Obama!!!

You said "[the idea] that we can create jobs by increasing the tax burden on the employers providing those jobs" was daft etc. Just wondering what burdens had been put on employers by the recent admin activities.

No worries on abandoning arguments. Internet debates are of dubious worth, as we both know (altho we both seem to still be unable to resist, time to time )

I guess what puzzles me on your stance here is that not just the US but most Western governments seem to applying some form of 'demand-side' approach to the recession (to my amateur eye IE: dropped interest rates - 'nationalising' industries - 'public works' IE green energy projects). Can the New Deal really have been such a washout as you suggest if a lot of them are taking leafs out of its 'Keynesian' book? (Just for the record i find some of the actions being taken some what dubious, but have to assume all these countries aren't just lemmings following each other off a cliff. Not completely anyway )

I'm further perplexed by your stance on climate change policies/science etc, in that you seem to be mainly taking a 'gut call' position, when as you point out trillions are at stake, at least, etc. But that's something for another thread

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

What I meant is not that necessarily the New Deal's large expenditure's took us out of the Great Depression. It was the spending and government programs during WWII that actually releaved us.

Certainly that is a good point, but out of curiousity, do you have any evidence to back up your position? I actually don't really know.

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"Travis Bickle: Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man."

I just want to try out Murtha's new airport, I heard it is creating loads of jobs and local revenue.

I don't think much has happened yet; so far it's just been talk, obviously, as the majority of proposals have yet to come together, but there has been talk of a number of things that will indirectly hurt employers. Just off the top of my head: higher capital gains rates, either punishments for companies which engage in any kind of outsourcing, or else benefits for their competitors who don't (an indirect form of protectionism), and higher tax rates on the wealthy who, like it or not, run these businesses.

It may not seem to be a straight shot in some of these examples, but small businesses live and die on investment (angel investing or venture capital, depending on the size of the business), and small businesses employ a massive number of Americans, so some of them might as well be an assault on employers and employees alike. Such talk is alien to most, of course, as this Administration seems to view the two as adversaries, rather than partners.

Well, the fact that everyone's doing it is hardly an argument for its wisdom, and though I wouldn't use the word "lemmings," I imagine it's a lot easier to go along with what the more developed nations are doing, all other things being equal.

That said, I see your point, and my answer is a depressing one: I think that these kinds of mistakes are built into the very nature of economic crises. Obviously I take the stance that markets can, for the most part, self-correct and adapt, but when the sky seems to be falling the worst thing a politician can be seen to do is nothing. Fear and panic from the voters require that politicians act, which makes for a vicious cycle in those instances in which intervention makes things worse.

By the by, I wouldn't count lowering interest rates as being especially or exclusively Keynesian, but I've got plenty of argumentative threads dangling already.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction being made. I was relatively certain that you were claiming the New Deal pulled us out of the Great Depression; if not, what are you suggesting did, and why would this other type of government spending be different?

Which position do you mean? If you mean the position that government spending lengthened the Great Depression, I'd say the timeline makes that case fairly well. Trade tarrifs have a major hand in causing the crash, government expands to compensate, which makes it worse, FDR wins election and the government keeps expanding, and the Depression continues throughout the 1930s. Government spending reached unheard of levels, and the Depression continued. I think that makes a pretty good case that it was, at best, not helping, and at worst, contributing to the problem.

I'm saying it wasn't the programs and spending of the New Deal that actually pulled us out of the Depression. I'm saying it was the programs and spending necessary for America to fight WWII which caused the economic regrowth. Obviously they're similar but the WWII effort was on a much larger scale, and was helped in that their was a unified populace behind the effort. Does this not support the idea that mass spending can pull an economy out of an economic downturn?


I'm saying give me an example in which a government used your idea of what a government should do in a recession and succeeded. I'm not saying this to be hostile, but I actually don't know if this ever happened or not.

I am not sure if I am more concerned that Obama did not know or did know and was too stupid to realize the issues it would cause. Lets have some accountability here please. Nothing major, not saying anything other than him taking responsibility for a mistake. Again if he did not know then that's pretty bad too.

Even if he is the commander-in-chief I don't think anyone could expect him to know about everything the airforce is doing. In my opinion the officer who okayed the fly over should be sacked. This is so stupid that it almost makes me wonder if it's some kind of sick mass psychosis experiment by the airforce.




Hey, Dill-Man! I like your style, dude!

I too have a very hard time thinking of a government or a country that has sat back and passively watched the market solve a recession by its own - and succeeded. I think during a recession the worst thing a government can be is passive. And I find it very, very hard to believe that a company would use a tax cut during a recession to hire new staff - just to be kind and help a brother out. The extra money earned by the tax cut would only be used as damage control. The companies will not be expansive before the tide turns and the recession goes away - which it will do much quicker if the government actively takes measures to make people continue to consume, despite the bad times, which leads to a demand for more products from companies. And the wheels keep turning. But, of course, it's about stimulating the right things and branches. And I'm not sure that holding the car industry under its arms, for instance, is the right thing to do. When I think about it, I'm quite positive I think it's the wrong thing to do. Is he doing that?

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Oh please, it was his plane. You are saying there was no memo, no communication between anyone and him about it? Then that is his fault also.

Anyway: Biden sure is a good ol' chap for telling everyone to stay out of confined travel situations and then taking a train. Go Joe.

Yea, no memo was given to him about it.

"The director of the White House military office, Louis Caldera, took the blame for the incident in a statement Monday."

Apparently, the guy ordered and cleared it, but didn't tell anyone about it. It's obvious he's the guy that should be sacked. Instead, Obama's just ordered a review of the incident/into how it happened with no one knowing about it.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Of course he did.

It's obvious he's to blame here. Do you honestly think Obama would be so careless to let such an event happen? Just think of the damage done to his administration because of it. I can't comprehend how he would not see a connection between the two and stop it from happening.

I guess I should be more clear: he did not know about it first hand - I can agree with that - but why not? Oh yeah his teleprompter forgot to tell him. Take responsibilty for fukups, thats all I am saying. It is worse not knowing about something like this than otherwise. If he would say he was sorry and move on it would do wonders for my respect for him.

Did you even read any of the countless articles about it?

U.S. President Barack Obama said the flyover "was a mistake ... and it will not happen again."

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/626063

Sad

Funny, that's how I felt about his predecessor...

If Bush didn't own up about WMD's, Katrina, or the CIA leaks, what makes you think Obama has to own up to his jet coming down too low? I'm glad we have such high standards depending on who's at the helm.
I just have a strange feeling that had McCain been in that plane, your complaints might be a bit smothered.

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...uh the post is up there...

Obama wasn't in the plane either.

What I meant was, had he been aware of it. Sorry folks it's late.

WRONG...Bush screwed up, and he paid for it...Obama needs to do the same. Bush bashing only goes so far. You win. Bush sucked, he was worst prez ever in the history of presidents.

NOW: what?

Okay, you're right that was a bit off topic and incendiary, sorry.

It seems though, most Presidents don't take responsibility, I concede that there are going to be things Obama won't own up to, I just hope that they are not major mistakes. Because, if you don't acknowledge a mistake, you are likely to repeat it. Granted, if Obama started employing Bushian "confidence" in the form of denying factual reality, then I would begin to dislike him a great deal more.

BTW, you may be shocked to hear this from me, but I don't think the Bush Presidency was a failure, by political standards anyway. I certainly didn't agree with their agenda, but they were a well-oiled political machine.