But that is not how we choose who to vote for. Chris Matthews made a good analogy last night: voters are like the manager of a baseball team. When his pitcher is tanking, he pulls him out. He doesn’t look at the bullpen and say, “do i know that any of these guys will do any better?” He yanks the pitcher, and gives somebody else a chance. The Republican party has had it’s chance, and the voters are sick of losing. Time to go to the bullpen.
Well, that’s still to be determined…though I have to admit that (IMHO) the recent financial melt down SHOULD play more to Obama than McCain. In fact, I THINK it will be the straw that breaks the McCain camels back.
However, we won’t see if the voters are sick of things (and associate McCain with Bush as well) until November…so, I wouldn’t go counting chickens just yet…
-XT
Perhaps; I certainly think it will still be close no matter what. My point was, the voters will choose based on how they feel the party in power has done, and not so much on whether the challenger is demonstrably better. If the voters believe tax cuts and deregulation have produced a stronger economy, they will vote for McCain. If not, they will vote for Obama, even if his policies cannot be proven to work any better. Hope springs eternal.
I doubt most voters think that deeply about it. If they think McCain will ‘fix’ the current issues then they will vote for him…if Obama will ‘fix’ them, then they will go that way.
The ones who DO think more deeply about it know that it’s more complex than ‘tax cuts and deregulation have produced a stronger economy’…or vice versa. That the REASONS we are in our current straights don’t really have all that much to do with either of those in the end.
-XT
Every time I try and post something a little light-hearted, short and a-pathetic-attempt-at-humor, I don’t get the response(s) I’m shooting for.
So I’ll probably just have to stop that little avenue of approach.
No one has a sense of humor around here anymore, politically speaking. This is life or death shit here!
-XT
Just to lighten the mood, then…
With most sincere apologies to Cole Porter, I present…a parody.
o/`*The voters today in society
Go for econ ingenuity.
So to win their hearts
one must quote with verve
supply-side talk and the Laffer Curve.
But the econ’mist of them all,
the one that gets ‘em ravin’
is the one that people call
the Old Chicago School Maven.
Brush up your Friedman.
Start quoting him now.
Brush up your Friedman,
and the Pubbies will kowtow.
Just remind them of Brazil & Chile
and they’ll all feel a visceral thrill-ay.
If your base won’t respond to your presser,
Tell them what World Bank told Lech Waleser.
If still, a bit dubious, they don’t rush ya,
Just bring up what IMF told Russia.
Brush up your Friedman
and they’ll all kowtow.*o/`
I like points 2a, b and c. A lot.
I like the theory behind point 5, but have a feeling that is execution will be so bad that it will make matters worse and turn into a pork-laden cesspool of waste.
I like point 6a.
Everything else appears to be massively wrong-headed, counterproductive, wasteful and represents an unconscionable intrusion into our personal freedoms and the way Americans choose to conduct business with each other and our fellow citizens of the world.
You would be hard-pressed to draw up a plan that would do more to stagnate the economy (other than full-blown nationalization of industries), put our energy security at risk, discourage job creation and throw a leaden blanket on export growth than this plan.
To top it off, you might as well start ringing the dinner bell for special-interest lobbyists and Congresscritters to get together and horse-trade favors for the protected ‘new, good’ industries in this plan, extort tribute and concessions from the ‘bad industries’ in this plan, and increase the already-disproportionate influence of unions in Congress and on the political process in general.
This plan gets the government involved in so many aspects of business, industry and daily life, and gives unaccountable government bureaucrats so many more new levers to play with, piggy-banks to raid, and favors to horse-trade with other bureaucrats, that I will rush out right now and write a check not only to John McCain’s campaign, but to Cynthia McKinney’s campaign, Bob Barr’s campaign, and anybody else who has a shred of a chance of keeping Barack Obama and Joe Biden out of office, either directly or by drawing away votes to a 3rd party. At least, if they are serious about this plan. And I have to assume they are.
Hell, I would write a check right now to the dead guy in “Weekend At Bernie’s” and put him in the Oval Office chair for the next 4 years, because at the end of that administration we’ll all be better off than if this plan gets any traction whatsoever.
How’s that? I thought the energy in this particular thread was starting to wane a bit.
Fine you feel this way but you’ve given no particular support for your reasons. Just saying it is so (e.g. “hard-pressed to draw up a plan that would do more to stagnate the economy”) does not make it so.
What we do know is Republican loosening of rules and regulations to get evil government out of the way of business has been a large factor in leading to the current economic crisis which many claim is second only to the melt down that got us the Great Depression. Certainly government intrusion needs to be as minimal as possible but clearly and obviously business cannot be counted on to restrain itself leading us to this mess.
Further, you have not spelled out how McCain’s policies are better. Particularly since he wishes to continue so many of Bush’s policies which I think it is safe to say are an unmitigated disaster.
Maybe you are very wealthy and the McCain tax cuts are attractive to you. Beyond they I see nothing supportable there.
The Great Depression saw contractions in GDP and employment by 25% to 40%. Our GDP is still growing, and unemployment is 6%.
Depending on how you count, we’ve added between 5 million and 8 million jobs since the popping of the dot-com bubble and 9/11, both significant external shocks that could have spelled disaster. I chalk it up to the resiliency of our free market system and Bush’s tax cuts. Your opinion may differ. In fact, I’m sure it does.
During the Savings and Loans crisis of the 1980s over 2,900 banks failed. We’ve seen 12 fail so far. There will probably be a few more to come, but we’re nowhere near the level of retail banking anxiety (the impact of bank failures on ‘Main Street’) that we were at during that time. Most smaller community banks and well-managed regionals are doing just fine. Lehman went under primarily because they doubled-down and tripled-down on mortgages, and because Fuld went off into the deep end of his own hubris as Paulson, his counterparties and the analysts were screaming at him to clean up his balance sheet.
The biggest ‘failure’ to date - FNMA and Freddie, were both government-sponsored entities growing far beyond any rationality due to the political strings they pulled in Congress. They are on the hook for a shocking $5+ trillion in assets. Their leverage was extreme, with capital ratios down below 5% at the very end. Most commercial banks are between 5% and 8%. Regionals and community banks are often up around 10% to 12%. I can stack up a litany of cites going back to the Reagan administration from rational people of all political stripes warning that this was an impending disaster. I roll my eyes and move on past posts who claim it was Bush’s fault, or Cheney’s fault, or Gramm’s fault, or anything else that smacks of force-feeding blame into a pre-constructed political agenda.
I’m impressed by yours and others (e.g. Shayna’s) ability to whip out links and cites for your positions. I’ll try and get better at that. It seems to be the norm on this board. I guess my weakness is that I think some of these facts are common knowledge and don’t even require cites. But that’s probably because I spend a lot of time in the business and finance world where I see these things over and over every day.
I don’t want to appear insulting or mean, but to equate the current situation with the Great Depression is a wild overexaggeration and causes me to discount your opinion about these matters. I’ll still read your posts, of course, but I probably won’t dig into Google searches or my personal library to back up things that appear blatantly obvious to me. It’s not even the worst economy of the last twenty years. I’m not sure it’s even ‘bad’. It’s a political season and so there is some mileage to be gained from scare-mongering and blaming the other guy for this, that or the other thing.
The SDMB intrigues me. I like Cecil. I like the dialog. I’m probably what you would call a wishy-washy libertarian. I’m not reeled back all the way to the hard-core libertarian principles. I love America. I’ve lived all over the world. This place rocks and I want to make it better. My personal belief is that education, solid physical infrastructure, and a basic safety net to prevent our citizens from rare but catastrophic loss is important for our competitiveness and to safeguard my children’s future. That’s where I’m willing to throw a little dollop of governmental intervention on top of a bare-bones libertarian framework. Yes, I know, it pollutes the argument and opens up a whole host of slippery-slope arguments. It’s fun to debate those. That’s why I’m here.
What I don’t understand is why so many SDMB posters are so willing…heck, EXCITED… about transferring freedoms that they now posess to government bureaucrats whose incentive systems, sticks and carrots may be totally different from yours. Why would you disempower yourself like that? Why do you want someone sitting in a cubicle in Washington telling you what products you can buy, what price you have to pay for them, what you can do with your property, your body, your car and a billion other things? Why would you do that? Why don’t you want to retain that power for yourself? I don’t get it.
Unless you want to put people in Washington that ‘you agree with’ (at least, you think you agree with them for the moment). And also don’t mind that they will compel others that you disagree with to do your bidding. By force, if necessary.
You don’t need to be a braniac like Obama and understand economics, monetary theory, trends in new technologies, etc. to win my vote. In fact, the smarter you are and the more you want ‘to do’, the less excited I get. Unless being smart and ‘doing something’ is safeguarding yours and my freedoms, even as we disagree about what to go and do with that freedom. It’s actually pretty simple. But maybe you need to be super, super-smart to see that less is more.
You know what else pisses me off about Obama’s plan? Read the opening paragraph, about how the ‘Bush tax cuts GAVE to the rich’. The government doesn’t GIVE anything. It takes using the monopoly of legal force. The wealth of its citizens doesn’t belong to federal bureaucrats. It belongs to me. And to you, Whack-A-Mole. And to Shayna. And to xtisme. It’s your money. Not the governments. The government only does what we allow it do. If you want to write them a bigger check than you owe on your 1040, because you are convinced they will do wonderful things with it, go ahead.
And for those of you who (quite justifiably, I might add) want the government to be forbidden to wiretap your phones, or to get out of the business of telling you what you can eat or drink, or what drugs to use, or what a woman can do when she’s pregnant, you seem so willing…WILLING! to push the responsibility for a billion other things on to them. Who we can trade with, and for what price. Which group of 300,000 employees we will punish with punitive taxation. What agreements for what types of loans can be freely consummated between a borrower and lender. What industries will get special low cost funding by forcibly extracting resources from others who aren’t on the favored list (Whoops! That’s how Fannie and Freddie got started. We should do it ‘better’ next time, shouldn’t we? Let’s make sure we get ‘good’ Congresspeople and bureaucrats in charge next time.)
You want the government to do all of these things. Why? I don’t understand. Don’t you want that power for yourself? Why are you willing to disempower yourself like that?
And your last little line reveals the type of class-warfare, us-against-them mindset that is especially depressing. You don’t know anything about me. I could be a billionaire. I could be writing this from a homeless shelter. You have no idea.
But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Pitting groups against each other - right wing bible-thumpers against Godless liberals, rich against poor, men against women, black against white, Rush against Al Franken, is pointless and counterproductive in my mind. What matters equally for all of us is the equality of our freedom, and the framework and governmental role that maximizes that freedom.
Don’t see it in Obama’s plan. I see the absolute opposite. Hence, I vote for the forgetful old crab-apple and the wife with the booze-hound.
That is a paltry number that I attribute to Bush’s failed economic policies as well. Most economists agree we need to generate 150,000 new jobs every month just to keep pace with expanding number of job seekers. By that metric, we should have created 14.4 million jobs since 2000 just to keep our heads above water. We haven’t, and the Republicans and their voodoo economics bear the responsibility.
Right. Let’s tax and regulate our way to prosperity. That’ll create jobs.
Taxmen and regulaton inspectors, at the very least.
That is exactly what I am proposing. Higher tax rates on the top 5% of the taxpayers and more regulations to prevent fraud has always worked better than tax cuts for the wealthy and wholesale derugulation. Look it up.
Consider this (not cites, just common sense.) How do we have a healthy economy? We need production, but we also need consumption.
When the bubble burst, the lack of investment and production was not the problem. Quite the contrary - companies like Cisco wrote off billions of dollars of inventory, and there was far too much production capability around.
Agreed, a tax cut was needed. But whose taxes got cut? The rich. Why? To give them more money to invest. But investment was the last thing we needed. That was why the economy grew so slowly - one of the slowest recoveries on record, and from a pretty mild recession also. What would have happened if most of the tax cut went to the bottom 90%? They wouldn’t have invested it, they would have bought more, which would have used up the inventories, which would require more production and more jobs, which would result in more consumption and more taxes paid and more profits, which would have provided money for expansion when it was needed.
I’ve never understood the Republican conviction that if you give money to someone when there is a lack of consumption, that person will start hiring people and adding to production. They must think CEOs are stupid. What will happen is that companies will buy back their stock or raise CEO salaries, and investors will put it in the market to run up stock prices without any investment in return.
Given that the average guy has no money, but everyone is telling him to buy, what does he do? Since housing prices rose thanks to low interest rates, he borrows on his house. This keeps the economy going, but kills the savings rate. Thus, even people without subprimes but who borrowed on their houses to keep up with the Joneses are now screwed, since they have negative equity. If everyone were cheap like me and refused to borrow we’d have a recession sooner, but it would be less painful.
Years back, during debates on the evils of WalMart, people asked “if WalMart pays low wages, and forces everyone else to, who is going to be able to afford to buy from them?” We now know the answer - after the home equity tap is turned off, not as many people as before.
BTW, just wait until people start defaulting on their credit card bills. Then we’ll have fun.
Obama’s cut is what we need. McCain’s is more of the same. No one is buying today - who is going to be stupid enough to build a new factory?
That seems to me a very clear description of the situation, Voyager. The cycle doesn’t start with someone wanting to sell, but someone wanting to buy.
Look up what? That imposing a restriction that prevents two parties from completing a voluntary transaction creates jobs?
That raising taxes creates jobs? You’re right. I’d love to see that.
We’ve had almost eight years of deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy. I don’t think the country will survive any more of your brand of prosperity.
Not just 12 banks but the biggest and most powerful banks in the world. This is not a local credit union going down but storied huge and powerful institutions. There are a thousand more on the short list. These are bad and scary times. The financial talking heads on the money channel are clearly shocked and worried.