"You don't want to let them fuck you over? Then don't" is no moral defense against the way they exploit their drivers, and is no defense at all against those who are poor and have no choice but to allow themselves to be fucked over from time to time. Just because a sucker is born every minute does not make it right to take a sucker's money unethically.
At some point "free markets" give way to "morality" -- otherwise we'd still have child labor.
Here's a fact: Congress, and only Congress sets the spending of the country. While the Executive suggests a budget, Congress makes whatever changes they like to it, and is who passes it into law.
Here's another: recessions cause Federal deficits to rise as tax revenues decrease while spending must remain relatively constant so as not to cause a much worse recession. If you're the type to look for someone to blame, blame the guy that started the recession through a complete failure to regulate risky bank activity, not the guy who inherited it.
Here's another: starting two wars without the funding to pay for them and adding a huge new Medicare entitlement program without the funding to pay for it is "unpatriotic". Not gutting the Federal budget and sending the economy into a tailspin because you inherited a recession and the attendant deficit that comes with it is "prudent".
I'm not offended by trash-talking -- that's all good fun, like your mother said last night -- but I am offended when people trash-talk their own country.
Huh. You know what I'm offended by? Fucking morons who vote against their interests because the lies they're fed make them feel good. Idiots who don't bother to fact-check the bullshit they're eating by the bucketload because it allows them to see themselves as better than someone. Asswipes who think "my country, right or wrong". In other words, 'Muricans.
I'm an AMERICAN. I read both sides of every issue. I fact-check sources. I follow the money. My priorities are Conscience, Country, God, (Party?), NOT God, Party, Country, (Conscience?). I understand Cui Bono is the basis for nearly everything someone paid for me to see. I do the work required of a Citizen of this country and take it as my sacred duty... and 'Muricans fucking PISS ME OFF. They make us look stupid. They give other countries a reason to doubt our global leadership and the very notion of Democracy itself (for example, the very popular belief in China that a Technocracy is much better than a Democracy, the United States being the number one example of why). They are a threat to our very existence, blithely voting in dumbfuck ideas that shit all over the Constitution like arresting reporters and protesters, a Mexican border wall or banning Muslims because it makes them feel good.
But yea, you go ahead and be offended by people who trash-talk their country, because the Lord knows that YOUR country can do no wrong, and in the case of the United States, the First Amendment doesn't apply to people who offend your sensibilities...
I can't decide if Brennan is stupid, or if he thinks everyone else is stupid.
He's giving the Senators plausible cover stories to protect themselves for when they vote for bills that would write mandatory backdoors into law. That's not stupid; that's playing the game masterfully.
Never, ever, think of your enemy as stupid -- even if s/he appears to be, even if s/he IS -- as it will cause you to underestimate them. Always assume that what appears to be their stupidity is a deception, and look at it until you find it. If you cannot find it, assume that it is YOU that is being stupid.
When gun emojis are criminal, only criminals will have them! We law-abiding citizens must have a way to defend ourselves from those marauding criminals who send us rifle emojis from criminal platforms! Oh the horrors!
On the flipside, think of how many emoji-based mass slaughters that won't be happening...
@rhazz isn't trying to "censor" you. Look up the definition of the fucking word. They are rightfully pointing out a documented occurrence, and suggesting a rational course of action.
Actually, the word you're looking for is "moderation". That's what down, or upvotes are created by: moderators. It is only through the collective voting of all of them that a post is elevated or buried.
When one person does it, it's censorship. When a group of people do it, it's democracy.
Without all the modern technology, including bio-medical, how many people would be dying each year?
This is a false dichotomy to a straw man argument. Nobody is questioning the advances that non-renewables have enabled, nor do we currently face a choice between modern technologies and non-renewable fuels. Indeed, as you say, it is modern technologies that are making the shift to a renewable-based economy possible. But the shift is also inevitable, and necessary. The only questions revolve around how quickly, how much cost, and how much disruption the transition will engender.
You are looking at the cost to an individual, but society doesn't work that way.
Eventually it has to. Eventually the cost to individuals becomes so common and so high that society must adapt. Eventually we must actually account for the costs to future generations that we currently pay lip service to.
Any "externalities" you might imagine have long since been paid for through the scientific and manufacturing technology that fossil fuels have enabled.
Agreed. FoxConn is dumping 60,000 employees for robots and their "minimum wage" is a something like a moldy loaf of bread for a 15 hour day...
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
2 robots at $70k is still cheaper than one employee.
You'd be correct, except for "math". At $15 an hour full time, that's roughly $30k per year per employee. If I add another 33% for McDonald's INCREDIBLY GENEROUS benefits (lol) that's $40k. So a human is still cheaper by almost half, and you haven't begun to pay for electricity or maintenance on said robots, much less the software development, QA and maintenance contract costs, to say nothing of upgrades and safety training, insurance and safety cages.
I have no doubt that robots will eventually render all of us idle, but $35k per pop versus a minimum wage employee, the economics don't come close to working. This is FUD, plain and simple.
In my parking lot with 200 parking space, there is 2 chargers and they are for private spaces. They are locked and there is a meter on them.
I'll see your anecdotal example and raise you a counterfactual. In parking lots in every public building in my city there are free electric chargers; at the grocery store there are free chargers. At every parking garage there are a couple of free chargers.
Do you really think a parking lot owner will pay free electricity for everyone?
I never said they would -- but they are for the moment. So if they choose to meter it in the future, then great. So? Did you think they were gonna give hydrogen away for free or something?
Do you have any notion of electrical circuits?
I used to be an electrician, so, yea.
A 15 amp circuit won't feed 200 cars trying to charge at the same time during 8 hours.
That's true. They would need many circuits. So? You think laying pipelines to carry hydrogen is cheap? You think buying super-reinforced highway-safe tanker trucks is cheap? You think building up an entire hydrogen infrastructure from scratch is going to be cheaper than some small incremental upgrades to the electric grid?
To install charging station everywhere, the input box and line to the parking must be upgraded at a large cost.
A breaker box and wiring up a parking lot would be a small fraction of the cost of installing hydrogen stations everywhere, and it would be using existing infrastructure, and it would be more convenient for drivers, since they can "fill up" at the same place they park; they don't have to go to a hydrogen station.
That's also the reason why you will not have powerful enough and in quantity charging stations at a gas/service station.
I doubt that service stations that choose to add electric charging stations would fill more than a few cars at a time; certainly no more than they can fill with gasoline, which means they don't need to make large upgrades to infrastructure, and those upgrades will STILL be far less expensive then adding hydro tanks and pumps. So, let's review: electric fill ups are cheaper to purchase. It's safer. More convenient. Quicker to install. Less expensive to install. Won't increase the carbon footprint as much as hydrogen. There ARE no areas in which hydrogen is more convenient than electricity except in certain edge cases such as off-grid (where propane will be cheaper).
Hydrogen cells, if a design can make them secure
If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
is much more handy and doesn't need to redesign the current infrastructure at a high cost.
If you think adding some electrical circuits and charging stations is expensive, wait until you see the cost of hydro tanks, safety measures & failsafes, pipes, tankers, etc.
because there will be many cases where it will just not be possible
I'm curious as to what some examples of your "many cases" might be?
A significant amount of large countries don't have reliable electricity networks
Aside from the fact that we aren't talking about third world countries or electrical grids, I would remind you that India ALSO has no hydrogen infrastructure, period. On the other hand, they ARE making breathtaking progress in installing solar infrastructure.
Until you can run an EV all day on a single night charge, there will be a need to external chargers
In other words, for 95% of us, that's now.
I live in a cold climate where we need engine block heaters and parking lots don't even want to pay for those.
Then they should LOVE EVs, since they don't require engine block heaters.
Charging an EV in a parking lot will be expensive.
Huh. Every parking lot that isn't dirt has lights. They're already mostly wired, and there is nothing to say that chargers distributed in parking lots must provide electricity for free.
You needn't write anything else. You just agreed with my primary assertion that recoveries happen.
Only if you take this single statement out of context and ignore all of the other times I have said they do not get better all by themselves. But that's the desperation your argument has sunk to.
As I have noted before, I provide evidence to indicate he made that recovery worse.
And as I have noted before, your "evidence" consists of a single discredited crank with no economic credentials whatsoever.
And once again, you misrepresent my side of the argument to a ridiculous extent.
You have a nasty habit of making assertions without backing them up. Specifically how have I "misrepresented your side of the argument to a ridiculous extent"?
I happen to believe that contrary to your assertion one can make predictions about the near future with reasonable and useful accuracy
That's wonderful that you BELIEVE this. How about some proof?
And once again, I note the lack of evidence for your assertion that the future was unusually unpredictable at this time due to existing economic factors.
I made no such assertion. What I SAID was "the forecast was wrong; the data was incomplete; this is not incompetence".
I think rather the economists in question were paid to ignore the negative effects of the administration's policies, and that's what resulted in the huge gulf between reality and fiction.
Ah. Conspiracy! Perhaps you might supply some sort of evidence to support your opinion?
I never claimed Obama did nothing nor do I consider that a reasonable interpretation of my words.
I think you're weaseling out of the obvious implication of your words, but fine. No, you did not actually state "he did nothing". We shall agree to disagree on the interpretation of your remarks.
I have provided evidence that Obama's actions were worse than inaction. So it is bad to credit him with something for which he hindered not helped.
Your "evidence" is contrary to all of the other sources I provided from respected economists from across the political spectrum, government and private sector. Yet you choose to believe a SINGLE claim to the contrary by a climate change denial blogger without any apparent economist credentials. Perhaps you should read about all of the times his "AGW fraud" claims have been discredited before you go promoting his opinions. Believe whomever you like, but please stop accusing others of confirmation bias.
Finally, the Japanese "lost decade" is yet another example where the attempted action was worse than inaction.
Ah. So in addition to your ability to predict the future, you claim the ability to look down roads not traveled.
Calling their projections "incorrect" deceptively downplays how glaringly divergent those projections were.
Divergent from what? This is where a citation to support your assertion would come in handy.
Nor do we have here any indication that the data was inadequate, that's just something you choose to assume is true - a classic symptom of confirmation bias
Data used to predict the future is ALWAYS inadequate. It's axiomatic. If the data were complete, it would no longer be the future; it would be the present, or past. Again, please stop accusing others of confirmation bias when you ignore simple axioms like "we cannot predict the future using economic models".
It's worth noting that we have many other recessions to compare the present one to. And most of those show curves similar to the two presented in the projection.
All recessions show "similar" curves. Things get bad. Then they get better. That does NOT make your argument.
Where's the evidence that the future was significantly unpredictable here for the projections that were being made?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. My claim is that nobody can predict the future. Your claim is that economic models made in the opening days of the great recession should have been accurate in every way required to craft exact, specific public policy. I will leave it up to the audience to determine which of our claims is axiomatic and which is extraordinary.
The obvious rebuttal to this is that there is no evidence for the contrary assertion. Show me that unrecovered recession.
I did -- the Japanese economy. That you chose to ignore it and instead make another assertion (that doing nothing is better than doing something) is your error, not mine.
Regardless, it is not up to me to provide evidence to support your assertion. You have asserted that an economy in a free fall that led to a dire recession will get better all by itself without any intervention. Where is your evidence to support this claim?
Even if those were all my claims, what's confusing about them?
That's me politely trying to tell you that your argument is inconsistent and that you have moved your goalposts in exactly the way I described, first by claiming President Obama did nothing, and then by claiming he DID do something, but that those actions made things worse.
An AC claimed among other things that Obama was responsible for "economy turned around from the tailspin it fell into under Bush". I merely noted at that time that it would have anyway.
This claim is both irrelevant to the GP you replied to, since the argument was about action, not inaction, and flat wrong -- ask the Japanese how their economy is doing after more than a decade of active government stimulus policy. Recovery is not a guaranteed thing.
They started with huge, capricious changes in the economy via stimulus and favoritism (such as the General Motors takeover).
Some evidence to support your statement of "capriciousness" would be welcome; my understanding is that they were laser focused on saving a sector of the economy that's responsible for over 3 million jobs. Also, I'm curious as to your rationalization for the use of the word "takeover". How much GM stock does the Federal Government currently own? How was the securitization of the loans the Federal Government made any different than a private sector actor would have used? (had there been one available) How is the reorganization of ownership stakes any different than a private sector actor would have demanded for their investments?
That creates massive uncertainty in the business world and dampens economic activiy.
Really? A government propping up a massive sector of the economy creates uncertainty and saving millions of jobs dampens economic activity? Perhaps you can show a citation to back up this incredulous claim?
So sure, the economists in question didn't "know" the full extent of the disaster because in large part they were way over-optimistically projecting the effects of their own administration's actions on the economy
My understanding is that they worked with the outgoing Administration to develop those models using the best data they had at the time. If you have evidence to support your assertion that they were unduly optimistic in their projections, now would be the time to show it. You're trying to make the case that the Administration was incompetent, and so far you've only made the case that their projections were incorrect (which we all know; we all know that economic projections are almost NEVER correct).
Also, we all know drum beating scares off sky dragons. We just didn't have enough drum this time. Your words are a typical confirmation bias excuse for why something didn't turn out as expected.
You seem to have a fascination for mythical creatures. I would prefer we keep the discussion to this world. My words are not at all a "typical confirmation bias", they are an understanding that economics in an inexact science and economic models are only as good as the inputs they are given. You are apparently under the impression that economists can predict the future.
You just assert that things were worse than the original data indicated and that we just didn't try hard enough. Reality is always worse than expected for fools.
It is not that we "did not try hard enough". I don't care how hard you try to predict the future; unless you've got powers none of us have, you cannot reliably do it. Reality is SOMETIMES worse that expected for fools -- and smart people as well. Sometimes it's better than expected. Sometimes it's exactly as expected.
And the end result was worse [wordpress.com] than what Obama's economists claimed would have happened, if nothing had been done.
I'm a bit confused. Previously you claimed President Obama deserved no credit because the economy was going to improve anyway. Now you're claiming he deserves no credit because the economic models that were created prior to understanding the full severity of the recession underestimated how bad things were AND you're claiming he actually made things worse. That's an impressive distance you've moved those goalposts in such a short time!
That's why I backed my observation elsewhere with two pieces of evidence
So what you're saying is that you left your citations in your other argument?
, the unusually slow recovery compared to previous recoveries
It appears you're saying that you can somehow meaningfully compare the worst recession ever to recessions that were not as bad? Or are you claiming that we should have emerged from the worst recession ever at least as quickly as recessions that were not as bad? Please clarify your claims, and provide citations (Preferably from someone who isn't claiming that "Obama Trillion Dollar Stimulus 50% Worse Than Doing Nothing" on a single piece of evidence (an outdated economic model) and thinks that 83 cents is actually a dollar).
But glancing at my link, I see that economists working for the Obama administration came to the same conclusion as I and then went on to claim a full recovery in unemployment rate by the beginning of 2014!
As I have previously mentioned, those forecasts were prepared from data in December, prior to knowing how bad the recession was. This may come as a surprise to you, but economic models prepared from today's data will disagree with economic models prepared from data taken four months ago. This is not a sign of "incompetence", it's a sign of "the passage of time". You must have conniption fits every time the BLS updates their labor reports from 3 months ago because more data has come in and *GASP!* THEY CHANGE!
The thing I find most amusing about this is that Conservatives are whining like little girls when they hear that a PRIVATE COMPANY is doing whatever they want to with their resources. Aren't Conservatives supposed to be for free markets and small government? Where has Congress been about investigating allegations of bias against Fox or all of the myriad right wing talk radio outlets?
The hypocrisy is both stunning, and business as usual...
As someone who is a big fan of history, may I remind you that it's not written in the present, as you have attempted to do? You kinda gotta wait 15-20 years...
Slashdot Mirror
A Slashdotter is about to have his first sexual experience, courtesy of the TSA!
That is not an air gap, and it is no better than using a router for network segregation.
"You don't want to let them fuck you over? Then don't" is no moral defense against the way they exploit their drivers, and is no defense at all against those who are poor and have no choice but to allow themselves to be fucked over from time to time. Just because a sucker is born every minute does not make it right to take a sucker's money unethically.
At some point "free markets" give way to "morality" -- otherwise we'd still have child labor.
Here's a fact: Congress, and only Congress sets the spending of the country. While the Executive suggests a budget, Congress makes whatever changes they like to it, and is who passes it into law.
Here's another: recessions cause Federal deficits to rise as tax revenues decrease while spending must remain relatively constant so as not to cause a much worse recession. If you're the type to look for someone to blame, blame the guy that started the recession through a complete failure to regulate risky bank activity, not the guy who inherited it.
Here's another: starting two wars without the funding to pay for them and adding a huge new Medicare entitlement program without the funding to pay for it is "unpatriotic". Not gutting the Federal budget and sending the economy into a tailspin because you inherited a recession and the attendant deficit that comes with it is "prudent".
Huh. You know what I'm offended by? Fucking morons who vote against their interests because the lies they're fed make them feel good. Idiots who don't bother to fact-check the bullshit they're eating by the bucketload because it allows them to see themselves as better than someone. Asswipes who think "my country, right or wrong". In other words, 'Muricans.
I'm an AMERICAN. I read both sides of every issue. I fact-check sources. I follow the money. My priorities are Conscience, Country, God, (Party?), NOT God, Party, Country, (Conscience?). I understand Cui Bono is the basis for nearly everything someone paid for me to see. I do the work required of a Citizen of this country and take it as my sacred duty... and 'Muricans fucking PISS ME OFF. They make us look stupid. They give other countries a reason to doubt our global leadership and the very notion of Democracy itself (for example, the very popular belief in China that a Technocracy is much better than a Democracy, the United States being the number one example of why). They are a threat to our very existence, blithely voting in dumbfuck ideas that shit all over the Constitution like arresting reporters and protesters, a Mexican border wall or banning Muslims because it makes them feel good.
But yea, you go ahead and be offended by people who trash-talk their country, because the Lord knows that YOUR country can do no wrong, and in the case of the United States, the First Amendment doesn't apply to people who offend your sensibilities...
He's giving the Senators plausible cover stories to protect themselves for when they vote for bills that would write mandatory backdoors into law. That's not stupid; that's playing the game masterfully.
Never, ever, think of your enemy as stupid -- even if s/he appears to be, even if s/he IS -- as it will cause you to underestimate them. Always assume that what appears to be their stupidity is a deception, and look at it until you find it. If you cannot find it, assume that it is YOU that is being stupid.
When gun emojis are criminal, only criminals will have them! We law-abiding citizens must have a way to defend ourselves from those marauding criminals who send us rifle emojis from criminal platforms! Oh the horrors!
On the flipside, think of how many emoji-based mass slaughters that won't be happening...
Money matters that much; it's just not the ONLY thing that matters. Sometimes a really pissed off electorate wakes up.
Specifically how much less could you care?
@rhazz isn't trying to "censor" you. Look up the definition of the fucking word. They are rightfully pointing out a documented occurrence, and suggesting a rational course of action.
Actually, the word you're looking for is "moderation". That's what down, or upvotes are created by: moderators. It is only through the collective voting of all of them that a post is elevated or buried. When one person does it, it's censorship. When a group of people do it, it's democracy.
This is a false dichotomy to a straw man argument. Nobody is questioning the advances that non-renewables have enabled, nor do we currently face a choice between modern technologies and non-renewable fuels. Indeed, as you say, it is modern technologies that are making the shift to a renewable-based economy possible. But the shift is also inevitable, and necessary. The only questions revolve around how quickly, how much cost, and how much disruption the transition will engender.
Eventually it has to. Eventually the cost to individuals becomes so common and so high that society must adapt. Eventually we must actually account for the costs to future generations that we currently pay lip service to.
Cite? What about the continuing externalities?
Agreed. FoxConn is dumping 60,000 employees for robots and their "minimum wage" is a something like a moldy loaf of bread for a 15 hour day... https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
You'd be correct, except for "math". At $15 an hour full time, that's roughly $30k per year per employee. If I add another 33% for McDonald's INCREDIBLY GENEROUS benefits (lol) that's $40k. So a human is still cheaper by almost half, and you haven't begun to pay for electricity or maintenance on said robots, much less the software development, QA and maintenance contract costs, to say nothing of upgrades and safety training, insurance and safety cages.
I have no doubt that robots will eventually render all of us idle, but $35k per pop versus a minimum wage employee, the economics don't come close to working. This is FUD, plain and simple.
Are you rude?
I'll see your anecdotal example and raise you a counterfactual. In parking lots in every public building in my city there are free electric chargers; at the grocery store there are free chargers. At every parking garage there are a couple of free chargers.
I never said they would -- but they are for the moment. So if they choose to meter it in the future, then great. So? Did you think they were gonna give hydrogen away for free or something?
I used to be an electrician, so, yea.
That's true. They would need many circuits. So? You think laying pipelines to carry hydrogen is cheap? You think buying super-reinforced highway-safe tanker trucks is cheap? You think building up an entire hydrogen infrastructure from scratch is going to be cheaper than some small incremental upgrades to the electric grid?
A breaker box and wiring up a parking lot would be a small fraction of the cost of installing hydrogen stations everywhere, and it would be using existing infrastructure, and it would be more convenient for drivers, since they can "fill up" at the same place they park; they don't have to go to a hydrogen station.
I doubt that service stations that choose to add electric charging stations would fill more than a few cars at a time; certainly no more than they can fill with gasoline, which means they don't need to make large upgrades to infrastructure, and those upgrades will STILL be far less expensive then adding hydro tanks and pumps. So, let's review: electric fill ups are cheaper to purchase. It's safer. More convenient. Quicker to install. Less expensive to install. Won't increase the carbon footprint as much as hydrogen. There ARE no areas in which hydrogen is more convenient than electricity except in certain edge cases such as off-grid (where propane will be cheaper).
If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
If you think adding some electrical circuits and charging stations is expensive, wait until you see the cost of hydro tanks, safety measures & failsafes, pipes, tankers, etc.
I'm curious as to what some examples of your "many cases" might be?
Aside from the fact that we aren't talking about third world countries or electrical grids, I would remind you that India ALSO has no hydrogen infrastructure, period. On the other hand, they ARE making breathtaking progress in installing solar infrastructure.
In other words, for 95% of us, that's now.
Then they should LOVE EVs, since they don't require engine block heaters.
Huh. Every parking lot that isn't dirt has lights. They're already mostly wired, and there is nothing to say that chargers distributed in parking lots must provide electricity for free.
Or, maybe it's not a kidnapping, it's a surprise adoption!
Why oh why would you give an AC who is threatening to leave a reason to stay!?!?
IMO a more fitting response: BYE! Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!
Only if you take this single statement out of context and ignore all of the other times I have said they do not get better all by themselves. But that's the desperation your argument has sunk to.
And as I have noted before, your "evidence" consists of a single discredited crank with no economic credentials whatsoever.
You have a nasty habit of making assertions without backing them up. Specifically how have I "misrepresented your side of the argument to a ridiculous extent"?
That's wonderful that you BELIEVE this. How about some proof?
I made no such assertion. What I SAID was "the forecast was wrong; the data was incomplete; this is not incompetence".
Ah. Conspiracy! Perhaps you might supply some sort of evidence to support your opinion?
I think you're weaseling out of the obvious implication of your words, but fine. No, you did not actually state "he did nothing". We shall agree to disagree on the interpretation of your remarks.
Your "evidence" is contrary to all of the other sources I provided from respected economists from across the political spectrum, government and private sector. Yet you choose to believe a SINGLE claim to the contrary by a climate change denial blogger without any apparent economist credentials. Perhaps you should read about all of the times his "AGW fraud" claims have been discredited before you go promoting his opinions. Believe whomever you like, but please stop accusing others of confirmation bias.
Ah. So in addition to your ability to predict the future, you claim the ability to look down roads not traveled.
Divergent from what? This is where a citation to support your assertion would come in handy.
Data used to predict the future is ALWAYS inadequate. It's axiomatic. If the data were complete, it would no longer be the future; it would be the present, or past. Again, please stop accusing others of confirmation bias when you ignore simple axioms like "we cannot predict the future using economic models".
All recessions show "similar" curves. Things get bad. Then they get better. That does NOT make your argument.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. My claim is that nobody can predict the future. Your claim is that economic models made in the opening days of the great recession should have been accurate in every way required to craft exact, specific public policy. I will leave it up to the audience to determine which of our claims is axiomatic and which is extraordinary.
I did -- the Japanese economy. That you chose to ignore it and instead make another assertion (that doing nothing is better than doing something) is your error, not mine.
Regardless, it is not up to me to provide evidence to support your assertion. You have asserted that an economy in a free fall that led to a dire recession will get better all by itself without any intervention. Where is your evidence to support this claim?
That's me politely trying to tell you that your argument is inconsistent and that you have moved your goalposts in exactly the way I described, first by claiming President Obama did nothing, and then by claiming he DID do something, but that those actions made things worse.
This claim is both irrelevant to the GP you replied to, since the argument was about action, not inaction, and flat wrong -- ask the Japanese how their economy is doing after more than a decade of active government stimulus policy. Recovery is not a guaranteed thing.
Some evidence to support your statement of "capriciousness" would be welcome; my understanding is that they were laser focused on saving a sector of the economy that's responsible for over 3 million jobs. Also, I'm curious as to your rationalization for the use of the word "takeover". How much GM stock does the Federal Government currently own? How was the securitization of the loans the Federal Government made any different than a private sector actor would have used? (had there been one available) How is the reorganization of ownership stakes any different than a private sector actor would have demanded for their investments?
Really? A government propping up a massive sector of the economy creates uncertainty and saving millions of jobs dampens economic activity? Perhaps you can show a citation to back up this incredulous claim?
My understanding is that they worked with the outgoing Administration to develop those models using the best data they had at the time. If you have evidence to support your assertion that they were unduly optimistic in their projections, now would be the time to show it. You're trying to make the case that the Administration was incompetent, and so far you've only made the case that their projections were incorrect (which we all know; we all know that economic projections are almost NEVER correct).
You seem to have a fascination for mythical creatures. I would prefer we keep the discussion to this world. My words are not at all a "typical confirmation bias", they are an understanding that economics in an inexact science and economic models are only as good as the inputs they are given. You are apparently under the impression that economists can predict the future.
It is not that we "did not try hard enough". I don't care how hard you try to predict the future; unless you've got powers none of us have, you cannot reliably do it. Reality is SOMETIMES worse that expected for fools -- and smart people as well. Sometimes it's better than expected. Sometimes it's exactly as expected.
I'm a bit confused. Previously you claimed President Obama deserved no credit because the economy was going to improve anyway. Now you're claiming he deserves no credit because the economic models that were created prior to understanding the full severity of the recession underestimated how bad things were AND you're claiming he actually made things worse. That's an impressive distance you've moved those goalposts in such a short time!
So what you're saying is that you left your citations in your other argument?
It appears you're saying that you can somehow meaningfully compare the worst recession ever to recessions that were not as bad? Or are you claiming that we should have emerged from the worst recession ever at least as quickly as recessions that were not as bad? Please clarify your claims, and provide citations (Preferably from someone who isn't claiming that "Obama Trillion Dollar Stimulus 50% Worse Than Doing Nothing" on a single piece of evidence (an outdated economic model) and thinks that 83 cents is actually a dollar).
As I have previously mentioned, those forecasts were prepared from data in December, prior to knowing how bad the recession was. This may come as a surprise to you, but economic models prepared from today's data will disagree with economic models prepared from data taken four months ago. This is not a sign of "incompetence", it's a sign of "the passage of time". You must have conniption fits every time the BLS updates their labor reports from 3 months ago because more data has come in and *GASP!* THEY CHANGE!
Facebook =/= Mainstream Media
The thing I find most amusing about this is that Conservatives are whining like little girls when they hear that a PRIVATE COMPANY is doing whatever they want to with their resources. Aren't Conservatives supposed to be for free markets and small government? Where has Congress been about investigating allegations of bias against Fox or all of the myriad right wing talk radio outlets?
The hypocrisy is both stunning, and business as usual...
As someone who is a big fan of history, may I remind you that it's not written in the present, as you have attempted to do? You kinda gotta wait 15-20 years...