I guess it depends on what baseline you use. Generally speaking, the increase in spending since the 1990s is primarily increases in entitlement spending along with defense. If you are using something like 2007 as the baseline then a lot is recession related spending. However, I am more concerned with the future, and in the long-term the increases in spending are entitlement and interest.
And no secret that he wants to do essentially nothing to social security and medicare. Probably 90% of his spending cuts will be interest saved from less debt due to increased revenues along with already scheduled winding down war and recession related costs.
Nevertheless you quipped that the Great Depression was “vastly preferable” to the economy during the gold standard. Unless you are a sadist I don’t see how you could say that. Perhaps Friedman also had this preference, but you haven’t demonstrated this with your quote.
Of course. However, sometimes doing something can make it more difficult to make more substantive changes in the future.
I think there are a lot of things in the law that may be minor positives compared to the status quo. Is it a real substantive change to our healthcare system that will change costs considerably, I highly doubt that.
Sure, it’s the law and not too terribly different than what they would have done if they had all the power. They lose credibility with their current strategy and they invite more and more fringe elements to the party by conducting their current strategy. If it was up to me though the Democrats should have been laser focused on jobs and the economy in Obama’s first term and then pushed for real healthcare reform in his second term.
Unless I didn’t actually say that at all.
Be that as it may, I regret introducing the subject of goldbuggery into this thread. It has nothing to do with the deficit.
snerk
Do you think that is true in this case?
While I can imagine more radical changes to health care law, I cannot imagine our actual political system ever making a more radical change. Nor do I imagine that the passing of PPACA somehow defused whatever support there would have been for some more radical change–whether that’s single-payer, abolishing preferential tax treatment for health benefits, or any of the other more radical proposals still kicking around.
If PPACA is to be considered mere fiddling while Rome burns, then I’m afraid Rome is toast.
Well we only have a short time period when there is a Fed but no FDIC. During that period, though, we have the onset of the Great Depression, so you can come to whatever conclusion you want about panics during the Fed era before FDIC.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WillFarnaby
Yes, because expansionary monetary policy, fiscal stimulus, and higher tax rates worked out so well for us during the Great Depression.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ravenman
Vastly preferable to the unstable turd of an economic system we had while on the gold standard.
What exactly did you say, bud?
You regret bringing up goldbuggery because I provided evidence that the U.S. economy thrived under the gold standard. Why bring up the topic if you’re not going to go any deeper than the old standardized cliches?
Start another thread on the topic and I’ll bring up the the gold standard’s history of recessions, deflation, and economic instability.
Sacrificing the short term will ensure we will never arrive at the long term with an economy worth saving.
True. And with the unfortunate power of compound interest, the Democrats’ strategy will leave us in the exact same predicament.
That’s nonsense. The Republicans don’t care about the economy, long term or short term. On the contrary; they’d love to crash it in a second Great Depression in order to justify massive cuts to all those evil “socialist” programs. They have zero concern for the welfare of the country or the people in it. They are concerned with pushing their ideological and religious agenda, not with the needs of the country.
The Republicans aren’t the “loyal opposition”; they are not people who mean well & are loyal to the country but just disagree on how to do things. They are the enemies of both the Democrats and the nation in general. The only reason they don’t qualify as traitors is because America’s legal definition of treason is so narrow that they can actively work for the ruin of the country and still not qualify.
Hell, no. I could live with the compromise if it actually was a compromise, but it wasn’t. It was just kicking the can down the road to a point where the Republicans will have more power due to their willingness not to raise the debt ceiling and let the country default on its financial obligations.
It was just a desperation move that accomplished nothing. At most, it was posturing by the Democratic Party, and I think giving the Republicans the upper hand undid that posturing. We didn’t come off any stronger than before, and the Republicans can easily mop the floor with us come March. But the Republicans knew we’d never let the financial cliff actually happen, and they know we’ll never actually let the U.S. default on its debt.