Politics, Politics, Politics

[MacNfries]

The current national debt is about 18.3 trillion dollars, per citizens about $57,000, per tax payers about $157,500
In 2008 the national debt was about 10.5 trillion dollars, per citizen about $34,000, per taxpayers about $96,800
Source is the U.S. treasury
And the deficit is no longer falling

The problem here, Torp, is that you're not admitting as to HOW we got to the first $1o.5 trillion, and that's been the premise of my argument with you for some time. Trickle Down got us to that $10.5 trillion ... and destroyed the middle-class as it was applied over and over and over. And Republicans want to do it all over again ... cut taxes for the wealthy & corporations.

Also, you're refusing to admit the state & magnitude of the economy of the USA (the largest economy in the world) when Obama walked into the White House and WHO put us there. We were losing around 800,000 jobs per month, 2 auto industries going bankrupt, housing plummeting, Wall Street crashing, two wars going on. You're not going to ask me to pull those charts back up, are you?

And the month AFTER taking office, jobs started coming back again, and now Obama's had 56 straight months of job growth ... I think I heard it was the most consecutive months of job growth in the history of the US. Do I need to put up that job's growth chart yet again? And you expected him to simply turn the US economy around (on a dime) in a matter of months? Had the auto industries gone bankrupt as Romney suggested they should have, think of the additional MILLIONS of jobs that would have been lost because of it. And how did Republicans help? With 300+ filibusters to every initiative Obama took ... by opposing or staling every appointment Obama made, by taking an Oath to Grover Norquist not to accept any tax increases from Obama, and in fact refusing to do anything IF the President didn't extend the Bush tax cuts which were suppose to expire. What about the US credit rating downgrade ... caused by the Republicans in Congress? How did THAT help us?

ARE YOU DENYING ANY OF THIS? Imagine how much better off the economy would be, and how much faster it would have recovered if Republicans had spent just half the energy working with Obama, instead of working against him and for Grover Norquist. I looked, and I can't find where Grover Norquist was on the ballot box of ANY government post ... the American voters didn't elect Grover Norquist to run Congress, did they?

And you talk about stagnant, flat income for workers ... well, hell yeah, and Trickle Down was a major reason as to why incomes have been flat for middleclass workers. How can you, with a straight face, point the finger at Obama for the current economic situation? And that AWESOME jobs bill that John Boehner so proudly held up in early 2010 ... you know, the one with 17 pages of which half were pictures? Remember that one? And what exactly have Republicans done to create jobs ... even ONE JOB? Remember Back To The Future? "Hello, hello .... anybody home? Hello!"

I've simply got to get some of those hallucinate ******* you're taking, so I can see the rainbows of the Republicans as clearly as you can.
..."Tiger, Tiger" ...........

 

[Illa]

Who Is Running for President? - The New York Times

 

[MacNfries]

Who Is Running for President? - The New York Times

I see it Clinton (Democrats) Walker (Republicans) and Trump (70% chance as an Independent)
I'd like to see a Bernie Sanders/Eliz. Warren ticket, but that won't happen. However, possibly Clinton's having to debate Sanders may help Clinton focus more on the real issues.

 

[TwoBiFour]

Well, your a little miss lead on who actually spurred job growth, but 80% of the American people are so no surprise there. I can't prove anything - I don't have fancy charts, animated gif's or links to obscure news articles but i can assure you, Obama had little to nothing to do with job growth other than the pointless jobs he created in big government. It has nothing to do with GOP or Dems or who did what in the past either. You and Torpedo can play the blame game, I'm not joining in on that discussion. In my line of business I am in a position that gave me a unique perspective on job growth and how it developed over the course of the last 8 years - It's not pretty. I think what infuriates me most is the fact that the general public will never know what actually transpired. The truth is never news worthy.

 

[MacNfries]

Well, your a little miss lead on who actually spurred job growth, but 80% of the American people are so no surprise there. I can't prove anything - I don't have fancy charts, animated gif's or links to obscure news articles but i can assure you, Obama had little to nothing to do with job growth other than the pointless jobs he created in big government.

That's fine if you don't have charts, or graphs, or links ... just your awesome memory and knowledge stored between your ears. Why don't you, just for entertainment, enlighten me as to the reason(S) for job growth the past 58 months.
All I have is silly stuff provided by the Bureau Labor Statistics, and anything you have to offer will be fresh imput to this deadend conversation ... so, please, share your secrets that the rest of us do not know.

What caused job growth 2 months after President Obama took office?
Please explain this chart. Is this false?.....
....

 

[Torpedo]

The problem here, Torp, is that you're not admitting as to HOW we got to the first $1o.5 trillion, and that's been the premise of my argument with you for some time. Trickle Down got us to that $10.5 trillion ... and destroyed the middle-class as it was applied over and over and over. And Republicans want to do it all over again ... cut taxes for the wealthy & corporations.

Also, you're refusing to admit the state & magnitude of the economy of the USA (the largest economy in the world) when Obama walked into the White House and WHO put us there. We were losing around 800,000 jobs per month, 2 auto industries going bankrupt, housing plummeting, Wall Street crashing, two wars going on. You're not going to ask me to pull those charts back up, are you?

And the month AFTER taking office, jobs started coming back again, and now Obama's had 56 straight months of job growth ... I think I heard it was the most consecutive months of job growth in the history of the US. Do I need to put up that job's growth chart yet again? And you expected him to simply turn the US economy around (on a dime) in a matter of months? Had the auto industries gone bankrupt as Romney suggested they should have, think of the additional MILLIONS of jobs that would have been lost because of it. And how did Republicans help? With 300+ filibusters to every initiative Obama took ... by opposing or staling every appointment Obama made, by taking an Oath to Grover Norquist not to accept any tax increases from Obama, and in fact refusing to do anything IF the President didn't extend the Bush tax cuts which were suppose to expire. What about the US credit rating downgrade ... caused by the Republicans in Congress? How did THAT help us?

ARE YOU DENYING ANY OF THIS? Imagine how much better off the economy would be, and how much faster it would have recovered if Republicans had spent just half the energy working with Obama, instead of working against him and for Grover Norquist. I looked, and I can't find where Grover Norquist was on the ballot box of ANY government post ... the American voters didn't elect Grover Norquist to run Congress, did they?

And you talk about stagnant, flat income for workers ... well, hell yeah, and Trickle Down was a major reason as to why incomes have been flat for middleclass workers. How can you, with a straight face, point the finger at Obama for the current economic situation? And that AWESOME jobs bill that John Boehner so proudly held up in early 2010 ... you know, the one with 17 pages of which half were pictures? Remember that one? And what exactly have Republicans done to create jobs ... even ONE JOB? Remember Back To The Future? "Hello, hello .... anybody home? Hello!"

I've simply got to get some of those hallucinate ******* you're taking, so I can see the rainbows of the Republicans as clearly as you can.
View attachment 633693 ..."Tiger, Tiger" ...........View attachment 633694

I find it interesting that you claim that within a month of coming into office that Obama fixed the economy that he turned job loss into job gain. I am curious as to the magic that he performed to do that. As you so aptly stated the US has the biggest economy in the world based on GDP (China is slightly larger when considering PPP(Purchasing Power Parity)). Short of nuclear war or a major pandemic there is nothing that is going to change our economy in a month or six months for that matter. Realistically it takes anywhere from 18 months to two years to move the US economy in any meaningful way.

Recession is a normal part of the free enterprise system and is really a part of any economic system. Probably the most damaging thing that was done to our economy was the implementation of ACA in the midst of a recessionary economy. Exactly how was that supposed to create jobs?

I was never all that impressed with Bush but Obama has been a disaster. The numbers below are are the indexed national average wages according to Social Security. You can easily see that in the last few years the average wage has not kept pace with inflation. That is average, there are a lot of people that have really lost ground
2001 32,921.92
2002 33,252.09
2003 34,064.95
2004 35,648.55
2005 36,952.94
2006 38,651.41
2007 40,405.48
2008 41,334.97
2009 40,711.61
2010 41,673.83
2011 42,979.61
2012 44,321.67
2013 44,888.16

If you want to put up your 56 months of job growth chart feel free to do so. However we are 29 quarters out of the pre-crisis peak and the total of non-farm hours that were utilized is still below where we were in the 4th quarter of 2007. Workforce participation according the the Bureau of Labor Statistics is steadily declining. This chart is for the civilian labor ******* age 16 and older. You can post all the charts and graphs you want but the simple truth is wages are stagnant and a lot of people that should be working aren't.

The unemployment figure that the government touts, and to be fair they did this before our current administration, is the U-3 unemployment number. This is the people that are currently drawing unemployment. A much more telling number is the U-6 unemployment. This includes the U-3 numbers plus people that have given up looking for work and people that have taken part time work because they can't find full time. These two groups are more or less swinging in the wind because unemployment benefits are exhausted. The U-6 rate is still over 10%.
Then there are the people that ran out of everything and applied for disability from Social Security. These figures from Social Security is the number that were accepted. If you have stayed on top of things the Disability fund is expected to be depleted in 2016. A lot of people when the benefits ran out and there wasn't a job tried to get disability. The numbers are in thousands and are rounded to the nearest thousand
Year Accepted Year Accepted
2003 778 2009 986
2004 797 2010 1,052
2005 832 2011 1,025
2006 813 2012 980
2007 823 2013 885
2008 895 2014 810

The Disability acceptance rate has fallen from about 41% in 2003 to about 32% in 2014.

If you want to get down to the biggest difference between Bush (the younger) and Obama it's that Obama is a much better liar that Bush. Obama is well past the point of "it ain't my fault".
Any recovery we are experiencing is mostly smoke and mirrors.

 

[Torpedo]

I see it Clinton (Democrats) Walker (Republicans) and Trump (70% chance as an Independent)
I'd like to see a Bernie Sanders/Eliz. Warren ticket, but that won't happen. However, possibly Clinton's having to debate Sanders may help Clinton focus more on the real issues.

View attachment 633977 View attachment 633978

I wouldn't be putting a lot of money on Hillary. If she does get the nomination Trump will run as an Independent which would pretty much guarantee Hillary the White House. The Clinton's and the Obama's get along about as well JFK and LBJ. If Biden throws his hat into the ring Trump won't run. I don't think Hillary is electable , way to much baggage. The only way for her to get elected is for Trump to run as an independent and split the Republican vote. I really wouldn't be surprised if some dark horse candidate gets the nod. On the Republican side everyone is getting thrown under the bus and a lot depends on who dodges the wheels. Trump already has been questioned about his treatment of women. There should be at least a few colorful self destructs in the coming months

 

[Torpedo]

The problem here, Torp, is that you're not admitting as to HOW we got to the first $1o.5 trillion, and that's been the premise of my argument with you for some time. Trickle Down got us to that $10.5 trillion ... and destroyed the middle-class as it was applied over and over and over. And Republicans want to do it all over again ... cut taxes for the wealthy & corporations.

Also, you're refusing to admit the state & magnitude of the economy of the USA (the largest economy in the world) when Obama walked into the White House and WHO put us there. We were losing around 800,000 jobs per month, 2 auto industries going bankrupt, housing plummeting, Wall Street crashing, two wars going on. You're not going to ask me to pull those charts back up, are you?

And the month AFTER taking office, jobs started coming back again, and now Obama's had 56 straight months of job growth ... I think I heard it was the most consecutive months of job growth in the history of the US. Do I need to put up that job's growth chart yet again? And you expected him to simply turn the US economy around (on a dime) in a matter of months? Had the auto industries gone bankrupt as Romney suggested they should have, think of the additional MILLIONS of jobs that would have been lost because of it. And how did Republicans help? With 300+ filibusters to every initiative Obama took ... by opposing or staling every appointment Obama made, by taking an Oath to Grover Norquist not to accept any tax increases from Obama, and in fact refusing to do anything IF the President didn't extend the Bush tax cuts which were suppose to expire. What about the US credit rating downgrade ... caused by the Republicans in Congress? How did THAT help us?

ARE YOU DENYING ANY OF THIS? Imagine how much better off the economy would be, and how much faster it would have recovered if Republicans had spent just half the energy working with Obama, instead of working against him and for Grover Norquist. I looked, and I can't find where Grover Norquist was on the ballot box of ANY government post ... the American voters didn't elect Grover Norquist to run Congress, did they?

And you talk about stagnant, flat income for workers ... well, hell yeah, and Trickle Down was a major reason as to why incomes have been flat for middleclass workers. How can you, with a straight face, point the finger at Obama for the current economic situation? And that AWESOME jobs bill that John Boehner so proudly held up in early 2010 ... you know, the one with 17 pages of which half were pictures? Remember that one? And what exactly have Republicans done to create jobs ... even ONE JOB? Remember Back To The Future? "Hello, hello .... anybody home? Hello!"

I've simply got to get some of those hallucinate ******* you're taking, so I can see the rainbows of the Republicans as clearly as you can.
View attachment 633693 ..."Tiger, Tiger" ...........View attachment 633694

And your not admitting that Obama is at least as bad as Bush

 

[Torpedo]

There's no use trying to debate with you, Torp, you show no documentation, and deny anything and everything I post and document. Our debate is a bit unfair, I think.
If you think Quantitative Easing is the solution, write your frik'n Republican congressman ... hell, Republicans NEED a new idea ... they've been stuck on Trickle Down for 35 years.
I write my congressman 2-3 times a year, and I keep saying Democrats need to establish a BUDGET and quit spending, but its Republicans that have been spending ... as far as I'm concerned, Obama saved this country from going into another Great Depression ... Republicans have been pissed of his election and have fought him all the way.
Sorry, but I must attend to work ... back later tonight. Mac

I really don't feel you have an advantage in facts or opinions

 

[hoping hubby]

That's fine if you don't have charts, or graphs, or links ... just your awesome memory and knowledge stored between your ears. Why don't you, just for entertainment, enlighten me as to the reason(S) for job growth the past 58 months.
All I have is silly stuff provided by the Bureau Labor Statistics, and anything you have to offer will be fresh imput to this deadend conversation ... so, please, share your secrets that the rest of us do not know.

What caused job growth 2 months after President Obama took office?
Please explain this chart. Is this false?.....View attachment 634018
View attachment 634017....View attachment 634019

Mac, you asked "What caused jobs growth 2 months after Obama took office?" My question is where do you see jobs growth at that time? Here's the same data, pulled directly from the BLS website but broken into separate graphs. The chart you provided scaled both sets of data to be 100 at January 09. This is fine for comparing govt vs private ratios, but masks the actual magnitudes.

First the private sector employment:

Raw data for private employment:
Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2009 111398 110698 109890 109089 108794 108368 108098 107865 107724 107450 107435 107203

And now the government sector employment:

Raw data for government employment:
Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2009 22579 22576 22560 22677 22617 22576 22521 22537 22451 22524 22533 22482

Since Obama took office Jan 20, 2009, we can call April data as roughly 2 months since he took office. If we compare April to January, the private sector lost 2.309 million jobs (109089 April vs 111398 January). During the same time-frame, the government jobs went up by 98 thousand jobs (22677 April vs 22579 January).

That spike up in April may look like a big deal when you mess with the scaling of the charts, but in actual numbers, the total employment for the nation went DOWN by 2.2 million jobs during those months and didn't start to climb until 2010.

You asked "Please explain this chart. Is this false?" Well I think I have explained the chart pretty well. No it isn't false. However the validity of data and understanding/interpreting it's meaning are two different things.

Of course the numbers may look different to you Mac when you have your glasses on:

 

[Torpedo]

When looking at the health of an economy a number of things have to be factored. The number of employable people constantly changes. People retire, some die, some become disabled, and some are just entering the workforce. To have real understanding of what is happening takes more than looking at a couple of charts. It is important to understand why things are happening. For instance in the last few years there has been an increase of around 30% in the number of people applying for disability. Understanding why this has occurred is important to understanding what is going on in the economy. There doesn't seem to be any spike or great increase in workplace injuries or accidents in the private sector so why the increase? It appears that a lot of these individuals couldn't find work and their unemployment benefits ran out. The people that do get accepted (currently around 32%) are no longer in the work *******. These individuals skew the unemployment rate to make it appear to to better than it actually is.

The current national debt is about 103% of our GDP and many are quick to point out that by the end of WWII the national debt was 120% of GDP and we recovered just fine. The national debt to GDP ratio hit its lowest level in the Nixon/Ford/Carter era. That is roughly 30 years. The debt that was accumulated from WWII was the cost of the war in personnel and materials for the war. When the war ended the need for these this greatly diminished so little new debt was accumulated. In addition for several years everything was going to the war effort and everybody was working. So when the economy went into a peacetime economy there will millions of eager customers with cash in hand. The current debt is about 103% of GDP and a substantial part in fact the biggest part of the debt is for social programs. It is unlikely these will go away at least not easily. A lot of people have no savings, and wages are flat not even keeping up with inflation. Now lets take a look at raising the money to pay the debt. Again I hear that the rich need to shoulder a larger share, and there is a fair argument that they should pay more. But let's look at the real picture. Suppose that Congress passed a law and the law said that anyone worth more than a billion dollars or more is getting all their wealth confiscated and it will be used to pay down the national debt. How much of the national debt would be paid off? This part is an edit and correction of my original post. Based on the Forbes 400 richest people in America their total assets are about 2.29 trillion dollars. National debt is currently at about 18.9 trillion. To make the Forbes list requires a little more than a billion dollars. The top 400's total assets would only be a little more than 12% of the current national debt. If we throw in every billionaire that didn't make the list you might make 12.5% or so. Simply taxing the rich is not a solution

 

[TwoBiFour]

Mac, you truly believe that Obama single handed turned the job rate around in just 2 months? Could there possibly have been something already in the works perhaps?

Like I stated I can’t really prove it and I don’t feel like opening myself up to more of your ridicule, belittlement, and disrespect, but a little late for that I suspect.

In short, the job rate increased via the efforts of the privet business sector and the top 15% (and still not even close to where it should be). The very wealthy business owners might be a lot of things, but one thing they are not is stupid. They knew they couldn’t just stop investing and sit on their money. Yes a lot of companies made cutbacks but a lot also kept building product simply to keep their people employed. The RV industry is a good example. Warren Buffet, who owns Forest River (one of the largest RV manufactures) invested his own money so FR could rehire some employees and get people back to work even though there were no orders. For a long time just about every vacant lot in the Midwest was filled with Travel trailers, 5th wheels, and motor homes, just waiting for a sales lot to be moved to.

It was simply “convenient timing” for Obama. The Wealthy Democrats and Republicans alike were pissed at Obama. Throughout his entire first term my clients did nothing but bitch about how Obama “stuck the knife deep”, to quote one client. Behind closed doors Obama thanked all the companies and Americas richest for not sitting on their money and re-investing in the people and starting to put people back to work, but then when Obama got in front of the cameras he took full credit making it appear that it was all his doing.

The private sector also asked that Obama NOT hand out all the “stimulus” money and bailouts, it was a waste of tax payer funds and most would simply take advantage and abuse it. As an example of where some of this “stimulus” money went I can tell you about a company that opened next to my own in 2009. The company never produced a single product, never hired a single employee but was given 4.5 million of tax payer money to develop technology that would lower fuel consumption on diesel engines. They filed bankruptcy in 2012.

Several Banks were poised and ready to take up the slack had Freddie Mac been allowed to fail like they should have IMO, several corporations were collaborating on replacing the gap when Chrysler collapsed like they should have. I don’t believe in the “To big to fail” bull crap, and we all know what the CEO’s did when they got their (our) money.

I think I have mentioned this before, but you really need to pull your head out from behind that monitor of yours and see what is really going on in the world, the news only reports on side.

 

[Torpedo]

The problem here, Torp, is that you're not admitting as to HOW we got to the first $1o.5 trillion, and that's been the premise of my argument with you for some time. Trickle Down got us to that $10.5 trillion ... and destroyed the middle-class as it was applied over and over and over. And Republicans want to do it all over again ... cut taxes for the wealthy & corporations.

Also, you're refusing to admit the state & magnitude of the economy of the USA (the largest economy in the world) when Obama walked into the White House and WHO put us there. We were losing around 800,000 jobs per month, 2 auto industries going bankrupt, housing plummeting, Wall Street crashing, two wars going on. You're not going to ask me to pull those charts back up, are you?

And the month AFTER taking office, jobs started coming back again, and now Obama's had 56 straight months of job growth ... I think I heard it was the most consecutive months of job growth in the history of the US. Do I need to put up that job's growth chart yet again? And you expected him to simply turn the US economy around (on a dime) in a matter of months? Had the auto industries gone bankrupt as Romney suggested they should have, think of the additional MILLIONS of jobs that would have been lost because of it. And how did Republicans help? With 300+ filibusters to every initiative Obama took ... by opposing or staling every appointment Obama made, by taking an Oath to Grover Norquist not to accept any tax increases from Obama, and in fact refusing to do anything IF the President didn't extend the Bush tax cuts which were suppose to expire. What about the US credit rating downgrade ... caused by the Republicans in Congress? How did THAT help us?

ARE YOU DENYING ANY OF THIS? Imagine how much better off the economy would be, and how much faster it would have recovered if Republicans had spent just half the energy working with Obama, instead of working against him and for Grover Norquist. I looked, and I can't find where Grover Norquist was on the ballot box of ANY government post ... the American voters didn't elect Grover Norquist to run Congress, did they?

And you talk about stagnant, flat income for workers ... well, hell yeah, and Trickle Down was a major reason as to why incomes have been flat for middleclass workers. How can you, with a straight face, point the finger at Obama for the current economic situation? And that AWESOME jobs bill that John Boehner so proudly held up in early 2010 ... you know, the one with 17 pages of which half were pictures? Remember that one? And what exactly have Republicans done to create jobs ... even ONE JOB? Remember Back To The Future? "Hello, hello .... anybody home? Hello!"

I've simply got to get some of those hallucinate ******* you're taking, so I can see the rainbows of the Republicans as clearly as you can.
View attachment 633693 ..."Tiger, Tiger" ...........View attachment 633694

From time to time over my career I have dealt with more than one person like you. What you lack in knowledge and understanding you make up for in personal attacks. I often wonder how many people don't join the discussion because they fear a "Mac attack". If you treat your family and coworkers the way you treat me and others on this site I feel considerable sympathy for them. If you need really need to be rude and insulting in order to feel good about yourself feel free to have at me. You have demonstrated clearly to me that your opinions are of little consequence to me.

 

[Daphne&D]

From time to time over my career I have dealt with more than one person like you. What you lack in knowledge and understanding you make up for in personal attacks. I often wonder how many people don't join the discussion because they fear a "Mac attack". If you treat your family and coworkers the way you treat me and others on this site I feel considerable sympathy for them. If you need really need to be rude and insulting in order to feel good about yourself feel free to have at me. You have demonstrated clearly to me that your opinions are of little consequence to me.

"What you lack in knowledge and understanding you make up for in personal attacks." Wow. After reading some of your comments you dare to say that?. After all, wasn't it you that started the whole mac thread to attack him?

 

[Torpedo]

"What you lack in knowledge and understanding you make up for in personal attacks." Wow. After reading some of your comments you dare to say that?. After all, wasn't it you that started the whole mac thread to attack him?

Not really. I didn't start the the thread. I believe it was falcondfw69 that actually started the thread. Mac and I had been at odds several different times and someone put forward the idea of a political thread where we and anyone else that was so inclined could debate and/or argue politics. I see the thread is on it's 86th page far beyond what I ever expected. I was quite surprised when the site administration decided a few weeks back to dedicate an entire category to Off Topic matters. Besides the disagreements that Mac and I have had there have been some pretty good discussions about history and other topics. I have had a few good exchanges that I would say qualified as Socratic Dialogues. Unfortunately the battles between Mac and myself seem to all too often over shadow the contributions others have made to this thread and category

 

[Daphne&D]

Not really. I didn't start the the thread. I believe it was falcondfw69 that actually started the thread. Mac and I had been at odds several different times and someone put forward the idea of a political thread where we and anyone else that was so inclined could debate and/or argue politics. I see the thread is on it's 86th page far beyond what I ever expected. I was quite surprised when the site administration decided a few weeks back to dedicate an entire category to Off Topic matters. Besides the disagreements that Mac and I have had there have been some pretty good discussions about history and other topics. I have had a few good exchanges that I would say qualified as Socratic Dialogues. Unfortunately the battles between Mac and myself seem to all too often over shadow the contributions others have made to this thread and category

Ahh OK my mistake on the thread start. oops.

 

[MacNfries]

From time to time over my career I have dealt with more than one person like you. What you lack in knowledge and understanding you make up for in personal attacks. I often wonder how many people don't join the discussion because they fear a "Mac attack". If you treat your family and coworkers the way you treat me and others on this site I feel considerable sympathy for them. If you need really need to be rude and insulting in order to feel good about yourself feel free to have at me.

For the life of me, I can not see where I was rude to you in my last post, Torp. Show me where I was rude. You and I have had a lot more heated exchanges in the past, but I can't see where I was rude to you above. You've dealt me a lot stronger comments, even challenging me to a boxing match . Our primary heated exchanges started when I asked you to quit addressing me personally on these political issues because it was the busy part of my work year ... we can go back and review your response to me if you'd like. So stop your "poor Torp" response.
Secondly, my last post is factual and precisely on target as I could make it, and it has to bother you to see where the major issues of this great country started ... need I say "trickle down" again? I'm going to address your question to me about why incomes of average workers have been so flat, but you're not going to agree with my response, but its going to be well documented with Republican anti-labor, anti-minimum wage, anti-collective bargaining, deregulation/tax cuts for corporations, austerity, pro-"right to work", and a host of other topics including school vouchers, etc, that have killed middleclass income in the US and have been regularly pushed/supported by Republicans. That's coming ... I haven't the time to do it now.

Not really. I didn't start the the thread. I believe it was falcondfw69 that actually started the thread. Mac and I had been at odds several different times and someone put forward the idea of a political thread where we and anyone else that was so inclined could debate and/or argue politics.

Ahh OK my stistake on the thread start. oops.

Daphne wasn't referring to just THIS thread, Torpedo ... she's referring to the one YOU set up titled "Mac & I" ... surely you recall that one. Its still there, why not go back and read MY comments where you've insulted me with your boxing match challenge. When you saw I wasn't going to agree to that silly boxing offer, you decided to verbally box me around in your little "Mac & I" thread. Go back and read YOUR COMMENTS.
So, please, quit trying to buy sympathy from the readers here. I put you on ignore once, but you kept addressing me in 3rd person with your character insults/assasinations, anyway. I have a right to defend myself, Torp. I don't attack anyone who doesn't attack me first. And if I'm offending a majority of the posters here, why is my following increasing by 3-4 followers a day? I'm not bragging, I use the responses as my gauge that I contribute something enjoyable to the website. I notice I had 14 likes when I logged in today, Torp. If you don't want me addressing you, you might try quit directing your questions & insults at me as you do. Or, you could ask me to quit addressing you, and unlike you, I would cordially respond to your request. Otherwise, you and I can continue having our heated exchanges when time permits me to respond. You choose ... sugar or vinegar.
Maybe its just time for you to take an afternoon nap ...

 

[Torpedo]

For the life of me, I can not see where I was rude to you in my last post, Torp. Show me where I was rude. You and I have had a lot more heated exchanges in the past, but I can't see where I was rude to you above. You've dealt me a lot stronger comments, even challenging me to a boxing match . Our primary heated exchanges started when I asked you to quit addressing me personally on these political issues because it was the busy part of my work year ... we can go back and review your response to me if you'd like. So stop your "poor Torp" response.
Secondly, my last post is factual and precisely on target as I could make it, and it has to bother you to see where the major issues of this great country started ... need I say "trickle down" again? I'm going to address your question to me about why incomes of average workers have been so flat, but you're not going to agree with my response, but its going to be well documented with Republican anti-labor, anti-minimum wage, anti-collective bargaining, deregulation/tax cuts for corporations, austerity, pro-"right to work", and a host of other topics including school vouchers, etc, that have killed middleclass income in the US and have been regularly pushed/supported by Republicans. That's coming ... I haven't the time to do it now.

Wages have gotten flat in the last few years. From a business standpoint it is a lot cheaper to hire part time employees primarily because of health care costs.

As to who has run up the national debt. When the younger Bush came into office the national debt was a bit under 6 trillion. When he left office it was around 10 trillion. He raised the national debt 4 trillion dollars. At that point I was very concerned because I didn't see that type of spending to be sustainable. The amount of economic growth that would be required to just wasn't realistic. However since Obama has taken office the debt has ballooned to about 18.3 trillion. The national debt is around 102% of the GDP. The nation debt to GDP ratio has exceeded 100% since 2012.

The last time the the national debt exceeded to GDP was at the end of WWII. However things were very different then. The debt was incurred by the expense of WWII. When the war ended those expenditures disappeared. It still took until the 1970's to get the debt ratio down to around 30% of GDP. Another important factor is that during the war there was very little in the way of durable goods that were available because everything was devoted to the war effort. During the war everyone that was capable of working was working but there was very little to spend their money on. When the war ended an the economy converted back to a peace time economy there were millions of people with significant saving that were eager spend. And the types of expenditures that had driven up the debt has disappeared.

However now we have a debt that exceeds the GDP and most of those expenditures are for social programs and other expenses that aren't likely to be reduced. In addition there aren't many people that have any significant saving so there isn't any cash reserve that consumers can inject into the economy.

The illusion that the Democratic party and you seem to believe in is that raising taxes on the wealthy will solve the problem. If you take the Forbe's 400 the richest 400 people in the United States their total worth is around 2.3 trillion dollars. About a third of this is concentrated with the top 25 people. It currently requires around 1.65 billion to make the list. Now if we decided to tax them 100% and take every penny they have apply it to the national debt it would only reduce the current debt by less than 15%. There is no doubt that the wealthy individuals should pay more taxes but it is not going to solve our current problem. Under the younger Bush the debt to GDP ratio went up about 20% in 8 years. Under Obama the ratio has went up another 20% and that was done in a lot less that 8 years. I haven't seen any realistic plan from either side of the aisle that will fix the problem.

 

[MacNfries]

You're still not seeing the vastness of the recent recession. The "top down" Supply Side was a big cause of this most recent recession & 3 decades of flat wages. Giving the corporations and wealthy more money in hopes that they would create jobs; instead, they got greedy and hid their profits, and got wealthier from it. That only created an hour-glass economy ... squeezing out the middleclass, and creating the rich & poor. THAT is the cause of the rising number of poor people, Torp ... you keep saying all you're seeing is more poor people ... the hourglass effect is what causes this.

More money needs to be put into the hands of those who need and will spend it on things they need ... appliances, furniture, cars, food etc ... all Republicans are doing is killing that by refusing a minimum wage, supporting "right to work" states, etc. Their policies and ideas don't work, yet they want to continue them. When you cut taxes as drastically as Reagan and the Bushes have done, of course there's going to be a huge deficit because you cut REVENUE. Cutting taxes (revenue) only works when applied at the appropriate time in the business & economic cycle. Republicans have this mindset that poor people are leaches ... why would the words "makers & takers", the "bottom 47%ers" and "welfare mamas" keep coming up in the Republican speeches? Reagan hated poor people ... saw them as "takers", and Supply Side was no more than a tax shifting strategy for the wealthiest Americans. He got BACK the revenue that the poor received in his tax cuts by creating 11 different taxes on the middleclass. The middleclass got poorer, Torp. Why do you think the Koch Brothers are spending close to a billion dollars on getting Republians elected in state governments? Look at these charts:



.... Look at the DATES! Look at the SOURCE! I didn't fabricate these graphs, Torp. This is where income inequality and deficit spending started. What do you propose the real reason was? .... it was GREED and the influence the wealthy, like the Kochs had on the Washington establishment. The federal tax code book didn't grow by 6,000+ pages because of the poor or middleclass.
Almost 35 years of top down tax cutting ... go look at the graphs when Clinton INCREASED taxes in the late '90's. Revenue went UP, and the deficit spending went away. Then Bush come in, and started that "Trickle Down" all over again, and even VP Cheney said "deficit spending doesn't matter" as he got richer off of it. Bush parachuted OUT OF THE CAR as he drove the US economy off the cliff, and handed the steering wheel to Obama ... the country was fixing to go into a Great Depression. What other President can you recall being handed a crashing economy like Obama received? I think Obama did fairly good considering the 300+ filibusters and downgrading of our credit rating that the Republicans have given him in their attempt to "work with the President". Bailing out Wall Street pissed me off, too!
I swear, I don't think Republicans understand that cutting taxes, and decreasing revenue are synomynous. Republicans need a new, fuck'n playbook, damn!

 

[MacNfries]

Wages have gotten flat in the last few years.

As to who has run up the national debt. When the younger Bush came into office the national debt was a bit under 6 trillion. When he left office it was around 10 trillion. He raised the national debt 4 trillion dollars. At that point I was very concerned because I didn't see that type of spending to be sustainable. The amount of economic growth that would be required to just wasn't realistic. However since Obama has taken office the debt has ballooned to about 18.3 trillion. The national debt is around 102% of the GDP. The nation debt to GDP ratio has exceeded 100% since 2012.

I love to go back and 'recall history', especially when the history supports my position. My gripe all along has been the impact that Supply Side economics has had on the middleclass and the wages. Contrary to your own observation, Torpedo, wages have pretty much been flat for over 35 years ... not just the 'last few years'. You took us from GW Bush to Obama ... let's back way on back to when Supply Side economics was implemented ... Ronald Reagan.

Reagan introduced his Supply Side economics while campaigning in 1980, saying he would cut taxes, raise military spending AND balance the 'run away budget'; GH Bush called it "voodoo economics". Mind you, when he took office the last Jimmy Carter budget produced a $77 billion deficit ... sizable for that time period. At any rate, Reagan won the election and cut the marginal tax rate on the highest income earners from 75% down to 38%. The first full year of his presidency the economy shrank 2%, the worst since the Great Depression, and his Supply-Side had produced the biggest budget deficit in recorded history. Reagan's first budget created a $128 billion deficit, and by next year, 1983, it had exploded to $208 billion. By the end of the Reagan Revolution, ending with GH Bush, the budget deficit was producing right at $300 billion a year. The national debt was around $1 trillion when Reagan arrived in 1980, and by the time Bush was packing up to leave office, the national debt was over $4.3 trillion. In other words, the national debt that had taken over 200 years to reach that $1 trillion mark, had reached over $4 trillion in just 12 short years of Supply Side. The primary observation as to why this happened was that the tax cuts had been given before, not after, the productive investments had been made. So, the rich got richer (not fulfilling the promised jobs), and the revenues of the government got smaller.

Bill Clinton reversed Reagan's Supply Side policies, raising taxes on the wealthy and lowering them on the working and middleclass ... it was called Demand Side economics. Demand Side economics says that if taxes are cut, they should be cut for who actually earn the least money as they will spend that money on actual needs and the money would circulate back into the economy, fueling a boom in consumer spending. It was this policy that rescued the US economy . Obviously, when Clinton implemented his policy every single Republican member of Congress voted against it. In fact, if you recall, it took a tie-breaking vote by Al Gore in the senate to get Clinton's bill passed.

Long story short, however, the economy produced the longest sustained expansion in US history, creating over 22 million new jobs, unemployment fell to its lowest level in 30 years, inflation fell to 2.5% compared to the 4.7% of the past 12 years, and the economy grew an average of 4% compared to just 2.8% average growth during the Reagan/Bush years. But most importantly, it produced the first budgetary surplus of almost $140 billion per year. This is what GW Bush inherited in January, 2001 ... ok, now let's go PICK UP where you started, with GW Bush. GW returned to Supply Side, he lowered taxes on the very rich (his "base" he called it) and those tax cuts gave 45% of the money to the top 1%ers. And THAT, my man, returned us to deficit spending that Cheney said wasn't important, and it is THE REST OF THE STORY. (all documented)

This is a very interesting article ... hope you'll read it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-parramore/what-thomas-piketty-and-l_b_6630688.html