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Agree 100%! It all started, IMO, with the housing bubble/bust when the Bush Admin. lowered int. rates and pushed housing as a place to invest money. I kept saying what you just said: all we are doing is prolonging the inevitable, which is a big recession or depression. Let's just take the big hit and recover already instead of dragging it along soft, but SLOW!
The problem is, I don't know how BAD things could have been if we just let the economy crash fast and hard. I'm not sure society could handle the impact, which is why I think the govt. did what it did.
i believe it started before the bush admin, during the clinton admin. i primarily blame fannie mae and other gre's for allowing the subprime market to take off by securitizing low quality loans. those organizations were very powerful and very corrupt. the sooner they end, the better.
but i dont really like to focus on who to blame, i want to focus on going forward. i dont want loans going to people who wont be able to pay them off. i dont want the government backing mortgages (or offering an implied guarantee via the gre's). government is the root of the problem. bush was basically happy to enjoy the good publicity from the fact that home ownership grew a lot during his presidency. he should have done more to stop it.
Agree 100%! It all started, IMO, with the housing bubble/bust when the Bush Admin. lowered int. rates and pushed housing as a place to invest money. I kept saying what you just said: all we are doing is prolonging the inevitable, which is a big recession or depression. Let's just take the big hit and recover already instead of dragging it along soft, but SLOW!
The problem is, I don't know how BAD things could have been if we just let the economy crash fast and hard. I'm not sure society could handle the impact, which is why I think the govt. did what it did.
Are they talking about the Bush tax cuts? The ones that were supposed to expire last year or something? I'm not rich, but I benefited from those those cuts, and I still say let them expire.
And if that causes a recession and you lose your job will you keep your festering gob shut, or will you whine incessantly?Like it or not, you have a service-consumer based economy. It is wholly dependent on discretionary disposable income.
When Cost Inflation resulted in a rise in gasoline prices and certain commodities experienced Cost Inflation because of the start-up of some 70+ ethanol plants that sucked corn off of the market and drove up corn prices, the discretionary disposable income of the masses was depleted and you went into a recession.
Even though you have recovered from the recession, the discretionary disposable income of the masses has not recovered, and that is in part why your GDP growth ranges from bad to tepid.
And you say, "Let them eat cake and let the tax cuts expire to deprive the masses of even more discretionary disposable income."
Quote:
Originally Posted by kinkytoes
The government needs the money
Prove it.
Prove to me the national government needs a 4th bureaucracy to over see the nutrition of school lunches, when there is already a 1st bureaucracy (the school board), a 2nd bureaucracy (the State school board), and for many States a 3rd bureaucracy (the county school board).
Quote:
Originally Posted by bradykp
he pointed out that if congress does NOTHING, which it's very good at, and just let the tax cuts expire, that would erase $3.9T in debt over the next 10 years (i may not have the exact quote right, but that's about it). that would put us well on our way to closing the debt
Really? What kind of math is that?
Your National Debt will be $15 TRILLION at year's end.
If you continue to deficit spend at your current rate of $1.5 TRILLION per year, that is $15 TRILLION making your National Debt $30 TRILLION plus oodles of interest that I don't feel like calculating right now.
Please explain how $26.1 TRILLION in National Debt is better than $30 TRILLION in National Debt?
Better than that, who exactly is going to be buying up all this debt?
Quote:
Originally Posted by west336
Stop cutting services and making this country even more pathetic, quality-wise, than it already is.
What moron is talking about cutting services?
I'm merely talking about cutting out duplication at the federal level and conforming to the Constitution.
You don't need a Department of Education anymore than you need spend money studying how Gulf shrimp run on treadmills.
Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, said he identified more than $3 billion in mismanagement at NSF, ranging from questionable studies to exorbitant operating costs, and in some cases duplication by the science agency of operations performed by other agencies.
At a time when the federal government is struggling with record deficits and bumping up against its borrowing limit, Mr. Coburn said the agency is a prime example of the kinds of spending taxpayers should no longer tolerate.
"There is little, if any, obvious scientific benefit to some NSF projects, such as a YouTube rap video, a review of event ticket prices on stubhub.com, a 'robot hoedown and rodeo,' or a virtual recreation of the 1964/65 New York World's Fair," Mr. Coburn said in a letter to taxpayers he wrote introducing the 73-page report, documented by more than 350 footnotes.
In one instance NSF employees, in their spare time, engaged in a Jell-O wrestling contest at the agency's McMurdo research station at the South Pole. In another case, the agency paid $559,681 to test sick shrimp's metabolism, which one researcher said was "the first time that shrimp have been exercised on a treadmill."
And you want to tax the snot out of people for that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by west336
Cutting services is not a way to make this country prosper in the long run.
Other than Obama wanting to cut Social Security, who is saying to cut services?
It will also free up cash among the 95% majority that can be spent in the marketplace thereby creating more jobs and more tax revenue
That's a delusion. There is a small global elite that runs things. It's less than one tenth of 1%. They are the ones really running the show. They control the banking systems, the politican systems, etc. They've rigged all of these systems in their favor. The majority of the people considered "rich" by ordinary Americans are not part of the true elite. They will just get soaked with the tax increases.
As has already been noted, the bottom 45% to 50% are not paying any Federal income taxes at all (yes, they pay Social Security & Medicare if they work, but so do all the other wage earners). I used to think the poor & middle class shouldn't pay taxes. But I've changed my mind. The poor and middle class have no clue as to what the true cost of government is because they've been paying so little in tax over the last decade. They have every incentive to vote for every new government program that comes along because they don't see the cost.
Even important programs like Medicare/Medicaid are not efficiently run. Costs for these programs goes up in the double digit percentages every year and nothing is ever done to rein in costs. Despite all the spending, America is far from the healthiest population. We're one of those most obese and pharmaceutically dependent countries in the world .
The problem I have with people on the political left is that most of them automatically and unquestioningly equate spending more on government programs with better quality and better outcomes. That is very often far from the truth. But in that respect, they are like fundamentalist Christians...you can't reason with them because they do not want to admit that spending more (and/or centralizing control at the Federal level) often does not lead to better results.
Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
5,509 posts, read 11,880,875 times
Reputation: 2501
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mircea
What moron is talking about cutting services?
I'm merely talking about cutting out duplication at the federal level and conforming to the Constitution.
Other than Obama wanting to cut Social Security, who is saying to cut services?
I just want some common sense.
I think what keep popping up in my mind is Texas' strategy not to raise taxes, but cut spending. You can't cut that much "fat" without cutting good, legitimate services in the process. There is not enough fat to trim to balance the budget. I doubt it anyways.
I think what keep popping up in my mind is Texas' strategy not to raise taxes, but cut spending. You can't cut that much "fat" without cutting good, legitimate services in the process. There is not enough fat to trim to balance the budget. I doubt it anyways.
Texas seems to be doing fine. Spending more doesn't equate to quality.
I think what keep popping up in my mind is Texas' strategy not to raise taxes, but cut spending. You can't cut that much "fat" without cutting good, legitimate services in the process. There is not enough fat to trim to balance the budget. I doubt it anyways.
there absolutely is enough fat to cut. the federal budget has grown by about 1/3 over the past few years. the 2008 federal budget was 2.9 trillion and in 2011 it is 3.8 trillion. that is a tremendous increase for such a short period of time. also, in that time the debt has gone from under 10 trillion to over 14 trillion. its insano.
there is tons of fat to be cut, but the political will to cut the fat isnt there and also politicians dont get money contributed to them by cutting spending so they dont have incentive to cut spending. like mircea said, there is an incredible amount of duplication in federal departments. states have departments of health, education, environmental protection and energy. you can chop them from the federal budget. you can also cut the military tremendously and you should eliminate federal pensions, retiree health benefits and cut federal salaries by about 20%. you can also sell off NASA.
Agree 100%! It all started, IMO, with the housing bubble/bust when the Bush Admin. lowered int. rates and pushed housing as a place to invest money. I kept saying what you just said: all we are doing is prolonging the inevitable, which is a big recession or depression. Let's just take the big hit and recover already instead of dragging it along soft, but SLOW!
The problem is, I don't know how BAD things could have been if we just let the economy crash fast and hard. I'm not sure society could handle the impact, which is why I think the govt. did what it did.
Actually it started with the first Bush when the first cycle of lowering interest rates and artificially raising property values.
People who purchased property in the real estate boom of the late 80's got bailed out and it began the bubble based, artificial economy we have been in ever since. If you look at the national debt this is the time period where it began to ramp up.
In an effort to avoid paying the price for this financial irresponsibility, we have been using ever-increasing debt to postpone the inevitable.
Had we let the free market run its natural course, the recession in the 90's would have been short and quick. Instead, we avoided it and set the stage for the dot com/real estate bubble of the late 90's. Had we let that recession run its natural course it would have been worse than the early 90's but not intolerable. Instead we went to the well again with massive borrowing and loose fiscal policy by the fed which fueled the mother of all real estate bubbles in the mid 2000's. When that bubble collapsed, we knew we were in real trouble this time, as we would have to experience the deflation of 3 recessions. Instead we went on the largest borrowing spree the world has ever seen and added trillions to the National Debt. The problem is now it is no longer working. QE1 and 2 were desperate attempts to blow yet another bubble and to begin another course of inflation. They failed. Instead of creating a bubble, the economy is stagnating under the weight of the debt.
Now as some people admit we finally have to face the music, others desperately want to believe we can still borrow our way out of having to pay the price for our past. The ultra wealthy know better and are robbing the store in order to get them through the coming calamity.
By not raising the debt limit, we would in fact make the FED impotent, and prevent them from financing more debt to a government addicted to debt.
We would force government to be responsible, and give the free market a chance to rectify the mistakes of the past.
Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
5,509 posts, read 11,880,875 times
Reputation: 2501
Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainNJ
there absolutely is enough fat to cut. the federal budget has grown by about 1/3 over the past few years. the 2008 federal budget was 2.9 trillion and in 2011 it is 3.8 trillion. that is a tremendous increase for such a short period of time. also, in that time the debt has gone from under 10 trillion to over 14 trillion. its insano.
there is tons of fat to be cut, but the political will to cut the fat isnt there and also politicians dont get money contributed to them by cutting spending so they dont have incentive to cut spending. like mircea said, there is an incredible amount of duplication in federal departments. states have departments of health, education, environmental protection and energy. you can chop them from the federal budget. you can also cut the military tremendously and you should eliminate federal pensions, retiree health benefits and cut federal salaries by about 20%. you can also sell off NASA.
I'm all about trimming the fat and re-evaluating, but I just doubt you can trim that much.
I think everyone is conveniently forgetting that there was this little housing bubble that popped in 2008 that has caused so much unemployment, decline in housing values, etc. that impacts TAX REVENUE. The correlation between the housing bubble and falling tax revenues and budgetary issues is nearly 100%. Tax REV is the key driver here. You can cut spending but I think the root of the issue is less revenue is being collected during the nation's worst economic recession since the Great Depression. It's not rocket science to me.
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