Obama should give back his tax refundFollow

What you're suggesting is that even if we didn't buy weapons, we'd still have bought bullets for those weapons. Even with my limited understanding, I know that isn't how it works. You can't do "additional spending" on something you're not doing "spending" on to begin with, sweetheart.

Quit defending it. The wars were a bad idea for the economy, and additional spending continues to be a bad idea.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2011 9:00pm by lolgaxe

Gbaji, I could post more links to articles written by economists from various sources, but since they actually understand the math and formulas used in ways that non economists find too puzzling, you go shouting it's got to be wrong, because it doesn't fit the answers you got doing basic math. Since most posters won't want to pay money to read the NY Times, I'm trying to limit how often I link to the newspaper.

Jonwin will confirm, that I can spend hours reading from various newspapers and wonkish blogs, and have to sometimes be reminded to take care of bodily functions, like eating regular meals.

Trying drawings some graphs and see if you can prove your economic theory that way. I been looking at graphs for weeks now, while reading Paul Krugman's blog and he's been referencing a wide range of sources, that layperson's like us would find mystifying. Because Beck and O'Reilly think he and George Soro's are trying to lead us down the Path of Socialism, I do try to read as many sources, as I can and ask questions, when I don't understand something.

I'm finding all the years I had to watch Sunday talk shows with George Will and William F. Buckley Jr, did teach me a few concepts you seem to fail to understand. Actually we weren't made to watch the shows, as long as we didn't want to read the Sunday Comics and look at the latest fashions in the NY Times Magazine. Which of course lead to me reading the Magazine and then the Week in Review, which lead to also reading the Washington Post and being a big fan of the News Hour on PBS.

But you can have your unicorns and pink elephants, while the rest of try to face the fact that the government can only do so much to effect the economy and the problem we face were caused by Wall Street being allow to run wild, not any political party or tax rates being too high.

Fun trivia is that a few of my public elementary school class mates were neighbors of George Will and a girl in my class, father was head of the IRS at the time.

Glad to see CNNMoney pick up the story. I wasn't going to post either poll, since I'm tired of Varus and Gbaji crying how any poll done by an liberal Media Company doesn't count.

Heh... almost had it and then you lost it. Oh well.

Huh? I have no idea where you got this. What I meant is that we had already been fighting those wars for 6+ years, and were already committed to spending the money for those wars when Obama took office. Those costs were already on the books before they chose to spend yet more money. I thought I was very clear about this. Whether you agree with the wars or not is irrelevant. The fact is that we were already fighting them. The money was already being spent.


The choice to spend more money was made knowing we were already spending the money on those wars. That's the point. How the hell did you miss that?



I'll repeat: Huh? Obama does not have a time machine (that I know of anyway). So in 2009, he could not go back in time and undo the decisions to engage in those wars and get the money we spent on them (and had to continue to spend on them) back. It makes no sense to justify some other completely unrelated spending on the basis that if we did have a time machine and could go back in time, we could not commit to spending money on those wars, and thus would have enough money to spend on this new thing we want.


That's insane. You get that, right? Please tell me you get that. They are trying to offset the spending they made by pretending that we never spent other money we already spent and thus "should have had" more money that we did. But we did spend that money. And they knew this. And they choose to spend more money anyway.



But not all the additional spending the Dems did in 2009/2010 though? Only additional spending on the wars? I've already pointed out that during the three year period between 2007 and 2010, the total defense spending only increased by $140B. The total domestic spending increased by an additional $500B or so during the same time period. So not only is the argument weak, it also really doesn't account for everything. While the writer in Joph's article uses projections to predict future costs, when we look at actual costs we've incurred so far, the numbers just don't add up.


To go back to my home budget example: It would be like if the increased cost for the Boat was $500/month, your hours were cut at your job resulting in a loss of $400/month, you're having to borrow $1200/month on credit to pay your bills, and you're trying to argue that if only you didn't spend $140/month on some other bill, you wouldn't be in the debt problem you're in. Any sane person would conclude that the boat is the largest contributor to the debt, with the loss of revenue coming in second place. Add in the fact that your total salary used to be $2500/month, and is currently dropped to $2100/month, you might conclude that blaming the $140/month bill is purely arbitrary. You could just as easily blame any of the other $2000/month you were spending on other things prior to the whole boat and hours being cut thing if you wanted to.


It's pure cherry picking. And foolish cherry picking at that. Even if you eliminated that $140/month expense, you'd still be falling into debt fast. Yet for some bizarre reason, that's exactly what that article tries to argue. And don't get me started on the whole Bush tax cuts thing. Even if we eliminated the entire set of cuts (for everyone), we're still only talking about around $350B/year. That, combined with revenues coming back up would almost get us back in the ballpark. But the Dems aren't arguing for that. They want only the cuts that apply to those making over $250k/year cut. And that would only net us like $80/year or something (I don't have those numbers off hand, but it's really really tiny relatively speaking). And similarly, while some number crunchers love to play "what if" games with the economic figures, the Dems also aren't proposing magically eliminating the costs associated with the wars either.

So what are they suggesting? Just those tiny tax increases? Is anyone actually seriously thinking that's all they plan and/or need to do if cutting spending is off the table? The Democrats know that in order to cover this with tax increases, those increases would have to be absolutely massive. Not just a small increase on "the rich". And not just some capital gains changes, or eliminating some corporate tax loopholes. None of that will come even remotely close to closing the gap. Deduction eliminations for mortgages over $500k? Still not coming close. They're selling smoke and mirrors and counting on most people not really doing the math and realizing that it's not going to work. I can only assume they're doing this because they know that there is no viable plan that doesn't either involve massive taxes which the public will never support (and which violates their own promises) or massive spending cuts (which they don't want). Thus, they play word games, and try to poke holes in the GOP suggestions, all while knowing that they don't have any real alternative. They're just hoping that they can somehow spin the blame onto the GOP for the mess and not take too big a hit for it.


Which is precisely why we're hearing all these BS arguments about "if only Bush hadn't sent us to war", and "if only Bush hadn't cut taxes". It's an attempt to blame the other guy when you're the one caught with your hand in the cookie jar. It's childish and stupid, but that's all the Dems have at this point.

Er?

Debt as a percentage of GDP:

 
Year        Debt% 
1990        42.1 
1991        45.3 
1992        48.1 
1993        49.3 
1994        49.2 
1995        49.1 
1996        48.4 
1997        45.9 
1998        43.0 
1999        39.4 
2000        34.7 
2001        32.5 
2002        33.6 
2003        35.6 
2004        36.8 
2005        36.9 
2006        36.5 
2007        36.2 
2008        40.3 
2009        53.5 
2010        62.1 

Looks like debt went up through the first half of the 90s. GOP took control in 1995, and debt started going down hitting a low of 32.5% in Bush's first year. Bush cuts taxes, and increases military spending, which results in a deficit which gradually pushes the debt percentage up over time from that 32.5% level to a high in 2005 of 36.9% (all still well below the high point when the Dems last controlled congress and the White House in 1994). Just as predicted, economic growth and increased revenue (even with a lower tax rate) resulted in the deficit shrinking in relation to GDP at that point, and the debt% began to decrease, resulting in lower debt rates in 2006 and 2007.


The point is that if we ignore the effects of the mortgage collapse and look only at the effects of the Bush tax cuts and his spending (on wars, Medicare plan D, etc), we see an economy which is moving in the right direction over the whole time period. Again, the numbers don't lie. The Debt stabilized and was going down prior to 2008 when the collapse happened. So unless you're arguing that the collapse occurred because of the Bush tax cuts, or the spending on Wars, or the Medicare changes, then you can't blame the later increase in debt on those things.


How you manage to ignore facts right in front of you is just amazing. Look at the debt numbers. They were going down. Thus, those economic actions by Bush did not result in a "massive and unsustainable debt". I was absolutely correct to say what I said. Now if you want to argue about the causes of the subprime mortgage collapse and subsequent financial fallout, that's a whole different story. But those have nothing to do with the tax rate changes, or the wars in the ME, or Medicare changes. Yet, that's what everyone seems to want to blame.

Strange, isn't it? It's like you want to look everywhere except at the facts. I wonder why that might be?

I am not talking about projection but actual data points covering the periods prior to both the current recession and previous market downturns. I been reading both conservative and liberal sites over the pass several weeks as the Budget battle heated up and while conclusions differ wildly, the overall trend shows, that our current problems started long before Obama enter national politics.

But still you try to cry that if the Democrats didn't spend so much the last 2 years everything would be just fine. IF that doesn't work you change to the cry that Democrats just want to raise taxes, so that they can raise spending on pet projects.

Funny how the most left wing bloggers all claim that if we actually passed all the programs you cry as socialism, we would not have to spend so much for health care and our military can still be most powerful in the world, without all the waste we currently spend on congress person's pet projects.

"We already maxxed out the credit cards with horribly irresponsible management but it's YOUR fault for needing to buy groceries after you lost your job and had to incur more debt! OUR terrible purchases were already made so we're blameless!"

Edited, Apr 22nd 2011 10:21pm by Jophiel

Wrong, there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999 and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000.

If the deficit last year was about $600B instead of $1.2T, you'd have a point. That's about what it should have been if we only had the lost revenue (excluding tax credits), plus existing deficit level, plus normal programmatic cost increases adding to that deficit. What happened is that you didn't have the cards maxed out, but had enough on them that the interest on them was just barely manageable so as to keep your total debt stable, then you lost some revenue, which required you to borrow more money, so you decided "what the hell!" and went on a spending spree for things you didn't need.


It was incredibly irresponsible for the Dems to do. So yeah, I'm going to place blame where it fairly belongs.

Admitting that the Democrats went on a spending spree and significantly increased the amount of deficit (and thus real debt) we incurred? Or, maybe I'm supposed to "admit" that the reason that the spending the Dems did incurred a deficit because the GDP was already running the economy right on the edge of debt increase?

I'll go back to my earlier point: The Dems knew that before they chose to spend more money. That is just like my boat analogy. If you know you're already spending as much money as you can without going further in debt, and you then choose to spend more money, it's the choice to spend more money at that time which is to blame for the additional debt. You can't just cherry pick some other things you were already spending money on and blame that instead.

But that's exactly what the site you sourced attempts Joph. They basically argue that if Bush hadn't cut taxes back in 2001, and if Bush hadn't sent us into wars in the ME in 2002/2003, then we'd have had more money and could have afforded all the stuff that the Dems spent money on in 2009/2010. Sorry if I find that to be an incredibly weak argument. As I've said several times, the Dems spent that money in an economy in which those other things already existed and were known quantities.

You're making a pretty pathetically weak argument Joph.