Obama Failure Thread Part V

Shine on you crazy diamond. If you ever decide to come back to reality, let us know.

 

so the declines in Fed/State/Local government payrolls over the past few years have had no impact on the economy? The federal government could have stemmed the losses, but the GOP couldn't do it... welcome to a slow recovery...put people back top work, they spend that money and create jobs...more so then the fictitious GOP Creators

 

I'm far from an expert, but I've been envisioning the effect as mostly in liquidity-- figuring the five buckses weren't going to make very many purchases before they hit someone who made a larger credit card payment with them; and thus that they would mostly affect the banks, not merchants, and so wouldn't affect employment much until someone actually got a loan.

Since nobody did actually get a loan, clearly we needed more tax cuts...

 

RatDog,


Cutting back on future spending growth doesn't amount to austerity cuts. That'd be like me , after thinking of spending $1,000 on a new flat screen and having my wife say “NOT NO BUT HELL NO”, calling the decision a $1,000 family budget cut.

 

Sadly we are all living the reality of Obamanomics. My FB page is filled with liberal friends that can't understand why their payroll with holdings went up or why they can't find jobs in this booming economy

 

Really? My FB is also filled with liberal friends and not one of them has mentioned changes in their payroll withholdings.

 

Well you disagree with the economic consensus. Can a random citizen go into a nuclear power plant and tell the nuclear engineers to step aside because they're doing it wrong? Because that's what you're doing. Everything I've seen you say flies in the face of people that devote their lives to understanding the economy.

Yes, the unemployment rate is still high, but the professionals agree that it would be worse without the stimulus. I trust them, because frankly neither you or I have the time or the resources to prove them wrong.

 

Not because it didn't happen, but because they don't want to admit it?

 

Well you're not paying attention then, because the outrage and confusion even made the news.

 

I thought the Republicans were the ones determined to let the payroll tax holiday expire?

 

Or it's because I have intelligent friends who follow the news and understand economics.

 

You've got it bass ackwards. I believe in the wisdom of the masses. Not 5 year planners.

 

Yeah they're the brilliant that call this "the best looking contraction you'll ever see.".

 

Or even that they pay attention and don't get caught by surprise?

 

I'll be sure to come into your place of business tomorrow and tell you how to do your job.

 

Doesn't mean they have to like getting less in their paychecks, especially if they make less than the $400,000 limit.

 

I had exactly one, who also happens to be the benefits manager at my job so he was one of the few who knew it was coming. He was just bitching because he has less cash to blow on weed and dj equipment.

 

Your benefits manager didn't see it coming? Really? You need to work for another company.

 

This response make no sense.

 

You said you trust "the masses" over economists to decide what good economic policy is. How is that any different from me coming into your work and telling you how to do your job? It's not.

You want to leave complex public policy decisions up to "the masses"? 70 percent of this country is overweight or obese. How does that speak to "the masses" ability to make well informed decisions on a daily basis.

It should be the role of "the masses" and thus the government to decide what our goals are. Leave it up to experts (aka scientists, engineers, historians) to decide how we go about achieving our goals.

 

Except that's not what the wingnuts want to do. Their avowed political goal is to reduce public power to put more power into the hands of those who control private sector institutions and shrinking the size of all levels of government except for the military thanks to the chickenhawk wing of the party and government regulation and oversight of sexual matters due to the influence of the theocratic wing of the party). Economically that translates into not just reducing spending growth but also reducing spending in both the relative and absolute. Norquist has said he wants government so small he can "drown it in a bathtub". Not surprisingly, this hare-brained political goal has given rise to stupid economic ideas like Reaganista "starve the beast", "tax cuts always pay for themselves", pretty much everything Ron Paul says and other such nonsense.

I wish wingnuts would focus on the quality of public programs and being sure we're spending our tax money wisely rather obsessing over the size of "government". Instead of trying to throw monkey wrenches into potentially good programs or simply throwing their toys out of the pram and obstructing anything helpful, if they actually tried to make programs work correctly instead of trying to destroy them, they'd probably find we could reduce spending through efficiency rather than just elimination.

I don't see that happening, though, because:

a) the elites who run the private sector need "big government" to keep it afloat because our corporate executive class is no longer capable of creating sufficient top line economic growth

b) their useful idiot wingnut followers have been spoon fed so much anti-democratic (small 'd') propaganda against "the government" and has made such a huge psychological investment in that belief system that it is now impossible for them to change.

 

So you're against the top-down centralized planning used by every corporation I've ever seen. TPFish is an anarchist! Who knew?

But seriously, if you believe in the masses, then you believe in higher taxes for the wealthy because that's what the masses believe in:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/06/trio-of-polls-support-for-raising-taxes-on-wealthy/

 

Talk about some crazy stuff right out of la la land. You act as if these "economists" did not drive the ship full steam ahead into the fricking iceberg. Experts did that ....

As for obesity, Corporations and policy planners have no role in manufacturing and marketing food that is unhealthy? Government plays no role for approving bovine growth hormone or antibiotic packed food? Yup that is some great planning right there I can see why you would want to continue with that.

 

That is one damned big paintbrush there, Paulista's, the tea party, fiscally responsible democrats, socially conservative democrats, basically anybody who does not believe the government is the answer to all our problems. In for penny in for a pound right? I mean they are doing such a great job for the average man on the street why not let them have even more power?

 

Economists didn't drive the ship into the iceberg. That was years of bad public policy in addition to overzealous speculative trading on Wall Street. The Government completely deregulated the banking industry and in response, the banking industry built a tower out of sand.

A lack of proper regulation caused these issues. The government let the food industry essentially police itself. It didn't work out too well.