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Discuss the US Presidential Election & the Economy
A number of folks have been submitting topics that indicate that they want to have a serious discussion on the issues surrounding this election. Since we're under a week now, I've decided to run a series of discussion stories to give you guys a place to discuss the issue. So here's the first one: The Economy. It's the biggest topic these days, eclipsing even war as the most important issue to most Americans. But how will that affect your choice next week? And why?
Has there been any evidence shown that either guy running for president has any idea how the economy works? All I've seen is platitudes and empty stateents from both of them.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Has there been any evidence shown that either guy running for president has any idea how the economy works?
Nope. One says "we'll just give people money, that'll fix it!" and the other says "we'll just cut taxes on businesses, that'll fix it!"
I just hope that whichever candidate wins realizes that he does not have a "mandate" from the people to implement every policy idea, and swing far to the extreme positions of his party. This is going to be a very close race, and he will have wound up being elected by just a slight majority of the fraction of the eligible voting population that bothered to actually vote. Almost nobody who votes for a candidate agrees with him on every single point; it's quite possible they disagree on everything but one or two issues.
Point is, winning by a tiny fraction does not mean everyone wants radical "change". 90% might indicate that, but 50.7% doesn't.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Neither major party candidate has mentioned addressing the crushing national debt or deficit spending. If I'm going to listen to platitudes, I want to hear about reducing spending and paying down the debt, not battles over who gets tax cuts.
12:50 - press return.
The economy is a no brainer for me, and I'm not going to duplicate long posts I've already made elsewhere, but it works like this: Bush broke the economy, plain and simple. There were probably other factors, but everything he did only made it worse. McCain voted with him 90% of the time, especially on the economy. People are under some delusion that under a republican president they'll pay less taxes. Not true. Unless you're rich (and if you're not sure, you're not) you'll pay less taxes under a democratic president. But also, paying less taxes doesn't make you richer. if you pay less in taxes, but more in property taxes, mortgages, and gas prices, then where is the savings? And if gas prices rise, then so does transport and your dollar is worth less. And that makes you poor as well. Hell, i'd vote for obama even if he were raising my taxes. I might shell out a hundred extra bucks in taxes, but if I make it up in savings spread out over the year, then good for me.
Nobody's vote counts, and as soon as we realize that we can start actually fixing problems.
So your purposed method of fixing the problems is to allow the same asshats to keep getting re-elected year after year because you don't bother to vote or get involved?
It takes courage and conviction to resist the "vote or die" crowd, but it MUST BE DONE.
Yeah, it takes a lot of courage and conviction to sit on your ass watching American Idol instead of taking 15 minutes to go to the polling place and vote.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I find it somewhere between hilarious and deeply disturbing that People can get up there and call Obama a socialist for wanting to tax rich people, while at the same time supporting the buying of banks by the federal government, which actually is socialist.
How is taxing rich people any more socialist than taxing the middle class? Were trillions of dollars in debt, this money is going to come from somewhere.
Also can anyone actually explain why we should be bailing out these banks in the first place? If we want to pretend to be capitalists we have to let businesses fail from time to time, especially when they bring it upon themselves with poor business practices like risky lending, and aggressive mortgages. Now GM is looking for a handout because they can't make a car that anyone wants and somehow thats the tax payers fault. (Meanwhile there's more Honda and Toyota manufacturing in the US than there is US manufacturing.)
It seems our whole economic system is unsound. Its all based on retail sales of mostly useless crap that is designed to fail or has planned obsolesence so you have to buy more. We hardly manufacture anything stateside anymore.
I suggest that we actually start focusing on high tech manufacturing. The stuff that can't be done on the cheap by unskilled labor.
Eschew Obfuscation
And the poor Republicans have been helpless victims for the last 8 years...They only controlled the legislature for the insignificant period between 1994 and 2006, so they clearly had no power to resist Clinton's evil ways.
Ah Clinton! Is there nothing we can't blame you for?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It seems obvious to me. They've got this 80 year old cancer survivor, and a very inexperienced (in politics) governor from a state that has it's own rules about most things that are very different then other states.
Why would they try to loose? The economy is in the toilet, the US owes trillions, the US has a very poor foreign image. The Republicans have just decided to let the Democrats deal with the mess. Then for 4 years everyone is getting good and pissed at the Democrats for the lack of jobs, money, government safety nets of any sort (because there is no money for it).
After 4 years, the Republicans can come swooping back in to "save the day" from those socialist Democrats who obviously can't run a country.
The last thing this country needs is having the top 3 spots in the hands of Obama, Reed, and Pelosi, I have trouble imagining anything worse.
How about George W. Bush, Hastert and Lott?
I do find it amusing that the Republicans are resorting to the "divided Government" card and warning us all about the dangers of a single party controlling Congress and the White House. If they were being just a little bit more intellectually honest they'd end the argument with "Look how badly we fucked it up when we had that much power!"
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The US is *bloody broken* after 8 years of "conservative" rule, including six years of absolute power, something the "liberals" haven't had for 30 years or so.
Whether liberals are better or not i don't really know. What I do know is of course the average person is going to be pissed at "conservatives". They've sent the US spiraling downwards in a way not seen since...well the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire.
In any case I spend a lot of time on this site and am rabidly moderate and in reality it's about 50-50 liberal/conservative these days. 8 years ago it was a little more slanted, though then it seemed to be wide eyed radical libertarianism that dominated here.
The funny thing is, and I keep noticing it every single time a "conservative" posts, they always whine on about how they'll be modded down by the "liberal whatever", etc etc. But get modded up at about the same rate as anyone else! You lot really seem to a have a *major* persecution complex which is bloody BIZARRE given that it's your party that's been running the US and setting the political discourse for nearly a decade.
You really are all starting to sound like a bunch of bloody whingers.
Man up.
P.S Current US "conservatives" seem more like ultra radical idealists than anything related to conservatism but whatever.
I'll prefix my comments on the economy by saying I'm an American living and working abroad in the financial sector. So I work with some of the issues haunting the global crisis every day.
Direct blame for the mess lies first and foremost with credit ratings agencies (Standard & Poor's, Moody's, Fitch, et al) and credit insurers (like AIG). They continued to provide strong ratings to mortgage-backed securities without considering the ripple effect a housing-market slump would have. Secondly, blame should fall on US regulating agencies (like the SEC), which failed to place adequate restrictions on mortgage brokers. And lastly, blame should fall on politicians for failing to address the problem of excessive consumer and corporate debt. For years the world has known that America's debt-fueled economic growth was unsustainable. And yet for the past six years, few regulative measures were introduced to increase banks' capitalization ratios. Republicans seem more to blame here, as the six years of deregulation were largely Republican sponsored, but Democrats haven't been much better on this issue.
The Bush administration is not directly responsible for the current financial crisis. Note, however, that the Bush administration's spending spree of the past 7 years has put the government in a decidedly weaker position to now deal with the financial crisis. The government is now much more leveraged than it was when Clinton left office, meaning the Treasury has less flexibility to control markets. The USD is in real danger, and the only reason it hasn't collaped is that there's no alternative currency that investors can run to (Europe is hurting just as bad right now as the USA). The War in Iraq was never worth bankrupting our country.
Let me repeat that...
The War in Iraq was never worth bankrupting our country.
The US national debt has increased in excess of USD 500 bn per year since 2003 and broke through USD 10 tn on September 30, 2008. That means USD 33 000 of debt per resident of the USA, or some 70% of GDP!!!!
In 2000 it was just USD 5.7 bn (58% of GDP) and was on its way down.
I don't credit Clinton with producing the strong economy of the time, and am neutral on the net effect of his tax increases, but I do believe one of his administration's best moves was to use the budget surplus to pay down the national debt.
Make no mistake, the USA is in a very difficult position right now, and its global power is diminishing measurably by the hour.
Economic and foreign policy should be THE deciding factors in the coming election. Completely forget about welfare, abortion, gay marriage, global warming, immigration, job outsourcing, socialized healthcare, agricultural subsidies, AIDS, the war on drugs, executive pay, intellectual property, and religion in the classroom. If the American population realized how dire the situation is right now, these would be non-issues in this election. Real issues like the war on terror, dependence on foreign hydrocarbons, education spending, political reform, antitrust regulation, and social security are important, but should take backseat to the two most pressing issues today: foreign policy and the economy (i.e. eliminating the credit crunch).
Issues like interrogation techniques, warrantless wiretapping, and incarceration of enemy combatants without trial should never have been issues in the first place. Suspected terrorists, both at home and abroad, should receive the same protections that any American citizen receives. Period. I'm still terrified that some Americans think otherwise, and absolutely horrified that some politicians agree with them. Warrantless wiretapping is absolutely disgusting, especially considering the FISA already allowed for a court order to be obtained up to three days after wiretapping had commenced. When voting, choose the smartest candidate you can based on the two most important criteria: foreign policay and the credit crunch. For any intelligent politician, the issues of interrogatio
Yes, welfare and income redistribution is doing horrible things in 3rd world countries like Denmark,Norway,Sweden,France,Germany,Belgium etc...
I've heard this statement many, many times. I have seen zero evidence that it's an accurate assessment. I can flush these people out with two words: medical marijuana. Add in prostitution, pornography, gay marriage, stem cell research, and you have a handful of areas in which their preferred government is far from small or non-intrusive. The "conservative" approach to habeas corpus, torture, and secret prisons is the opposite of small government--it's flat-out totalitarian. So my problem, in a nutshell, with conservatives is not that they are conservative, but that they are liars.
NO NO NO NO NO NO!! It is NOT the federal governments job to mold a citizen's legal behavior!!! That is not what the federal govt. is authorized or instantiated to do by the Constitution. It is there for basic things...defense of country, an oversite of interactions by the states....etc.
Taxes should go for nothing more than things like infrastructure and the like. It should not be used to mold human behavior....leave that to the individual how they want to act.
I really had so many 'tax incentives'...they should be banned. Tax everyone the same, and no deductions for this or that. You want a home...buy it, but, don't expect a tax break for it. Want to have kids? Fine...but, pay for it on your own, don't expect people without kids to foot that part of your tax bill. I'm ok with taxes for infrastructure things like schools for kids, but, when you get a deduction just for having a kid, those without are effectively subsidizing you decision...and before you say it is in the best interest to encourage people to have kids, I've yet to hear anyone waffling on having a kid, and then go "Hey, I'll get a tax break...throw out the condom babe..we're gonna make a tax brea....er...baby". People fuck, and will continue to fuck...and have kids. So, let's quit giving them a subsidy.
Anyway, I got off track....but, taxes should not be used to manipulate behavior...that is not the business of govt. That is one way that we have allowed govt. to get too big and intrusive into our personal lives.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Economists need to learn the lesson structural engineers learned in 1940, when the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsed.
Structural engineers used to pride themselves on designing funicular structures - maximizing utility with the minimum amount of material. The Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse changed everything. Ever since, structural engineers have recognized that safety, not maximizing utility, is paramount. Building codes now universally require that structures be overengineered.
Now, where is the politician or economist who will publicly state that we should design our economy to be safe, rather than maximally productive? Even in the face of potential economic collapse, all we hear about are bandaids and growth, growth, growth. Anyone who would propose limiting growth in order to provide greater resilience would be tarred, feathered, and flogged.
Why is it so anathema to talk about safety nets? Why, for example, is it so evil to consider that the reason we need universal health care isn't because it's the most productive way to run our economy, but because we should all feel comfortable that basic humans needs will be met, no matter what the goddamn economy is doing? Perhaps economies of scale point to the need for uber-banks; but maybe instead of creating institutions that are too big to fail, we should consider that efficient or not, too big to fail is simply too goddamn big. On and on. Everything in the name of efficiency and productivity; nothing in the name of resilience and safety.
Every politician I've seen to date has been too chicken shit to state obvious truths. I think that's not really their fault, because the system they live in demands it if they hope to ever be elected. I'm voting for Barack, because reading between the lines, I think he gets it. At least more than McCain. McCain has some good local perspective on a few things, but he's just not a big-picture meaning-of-life kind of guy. He might know how to help businesses, but he just doesn't get the point of it all. Try to imagine McCain sitting poolside at a resort sipping a margarita, for example. I can't. To me, that's a fatal flaw.
Ultimately the questions for conservatives is whether they believe that people have an inherent right to live, even if at the lowest standards of living, or if people that can work or can find work do have that right. Because if they do have a right to live, then we must be prepared to give those people some amount of charity.
First, charity is something you give of your own free will. Conservatives do a lot of this (in fact, studies have shown they give more to charity than liberals). Taxes and the government programs they fund are not charity, because taxes are taken against your will under penalty of imprisonment.
Second, I think you will find few if any conservatives who oppose helping people get back on their feet. We're generally all for giving temporary assistance to get someone through a tough time, because we realize everyone has bad luck sometimes.
However, I think you will find most conservatives do oppose handouts for folks who are not working but could. There's no reason to support freeloading for those who could work.
So in that sense, I think conservatives would support taxpayer funding for a "right to live" limited to food, clothing, very basic medical care, and shelter; provided that the person is doing their best to improve their own situation. In no way should we be taxing someone to pay someone else's cable TV bills though. A right to live does not equate to a right to live well on the public dole.
The 'social' in social security means 'the people' as in no matter what happens people shouldn't starve to death or freeze out in the cold in their old age. It does NOT mean 'your social status' as in what circles you can afford to hang out in and what diamond jewelry you can afford to wear. That's why a progressive 'social' security system makes a lot of sense.
Preventing starvation in old age was the original intent of the program. However, people now live much longer (thus withdrawing more from Social Security than they used to), but we haven't redefined "old age" to mean the same level of ability to work as it meant back then. So now SS is paying for general retirement of folks for decades of their lives, rather than helping the neediest and very oldest. That's a huge scope creep that presents a much larger bill than intended.
With the graying of the population, we also have many fewer people paying into the system for each person taking money out.
So the question is whether we can even afford to allow SS to continually grow as a welfare program for more and more able-bodied people, or whether we should put it back to its stated purpose of preventing the truly elderly from becoming destitute.
Sounds about right to me... the top 5% of wage earners earn about 60% of the wages in the country, so it seems fair that they should be paying 60% of the taxes.
Wikipedia says the top 1% control 38% of the wealth while paying 34% of the taxes, so based on that it sounds like the top 1% need a small tax increase (based on IRS numbers, the top 1% looks to be those making more than $388,000 a year for 2006).
Yes, it is actually. That's the entire point of a minimum wage, to provide a living wage to low skill workers. Not everyone is smart enough or skilled enough to get a job in engineering. We need janitors, waitresses, cashiers, and bartenders, too. I for one would like my janitor to be able to afford a place to live without having to work 60+ hours a week. If the minimum wage is not enough even for a single, healthy person to make a living, then it is failing its intended purpose.
Just throwing out fuel for the fire: The Obama Tax Plan
- The top two income-tax brackets would return to their 1990s levels of 36% and 39.6% (including the exemption and deduction phase-outs). All other brackets would remain as they are today.
- The top capital-gains rate for families making more than $250,000 would return to 20% -- the lowest rate that existed in the 1990s and the rate President Bush proposed in his 2001 tax cut. A 20% rate is almost a third lower than the rate President Reagan set in 1986.
- The tax rate on dividends would also be 20% for families making more than $250,000, rather than returning to the ordinary income rate. This rate would be 39% lower than the rate President Bush proposed in his 2001 tax cut and would be lower than all but five of the last 92 years we have been taxing dividends.
- The estate tax would be effectively repealed for 99.7% of estates, and retained at a 45% rate for estates valued at over $7 million per couple. This would cut the number of estates covered by the tax by 84% relative to 2000.
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I drank what? -- Socrates
We did manage to get out of McCarthyism and Prohibition...
No we haven't. They both simply been more finely tuned to specific targets. McCarthyism hit the liberation movements in the sixties and the Muslims today. Alcohol prohibition netted too many good ol' boys, while today's drug laws nail the poor and minorities. And openly so. But make no mistake McCarthyism and Prohibition are as strong today as they ever were. And the civil war(oxymoron, if there ever was one) goes so far beyond the subject of slavery that it was hardly the real issue behind it. It wasn't a "cultural" war. It was as economic as all others are. A speed bump in the building of an empire.
You won't be able to buy or sell marijuana legally anytime in the next four years, but the choice America makes in this election will have a strong influence on legalized marijuana in the next twenty years.
Not so likely as long as we continue to be distracted by false "crises". Every effort is being made to dumb down the internet into TV in the name of "think of the children". We got "terrorism", an economic "emergency", "OMG! Idol's been canceled!"
It's might be easy for some to say "be patient" because they don't feel the effects directly. In the meantime there are innocent people rotting in prison right now. Some will die there. Thousands of families are being broken by gangland violence(Just another form of terrorism), all fomented by prohibition, not drug use. They should just be patient? Maybe if all of society got a taste of what they go through, we just might see the light and put an end to it a hell of a lot quicker. Unfortunately society's reaction is to become more fascist and demand more of the same. Right now the profit margins derived from prohibition are just too high to give it up so easily, so it won't go anywhere very soon. And the prison industry is the new slavery. BUT! I actually do have faith, but it sure does hurt to see it grind on so slowly. As a victim of the process, I did get a taste of what it's like. So...Sorry if I appear to be a bit impatient.
What?
Ever tried giving to charity? Then you can target the specific individuals, groups or unfortunate circumstances you want to positively affect, eliminating the expansive government overhead and waste inherent in such programs. There are even charity ratings sites that tell you how efficiently any charity gets your money to those who need it.
You can give your money away much more intelligently than the government can.
There are three problems with this:
First, you assume that a cause you support *has* a charity that's more efficient than the government. I note that you imply that inherent waste & overhead are a government problem but don't look at whether such problems apply to smaller charities. Nor do you discuss the differences in economies of scale between a small operation and a national operation.
Second, under this system only the most popular causes will receive adequate funds and other groups may slip under the cracks. The Federal government is limited in its actions by the 14th Amendment's requirement to provide equal protection under the law. Private charities are under no such obligation.
Think back to the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movements. Do you believe that poor blacks got as much charity and assistance as poor whites? Under a purely voluntary, charity-based system, unpopular groups may end up getting far less support than they may deserve based on their need.
Today, we see much of the same targeted, exclusionary approach in charities based on religious beliefs that turn away homosexuals or other "undesirables" or who require one to buy into some of their teachings before receiving benefit (or at least take advantage of a person in a vulnerable place). Just look at Scientology and Narconon.
Third, I have never once seen someone able to seriously argue that if you remove $X million dollars in federal taxation that $X million dollars (or more) will flow into charities for the needy. Taking away government social programs will NOT result in an equivalent amount of help coming from the private sector (and now out of the generous, goodness of people's hearts instead of from the filthy, grubbing government). All people are saying when they say, "Let the people choose what charity to give to," is really, "Let the people choose to say, 'Screw you, panhandlers,' and not give to any charity. I can obviously make better use of my money than those people, or they wouldn't be asking for it."
Frankly, the social costs of the alternative are why we have programs like Social Security in the first place. We didn't come up with a government program to give money to old people just because we wanted to get rid of the existing charity system. We did it because the old system was wholly inadequate and the social costs of an impoverished and unable to work segment of society (which we will all one-day join) was considered intolerable.
Same as the social costs of people unable to afford healthcare today. It's a drain on the economy and productivity as well as just being inhumanly callous to let people be sick because they're afraid that they can't afford to be well. We're the only wealthy nation that ignores this problem, and it's shameful. If the private charity system were working as people pretend it will, then we wouldn't even be *having* this discussion. End of story.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").