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Err... so these far right parties have some degree of success in Europe. A couple seats here, a 1/5 of the parliament there...
Oh hey, that's significantly less than, gee, I don't know, a majority in one chamber of Congress and a legitimate chance at a majority in the other and a shot at taking the executive branch as well.
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You could argue it violates our national sovereignty. We've never had or needed international observers in the past. International election monitors are for countries that don't have a long-standing democratic tradition.
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On October 26 2012 01:52 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2012 22:18 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 25 2012 20:50 v3chr0 wrote:On October 25 2012 17:52 KwarK wrote:On October 25 2012 17:46 BluePanther wrote:On October 25 2012 17:02 heishe wrote:
As an outside I'm completely baffled how people can even for one second consider voting for Romney.
He has now shown several times how competely incompetent he would be to run a country. The methods he proposed to cut taxes were shown to be mathematically impossible, he has shown complete incompetence in terms of understanding of the military, and worst of all he's a blatant liar. He lies and is constantly contradicting himself, flip flopping on his own views on a subject constantly, sometimes in really short timespans of less than an hour.
Of course, that he's the follower of a completely nutjob religion and seems like a rich sleezy douche in general doesn't help at all. Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts and did quite well for himself. He's actually had more experience running a state than Obama, actually. Maybe more than Obama had four years ago. Obama has had more experience at running a nation now than Romney, about four years more. He has nearly 4 years of experience now, yes. Does that really mean anything when he hasn't done all too much but make things worse? His record is what counts, not what he says or how many years he has done less than adequate at his job. I see it the opposite, these 4 years have proven what I already knew and expected; he is not qualified to run this country, nor does he seem to even understand how it works. To him, it's all class warfare, and blame. Regardless of his situation, he the leader of this nation and it his responsibility to get things moving forward, he couldn't even do that with full control for 2 years. Social and foreign issues are not of utmost importance, this is about our saving our economy before everything recedes into chaos. How has Obama made things worse? Things are getting better, employment is increasing, unemployment is decreasing. You can argue that things aren't getting better fast enough, but things are not worse. That's simply wrong. The economy is recovering. If you want to see things getting worse go look at the UK, where their economy was slowly recovering under Brown, and then contracted a couple a quarters into Cameron's term because he suddenly pivoted to austerity. Now the UK is stuck in a double-dip recession and it's not getting better. Obama prevented the economy from crashing because of the stimulus. However, the problem is that there wasn't enough stimulus and recoveries from financial crises are usually slow: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/sorry-u-s-recoveries-really-aren-t-different.htmlNote that this article isn't some after the fact justification. Reinhart and Rogoff wrote a book in early 2008, chronicling the history of financial crises and showing that they're followed by slow recoveries. If you want to make things worse, then vote for Romney. He'll give tax cuts, mostly for the rich, which will have little stimulative effect, and would cut spending and balance the budget, rather than pushing for more spending to create jobs. For example Obama's stalled jobs bill is estimated to create around 2 million jobs by independent experts: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/07/812251/republicans-blocked-jobs-act-one-year/ The American Jobs Act was structured to provide 2 years of stimulus followed by a decade of austerity to pay for it ( p. 14). In the context of Reinhard and Rogoff, that the recovery will be slow for an extended period of time, does that structure make sense? Or is it just setting up a new 'fiscal cliff' of sorts?
Actually, a temporary increase in spending that's offset later is a good way to do stimulus. Stimulus is meant to be temporary. Upon a further reading of the report, half of that "austerity" basically comes from raising taxes on the rich, which is not very contractionary. The report says:
Combining the direct spending and revenue effects of S. 1549, CBO estimates that
enacting the bill would increase the budget deficit by $288 billion in 2012 and decrease
deficits by $3 billion over the 2012-2021 period. That estimated deficit reduction of
$3 billion over the coming decade is the net effect of $447 billion in additional spending
and tax cuts in titles II through III and $450 billion in additional tax revenue from the
offsets specified in title IV.
So half of it comes from Title 4, which is tax increases on the rich:
Title IV: Offsets. Title IV includes a number of revenue-increasing provisions that would
begin in calendar year 2013. Section 401 would limit the extent to which taxpayers with
adjusted gross income above certain amounts ($200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000
for married taxpayers filing jointly) can reduce their tax liability through itemized
deductions and certain other deductions and income exclusions to 28 percent of those
deductions and exclusions.
Section 411 would tax as ordinary income, rather than as capital gains, a form of
compensation called carried interest, which is generally received by a general partner of a
private equity or hedge fund and is typically a share of the profits on the assets under
management.
Subtitle D would eliminate various tax provisions related to oil and gas production,
including percentage depletion and the deduction allowed for intangible drilling and
development costs.
JCT estimates that the provisions in Title IV would reduce revenues by $2.5 billion in
2012, and increase revenues by $450 billion over the 2012-2021 period.
Then there's the fact that reducing the deficit over the the next 10 years, when the economy would have recovered is a good thing, not a bad thing. And also that Obama is campaigning on more infrastructure, more teachers, more research, etc. Basically stimulus, without using that dirty word.
And the CBO report also says the Jobs Act it will be great for the economy:
CBO anticipates that enacting S. 1549 could have a noticeable impact on economic growth
and employment in the next few years. Following long-standing Congressional budget
procedures, however, this estimate does not include the potential budgetary effects of such
changes in the economic outlook.
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On October 26 2012 01:52 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2012 22:18 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 25 2012 20:50 v3chr0 wrote:On October 25 2012 17:52 KwarK wrote:On October 25 2012 17:46 BluePanther wrote:On October 25 2012 17:02 heishe wrote:
As an outside I'm completely baffled how people can even for one second consider voting for Romney.
He has now shown several times how competely incompetent he would be to run a country. The methods he proposed to cut taxes were shown to be mathematically impossible, he has shown complete incompetence in terms of understanding of the military, and worst of all he's a blatant liar. He lies and is constantly contradicting himself, flip flopping on his own views on a subject constantly, sometimes in really short timespans of less than an hour.
Of course, that he's the follower of a completely nutjob religion and seems like a rich sleezy douche in general doesn't help at all. Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts and did quite well for himself. He's actually had more experience running a state than Obama, actually. Maybe more than Obama had four years ago. Obama has had more experience at running a nation now than Romney, about four years more. He has nearly 4 years of experience now, yes. Does that really mean anything when he hasn't done all too much but make things worse? His record is what counts, not what he says or how many years he has done less than adequate at his job. I see it the opposite, these 4 years have proven what I already knew and expected; he is not qualified to run this country, nor does he seem to even understand how it works. To him, it's all class warfare, and blame. Regardless of his situation, he the leader of this nation and it his responsibility to get things moving forward, he couldn't even do that with full control for 2 years. Social and foreign issues are not of utmost importance, this is about our saving our economy before everything recedes into chaos. How has Obama made things worse? Things are getting better, employment is increasing, unemployment is decreasing. You can argue that things aren't getting better fast enough, but things are not worse. That's simply wrong. The economy is recovering. If you want to see things getting worse go look at the UK, where their economy was slowly recovering under Brown, and then contracted a couple a quarters into Cameron's term because he suddenly pivoted to austerity. Now the UK is stuck in a double-dip recession and it's not getting better. Obama prevented the economy from crashing because of the stimulus. However, the problem is that there wasn't enough stimulus and recoveries from financial crises are usually slow: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/sorry-u-s-recoveries-really-aren-t-different.htmlNote that this article isn't some after the fact justification. Reinhart and Rogoff wrote a book in early 2008, chronicling the history of financial crises and showing that they're followed by slow recoveries. If you want to make things worse, then vote for Romney. He'll give tax cuts, mostly for the rich, which will have little stimulative effect, and would cut spending and balance the budget, rather than pushing for more spending to create jobs. For example Obama's stalled jobs bill is estimated to create around 2 million jobs by independent experts: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/07/812251/republicans-blocked-jobs-act-one-year/ The American Jobs Act was structured to provide 2 years of stimulus followed by a decade of austerity to pay for it ( p. 14). In the context of Reinhard and Rogoff, that the recovery will be slow for an extended period of time, does that structure make sense? Or is it just setting up a new 'fiscal cliff' of sorts?
Well, that really depends on how it's executed. If the recovery is slow but steady for an extended period of time, by implementing minor tax cuts for the short term and offering tax credits while levying substantive tax increases that are intended to last the entire 10 years, it's theoretically possible to "pay off" the stimulus. It does depend on the types of money you're sending into the economy. It could make things worse, though, if the higher tax rates create more of a decrease in productivity in the long term than the payroll tax cuts can offset; given the past history of similar programs it probably wouldn't, and it certainly wouldn't decrease revenue any more than across the board tax cuts (just look at what the Bush tax cuts did to government receipts, it's not pretty).
It's pretty much how Bush Sr, Nixon, and Reagan set things up. It doesn't really help the fiscal cliff, but it doesn't make it that much worse. The problem is usually only when they don't take into account inflation or changing labor markets due to demographic alterations, and I think the modern CBO is a little better about that than it used to be, though God knows I'm not qualified to see if they did or didn't in their report on Obama's job stimulus.
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United States6277 Posts
On October 26 2012 01:01 Alex1Sun wrote:
What really saddens me is that republicans no longer think about long term future. Thy denounce science, don't care about the environment etc.
This is especially sad since not long ago it was republican party that actually cared about such things. A republican president Richard Nixon for example made more environmental reforms than most other presidents combined, and his reforms were fantastic!
Nowadays it's just sad to see republicans in their current pitiful state. They still lie that there is no scientific consensus on climate change. That's really sad.
The US is doing better than most advanced economies in lowering CO2 emissions.
US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions
Most Republicans, not necessarily the blowhards that talk on TV all the time, want a healthy environment but don't want to make unnecessary and costly changes to get there.
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Cant compare republicans with european extreme right.
If want to compare it you should compare it to the most right wing "normal" party and then the republicans can be considered more right wing then anny party in europe (nothing wrong with that btw)
Extreme right is a small minority and not realy considered a suitable choise in most middle classes.
People vote for them as a protest vote against the current system.
Extreme right in europe is also pretty liberal, they extreme right wing on only 1 point and that is immigration and integration isues.
Most of them do support a huge welfare system.
One poster said it nice.
Republicans:liberal on economic isues, conservative on social isues
Democrats:Conservative on economic isues,liberal on social isues.
Looks like there is room for at least 2 more parties in the usa.
A full conservative and a full liberal one.
The full liberal one would do pretty well i think.
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On October 26 2012 02:01 Swazi Spring wrote:You could argue it violates our national sovereignty. We've never had or needed international observers in the past. International election monitors are for countries that don't have a long-standing democratic tradition.
According to the article, there were international observers present in the USA for five other elections since 2002, presumably including the 2004/2008 elections. There's little reason to ban them now unless you have something to hide.
http://www.osce.org/odihr
In particular, http://www.osce.org/what/elections
Any democratic country that is part of osce, including the USA has an obligation to allow ODIHR observers to monitor elections. Texas is the only state as far as I can tell from some quick searches that outright refuses observation of elections.
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On October 26 2012 02:24 Lmui wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 02:01 Swazi Spring wrote:You could argue it violates our national sovereignty. We've never had or needed international observers in the past. International election monitors are for countries that don't have a long-standing democratic tradition. According to the article, there were international observers present in the USA for five other elections since 2002, presumably including the 2004/2008 elections. There's little reason to ban them now unless you have something to hide. http://www.osce.org/odihrIn particular, http://www.osce.org/what/electionsAny democratic country that is part of osce, including the USA has an obligation to allow ODIHR observers to monitor elections. Texas is the only state as far as I can tell from some quick searches that outright refuses observation of elections.
Oh I see, I didn't know that, thanks for correcting me. By the way, happy birthday.
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Obama calls Romney a "bullshitter".
As we left the Oval Office, executive editor Eric Bates told Obama that he had asked his six-year-old if there was anything she wanted him to say to the president. … [S]he said, ‘Tell him: You can do it.’ Obama grinned. … ‘You know, kids have good instincts,’ Obama offered. ‘They look at the other guy and say, “Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell.”’” Source: http://www.politico.com/playbook/
I approve.
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United States6277 Posts
On October 26 2012 02:14 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 01:52 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 25 2012 22:18 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 25 2012 20:50 v3chr0 wrote:On October 25 2012 17:52 KwarK wrote:On October 25 2012 17:46 BluePanther wrote:On October 25 2012 17:02 heishe wrote:
As an outside I'm completely baffled how people can even for one second consider voting for Romney.
He has now shown several times how competely incompetent he would be to run a country. The methods he proposed to cut taxes were shown to be mathematically impossible, he has shown complete incompetence in terms of understanding of the military, and worst of all he's a blatant liar. He lies and is constantly contradicting himself, flip flopping on his own views on a subject constantly, sometimes in really short timespans of less than an hour.
Of course, that he's the follower of a completely nutjob religion and seems like a rich sleezy douche in general doesn't help at all. Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts and did quite well for himself. He's actually had more experience running a state than Obama, actually. Maybe more than Obama had four years ago. Obama has had more experience at running a nation now than Romney, about four years more. He has nearly 4 years of experience now, yes. Does that really mean anything when he hasn't done all too much but make things worse? His record is what counts, not what he says or how many years he has done less than adequate at his job. I see it the opposite, these 4 years have proven what I already knew and expected; he is not qualified to run this country, nor does he seem to even understand how it works. To him, it's all class warfare, and blame. Regardless of his situation, he the leader of this nation and it his responsibility to get things moving forward, he couldn't even do that with full control for 2 years. Social and foreign issues are not of utmost importance, this is about our saving our economy before everything recedes into chaos. How has Obama made things worse? Things are getting better, employment is increasing, unemployment is decreasing. You can argue that things aren't getting better fast enough, but things are not worse. That's simply wrong. The economy is recovering. If you want to see things getting worse go look at the UK, where their economy was slowly recovering under Brown, and then contracted a couple a quarters into Cameron's term because he suddenly pivoted to austerity. Now the UK is stuck in a double-dip recession and it's not getting better. Obama prevented the economy from crashing because of the stimulus. However, the problem is that there wasn't enough stimulus and recoveries from financial crises are usually slow: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/sorry-u-s-recoveries-really-aren-t-different.htmlNote that this article isn't some after the fact justification. Reinhart and Rogoff wrote a book in early 2008, chronicling the history of financial crises and showing that they're followed by slow recoveries. If you want to make things worse, then vote for Romney. He'll give tax cuts, mostly for the rich, which will have little stimulative effect, and would cut spending and balance the budget, rather than pushing for more spending to create jobs. For example Obama's stalled jobs bill is estimated to create around 2 million jobs by independent experts: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/07/812251/republicans-blocked-jobs-act-one-year/ The American Jobs Act was structured to provide 2 years of stimulus followed by a decade of austerity to pay for it ( p. 14). In the context of Reinhard and Rogoff, that the recovery will be slow for an extended period of time, does that structure make sense? Or is it just setting up a new 'fiscal cliff' of sorts? Actually, a temporary increase in spending that's offset later is a good way to do stimulus. Stimulus is meant to be temporary. Upon a further reading of the report, half of that "austerity" basically comes from raising taxes on the rich, which is not very contractionary. The report says: Show nested quote +Combining the direct spending and revenue effects of S. 1549, CBO estimates that
enacting the bill would increase the budget deficit by $288 billion in 2012 and decrease
deficits by $3 billion over the 2012-2021 period. That estimated deficit reduction of
$3 billion over the coming decade is the net effect of $447 billion in additional spending
and tax cuts in titles II through III and $450 billion in additional tax revenue from the
offsets specified in title IV. So half of it comes from Title 4, which is tax increases on the rich: Show nested quote +Title IV: Offsets. Title IV includes a number of revenue-increasing provisions that would
begin in calendar year 2013. Section 401 would limit the extent to which taxpayers with
adjusted gross income above certain amounts ($200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000
for married taxpayers filing jointly) can reduce their tax liability through itemized
deductions and certain other deductions and income exclusions to 28 percent of those
deductions and exclusions.
Section 411 would tax as ordinary income, rather than as capital gains, a form of
compensation called carried interest, which is generally received by a general partner of a
private equity or hedge fund and is typically a share of the profits on the assets under
management.
Subtitle D would eliminate various tax provisions related to oil and gas production,
including percentage depletion and the deduction allowed for intangible drilling and
development costs.
JCT estimates that the provisions in Title IV would reduce revenues by $2.5 billion in
2012, and increase revenues by $450 billion over the 2012-2021 period. Then there's the fact that reducing the deficit over the the next 10 years, when the economy would have recovered is a good thing, not a bad thing. And also that Obama is campaigning on more infrastructure, more teachers, more research, etc. Basically stimulus, without using that dirty word. And the CBO report also says the Jobs Act it will be great for the economy: Show nested quote +CBO anticipates that enacting S. 1549 could have a noticeable impact on economic growth
and employment in the next few years. Following long-standing Congressional budget
procedures, however, this estimate does not include the potential budgetary effects of such
changes in the economic outlook.
Ok, normally a short and powerful stimulus is what you want, and its what we had with the last stimulus too. Though, if we had passed the bill when Obama first wanted to, and we had those extra 2mm jobs, the economy would still be in the crapper (the economy still wouldn't reach 'launch velocity') and we'd have more austerity on the horizon. Wouldn't a more open-ended stimulus be better? Or is that making good the enemy of great?
On a different point, normally I'd agree that raising taxes on the rich would be the 'least bad' way to raise taxes. But I'm a little skeptical here because of all the other taxes Obama wants to impose on the rich through Obamacare and rolling back their Bush tax cuts. At some point wouldn't it add up to a major shock to the system (disincentives, repricing of assets)?
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On October 26 2012 02:34 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 02:14 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 01:52 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 25 2012 22:18 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 25 2012 20:50 v3chr0 wrote:On October 25 2012 17:52 KwarK wrote:On October 25 2012 17:46 BluePanther wrote:On October 25 2012 17:02 heishe wrote:
As an outside I'm completely baffled how people can even for one second consider voting for Romney.
He has now shown several times how competely incompetent he would be to run a country. The methods he proposed to cut taxes were shown to be mathematically impossible, he has shown complete incompetence in terms of understanding of the military, and worst of all he's a blatant liar. He lies and is constantly contradicting himself, flip flopping on his own views on a subject constantly, sometimes in really short timespans of less than an hour.
Of course, that he's the follower of a completely nutjob religion and seems like a rich sleezy douche in general doesn't help at all. Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts and did quite well for himself. He's actually had more experience running a state than Obama, actually. Maybe more than Obama had four years ago. Obama has had more experience at running a nation now than Romney, about four years more. He has nearly 4 years of experience now, yes. Does that really mean anything when he hasn't done all too much but make things worse? His record is what counts, not what he says or how many years he has done less than adequate at his job. I see it the opposite, these 4 years have proven what I already knew and expected; he is not qualified to run this country, nor does he seem to even understand how it works. To him, it's all class warfare, and blame. Regardless of his situation, he the leader of this nation and it his responsibility to get things moving forward, he couldn't even do that with full control for 2 years. Social and foreign issues are not of utmost importance, this is about our saving our economy before everything recedes into chaos. How has Obama made things worse? Things are getting better, employment is increasing, unemployment is decreasing. You can argue that things aren't getting better fast enough, but things are not worse. That's simply wrong. The economy is recovering. If you want to see things getting worse go look at the UK, where their economy was slowly recovering under Brown, and then contracted a couple a quarters into Cameron's term because he suddenly pivoted to austerity. Now the UK is stuck in a double-dip recession and it's not getting better. Obama prevented the economy from crashing because of the stimulus. However, the problem is that there wasn't enough stimulus and recoveries from financial crises are usually slow: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/sorry-u-s-recoveries-really-aren-t-different.htmlNote that this article isn't some after the fact justification. Reinhart and Rogoff wrote a book in early 2008, chronicling the history of financial crises and showing that they're followed by slow recoveries. If you want to make things worse, then vote for Romney. He'll give tax cuts, mostly for the rich, which will have little stimulative effect, and would cut spending and balance the budget, rather than pushing for more spending to create jobs. For example Obama's stalled jobs bill is estimated to create around 2 million jobs by independent experts: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/07/812251/republicans-blocked-jobs-act-one-year/ The American Jobs Act was structured to provide 2 years of stimulus followed by a decade of austerity to pay for it ( p. 14). In the context of Reinhard and Rogoff, that the recovery will be slow for an extended period of time, does that structure make sense? Or is it just setting up a new 'fiscal cliff' of sorts? Actually, a temporary increase in spending that's offset later is a good way to do stimulus. Stimulus is meant to be temporary. Upon a further reading of the report, half of that "austerity" basically comes from raising taxes on the rich, which is not very contractionary. The report says: Combining the direct spending and revenue effects of S. 1549, CBO estimates that
enacting the bill would increase the budget deficit by $288 billion in 2012 and decrease
deficits by $3 billion over the 2012-2021 period. That estimated deficit reduction of
$3 billion over the coming decade is the net effect of $447 billion in additional spending
and tax cuts in titles II through III and $450 billion in additional tax revenue from the
offsets specified in title IV. So half of it comes from Title 4, which is tax increases on the rich: Title IV: Offsets. Title IV includes a number of revenue-increasing provisions that would
begin in calendar year 2013. Section 401 would limit the extent to which taxpayers with
adjusted gross income above certain amounts ($200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000
for married taxpayers filing jointly) can reduce their tax liability through itemized
deductions and certain other deductions and income exclusions to 28 percent of those
deductions and exclusions.
Section 411 would tax as ordinary income, rather than as capital gains, a form of
compensation called carried interest, which is generally received by a general partner of a
private equity or hedge fund and is typically a share of the profits on the assets under
management.
Subtitle D would eliminate various tax provisions related to oil and gas production,
including percentage depletion and the deduction allowed for intangible drilling and
development costs.
JCT estimates that the provisions in Title IV would reduce revenues by $2.5 billion in
2012, and increase revenues by $450 billion over the 2012-2021 period. Then there's the fact that reducing the deficit over the the next 10 years, when the economy would have recovered is a good thing, not a bad thing. And also that Obama is campaigning on more infrastructure, more teachers, more research, etc. Basically stimulus, without using that dirty word. And the CBO report also says the Jobs Act it will be great for the economy: CBO anticipates that enacting S. 1549 could have a noticeable impact on economic growth
and employment in the next few years. Following long-standing Congressional budget
procedures, however, this estimate does not include the potential budgetary effects of such
changes in the economic outlook. Ok, normally a short and powerful stimulus is what you want, and its what we had with the last stimulus too. Though, if we had passed the bill when Obama first wanted to, and we had those extra 2mm jobs, the economy would still be in the crapper (the economy still wouldn't reach 'launch velocity') and we'd have more austerity on the horizon. Wouldn't a more open-ended stimulus be better? Or is that making good the enemy of great? On a different point, normally I'd agree that raising taxes on the rich would be the 'least bad' way to raise taxes. But I'm a little skeptical here because of all the other taxes Obama wants to impose on the rich through Obamacare and rolling back their Bush tax cuts. At some point wouldn't it add up to a major shock to the system (disincentives, repricing of assets)?
Unfortunately, due to the nature of politics, open-ended stimulus tends to result in stimulus that never goes away with the tax burden being passed on to future generations. Look at what happened to the Bush era tax cuts-even though they demonstrably did NOT increase government revenue nor dramatically impact the economy and hugely contributed to the generational deficit, they're now being embraced by both parties because you have to do it to get votes.
It is indeed possible for taxes on the rich to create disincentives and repricing of assets, but it's much worse if they're all hitting the same place. The Obamacare taxes are more based in increased part B payments by wealthier people as well as part D; these hit after people retire, so the disincentive is minimized. If you diversify the temporal burden of the austerity you reduce the shock substantially, and from what I can tell they've done a pretty good job of that.
Still, it's a gamble in that any sort of large scale Eurozone or Asia-Pacific shock could make the austerity measures dramatically less effective and drastically reduce the long-term effectiveness of the plan, but if those things happen the deficit will skyrocket anyway.
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On October 26 2012 02:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 01:01 Alex1Sun wrote:
What really saddens me is that republicans no longer think about long term future. Thy denounce science, don't care about the environment etc.
This is especially sad since not long ago it was republican party that actually cared about such things. A republican president Richard Nixon for example made more environmental reforms than most other presidents combined, and his reforms were fantastic!
Nowadays it's just sad to see republicans in their current pitiful state. They still lie that there is no scientific consensus on climate change. That's really sad. The US is doing better than most advanced economies in lowering CO2 emissions. Show nested quote +US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions Most Republicans, not necessarily the blowhards that talk on TV all the time, want a healthy environment but don't want to make unnecessary and costly changes to get there.
If by better you mean still at the near top the lists of co2 emissions you are correct, even per capita. The biggest spender should have the largest margin for improvement as well, so that's not a shocker. Also it seem natural gas seems to be the biggest reason why the co2 emission has been lowered and that's not without environmental impact as well.
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Today Team Liquid learns that the only viable "green energy" is nuclear power.
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On October 26 2012 02:51 Swazi Spring wrote:
Today Team Liquid learns that the only viable "green energy" is nuclear power.
It's only "viable" with government subsidy, loan guarnatees, limited liability and government run insurance.
It would not exist in a free market.
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United States6277 Posts
On October 26 2012 02:42 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 02:34 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 26 2012 02:14 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 26 2012 01:52 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 25 2012 22:18 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 25 2012 20:50 v3chr0 wrote:On October 25 2012 17:52 KwarK wrote:On October 25 2012 17:46 BluePanther wrote:On October 25 2012 17:02 heishe wrote:
As an outside I'm completely baffled how people can even for one second consider voting for Romney.
He has now shown several times how competely incompetent he would be to run a country. The methods he proposed to cut taxes were shown to be mathematically impossible, he has shown complete incompetence in terms of understanding of the military, and worst of all he's a blatant liar. He lies and is constantly contradicting himself, flip flopping on his own views on a subject constantly, sometimes in really short timespans of less than an hour.
Of course, that he's the follower of a completely nutjob religion and seems like a rich sleezy douche in general doesn't help at all. Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts and did quite well for himself. He's actually had more experience running a state than Obama, actually. Maybe more than Obama had four years ago. Obama has had more experience at running a nation now than Romney, about four years more. He has nearly 4 years of experience now, yes. Does that really mean anything when he hasn't done all too much but make things worse? His record is what counts, not what he says or how many years he has done less than adequate at his job. I see it the opposite, these 4 years have proven what I already knew and expected; he is not qualified to run this country, nor does he seem to even understand how it works. To him, it's all class warfare, and blame. Regardless of his situation, he the leader of this nation and it his responsibility to get things moving forward, he couldn't even do that with full control for 2 years. Social and foreign issues are not of utmost importance, this is about our saving our economy before everything recedes into chaos. How has Obama made things worse? Things are getting better, employment is increasing, unemployment is decreasing. You can argue that things aren't getting better fast enough, but things are not worse. That's simply wrong. The economy is recovering. If you want to see things getting worse go look at the UK, where their economy was slowly recovering under Brown, and then contracted a couple a quarters into Cameron's term because he suddenly pivoted to austerity. Now the UK is stuck in a double-dip recession and it's not getting better. Obama prevented the economy from crashing because of the stimulus. However, the problem is that there wasn't enough stimulus and recoveries from financial crises are usually slow: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/sorry-u-s-recoveries-really-aren-t-different.htmlNote that this article isn't some after the fact justification. Reinhart and Rogoff wrote a book in early 2008, chronicling the history of financial crises and showing that they're followed by slow recoveries. If you want to make things worse, then vote for Romney. He'll give tax cuts, mostly for the rich, which will have little stimulative effect, and would cut spending and balance the budget, rather than pushing for more spending to create jobs. For example Obama's stalled jobs bill is estimated to create around 2 million jobs by independent experts: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/07/812251/republicans-blocked-jobs-act-one-year/ The American Jobs Act was structured to provide 2 years of stimulus followed by a decade of austerity to pay for it ( p. 14). In the context of Reinhard and Rogoff, that the recovery will be slow for an extended period of time, does that structure make sense? Or is it just setting up a new 'fiscal cliff' of sorts? Actually, a temporary increase in spending that's offset later is a good way to do stimulus. Stimulus is meant to be temporary. Upon a further reading of the report, half of that "austerity" basically comes from raising taxes on the rich, which is not very contractionary. The report says: Combining the direct spending and revenue effects of S. 1549, CBO estimates that
enacting the bill would increase the budget deficit by $288 billion in 2012 and decrease
deficits by $3 billion over the 2012-2021 period. That estimated deficit reduction of
$3 billion over the coming decade is the net effect of $447 billion in additional spending
and tax cuts in titles II through III and $450 billion in additional tax revenue from the
offsets specified in title IV. So half of it comes from Title 4, which is tax increases on the rich: Title IV: Offsets. Title IV includes a number of revenue-increasing provisions that would
begin in calendar year 2013. Section 401 would limit the extent to which taxpayers with
adjusted gross income above certain amounts ($200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000
for married taxpayers filing jointly) can reduce their tax liability through itemized
deductions and certain other deductions and income exclusions to 28 percent of those
deductions and exclusions.
Section 411 would tax as ordinary income, rather than as capital gains, a form of
compensation called carried interest, which is generally received by a general partner of a
private equity or hedge fund and is typically a share of the profits on the assets under
management.
Subtitle D would eliminate various tax provisions related to oil and gas production,
including percentage depletion and the deduction allowed for intangible drilling and
development costs.
JCT estimates that the provisions in Title IV would reduce revenues by $2.5 billion in
2012, and increase revenues by $450 billion over the 2012-2021 period. Then there's the fact that reducing the deficit over the the next 10 years, when the economy would have recovered is a good thing, not a bad thing. And also that Obama is campaigning on more infrastructure, more teachers, more research, etc. Basically stimulus, without using that dirty word. And the CBO report also says the Jobs Act it will be great for the economy: CBO anticipates that enacting S. 1549 could have a noticeable impact on economic growth
and employment in the next few years. Following long-standing Congressional budget
procedures, however, this estimate does not include the potential budgetary effects of such
changes in the economic outlook. Ok, normally a short and powerful stimulus is what you want, and its what we had with the last stimulus too. Though, if we had passed the bill when Obama first wanted to, and we had those extra 2mm jobs, the economy would still be in the crapper (the economy still wouldn't reach 'launch velocity') and we'd have more austerity on the horizon. Wouldn't a more open-ended stimulus be better? Or is that making good the enemy of great? On a different point, normally I'd agree that raising taxes on the rich would be the 'least bad' way to raise taxes. But I'm a little skeptical here because of all the other taxes Obama wants to impose on the rich through Obamacare and rolling back their Bush tax cuts. At some point wouldn't it add up to a major shock to the system (disincentives, repricing of assets)? Unfortunately, due to the nature of politics, open-ended stimulus tends to result in stimulus that never goes away with the tax burden being passed on to future generations. Look at what happened to the Bush era tax cuts-even though they demonstrably did NOT increase government revenue nor dramatically impact the economy and hugely contributed to the generational deficit, they're now being embraced by both parties because you have to do it to get votes. It is indeed possible for taxes on the rich to create disincentives and repricing of assets, but it's much worse if they're all hitting the same place. The Obamacare taxes are more based in increased part B payments by wealthier people as well as part D; these hit after people retire, so the disincentive is minimized. If you diversify the temporal burden of the austerity you reduce the shock substantially, and from what I can tell they've done a pretty good job of that. Still, it's a gamble in that any sort of large scale Eurozone or Asia-Pacific shock could make the austerity measures dramatically less effective and drastically reduce the long-term effectiveness of the plan, but if those things happen the deficit will skyrocket anyway.
I meant open ended in terms of paying for it.
As for the incentives I'm more asking about the supply side incentives. Obama wants to raise taxes on dividends / cap gains from 15% to over 40%. How will businesses react to that? Will they focus less on expansion and more on adding leverage to their existing balance sheet? Also, how will entrepreneurs react? Will they still be able to launch as many start ups once equity is more expensive?
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Vote for the career politician who made all of his money via politics... Whose campaign is based upon intangible ideas like Change and Hope (Barack)
Vote for the career businessman who made all of his money in business... Whose campaign is based upon tangible ideas like business and the ass-whooping reform of idiot America (Romney)
It's kind of blatantly obvious that Obama is charismatic and extremely politically powerful - he's a born and raised politician. His greatest talent is making people like him.
Romney is a businessman. His natural talent is making money and building shit//making shit happen.
I guess I'm gonna vote for Romney.
Edited so that it's a little less controversial. And so that I don't have to insert sources for all of my comments -_-
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On October 26 2012 03:22 BoX wrote:
Vote for the career politician who made all of his money via politics... Whose campaign is based upon intangible ideas like Change and Hope (Barack)
Vote for the career businessman who made all of his money in business... Whose campaign is based upon tangible ideas like business and the ass-whooping reform of idiot America (Romney)
It's kind of blatantly obvious that Obama is charismatic and extremely politically powerful - he's a born and raised politician. His greatest talent is making people like him.
Romney is a businessman. His natural talent is making money and building shit//making shit happen.
I realize I'm stating things very bluntly and am open for debate, but that's my position. I LOL at people who go on touting that BS that the Obama admin tries to LIE TO YOU about Romney only paying 15% in his taxes -- he's already paid 35% on his money, now he's paying an additional 15% on his ROI income (that's a total of 50% taxation fellas, not 15% - LOL!)
Ya, brb, I'm Obama, I listened and watched as my American civilians are tortured and killed and do nothing about it 'cuz whatevs. But I make sure to praise the people who LOL and celebrate American civilian's torture, 'cuz we wanna be super nice to those dudes <3 BRB dumping osama's body over water 'cuz it's offensive to keep his body - don't wanna offend those guys, they're super cool dudes. definitely gotta show respect to osama's body 'cuz whatevs no big deal he's not a bad dude <3
You have any sources? Or are you just saying random things in a cry for attention?
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On October 26 2012 03:22 BoX wrote:
Vote for the career politician who made all of his money via politics... Whose campaign is based upon intangible ideas like Change and Hope (Barack)
Vote for the career businessman who made all of his money in business... Whose campaign is based upon tangible ideas like business and the ass-whooping reform of idiot America (Romney)
It's kind of blatantly obvious that Obama is charismatic and extremely politically powerful - he's a born and raised politician. His greatest talent is making people like him.
Romney is a businessman. His natural talent is making money and building shit//making shit happen.
I guess I'm gonna vote for Romney.
Edited so that it's a little less controversial. And so that I don't have to insert sources for all of my comments -_-
He was born in Hawaii to a poor parent.
Romney was born into wealth and politics.
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EPT
