Disgusted With Obama Administration.

• believer

  

  BoatShoes;1046563 wrote:Why would a keynesian repudiate those views when Obama has not been a Keynesian? Every Keynesian worth his salt was crying to high heaven that the Stimulus Bill was going to be too small (and it was). It Worked but it wasn't large enough and thus, just like clockwork, Believer goes on Ohiochatter and says "the anointed one said unemployment wouldn't go above 8%"
  
  And finally, Keynesians don't believe "big gubmint is good gubmint." They simply believe that at the very least, when you can't use conventional monetary policy because interest rates are at the zero lower bound that the government out to borrow at these low rates to finance tax cuts or direct spending in order to prevent mass unemployment and falling GDP.to counter the business cycle. This view has been vindicated over the last several years. Europeans are doing exactly what Republicans would like to do here and their budget deficits are getting worse, their economies are heading toward recession and they have even more people out of work.
  
  It is you and president Obama who need to see the light. When Americans lost multiple trillions in dollars worth of wealth in their homes a paltry $700 billion dollar stilmulus phase in over several years, a third of which is simply to buffer against cuts by state governments is not enough to counter that.

  And so you believe the Feds should snap their fingers, make trillions of taxpayer dollars out of thin air, and....and....and do what again with that bogus money? Oh that's right, spend it. Let's see....the Feds spending money. No doubt that funny money will be spent wisely, fairly, and equitably. There will be no political shenanigans involved at all. The Feds will spread the wealth equitably, strategically, and apolitically to insure sustained economic growth.
  
  I see your point. $780 billion is chump change compared to what really should have been done. The gubmint printing presses should have been rolling on overtime to pump out trillions, not billions. If Obama had had the gonads to do that in the first place, we'd all be living in opulence right now.
  
  Unemployment would have never gone above 8%, no 9%, well almost 10% anyway. Instead, we still enjoy 8.5% "official" unemployment with no significant improvement in sight simply because Obama and his Democrat bed buddies in Congress failed to spend even more of what doesn't really exist.
• QuakerOats

  Americans fear an obama reelection by 2 - 1.
  
  http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/01/09/poll-americans-2-1-fear-obamas-reelection
  
  Their fears are well placed.
• QuakerOats

  Just another example of the bureaucratic dictatorial power grab fully endorsed by the obama regime. His EPA and his NLRB and his DoJ are completely out to lunch, and out of control. .......... change we can believe in ..........
  
  [h=3]Supreme Court Appears Sympathetic To Idaho Couple's Argument Against The EPA.[/h]The Washington Post (1/10, Barnes) reports, "Conservative members of the Supreme Court seemed outraged Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency's actions in a four-year battle with an Idaho couple who want to build a house on land the EPA says contains sensitive wetlands. Justices across the ideological spectrum appeared troubled by the EPA's position that Mike and Chantell Sackett do not have the right to go court to challenge the agency's wetlands decision." The couple "wanted to build a home on a 0.63-acre lot near Priest Lake in the Idaho panhandle that they bought for $23,000. But after three days of bringing in fill dirt and preparing for construction in 2007, officials from the EPA and the US Army Corps of Engineers ordered the activity stopped and said they suspected the land contained wetlands."
  USA Today (1/10, Biskupic) reports, "The Sacketts, who say they did not know their property was under such designation, tried to challenge EPA's finding that they were discharging material into a regulated wetlands. The EPA refused a hearing. So, as their lawyer argued at the US Supreme Court on Monday, the couple could not build their house and faced tens of thousands of dollars in fines if they failed to remove the dirt and restore their property to its original condition." Furthermore, the couple had no way to challenge the EPA's order in court.
  McClatchy (1/10, Cockerham) reports, "The broad issue is whether landowners hit by EPA compliance orders should be allowed to sue immediately to overturn those orders, rather than waiting for the EPA to go to court to force compliance. The case could have far-reaching implications." Environmental groups believe "that a Sackett victory could allow big corporate polluters to tie up the EPA in court instead of dealing with the problem."
  Reuters (1/10, Vicini) notes that the National Association of Manufacturers was one of the organizations supporting the Sackett's challenge. On its website, MSNBC (1/10) also notes the National Association of Manufacturers support for the Sackett's case.
• BoatShoes

  believer;1046594 wrote:And so you believe the Feds should snap their fingers, make trillions of taxpayer dollars out of thin air, and....and....and do what again with that bogus money? Oh that's right, spend it. Let's see....the Feds spending money. No doubt that funny money will be spent wisely, fairly, and equitably. There will be no political shenanigans involved at all. The Feds will spread the wealth equitably, strategically, and apolitically to insure sustained economic growth.
  
  I see your point. $780 billion is chump change compared to what really should have been done. The gubmint printing presses should have been rolling on overtime to pump out trillions, not billions. If Obama had had the gonads to do that in the first place, we'd all be living in opulence right now.
  
  Unemployment would have never gone above 8%, no 9%, well almost 10% anyway. Instead, we still enjoy 8.5% "official" unemployment with no significant improvement in sight simply because Obama and his Democrat bed buddies in Congress failed to spend even more of what doesn't really exist.

  Just ask yourself this; does it bother you that the countries that are taking my advice are doing better than countries that are doing what you would have them do?
  
  The Republicans control the House of Representatives. If they even cared about the proper macroeconomic response they could get in the game and get the spending on the type of projects they like. It doesn't matter to me because this isn't a morality play. Spend it on building a massive impenetrable wall on the border of mexico, hiring returning soldiers to round up illegals, build more F-22's that will never be used, build more prisons for the poor and indignant, drill holes in the ground looking for oil, etc. All that spent money by the government gets spent again in the private sector by the people we paid and creates jobs in the private sector. We know this works. Even with massive rationing on private spending the weaponized keynesian stimulus known as WWII created explosive economic growth and put everybody to work being productive.
  
  But you say it best. You'd rather just prefer the malaize continue so that stupid people like Boatshoes will realize Obama is a failure. You would rather America suffer than do what the evidence shows clearly what will work. And the most amazing part is that taking your advice will only make the medium and long term budget problems that you really care about worse.
  
  You say you voted for Ronald Reagan when you were in college. Well, Ronald Reagan's response to the early 80's recession was Keynesian! Cutting taxes and increasing defense expenditure outlays that cause massive deficits in response to a recession is something a keynesian would do! Cindy Romer, Obama's economic adviser during the stimulus has done her primary research on the effects of tax cuts financed by debt to stimulate the economy. A classical economist would have offset Ronald Reagan's tax cuts with spending cuts (which makes recessions worse). Reagan of course had Volcker using conventional monetary policy as well. You ought to hope that Bernanke would be fighting against unemployment in the same way Volcker fought against inflation! Even still, Paul Volcker allowed for much higher inflation in the 80's than we have today.
  
  If Ronald Reagan had followed your advice for spending cuts in response to the recession and Paul Volcker would have been as obsessed with inflation as current policy makers, Ronald Reagan very likely would not have had a second term.
• BoatShoes

  QuakerOats;1046699 wrote:Americans fear an obama reelection by 2 - 1.
  
  http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/01/09/poll-americans-2-1-fear-obamas-reelection
  
  Their fears are well placed.

  Only 33% of Americans "Fear" an Obama re-election according to your link and surely that is people like yourself who have an irrational fear of the man implementing 1990's Republican dogma.
• QuakerOats

  BoatShoes;1046769 wrote:Only 33% of Americans "Fear" an Obama re-election according to your link and surely that is people like yourself who have an irrational fear of the man implementing 1990's Republican dogma.

  
  The 1990's republican's were the ones who reformed welfare and balanced Clinton's budgets for him (as you well know). That is 180 degrees from the annual $1.7 TRILLION annual deficits this regime is foisting upon The People, led by the new King of Welfare and Food Stamps.
  
  Next.
• BGFalcons82

  

  BoatShoes;1046561 wrote:Paul Krugman is not Obama's economist. Obama has not embraced keynesianism but has instead repeated and pursued the same types of contractionary policies that his peers in Europe are pursuing. His pivot towards jobs is a recent development and his proposals were all too small anyways.

  Sure he is. I didn't say Barry only had one economist. He gets advice from multiple ones, including heir Krugman.
  
  Is a contractionary policy defined as spending $800,000,000,000 out of money that simply does not exist?
  Is a contractionary policy defined as spending $350,000,000,000 for an omnibus spending bill out of money that simply does not exist?
  Is a contractionary policy defined as creating a brand new health care system in which the government expands its sphere of control and regulation over 1/6 of the entire economy?
  Is a contractionary policy defined as adding as much national debt in 3 years as all previous president's combined?
  
  If these are examples of contractionary policy, you surely have a different dictionary than I. Is yours signed by John Maynard Keynes?
• QuakerOats

  BG, you must not have received the memo: anything less than 100% command and control of the economy by this regime is considered contractionary. Our lives can only improve by rendering complete control to the enlightened liberal elite.
• jmog

  BoatShoes;1046561 wrote:Paul Krugman is not Obama's economist. Obama has not embraced keynesianism but has instead repeated and pursued the same types of contractionary policies that his peers in Europe are pursuing. His pivot towards jobs is a recent development and his proposals were all too small anyways.
  
  Meanwhile Ben Bernanke is not even following his own advice he gave while he was at Princeton. TK421 brings up how the debt is now 100% of GDP and well this is exactly what you should expect to happen when the economy is operating well below it's potential for almost half a decade and growth is paltry and unemployment is disastrously high. I don't suppose TK241 cares how countries in Europe are doing who have taken his advice and yet are doing much worse than we are.
  
  We have our own currency and it is overvalued as is. If we had the type of inflation that Ronald Reagan had for most of his term unemployment would drop in the short term and gdp would rise and our citizens and the government's real debt burdens would drop significantly and then we could get on the track to focusing on medium and long term budget restraint.

  You can't be serious BS. Just because you believe Obama hasn't been Keynesian "enough" doesn't mean he hasn't been a big spending Keynesian.
  
  Europe is worse off because they have had the big government/Keynesian governments for MUCH longer than we have. They have already been down that road and are heading back. Does the "u-turn" hurt (aka a contraction in the economy) sure does, but their headlights are coming back at us, they are flashing us about the "wreck" ahead, and we are plunging headlong into the same problem they are currently in.
  
  You will start to lose any credibility if you start to say that Obama has been in support of "contractionary policies".
• Belly35

  

  Europe :laugh::laugh::laugh: WTF If that what you see as a example of what you want America to be you are cluesless. That not my America and as long as I can breath I will do anything it takes to see that it does not. What the fuck is so great about Europe?
  
  I do business in the UK and Germany they hate what their country has become. and the future of thier country is even more fearful. I can get products made in Germeny almost as cheap as in China and get better workmanship. Why because they are becoming a "three world country without entitlement".
• jmog

  FYI, I do travel internationally a decent amount for my job and many of the people I work with (both customers, vendors, and co-workers) are from Europe.
  
  You know how many of them think the Keynesian/welfare state that Europe has been for such a long time is a good idea? None.
  
  Of course, all of them have jobs and aren't sucking off of the European teet.
  
  Every single one of them that have come to work/live in the US like it here so much better and their biggest complaint was the welfare state and higher taxes.
• BoatShoes

  jmog;1046913 wrote:You can't be serious BS. Just because you believe Obama hasn't been Keynesian "enough" doesn't mean he hasn't been a big spending Keynesian.
  
  Europe is worse off because they have had the big government/Keynesian governments for MUCH longer than we have. They have already been down that road and are heading back. Does the "u-turn" hurt (aka a contraction in the economy) sure does, but their headlights are coming back at us, they are flashing us about the "wreck" ahead, and we are plunging headlong into the same problem they are currently in.
  
  You will start to lose any credibility if you start to say that Obama has been in support of "contractionary policies".

  See what is amazing is all of these points you try to make have been easily refuted already but I must press on anyway.
  
  Your claim that Europe is in bad shape because of large welfare states is absolutely false. In fact, it has been quite common for anti-welfare state types to use the Euro Crisis to blame it on the welfare state in the media when the evidence doesn't support this proposition.
  
  Here's Dean Banker of the Center for Economic Policy Research taking on Paul Samuelson who made similar incorrect claims as you're making now. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-misuses-the-euro-crisis-to-advance-his-war-on-the-welfare-state?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beat_the_press+%28Beat+the+Press%29
  
  
  The countries with the most generous welfare states are doing better than others.
  
  
  
  
  The austerity for all policies are what are causing the problems. Spain was a good fiscal soldier before the crisis and was actually running budget surpluses. Do you understand? They were running budget surpluses and yet now they have huge budget deficits because the austerity policies.
  
  You are wrong, wrong, wrong. Additionally, we could not be faced with the types of problems that the PIGS are having because we have our own currency.
  
  And yes, Obama for the entire year in 2011 was in support of contractionary fiscal policies saying that it was time for us to eat our peas. This is Obama in July during the deficit debate:
  
  [LEFT]"Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs."[/LEFT]
  
  You won't find a quote of Obama saying, "we need to stimulate aggregate demand in a depressed economy..." etc.
  
  Compare that to Jean Claude-Trichet of the European Central Bank who was a chief architect of Europe's failures:
  
  [LEFT]“Yes. In fact, in these circumstances, everything that helps to increase the confidence of households, firms and investors in the sustainability of public finances is good for the consolidation of growth and job creation. I firmly believe that in the current circumstances confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery, because confidence is the key factor today.”
  [/LEFT]
  They were both incredibly wrong.
  
  Obama is not a big spending keynesian by any stretch of the imagination. He's no more of a keynesian than Ronald Reagan ever was. And, the welfare states are not the reason for Europes fiscal woes but incredible policy failures of austerity for all in the face of a depressed economy.
• BoatShoes

  jmog;1047091 wrote:FYI, I do travel internationally a decent amount for my job and many of the people I work with (both customers, vendors, and co-workers) are from Europe.
  
  You know how many of them think the Keynesian/welfare state that Europe has been for such a long time is a good idea? None.
  
  Of course, all of them have jobs and aren't sucking off of the European teet.
  
  Every single one of them that have come to work/live in the US like it here so much better and their biggest complaint was the welfare state and higher taxes.

  Yeah well it seems your anecdotal experience is not universal. By and large Europeans lead happier and healthier lives while several of those countries with large welfare states also enjoy very high economic freedom with more equality of opportunity than we do in the United States.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index
  
  
  But either way, my point is not to say we should be like Europe. Europe has failed to respond to this crisis way more than we do. Despite Ben Bernanke isn't following his own advice he could be doing a lot worse.
• jmog

  BoatShoes;1047138 wrote:See what is amazing is all of these points you try to make have been easily refuted already but I must press on anyway.
  
  Your claim that Europe is in bad shape because of large welfare states is absolutely false. In fact, it has been quite common for anti-welfare state types to use the Euro Crisis to blame it on the welfare state in the media when the evidence doesn't support this proposition.
  
  Here's Dean Banker of the Center for Economic Policy Research taking on Paul Samuelson who made similar incorrect claims as you're making now. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-misuses-the-euro-crisis-to-advance-his-war-on-the-welfare-state?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beat_the_press+(Beat+the+Press)
  
  
  The countries with the most generous welfare states are doing better than others.
  
  
  
  
  The austerity for all policies are what are causing the problems. Spain was a good fiscal soldier before the crisis and was actually running budget surpluses. Do you understand? They were running budget surpluses and yet now they have huge budget deficits because the austerity policies.
  
  You are wrong, wrong, wrong. Additionally, we could not be faced with the types of problems that the PIGS are having because we have our own currency.
  
  And yes, Obama for the entire year in 2011 was in support of contractionary fiscal policies saying that it was time for us to eat our peas. This is Obama in July during the deficit debate:
  
  [LEFT]"Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs."[/LEFT]
  
  
  You won't find a quote of Obama saying, "we need to stimulate aggregate demand in a depressed economy..." etc.
  
  Compare that to Jean Claude-Trichet of the European Central Bank who was a chief architect of Europe's failures:
  
  [LEFT]“Yes. In fact, in these circumstances, everything that helps to increase the confidence of households, firms and investors in the sustainability of public finances is good for the consolidation of growth and job creation. I firmly believe that in the current circumstances confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery, because confidence is the key factor today.”
  [/LEFT]
  
  They were both incredibly wrong.
  
  Obama is not a big spending keynesian by any stretch of the imagination. He's no more of a keynesian than Ronald Reagan ever was. And, the welfare states are not the reason for Europes fiscal woes but incredible policy failures of austerity for all in the face of a depressed economy.

  Come on BS, Obama saying he wants Fiscal responsibility 3 years into a term of spending a crap ton of money we don't have is just lip service. His proposal for a budget was laughed off the stage by even the democrats. Obama wants to cut off of BASELINE spending over 10 years, he has YET to put forth a proposal that will cut spending NOW.
  
  You and I both know this but you will continue to try to make him look like he is a fiscally conservative, just like the MSM will do heading up to November.
• BoatShoes

  BGFalcons82;1046876 wrote:Sure he is. I didn't say Barry only had one economist. He gets advice from multiple ones, including heir Krugman.
  
  Is a contractionary policy defined as spending $800,000,000,000 out of money that simply does not exist?
  Is a contractionary policy defined as spending $350,000,000,000 for an omnibus spending bill out of money that simply does not exist?
  Is a contractionary policy defined as creating a brand new health care system in which the government expands its sphere of control and regulation over 1/6 of the entire economy?
  Is a contractionary policy defined as adding as much national debt in 3 years as all previous president's combined?
  
  If these are examples of contractionary policy, you surely have a different dictionary than I. Is yours signed by John Maynard Keynes?

  Sigh. By march 2009 the world had last 34.9 trillion in wealth. When you take that into account nobody enacted the types of expansionary policies that could have countered against that type of contractionary pressure. The 50 states all massively cut budgets and the Federal government's easing that pain for a short period of time did not prevent the overall effect from being contractionary.
  
  Additionally, the government pivoted toward deficit reduction in July 2011 and there was a concurrent decline in government purchases and government employees...enhancing the contractionary effect. (The large blip is census workers)
  
  
  
  
  
• jmog

  BoatShoes;1047147 wrote:Yeah well it seems your anecdotal experience is not universal. By and large Europeans lead happier and healthier lives while several of those countries with large welfare states also enjoy very high economic freedom with more equality of opportunity than we do in the United States.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index
  
  
  But either way, my point is not to say we should be like Europe. Europe has failed to respond to this crisis way more than we do. Despite Ben Bernanke isn't following his own advice he could be doing a lot worse.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_happiness.png
  
  Yeah, from your own Wikipedia link...looks like most of Europe is not as happy as the US...nice fail .
  
  Yes, a few countries in Europe are up there with us, but the vast majority of European people (aka population) are in Russia, Germany, Turkey, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, and Romania. That is the top 10 nations in Europe by population. Every single one of them are below the USA on your illustrious happy scale.
  
  The first country above us on the scale is the Netherlands.
  
  Feel free to keep posting links to prove my point and disprove your's. I love the help.
• jmog

  BoatShoes;1047153 wrote:Sigh. By march 2009 the world had last 34.9 trillion in wealth. When you take that into account nobody enacted the types of expansionary policies that could have countered against that type of contractionary pressure. The 50 states all massively cut budgets and the Federal government's easing that pain for a short period of time did not prevent the overall effect from being contractionary.
  
  Additionally, the government pivoted toward deficit reduction in July 2011 and there was a concurrent decline in government purchases and government employees...enhancing the contractionary effect. (The large blip is census workers)
  
  
  
  
  

  I wonder what happened in July 2011...hmm, wonder if the conservatives (you know those "Tea Baggers" you liberals like to make fun of) are the ones that started to force the hand since they finally had some power?
  
  You pushing this off like Obama has been all for contraction spending is hilarious.
• BoatShoes

  jmog;1047149 wrote:Come on BS, Obama saying he wants Fiscal responsibility 3 years into a term of spending a crap ton of money we don't have is just lip service. His proposal for a budget was laughed off the stage by even the democrats. Obama wants to cut off of BASELINE spending over 10 years, he has YET to put forth a proposal that will cut spending NOW.
  
  You and I both know this but you will continue to try to make him look like he is a fiscally conservative, just like the MSM will do heading up to November.

  Because Obama basically thought the economy was on its way to recovering and was facing supply shocks. If you listen to his speeches he thought the mature thing to do was cut the budget over time. Cutting the Budget NOw raises unemployment and lowers GDP period. Obama wanted to focus on deficit reduction but when you listen to his speeches he wanted to do it in a way that minimized the impact on the economy over time because he's not stupid. He basically endorsed a Real Business Cycle type view which isn't that hard to believe considering he spent much of his adult life at the University of Chicago.
  
  Cutting budgets NOW and firing millions of government employees and putting them on unemployment insurance is not fiscal sanity but fiscal madness and it would only make the deficit worse. This is not in dispute. How many times do we have to have this conversation? Obama offered to cut $4 trillion over the next decade and that is precisely what the ratings agencies were asking him to do.
• BoatShoes

  jmog;1047158 wrote:I wonder what happened in July 2011...hmm, wonder if the conservatives (you know those "Tea Baggers" you liberals like to make fun of) are the ones that started to force the hand since they finally had some power?
  
  You pushing this off like Obama has been all for contraction spending is hilarious.

  Don't think I've ever said "Tea Bagger" on this forum. Obama throughout his campaign for presidency always talked about deficit reduction. He even IDIOTICALLY AND IRRESPONSIBLY voted against raising the debt ceiling when he was a Senator for heaven's sake. When he was a liberal senator he voted against raising the debt ceiling. The only difference is that he has always been for including higher taxes and more on the revenue side as part of a solution to our deficit. He even demanded that the healthcare bill be projected to lower the deficit in the future in order for it to have his signature while rejecting more expensive options near and dear to liberals.
  
  I know nobody on hear believes the CBO but they nonetheless project Obama's 1990's Republican healthcare bill to lower the deficit.
  
  Even the stimulus bill was mostly tax cuts which Republicans...when they put on their Keynesian caps...have always said "pay for themselves"
• jmog

  BoatShoes;1047165 wrote:Because Obama basically thought the economy was on its way to recovering and was facing supply shocks. If you listen to his speeches he thought the mature thing to do was cut the budget over time. Cutting the Budget NOw raises unemployment and lowers GDP period. Obama wanted to focus on deficit reduction but when you listen to his speeches he wanted to do it in a way that minimized the impact on the economy over time because he's not stupid. He basically endorsed a Real Business Cycle type view which isn't that hard to believe considering he spent much of his adult life at the University of Chicago.
  
  Cutting budgets NOW and firing millions of government employees and putting them on unemployment insurance is not fiscal sanity but fiscal madness and it would only make the deficit worse. This is not in dispute. How many times do we have to have this conversation? Obama offered to cut $4 trillion over the next decade and that is precisely what the ratings agencies were asking him to do.

  You are wrong again, Obama proposed DEFICIT "cuts" of 4 trillion over 12 years, not spending cuts of $4 trillion. His proposal raised taxes and made some BASELINE SPENDING cuts, no actual spending cuts.
  
  He did NOT propose $4 trillion in spending cuts and most CERTAINLY did not propose $4 trillion in ACTUAL spending cuts.
• jmog

  BoatShoes;1047174 wrote:Don't think I've ever said "Tea Bagger" on this forum. Obama throughout his campaign for presidency always talked about deficit reduction. He even IDIOTICALLY AND IRRESPONSIBLY voted against raising the debt ceiling when he was a Senator for heaven's sake. When he was a liberal senator he voted against raising the debt ceiling. The only difference is that he has always been for including higher taxes and more on the revenue side as part of a solution to our deficit. He even demanded that the healthcare bill be projected to lower the deficit in the future in order for it to have his signature while rejecting more expensive options near and dear to liberals.
  
  I know nobody on hear believes the CBO but they nonetheless project Obama's 1990's Republican healthcare bill to lower the deficit.
  
  Even the stimulus bill was mostly tax cuts which Republicans...when they put on their Keynesian caps...have always said "pay for themselves"

  You mean the same Obama that voted against the debt ceiling because he was in the middle of chastising Bush for spending too much?
  
  You mean the same Obama that was calling conservatives irresponsible for wanting spending cuts to pass another debt ceiling?
  
  Yeah, he's been consistant .
  
  Obama's version of deficit reduction is higher taxes, he has never put forth a plan to cut actual spending.
• BoatShoes

  jmog;1047155 wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_happiness.png
  
  Yeah, from your own Wikipedia link...looks like most of Europe is not as happy as the US...nice fail .
  
  Yes, a few countries in Europe are up there with us, but the vast majority of European people (aka population) are in Russia, Germany, Turkey, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, and Romania. That is the top 10 nations in Europe by population. Every single one of them are below the USA on your illustrious happy scale.
  
  The first country above us on the scale is the Netherlands.
  
  Feel free to keep posting links to prove my point and disprove your's. I love the help.

  I should have been more specific, besides France, those with the most generous welfare states, namely the nordic countries tend to score higher. Spain who you cite for instance spends less on their welfare state as a percentage GDP than we do and like I said was recently running budget surpluses.
• BoatShoes

  jmog;1047183 wrote:You mean the same Obama that voted against the debt ceiling because he was in the middle of chastising Bush for spending too much?
  
  You mean the same Obama that was calling conservatives irresponsible for wanting spending cuts to pass another debt ceiling?
  
  Yeah, he's been consistant .
  
  Obama's version of deficit reduction is higher taxes, he has never put forth a plan to cut actual spending.

  Well his administration did just propose a plain for a leaner DoD. Either way, the fact that he is more concerned with raising revenue than spending cuts doesn't mean he hasn't been concerned with deficit reduction. You're moving the goal posts when you say he's never tried to achieve spending cuts. Raising taxes and/or cutting government spending are BOTH bad to do in a depressed economy with high unemployment.
• jmog

  BoatShoes;1047189 wrote:Well his administration did just propose a plain for a leaner DoD. Either way, the fact that he is more concerned with raising revenue than spending cuts doesn't mean he hasn't been concerned with deficit reduction. You're moving the goal posts when you say he's never tried to achieve spending cuts. Raising taxes and/or cutting government spending are BOTH bad to do in a depressed economy with high unemployment.

  I'm not moving the goal posts, I'm just telling the truth.
  
  Stretching out cuts off of baseline spending over more than a decade and never actually cutting any spending at all is just a fact of his proposal, it is not "moving the goal posts".
• QuakerOats

  Dear Dad,
  
  Today at school we learned that you should spend more than you take in; it always makes the economy work really well, and just no never mind about the Fed printing a few extra trillion dollars at the behest of Mr. President, it really isn't going to be wasted on extra spending in non-reprodcutive sectors, plus, it doesn't have to really be paid back anyway. And those deficits are not a big deal either since the ratings agencies said we just needed to cut $4 trillion over the next decade, and sure enough Mr. President is going to do just that, even though it sounds really harsh; hopefully he won't have to cut any benefits or entitlements because that is what really spurs economic growth -- we found that out too. As long as the top 10% pay more in taxes everyone else can be on holiday most of the year and that really helps with their well being and outlook on life; and that all translates into economic activity; heck, it wasn't until a week ago that I learned how extending unemployment benefits stimulates economic expansion, but that was a building block I guess to today's lessons. Anyhow, you are not supposed to worry that just this year our household was saddled with another $29,000 in debt, because supposedly Mr. President has this all figured out. Looking forward to school tomorrow.
  
  Sincerely,
  Your Son