Presidential election, 2016

[Eric the Green]

(11-28-2016, 09:09 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-28-2016, 12:48 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-27-2016, 09:17 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: The discussion was about the debt, not the deficit.

However, it's to be noted that the highest deficit on your chart was in 2009, Obama's first year, due to his patronage, er, "stimulus" spending, and it went down mostly after the partial shutdown that the Tea Party folks forced.

Certainly, the Tea Party-demanded cuts and the sequestration cut the deficit, although Obama agreed to it and so had a hand in it. But if the stimulus was "patronage," it was that toward a lot of different folks to whom the Democratic Congress gave it, not just to people on welfare. And it did stimulate the economy. It worked.

I agree a lot of Obama's patronage definitely went to people not on welfare, in particular wealthy Obama donors such as the founders of Solyndra.

That Republican slogan is more nonsense. Most of the stimulus went to infrastructure projects and education. I believe the subsidies to solar energy worked out fine, and that they were separate from the stimulus. One of the best things government does is to stimulate industries that are in the national interest, but which need help getting started. The quote I made in my essay makes this point clear. Projects and industries in the interest of the people and the nation cannot get enough capital, because investors are interested in short term profit, and these are long-term interests. Railroads, highways, the space program are excellent examples. There is nothing more in the national interest today than new clean energy. There is nothing more destructive than to continue with fossil fuel energy as our source of power, as Trump and Republicans are dedicated to-- so misguided and greedy as they are.

If you are willing to see the other point of view, please read my essay:
http://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html

Quote:Far from stimulating the economy, that extra spending just delayed the recovery for far longer than would have happened had the recession been allowed to work itself out normally.  But I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree on that, since the left clings to bankrupt demand side Keynesian economics to justify increasing the size of government.

You have no data to support your claim, except made-up fake data from conservatives. We just cling to the truth. Your way does not work. Trickle-down doesn't trickle. Capitalists do not do the right thing on their own; the people need to steer the economy through their government. Capitalism has been shown to be a failure over and over again without state intervention. If the recession had been left to itself, things would have just gotten worse, as they did in the early thirties before FDR stepped in. How can you deny history is such a flagrant way?

Libertarian philosophy is nothing but a scam whose purpose is to enable capitalists to make more money at everyone and everything else's expense. The "size of government" is another false conservative slogan; the issue is what we want government to do. Democrats make government smaller and more efficient; Republicans just complain about it to get votes and then balloon the debt with military patronage and breaks for the wealthy.

Quote:

Quote:You referred to the deficit and said at the end of Obama's term it was twice what it was at the end of Bush's; no, it was about the same level.

I referred to the debt, not the deficit.  They are two different things.  The deficit has been reduced substantially through sequestration, as you referred to, but it has still been adding to the debt all along, such that the debt is twice as high now as it was when Obama took office.

You referred to the deficit earlier in this chain of posts, but the fact that the debt went up is entirely due to the recession that was imposed upon us by neo-liberal, pro-capitalist, pro "free-market," trickle-down, Reaganoid policies.

Trump's policies will explode the deficit and the debt much further, and could lead to another crash, particularly if Dodd-Frank is repealed or weakened (and it most surely will be the latter, at least). And the crash will further explode the debt and deficit in turn and require another stimulus.

I agree that we disagree, but I have long-since pledged to do my best to debunk trickle-down libertarian economics at every opportunity.