Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Oh, by the way, I looked briefly at your article and it amusing refers to EU deficits post-austerity measures. That's quite disingenuous, but unsurprising because it's the Economist. Good job reading a headline, however.
Oh, by the way, I looked briefly at your article and it amusing refers to EU deficits post-austerity measures. That's quite disingenuous, but unsurprising because it's the Economist. Good job reading a headline, however.
Not all of Europe implemented Austerity (and those that did didn't benefit; Greece's 17% decline in GDP over 3 years post-Austerity destroyed the value of their austerity). Moreover, if you would have adjusted for the small aggregate austerity measures, the relative deficits (and overall debts) would still beat the U.S., with the wealthier countries (which are more similar to us anyway) being especially superior.
Finally, the U.S. budget outlays have fallen far short of projections and we have engaged in austerity (in GDP percentage terms).
Also, The Economist is disingenuous!!?? When I made the crack about confirmation bias, I wasn't sure how widely the "circle of exclusion" ran, but if a center-right, pro-capitalist, intellectual journal like The Economist strikes you as de-facto disingenuous, I can't imagine what you consider a credible source.
Not all of Europe implemented Austerity (and those that did didn't benefit; Greece's 17% decline in GDP over 3 years post-Austerity destroyed the value of their austerity). Moreover, if you would have adjusted for the small aggregate austerity measures, the relative deficits (and overall debts) would still beat the U.S., with the wealthier countries (which are more similar to us anyway) being especially superior.
Finally, the U.S. budget outlays have fallen far short of projections and we have engaged in austerity (in GDP percentage terms).
Also, The Economist is disingenuous!!?? When I made the crack about confirmation bias, I wasn't sure how widely the "circle of exclusion" ran, but if a center-right, pro-capitalist, intellectual journal like The Economist strikes you as de-facto disingenuous, I can't imagine what you consider a credible source.
Yes, The Economist is disingenuous. It's quite simple to see that if you read the actual article, which you probably didn't. First of all, neither you nor the writer knows the difference between "debt" and "deficit," since he also uses it interchangeably. Second of all, the article purports to compare the US debt with EU debt, but as I said he does so after austerity measures were in place -- which he himself notes, albeit only in the text and not in the headline. Third of all, he doesn't explain to his readers -- who need it -- the difference between the US and the EU, only some of which are that the EU doesn't have to deal with our levels of military spending or illegal immigration. I'm sure there were more problems with the article, since I was only halfway through, but given how flawed it was I realized there was no point in continuing to read it.
I now think you don't know what an ad hominem is, either. This is really horrifying.
Let's see:
Quote:
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
Quote:
An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.
As if the EU needs to spend more on the military were we to decrease our spending... you know, with the Cold War going on full bore and all.
That said, none of that is really relevant to our ability to pay for and provide a universal system of public collegiate and graduate-level education. We can do so and it would be cheaper to society as a whole (and be sustainable in the long run). Austerity cuts were rarely to education, and when even modest cuts or changes to higher ed were proposed (as in the UK), the protests were and instant and uproarious.
Here, we just take our awful system as if it is an unchangeable fact of life, a monolith which lords over us beyond our power. It's not, and we do have the power.
A lot of things involving money are mandatory in the US.
Americans forced to 'contribute' to Social Security Insurance, vehicle insurance being required and recently health insurance being required.
How about a new law:
Anyone that has children should be required to put at least $2,000 a year into an account to pay for the end result of their orgasm(s) to go to college.
If the child or children do not go to college, then the money is refunded or allowed to be withdrawn from the account by the parent or parents. Eighteen years is plenty of time for parents to save and invest the money required for their children's college education.
It should be called the 'You Made It - You Pay To Educate It' Law
A lot of things involving money are mandatory in the US.
Americans forced to 'contribute' to Social Security Insurance, vehicle insurance being required and recently health insurance being required.
How about a new law:
Anyone that has children should be required to put at least $2,000 a year into an account to pay for the end result of their orgasm(s) to go to college.
If the child or children do not go to college, then the money is refunded or allowed to be withdrawn from the account by the parent or parents.
It should be called the 'You Made It - You Pay To Educate It' Law
Problem solved.
Or you could just have no law and just not have any government loans or subsidies for education. It would do the same thing, cut the government, and not add more laws or regulatory bodies.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
