny. BTW, Reagan increased taxes when he was in office. Surprise!
The housing bubble? Yeah, that's a result of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act. Yes, Clinton did sign it, but it was also passed under a Republican congress. And again, we had a surplus under Clinton as a direct result of his policies. Don't make shit up. And yeah, to get out of a hole, you need to promote economic growth. Economic growth only occurs in times of increased demand for consumption. Increased demand for consumption only occurs when people have more disposable income. In other words, the only way to promote economic growth is to make sure people have more money to spend, which is what the stimulus bill did. And according to a number of institutions (including the Princeton Review), the stimulus was a great idea that wasn't big enough to work because it got cut down repeatedly due to demands from the Republicans in congress, because Obama wanted to compromise and work with them instead of telling them to go fuck themselves.
BTW, Obamacare? Yeah, another word made up by Republicans to make it sound like something really bad and dangerous. Surprise surprise, it's actually amazingly good for insurance companies, and it's not at all a liberal policy.
Get your shit together.
the second half of Reagan's presidency wasn't as good as his first I agree.
of course there was surplus during Clinton that was the bubble growing.
Stimulus doesn't fucking work, how can it. You're taking money from people and giving it back to them but less of it.
The economy doesn't grow from increased consumption... Consuming more than producing leads to debt... What people need to start doing is consuming less than we're producing, then export our excess, pay off our debt, then save real capital, and then invest that money so that we can produce more... There needs to be a recession because continuously giving people money to buy shit doesn't improve our economy, because buying shit doesn't increase the total number of shit to go around it simply redistributes it, and continues to send false signals to business that consumers can still afford more.
health care bill is longer to type than obama care, and it's terrible either way.
It's called the money multiplier. Person A is given $100 from the government. Government spending? $100. He then turns around and saves $20, but spends $80 of it. Person B gets that $80 now has $80 to spend. He saves 20% of it like person A, and now spends $64 of it. Person C gets $64 and saves 20%, spending the rest. $51.2 goes to person D who then spends some. End result? The government spent $100, net gain in production and consumption is MUCH HIGHER. This spending is also taxed, so the government gets some of it back.
The two reasons why the stimulus bill didn't work are as follows: One, the stimulus bill wasn't big enough, they underestimated people's tendency to save money rather than spend, and it needed to be larger. To be fair, Obama's original plan was much bigger, but it was cut down in size drastically in compromise with the Republicans. Secondly, a lot of the jobs it did create went overseas because nobody seems to be interested in making the companies doing business in America hire Americans. This is the biggest problem with our economy right now, all the money goes out of country, and unemployment is high because companies find cheaper labor elsewhere. We need to do something about THIS, but it's not high on anybodies agenda.
To be honest, I don't much like Obama either, but it's important to give credit where credit is due and not make stuff up.
Where does the government get this money? They're already in huge deficit. They either print the money in which case there's inflation, or they go further into debt which also weakens the dollar.
The weakened dollar loses people their purchasing power, so of course people spend less. Especially since they're already in debt.
The solution isn't to spend it's to save... the principle of global economics dictates that if you're consuming more than you're producing you're going to be falling into debt. Either literal debt, or it loses purchasing power of the currency with respect to other currencies. In the end you can't make something out of nothing, and the efficiency of this obviously sucks because whenever money goes through the government tons of it gets stuck.
By giving people money to spend we're not improving our economic fundamentals, our production or industry, and the artificially low interest rates aren't helping. There's an obvious arbitrage going on with the US dollar which makes it foolish to save currency (which is why commodities and precious metals have kept going up in price as they're a way to hedge inflation.) How can money be so cheap (low rates) when everyone is in debt, it doesn't make sense.
The spending doesn't create any more products or wealth it simply allows some people to keep jobs that provide americans with goods and services that the americans shouldn't be able to afford in the middle of a recession. The market needs to go through a contraction to pay off its debt, and the more we keep spending the harder the contraction will be to deal with when it comes.
Short term debt is unimportant, long term debt is. Think about the long run, not the short run. Yes, deficit spending while in debt increases your debt in the short run, but if it increases employment, it leads to a long term recovery. Unfortunately, it won't do that now, because all the jobs that get created still are going overseas, and nobody fucking wants to do anything about it. Nothing pisses me off more than watching big companies get tax breaks to create new jobs and then hire people outside the country because it's cheaper. Hilariously, if this were fixed, it'd be the biggest factor in helping the economy, but not a single candidate has it on their agenda at all. Go fucking figure. (Yes, I'm legitimately angry about this, and it's almost the only thing that has me actually pissed off rather than irritated).
You need real savings to create jobs. While interest rates are kept low savings will be minimum. all the money that gets saved will only be used to pay the interest on the current debt, which is basically just another form of spending. But if the government stops controlling the interest rates like they should, then all of a sudden this short term debt that you say is unimportant will become incredibly important.
and it doesn't lead to long term economy growth, because the money is still originally coming out of the private sector or out of the printing press. The government doesn't create any products (well technically it does like roads and some infrastructure, but it's not that significant on this scale.)
Money is meant to represent wealth which is the ownership of actual stuff. Whenever money is in the hands of the government it's already money that the government forced from the people/businesses, because it's the people that create the products. They are redistributing money amongst those that are most likely to spend it because yes it keeps more people in their jobs, but it also sends a false signal to the businesses. Businesses that are creating services that the american people shouldn't be able to afford SHOULD be contracting. That's why it's called a recession. The more stimulus there is the more people will be able to get the wrong type of jobs, so in the end when the government decides to stop borrowing money and debasing our currency, almost everyone will be in a non-essential job, and they will have to lose their jobs, and then even more people would suffer than if the recession would have been allowed to occur sooner. It's the standard boom and bust cycle.
What are you suggesting they do about companies hiring overseas? You can't stop the companies from hiring where they want to hire. If the american employee has lost his competitive advantage perhaps he's demanding too much of a compensation? minimum wage laws need to be abolished.
Also, right now, inflation isn't a bad thing at all, we're below our target inflation number. I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up as a negative. Also, a lot of people can't afford to wait during a contraction period for the economy to recover: people are losing their homes because they can't find a job due to high unemployment.
It IS a negative, the longer it continues the worse things are gonna get if recession is allowed to hit fully, and if it's not then we'll eventually hit hyper-inflation.
What do you think is gonna happen if China stops inflating their currency along with ours? all of a sudden all the cheap chinese shit we buy will be completely unaffordable because they have so much more exports to us than we have exports to them, that their currency should actually be worth way more than ours, sure they'll lose us as customers, but their quality of living would jump the hell up if they stopped buying our treasury, because their purchasing power would considerably.
Disband minimum wage laws? Are you serious? Do you know how low minimum wage already is in this country? Do you realize how poor the poor actually are? It's not like they can take another salary hit.
Why don't we abolish other so called entitlements then? How about repealing the Fair Labor Standards Act? I mean, kids need to work too, right? And we shouldn't have regulations about what we're allowed to pay them, cause that'd be socialism.
Minimum wage law destroys jobs. Let's be serious now. Businesses need to make a profit. They aren't gonna hire someone for 8 dollars an hour if that person isn't able to produce more than 8 dollars an hour worth of profit to the business... Its not like employers maliciously hate giving people jobs, no... they just don't want to lose money and go out of business.
Time and a half for working overtime? Wow, did Marx himself come up with that one? We can surely do without that.
The weekend? If they want a job they can learn to come in on Saturday and Sunday too.
Overtime pay is terrible for the workers. In fact right now employers don't want people to work overtime even when they can (see example above except for the person didn't get tired and is still needed on the job.)
You will get clocked out when your shift is done, because he'd rather have someone else do that job without having to pay you extra money.
Safety standards? Look I know the machine sometimes backfires and occasionally takes a thumb or two with it, but honestly it's all part of the risk. They'll get over it.
Some safety liabilities that get put on the employers by the government can be pretty stupid but in the end, it is in the employer's favor to maintain a safe environment for his workers, because once again having to hire new un-experienced employees will end up costing him more.
Please please please have a look at the numerous charts/graphs I posted probably more than once earlier in this thread. The wealth disparity in our nation is unforgivable. Our worker benefits pale in comparison to other civilized nations. And you seriously want to remove minimum wage laws all together? You seem to be advocating some crazy form of neo-feudalism.
I'm not advocating feudalism. The point is right now if your work isn't bringing in more than 8 dollars worth of profit an hour you won't get hired anyways, so if you're in a job chances are you are useful on your job and a pay-cut isn't as likely as you think it is, because you're pulling your weight.
a lot of minimum wage jobs are provided by small businesses... I like how you think that small business owners are some kind of sick freaks that are rolling in cash and are just licking their lips at the idea of cutting their workers' pay even more....
actually if you get rid of minimum wages a kid out of high school with like no skills instead of running up a huge debt going to college and coming out with a degree with which it's still incredibly hard to find a job nowadays can get a very low paying job doing something as simple as passing tools to a mechanic at a car service center, and learn actual valuable marketplace skills that are actually useful, and then he will be able to do a job that's actually worth a higher pay, and he will be able to get hired because he's not totally useless at stuff.
Frankly, you're wrong on many counts, and history has proven it multiple times.
As for what we could do to stop companies from outsourcing jobs, there are multiple things you could do. For one, you could give tax breaks to companies that hire U.S. employees and charge companies a tax for hiring non-Americans, we're basically the largest consumer market on the planet, companies aren't going to leave America because they don't get to hire overseas. *Bam* problem solved. Companies want to do business in America and don't want to hire U.S. citizens? Then we make it significantly less profitable for them to do so. I guarantee you'll get enough competitive companies to step in and fill in the gaps for the few companies that leave, and since you've offered a legitimate benefit for hiring U.S. citizens (tax breaks), it's only to their benefit to do so. The only reason we don't do it is because lobbyists for big business don't want it happening, they'd rather have cheap labor outside the country.
And no, eliminating minimum wages would be possibly the dumbest thing I've heard on the internet in a long time. Do you want to increase the wealth gap beyond the already ridiculous amount it is? I hear having 50% of the country controlling 2% of the wealth isn't good enough, we need to lower it by making the poor poorer! They don't deserve 2% anyway, they don't work hard and they don't deserve money.
On September 14 2011 08:39 Haemonculus wrote: I'm looking at things from the view of the worker because that's the majority of the workforce. There are more people on the lower rungs of the totem pole, and historically and to date they're the ones who get screwed. I'm sure your friend's dad is a swell guy, but Walmart doesn't practice quite as ethical hiring standards.
and I bet walmart is the type of business to clock out its workers right on the dot to avoid over-time pay as well.
Walmart is a really crappy company to use as an example, because they provide the types of jobs that aren't going to last unfortunately.
Walmart sells things that are made outside the US. as the purchasing power of the dollar keeps falling less people will be able to shop even at walmart, because for other countries like China it will stop making sense to export their goods to us for our worthless dollars.
Walmart jobs are unfortunately exactly the type of jobs that the stimulus protects. They are service related jobs which help bring foreign products into the homes of americans. The prices at Walmart will eventually rise greatly, and people won't be able to afford them, and Walmart will fire the fuck out of everyone anyways, and unfortunately this is inevitable if you want the economy to ever recover. That's just the shit that we're in.
That's not true either, China is deliberately following a policy of keeping their currency worthless compared to ours and lowering theirs in response to ours, because they don't want to consume. Even if ours dropped to the pits they'd still be exporting to us, because the last thing their leaders want right now is for their citizens to spend money on comforts. They're basically stocking up on as many investments and as much money as they can while increasing the size of their production until they eventually hit the maximum point, then they'll stabilize and start spending.
Exchange rates aren't actually that important generally speaking, until the difference becomes extraordinary.
Reagan was one of the best presidents of the modern times economically. FDR and Carter were some of the worst.
Clinton's policies were a major cause in the housing bubble.
Bush did over-spend on military, and he tried to stop the bubble from bursting with bad monetary policy so he could get reelected, which made it bigger, but Clinton is the one who helped start it. He wasn't at all a great president economically.
and no, you don't need to spend money to get out of the hole. The hole is that we're spending too much money. Stimulus doesn't work at all even on a theoretical level, and Obama continues to push for more. and spending money on Obamacare isn't a way to get out of this hole ever.
you're the one who needs to get informed.
You're so wrong it's astounding.
Reaganomics were so full of shit it's not even funny. BTW, Reagan increased taxes when he was in office. Surprise!
The housing bubble? Yeah, that's a result of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act. Yes, Clinton did sign it, but it was also passed under a Republican congress. And again, we had a surplus under Clinton as a direct result of his policies. Don't make shit up. And yeah, to get out of a hole, you need to promote economic growth. Economic growth only occurs in times of increased demand for consumption. Increased demand for consumption only occurs when people have more disposable income. In other words, the only way to promote economic growth is to make sure people have more money to spend, which is what the stimulus bill did. And according to a number of institutions (including the Princeton Review), the stimulus was a great idea that wasn't big enough to work because it got cut down repeatedly due to demands from the Republicans in congress, because Obama wanted to compromise and work with them instead of telling them to go fuck themselves.
BTW, Obamacare? Yeah, another word made up by Republicans to make it sound like something really bad and dangerous. Surprise surprise, it's actually amazingly good for insurance companies, and it's not at all a liberal policy.
Get your shit together.
the second half of Reagan's presidency wasn't as good as his first I agree.
of course there was surplus during Clinton that was the bubble growing.
Stimulus doesn't fucking work, how can it. You're taking money from people and giving it back to them but less of it.
The economy doesn't grow from increased consumption... Consuming more than producing leads to debt... What people need to start doing is consuming less than we're producing, then export our excess, pay off our debt, then save real capital, and then invest that money so that we can produce more... There needs to be a recession because continuously giving people money to buy shit doesn't improve our economy, because buying shit doesn't increase the total number of shit to go around it simply redistributes it, and continues to send false signals to business that consumers can still afford more.
health care bill is longer to type than obama care, and it's terrible either way.
It's called the money multiplier. Person A is given $100 from the government. Government spending? $100. He then turns around and saves $20, but spends $80 of it. Person B gets that $80 now has $80 to spend. He saves 20% of it like person A, and now spends $64 of it. Person C gets $64 and saves 20%, spending the rest. $51.2 goes to person D who then spends some. End result? The government spent $100, net gain in production and consumption is MUCH HIGHER. This spending is also taxed, so the government gets some of it back.
The two reasons why the stimulus bill didn't work are as follows: One, the stimulus bill wasn't big enough, they underestimated people's tendency to save money rather than spend, and it needed to be larger. To be fair, Obama's original plan was much bigger, but it was cut down in size drastically in compromise with the Republicans. Secondly, a lot of the jobs it did create went overseas because nobody seems to be interested in making the companies doing business in America hire Americans. This is the biggest problem with our economy right now, all the money goes out of country, and unemployment is high because companies find cheaper labor elsewhere. We need to do something about THIS, but it's not high on anybodies agenda.
To be honest, I don't much like Obama either, but it's important to give credit where credit is due and not make stuff up.
Where does the government get this money? They're already in huge deficit. They either print the money in which case there's inflation, or they go further into debt which also weakens the dollar.
The weakened dollar loses people their purchasing power, so of course people spend less. Especially since they're already in debt.
The solution isn't to spend it's to save... the principle of global economics dictates that if you're consuming more than you're producing you're going to be falling into debt. Either literal debt, or it loses purchasing power of the currency with respect to other currencies. In the end you can't make something out of nothing, and the efficiency of this obviously sucks because whenever money goes through the government tons of it gets stuck.
By giving people money to spend we're not improving our economic fundamentals, our production or industry, and the artificially low interest rates aren't helping. There's an obvious arbitrage going on with the US dollar which makes it foolish to save currency (which is why commodities and precious metals have kept going up in price as they're a way to hedge inflation.) How can money be so cheap (low rates) when everyone is in debt, it doesn't make sense.
The spending doesn't create any more products or wealth it simply allows some people to keep jobs that provide americans with goods and services that the americans shouldn't be able to afford in the middle of a recession. The market needs to go through a contraction to pay off its debt, and the more we keep spending the harder the contraction will be to deal with when it comes.
Short term debt is unimportant, long term debt is. Think about the long run, not the short run. Yes, deficit spending while in debt increases your debt in the short run, but if it increases employment, it leads to a long term recovery. Unfortunately, it won't do that now, because all the jobs that get created still are going overseas, and nobody fucking wants to do anything about it. Nothing pisses me off more than watching big companies get tax breaks to create new jobs and then hire people outside the country because it's cheaper. Hilariously, if this were fixed, it'd be the biggest factor in helping the economy, but not a single candidate has it on their agenda at all. Go fucking figure. (Yes, I'm legitimately angry about this, and it's almost the only thing that has me actually pissed off rather than irritated).
You need real savings to create jobs. While interest rates are kept low savings will be minimum. all the money that gets saved will only be used to pay the interest on the current debt, which is basically just another form of spending. But if the government stops controlling the interest rates like they should, then all of a sudden this short term debt that you say is unimportant will become incredibly important.
and it doesn't lead to long term economy growth, because the money is still originally coming out of the private sector or out of the printing press. The government doesn't create any products (well technically it does like roads and some infrastructure, but it's not that significant on this scale.)
Money is meant to represent wealth which is the ownership of actual stuff. Whenever money is in the hands of the government it's already money that the government forced from the people/businesses, because it's the people that create the products. They are redistributing money amongst those that are most likely to spend it because yes it keeps more people in their jobs, but it also sends a false signal to the businesses. Businesses that are creating services that the american people shouldn't be able to afford SHOULD be contracting. That's why it's called a recession. The more stimulus there is the more people will be able to get the wrong type of jobs, so in the end when the government decides to stop borrowing money and debasing our currency, almost everyone will be in a non-essential job, and they will have to lose their jobs, and then even more people would suffer than if the recession would have been allowed to occur sooner. It's the standard boom and bust cycle.
What are you suggesting they do about companies hiring overseas? You can't stop the companies from hiring where they want to hire. If the american employee has lost his competitive advantage perhaps he's demanding too much of a compensation? minimum wage laws need to be abolished.
Also, right now, inflation isn't a bad thing at all, we're below our target inflation number. I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up as a negative. Also, a lot of people can't afford to wait during a contraction period for the economy to recover: people are losing their homes because they can't find a job due to high unemployment.
It IS a negative, the longer it continues the worse things are gonna get if recession is allowed to hit fully, and if it's not then we'll eventually hit hyper-inflation.
What do you think is gonna happen if China stops inflating their currency along with ours? all of a sudden all the cheap chinese shit we buy will be completely unaffordable because they have so much more exports to us than we have exports to them, that their currency should actually be worth way more than ours, sure they'll lose us as customers, but their quality of living would jump the hell up if they stopped buying our treasury, because their purchasing power would considerably.
Disband minimum wage laws? Are you serious? Do you know how low minimum wage already is in this country? Do you realize how poor the poor actually are? It's not like they can take another salary hit.
Why don't we abolish other so called entitlements then? How about repealing the Fair Labor Standards Act? I mean, kids need to work too, right? And we shouldn't have regulations about what we're allowed to pay them, cause that'd be socialism.
Minimum wage law destroys jobs. Let's be serious now. Businesses need to make a profit. They aren't gonna hire someone for 8 dollars an hour if that person isn't able to produce more than 8 dollars an hour worth of profit to the business... Its not like employers maliciously hate giving people jobs, no... they just don't want to lose money and go out of business.
8 hour work days? Pshhhh, profits will be higher if we make them work 10 or 12 hours a day.
No they won't be. people will get tired and make mistakes.
Time and a half for working overtime? Wow, did Marx himself come up with that one? We can surely do without that.
The weekend? If they want a job they can learn to come in on Saturday and Sunday too.
Overtime pay is terrible for the workers. In fact right now employers don't want people to work overtime even when they can (see example above except for the person didn't get tired and is still needed on the job.)
You will get clocked out when your shift is done, because he'd rather have someone else do that job without having to pay you extra money.
Sick days? Whatever, just replace sick workers. They're risking their jobs having the audacity to want a few days off to recover.
Terrible idea. Workers need training to be efficient.
Safety standards? Look I know the machine sometimes backfires and occasionally takes a thumb or two with it, but honestly it's all part of the risk. They'll get over it.
Some safety liabilities that get put on the employers by the government can be pretty stupid but in the end, it is in the employer's favor to maintain a safe environment for his workers, because once again having to hire new un-experienced employees will end up costing him more.
Please please please have a look at the numerous charts/graphs I posted probably more than once earlier in this thread. The wealth disparity in our nation is unforgivable. Our worker benefits pale in comparison to other civilized nations. And you seriously want to remove minimum wage laws all together? You seem to be advocating some crazy form of neo-feudalism.
I'm not advocating feudalism. The point is right now if your work isn't bringing in more than 8 dollars worth of profit an hour you won't get hired anyways, so if you're in a job chances are you are useful on your job and a pay-cut isn't as likely as you think it is, because you're pulling your weight.
a lot of minimum wage jobs are provided by small businesses... I like how you think that small business owners are some kind of sick freaks that are rolling in cash and are just licking their lips at the idea of cutting their workers' pay even more....
actually if you get rid of minimum wages a kid out of high school with like no skills instead of running up a huge debt going to college and coming out with a degree with which it's still incredibly hard to find a job nowadays can get a very low paying job doing something as simple as passing tools to a mechanic at a car service center, and learn actual valuable marketplace skills that are actually useful, and then he will be able to do a job that's actually worth a higher pay, and he will be able to get hired because he's not totally useless at stuff.
Basically what we have here is a difference of loyalty. I believe that the most valuable part of the economy is the people who work in it. If you believe this then all the logistics of the economy from corporations to finance and the jobs and services they create are only as valuable as their ability to provide a good quality of life to those involved. Now "good" is a subjective assessment which is under constant debate (as it should be) but it takes somebody very out of touch to believe a company that hires the desperate masses for well below a poverty rate isnt being abusive. There may be companies, small businesses especially, which could prosper in such an environment. But I put forward that not all businesses should exist, and if you can not generate enough profit to pay employees a wage which provides for their basic needs then your business model is not good enough to function in the market.
Well you're wrong. It's better to have a job than not have a job. In the end people will jump over the under -minimum wage jobs too the moment that minimum wages get repealed because like I said it's better to have a job than not have a job, and it's really hard for a business to be profitable at all, especially if it's new in these times, you have incredibly high standards for a business.
No one is making people work for under minimum wage jobs... the thing is that if these jobs were legal people would gladly take them.
This leads me to the line of reasoning many conservative anti-regulation people have which is that "some>nothing and beggars cant be choosers". The idea that a person who makes 4 dollars an hour is better off than somebody unemployed soothes the conscious of those who favor this kind of system. The main problem with this is that those desperate people who are propped up ever so slightly by this approach become trapped by the debt burdens of their very existence. To me at least this is not only counterproductive (we should always hope to move people into a self sustaining state) but also cruel.
You didn't make any sense to me here. We don't have the economic fundamentals to give jobs to all the people that we have that want to work at the current minimum wages do you understand?
The least the government can do is stop running up the inflation so that people don't also lose their purchasing power from the money they can get, and if they also remove the minimum wages then more people will have at least some jobs.
tl/dr: A sad reality of the world is that there will always be disadvantaged and disenfranchised individuals. How we treat them is a measure of our character. The market is ruthless and will treat them accordingly. Regulations and social welfare programs offer a little protection from this. It all comes down to what we are willing to sacrifice, people or things.
Except the government forces businesses to sacrifice a ton, even when they're unwilling... and what's the result? Tons of our money trapped in the bureaucratic nets of the government, and a sickishly high unemployment rate...
On September 14 2011 00:05 Kiarip wrote: keynesianism is a is fairy tale there's not point in me arguing with someone who believes in fairy tales.
You really know how to add to political and economic discourse.
Economics is not a perfect science, obviously, or there wouldn't be people still looking to discover new things. There are hard problems that existing models are unable to completely explain and the very nature of what is "obvious" or "rational" (rational expectations) in economics breaks down when different people have different internal models of the world.
The biggest problem with "people like you" is that just because someone says they "believe in keynes", you bucket it into the stupidest possible interpretation of Keynes possible. Many supply side economists think (from what I can gather) they Keynesians just want the government to spend infinite money to boost living standards for everyone (or something to that effect).... but Keynesians in America are still Capitalists (in the sense that anyone that doesn't want to abolish social security is a capitalist if they believe in all the other capitalist-type things), still believe that free markets are generally more efficient than the public sector, still believe that unsustainable deficits are bad and require a change in policy, etc, etc, etc
The way you argue economics/politics would be like a Keynesian saying that all supply side economists want 0 tax rates for everyone. Just a stupid exaggeration to try and make the other person look stupid without really coming to any real solution.
Reagan was one of the best presidents of the modern times economically. FDR and Carter were some of the worst.
Clinton's policies were a major cause in the housing bubble.
Bush did over-spend on military, and he tried to stop the bubble from bursting with bad monetary policy so he could get reelected, which made it bigger, but Clinton is the one who helped start it. He wasn't at all a great president economically.
and no, you don't need to spend money to get out of the hole. The hole is that we're spending too much money. Stimulus doesn't work at all even on a theoretical level, and Obama continues to push for more. and spending money on Obamacare isn't a way to get out of this hole ever.
you're the one who needs to get informed.
You're so wrong it's astounding.
Reaganomics were so full of shit it's not even funny. BTW, Reagan increased taxes when he was in office. Surprise!
The housing bubble? Yeah, that's a result of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act. Yes, Clinton did sign it, but it was also passed under a Republican congress. And again, we had a surplus under Clinton as a direct result of his policies. Don't make shit up. And yeah, to get out of a hole, you need to promote economic growth. Economic growth only occurs in times of increased demand for consumption. Increased demand for consumption only occurs when people have more disposable income. In other words, the only way to promote economic growth is to make sure people have more money to spend, which is what the stimulus bill did. And according to a number of institutions (including the Princeton Review), the stimulus was a great idea that wasn't big enough to work because it got cut down repeatedly due to demands from the Republicans in congress, because Obama wanted to compromise and work with them instead of telling them to go fuck themselves.
BTW, Obamacare? Yeah, another word made up by Republicans to make it sound like something really bad and dangerous. Surprise surprise, it's actually amazingly good for insurance companies, and it's not at all a liberal policy.
Get your shit together.
the second half of Reagan's presidency wasn't as good as his first I agree.
of course there was surplus during Clinton that was the bubble growing.
Stimulus doesn't fucking work, how can it. You're taking money from people and giving it back to them but less of it.
The economy doesn't grow from increased consumption... Consuming more than producing leads to debt... What people need to start doing is consuming less than we're producing, then export our excess, pay off our debt, then save real capital, and then invest that money so that we can produce more... There needs to be a recession because continuously giving people money to buy shit doesn't improve our economy, because buying shit doesn't increase the total number of shit to go around it simply redistributes it, and continues to send false signals to business that consumers can still afford more.
health care bill is longer to type than obama care, and it's terrible either way.
It's called the money multiplier. Person A is given $100 from the government. Government spending? $100. He then turns around and saves $20, but spends $80 of it. Person B gets that $80 now has $80 to spend. He saves 20% of it like person A, and now spends $64 of it. Person C gets $64 and saves 20%, spending the rest. $51.2 goes to person D who then spends some. End result? The government spent $100, net gain in production and consumption is MUCH HIGHER. This spending is also taxed, so the government gets some of it back.
The two reasons why the stimulus bill didn't work are as follows: One, the stimulus bill wasn't big enough, they underestimated people's tendency to save money rather than spend, and it needed to be larger. To be fair, Obama's original plan was much bigger, but it was cut down in size drastically in compromise with the Republicans. Secondly, a lot of the jobs it did create went overseas because nobody seems to be interested in making the companies doing business in America hire Americans. This is the biggest problem with our economy right now, all the money goes out of country, and unemployment is high because companies find cheaper labor elsewhere. We need to do something about THIS, but it's not high on anybodies agenda.
To be honest, I don't much like Obama either, but it's important to give credit where credit is due and not make stuff up.
Where does the government get this money? They're already in huge deficit. They either print the money in which case there's inflation, or they go further into debt which also weakens the dollar.
The weakened dollar loses people their purchasing power, so of course people spend less. Especially since they're already in debt.
The solution isn't to spend it's to save... the principle of global economics dictates that if you're consuming more than you're producing you're going to be falling into debt. Either literal debt, or it loses purchasing power of the currency with respect to other currencies. In the end you can't make something out of nothing, and the efficiency of this obviously sucks because whenever money goes through the government tons of it gets stuck.
By giving people money to spend we're not improving our economic fundamentals, our production or industry, and the artificially low interest rates aren't helping. There's an obvious arbitrage going on with the US dollar which makes it foolish to save currency (which is why commodities and precious metals have kept going up in price as they're a way to hedge inflation.) How can money be so cheap (low rates) when everyone is in debt, it doesn't make sense.
The spending doesn't create any more products or wealth it simply allows some people to keep jobs that provide americans with goods and services that the americans shouldn't be able to afford in the middle of a recession. The market needs to go through a contraction to pay off its debt, and the more we keep spending the harder the contraction will be to deal with when it comes.
Short term debt is unimportant, long term debt is. Think about the long run, not the short run. Yes, deficit spending while in debt increases your debt in the short run, but if it increases employment, it leads to a long term recovery. Unfortunately, it won't do that now, because all the jobs that get created still are going overseas, and nobody fucking wants to do anything about it. Nothing pisses me off more than watching big companies get tax breaks to create new jobs and then hire people outside the country because it's cheaper. Hilariously, if this were fixed, it'd be the biggest factor in helping the economy, but not a single candidate has it on their agenda at all. Go fucking figure. (Yes, I'm legitimately angry about this, and it's almost the only thing that has me actually pissed off rather than irritated).
You need real savings to create jobs. While interest rates are kept low savings will be minimum. all the money that gets saved will only be used to pay the interest on the current debt, which is basically just another form of spending. But if the government stops controlling the interest rates like they should, then all of a sudden this short term debt that you say is unimportant will become incredibly important.
and it doesn't lead to long term economy growth, because the money is still originally coming out of the private sector or out of the printing press. The government doesn't create any products (well technically it does like roads and some infrastructure, but it's not that significant on this scale.)
Money is meant to represent wealth which is the ownership of actual stuff. Whenever money is in the hands of the government it's already money that the government forced from the people/businesses, because it's the people that create the products. They are redistributing money amongst those that are most likely to spend it because yes it keeps more people in their jobs, but it also sends a false signal to the businesses. Businesses that are creating services that the american people shouldn't be able to afford SHOULD be contracting. That's why it's called a recession. The more stimulus there is the more people will be able to get the wrong type of jobs, so in the end when the government decides to stop borrowing money and debasing our currency, almost everyone will be in a non-essential job, and they will have to lose their jobs, and then even more people would suffer than if the recession would have been allowed to occur sooner. It's the standard boom and bust cycle.
What are you suggesting they do about companies hiring overseas? You can't stop the companies from hiring where they want to hire. If the american employee has lost his competitive advantage perhaps he's demanding too much of a compensation? minimum wage laws need to be abolished.
Also, right now, inflation isn't a bad thing at all, we're below our target inflation number. I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up as a negative. Also, a lot of people can't afford to wait during a contraction period for the economy to recover: people are losing their homes because they can't find a job due to high unemployment.
It IS a negative, the longer it continues the worse things are gonna get if recession is allowed to hit fully, and if it's not then we'll eventually hit hyper-inflation.
What do you think is gonna happen if China stops inflating their currency along with ours? all of a sudden all the cheap chinese shit we buy will be completely unaffordable because they have so much more exports to us than we have exports to them, that their currency should actually be worth way more than ours, sure they'll lose us as customers, but their quality of living would jump the hell up if they stopped buying our treasury, because their purchasing power would considerably.
Disband minimum wage laws? Are you serious? Do you know how low minimum wage already is in this country? Do you realize how poor the poor actually are? It's not like they can take another salary hit.
Why don't we abolish other so called entitlements then? How about repealing the Fair Labor Standards Act? I mean, kids need to work too, right? And we shouldn't have regulations about what we're allowed to pay them, cause that'd be socialism.
Minimum wage law destroys jobs. Let's be serious now. Businesses need to make a profit. They aren't gonna hire someone for 8 dollars an hour if that person isn't able to produce more than 8 dollars an hour worth of profit to the business... Its not like employers maliciously hate giving people jobs, no... they just don't want to lose money and go out of business.
8 hour work days? Pshhhh, profits will be higher if we make them work 10 or 12 hours a day.
No they won't be. people will get tired and make mistakes.
Time and a half for working overtime? Wow, did Marx himself come up with that one? We can surely do without that.
The weekend? If they want a job they can learn to come in on Saturday and Sunday too.
Overtime pay is terrible for the workers. In fact right now employers don't want people to work overtime even when they can (see example above except for the person didn't get tired and is still needed on the job.)
You will get clocked out when your shift is done, because he'd rather have someone else do that job without having to pay you extra money.
Sick days? Whatever, just replace sick workers. They're risking their jobs having the audacity to want a few days off to recover.
Terrible idea. Workers need training to be efficient.
Safety standards? Look I know the machine sometimes backfires and occasionally takes a thumb or two with it, but honestly it's all part of the risk. They'll get over it.
Some safety liabilities that get put on the employers by the government can be pretty stupid but in the end, it is in the employer's favor to maintain a safe environment for his workers, because once again having to hire new un-experienced employees will end up costing him more.
Please please please have a look at the numerous charts/graphs I posted probably more than once earlier in this thread. The wealth disparity in our nation is unforgivable. Our worker benefits pale in comparison to other civilized nations. And you seriously want to remove minimum wage laws all together? You seem to be advocating some crazy form of neo-feudalism.
I'm not advocating feudalism. The point is right now if your work isn't bringing in more than 8 dollars worth of profit an hour you won't get hired anyways, so if you're in a job chances are you are useful on your job and a pay-cut isn't as likely as you think it is, because you're pulling your weight.
a lot of minimum wage jobs are provided by small businesses... I like how you think that small business owners are some kind of sick freaks that are rolling in cash and are just licking their lips at the idea of cutting their workers' pay even more....
actually if you get rid of minimum wages a kid out of high school with like no skills instead of running up a huge debt going to college and coming out with a degree with which it's still incredibly hard to find a job nowadays can get a very low paying job doing something as simple as passing tools to a mechanic at a car service center, and learn actual valuable marketplace skills that are actually useful, and then he will be able to do a job that's actually worth a higher pay, and he will be able to get hired because he's not totally useless at stuff.
Frankly, you're wrong on many counts, and history has proven it multiple times.
As for what we could do to stop companies from outsourcing jobs, there are multiple things you could do. For one, you could give tax breaks to companies that hire U.S. employees and charge companies a tax for hiring non-Americans, We're basically the largest consumer market on the planet, companies aren't going to leave America because they don't get to hire overseas. *Bam* problem solved.
And no, eliminating minimum wages would be possibly the dumbest thing I've heard on the internet in a long time. Do you want to increase the wealth gap beyond the already ridiculous amount it is? I hear having 50% of the country controlling 2% of the wealth isn't good enough, we need to lower it by making the poor poorer! They don't deserve 2% anyway, they don't work hard and they don't deserve money.
WOW. That's exactly the point... we're the largest consuming market in the world... but no one wants to pay for people to produce here because it's too expensive because we consume so much... so we have the government constantly stimulate our spending with low interest rates, and stimuli, and this keeps devaluing our currency... Until people realize that all this shit that they send here... we will never be able to repay them for it with anything other than paper, because our own private sector isn't capable of competing anymore, so then they'll stop sending us stuff, and there will be absolutely NOTHING left in this country.
edit:
also, if companies are taxed heavily for hiring outside the US they'll move away and just export their stuff here...
You want to isolate ourselves from all the imports with high taxes? Well okay, all outside currencies will go up, as all of a sudden they'll have an abundance of stuff they're not selling to us, and we'll be stuck with the wreckage that is our post-stimulus economy. By the way all the bullshit service sector jobs that are only there to get the foreign products into american homes are also all gonna go poof. at least then it will be blindingly obvious that our economic fundamentals are shit, and we should have been promoting saving by the private sector to rebuild them in the future rather than trying to spend our way out of this situation.
You really know how to add to political and economic discourse.
Economics is not a perfect science, obviously, or there wouldn't be people still looking to discover new things. There are hard problems that existing models are unable to completely explain and the very nature of what is "obvious" or "rational" (rational expectations) in economics breaks down when different people have different internal models of the world.
The biggest problem with "people like you" is that just because someone says they "believe in keynes", you bucket it into the stupidest possible interpretation of Keynes possible. Many supply side economists think (from what I can gather) they Keynesians just want the government to spend infinite money to boost living standards for everyone (or something to that effect).... but Keynesians in America are still Capitalists (in the sense that anyone that doesn't want to abolish social security is a capitalist if they believe in all the other capitalist-type things), still believe that free markets are generally more efficient than the public sector, still believe that unsustainable deficits are bad and require a change in policy, etc, etc, etc
The way you argue economics/politics would be like a Keynesian saying that all supply side economists want 0 tax rates for everyone. Just a stupid exaggeration to try and make the other person look stupid without really coming to any real solution.
of course all supply side economists want 0 tax rates for everyone, but that's not possible. Neither is the spending of infinity money on consumption, but what it comes down to is that it's better to minimize the size of the government and therefore taxes and government spending.
obviously neither absolutes work, but working towards one leads to prosperity, and working towards the other doesn't.
That's not true either, China is deliberately following a policy of keeping their currency worthless compared to ours and lowering theirs in response to ours, because they don't want to consume. Even if ours dropped to the pits they'd still be exporting to us, because the last thing their leaders want right now is for their citizens to spend money on comforts. They're basically stocking up on as many investments and as much money as they can while increasing the size of their production until they eventually hit the maximum point, then they'll stabilize and start spending.
Exchange rates aren't actually that important generally speaking, until the difference becomes extraordinary.
and when they start spending then our money will be worthless in comparison and since all the producing jobs have moved overseas we will have nothing... result of? continuous spending, as opposed of saving to rebuild the economy.
EDIT:
to Whitewing:
The employees are massively over protected... you act like businesses can exist without workers. There's a reason why people aren't hiring, if it was profitable to hire they would... see the video I posted please.
If employees weren't over-protected, why wouldn't everyone hire a bunch of them and bully them around? It doesn't work like that. am I saying that employers should be able to bully their employees? no, but since there's unemployment so high it's obvious that they're protected so much that it's not worth hiring them anymore.
Really hoping Ron Paul can pull out the nomination, I know well be fighting hard for Paul. He is the only legitimate candidate who has a voting record against the big govt spending. He is also the only candidate who is serious about ending the wars. RON PAUL 2012
EPT
