It's from the late 1920s to early 1940s.

That's certainly what it looks like.

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Escape will make me God.

I think ruffdraft has a sugar daddy.

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I think that he's gotten himself so mired in his argument that there's no way that he can back out now.

Bonus points if he realized this a moment too late.

Not that I mean him specifically and that it can apply to anyone, but typically when one is presented with facts, it only makes the person double down on their beliefs.

People associate their opinions and beliefs with their identity, so any assault on these opinions is on some level considered an attack on their character. Which is why a lot of Americans consider atheists immoral on some level for instance (even if on an objective level secular people and nations fair better on measures such as crime and staying married).

It's why people say they trust scientists so much yet routinely deny many of their findings, such as climate change evidence. They try to convince you head-on which only backfires (and whatever anyone thinks, the science is settled; you do not give every outlying extremist equal balance in a discussion, but that's for another debate).

But these discussions are always going Soth so I highly doubt he feels trapped. He's been doing it for a while now.


This also makes me wish for a section dedicated to this sort of stuff.

/shrug

Maybe I'm wrong then.

Would have to put it into a graph form myself, all graphs I can find on image search reach up to 2008 or 2009.



Wat?


I laughed because you said it like getting a new, better job was trivial. It's not. Most "new jobs" people get these days are for lower wages than the previous ones.

Here's fresher data: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-0 ... 6-000.html
Seems the government is doing something after all. Having said that, at 9% unemployment rate you don't just "go get a new job" man. It's easy to do for those who earn $500.000+, but not the low incomes guys who are easy to replace.


PS
I won't even comment on how ridiculous it was for you to mock a decent graph from reliable source data by putting on one with undefined values of Y axis and no X axis at all. I'm guessing you wanted to be clever and hyperbolise some faults you saw in the graph I posted, but frankly, I see no faults like the ones your graph seems to be showing.

PS2
Look how ironic. You are right, I should have used a more up-to-date graph to show my point. After all the graph I posted end at unemployment rate of 6.5%, while right now it's about 9%. Silly me.

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This post is intended for information only. Please do not reply to this message as responses cannot be read or acknowledged due to the stupidity of the user.

So instead of "The primary benefit of merging countries together throughout time is that in the end there is next to no need for military and war equipment." it's more "If everyone united in peace and love unlike anything the world has ever seen on a large scale, there would be next to no need for military or war equipment." I can agree with that.

Probably. Some were deemed worth the effort of attacking, and others were not. Cost / benefit / risk and such.

Because the Germans would have considered what their enemies could/would do in making their own plans. If Germany could kick the Allies off mainland Europe starting from their entrenched position and easy access to reinforcements, the Allies would not be able to muster the resources to re-take Europe later, even if they had friendly landing areas. The Allies were on the defensive in Western Europe until reinforcements from the US provided the resources needed. The US didn't enter the war until more than a year and a half after the invasion of France, after Japanese, not German, provocation, and Germany had occupied France for four years by the time the Allies invaded.

No more threatening than Switzerland or Sweden, which were not invaded. Nice that you agree that Belgium and Holland were convenient targets because of their inability to defend themselves.

You had said, "Well it's not. It's controversial, and human genetic engineering is generally illegal or off-limits." I replied, "Anyway, human genetic engineering is generally NOT illegal (care to cite any laws to the contrary?) Certain kinds of genetic modification will probably be made illegal in some places when they get closer to practicality (non-therapeutic embryo modification, say). Keep in mind that we're talking about dealing with the negative consequences of genetic drift caused by the removal of selection pressures, meaning therapeutic changes like susceptibility to type 1 diabetes. I don't see that becoming illegal." It generally IS NOT illegal or off-limits, and the genetic engineering under discussion is generally not controversial (About whether or not it should be used when it's safe and effective. The controversy about GM crops and such is about whether or not they are safe.).

Not really. We're discussing systemic issues. Going from overall expense and achievement to expense and achievement per student in order to go back to overall expense and achievement doesn't really help things.

This is a graph of returns to scale in an ideal, generic situation. There is a large area where increasing expenditure results in increasing efficiency. This, I think, is a more realistic description of the returns to scale in modern education. Note that increasing investment in education always gets better achievement, but never increases efficiency. Extending your example above, for even less expense, a volunteer tutor could teach both refraction and the Casimir Effect using books from the local library, for less educational achievement, but enormously greater efficiency.

Consider this. Looks like, with modern education in the US, the marginal benefit of increased money is rather low. This seems to be the case in Africa as well. Throwing money at schools may help effectiveness, but it looks like it would not be likely to improve efficiency for any spending range encountered in the US. Improvements in efficiency should focus more on specific practices rather than overall funding.

Apparently between 11 and 19 percent of Republicans. Haven't seen any updates in the last few days though.

Not really, but I saw some openings there, like the Norway unions bit and the economics of outsourcing and inflation.

Stewart was pointing out that the Republican response to the Ryan's plan compared to past actions indicates that they are more focused on partisanship than policy. And that clip did talk about the content of the plan, about as much as the video you posted.

Do you think that given that, it's a good plan then? Given tax cuts in a plan supposedly to cut the deficit, polls indicating that most Americans want pretty much the opposite, and various other things pointed out there. Regarding Medicaid, why would replacing it with vouchers be a good thing? This explains briefly how it probably would be bad, at least if you care about the well-being of seniors (about halfway down where it says "replace X with vouchers" is Republican code for "destroy X").

On another topic mentioned in that video, what do you think of the larger plan of pulling the frame of debate to the "right"? Because it's obviously been going on, and the Democrats have so far been following along. Do you think that that's good bipartisanship, or a good way to run a democracy? Seems that The West Wing anticipated this sort of thing years ago, and illustrated a different way that things could have turned out.

Yes, and some people can't. That you would bring this up indicates that your conceptions of economics and the government's role in society are seriously disconnected from reality.

Would you care to explain how refugees in Darfur would be able to find jobs and work themselves and their families out of poverty if only they weren't lazy, and actually tried? I am aware that you were referring to the situation in the US, but Darfur provides a stark example of how the principle you invoked is far from universal. For it to apply in the US, there would have to be neither structural nor cyclical unemployment, accompanied by a perfectly (classical economically) functioning labor market with no pesky complications like imperfect information or costs for moving around. Do you really think that that's the case? What do you think of the working poor?

Is the truth disgusting? What do you think the truth is?

It's a plan. You just don't like it. Please use terms accurately, as disagreement over terminology can divert us from more meaningful discussion.

Then let's examine whether this "proof" is such. As you read, keep the "Big Lie" technique in mind.

(video description) "Based on a theory known as Keynesianism, politicians are resuscitating the notion that more government spending can stimulate an economy." - That the government can stimulate the economy is based on the (quite obvious) idea that the government can both give money to people (who then spend it) and hire people to do stuff (which produces goods, services, and jobs, and gives those people money to spend). An action that results in people doing stuff and spending money when they otherwise wouldn't is an economic stimulus. This is incorporated into the aggregate demand curve of the Aggregate Demand - Aggregate Supply model. It's based on Keynes's work, but it's a basic component of various modern economic models, including the supply-side economics of Presidents Reagan and W. Bush. Demand-side (what's usually considered the Keynesian approach) and supply-side plans disagree about where the AD curve crosses the AS curve (thus the relative elasticity of AD and AS), and therefore the optimal strategy for improving things. Note that implementations of supply-side economics have run large Keynesian-style deficits in attempts to stimulate the economy, though the deficits are targeted at incentives for the supply side like reducing corporate and top bracket income tax rates. Also, calling it "Keynesianism" rather than "Keynesian economics" (while technically correct if not as widespread when referring to what Keynes himself proposed as opposed to later developments on his ideas) insinuates that it is primarily an ideological construct tied to personal regard for Keynes himself rather than an empirically supported economic model. Critics of evolution often call it "Darwinism" for similar reasons.

(video description) "This mini-documentary produced by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation..." - The Center for Freedom and Prosperity "is a non-profit organization created to lobby lawmakers in favor of market liberalization." As in reducing taxes and government spending, privatizing Social Security, and general deregulation (both intra- and international). Who do you think stands to benefit from those policies? This is a conflict of interest, so consider what in the video are statements of fact and what are value judgments, spin, etc.

Pause when it fades in. - Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute starts with an earnest, almost pleading expression. He is sharply dressed and groomed, and is flanked by two closeups of the Statue of Liberty's face, each overlaid with the word "liberty". "Threat" appears twice, less conspicuously. Also in the background are the following: rules, ownership, accidents, police, New York. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity is just that patriotic. Even though they think that US people and corporations should use foreign tax shelters until the US lowers its taxes enough to compete, and that the government should lack the auditing authority to identify that when it happens.

"First some background." - The Great Depression began in 1929. The New Deal started in 1933. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was published in 1936. It was The Means to Prosperity that existed in time to influence the New Deal. It was much more basic than the General Theory, and pointed out some obvious things such as that the economic situation in a strong recession is different from normal conditions, which changes the cost/benefit of various activities, including government efforts to look after the well-being of society, but did not present a more rigorous framework for managing an economy. In preparing the General Theory, Keynes had available to him the implementations and results of stimulus programs that had gone into effect years earlier, including the New Deal and German programs. The people who implemented those programs knew of Keynes, but his ideas were by no means dominant, untested and running counter to the prevailing theories as they were. The idea for the New Deal was more to try different things and see what worked (the spaghetti approach). Incidentally, "government trying different things" (especially targeted to helping people in trouble as the New Deal programs were) works as a Keynesian stimulus.

"Let's first look at whether Keynesianism makes sense from a theoretical perspective..." - If the government controls the money supply (as the US government does), it can simply make more money. The video does mention it later though, so let's not go into it except to acknowledge the contradiction. The description of aggregate demand is way off (AD can't change without the money supply changing?). Also income. Economics is not zero-sum, so the size of the pie does indeed depend on how it is sliced (do the resources of the pie get sliced into pieces useful for the functioning of the economy?). This IS very important. The idea is that idle money gets moving though the economy again, not that there is magically more of it.

"Some advocates of this theory get a bit more creative..." - Here is a second strawman somewhat less simplistically misleading presentation of what Keynesian economics actually involves.

"The really clever Keynesians then respond..." - This is also seriously flawed, but because of the rule of three, as presented it has an air of finality and completeness that someone unfamiliar with how it works could mistake for actually being final or complete. So then, money is sitting idle in banks because people want to save rather than spend or risk investment due to a weak economy, and that leads to reduced demand, weakening the economy further? If only there were a way to bring money from peoples' savings back into circulation. If only someone could borrow money from people with savings (offering guaranteed returns to deal with the aversion to risk in the weak economy) and spend that money on, say, infrastructure projects (which are naturally undersupplied by the market due to externalities) that use a lot of labor and resources (thus putting spare capacity back to work), and have long term benefits for society anyway. Oh wait, that's exactly what a standard governmental Keynsian response to recession involves. Let's put some numbers to this. Suppose the government borrows $100 and pays someone to do something with it. Let's ignore that person's project expenses, where stimulus money goes to other people (typically people hit unusually hard by the recession like material suppliers) at that point, and assume that all $100 goes to the person hired. Let's assume a savings rate of 50% (far higher than is typical, especially for US wage earners. 5% is fairly high these days.). Half the stimulus money goes back to the bank. The other half is spent, and someone else gets it. Half of that goes to the bank, and the other half is spent, etc. All the money eventually goes back to the bank, but economic activity is increased by $200 in the meantime. The fiscal multiplier here is 2, meaning that $X of stimulus results in a $2X increase of economic activity. The lower savings rate in reality allows a larger multiplier, but there is also some loss due to crowding out. This means that to be most effective, a stimulus should be targeted to weak areas of the economy with plenty of spare capacity. In a general recession with much of the economy hurting, this means that a sledgehammer approach works fairly well, but aim can still affect outcome a lot. To fix what's mainly a fall of demand, say, demand-side techniques would be a lot more effective than supply-side.

"Looking now at the real world evidence... Hoover..." - The use of the Great Depression is curious here, since the ability of Keysnian economics to explain why things went as they did when prevailing theories couldn't was THE big reason why it became dominant later on. Look here. Hoover did some things that could be called Keynesian, but on balance his policies were not very. Higher taxes (anti-Keynesian) and trade barriers (anti-Keynesian) combined with pretty flat nominal spending (non-Keynesian). Due to deflation, real government spending increased (which is the increase mentioned in the video), but the increase largely went to sectors that were already supplying government demand, and so the fiscal multiplier was small, and aggregate demand continued to fall. The large deficit came about through reduced revenue as people made less, meaning that the reduction in tax burden "went to" people who weren't making as much money as before, but they had less disposable income than before, not more, and the higher rates exacerbated the situation: hardly a Keynesian stimulus. Some programs were in line with Keynesian ideas, but they were small relative to the problem. Growth didn't just slow down; real GDP shrank by about 10% per year, and the few percent deficit went towards things with low fiscal multipliers.

"...other than being a bit more reasonable on trade, Roosevelt followed the same approach." - Another seriously flawed bit (though he was indeed more reasonable on trade). You see, different economic policies were in place over FDR's four terms, with different results that just so happen to be consistent with Keynesian predictions. When FDR came into office in 1933, he instituted the New Deal, which did a lot of things, with the result being a major increase in demand-side stimulus. Real GDP shrank 13% in 1932. In 1933, it shrank 1.3% as New Deal programs were getting going. In the next three years (the three with the New Deal fully in place), real GDP grew 11%, 9%, and 13%. Real (but not nominal due to the previous deflation) GDP passed its previous peak in 1929. Over this time, unemployment dropped by about 15% (sources vary by how things are totaled and smoothed, but it's about that for peak to trough, as your graph showed). Then, because things were improving (though not yet back to "normal") while a large debt was piling up, taxes were increased and New Deal programs were significantly scaled back. Growth and unemployment promptly reversed (though not nearly as bad as under Hoover), with a recession that was itself one of the largest of the 20th Century. A the time, tensions were building in Europe, so for the next few years, capital coming from Europe and anticipatory government defense spending boosted aggregate demand again. Growth resumed (if not quite as fast as under the New Deal) and unemployment started dropping again. Then the US entered World War II. Government military expenditures dwarfed New Deal spending and (in proportion to the economy) every other Keysnian stimulus in US history. The economy went into overdrive. Real GDP growth reached its highest ever, and unemployment reached its lowest ever. War related spending was so high that it dominated the economy, crowding out private activity. This caused trouble when the war ended, with a recession that lasted until the private sector shifted back to peacetime activity. However, growth and employment during WWII were so high that despite the recession, the economy was in much better shape after than before.

"Other Keynesian episodes generated similarly dismal results... Gerald Ford..." - This description of Ford's economic policies is also off. There was a mild recession ongoing from 1973, with a major attribute being high inflation (quadrupling oil prices and war spending in Vietnam would tend to do that). Ford's first goal was to reduce inflation, so he proposed a tax increase and budget discipline, and encouraged people to spend less. The recession got worse and unemployment increased, so Ford proposed a more Keynesian policy to address that (in January 1975, as that TIME image says). The recession ended in March 1975, and the economy averaged better than 5% real growth for the next three years.

"...tax cuts only boost the economy when they reduce the tax penalty on work, saving, and investment..." - This amounts to a bald statement that there is no demand side to the equation. Reducing long term rates can act to encourage the supply side, but "gimmicks" like rebates and temporary reductions can act to stimulate the demand side.

"...George W. Bush gave out so-called rebate checks... and he certainly was a big spender..." - Bush's rebates were a small part of his economic policy, which was overall far more supply-side. Most of the deficits went to tax cuts mostly for corporations and the wealthy in an attempt to boost supply when the problem was more that existing supply was not being fully utilized (lack of demand). Much of the rest went to military spending, and the military-industrial complex was already well-fed, so more spending there has a small multiplier. The recent wars are also far less expensive in percent GDP than past wars. And efforts weren't made to close the deficit when things were growing again to guard against bubbles.

"Even left-wing international bureaucracies... bigger government hurts economic performance..." - This isn't really related to the validity of Keynsian economic management. Overall size of the government is less important for that than changes in spending and taxation in response to economic fluctuations. Keynes agreed with other economists that, due to lack of incentives for efficiency, government spending at a given task that can be supplied without failure by a market will probably be less efficient. He therefore advocated a government that, while large enough to actively stabilize the economy, was small enough to let markets do most things. That economic efficiency can fall when a government reaches beyond those activities that are more efficiently done centrally is not surprising, and does not conflict with Keynesian economics.

"The most obvious example may be Japan..." - Check it out. Japan had a ridiculously huge asset bubble that deflated, leading to massive corporate debts and systemic trouble. With sharply dropping investment, one might expect a large recession, but the stimulus programs apparently about balanced that out. Real GDP did grow slightly over the decade, but Japan was apparently in a large liquidity trap, which is a Keynsian failure mode. Look at what happened when Japan used quantitative easing to address it. So yes, Japan now has a huge debt, but the economy dug itself pretty deep in the first place. This bit also serves to illustrate how dishonest the video is being. Look at the Nikkei 225 graph at 6:32. Here is a graph of the Nikkei 225 average from 1970 to when the video was made (2008). The video's graph starts at the peak of the huge bubble and omits the recent upturn in an apparent attempt to portray the fall as the index returned to a number that more reflected the actual value of things as the fault of Keynesian economic policy. I suspect that the decrease from the bubble was why the stock market index was used instead of a direct measure of the economy like GDP.

"Let's end this video by asking a simple question." - If Keynsian economics is solid theoretically and well-supported with real world data, why does this video claim that Keynsian economics is wrong? I'd like to hear what you think, but I suspect that the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Cato Institute have a vested interest in Keynesian policies not being used even if they are good for an economy overall.

"...maybe politicians will finally do the right thing by reducing the burden of government rather than increasing it." - Here again, the video implies that Keynesian fiscal policy is about enlarging the government, period. Convenient that "shrink government because it's a burden" aligns nicely with what the organizations that produced this video advocate for elsewhere, isn't it? It also lends itself more to catchy slogans than an accurate representation of Keynesian economics would.

Consider these videos. The often-overlooked (and often ignored in real policy) part of Keynesian economic management is that the government should run a surplus in booms to cool off overreach, as "Hayek" mentions there, and to pay off debt accrued in downturns. Seems to have worked for Clinton. Longest expansion ever, followed by the smallest recession on record, even with 9/11. Also check out this. It's a bit long, but it gives a 1965 look back on two decades of unprecedented prosperity and fairly Keynesian-based economic policy. Keynesian fiscal policy is simply the most powerful tool ever found for getting out of recessions, and it's pretty good for managing good times too.

Historical levels of deficit, I would assume, particularly over the last century or so. It's usually been a few percent of GDP. Removing the effects of the prescription drug benefit and the Bush tax cuts would put the predicted deficit for the next few years on the low end of that. Diatribe need not be intellectually vapid.

Tax cuts have an opportunity cost. Either they increase the deficit/debt, which must be paid later, or they must be offset by cuts in service. For example, in Ryan's budget plan, tax cuts for the wealthy are paid for mostly by service cuts for the poor.

Rather than looking at what you say he "basically" said, look at what he literally said. If the prescription drug benefit had been funded from the outset, it would not contribute to the deficit today, as funding would have already been in place for it.

As explained here, that seems to be referring to tax increases. It could sort of be justified in terms of opportunity cost, but it's pretty Orwellian, as mentioned there. Par for the course these days though, with things like "death panels" being major talking points.

Deductions like that are intended to make home ownership easier. American dream and such. That's a rather different issue than the level of overall taxation.

It's almost as if a certain party is not negotiating in good faith, or that someone didn't sufficiently research topics before opining about them on a certain online forum. Do really think that Ryan expects his proposal to be implemented as something other than a starting point for gaining concessions from Democrats (or even if he does, that it will serve as something other than that)?

If you mean the first mention of a $4T deficit reduction, Obama was talking about Ryan's plan. Obama followed that bit (which he mentioned as a point in its favor) with criticism of Ryan's plan. Later, when Obama gave his own proposal for a $4T deficit reduction, he followed with an explanation of how that would be achieved. Since both plans rack up more debt, does that mean that you don't think Ryan's plan is valid?

You mean the "literally a death trap" thing? That was a criticism of Representative Schultz for using recklessly (or intentionally) hyperbolic language of the type Stewart had just criticized Republicans for using in the healthcare debate. The visual and commentary pointed out that it was not actually a literal death trap. Political humor yes, but making fun of politicians for making glaringly false statements is rather different from what was going on in the NewsBusted video. For the bit you quoted, Betty White's show doesn't itself have much to do with politics or health care (and it's actually about elderly people pranking younger people), and Obamacare doesn't prank the elderly by any reasonable stretch that I'm aware of. So it's basically an excuse for an unsubstantiated jab at Obama.

Remember when Clinton was in office, and plans were drawn up to pay off the debt in 13 years? Paying off the current debt in 10 is probably within the realm of possibility, if not practicality. Doing that while maintaining services would take something like Europe-level taxation, which is unlikely to fly in the current US political environment. More practically, reducing debt growth to below the rate of inflation would help over the long term, though interest payments would continue to drain the budget.

And where do you think most of that came from? Even the Cato Institute agrees.



Something like raise taxes? To what they were under Clinton, say?

Actually, Ryan's budget is predicted to run a deficit through FY2039. Still think it's serious about reducing the debt?

Like what?

What life do you wish for Americans?

Comparing trends in GDP and debt growth to the situation after World War II indicates that the predicted debt should be manageable provided the people in charge are interested in doing so.

It seems that the Simpsons line that Democrats "don't know how to govern" may be more true now than it was in 1994. The accompanying line that Republicans "want what's worst for everyone" seems to be as well.

Ryan's plan is heading towards removing entitlements, which are privileges of the US legal code, not the Constitution.

An even amount from everyone would be a lump sum payment (about $8000 annually from each person in the US), which would be a great deal more than the present for most people, and a great deal less for the very wealthy. A flat rate without deductions (about 20% on all income) also represents a large increase for most people and a large decrease for most of the very wealthy.

Remember that cutting ALL discretionary spending would not close the deficit. If you propose closing it with cuts alone, significant cuts to entitlements are needed. Rather than starting with the assumption that revenue is fixed (which, as has been pointed out repeatedly, it is not), I would propose* making a list of goals to be achieved with accompanying costs and benefits, arranged from highest to lowest benefit/cost ratio, and a list of revenue sources with accompanying economic costs and benefits, arranged from highest to lowest revenue/harm ratio. Anything on either list that has both a net benefit and is revenue-neutral or better is in at the start. From there, items are added from the top of the goals list, accompanied by the items from the top of the revenue list that it would take to balance the budget satisfactorily. Continue until the benefits of achieving a goal are outweighed by the costs of what it would take to provide funding, and you have a balanced budget that optimally allocates resources, whatever the tax rates turn out to be.

*Realistically, this would take the form of a series of equations describing marginal costs and benefits, allowing different funding levels for various programs to be compared for benefit.

The articles and their sources explain how. In brief, the 2009 budget (President Bush's) had more than a trillion dollar deficit. In the next year, revenue dropped, and mandatory spending increased by $280 billion. In the next year, revenue dropped further, and mandatory spending increased again. The stimulus and other Obama initiatives added a little (relatively) to the deficit, but the overall situation is a legacy of the recession and previous fiscal policy.

$2.11T for 2009 and $2.16 for 2010, actually (2.7 was the initial estimate). Anyway, tax increases and spending cuts, apparently.

On the other hand, pork rinds are better for muscle building. If the diet change is accompanied by an exercise regimen that results in the loss of ten pounds of fat and the gain of twenty pounds of muscle, fat and bloat have been reduced even though weight has increased. Shall we have a metaphor-off?

If the debt is intentional, there is usually a plan to get out of it, like debt for startup, expansions, etc. If a company acquires what appears to be insurmountable debt, it files for bankruptcy, especially if it qualifies for Chapter 11.

Those with lots of wealth, especially liquid wealth*. So the richest individuals and large business interests. Organized crime where it has a significant presence. Less affluent groups can operate on smaller scales. You may recall the quote, "there are ten ways to buy every crooked politician and a hundred ways to buy every honest one," and as that implies, interested parties bid against each other for influence, which takes a lot of money.

*Please read this link, RuffDraft.

It was ruled that corporations (already legally persons for certain purposes) could not be limited in their funding of independent advertisements. The reasoning was that doing so would stifle the First Amendment rights of the citizens in a corporation, though corporations are not themselves citizens. The decision is somewhat controversial.

Depends on what indicators in particular you're looking for, but median income is probably relevant. That and several other indicators were pretty good under Clinton, not so good under (either) Bush. Income inequality is important, but it's not the only important factor.

That's kind of what BeeAre was getting at there. The things that the government spends money on have various monetary and non-monetary benefits, which should be taken into account when considering the merits of spending that results in a debt. Some spending (the construction of functional roads and other infrastructure, say) has such enormous economic benefits that, even ignoring quality of life issues, the resulting economic growth more than pays for the original expense by increased revenue. Some programs have less drastic fiscal effects, but very important benefits nonetheless, like regulation of pollution. Some things don't have much social or fiscal benefit, like corporate tax breaks that go to overseas accounts. The issue isn't so much that debt is always bad, but that debt has a cost such that the things that the government goes into debt for ought to be worth it. Even when facing a large deficit, it is important to focus cuts on those things with relatively low benefit per dollar spent, while leaving more beneficial things more intact. Depending on the situation, there might be programs beneficial enough that funding ought to be increased for them, even if it increases the deficit.

Do you know what the means of the United States are? In World War II, federal spending topped 46% of GDP, and the deficit reached 30% of GDP. Public debt reached about 110% GDP. Economic growth approached 20% per year. The debt dropped to about 60% of GDP within 6 years due to economic growth, inflation, and a surplus from high taxes (the highest surplus as a percent of GDP in US history), with revenue about 10% more of GDP than before the war. The United States is a very long way form exhausting its means. Your personal budget example is very far off, as the federal government more than quintupled its income in three years.

Actually, they are, in that they are made of people who are liable for the debt of the country. That doesn't matter for this consideration though. If China wants the US to pay it back, it has to keep interacting on good terms with the US. Economic ties like that are a strong disincentive to war.

Insufficient regulation? Though that's more an error of omission than commission.

Like any company that makes use of large loans. Say you want to start or expand a business. You get a loan, go into debt, and pay it back with profits, hopefully with the benefits more than offsetting the cost of interest. Comparatively, it's sometimes good for the government to borrow money to do something now, and pay for it later.

The real world is quite a ways from an ideal free market system. Ever heard of things like company towns, truck systems, and other implementations of monopolies? In the real world, businesses try to set up barriers to entry to suppress competition, and people are very much restricted by what others do. Suppose you wanted to compete with De Beers. How would you go about doing that? Or suppose you're a poor person working three minimum wage jobs in a place without better offers available. How would you go about starting up a company of your own?

How is that supposed to work? If a company fires its domestic production workers and moves production to China, who is responsible for the unemployment of the fired workers? If people lose their jobs due to a recession caused by reckless practices in the financial system, who is responsible? Compared to the general population, homeless people are more likely to be children, male, veterans, single, urban, and/or racial minorities. Homelessness varies inversely with education, but more than a quarter of homeless people have gone to college. What do you think about this? Or this?

Animated cartoon. It's a bit more nuanced than a one-liner.

Whether it's good or bad is irrelevant for this. What matters is that Wal-Mart has achieved degrees of monopoly in places, contrary to your assumptions of ideal free markets. Are there benefits form this arrangement? Are there advantages to government-provided services?

No plan projects anything remotely close to that. Please address the real situation.

You've pointed out a bias, which calls conclusions into question, but does not make facts presented wrong. Are the facts presented correct?

Charitable giving fell in the recession though.

That is correct, though Citizens United is listed first since it was the plaintiff.

Want me to go through this one, or do you have any points you want to make yourself?

The tax cuts didn't start it. They just didn't really help things, since it was more a demand-side problem and the cuts were targeted at supply.

More like subsidizing, but pretty much.

Looks like 60 million people or so.

What about health care reform, repealing "Don't ask, don't tell," dealing with the gulf oil spill, "ending" the Iraq war, and starting the Libya "war"?

A country can raise taxes to pay it down, or devalue its currency to reduce the real value of the debt. It is also a sovereign entity that is not bound by an external authority to pay the debts back, though not doing so would still have consequences for its credit rating and international relations.

Congress, the President, and the Vice President are elected, but most of the judicial and executive branches and congressional staff are put in place through other means.

Actually, (for-profit*) corporations are legally obligated to seek profit under the conditions of their incorporation, even beyond the actual motivations of the people running it. It is literally, legally, their raison d'être. The bounds for this are usually the law and however far past the law the corporation thinks it can get away with. The place of regulation is to establish an environment for the corporation to operate within such that profitable but socially detrimental practices are discouraged. If such practices are not discouraged, there's a pretty good chance that corporations in that field will try to make use of them, corporate ideals like "Don't be evil" notwithstanding. Real-world regulations typically came about in the first place because of legal but undesirable actions.

*There are a variety of non-profit corporations with different regulations, such as charities or municipal governments, but talk of corporations usually focuses on for-profit corporations active in business.

Actually, many loopholes are specific exemptions or deductions originally meant to encourage certain things (or encouraged by lobbyists on behalf of those who stood to benefit). Otherwise, loopholes may be created with inconsistent regulation, like trusts allowing estates to avoid taxation. In any case, it's a matter of regulation. Loopholes are holes... in the regulation.

Perhaps (if congressional politics really did work that way), but if major politicians like Newt Gingrich accused Obama of setting up a dictatorship during the response to the financial system breakdown. What do you think would happen if Obama did that?

Every other highly developed nation has a national health care system, and spends less on health care than the US, even in terms of percentage of government budget.

Wink wink nudge nudge.

Those are all priorities.

It includes things like student loans, food stamps, and unemployment compensation. Those are priorities too.

What about the people who didn't want the government involved in their Medicare or Social Security?

The current standard of living for most people in the US relies heavily on government-provided infrastructure, services, and regulation. In short, the government can't afford NOT to do those things because it would undermine the ability of the economy (and society) to function well. How do you think things would go if, say, the government stopped funding road and rail projects, disbanded fire protection, police, and public education services, and stopped regulating utilities, pollution, medicine, and food?

Actually, most income tax brackets saw a 3% reduction. The top bracket was reduced by 4.6%. Also, payroll taxes stayed, so the reduction was from a small part of the overall tax burden for lower income groups and a larger part for higher income groups. Capital gains, dividend, gift, and estate taxes were significantly reduced, which almost exclusively benefited the wealthiest. This worsened the fiscal situation, but did not itself cause the recession. It didn't do much good though.

Actually, net job growth during Bush's first term was slightly negative, and was among the slowest of the last century in the second term. Overall, job growth over Bush's presidency was the worst since Hoover, both in absolute and percentage growth. One could compare those eight years to the preceding eight. Also, real income fell for most people over Bush's presidency. The top 20% improved though.

Ahem. Unemployment under Bush never again reached the low of when he took office, though it was OK for the most part. Unemployment in March was 8.8%.

FY2000 had the largest surplus ever, and the budget was on course to pay down the debt in a little over a decade. FY2003, FY2004, FY2008, and FY2009 each had the largest deficits ever to that time*. Revenue fell, then grew again over Bush's terms, but revenue did not keep up with the increasing expenditure. Economic growth under Bush was actually unusually slow. Counterintuitively straightforward as it may be, lower taxes led to lower revenue.

*The focus of that graph is on the Federal Reserve's efforts to increase the money supply during the recession. Note how the inflation rate dropped as the efforts stepped up, which is the opposite of what one would expect if the money supply weren't collapsing from the breakdown of the financial system, as mentioned earlier.

Because deregulation led to a market failure in the financial system?

The bank that loaned the money owns the loan as a financial asset, as in a debt that it is due to be paid. If it wishes, it can sell this debt to other financial institutions (at a discount from the nominal value, because there's a chance that the person will default on the loan). Those other institutions can package that debt with other debts and other financial assets, and sell them as securities to investors. Naturally, the organizations selling them want a high price, and so have an incentive to overvalue risky debt. Without sufficient transparency and oversight, securities are rated too highly, their value is inflated, and their risk is understated. A bubble forms, and when it pops (as in, investors find out how risky the debt actually is), things go bad. if it's a big bubble, the financial system stops working properly, mass hysteria spreads through the economy, dogs and cats start living together, etc.

So then, who in the government is responsible for the financial crisis, and how did they cause it? Name names, please.

So in other words, having a single organization that people are obligated to use for a certain service is fine if it is more efficient than alternatives (and there are safeguards to prevent abuse). Now, what do you think about the government monopoly on military force? Or a government monopoly on health insurance?

Actually, a monopoly that wants to maximize profit will increase prices above the competitive market equilibrium. Fewer people buy things, but the greater profit per item more than makes up for it. This is pretty basic economics, and relates to why monopolies are usually bad for the system.

Probably worse. There's a lot of potential for abuse, as happened when the US, Britain, and other countries industrialized, but generally, manufacturing jobs increase the standard of living. However, the availability of cheap foreign labor means that domestic wages and/or employment in manufacturing drops due to competition. This is offset to some extent by the availability of cheap imported goods, but there is still disruption. So globalization is pretty good overall, but there are problems.

Logic doesn't work that way. Not A does not imply B. Free capitalism, so far as it has been implemented in the real world, has some glaring problems. Communism, so far as it has been implemented, has its own glaring problems. Mixed capitalism has problems, but it generally far outperforms both. With that in mind, the issue becomes determining the optimal mix for a given situation.

I'll top that with this. 221 House Republicans voted for a blatantly unconstitutional bill. They were mocked on the House floor and in the media. It's been about a month since then. How do you think their reputations are holding up? How many people do you think will care about it in the 2012 elections?

Let's have a look at that.

(video description) "They're smarter, wiser, and better looking than us, that's why they're called "The Elites." So how could they be so wrong about everything?" - Elites are "a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence <members of the ruling elite>" So anyone with a lot of power or influence is an elite. Elites are not a homogenous group, and "they" are not wrong about everything. Andrew Klavan is himself part of the media elite.

"...whenever I'm faced with an important question..." - Here, the discussion is framed with faulty reasoning. If there is a question to be answered, one should turn to the evidence, not the opinions of influential people. Arguments from authority are formally invalid, after all. Klavan uses this to imply that "those elites" are wrong and not to be trusted, but Klavan himself is correct, so can be taken at his word about issues. The issue, as always, is evidence, but a comprehensive examination of evidence is not what Klavan wants to focus on.

"For instance, elite President Barack Obama says that..." - Every part of Obama's quote there is factually correct. Seriously, have you been watching the last decade of US politics? Or what's going on online?

"...we're uninformed, says elite Senator John Kerry..." - Kerry is correct here. This is nothing new. This has long been known and used in propaganda. I can bring up statistics for individual issues if you want. Remember the study about how well people are informed based on which news sources they use? Remember how THE VERY VIDEO WE'RE TALKING ABOUT uses simple slogans to make its point? Remember how you based your evaluations of tax changes on misunderstandings of how corporate tax affects jobs and who the estate tax affects?

"...we're stupid, according to comedian Bill Maher, who must also be an elite..." - Here's the context. Think he's wrong?

"...and that's the diagnosis of First Lady Michelle Obama" - Here is the context. A month before that, this happened. Think her statement was unjustified?

"..."nation of cowards"..." - Here is the context. Think Holder's statement was unjustified?

"...editorialists at the elite New York Times..." - Klavan doesn't give names, articles, or quotes, so (since there are many editorialists who have written many articles) it amounts to "take my word for it," or "see what you can find yourself."

"...that's the only way to explain the fact that we didn't vote for the people supported by the elites..." - So "the elites" disparage "us" and "we" all disagree with "them". You might find this interesting. Guess what words are on which list.

"...nor any achievement they can point to that has made our lives better than before they took office... so-called science and facts..." - The obvious problems in this section are big part of why I'm still not sure whether Klavan is sincere or not. "Facts have a liberal bias" is rarely used seriously, after all. That and the other issues suggest a parody of "conservative" talking points. Klavan's past indicates that he might be sincere. The high production value and use of propaganda techniques suggest that it's intentionally misleading.

For the video in general: The presentation is framed in terms of Us (Klavan and the audience) vs. Them (the elites), even though, as mentioned before, Kalvan himself is a media elite, and there are conservative elites as well (like the people Klavan is working for here). Points attributed to "elites" are in a "dirty" font, and "elite" is used repeatedly as an epithet. The US flag in the background is kind of justified by context when it appears, but then it stays in the background for unrelated things Klavan says, and the color fades in at the end, another blatant propaganda technique. Klavan is dressed semi-casually, with clothes somewhat disheveled, in contrast to the images presented of "the elites" except Michelle Obama's at the end, and he uses self-deprecating language, mannerisms, and other little things like that to build audience sympathy and further the "us vs. them" theme.

Let's have a look at that too.

(video description) "Andrew Klavan explains how government will suck the tax payers dry as well." - Because TAXATION caused the recession, right?

"...so they came to me..." - Klavan is being literal here. He's an expert in writing, not economics. Anyway, here too he's implying that "experts" are the arbiters of reality, not evidence.

"Not being experts yourselves..." - This serves to legitimize Klaven's statements about policy that follow, since he ironically implies that his expertise is needed to point out a common horror movie trope. Since it's not, why would Klavan need expertise in economics for us to take his word about complex policy issues?

"...Ronald Reagan cut tax rates and slowed the growth of government..." - As I pointed out earlier, while Reagan did cut income tax rates, he increased the scope of taxation, so that the overall tax burden was reduced somewhat, but not a lot. As for the growth of government, real revenue increased by 19% (2.2% / year) and real expenses increased by 22% (2.5% / year). Revenue averaged 18% of GDP, spending averaged 22.3% of GDP, and the deficit averaged 4.3% of GDP. The debt nearly tripled (up 178%, 13.6% per year), and GDP increased by 32% (3.5% / year). Now let's check Clinton's numbers. GDP up by 33% (3.6% / year), debt up by 32% (3.5% / year), revenue up 47% (4.9% / year), and expenses up 12.3% (1.5% / year). Revenue averaged 19.3% GDP, expenses averaged 19.4% GDP, and deficit averaged 0.1% GDP. So Clinton taxed more (closing the deficit and forming a surplus in the process), but Reagan grew the government 67% faster. When population is considered, spending per capita under Reagan increased by 1.6% / year / person, compared to 0.2% / year / person under Clinton, so by that measure Reagan grew it about 7x as fast. As for "25 of the most free, prosperous, and creative years this country has ever known," It's quite a stretch to give Reagan all the credit for that, as much of the rest of the prosperity in that time came from the Clinton years with their rather different policies. That span also includes three recessions, 9/11, and the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping, imprisonment without trial, etc. The growth rates of the Reagan and Clinton administrations have been the highest of the last 30 years, but they are unremarkable for the 20th Century as a whole. In that context, it's not so much that Reagan/Clinton were notably good (though Clinton gets some props for the longest uninterrupted expansion in US history), but that the Bushes were notably bad.

"This is an almost perfect metaphor for your government at work." - The government has started businesses like the USPS (the second largest employer in the US), utilities, and others, and provides help with starting businesses and educating the workforce. The government creates wealth like infrastructure, science, and technology. It adds value to food, drugs, and other products by certifying them safe. It protects the wealth of functioning markets and the environment. Most government spending these days involves transfer payments, so most of most peoples' tax payments (which are a long way from "all the stuff they make") goes right back to other people. Since the government is running a deficit, people are overall actually getting more money from the government than they pay in taxes.

"Now, there are some differences..." - Paying taxes to support government services IS good for us (police, fire protection, defense, infrastructure, etc.). It CAN BE patriotic (WWII, "Ask what you can do for your country," paying off a debt that would harm the country if left alone, etc.). We all DO have to make sacrifices (It's called economization, and it's a part of the human condition because we don't have unlimited supplies of everything.). In many cases, the government DOES know how to spend money better than "you" do. Self interest DOES NOT ALWAYS coincide with the interests of society, and one of the jobs of the government is to prevent excessive abuse from being done for certain peoples' self-interest (slavery, say, or theft). Politicians have various motivations, including, sometimes, altruism.

"Every dollar the government takes is one less dollar of freedom for you and one more dollar of power for them." - Because 18% more dollars would buy more freedom in the absence of the government that enforces laws, builds roads and other infrastructure, makes sure that the markets you can use to buy a TV or finance a house or business work properly and that charities actually do what they say they do, and prevents the mob boss downtown from setting up his own city-state. Libertarians want to free the shit out of us, don't they? Or so the rhetoric would seem to suggest.

"..and of course, every citizen who feeds on those jobs, and projects, and programs... becomes a zombie just like their government masters..." - Then Klavan himself and everyone here is a zombie (Internet technology produced by the government without our tax support). Klavan attended the University of California, Berkely, the tuition of which is subsidized by California taxpayers. He may have received student loans. We all use infrastructure that was built before we were born, paid for by taxes collected from others.

"...the Night of the Living Government has just begun." - Rather, it began in 1788 when the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation because the Articles weren't working. A stronger central government was needed, and TL;DR that's what we have.

For the video in general: Klavan implies throughout that expertise isn't very important (especially, say, for those experts with different views of economics or history) while expecting the audience to take him at his word because he presents himself as an expert in the topics at hand. Plus, you know, some of the stuff I mentioned about the precious video. Also, the government is a zombie army? Really?

Pretty much, but i think Q.U. is looking for consistency. What do you think would happen to the deficit if the Bush tax cuts were repealed?

Do you remember when the tax cuts were debated? That wasn't the rationale AT ALL. More the reverse, actually, for the 2001 cuts. There was a surplus, and the idea was to put it toward tax cuts rather than paying down the debt as Clinton had proposed the year before. Even the recklessly optimistic Heritage Foundation estimate predicted a reduction of $1.1 trillion in revenue through 2011 compared to the existing tax structure. The 2003 cuts were supposed to be for economic stimulus, not balancing the budget. Those were the public, stated reasons, but, as pointed out by the opposing economists, the 2003 cuts were not well suited for the purpose of stimulus, and by then the 2001 cuts had already failed to stimulate growth, along with producing a large deficit. So we can conclude either that the proponents of the cuts didn't understand economics very well, or that the cuts were put in place as part of the "starve the beast" strategy Q.U. and I have mentioned.

Impressive as always.

If only you could make a living off just presenting facts, man.

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Ugh, that's big. Let me just finish responding to some key points I think I should discuss. If I manage to remember what we were talking about back then.


And therefore, while I agree with the validity of the second graph, I fail to see how efficiency in the way you define it in this case would do us any good to consider. It never increases, so you cannot establish a peak point of optimal funding to results. That's why as I said, what you called efficacy would serve a better role.


As far as I can tell at least half of them are not.


Here I was mostly sourcing on their political campaigns. Where the reps were throwing shit all over the dems and calling them out on the most ridiculous and retarded things (like Obama eating a cheeseburger the wrong way) while the dems didn't seem to try to hit back until much later.


My mistake. But legal code is still similarly important.


My point exactly. That's why tax rates need to increase with income, as they are now.


Any other source for that vid? One that doesn't say "Sorry Great Britain..."?


Who says he cannot?

I mean, Bush can still even now get $500.000 for a speech, and that's even without any facts. And frankly, I'd rather listen to Val.

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This post is intended for information only. Please do not reply to this message as responses cannot be read or acknowledged due to the stupidity of the user.

Unfortunately, that segment doesn't seem to be available elsewhere for now, but the situation is described here. I suppose you could try a proxy to watch the Daily Show bit.

before i read valhallen's post, i'll answer the last part of yours, RD.



So wait, let me get this straight. If a poor person loses money, he risks death. If a rich person loses money, he risks money. So rich people suffer more than the poor, because if they lose money, everyone loses their job? What ever happened to the free market recovering?

Either poor people bounce back because it is so easy to find another rich person to give them money, which means the rich have a worse deal; or the rich bounce back because they are not allowed to fail because all the money that have and spend will be lost, so the poor have a worse deal.

Which is it? Who has the worse deal, RD? What do you see happening in the world that leads you to your answer? And what do we do to improve that deal?

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Dave keep your damn near racist ignorant logic as far from the other sections of the site as humanly possible because it hurts my face just thinking about it.
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Tazuren Mal, please, do the world a BIG FUCKING FAVOR, and drop DEAD!
Cybella YOU EGOCENTRIC IDIOT!
Kathleen mal you are the people i hate the most here...and that is saying something
Hana you misogynist fuckwad.
Sakura I hate you.
Relick not many people would really care if you left without a word.
Cali Mal's an elitist cunt that glowers in getting peopel to dislike him. He can stay the fuck out of the RP forums forever and I'll be happy and he could leave Snafu altogehter and I'd probably not even notice..and if I did, I'd be nothing but happy. Shit, he's nothing special. Just another internet troll that happens to wear a different mask.

Continued from before. This bit was mostly ready but not cleaned up.



That's not really how it happened. Over Bush's budgets, the national debt increased by about $6T (about doubling it), about $1T of which went to the wars. Obama campaigned on economic issues, not budget issues, because the country was getting into the biggest recession since the Great Depression, and it was obvious that the deficit and debt would get pretty big from the policies that were in place. Care to cite any promises made by Obama about reducing the national debt?

By the end of FY2009 (Bush's last budget), the debt was about $12T, about half of which was added under Bush's budgets, and existing policies, if left in place, would produce $1T and larger deficits for several years. What, exactly, do you think Obama did (will do?) to "sink us into nearly three times as much debt as Bush racked up by 2012"? Though the health care reform is supposed to reduce the deficit somewhat, the lack of the public option really crippled it in that regard. Do you think that the Democrats pushed to remove it? Keep this in mind.

I think the point was along the lines of the US having a much lower tax burden than other modern nations despite trying to maintain entitlement, military, and other spending higher than revenue, and making up the difference with a deficit. That the US tax burden is quite a bit lower than shown on the graph actually strengthens this point, and shows how nations with twice the effective tax bite of the US are doing fine.

That's not what Warren Buffett was talking about. His secretary supposedly made about $60k/year and paid an overall tax rate of about 30%, which would be mostly due to income, entitlement, state, and local taxes. Warren Buffett made most of his income from capital gains, which are taxed at 15%, giving him an overall tax rate of about 17.7%, supposedly without using tax avoidance strategies that let capital gains avoid tax altogether.

That's missing the point. Ever heard of game theory? Tragedy of the commons? No one person, even the richest in the world, has enough money to make a large difference in the US budget. Any such donation represents a very high personal cost to gain ratio, so it would be irrational (certain considerations of Bayesian rationality aside) for people to do it of their own accord. That doesn't prevent them from understanding that compulsory taxation to support the system is important, or even from supporting a tax increase.

Which is because Ryan's budget largely uses service cuts for the poor to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy instead of putting the savings toward reducing the deficit. Also because it would result in cuts to funds that now go to helping keep children alive and healthy.

More like this, rather. See case studies 5 and 7 for more detailed explanations.

As I've been saying for a while, it's a cash flow issue. The effects of the Bush tax cuts on cash flow and debt can be calculated. If spending were dropped back to 2000 levels, it would represent cutting EVERYTHING but Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest payments, and some of those would still require partial cuts. What were you saying about giving up more money?

Also, for year to year changes, look at real rather than nominal income and expenditure. Revenue fell in both 2001 (recession) and 2002 (tax cut), while expenses increased a little in 2001 (Clinton-budgeted growth as population grows) and a lot in 2002 (Afghanistan war). Also, revenue fell again in 2003 (more tax cuts) and expenses increased a lot again (Iraq war).

Federal support of charities is rather more than $20B but what percent of the budget it amounts to depends on what counts (general nonprofits? schools? hospitals?). I'm curious about where you got those numbers. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting got $422m in federal funds (about 0.012% of federal spending) in 2010, of which about $25m went to PBS and about $3m went to NPR. As for public vs. private funding of things charities do...

Charitable donations are deducted from taxable income, thereby indirectly reducing income tax due. Deductions for charity are limited to 50% of gross income (for individuals - corporations are limited to 10%), which could lower total income tax by up to 17.5% of gross income. The top income (as in income subject to income tax) earners pay about 16.6% of their gross income to income tax. There are billionaires who pay no income tax at all.

Q.U. was making the case that some charities funnel money back to wealthy donors to evade taxes. But as for charities in general, both public generosity and government funding help.

Generally for monetary gain or enhancement of economic power, though personal agendas sometimes come into play.

Historical responses to abusive monopolies have included armed insurrection, industrial sabotage, regulations (like breaking the monopoly up or constraining business practices) to prevent abuse, and forming unions / other political blocs. Generally, whoever secures the backing of the government wins. If the government stays out of it, whoever fights dirtier tends to win.

Ryan and the House Republicans are.

By law, the reduction in rates is due to expire. The status quo is that the rates will increase. If the law is changed so that the rates don't change, it would be a tax cut even though the rates would stay the same, because it reduces taxes from what they would be.

"All taxes" would take a major change in the tax structure (payroll, sales, property, state, etc.) and would therefore not be politically practical. "35 for 35" would be a reduction for people making less than about $80k taxable income, more for everyone else, though elimination of exemptions would lower the break even point (by nearly half, depending on the situation) and embiggen the increase for higher incomes, and the marginal return of work would drop significantly for income at $35k. So a fair chunk of the "middle class" would take a hit, therefore it's not politically practical. I'd actually propose keeping a lot of deductions for the economic incentives they provide, eliminating tax brackets altogether, and having a continuously increasing marginal rate (logarithm-based, say) such that taxes for lower / middle / upper middle income groups don't change a whole lot, but millionaires would face a few percent more, and billionaires would pay a few percent more than that (apply a similar increasing rate to gift, estate, capital gains, etc. too). That would help provide an incentive to de-centralize wealth and redeem investments over longer periods of time, perhaps reducing market volatility. But who likes logarithms anyway? Also, remove the cap on payroll taxes. A more progressive structure would probably be better, but making it non-regressive is probably politically viable in the short term.

The messages included factual explanations of how some of the things you've been saying are wrong. This provides an interesting companion to those videos.

What about Kennedy or Nixon? There are degrees of puppetry.

Want me to go through this one, or do you have any points you want to make yourself?

Well, for one, there have been some calls for military coups. And there's stuff like this.

I'll grant for this consideration that the Bill of Rights was originally intended, but let's look at the spirit of the Constitution. It was a massive, unprecedented increase in central government authority. Rights of States were reduced in service to the common good. The spirit was basically, "We value both individual liberty and the common welfare, so we're doing this because, while it is imperfect (slavery lol), this is what it will take to get things working better." The goal was NOT preventing growth of government power or taxation (pretty much the opposite, rather, as the government under the Articles sorely lacked them). Guards were put in place to prevent abuse of power, not growth of power to address new problems, which was implicitly endorsed with the "promote the general welfare" bit. Authority to address new problems was given to Congress, subject to the approval of the people through the democratic process. And the whole thing was made adjustable, so it would be flexible enough for changes in the future.

Some proposals of the Tea Party involve fewer government controls, like deregulation of finance, health care, and environmental protection. That's bad, mkay? Other proposals involve greater government control, like busting unions, making people liable for arrest if they don't carry papers regarding their residency status, and setting up de facto dictatorships*. That's also bad.

*Robocop lol.

How about the previously prevailing political environment?

All else equal, a simpler system would probably be better. The problem is that complexity has some advantages. For example, suppose that the government wants to encourage people to switch to electric cars because electrics have fewer negative externalities than conventional cars, so electric cars get subsidized with a tax break. Lots of programs like that exist to provide incentives for various things, and there is some value in that. If programs are wasteful, they should be removed, but not all the complex bits in the tax code are wasteful.

The positions of the Tea Party are rather ill-defined... except in opposition to other groups' positions, mostly Democrats. They mostly agree on what they don't like, but are not very unified in what they DO like.

Sure, the front page description looks relatively reasonable, if a bit reactionary, nationalistic, historically revisionist, and in questionable agreement with the First Amendment, but check out the part where it describes policy goals.

Regarding Obamacare, check these out.

Regarding growth and job creation, the plan is to deregulate things and not raise taxes, when insufficient regulation is what led to the recession, and that combined with the low taxes led to expansion of the deficit and debt, and monetary policy limited deflation in 2009.

Regarding taxes, a low estate tax and the 2001 / 2003 tax cuts did not do much for economic or job growth in the past several years, so why would continuing the status quo suddenly improve things?

Regarding spending cuts, as mentioned before, cutting all discretionary spending would not close this year's deficit. Further, entitlement programs grow over time as more people apply. Closing the deficit without tax increases would take significant cuts to entitlements.

Regarding "Protect America--An Exceptional Country": It's a bit jingoistic, but whatever. It seems to misunderstand how the UN works.

Regarding traditional values, taxpayer support for abortions is currently banned. This seems to be related to proposals to de-fund Planned Parenthood, which is currently supported for things like gynecology for poor women. Would upholding the sanctity of human life include efforts to repeal capital punishment, provide for the well-being of the poor, or bring about world peace? Or subsidize gynecology for poor women?

Regarding bailouts, that's a fair point (though the idea of the bailouts wasn't about being fair), but that's pretty much been done already, and it was largely under Bush. It's expected to turn a profit in the end, and the part that looks to be a loss involves programs to help people stay in their homes.

Regarding court packing, that's not a very good assessment of the situation. Also, laws do not exist apart from the people.

Regarding new leaders, what do you think about what they've done, as pointed about above?

Looks like about half of Mississippi Republicans admit to overt racism. Do you think that, compared to Republicans in general, members of the Tea Party are more interested in returning things to how they were in the past? Who is now calling birthright citizenship into question? It may not be a majority, but it's obvious that a significant minority of the Tea Party is at least partly motivated by racism.

Want me to go through this one, or do you have any points you want to make yourself?

I don't know of any mainstream attempts to dismantle the bourgeoisie in the US. There are, as pointed out elsewhere in this post, some attempts at authoritarian corporatism accompanied by a nationalistic rejection of egalitarianism and rationalism. Remember that Communism has usually been established through a revolution, and Fascism has usually been established through use of existing political machinery.

O'Reilly may be better than Beck and some others, but that doesn't make him a good source of information.

Actually, statistical sampling is rather different from what you described there. The confidence of a survey depends on the sample size, not (for populations much larger than the sample size) the size of the population being investigated. That's why national surveys usually involve around a thousand people (acceptably low margins of uncertainty for overall conclusions). A census is not needed. Such surveys have been done of the Tea Party.

As of February 2011, 72%* of Republican primary voters did not think that Obama was born in the US. This is similar to the beliefs of those who strongly identified with the Tea Party in California in 2010, though it seems to have become more prevalent over time, as the numbers were rather higher for the Tea Party than Republicans as a whole.

*Yes, the title says 51%. 21% weren't sure what to think. This is rather like not being sure what to think about whether or not the Moon is made of cheese. Trump's statements go into that 21%.

As of just over a year ago, 89% of Tea Party supporters claimed to be white, compared to 8% claiming others. The percentages for the US as a whole are 72% white and 28% others. That indicates that the white/minority ratio among Tea Party supporters is about 4x as high as the general population.

As of last year, 18% of Americans claimed to support the Tea Party, and only 22% of those (4% of Americans) had donated money or attended rallies. The Tea Party seems to be disproportionately vocal.

That's not what Obama said*. The article you linked really doesn't support its point very well. One revealing bit is this: "I stopped in a fast food restaurant for a burger. Around fifteen white seniors were having lunch. I overheard them ranting about Obama's overreaches and socialist policies. Upon seeing me, a black man, they became silent. I was tempted to say, "Please continue, I whole-heartedly agree with you!" Too bad they did not notice my Tea Party Express t-shirt." This is supposed to be an example of where white people were afraid to criticize Obama over policy, lest they be perceived by strangers as racists. Perhaps instead they stopped talking because they became uncomfortable discussing their political beliefs in the presence of a black man, whether or not they saw his shirt. The author lives in Florida, so the anecdote probably took place in the South, where many white seniors would have grown up and entered adulthood and politics under Segregation, in which black men were prevented from interrupting groups of white people in restaurants, among other things.

*A steering wheel is a key component of a car. The overall goal of driving a car is not to turn the front wheels a few degrees in either direction, though that is a component.

No such threats have been pushed by Obama or the Democrats (care to cite any?). That the Tea Party acts as if they have been calls their understanding of reality and/or motivations into question.

What rights and freedoms are in danger, and who is endangering them? What do you think union members would say about this?

That article characterizes Social Security as a get-rich scheme about to collapse, so therefore Social Security should be dismantled. Really, RuffDraft?

17% is not most.

In other words, Medicare treatment is less expensive than the private market, and that article talks about an effort to make up some of the difference to encourage some of the (relatively few) doctors no longer participating to continue to treat Medicare patients. Do you think that replacing Medicare with vouchers would maintain the cost advantage of Medicare, or would suddenly facing the private sector costs mean that Medicare patients would no longer have coverage without a large increase in funding for the vouchers?

You realize that "not audited" does not equate to "fraudulent" right? Medicare and Medicaid may lose about $60B (8%) to fraud. This is a higher percentage but lower amount than the private sector. Since Medicare is less expensive despite the higher rate of fraud, what do you think of the tradeoff?

To test this principle, would you agree or disagree that, compared to the US population as a whole, members of the Ku Klux Klan are more likely to be white and/or racist? What if you had a group composed of 10% KKK members and 90% average Americans?

Yet people discussed it.

If political beliefs vary significantly by race, race is not irrelevant in politics.

Pretty much. Racial epithets are offensive because of what they mean, which varies by context, not from the phonemes that make them up.

The Tea Party is disproportionately white, and it opposes the policies of a black president who has mostly continued the policies of a white president. It also advocates policy that disproportionately helps the rich (who are disproportionately white) and that hurt poor people (who are disproportionately minorities). While this does not require racism on the Tea Party's part overall, it does look questionable, and there are clearly identified racist elements in the Tea Party.

What if he's right though? Where was the Tea Party when Bush was in office?

More true than you may have meant there. Do you know what the original Tea Party was about? The East India Company had a legal monopoly on tea, but it was expensive in large part due to tariffs. Smugglers made a killing by illegally bringing in cheaper (if inferior) tea and undercutting the East India tea. The Tea Act made East India tea much more affordable, but the small colonial tax remained. Because it was now cheaper than smuggled tea, many people bought it instead, and smugglers lost business. They (and other traders who weren't allowed to import the East India tea) didn't like that, hence the Tea Party. It amounted to adding injury to insult, since taxation without representation had been going on for a while, and the Tea Act didn't increase taxes (instead greatly reducing them), but it did affect the business of wealthy traders. Other such economic incentives against British control helped the Revolution along.

And who do you think stands to benefit from modern Tea Party proposals to cut corporate taxes and reduce regulation? As with the original Tea Party and the American Revolution, there are popular sentiments in support of the movement, but business interests are steering it toward outcomes favorable to themselves. As before, how well this turns out will depend on how well the interests of the general population are protected in this process.

The first is a coup. The second is the democratic process.

Yes.

It's a matter of degree. Which group do you think has a greater percentage of people who think that Obama was not born in the US, that evolution is false, that the world is a few thousand years old, that it will end within a few decades, or that the world is not getting warmer.

You are aware, are you not, that at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, slavery was legal, and blacks and women could not vote? And Native Americans were being exterminated? And that the Constitution greatly increased the power of the government? And that it was established after an armed rebellion and specifies freedom to own weapons in case the populace would have need of them? And that something can be extreme in contemporary politics but allowed by the Constitution?

That's somewhat true, but the point was never to get out what you put into Social Security. The point was to provide for people in need of assistance to maintain a decent standard of living.

It's The Man, man. Fossil fuel companies, the military-industrial complex, financial organizations, Freemasons, Skull and Bones, Illuminati, and unions.

The US is currently at its peak historical population growth. The Baby Boom had a higher percentage growth rate, but the numbers were smaller. So the US is in decent shape for the time being. Most other developed countries less so. There are some rather worse economic inventions than Social Security.

No, that's pretty much it. Politics doesn't have to make rational sense, at least in first-order descriptions.

The point seemed to be that entitlement programs that take money from younger workers to give to older/poorer people can't cope very well with the demographic trends of some countries, in which birth rates fall and people live longer, which greatly increases the entitlement burden per worker. Check the description and links here for basics.

Not so much, actually. A lower savings rate increases economic activity, since the money gets spent and passed around the economy instead of sitting idle. This is offset by the use of savings in banks for loans and investments, but banks must keep some in reserve, so it's still something of a drag. Savings have a valuable part in the economy, so it's important for the savings rate to be appropriate for the economic situation (otherwise bubbles or recessions follow). Private savings also don't function as a social safety net, since some investments go bad, and some people can't save enough in the first place. How is a public transfer program supposed to be less secure?

Math be damned?

Why would stimulus packages be less useful with people using savings instead of regular payouts? Wouldn't the shrinking of retirement account investments in a recession lower propensity to spend, resulting in a need for a larger stimulus?

Like AAA-rated mortgage-based securities? I'm serious. Think carefully about what sort of investments you're proposing, and how those securities looked in 2005.

Given the state of financial reform, that's not too far off, at least in results. Also, Hitler had a dog, was a national leader, and rode around in a fancy car.



Look past the partisanship to the facts presented. It's serious, if a bit hyperbolic.

How about policies as implemented? As pointed out in that article, that puts Obama pretty close to H.W. Bush.

They aren't now, but both Reagan and H.W. Bush raised taxes. What has Obama done about gun control that makes him so dissimilar to them as to invalidate the comparison? I'll add that thus far, Obama has cut taxes.

So current Democrats are in charge of deciding what past Republicans have done?



I'll be catching up on the remaining stuff now. It's not written yet, so it may take longer.

Remind me to stop coming in and reading this thread every day.

I just come to marvel at the length of Valhallen's posts.

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At this rate, they'll become so lengthy that his posts will become a satire of themselves.

that's the beauty of complication: it spins around what i would like to think is a theoretical wheel of irony, driving past satire into real art again, like some sort of exquisite singularity that breaks the normal singular way of understanding the physic of citation and starts barfing hawking radiation everywhere.

watch me be four layers of ironic

i laughed pretty hard when in valhallen's latest follow-up he made a foot-note for "Robocop, lol"

and i do read errthing made in this thread.

taught me more than two political science courses.

I thought of that as well. A fluid tax rate adjusted by your personal income exactly. As if exactly tailored to your personal needs, gains, and capacity. Just put in one equation which would define the tax rate on the basis of the number you put in as "taxable income". It would need to keep most of it's pre-factors though, as in reductions for people in different special conditions.


Whenever watching those Tea Party members all I can hear is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWNho8g0lsU


Ahahahahaha... Yeah. He knows so much about the world. And its people. Look, how cute he is when he discovers black culture of America for the first time. He learned that they are people too! Wow. They are actually well dressed. That's new. And look, they didn't rap! How rare. Rotfl.


There surely are worse inventions. But in general it is not a sustainable concept in the long run, where we know what the trends are. Now US is rather unusual, because it has a high immigration rate, and that increases the total fertility of the society, which allows the current system to keep on going. The only questions are: how long can it keep being positive, and how much will it cost to keep it active for how long.


It is less secure if you know how to build a well-regulated and stable market of insurance and retirement funds.
And I do agree, that pay-as-you-go is far more effective and helps stimulate growth better. But that makes it superior only for how long? Until the dependency ratio topples these benefits over. The best course of action would be to recognise the toppling point and begin a reform at that point to maximise benefits and minimise costs.


What does that have to do with recession? If you get your country into recession it will screw up most things anyway. I'm talking about a stable healthy economy. In which case my point holds true, that as of all the trends of ageing countries that we've seen by now, the pay-as-you-go system will eventually become a dangerous drag.


I wouldn't know what you're referring to. But I can imagine that whatever the problem was, it could have been avoided if done right. Simple as that.

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Intergenerational transfer programs can work with a steady-state population distribution, or even a shrinking population, so long as things are balanced for the conditions. I think that the US can maintain a relatively high fertility rate for at least as long as abstinence-only sex ed is popular and abortion has something of a social stigma.

No modern economy can reliably avoid economic trouble altogether. The longest span between recessions in the US was ten years in the 1990s. Recessions will happen, so a retirement plan has to accommodate them somehow. What do you think would have happened during the recent "Great" recession if Social Security had been replaced with private retirement accounts, as had been proposed at various times in the past?

A AAA credit rating is the highest available, held by the US government as well as certain other governments and organizations. If something is rated AAA, it's supposed to mean that it's pretty much a sure thing, like US government bonds. In the run-up to the financial crisis, mortgage-based debt was packaged, obfuscated, repackaged, rated AAA, and sold as "safe" investment securities. The mortgages really merited nowhere near AAA, but the financial organizations that packaged them could make more money by understating the risk. Such securities were incorporated into retirement savings, which were severely impacted when the financial crisis hit and it became apparent how bad they really were.

Yes, okay. But again, what does that have to do with the retirement plan? I can see that you're saying that if US had a fully private retirement base they would have lost it all. And firstly, I must note that I mentioned that I wouldn't go for a fully private retirement plan, because as you pointed out, it's risky. I'd leave it to a strictly regulated governmental organisation, that "cannot fail".
Now on a separate note, the fact that stupid unregulated banks sold risky mortgages as AAA credits for social securities, is just a failure of the investment system, not the retirement system. Again, regulation, and all is well.

Finally, I agree, US could probably keep its fertility rate high enough to never feel the rough sting of ageing population like Japan does. It could be manageable, through different economic and political actions. But my point is, at that point (ageing population) it is still LESS effective and more costly than the alternative.

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a credit rating is nothing but a form of "notarization", isn't it? An official review by someone that (in good cases) affirms that all the protocols that the official reviewer measures their judgment by are being fulfilled in a certain way?

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Bleedcomics Staff Writer/Editor, , and Keeper of the Jar Brain of Secret President. RIP Ku Ku Ku \(-^.^-)/ U Wuz A REAL N***A!!!!!!!
"We're quite aware of this. BR is no happy rainbow face man. He is simply our neighborhood best fucking poster." ~ Warbear
Puff Most Epic.

A credit rating is an evaluation (typically by a rating bureau) of how worthy of credit an entity is (how likely a loan will be repaid). Things that increase credit worthiness include a history of paying debts on time and having a lot of assets available to call upon if needed. The US federal government is unsurpassed in both regards, and so gets the highest rating available. For debt derivatives leading up to the financial crisis, the rating bureaus rated them too highly for various reasons, and here we are.

it's almost like if you cheat the system you do so with the intent of having short term and short distance benefits at the expense of whatever things are controlled by the rule that was broken hmmmmmmmmmmmm

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Bleedcomics Staff Writer/Editor, , and Keeper of the Jar Brain of Secret President. RIP Ku Ku Ku \(-^.^-)/ U Wuz A REAL N***A!!!!!!!
"We're quite aware of this. BR is no happy rainbow face man. He is simply our neighborhood best fucking poster." ~ Warbear
Puff Most Epic.

Something to consider.