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I think there are more jobs available, but the salaries arent good. I think thats really causing a drag on a stronger recovery.
Pure Republican poppycock. The economy has never been better because the stock market is at all time highs. All of us elites are doing extremely well and that is your true gauge of a successful economy. My restaurants are all booming. We have the middle class plebs expanding their debt burden as well. Dr. Bernanke continues to expand the balance sheet, and by doing so, furthers the recovery to even greater lengths. Anything questioning the recovery and the claim that we are really in a depression is in fact Republican poppycock. It is because I say so and gave an economics lecture about this very topic at one of my 501(c)(3) organizations last night. I was received with a standing ovation and one pleb actually fainted in the presence of my greatness.
Fixing Social Security and Medicare is not impossible. It just requires the political will to do so. Something we never seem to acquire until the last minute. It will be done.
Social Security may not even need to be fixed. The projections produced by the SS Trustees are based on sets of hopelessly pessimistic assumptions, the very reason that their past projections have been so wildly off the mark. And even these gloom-and-doom calculations show that the system is fine for another 20 years even if we do nothing at all. Meanwhile, if the economy eventually returns to health, or if there is positive growth in immigration over coming decades, or if the pace of expansion in life expectancy should slow from the levels of recent decades, it is easily possible that the trust fund will in fact never be exhausted and SS can pay 100% of scheduled benefits in perpetuity, again assuming that we do nothing at all in the interim to improve the system. Want to be a little more proactive? Fine. Increase the wage cap from it's current $113,700 to about $175,000, but leave the benefits cap just as it is. Poof! All projected problems vanish. If you think that's being mean to rich people, consider that 90% of all wages were under the cap in 1983 when the last major adjustment of SS was done, but that the number has now fallen to 83% as more and more income has been redistributed upward and into the pockets of the already quite wealthy. Bad enough that they've grabbed the money, but to have grabbed it tax-free? Something could be done about that.
Medicare is a much different situation, but the overriding point here is that its problems arise not from within Medicare itself, but rather from within the out-of-control, for-profit, fee-for-service health care system that Medicare is plugged into. It's hardly a coincidence that no other developed country relies on such a system to anything like the degree that we do. And although PPACA was able to extend the functional lifetime of Medicare by a little more than a decade, there is no way to resolve the long-term situation without health care reform. People who think we can afford to "repeal Obamacare" are simply idiots. There is no other suitable word for them.
Pure Republican poppycock. The economy has never been better because the stock market is at all time highs. All of us elites are doing extremely well and that is your true gauge of a successful economy. My restaurants are all booming. We have the middle class plebs expanding their debt burden as well. Dr. Bernanke continues to expand the balance sheet, and by doing so, furthers the recovery to even greater lengths. Anything questioning the recovery and the claim that we are really in a depression is in fact Republican poppycock. It is because I say so and gave an economics lecture about this very topic at one of my 501(c)(3) organizations last night. I was received with a standing ovation and one pleb actually fainted in the presence of my greatness.
Butt-hurt seems to be particularly bad among the small fry stalker/groupie cohort this morning. Did you get toasted in some other forum again or something?
Last edited by oaktonite; 08-19-2013 at 06:59 AM..
If we can't create economic growth when we are pumping $85 Billion/Month directly into the economy, what happens when we stop?
Stick Market is up. Government spending is HUGE. Wealthy are doing great. Not a cloud in the sky...until the Fed tries to curtail the free lunch. Then, well.....7 1/2% unemployment will look like the 'good' times.
Enjoy it while it lasts. Once the manipulation stops you are going to see a cold economic winter that will re-define our way of life.
If we can't create economic growth when we are pumping $85 Billion/Month directly into the economy, what happens when we stop?
QE doesn't go directly into the economy. Banks surrender various securities in exchange for credits to their accounts held at the Fed. This increases the monetary base which has more than tripled, but not the money supply which has not come close even to doubling.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ted Bear
Stick Market is up. Government spending is HUGE.
Real federal spending peaked in 2009. It is not expected to reach that mark again until 2016. This is one of the reasons that recovery has been at a moderate pace.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ted Bear
Wealthy are doing great. Not a cloud in the sky...until the Fed tries to curtail the free lunch. Then, well.....7 1/2% unemployment will look like the 'good' times. Enjoy it while it lasts. Once the manipulation stops you are going to see a cold economic winter that will re-define our way of life.
QE doesn't go directly into the economy. Banks surrender various securities in exchange for credits to their accounts held at the Fed. This increases the monetary base which has more than tripled, but not the money supply which has not come close even to doubling.
Real federal spending peaked in 2009. It is not expected to reach that mark again until 2016. This is one of the reasons that recovery has been at a moderate pace.
Long on color, short on sense.
Thank you for the lesson in how our banking system works.
Quite right...the monetary base has expanded dramatically. The economy, on the back of this underpinning? Not so much.
Yes, Government spending is not what it was. There has been a nominal curtailment. Regardless, the absolute amount of spending is still HUGE (and quite frankly, out of control, but that is another topic).
So you don't think that , with huge economic stimulus--where we have achieved virtually zero growth and job creation-- removal of the stimulus will cause an economic slowing? Then why are we spending the money to begin with?
If the stimulus has produced no results, why not remove it and save our good-will for another day?
Thank you for the lesson in how our banking system works.
There are many without understanding.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ted Bear
Quite right...the monetary base has expanded dramatically. The economy, on the back of this underpinning? Not so much. Yes, Government spending is not what it was. There has been a nominal curtailment. Regardless, the absolute amount of spending is still HUGE (and quite frankly, out of control, but that is another topic).
Spending is actually just about at the level of the trend that has existed since 1960. What's cockeyed is revenues. The bottom has fallen out over there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ted Bear
So you don't think that , with huge economic stimulus--where we have achieved virtually zero growth and job creation-- removal of the stimulus will cause an economic slowing?
We have had growth in 15 of the past 16 quarters, the exception being 2011-I after Republicans gained control of the House. QE is meanwhile not a stimulus program. It is a program designed to keep interest rates low. Stimulus is a fiscal phenomenon, and it basically ended after 2010. Too bad, as it is a more effective tool than QE.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ted Bear
If the stimulus has produced no results, why not remove it and save our good-will for another day?
The stimulus program produced almost exactly what it was designed and expected to produce. There were 3+ million jobs present in the economy at the end of 2010 that would not have been there but for the stimulus bill. About two percentage points were shaved off the unemployment rate as the result with a similar amount being added to GDP growth rates. There are some relatively small scale flows still occurring, but once Republicans got control of the House with their "debt and spending are bad" mantra, actual stimulus unwisely came to an end.
People love handouts. We have people living in mansions getting food stamps. (in Milwaukee)
They don't OWN the mansions, however. The typical scenario here would be a bank or builder making no money at all off a vacant property who starts taking Section-8 housing vouchers just to make any buck at all. Many who are eligible for Section-8 are aslo eligible for food stamps.
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