So red country is beginning to clue in on where most of the cuts in the sequester are: in red country. This isn't because anybody is aiming them there, it's because red country gets an out-sized proportion of federal spending per capita. Little airports all over the country are losing their air traffic controllers. Federal grants to improve roads and infrastructure are being whacked. Civilian employees on every military base in the country are getting an effective 20% paycut with a day a week furlough plan. Next up, agriculture. I give this about 3 months before there is a hue and cry that makes 2010 look weak by comparison. Nothing like looking at a road full of spring potholes after the thaw and realizing that fixing them is no longer in the budget.
Hard to say if 65 million voted for him as witnessed by: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...nvestigated-for-potentially-voting-six-times/ http://theurbandaily.com/2086500/voter-fraud-investigation-woman-voted-six-times/
Lol I think you're missing the point. Supposing there was massive voter fraud, your math is way off on how many people in this country "never worked a day in their life". It is best to avoid these brainless generalities coming from both sides of the political spectrum.
When Republikans lie, which is frequently, it leads one to a logical conclusion not only that they base their own opinions on lies and untruths, but also that they have no real arguments to make. Now of course i concede there are arguments they could make that are not based on lies, however less than persuasive they might be. But lies never lead anywhere good, and it amazes me they see no downside to the way they look to the public in general. It is clear to me this problem is part of why they are losing elections and support. How could it not be?
Lol the thing is I think both sides are "right" in theory. I have a problem with the fact that it seems 95% of people who speak on political issues have no idea what they are talking about or are regurgitating shit they heard from their favorite political "analyst". I wish we could get to where uninformed people shut up and learned things before talking instead of the other way around. For example I know next to nothing about economics (gasp! is my internet life over???) so I rarely offer input on that.
TSA and control towers along with federal highways are supposed to be paid for by user taxes. Many small airport control towers should be shut down. There are way to many control towers at airports that have no commercial flights that should be closed down.
I do agree on this to some extent. We spend a lot of money to provide small communities with things that larger communities take for granted. That doesn't change the fact that some of the things the sequester removes are edging close to necessities even if they're not justified by the tax base of the local region. As an example, West Virginia provides $6.5 billion in tax revenue to the federal government every year. They receive $16.7 billion in federal spending. If you cut federal spending in West Virginia by a billion dollars a year while exempting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP and Unemployment Insurance from the cuts you create an enormous shortfall in other areas. Things like transportation and infrastructure get cut to the bone. Things like food and water safety get cut heavily. Support for rural electricity and water infrastructure get cut heavily. FEMA funds that would normally go to the state in the event of an emergency are not there. Airports are just the tip of the iceberg. Can Doppler radar substitute for having a pair of eyes in the tower when a storm is nearby and wind shear is suddenly a critical issue? I hope so. But that's just the tip of the iceberg because everything else is getting cut in ways that effect more than a handful of travellers in a small plane in a mountain airport.
Sounds like the President, Democrats and Republicans should have passed Simpson Bowles instead of both sides creating a sequester that was intended to be impossible for either side to live with.
Simpson and Bowles made a major part of the argument for their position that we would see climbing interest rates that would choke off a recovery if there was not a huge cut in spending, particularly on Social Security and Medicare. They in fact predicted this would certainly occur within two years. that two years have come and gone, and there has been virtually no inflation. If they can get something like that so wrong, i have no faith in the arguments they make. The European experience with austerity proves the Keynsian position that you cannot cut your way to prosperity in a recesssion. Yet Simpson and Bowles essentially are arguing we do the same thing that Trichet and the Germans rammed down the Europeans' throats, to ill effect. We are better off for having NOT implemented Simpson Bowles. Now, I do agree with the point that sequestration is awful because it does not do what the fans of austerity think should be accomplished. And Simpson Bowles argued for one dollar of tax increases for every two in spending cuts, while what we have done so far is only one dollar for every four in cuts. Simpson Bowles also assumed accelerating rates of health care expenditures, when that rate in fact has declined. I don't believe they predicted a decline in rates of interest payments on the national debt, either. But on the whole, Simpson Bowles is not the way to go forward. The way to go forward is to reverse sequestration, implement a public spending infrastructure development program, tighten up monetary policy when unemploymnet drops into the low 6 percent range, and sometime later this year or early next year close some of the loopholes that only benefit the rich, like carried interest. When the economy starts heating up, THEN we can look at imposing an across the board tax increase to take effect gradually, more work at cutting health care rates of increase, and take a look in about ten years or so at making some changes to Medicare and Social Security. Right now they are doing okay, and there is no need to change them now. I also think the GOP needs to be adamantly opposed on efforts to privatize Medicaid's organization. That will only INCREASE health care costs to the government. It will benefit some of their friends in the corporate interests, but it will hurt everyone else.
Yep. The problem was that it represented a major middle class tax hike and neither party was willing to go that route. They should have taken the proposal at face value and helped the country move forward but instead the left and the right conspired to muzzle the middle. That's a common theme these days. Unfortunately the middle can't produce the next administration because any attempt would likely just elect the right in a three-party race, similar to Bill Clinton's first election.
The Bush administration was one of the most accommodative administrations ever in terms of deficit spending and while it took us out of a short recession it did land us into a bit of a mess later on. Nobody would argue that spending money today is going to stimulate the economy today. The argument is if you spend today and can't tomorrow at some point there will be drag tomorrow. 2008 was tomorrow before it was yesterday. If you or Simpson or Bowles knew that the Federal Reserve was going to buy almost all the debt that the government would issue you would have made a killing by buying US bonds over the last few years. Just knowing the demographics would make you intuitively believe that there would be no shortage of US debt going out for at least a decade or more. Granted I was lucky and bought stocks instead so I can't complain about dumping my bonds a tad early. Still I would be very suspect of the notion of buying US debt today as a long term investment. Until someone can convince me that the supply isn't going to be virtually unlimited and at some point the Federal Reserve isn't going to be buying the majority of it causing a shortage, I can't see this as anything more than a manipulated market. This same fed manipulation is also a very good reason we don't need political action although the wage earning middle class is feeling real inflation even while asset holders benefit. Or if you will the rich get richer while everyone else goes to the supermarket and gas station and feels the pain. Other than that we agree. Sequester is a decidely bad idea as are tax increase today. In the long run tax reform that treats gains and income a little more equally and doesn't reward debt as much is probably a good idea.
I assume in the second paragraph you meant that no one would argue that if you raised government spending today it will stimulate the economy. Of course that is correct, and I also agree the problematic part comes in when the decision must be made to lower expenditures and raise taxes more, in order to get the deficit to a lower level. but right now, the problem is too much unemployment and lack of overall economic activity, not as the GOP would swear a too big deficit. In any event as Europe shows us, too much austerity leaves economies chasing their tails in a downward spiral. And infrastructure spending is in any event needed, to serve a useful purpose as well as lower unemployment. That leaves my major quibble with your post being the reference to W as "accommodative" of deficit spending. Economic history shows that slashing taxes on the rich has the least stimulative effect on the economy, and that was the primary economic policy pursued by his Admin. In other words the point of his policy was to redistibute income to the rich, not to stimulate the economy. The rest of your post I agree with.
Bush lowered taxes and spent like a mad dog. Now while it may not have been particularly efficient it was clearly accommodative and stimulating to the economy for a while. You seem to think that liberals are particularly good at efficient stimulus. Theory, political reality and self-interest of Congress aren't exactly the same thing. Bush tax cuts along with a huge middle class health benefit and a huge military build up worked very well after 9/11 stopped the economy. Obama tax cuts, extended unemployment benefits along with a relatively mild stimulus plan worked very well after the banks seized up. The question is what’s next. GDP right now isn't all that bad. Worker productivity gains is a game changer that needs to be considered. Don't forget improving the infrastructure is going to increase worker productivity in the future and it's worker productivity that is going to be the biggest drain on employement world wide over the next decade. Robotics are now replacing unskilled labor at very cheap costs enough to dislocate 3rd world labor.
Well, it is conceivable for certain stimulus programs that are the KIND of stimulus that liberals tend to favor, and are disfavored by economic royalists and corporate shills, to be poorly implemented. But I think it is fairly clear from all available evidence that tax cuts targetted to the wealthy have less effectiveness as a general matter, certainly in the short run. The reason concerns the concept of the velocity of money, in that the rich, being already rich, tend to hold onto and not spend in the short run any additional money they might receive. Those tax cuts tend to not make their way back into the economy as quickly as subsidies such as ones that hire people or support people living hand to mouth, as it were. The problem with W on this account (there of course were others) was that he continued deficit spending as the housing bubble developed. I know that is a rather cryptic description, but discussing W's fiscal policies certainly helps us understand how we got into this mess, but not so much how to get out of it.
It appears that austerity is next and we should be entering our main phase of it just as the Europeans give up on it in disgust.
Not even close to comparable. European countries cannot print money and expand their money supply. European countries have been highly restricted in their ability to expand their money supply because they had to sell their bonds on the open market. They simply couldn't finance anything but austerity. The US has a Federal reserve with a dual mandate of employment and controlling inflation. They don't have to buy on the secondary market. There is very little that constrains us from monitizing debt unlike Europe. The sequester is only impacting a very small portion of our budget and a miniscule portion of our GDP. The government will be expanding it's spending as demographics demand it. I don't like the sequester, it will cause some pain but the US isn't about to enter a phase of austerity anytime soon.
Comparisons to Europe if one means those countries tied to the Euro are made problematic by the factors you mention. But Britain is not tied to the Euro, has implemented austerity measures similar to the rest of the EU, and has seen their economy contract and debt actually go up, due to declining tax receipts. The Tories right now according to polls would be tossed out, if elections were held today, but they do not have to declare for two years (although it might come sooner, but I digress). The point is that Britain can print money and more closely control their currency in a way that Italy and Spain cannot, but that has not prevented them from seeing austerity harm their economy, and it goes without saying in a way that was not predicted by the government. But Krugman predicted it, and was right again.
The central bank of England doesn't have the dual mandate that the US Federal reserve does. They have been way behind the curve that Barnake and the US federal reserve in monitizing debt. Additionally the banks in England didn't have near the capital infusion the US banks did. There balance sheets aren't in the same shape. In other words the money that's printed isn't leaking out into the economy as quickly as it is here. We agree that in principle fiscal policy has been very bad overall in Europe but fiscal policy is more restained by central banks in Europe and England than it is in the US simply because of the dual mandate. Barnake has to a large extent done more good for the US and world economy than any policy by any democratic governments including the US. He rescued the banks before they collapsed. He pushed the government to refinance their balance sheets and he has monitized the debt to make borrowing costs well below market levels for the US government. In the long run this same dual mandate may create another horrible bubble but for right now we can all feel really good about our assetts going through the roof unless of course you dumped out at the bottom and haven't participated.
