Agreed.
Sure, the U.S. is definitely more similar to Japan than Greece although no country is really a good comparison to the U.S.
Also, there are also major negatives to the current low interest rate environment we are in. For example, we’re screwing over the retirees and savers; we’re causing savers to move up the risk spectrum in search of return; and we’re taking on additional contingent liabilities as pensions get riskier.
No you’re not. Or at least, most of the people who agree with you are just paying lip service.
It was the Republicans who refused to compromise. The majority of them wanted huge spending cuts, wanted to hold the debt ceiling hostage, wanted no tax raises, no cuts to military, and all of this or else they’d refuse to vote for it. And at the end, about a 150 of them held firm. They are the ones who refused to compromise. If only they’d agree to raise the taxes more, then they’d have more spending cuts. If they weren’t such assholes about the debt ceiling, maybe the Dems would be willing to give up more
They reaped what they sowed, which is a dysfunctional, obstructionist government. No wonder a mostly Democratic bill was the only one that could have passed. Ignore the majority of the majority party, work with the few who would NOT like to see the country go through another recession, and vote for the Democratic plan. If you and other Republicans are so mad they didn’t get a better deal then vote your Republicans out office. But you won’t, you’ll retain a huge majority of them, and the ones who do get voted out will be even more hardline than the last batch
The only way this country and move forward with deals, compromises, and get back to actual governing is for Republican voters to oust all those who refuse to compromise.
You’re grasping. He said it in the debate, it was on his website, he covered it on the stump. Where do you think Obama came up with his attack on Romney’s vouchers, if Romney said this “virtually nowhere else”? Part of Romney’s platform was entitlement reform; whether you agree with his plan or not, he had one.
The facts are not up for debate. Obama squandered the political capital he had to push through an increase in taxes on the rich, an increase that would not put so much as a dent in the current year’s deficit, let alone the total debt. Romney ran, in part, on entitlement reform and debt reduction (whether you think his plans would have been effective is a different issue). The current “plan” that addresses the fiscal cliff, a bipartisan effort, ignores entitlement reform and will add trillions to the debt. Them’s the facts.
So you’ve got buyer’s regret. I’ll bet you wish they had taken the offer he made a couple of weeks ago; but, *nooooo! * Republicans decided to double down on “No tax increases, ever!”, and they lost. Now they had to settle for a much worse deal. Maybe that will teach them to compromise next time. Or not; they are already trying to convince themselves that revenue is now off the table, and all new deals will be strictly spending cuts. And they will continue down that rabbit hole once again, doubling down on a losing proposition, until it is too late; and once again they will have to settle for more tax increases and no spending cuts.
Why do your guys keep punching themselves in the dick, then wonder why their junk hurts?
They’re not my guys. I don’t care who “wins.” I’d be thrilled if Obama could seize this moment in history and be a true leader, one who rallies a nation and drives us to real, sustainable solutions. I hope he does, but have no expectation he will.
Whoever comes up with a real plan that can actually address the critical issues we have, he’s my guy. If we keep coming up with pieces of shit like this last “solution,” I’ll continue to conclude that D.C. is a fraternity of imbeciles.
Only way Obama could do anything of the sort is if he declared himself dictator and abolished the house and senate. This silly idea that it is a lack of leadership that is keeping us in gridlock is simply ridiculous.
Well, it probably wouldn’t hurt.
The Republicans decrying the lack of leadership are no better than the third grader pouting, “You’re not the boss of me!” They don’t want to be led, because that would be a sign of weakness, then they bash Obama for not leading the unleadable. They don’t know what leadership is, it is just another buzz word to them.
The only thing more laughable than this “compromise” is the market’s reaction to it.
You are right, this was not a compromise; The GOP vowed to never compromise, so they ended up with a deal they don’t like. Tough titty.
As for the markets, my portfolio was up over 2% in two days. Cha-ching!
Round and round.
Speaking of humor, the prescriptions of the Austrian school for our current economic and fiscal problems have me in stitches.
That is, Obamacare funded stitches, which only makes me laugh harder.
What bullshit. It is the Republicans who have never shown any responsibility in fiscal matters. They cut revenues but not spending because they in fact know that spending cuts are not popular with the public (except in the abstract). They propose few real significant spending cuts but rather come up with fantasmagorical budgets like Paul Ryan’s that magically cut spending but never specify the details. (And, of course, they throw money at the Pentagon for things that even they don’t think we need.)
The Republicans and their apologists on this are just infantile little children.
Is that your go-to response when someone shows you were unambiguously incorrect?
No, but our income is ~$2 trillion and our debt is ~$16 trillion and rising at more than ~$1 trillion per year.
To use your example, it would be if your income was $40k, your total debt was $320k, and you were taking on $20k of new debt this year.
I was addressing the comments about the debt never going down in recent history. The aggregate amount of debt has basically not decreased, but the burden of the debt on our economy went down by a whole lot between WW2 and Reagan’s presidency. Many people don’t seem to understand this concept. I had to use a very simple illustration to get the point across that just looking at debt numbers going up isn’t an accurate portrayal of the problem, that you have to look at debt as a portion of our national wealth.
And to be consistent, our debt is about $16 trillion and our income is also about $16 trillion, not $2 trillion.
Yes, but at the end of WWII, we had just invested 4 years of massive resources the likes of which the world had never seen in order to defeat 2 of the most evil and powerful empires the world has ever seen. Is that a fair starting point to determine how good/bad our current debt is?
Plus $16 trillion is only our income if you consider the personal incomes of every single American in the equation. Again, that’s a poor starting point because government spending can never be anywhere near 100% of GDP and is thus, not available for debt reduction.
Your overall point wasn’t lost on me (that looking at raw numbers is silly from many years ago) but the debt is a serious problem when you consider that it has increased $10 trillion over the past 15 years with no plan from anyone to keep it from growing.
Serious and sharp spending cuts have to happen soon to keep this debt from exploding. There simply isn’t enough tax money out there to balance the budget unless we are talking about confiscatory rates without loopholes: Something which will cripple the economy and not touch the debt problem.
Personal income could never be 100% available for debt reduction either.
Right, and neither is 100% of government income, so the $2 trillion (and the $40k) makes that assumption as well. That’s why I think that $2 trillion is a better figure than $16 trillion. Even if we double tax revenue, it’s $4 trillion.
Better stated: $16 trillion could never be available for government allocation at all (debt reduction or otherwise) so it is a bad starting point.
If people stop claiming or implying that the United States has never reduced our debt burden, it is a perfectly fair and factual point to make that over thirty years, the ratio of debt to GDP was constantly reduced. Pick 1960 as a starting point if you wish: our debt as a percentage of GDP was just shy of 60%, and twenty years later it was in the neighborhood of 35%.
Debt to GDP ratio is the standard measuring stick of whether debt is sustainable. If one were inclined to take your view, then any debt that’s more than a small portion of government revenues might be considered bad (because payment of the debt can never be 100% of government spending) and people would start freaking out if the debt was more than, say, $500 billion. But virtually everyone – other than small government fanatics – takes a more nuanced view and looks at the ability of a government to pay its debt and meet other obligations as a government should, which the US is currently doing and is expected to do for quite some time to come. On this point, the market is speaking.
Perhaps you are missing the point. Balancing the budget is not the only way to address the debt problem. As about 35 of the last 60 years shows, maintaining high economic growth while not letting deficits spin out of control is effective at reducing a country’s debt burden. Instituting austerity programs that reduce economic growth in order to tackle the debt boogeyman ASAP is the wrong way to go.
Yes, both government revenue and spending should be addressed, but not in shortsighted ways that throw people out of work and make the job of addressing deficits harder. After all, what do you really think balanced the budget in the late 1990s? Was it adjustments to tax rates? Was it the spending cuts? Of course not! It was the rip-roaring economic boom that increased revenues and low unemployment that alleviated demand on government services.
If the government wants to fit into skinny jeans like it did in high school, the answer isn’t fasting and purging (radical budget cuts). The method is to institute a healthy lifestyle across all sectors.