Perspective: How It All Happened

[NYcarbineer]

Then how come we aren't paying them back, Carbine? I would like to see where he explicitly stated that. Keynesian economics relies on inflation. When there isn't any, well it falls flat on it's face.

Fiscal irresponsibility is no longer punished by the voters.

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

The average middle class family is up to its ears in debt.

PS, your post has nothing to do with what I said.

 

[Redfish]

Actually he wasn't. Even on a family budget there are calculated reasons to go into debt. You have to have a car to get to your job or to do your job, and you don't have the cash to buy it outright, it can make sense to finance some of it on the theory it will allow you to earn enough to make the payments as well as meet your needs.

It is a rare family who can buy a home outright, and it makes sense to go into debt if it is done wisely and there is little chance you can lose money--what you are buying will gain in value sufficiently that you won't lose the down payment or the money you are putting into the property.

Keynes was of the opinion that it is okay for government to go into short term and temporary debt to finance necessary infrastructure in a way that would jump start a stalled economy. He always included the concept that the debt should never exceed what cannot be quickly returned to the treasury.

The idiots are those who bastardize Keynes theories to justify what our government does which bear absolutely no resemblance to pure Keynesian economics. Keynes knew that prosperity had to come from the private sector and it could not be created by government. Our leftist friends operate under the illusion that government can spend us rich and there will be no negative consequences from that.

right, but what we are now doing is neither temporary or short term. But thats only one thing the Keynes advocated. His other stupid idea was that continuous inflation is good for an economy. Yes, we all have to use debt, and governments also have to use debt. But its a question of degree, currently we are paying only the interest on 16T in debt and increasing it by
1T every year. Do you think this can continue indefinitely?

That is another bastardization of Keynesian theories that simply is not true. Keynes was adamently opposed to inflationary policies and cautioned strongly against them.

I haven't read the whole essay, but here is at least one economist historian who agrees with that:
http://richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_review/1981/pdf/er670101.pdf

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of internet sites that repeat the bastardized concepts of Keynesian economics, but what most of them describe as Keynesian are not even close to what Keynes himself proposed, theorized, or advocated.

opinions are like assholes-----------------------you finish it.

But how about answering my question? do you think we can spend more than we take in indefinitely? Is it good that the govt debt increases by 1T every year? Is it good that we are borrowing 46 cents of every dollar spent by the govt?

 

[Redfish]

Fiscal irresponsibility is no longer punished by the voters.

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

The average middle class family is up to its ears in debt.

PS, your post has nothing to do with what I said.

So that somehow makes it OK for the federal govt to do the same thing?

 

[Bfgrn]

Really? So its ok for a govt to spend more than it collects year after year? Its ok for the govt to print up money and degrade the value of our currency? its ok for the govt to borrow 46% of what it spends and then pay back only the interest while the debt grows by a trillion a year?

Sorry, bubba, but the govt should operate like a family budget. income should balance expenditures.

John Maynard Keynes was an idiot.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

YES you moron. The US government was in debt before John Maynard Keynes was born.

With one brief exception, the federal government has been in debt every year since 1776. In January 1835, for the first and only time in U.S. history, the public debt was retired, and a budget surplus was maintained for the next two years in order to accumulate what Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury called “a fund to meet future deficits.” In 1837 the economy collapsed into a deep depression that drove the budget into deficit, and the federal government has been in debt ever since.

Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and neither can the federal government”. On the surface that, might appear sensible; dig deeper and it makes no sense at all. A sovereign government bears no obvious resemblance to a household. Let us enumerate some relevant differences.

1. The US federal government is 221 years old, if we date its birth to the adoption of the Constitution. Arguably, that is about as good a date as we can find, since the Constitution established a common market in the US, forbade states from interfering with interstate trade (for example, through taxation), gave to the federal government the power to levy and collect taxes, and reserved for the federal government the power to create money, to regulate its value, and to fix standards of weight and measurement-from whence our money of account, the dollar, comes. I don’t know any head of household with such an apparently indefinitely long lifespan. This might appear irrelevant, but it is not. When you die, your debts and assets need to be assumed and resolved. There is no “day of reckoning”, no final piper-paying date for the sovereign government. Nor do I know any household with the power to levy taxes, to give a name to — and issue — the currency we use, and to demand that those taxes are paid in the currency it issues.

The federal government is the issuer of our currency. Its IOUs are always accepted in payment. Government actually spends by crediting bank deposits (and credits the reserves of those banks); if you don’t want a bank deposit, government will give you cash; if you don’t want cash it will give you a treasury bond. People will work, sell, panhandle, lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to obtain the government’s dollars. I wish my IOUs were so desirable. I don’t know any household that is able to spend by crediting bank deposits and reserves, or by issuing currency. OK, some counterfeiters try, but they go to jail.

Heh, you really don't know what you're talking about do you? Issuing random facts does not cover for your lack of an argument.

I know exactly what I'm talking about. Facts are the right's worst enemy, it sends you guys into pud mode.

You are being lied to by people who want to destroy Obama and turn America into an ATM for Wall Street and corporations.

The level of our national debt is not actually high. In relation to GDP, it is only a bit over half of what it was in 1946. Debt held by the public, which is the correct construct — not the 90+ percent figure for gross debt, commonly seen in press reports and in comparisons with other countries. The relevant number is today below where it was in the mid-1950s, and comparable to the early 1990s.

What I learned from hanging out with deficit hawks

 

[Redfish]

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

YES you moron. The US government was in debt before John Maynard Keynes was born.

With one brief exception, the federal government has been in debt every year since 1776. In January 1835, for the first and only time in U.S. history, the public debt was retired, and a budget surplus was maintained for the next two years in order to accumulate what Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury called “a fund to meet future deficits.” In 1837 the economy collapsed into a deep depression that drove the budget into deficit, and the federal government has been in debt ever since.

Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and neither can the federal government”. On the surface that, might appear sensible; dig deeper and it makes no sense at all. A sovereign government bears no obvious resemblance to a household. Let us enumerate some relevant differences.

1. The US federal government is 221 years old, if we date its birth to the adoption of the Constitution. Arguably, that is about as good a date as we can find, since the Constitution established a common market in the US, forbade states from interfering with interstate trade (for example, through taxation), gave to the federal government the power to levy and collect taxes, and reserved for the federal government the power to create money, to regulate its value, and to fix standards of weight and measurement-from whence our money of account, the dollar, comes. I don’t know any head of household with such an apparently indefinitely long lifespan. This might appear irrelevant, but it is not. When you die, your debts and assets need to be assumed and resolved. There is no “day of reckoning”, no final piper-paying date for the sovereign government. Nor do I know any household with the power to levy taxes, to give a name to — and issue — the currency we use, and to demand that those taxes are paid in the currency it issues.

The federal government is the issuer of our currency. Its IOUs are always accepted in payment. Government actually spends by crediting bank deposits (and credits the reserves of those banks); if you don’t want a bank deposit, government will give you cash; if you don’t want cash it will give you a treasury bond. People will work, sell, panhandle, lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to obtain the government’s dollars. I wish my IOUs were so desirable. I don’t know any household that is able to spend by crediting bank deposits and reserves, or by issuing currency. OK, some counterfeiters try, but they go to jail.

Heh, you really don't know what you're talking about do you? Issuing random facts does not cover for your lack of an argument.

I know exactly what I'm talking about. Facts are the right's worst enemy, it sends you guys into pud mode.

You are being lied to by people who want to destroy Obama and turn America into an ATM for Wall Street and corporations.

The level of our national debt is not actually high. In relation to GDP, it is only a bit over half of what it was in 1946. Debt held by the public, which is the correct construct — not the 90+ percent figure for gross debt, commonly seen in press reports and in comparisons with other countries. The relevant number is today below where it was in the mid-1950s, and comparable to the early 1990s.

What I learned from hanging out with deficit hawks

nice chart, totally irrelevant to the discussion, but nice.

Since we are only paying the interest on the debt, what will the situation be in 10 years? 20? when most of the federal budget will be needed just to pay interest on the debt?

What then?

 

[Bfgrn]

Heh, you really don't know what you're talking about do you? Issuing random facts does not cover for your lack of an argument.

I know exactly what I'm talking about. Facts are the right's worst enemy, it sends you guys into pud mode.

You are being lied to by people who want to destroy Obama and turn America into an ATM for Wall Street and corporations.

The level of our national debt is not actually high. In relation to GDP, it is only a bit over half of what it was in 1946. Debt held by the public, which is the correct construct — not the 90+ percent figure for gross debt, commonly seen in press reports and in comparisons with other countries. The relevant number is today below where it was in the mid-1950s, and comparable to the early 1990s.

What I learned from hanging out with deficit hawks

nice chart, totally irrelevant to the discussion, but nice.

Since we are only paying the interest on the debt, what will the situation be in 10 years? 20? when most of the federal budget will be needed just to pay interest on the debt?

What then?

A linear brain...

 

[NYcarbineer]

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

The average middle class family is up to its ears in debt.

PS, your post has nothing to do with what I said.

So that somehow makes it OK for the federal govt to do the same thing?

You don't know what is being talked about here.

 

[numan]

'
How tiresome foolish, uneducated folk are, whose mental horizon is limited to the financial trivia of household debt, and who know nothing of economics on larger scales!!

There is certainly a useful place for debt at a national level -- intelligently applied.

Of course, one can hardly expect intelligence from anyone or anything in the the United States.
One must just be pleasantly surprised on those rare occasions when it appears before our startled gaze.

The level of our national debt is not actually high. In relation to GDP, it is only a bit over half of what it was in 1946.

It is true that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the scale of debt was much higher than today .

However, the situations are not at all comparable. In 1946, America was King of the World, unscathed by war, almost as technically competent as Germany, and possessed of the largest economy and industrial infrastructure in the the world. And of course, it was out of sight as an exporter of vast amounts of production, and accumulated wealth to an unprecedented level.

Today it is deeply in debt as a net importer, and its industrial infrastructure lies in ruins. Its technical competence, except in a few areas, is fast sinking to third-world levels. War profiteers and the parasitical monster of the Military-Industrial Complex unceasingly drain the life blood of Americans. The USA owes money all over the world -- it is by far the biggest debtor nation in the world. In such a situation, America's debt is horrendous, to an appalling degree.

At some point, our creditors will refuse to lend any more money, and will call in their debt as quickly as they may. At that point, the USA will almost instantly be impoverished, and will become the Argentina of the 21st century.
.
[I suppose, a bad comparison. Most Americans are so uneducated that they probably don't know that Argentina was once a rich country that also destroyed its economy by financial incompetence]
.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Anyone remember the so-called 'Reagan Democrats'?

Of course you do.

In the South, they were mostly conservative states rights Democrats, many of them segregationists if they were old enough,

who flocked to their new hero, Ronald Reagan.

For some definitions that conservatives should appreciate, let's go to Conservapedia, the encyclopedia of the Right:

Reagan Democrat:

Reagan Democrats were Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Most were working men and women who had come to feel that the Democratic party was no longer championing them,but favored blacks instead.

lol racist!!!!!!!!!! lol

Conservative Democrat:

The American South had a long tradition of electing conservative Democrats to office, including in Presidential elections until they broke from the Democrats in 1964 to vote for Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee. From 1948 to the 1970s an even more conservative wing of the party, mostly from the South, was called "Dixiecrats". This Dixiecrat wing of the party has been essentially defunct since the 1970s, when the House contingent was led by the late Joe Waggonner of Louisiana. Many former Dixiecrats, including Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, were early converts to the Republican Party, foreshadowing a long trend of conservatives leaving the Democrats and joining the Republicans that continued through the 1980s and 1990s.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Then how come we aren't paying them back, Carbine? I would like to see where he explicitly stated that. Keynesian economics relies on inflation. When there isn't any, well it falls flat on it's face.

Fiscal irresponsibility is no longer punished by the voters.

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

 

[Bfgrn]

'
How tiresome foolish, uneducated folk are, whose mental horizon is limited to the financial trivia of household debt, and who know nothing of economics on larger scales!!

There is certainly a useful place for debt at a national level -- intelligently applied.

Of course, one can hardly expect intelligence from anyone or anything in the the United States.
One must just be pleasantly surprised on those rare occasions when it appears before our startled gaze.

The level of our national debt is not actually high. In relation to GDP, it is only a bit over half of what it was in 1946.

It is true that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the scale of debt was much higher than today .

However, the situations are not at all comparable. In 1946, America was King of the World, unscathed by war, almost as technically competent as Germany, and possessed of the largest economy and industrial infrastructure in the the world. And of course, it was out of sight as an exporter of vast amounts of production, and accumulated wealth to an unprecedented level.

Today it is deeply in debt as a net importer, and its industrial infrastructure lies in ruins. Its technical competence, except in a few areas, is fast sinking to third-world levels. War profiteers and the parasitical monster of the Military-Industrial Complex unceasingly drain the life blood of Americans. The USA owes money all over the world -- it is by far the biggest debtor nation in the world. In such a situation, America's debt is horrendous, to an appalling degree.

At some point, our creditors will refuse to lend any more money, and will call in their debt as quickly as they may. At that point, the USA will almost instantly be impoverished, and will become the Argentina of the 21st century.
.
[I suppose, a bad comparison. Most Americans are so uneducated that they probably don't know that Argentina was once a rich country that also destroyed its economy by financial incompetence]
.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde


Uneducated? So let's replace it with horror shows, ghost stories and fairy tales of calling in debts by foreign 'powers' and collapse. Especially since on a national balance sheet most dollars of Federal debt are balanced by a dollar of credit owned by some business, citizen, or pension fund. And there is always to old reliable scare tactic, compare America to Greece or other small nations with a GDP smaller than some American cities.

Debt is measured against GDP, so the best way to reduce debt to GDP is to increase the GDP. But that is way too progressive, entrepreneurial and business-like thinking.

Here is what we could do. Let's follow the teabagger/Andrew Melon crowd, the 'liquidationists' and go the balanced budget/austerity route. No one has ever really proven that medieval bloodletting doesn't work. I mean shit, if lancing a boil relieves the pressure, just think how much better the patient would be if we drained all his blood. SOUND thinking there, don't ya think? Debt is measured against GDP, so the best way to REALLY increase debt, shrink GDP and send America's economy spiraling is a depression is the balanced budget/austerity route.

Hey, America could have a fire sale. ‘Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate’

Shhh! quiet...can you hear that? I hear ghost stories again...why it's the ghost of Herbert Hoover himself...What's that Herbie?

The ‘leave-it-alone liquidationists’ headed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon…felt that government must keep its hands off and let the slump liquidate itself. Mr. Mellon had only one formula: ‘Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate’.…He held that even panic was not altogether a bad thing. He said: ‘It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people’.

Hey, when you guys call in America's debt, hope you don't go hungry...

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

 

[TemplarKormac]

Fiscal irresponsibility is no longer punished by the voters.

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

The average middle class family is up to its ears in debt.

PS, your post has nothing to do with what I said.

Has a lot to do with what you said. And you're right, the middle class IS up to it's ears in debt, because their government put them there. All of us owe $53,000 a peice. Fiscal irresponsibility can ruin a family, why hasn't it ruined our government? Or would the government rather downplay its lack of care with taxpayer dollars? Yes, lets continue that perpetual cognitive dissonance going on in America.

 

[TemplarKormac]

I know exactly what I'm talking about. Facts are the right's worst enemy, it sends you guys into pud mode.

You are being lied to by people who want to destroy Obama and turn America into an ATM for Wall Street and corporations.

The level of our national debt is not actually high. In relation to GDP, it is only a bit over half of what it was in 1946. Debt held by the public, which is the correct construct — not the 90+ percent figure for gross debt, commonly seen in press reports and in comparisons with other countries. The relevant number is today below where it was in the mid-1950s, and comparable to the early 1990s.

What I learned from hanging out with deficit hawks

nice chart, totally irrelevant to the discussion, but nice.

Since we are only paying the interest on the debt, what will the situation be in 10 years? 20? when most of the federal budget will be needed just to pay interest on the debt?

What then?

A linear brain...

Answer the question. These types of responses make me question your intelligence, and whether or not YOU have a linear brain. I love how you dodge a question by insulting the one who asked it.

 

[Bfgrn]

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

The average middle class family is up to its ears in debt.

PS, your post has nothing to do with what I said.

Has a lot to do with what you said. And you're right, the middle class IS up to it's ears in debt, because their government put them there. All of us owe $53,000 a peice. Fiscal irresponsibility can ruin a family, why hasn't it ruined our government? Or would the government rather downplay its lack of care with taxpayer dollars? Yes, lets continue that perpetual cognitive dissonance going on in America.

Because the government put them there? Yea, by not expanding government to address the alarming growth of medical costs, responsible for as much as 90% of future deficits. We need government to promote preventive care and to limit bureaucratic overhead and anti-competitive pricing by pharmaceutical companies and medical centers.

 

[Bfgrn]

David Frum: A former economic speechwriter for President George W. Bush

Posted: September 15, 2009, 4:30 PM by NP Editor

Healthcare costs destroyed the Bush economy

Ron Brownstein ably sums up the Census Bureau’s final report on the Bush economy.

Bottom line: not good.

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked.

What went wrong?

In a word: healthcare.

Over the years from 2000 to 2007, the price that employers paid for labor rose by an average of 25% per hour. But the wages received by workers were worth less in 2007 than seven years before. All that extra money paid by employers disappeared into the healthcare system: between 2000 and 2007, the cost of the average insurance policy for a family of four doubled.

Exploding health costs vacuumed up worker incomes. Frustrated workers began telling pollsters the country was on the “wrong track” as early as 2004 – the year that George W. Bush won re-election by the narrowest margin of any re-elected president in U.S. history.

Slowing the growth of health costs is essential to raising wages – and by the way restoring Americans’ faith in the fairness of a free-market economy.

Explaining the impact of health costs on wages is essential to protecting the economic reputation of the last Republican administration and Congress.

If Republicans stick to the line that the US healthcare system works well as is – that it has no important problems that cannot be solved by tort reform – then George W. Bush and the Congresses of 2001-2007 will join Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover in the American memory’s hall of economic failures. Recovery from that stigma will demand more than a tea party.

Read more: David Frum: Healthcare costs destroyed the Bush economy - Full Comment

 

[TemplarKormac]

The average middle class family is up to its ears in debt.

PS, your post has nothing to do with what I said.

Has a lot to do with what you said. And you're right, the middle class IS up to it's ears in debt, because their government put them there. All of us owe $53,000 a peice. Fiscal irresponsibility can ruin a family, why hasn't it ruined our government? Or would the government rather downplay its lack of care with taxpayer dollars? Yes, lets continue that perpetual cognitive dissonance going on in America.

Because the government put them there? Yea, by not expanding government to address the alarming growth of medical costs, responsible for as much as 90% of future deficits. We need government to promote preventive care and to limit bureaucratic overhead and anti-competitive pricing by pharmaceutical companies and medical centers.

That is a non sequitur. Obamacare has caused premiums to rise, buddy. You know, the grandfather clause. More to my point than yours. Healthcare alone does not put each person in America in $53,000 of debt. Entitlement programs such as Welfare and Foodstamps do. Unnecessary wars do. Lavish IRS conferences do.

But anyway, your argument is pointless.

OBAMACARE RATE SHOCKER: Committee Surveys Leading Insurance Companies?Obamacare to Cause Premiums to Spike Nationwide, as High as 400 Percent | Energy & Commerce Committee

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/...-insurance-premiums-rise/?KEYWORDS=health+law

Study: Obamacare to raise individual claim costs by 32 percent | The Daily Caller

Obamacare does nothing to curb healthcare costs bud. I don't know who deluded you into thinking that, but well... that's just...

Damn.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Has a lot to do with what you said. And you're right, the middle class IS up to it's ears in debt, because their government put them there. All of us owe $53,000 a peice. Fiscal irresponsibility can ruin a family, why hasn't it ruined our government? Or would the government rather downplay its lack of care with taxpayer dollars? Yes, lets continue that perpetual cognitive dissonance going on in America.

Because the government put them there? Yea, by not expanding government to address the alarming growth of medical costs, responsible for as much as 90% of future deficits. We need government to promote preventive care and to limit bureaucratic overhead and anti-competitive pricing by pharmaceutical companies and medical centers.

That is a non sequitur. Obamacare has caused premiums to rise, buddy. You know, the grandfather clause. More to my point than yours. Healthcare alone does not put each person in America in $53,000 of debt. Entitlement programs such as Welfare and Foodstamps do. Unnecessary wars do. Lavish IRS conferences do.

But anyway, your argument is pointless.

OBAMACARE RATE SHOCKER: Committee Surveys Leading Insurance Companies?Obamacare to Cause Premiums to Spike Nationwide, as High as 400 Percent | Energy & Commerce Committee

Sebelius: Some Could See Insurance Premiums Rise - Washington Wire - WSJ

Study: Obamacare to raise individual claim costs by 32 percent | The Daily Caller

Obamacare does nothing to curb healthcare costs bud. I don't know who deluded you into thinking that, but well... that's just...

Damn.

And, let's remember that healthcare costs where on a decade long downward trend when Obama reversed it.....


.Year *NHE Increase

2001 1493

2002 1638 9.7%

2003 1775 8.3%

2004 1901 7.0%

2005 2030 6.7%

2006 2163 6.5%

2007 2298 6.2%

2008 2406 4.6%

2009 2501 3.9%

2010 2600 3.9%

2011 2700 3.8%

*National Health Expenditures, in $ billions.
http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statist...NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/tables.pdf

 

[TemplarKormac]

Because the government put them there? Yea, by not expanding government to address the alarming growth of medical costs, responsible for as much as 90% of future deficits. We need government to promote preventive care and to limit bureaucratic overhead and anti-competitive pricing by pharmaceutical companies and medical centers.

That is a non sequitur. Obamacare has caused premiums to rise, buddy. You know, the grandfather clause. More to my point than yours. Healthcare alone does not put each person in America in $53,000 of debt. Entitlement programs such as Welfare and Foodstamps do. Unnecessary wars do. Lavish IRS conferences do.

But anyway, your argument is pointless.

OBAMACARE RATE SHOCKER: Committee Surveys Leading Insurance Companies?Obamacare to Cause Premiums to Spike Nationwide, as High as 400 Percent | Energy & Commerce Committee

Sebelius: Some Could See Insurance Premiums Rise - Washington Wire - WSJ

Study: Obamacare to raise individual claim costs by 32 percent | The Daily Caller

Obamacare does nothing to curb healthcare costs bud. I don't know who deluded you into thinking that, but well... that's just...

Damn.

And, let's remember that healthcare costs where on a decade long downward trend when Obama reversed it.....


.Year *NHE Increase

2001 1493

2002 1638 9.7%

2003 1775 8.3%

2004 1901 7.0%

2005 2030 6.7%

2006 2163 6.5%

2007 2298 6.2%

2008 2406 4.6%

2009 2501 3.9%

2010 2600 3.9%

2011 2700 3.8%

*National Health Expenditures, in $ billions.
http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statist...NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/tables.pdf

Very telling indeed. Obamacare is a disaster.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

The average middle class family is up to its ears in debt.

PS, your post has nothing to do with what I said.

Has a lot to do with what you said. And you're right, the middle class IS up to it's ears in debt, because their government put them there. All of us owe $53,000 a peice. Fiscal irresponsibility can ruin a family, why hasn't it ruined our government? Or would the government rather downplay its lack of care with taxpayer dollars? Yes, lets continue that perpetual cognitive dissonance going on in America.

The government functions through the elected representatives of the people. I told you, the voters stopped punishing fiscal responsibility.

1. Reagan ran on a promise to balance the budget. He ran against Carter's relatively paltry deficits. Once Reagan was in office, the deficits skyrocketed;

Reagan ran for re-election and won by a bigger margin than he got the first time. Massive deficits continued unabated, and yet George Bush Sr. was able to effectively inherit the Reagan presidency.

2. Clinton got elected, the deficit plunged from triple digits to surpluses in 8 years, and yet Al Gore couldn't hold onto the presidency for the Democrats.

3. GW Bush gets elected with a budget surplus in place; he promptly takes us back to triple digit deficits, and yet, in 2004, he manages to get re-elected by a bigger margin than he got the first time.

4. Obama gets elected, the deficits go even higher, and yet he gets re-elected in 2012.

Now you tell me, are the voters punishing anyone for fiscal irresponsibility?

btw, when Cheney said 'deficits don't matter', that is what he was talking about. Deficits don't matter to the voters.

 

[Bfgrn]

Has a lot to do with what you said. And you're right, the middle class IS up to it's ears in debt, because their government put them there. All of us owe $53,000 a peice. Fiscal irresponsibility can ruin a family, why hasn't it ruined our government? Or would the government rather downplay its lack of care with taxpayer dollars? Yes, lets continue that perpetual cognitive dissonance going on in America.

Because the government put them there? Yea, by not expanding government to address the alarming growth of medical costs, responsible for as much as 90% of future deficits. We need government to promote preventive care and to limit bureaucratic overhead and anti-competitive pricing by pharmaceutical companies and medical centers.

That is a non sequitur. Obamacare has caused premiums to rise, buddy. You know, the grandfather clause. More to my point than yours. Healthcare alone does not put each person in America in $53,000 of debt. Entitlement programs such as Welfare and Foodstamps do. Unnecessary wars do. Lavish IRS conferences do.

But anyway, your argument is pointless.

OBAMACARE RATE SHOCKER: Committee Surveys Leading Insurance Companies?Obamacare to Cause Premiums to Spike Nationwide, as High as 400 Percent | Energy & Commerce Committee

Sebelius: Some Could See Insurance Premiums Rise - Washington Wire - WSJ

Study: Obamacare to raise individual claim costs by 32 percent | The Daily Caller

Obamacare does nothing to curb healthcare costs bud. I don't know who deluded you into thinking that, but well... that's just...

Damn.

Partisan BULLSHIT.

factcheck.org : FactChecking Health Insurance Premiums