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Expansion of the money supply is not a core cause of inflation because the same entity that issues the currency controls the demand for it (interest rates). That's how the Fed picks and chooses its target inflation rate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pghquest
Wong.. There is no economic growth without money being circulated..
If I have $100 in my pocket and cut my own grass, this creates $0 increase in the GDP, but if I decide to spend it and pay you to do it, it increases the GDP by $100.
That $100 was already created as a debt, so that doesn't really address the argument. That does explain why devaluing currency and taxation are sound economic principles however (both discourage hoarding).
Quote:
Originally Posted by pghquest
It didnt need the creation of new money to cause economic activity..
Of course it did. You didn't create that $100.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pghquest
WRONG, there is only $1.29 trillion in circulation.
ooh I'm done with you.. You just make things up as you go along and its all WRONG...
No, there is roughly $18 trillion in circulation between the private and foreign sectors. (whatever the debt number is for today)
Conservatives are all for big spending on corporate welfare and a bloated militaryand could care less about the national debt.
And that's the way it's been for probably 100 years now. Conservatives hold the "small government" narrative, but all it really means is cutting the safety net. And they keep saying it because it works. Look at all the people who come on here talking about deadbeats on welfare. Welfare spending was 9% of the 2015 budget, and the rate of fraud is believed to be around 2%. Not 2% of the 9%, but 2% of the entire 100% that's spent on welfare. Put another way, for every $1 in taxes that funds the federal budget, 9 cents goes toward welfare. That means that a little less than two-tenths of a penny of that $1 is lost to fraud. That's what everyone is so up in arms about. Two-tenths of a penny.
Others complain about foreign aid. That's about 1% of the budget. One penny of your dollar.
Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much on corporate welfare -- i.e., subsidies -- than we do on social welfare. And that's not even including all the massive corporate tax breaks that leave gigantic companies like GE and Boeing essentially owing nothing in taxes -- nor does it include all the money they hide overseas. Guess who has to make up the tax shortfall? The middle class.
THAT is where people's outrage should lie. Not with poor people who are daily being reamed by these massive corporations who are raking in record profits. The top 1% to 2% are seeing all the recent monetary growth, while unemployment and underemployment remain a problem for everyone else.
The biggest place we can slash spending is in the military. We spend more on war than the next eight nations combined, and no other nation on the planet spends as much as we do. Our foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. We can't bomb the world into peace, and we can't destroy ideologies with military might. The military is for NATIONAL defense, not for subduing every bad guy around the planet, or dropping drone bombs on weddings and rescue parties, or assassinating American citizens, or running kill lists from the Oval Office. James Madison warned that liberty cannot survive in a nation that's at perpetual war, and we can see that in the way our civil liberties are being choked to death in the name of national security. Yet no one will have that discussion at the national level. Look at the flap over funding DHS -- where was the discussion about whether we even need this department? It's just taken as a given now. The two major parties are virtually identical when it comes to foreign policy and civil liberties, yet those are the two things we desperately need to force a national conversation on.
If I have to pay taxes, I want them to go toward helping people, not killing them. Universal health care and subsidized higher education -- I'd pay for those in a heartbeat. Social welfare is a pittance in the budget. Establishing a guaranteed minimum income for every American -- an idea that goes all the way back to Thomas Paine -- would help keep people afloat when they fall on hard times and could do away with a lot of redundancy in social programs.
We could manage to do most, if not all, of this by cutting corporate subsidies, closing tax loopholes, penalizing the hoarding of money overseas, and enacting deep cuts in military spending.
The problem is that the Ds and Rs all play for the same team, so this will never happen. Sure, there are some superficial differences between the parties, but both of them are drifting to the right. Today's mainstream Democrats are probably about where Nixon was on the political spectrum 40 years ago. Today's Republicans, meanwhile, would probably crucify Reagan as being a liberal.
And that's the way it's been for probably 100 years now. Conservatives hold the "small government" narrative, but all it really means is cutting the safety net. And they keep saying it because it works. Look at all the people who come on here talking about deadbeats on welfare. Welfare spending was 9% of the 2015 budget, and the rate of fraud is believed to be around 2%. Not 2% of the 9%, but 2% of the entire 100% that's spent on welfare. Put another way, for every $1 in taxes that funds the federal budget, 9 cents goes toward welfare. That means that a little less than two-tenths of a penny of that $1 is lost to fraud. That's what everyone is so up in arms about. Two-tenths of a penny.
Others complain about foreign aid. That's about 1% of the budget. One penny of your dollar.
Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much on corporate welfare -- i.e., subsidies -- than we do on social welfare.
Really? Identify the supposed corporate welfare in the following:
There should be no surprise that the right-wing's priorities are self-centered, callous and reactionary. The "conservative" label has become nothing more than a childish attempt to hide one's craven nature under what used to be a respectable label.
You nailed it.
Obama is self-centered, callous, and reactionary.
That craven lowlife as a candidate proposed a net federal spending cut -- and all of his supporters, who I can only assume were all far right wing tea party types cheered, chanted, and fainted!!!
Conservatives are all for big spending on corporate welfare and a bloated militaryand could care less about the national debt.
Thank you. Case closed.
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