Is It Too Late?

[editec]

I am starting to give up hope (and lose interest) that anything can be done to reverse our economic decline. We seem to be on a set course through 2016, after which our financial obligations and debt will have exceeded any reasonable expectation of our economy's ability to support.

Are we like a hopelessly underwater homeowner who lost his job and has been putting his mortgage payments on a credit card? Will we keep doing this until we hit our credit limit and then wait for our creditors to foreclose? I know people who have done this and came out pretty well, so maybe this is the way to go.

Seriously, do any of you, Left or Right, think we can keep on this course indefinitely? If not, what are our options, or is it too late?

Do NOT lose hope.

As the fiscal mess is ENTIRELY MANMADE, this contrivance we call the national debt is as FAKE as our democracy.

No, I am not being glib, I am not kidding one bit.

There is more than enough wealth. its the system we have of sharing it that must be solved.

So, in your opinion, we don’t have a debt problem because the real problem is that we don’t take enough wealth from the people and redistribute it?

Oh it's way way more complex than that.

Mostly it has to do with the way we create new money rather than how we tax people.

Sorry but that is crazy. There is no redistribution problem. We have been redistributing the crap out of our wealth for decades. It is not working. We have a real deficit problem. The government has outgrown the economy almost every single year, tax receipts have fully recovered already and we are still running trillion dollar debts. Tax receipts hit 2.4 trillion in 2012 and have only been higher in 2 other years. 07-08 they were 2.5 and that was entirely based on a false economy of lies.

There is a REAL deficit problem and I cannot fathom how you can ignore it? How do you rationalize the debt increasing a trillion dollars a year as meaningless? Our spending level a full 45 percent over receipts!

That is NOT sustainable and yet we don’t see anything pointing to a change any time soon. If only we could steal more from people to pay that off right? That does not work. I am sorry but there is no way to tax our way to that king of cash.

You realize that until you actually understand my POV, telling me why it's "crazy" means you are NOT speaking to me, but instead you are lecturing a STRAW MAN, don't you?

You ASSUMED that my complaint was going to be about taxation.

It was not.

 

[FA_Q2]

Do NOT lose hope.

As the fiscal mess is ENTIRELY MANMADE, this contrivance we call the national debt is as FAKE as our democracy.

No, I am not being glib, I am not kidding one bit.

There is more than enough wealth. its the system we have of sharing it that must be solved.

So, in your opinion, we don’t have a debt problem because the real problem is that we don’t take enough wealth from the people and redistribute it?

Oh it's way way more complex than that.

Mostly it has to do with the way we create new money rather than how we tax people.

Sorry but that is crazy. There is no redistribution problem. We have been redistributing the crap out of our wealth for decades. It is not working. We have a real deficit problem. The government has outgrown the economy almost every single year, tax receipts have fully recovered already and we are still running trillion dollar debts. Tax receipts hit 2.4 trillion in 2012 and have only been higher in 2 other years. 07-08 they were 2.5 and that was entirely based on a false economy of lies.

There is a REAL deficit problem and I cannot fathom how you can ignore it? How do you rationalize the debt increasing a trillion dollars a year as meaningless? Our spending level a full 45 percent over receipts!

That is NOT sustainable and yet we don’t see anything pointing to a change any time soon. If only we could steal more from people to pay that off right? That does not work. I am sorry but there is no way to tax our way to that king of cash.

You realize that until you actually understand my POV, telling me why it's "crazy" means you are NOT speaking to me, but instead you are lecturing a STRAW MAN, don't you?

You ASSUMED that my complaint was going to be about taxation.

It was not.

You type this:
‘There is more than enough wealth. its the system we have of sharing it that must be solved.‘
And expect it to be takes any other way? I am sorry if I am misconstruing your beliefs but when you stick with one liners it is difficult to construct a reasoned response without at least making some inferences. Straw man or not, try making your point clearer then or are you not here to debate? Maybe you just want to post one liners and then responding with more one lines about how that’s not your position without ever moving the conversation forward. I hope not because I think that you actually have something to contribute…

Now, what do you mean the ‘creation’ of wealth? Are you referring to the banking system or the labor market? Are you saying that the creation has something to do with sharing because I don’t see how the banking system has much to do with that and I have no idea how to fit that into the labor market. Is there some other aspect that your referring to.

Give us more than a few lines with hints before complaining about straw men.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Is It Too Late?

No.

And no one is proposing we “keep on this course indefinitely.”

As soon as economic recovery is realized we can address the deficit.

Economic recovery and the deficit are two separate and distinct issues; indeed, attempting to balance the budget now won’t contribute to recovery, and could in all likelihood jeopardize it.

Obama has already cut the deficit by $3-4billion and I agree with you that now is not the time to address that. Looking at history as well as other countries bears that out.

Even so, it is wrong to blame Obama for the deficit.

Boehner has been a House member since 1990 – 23 years

McConnell has been a Senator since 1984 –29 years

President Obama has been President since 2009 – just over 4 years

If Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell and the other R's are so darn unhappy with our runaway debt, they’ve had DECADES to do something about it.

Meanwhile, President Obama HAS done something about it - cutting the deficit and his is the smallest government spender since Eisenhower.

If President Obama’s agenda had been supported instead of constantly obstructed in the House and filibustered in the Senate, we would have made even greater progress in the last 4 years. But Boehner and McConnell have seen to it that President Obama’s agenda, that the majority of Americans voted for twice, has been hamstrung from the start. In spite of that, Obama has also managed to effect the recovery and jobs while Rs have not voted on even one jobs bill. Nor have they introduced any jobs bills.

Its true what Jindal said, that the Rs are The Stupid Party but they're also un-American. Their actions may well be treason. They ignore the will of the people as well as the Constitution. Thanks to their gerrymandering and illegal voter suppression efforts, most are on the tax-paid gravy train for life. They do nothing while tax payers support them. We even pay for the health care insurance that they wish to deny us.

Only the very wealthy and the very stupid would or should be voting for Republicans at any level of government.

 

[numan]

This thread and several comments remind me of an attitude I just can't figure out? It's the new 'American can't do attitude.' Instead of solutions you get wringing of hands and groans the end is near. Surely the great depression was worse....

No, it wasn't.

We are just in the beginning stages of the Great American Depression of the early 21st century.

Today, corrupt, malign financiers, both here and abroad, are far more in control than they were in the 1930's.

Moreover, in the 1930's, the war-profiteers were not the American ruling class, as they are today, and they were not beggaring America with their present-day Nazi Military Machine.

When the disorder and violence inevitably reach a certain level, Americans will be forced to accept a Command Economy, such as the Nazis established in Germany, and the Commies did in Russia.

Then you loony-tune right-wing antiques can really go crazy !!

SAVE YOUR FIAT MONEY, BOYS -- THE HYSTERICAL STATES OF AMERICA WILL RISE AGAIN !!

.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

This thread and several comments remind me of an attitude I just can't figure out? It's the new 'American can't do attitude.' Instead of solutions you get wringing of hands and groans the end is near. Surely the great depression was worse, I wonder did Americans then cry about it? FDR and the war got America through that failure of capitalism, and today both the stimulus and the reversal of Bush's war spending and unfair tax policies are helping. But lots more can be done. Support America rather than whining, buy American made and shop where wages support people not just corporations. If you call a company and get an overseas worker ask why, ask for an American and tell the company. Support higher taxes on the greedy who take but do not give. Read the the link in my Sig if you doubt that works. And much of the debt came from republican policy, blaming Obama is off base and wrong even though republican propaganda manages that message. See articles below, open your eyes and you too shall see.

And read about the GD so you get some sense of reality. Timeline of the Great Depression and Summary


"This is when the Republican Party set its trap. Meeting in closed sessions at the beginning of the Obama regime, the party of tax cuts for the rich, unfunded wars, and the largest deficit in the history of the country redefined itself. It suddenly became the party of deficit reduction through lean government joined to supreme confidence in unregulated financial and corporate markets. It even opposed the bail out of General Motors and Chrysler, though these actions stopped unemployment from reaching a dangerous tipping point, allowed the two companies time to reconstruct themselves, and enabled them to pay back the loans within two years–-creating one of the most successful bailouts in the history of Euro-American economic life." William E. Connolly See The Contemporary Condition: The Republican Pincer Machine


"We do face an entitlement crisis, then. But it is not the one identified by Fox News and the Neoliberal Right. It is the one concealed by the nomenclature and attacks by the Right. What’s more, as the recent economic meltdown in 2008 demonstrated, these entitlements are not only unjust, they are extremely dangerous. A class entitlement to escape regulation while putting at risk a whole society, and indeed world, is nothing to sneeze at. And as we have seen most recently, even if a world wide depression is avoided after such a meltdown, its costs and sacrifices gradually trickle down the social ladder until they, too, reach those at the middle and bottom layers of society. So, the rich and the superrich feel entitled to monopolize the largesse when growth occurs and to pass down the costs of their adventurism when the bottom falls out. That is a hell of a lot of entitlement. That is precisely why so many are so eager to publicize the false version of “the entitlement society” today, within state legislatures controlled by the Republican Party, through Superpacs allowed by the gang of five neoliberals on the Supreme Court, and on the 24 hour News Media. Reduce the deficit, they chant, by curtailing programs supporting the middle and poor classes. Quietly accept the double-trickle down process. But don’t you dare touch the entitlements of the rich that put everyone else at risk." William E. Connolly The Contemporary Condition: The Real Entitlement Crisis

This is an excellent post.

Thank you very much for taking the time and thought to write this. I hope others will read it with an open mind.

 

[PaulS1950]

The proper way to "share" money is to earn it. If what you do is vital to more people then your eight hours is worth more than the eight hours another guy spends selling burgers. If what you do makes a profit for 100000 people then you get the big bucks. If what you do makes two people happy then you get less money. That is the way the market works and if you took all the money in the world and divided it equally in less than a year the distribution would be the same as it is now. Most people think that money is to spend, so when they have it they spend it and it is gone. Those who know the value of money use it without spending it and get more money. They wait to spend it until after they have more than enough.

 

[jwoodie]

This thread and several comments remind me of an attitude I just can't figure out? It's the new 'American can't do attitude.' Instead of solutions you get wringing of hands and groans the end is near. Surely the great depression was worse, I wonder did Americans then cry about it? FDR and the war got America through that failure of capitalism, and today both the stimulus and the reversal of Bush's war spending and unfair tax policies are helping. But lots more can be done. Support America rather than whining, buy American made and shop where wages support people not just corporations. If you call a company and get an overseas worker ask why, ask for an American and tell the company. Support higher taxes on the greedy who take but do not give. Read the the link in my Sig if you doubt that works. And much of the debt came from republican policy, blaming Obama is off base and wrong even though republican propaganda manages that message. See articles below, open your eyes and you too shall see.

And read about the GD so you get some sense of reality. Timeline of the Great Depression and Summary


"This is when the Republican Party set its trap. Meeting in closed sessions at the beginning of the Obama regime, the party of tax cuts for the rich, unfunded wars, and the largest deficit in the history of the country redefined itself. It suddenly became the party of deficit reduction through lean government joined to supreme confidence in unregulated financial and corporate markets. It even opposed the bail out of General Motors and Chrysler, though these actions stopped unemployment from reaching a dangerous tipping point, allowed the two companies time to reconstruct themselves, and enabled them to pay back the loans within two years–-creating one of the most successful bailouts in the history of Euro-American economic life." William E. Connolly See The Contemporary Condition: The Republican Pincer Machine


"We do face an entitlement crisis, then. But it is not the one identified by Fox News and the Neoliberal Right. It is the one concealed by the nomenclature and attacks by the Right. What’s more, as the recent economic meltdown in 2008 demonstrated, these entitlements are not only unjust, they are extremely dangerous. A class entitlement to escape regulation while putting at risk a whole society, and indeed world, is nothing to sneeze at. And as we have seen most recently, even if a world wide depression is avoided after such a meltdown, its costs and sacrifices gradually trickle down the social ladder until they, too, reach those at the middle and bottom layers of society. So, the rich and the superrich feel entitled to monopolize the largesse when growth occurs and to pass down the costs of their adventurism when the bottom falls out. That is a hell of a lot of entitlement. That is precisely why so many are so eager to publicize the false version of “the entitlement society” today, within state legislatures controlled by the Republican Party, through Superpacs allowed by the gang of five neoliberals on the Supreme Court, and on the 24 hour News Media. Reduce the deficit, they chant, by curtailing programs supporting the middle and poor classes. Quietly accept the double-trickle down process. But don’t you dare touch the entitlements of the rich that put everyone else at risk." William E. Connolly The Contemporary Condition: The Real Entitlement Crisis

This is an excellent post.

Thank you very much for taking the time and thought to write this. I hope others will read it with an open mind.

"From each, according to his ability; to each according to his need."

 

[oldfart]

Economic recovery and the deficit are two separate and distinct issues; indeed, attempting to balance the budget now won’t contribute to recovery, and could in all likelihood jeopardize it....The two problems are separate but they are connected.

I agree.

The truth is that this government has spent and increased the deficit by a greater percentage than the growth of the economy virtually every single year. There are a VERY few years that such has not happened and those were facades, times when the economy was growing faster than it should and a fall happened shortly after.

I'm not sure how you are arriving at these numbers, but they are clearly wrong. If government spending rises at a faster rate than the economy as a whole, the portion of GDP going to government spending must constantly rise. This is simply not the case. Published figures for government spending as a percent of GDP was 20.4% in 1953 at the start of the Eisenhower administration, but it dropped to 17--18% until 1968 when it reached 20.5%. It dropped again and then increased until it peaked at 23.1% in 1982 under Reagan. It was 21.4% in 1993 when Clinton came into officeand dropped to 18.2% in 2001, the last Clinton budget. By the last Bush 43 budget, it peaked again at 25.2% in 2009, the modern record. It has fallen steadily to 22.7% in the current budget and is projected under current law to be 18.6% in 2016; which would make a good Eisenhower or Clinton year and better than any Reagan or Bush year.

So where are you getting the false data from?

The reason why we are in this mess is because we spent our way out of previous economic hardships but they were not preceded by the massive debt that we have incurred. As Keynesian Economics advocates, you are SUPPOSED to pay that debt incurred from a large recession during the good times. An important part of a stable economic plan that we have, as a nation, simply ignored.

First, your premise was false. Second, I believe both Carter and Clinton left office with projected surpluses, so I assume your jeremiad is directed to Reagan and Bush who squandered the surpluses and converted them into deficits.

Further, we are not taking on an ever increasing debt load as well as we INCREASE our promises for the future. If you really believe that we can continue on this trend or that we will address the problems when the good times return, history is simply against you.

Then why are both government spending and the debt as a percentage of GDP going down?

This kind of muddled thinking is what happens when you get "information" from political sources and either don't know how or don't have the integrity to check the numbers. I hope your problem stems from gullibility and ignorance rather than moral and ethical failures.

 

[auditor0007]

Oh for all the doom and gloom. Can none of you see that we are about to embark on a long period of massive economic growth? The federal debt is not at all unmanageable. When the economy does pick up, tax revenues will increase dramatically and spending on safety net programs will decrease. When these two things happen, the vast majority of the yearly deficit will disappear. The rest we will be able to work on.

Now why am I so optimistic? There are a number of things that are happening in the economy that are going to create the perfect storm for what I believe will be a long period of a booming economy. The first of these is the fact that Americans have been paying down their personal debt. This is happening slowly because so many are out of work or underemployed, but despite that, Americans are slowly but surely paying down their debts. At the same time, American business is stockpiling trillions of dollars in cash. They don't see any demand to warrant spending that money on expansion at the moment, but much of that is because everyone is paying down debt rather than spending money.

Add to that the fact that we are becoming less reliant on foreign energy and that it is actually getting cheaper, and now you should start to understand what lies ahead, and that is an economy where personal debt has been paid down so people begin spending money again, business starts expanding, and with lower energy costs, the whole thing takes off.

One last thing to add to this. Young people have been holding off on starting families, because they feel they cannot afford it. This is going to change also, and even if they don't feel they can afford it, at some point they will start their families whether they can afford them or not. That will add to demand in a very big way, and this will get the economy growing like we haven't seen for some time. As for how many young people there are, the number is around 75 million who are currently between the age of 20 and 35. You should ask yourself why Warren Buffet is fairly optimistic about the future. He is not some stupid old man who just got lucky. He understands how the economy works and he sees what I see. He knows this economy is going to take off like a rocket and we're not that far off from it starting.

 

[jwoodie]

When and why is this perfect storm going to happen? Paying down personal debt hasn't helped Japan escape 20 years of stagnation, so why should it here? Lower energy demand and prices are a result of the recession in the US and Europe. If/when these economies recover, energy prices will skyrocket.

 

[auditor0007]

When and why is this perfect storm going to happen? Paying down personal debt hasn't helped Japan escape 20 years of stagnation, so why should it here? Lower energy demand and prices are a result of the recession in the US and Europe. If/when these economies recover, energy prices will skyrocket.

Gasoline prices will increase somewhat, but we are moving away from gasoline more and more. We have an awful lot of cheap natural gas and I do believe we will begin to see many of our vehicles start running off of that natural gas in the near future.

Japan's problem has much more to do with than just paying down debt. They don't have enough young people, and the ones they have are not having kids of their own. The situation is so bad that the government is paying people to have kids. This is not only happening in Japan, but in Germany, Russia, and many other countries. Even with Americans holding off on having kids, our birthrate is still at a level where we are holding ground.

When does this all start? It's already starting, but it is a very slow start. By 2016, things will be rolling along nicely. By 2020, the stock market will be showing 15% yearly gains. The only thing that could derail all of it is if we get into another stupid war.

 

[The Rabbi]

Is It Too Late?

No.

And no one is proposing we “keep on this course indefinitely.”

As soon as economic recovery is realized we can address the deficit.

Economic recovery and the deficit are two separate and distinct issues; indeed, attempting to balance the budget now won’t contribute to recovery, and could in all likelihood jeopardize it.

We've had 5 years of Obamonomics and recovery will never be realized with these policies. The two are intertwined as higher economic activity will lead to higher tax revenues and an opportunity for lower deficits.

 

[editec]

So, in your opinion, we don’t have a debt problem because the real problem is that we don’t take enough wealth from the people and redistribute it?

Oh it's way way more complex than that.

Mostly it has to do with the way we create new money rather than how we tax people.

Sorry but that is crazy. There is no redistribution problem. We have been redistributing the crap out of our wealth for decades. It is not working. We have a real deficit problem. The government has outgrown the economy almost every single year, tax receipts have fully recovered already and we are still running trillion dollar debts. Tax receipts hit 2.4 trillion in 2012 and have only been higher in 2 other years. 07-08 they were 2.5 and that was entirely based on a false economy of lies.

There is a REAL deficit problem and I cannot fathom how you can ignore it? How do you rationalize the debt increasing a trillion dollars a year as meaningless? Our spending level a full 45 percent over receipts!

That is NOT sustainable and yet we don’t see anything pointing to a change any time soon. If only we could steal more from people to pay that off right? That does not work. I am sorry but there is no way to tax our way to that king of cash.

You realize that until you actually understand my POV, telling me why it's "crazy" means you are NOT speaking to me, but instead you are lecturing a STRAW MAN, don't you?

You ASSUMED that my complaint was going to be about taxation.

It was not.

You type this:

‘There is more than enough wealth. its the system we have of sharing it that must be solved.‘
And expect it to be takes any other way?

Oh it doesn't surprise me you took it that way. Given that we are constantly being told that the debt is the worst problem on earth and that the debt has the same authority as GRAVITY, I wouldn't expect you to imagine anything else.

Unless you've been reading the rest of my posts over the last couple years where I have explained repeatedly where real problem lies. MONETARISM

I am sorry if I am misconstruing your beliefs but when you stick with one liners it is difficult to construct a reasoned response without at least making some inferences.

No problem.

Straw man or not, try making your point clearer then or are you not here to debate?

Here's a thought...take mt words at face value. Add nothing to them.

If you don't see something written down, don't assume it's there. I am not a caricature any more than you are.

If you need clarification, just ask for it.

Maybe you just want to post one liners and then responding with more one lines about how that’s not your position without ever moving the conversation forward. I hope not because I think that you actually have something to contribute…

Given the thousands of posts I have here, I'd like to think I am a known quantity here. Apparently that is not the case with you.

Now, what do you mean the ‘creation’ of wealth? Are you referring to the banking system or the labor market?

Did I post creation of wealth? Perhaps that misreading explains your confusion. I wrote:

Mostly it has to do with the way we create new money rather than how we tax people.

Are you saying that the creation has something to do with sharing because I don’t see how the banking system has much to do with that

Then its time for you to start educating yourself. If you do not understand how havingh the authority to decide who gets NEW MONEY then you truly do not understand how that DISTORTS this economy to benefit of a few at the expense of the VAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST majority of us (including the very wealthy, I might add).


Here's an excellent, very authoritative place to start educating yourself about how our system REALLY works, amgio.

CLICK ME!​

 

[Katzndogz]

It's way too late for this government to reverse an economic decline that it doesn't want to reverse.

 

[candycorn]

I think a better question to be asking is this, "What happens when we default?"

I'm not completely convinced it will be all that bad for the average American. It's sort of like not getting your allowance as a kid...what are you going to do? Leave home? What are our creditors going to do? Not sell their cheap imports here? I'm sure they'll find fertile markets in Burkina Fasso and Cuba for their (just looking at my desks) clock radios, electic fans, cell phone, Citizen watches, etc...

I'm sure I'll get clobbered for saying as much but we're all sort of in the same boat finance-wise (other countries and us I mean). The old saying goes like this: If you owe me $10 and can't pay it, you've got a problem. If you owe me $10,000,000 and can't pay it, WE've got a problem meaning that I likely owe a lot of that $10M to someone else.

 

[Big Black Dog]

Elect another ass hole like Owe Bama and the economy will get better.... ROFLMAO. Ever hear the phrase, "I TOLD YOU SO."

 

[auditor0007]

It's way too late for this government to reverse an economic decline that it doesn't want to reverse.

The only time a government really has control over an economy is in a command type society such as China. In a fairly open market society such as ours, government intervention or non-intervention plays a very minor role in how the economy does. The economy is volatile and has ups and downs. Right now, we are in the middle of a long downturn, but we're starting to come out of it.

 

[The Rabbi]

It's way too late for this government to reverse an economic decline that it doesn't want to reverse.

The only time a government really has control over an economy is in a command type society such as China. In a fairly open market society such as ours, government intervention or non-intervention plays a very minor role in how the economy does. The economy is volatile and has ups and downs. Right now, we are in the middle of a long downturn, but we're starting to come out of it.

So gov't policies have no effect on a nation's economy? Really?
Where do they teach this?

 

[The Rabbi]

I think a better question to be asking is this, "What happens when we default?"

I'm not completely convinced it will be all that bad for the average American. It's sort of like not getting your allowance as a kid...what are you going to do? Leave home? What are our creditors going to do? Not sell their cheap imports here? I'm sure they'll find fertile markets in Burkina Fasso and Cuba for their (just looking at my desks) clock radios, electic fans, cell phone, Citizen watches, etc...

I'm sure I'll get clobbered for saying as much but we're all sort of in the same boat finance-wise (other countries and us I mean). The old saying goes like this: If you owe me $10 and can't pay it, you've got a problem. If you owe me $10,000,000 and can't pay it, WE've got a problem meaning that I likely owe a lot of that $10M to someone else.

Default (or practically default) hasn't worked out too well for the average Greek, whose standard of living has gone back to the 1950s. It would be monumental.

 

[Greenbeard]

As Keynesian Economics advocates, you are SUPPOSED to pay that debt incurred from a large recession during the good times. An important part of a stable economic plan that we have, as a nation, simply ignored.

I wouldn't say ignored--the question was put before the nation and considered relatively recently.

Paying down that debt obviously requires taking in more revenue than needed to pay the government's expenses in a given year. We once had a boring candidate who suggested using that surplus revenue to start paying down the debt. His opponent suggested eliminating the surplus: "The people of America have been overcharged, and, on their behalf, I'm here asking for a refund."

Which did you vote for?