11-27-2016, 03:15 PM
(11-27-2016, 12:05 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(11-27-2016, 03:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(11-27-2016, 01:56 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(11-26-2016, 06:10 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Louise XIV and Bush 43 went past moderation to ruinous. Trump's campaign rhetoric suggested he was going to go past Bush 43. The way Trump is disregarding his campaign rhetoric, though, I don't know yet how far he is really willing to take the debt.
Trump doesn't have any choice about taking the debt past Bush since it has already been doubled by Obama.
I notice you left out that part, though. I guess you like demagogues as long as they're on your side.
Woah there! Trump is proposing unnecessary and wasteful spending and huge and useless tax cuts. In no way is this reckless policy something that is not a choice, and in no way does it relate to anything that happened under Obama.
What Obama spent, however, was directly related to the outcome of Bush 43's policies, namely the great recession and the stimulus which was the only thing that got us out of it, or could have gotten us out of it.
The stimulus spending that Obama actually did was as wasteful and counterproductive as anything Trump might be proposing. Obama managed to delay the recovery by his entire two terms, keeping our growth rate well below trend.
But whatever you think of Obama's spending, it clearly took us beyond the Bush deficit, and clearly was not Trump's doing. For Bob's statement to be correct, you'd have to believe that Trump could magically roll back all of Obama's deficit spending, returning the deficit to where it was at the end of the Bush administration, when it stood at half it's current level. That's clearly ridiculous.
The economic growth rate under Obama was higher than the stated rate under Dubya. The problem with the 'growth' under Dubya was that much of it was fecal investment in real estate that would quickly become worthless.
Friedrich Hayek convinces me on this: a financial bubble is itself the real disaster as potential investment is drawn away from activities that could do real good (plant and equipment that allows productivity and job creation) into housing that proves unmarketable. It's the bad investment, and not the realization that the investment is bad, that does the real harm. The panic is simply the realization of the reality.
But there is no quick catch-up. A few years of illusory growth simply disappear from the economic charts, and we start about where the bubble begins.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.