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Never.More posted:Dont understand the point your trying to make ... maybe I am just tired as hell. Can you restate the question with some context? You say debt is bad. Demonstrate a correlation between periods of high debt and high unemployment (or low GDP, or any other indication of economic health you can think of.) Nice Davis's link to FRED is a great resource. I look forward to seeing some graphs from you.
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Jun 3, 2013 02:58
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Never.More posted:Deflating the currency would gravely damage that. Not to go back to the 'you don't understand the basics of what you're talking about' well one too many times, but what you're describing is inflation, the exact opposite of deflation. And if US sovereign debt is dangerously and unsustainably high, why the hell is everyone still so willing to buy it? And even if we take it as a given that the debt is our number one pressing problem, why must it be made up of spending cuts on services for our poorest and not through tax increases on the wealthiest Americans?
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Jun 3, 2013 03:03
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Hey guys, can we stop replying to the idiot shitposter who refuses to acknowledge a single one of the many, many points that have been brought up that completely refute his arguments and just cherry picks a handful of things to reply to with half relevant Wikipedia articles and get back to posting about right wing media?
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Jun 3, 2013 03:03
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Never.More since you literally seem to believe the national debt = household debt thing, out of curiosity how is it going to work when the US never pays it off and the debt collectors finally come? Does China get ownership of California?Skeeter Green posted:Hey guys, can we stop replying to the idiot shitposter who refuses to acknowledge a single one of the many, many points that have been brought up that completely refute his arguments and just cherry picks a handful of things to reply to with half relevant Wikipedia articles and get back to posting about right wing media? Sounds like someone is disrespecting another's viewpoint. For a liberal, that's pretty intolerant of you 
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Jun 3, 2013 03:06
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Not to put too fine a point on this, but who has savings or retirement plans these days? Who do you know who has hundreds of dollars in the bank? Because I'm looking at all of these unemployed people and suddenly-homeless people and thinking they have bigger problems. According to the government, un-employment is down. Around the 7.5% mark. (http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000) As far as the FDR solution, I dont think anyone can question that he pulled America through one of the toughest times we have ever faced. He deserves a great deal of respect for that. However, like everything, his solutions did have a price. It was the start of us putting in social welfare programs that do cost in terms of what we spend and we take in via taxes. So what do we tell the people actually saved their money and lived very fiscal conservative lives? Sorry guys, you saved all your life and these other people did not (either from bad decisions or from very unfortunate circumstances); so you who saved are now screwed in regards to that savings. I would contend there are quite a few people in America who did just that and would rightly be very outraged at the thought of losing all that hard work. Still, it is a very valid point that we dont want to leave people without any safety net at all. So how do we balance the two? That is where the debates get very ugly on the Hill and why I think we need to listen to each side of the argument. Its easy to bring out the tear jerker story for each perspective or throw out extreme rhetoric. But that does not get us any closer to the issue. It hardens the lines, it does not produce a compromise. That is also why I believe we need to start tackling the debt now, before we get anywhere near a situation like Greece.
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Jun 3, 2013 03:09
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Never.More posted:According to the government, un-employment is down. Around the 7.5% mark. (http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000) Demonstrate that a high debt-to-GDP ratio has been historically bad for the economy. You were given the link, now show the data. This isn't a loving philosophical debate, you need to back up this "debt is bad" horse poo poo with some actual numbers.
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Jun 3, 2013 03:12
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baw posted:You say debt is bad. Demonstrate a correlation between periods of high debt and high unemployment (or low GDP, or any other indication of economic health you can think of.) Nice Davis's link to FRED is a great resource. I look forward to seeing some graphs from you. Sure: Most extreme example is again Greece. Debt to GDP Ration: http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZeFOeGpyOdfsNyozfAj62qiZiOw6P_nY1PtP3P6jawIqerE0Z Debt to Unemployment: http://blog.dexia-am.com/fixed-income/Documents/greek_economic_figures.jpg (Although to be fair part of that in 2011 is them hitting a recession.) This is what we are trying to avoid.
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Jun 3, 2013 03:13
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Never.More posted:Sure: Most extreme example is again Greece. That is a bad comparison. Greece does not have its own central bank, or a monopoly on the world's reserve currency. The US does. Maybe you can find some actual relevant information? Maybe about the US? baw fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 03:15
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Never.More posted:Sure: Most extreme example is again Greece. It is true that in the single data point of "Greece in the past few years", high debt levels correlated with high unemployment. What does a study with a much larger sample size show? That there's no evidence that high debt levels cause slow growth.
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Jun 3, 2013 03:20
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I am loving sick of the "truth is in the middle" poo poo that seems to permeate journalism (and peoples' opinions) nowadays. I read an article in some outdoors magazine about minimalist running shoes vs. traditional running shoes and the article ended with some South Park "well both sides have a good point..." bull poo poo. Has it always been this lovely or is this something I'm just beginning to notice?
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Jun 3, 2013 03:23
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Wolfsheim posted:Never.More since you literally seem to believe the national debt = household debt thing, out of curiosity how is it going to work when the US never pays it off and the debt collectors finally come? Does China get ownership of California? First, happy to respond to everyone ... but there is a lot of you and one of me. So if your not getting a response feel free to pm or repost. No I am not trying to say that National Debt = Household Debt. The idea with linking that number was to put in terms everyone can understand. When you start talking trillions of dollars it simple becomes a number for most people. However when you break it down to the point that "if we were going to pay this off everyone would owe this much" makes it easier for people to grasp. As far as what happens if the US ever truly defaulted on it's debt. That is a very interesting question. My theories are as follows but feel free to voice your own. - A lot of the world economy is affected by the USD. People put faith in it and buy T-bonds etc. If the US truly defaulted a lot of that goes away and it could some fairly massive economic ripples. - If we defaulted people would most likely stop buying our bonds without a very large interest rate associated with them. As such we could not spend more than we take in from taxes without literally printing money. Which would further drive down the value of the dollar. - Buying foreign products becomes much more expensive as the strength of the dollar is hit. - As far the military angle or hostile take over of territory depending whom the creditors are (ie your China example), I really doubt that would happen. But it would affect international relations and other countries willingness to deal with us.
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Jun 3, 2013 03:25
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Never.More posted:compromise You use this word. You call yourself a conservative, presumably you support predominantly Republican politicians. Yet the debt brinksmanship was over the fact that the GOP contingent in congress would not accept any compromise including deals that were 90% their way in terms of budget cuts vs. increased revenue. Do you consider this to be a problem?
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Jun 3, 2013 03:26
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Never.More posted:No I am not trying to say that National Debt = Household Debt. The idea with linking that number was to put in terms everyone can understand. When you start talking trillions of dollars it simple becomes a number for most people. However when you break it down to the point that "if we were going to pay this off everyone would owe this much" makes it easier for people to grasp. I understand breaking the big number down to make it seem more "real" as a rhetorical tactic, but I also find it to be an incredibly disingenuous framing given that it excludes corporations and local and state governments from shouldering any of the burden.
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Jun 3, 2013 03:30
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baw posted:That is a bad comparison. Greece does not have its own central bank, or a monopoly on the world's reserve currency. The US does. I think your missing the point I am trying to make. I am not saying that if we dont kill the debt right now it is going to screw us over in the next year or so. I am saying that if we dont tackle the debt sooner rather than latter, it will hit us hard in the future. To follow on that concept, taking care of the debt now is much easier than taking care of the debt five years from now or ten years from now and so on. That is the reason that Greece is relevant for this discussion. They didnt deal with their debt and it ran away on them. Thankfully their economy was small enough and the EU cared enough to bail them out. Below is the link of the GDP to Debt Ratio. We are at 104.8% as of 31 March 2013. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-26/total-us-debt-gdp-105 Are we on the edge of utter collapse? No. Is our economy growing still? Yes. However, that is not what I am trying to show. I am trying to show that if you do not curb the spending and start working on the debt, then at some point you will hit the wall. Here is where it gets interesting. Some economists say you wont. Others say you will. Shockingly they dont like each other and call each other mean names in articles (in a professional manner, sometimes). Here is one article that talks about both sides actually (a little). http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/predicting-a-crisis-repeatedly/ To try to use an analogue, most people can agree that there is a cliff somewhere up ahead. Problem is we are blindfolded and dont know exactly where the cliff edge is. The point I was trying to get across is lets not get any close to the edge of the cliff than we have to. Never.More fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 03:47
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Also if you want to analyze the holdings of the government as though it were a household, it is incredibly disingenuous to only look at liabilities and not assets. Some of those would include: real property(military sites, national parks, federal buildings), government bonds, etc.
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Jun 3, 2013 03:48
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E: Never mind
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Jun 3, 2013 03:50
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Never.More posted:I think your missing the point I am trying to make. I am not saying that if we dont kill the debt right it is going to screw us over in the next year or so. I am saying that if we dont tackle the debt sooner rather than latter, it will hit us hard in the future. To follow on that concept, taking care of the debt now is much easier than taking care of the debt five years from now or ten years from now and so on. That is the reason that Greece is relevant for this discussion. They didnt deal with their debt and it ran away on them. Thankfully their economy was small enough and the EU cared enough to bail them out. Below is the link of the GDP to Debt Ratio. We are at 104.8% as of 31 March 2013. So we should make economically destructive policy (cutting government spending is a de facto cut in GDP!) to avoid a cliff that doesn't exist (they've been predicting this bullshit for years now, and they have been completely wrong.)? The models that have held up over the past five years have been the ones that say the debt isn't something we should worry about right now because cutting it could actually be destructive. Again, this isn't a philosophical debate. The data is very clear.
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Jun 3, 2013 03:53
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Zwabu posted:You use this word. You call yourself a conservative, presumably you support predominantly Republican politicians. Yet the debt brinksmanship was over the fact that the GOP contingent in congress would not accept any compromise including deals that were 90% their way in terms of budget cuts vs. increased revenue. Do you consider this to be a problem? I do indeed. Thats the problem that we have right now with all our elected officials. No one wants to take the hit and accept that no one is going to be happy when we tackle this issue. People are going to be upset on both sides. Quite frankly, I believe both sides are relatively honest in that they really do deep down want whats best for America. Problem is that is two very different views. When you throw in people who run for re-election, things get ugly. There was actually a compromise that was worked out between a bi-partisan group, but neither big side (actual parties, not the two working out the compromise) wants to give in on its beliefs. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-19/simpson-bowles-prod-congress-again-to-anti-deficit-fervor.html So we end up in the grid lock situation we are in now with nothing really being done. That is honestly one of the major driving factors in me posting in here (and continuing to post). I realized this was a very un-Republic friendly thread when I posted. But our country is facing these issues and not accepting that the other side really truly believes what they are saying is screwing us over. Or to put it another way, due to the way our political system works we are pretty much going to HAVE to reach a compromise of some sort. The longer we put it off the worse it will get.
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Jun 3, 2013 03:56
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If the debt is such a dangerous thing, why is cutting spending the only solution you ever mention and only solution the Republican party is willing to entertain? If our national debt is leading us to some "cliff", why can't we raise taxes to a level where they were when our debt situation wasn't so dire?
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Jun 3, 2013 03:59
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Maybe while you're looking up historical debt rates in the US, you can also look into historical tax rates and see if there is any relationship between high tax rates and economic health.
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Jun 3, 2013 04:03
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Never.More posted:The idea with linking that number was to put in terms everyone can understand. The only person here who seems to need these concepts dumbed down to the point of being entirely wrong/useless is you. Please stop doing it, or else people will continue to conclude that you're an idiot. Have you ever considered that your simplistic, intuitive view of economics is leading you to the wrong conclusions, and instead of dumbing things down, you should open up a god drat book? Never.More posted:But our country is facing these issues and not accepting that the other side really truly believes what they are saying is screwing us over. What a bunch of horse poo poo. How naive are you? ohgodwhat fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 04:05
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Never.More posted:I do indeed. Thats the problem that we have right now with all our elected officials. No one wants to take the hit and accept that no one is going to be happy when we tackle this issue. People are going to be upset on both sides. Quite frankly, I believe both sides are relatively honest in that they really do deep down want whats best for America. Problem is that is two very different views. When you throw in people who run for re-election, things get ugly. There was actually a compromise that was worked out between a bi-partisan group, but neither big side (actual parties, not the two working out the compromise) wants to give in on its beliefs. You use this "both sides" language a lot. The Democratic side was willing to give away the majority of the store in budget cuts but the GOP side would accept nothing but 100% in the debt brinksmanship. It's easy to say "both sides" over and over as you are doing but are you really meaning to say the lack of compromise is equally the responsibility of both parties?
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Jun 3, 2013 04:10
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baw posted:Maybe while you're looking up historical debt rates in the US, you can also look into historical tax rates and see if there is any relationship between high tax rates and economic health. Never.More, to save you the trouble of finding this yourself, here is an article from last year showing that there is no correlation between high marginal tax rates and real GDP growth.
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Jun 3, 2013 04:17
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Never.More posted:
Yeah, I think this is where we disagree. And I want to be clear here: I have voted for Republican candidates in the (admittedly now fairly distant) past. I still consider myself at least philosophically "conservative," in the most basic sense of fearing change. But the modern Republican party is not sane and is not arguing in good faith. To take the simplest, starkest example, Paul Ryan's budget would have -- and this is not hyperbole, but reasonably well-substantiated economic fact -- killed hundreds of thousands of people from the Medicaid cuts alone (for a lot of different reasons I can explain in detail if you want me to). At a broader, scientific level, Paul Ryan's economic arguments are all based on studies that have been profoundly discredited, i.e., Reinhart and Rogoff really should have proofread their spreadsheets. I mean, that's the thing. I approached this whole economic debate between the Democrats and the Republicans with an open mind -- way back in 2008 when this whole economic mess started. And I noted down what each side said would happen. And all the Republican predictors have just been proven consistently wrong, and then I look over at Paul Krugman and he's basically been proven entirely right time and again. That's the thing. There is no two sides truth in the middle debate here. It's a case of some people being utterly wrong and some people being provably correct about what we need to do to fix the economy. And the Republicans are just wrong. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 04:20
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Never.More posted:There was actually a compromise that was worked out between a bi-partisan group, but neither big side (actual parties, not the two working out the compromise) wants to give in on its beliefs. Bullshit. The Dems have been rolling over on most of this stuff. They are pretty much socially liberal Republicans at this point. They sure are hell aren't Left by any meaningful definition. "Obamacare" is basically "Romneycare", which is really just a rehash of the Republican healthcare rebuttal to "Hillarycare" from the 90's The Republicans are bankrupt in terms of policy right now, and they have resorted to obstructionism. They are making mountains out of molehills to justify their obstructionism. Trying to create a debt crisis where none exists. Even with the rating downgrade and the vanishingly small interest rate, people still buy every bit of debt the government sells. Same as they are trying to sidetrack everything now with scandals. Never mind that US embassies were attacked over a dozen times during the Bush administration, we have to stop everything to investigate Benghazi. Political groups named after a tax protest get extra scrutiny when filing as social welfare groups, and the legislature has to stop everything to investigate. There is no 2 sides to this. One side bends over to the point that is clearly has no spine, while the other side tries to drag everything into the gutter.
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Jun 3, 2013 04:53
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Skeeter Green posted:Hey guys, can we stop replying to the idiot shitposter who refuses to acknowledge a single one of the many, many points that have been brought up that completely refute his arguments and just cherry picks a handful of things to reply to with half relevant Wikipedia articles and get back to posting about right wing media? baw posted:I am loving sick of the "truth is in the middle" poo poo that seems to permeate journalism (and peoples' opinions) nowadays. I read an article in some outdoors magazine about minimalist running shoes vs. traditional running shoes and the article ended with some South Park "well both sides have a good point..." bull poo poo. Has it always been this lovely or is this something I'm just beginning to notice?
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Jun 3, 2013 05:10
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Never.More posted:First, happy to respond to everyone ... but there is a lot of you and one of me. So if your not getting a response feel free to pm or repost. Not to sound to self aggrandizing but I think a problem is that when it comes to this issue, probably D&D as a whole, is not "most people." Posters here are disagreeing with you specifically because they have looked into the issue more than most people and using big numbers isn't going to break our understanding of the issue. The debt/deficit/US economy is a complex enough issue that dumbing it down is going to invariably lead to erroneous conclusions.
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Jun 3, 2013 05:21
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Never.More posted:Oh not at all. I completely agree that the the last couple of Republican Presidents have done very badly with the national debt. Although to be fair to Reagan, he basically spent the Soviet Union out of reality with his military build up. To be fair to Clinton, he slashed the military spending but did enjoy the massive influx of the .com boom. The reason I associate with the Republican party in this area is that they at least agree to make the national debt a major talking point and claim they are going to do something about it. Here is hoping that they actually do something about it. Elected leaders promising one thing and then delivering another is a whole separate can of worms though, I am afraid. Citation needed for the first bolded line, actually allow me to teach you what really happened with the fall of the Soviet Union that Reagan (and Thatcher) have historically gotten most of the credit for the work done primarily by the Polish Trade Union, Gorbachev, and JPII. See, the Polish Trade Union that started in the 1980's was illegal under the Warsaw government because it pushed hard for a democratic but socialist government that was in favor of workers rights and social change. It sought this form of government through non-violent protests and civil resistance for almost 10 years against a lot of government oppression including years of martial law with the only outside help coming from JPII since he was Polish and the USSR didn't have the balls to keep him out of both his home country and one of the largest catholic states in the union. Now in 1985 Gorbachev, after becoming General Secretary after Chernenko died in 1985, wanted to fix much of the economic problems that the USSR was having that started mostly under the later years of Brezhnev in the mid 70's. The reforms that Gorbachev tried to enact alienated him from much of the old USSR power structure either because he replaced them or replaced other ranking officials friends, so when in 1989 the Polish Trade Union finally gained democratic reforms Gorbachev had very limited resources on which to bring that state back into the fold of the USSR. His failure to do anything about the Polish democratic concessions to the trade union started a chain reaction to where the rest of Eastern Europe under the USSR saw cracks in the union and demanded that there states also get democratic elections. Within about a year you then had most of the soviet block states holding free elections about their own government, with in 1990 leads to the dissolution of the USSR and the beginning of the very short lived RFSR (Gorbachev was president of this much looser union of states) in which finally during a coup in 1991 the whole USSR/RFSR collapsed. Contrary to US/Western history books, Reagan and Thatcher literally had nothing to do with the collapse of the USSR as it was 99.9% the result of Gorbachev, the Polish Trade Union and the support that it got from JPII. Now for the second bolded section, Can you please explain why the republican party has historically not given a flying gently caress about the national debt issue between the years of 1981-1992, and 2001-2008?
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Jun 3, 2013 05:30
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ohgodwhat posted:The only person here who seems to need these concepts dumbed down to the point of being entirely wrong/useless is you. Please stop doing it, or else people will continue to conclude that you're an idiot. Name calling is not constructive. Tell you what, how about you jump into a thread that is dominated by right leaning people and see how many people agree with you? The point of this was to point out that there are opposing views to the ones held. That a refusal to even listen to opposing view points is counter productive. As for "dumbing it down"; I listed the national debt, I listed the percentage of the national debt as related to GDP, and finally I listed the number that each of owes if we were to each pay an equal percentage. The last number is important because it gives people something they can relate to. That is hardly a worthless number is often utilized to describe a countries debt situation. As far as a wrong view, you do realize that economists cant even agree on this subject right? People who are paid lots of money and spend all their time studying it. Like I said, google it. You will find directly contradictory claims. So you have a couple of choices at that point. You either pick the economist who agrees with your point, say he is right and the others are wrong. Throw your hands up and say I dont know. Or take a step back and try to apply some basic reasoning to a situation to figure out what you believe. I decided on the third option. On to the other posts. Beowulf: The bill I was talking about was put forward. Neither side agreed to support it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Fiscal_Responsibility_and_Reform The first time around the Republican's killed it. The second time around the Republicans and the Democrats killed it. As to right and wrong of this issue. We have empirical data that countries can indeed go into the economic hell if their debt rises to high. America is, thankfully, in a special place in regards to that given how powerful our economy is and the strength of the USD. The responses I seem to be receiving are "that wont change, we will be fine". That is the point I am disagreeing on. Just because we are in a more secure position, do you really believe that no matter what we do we will never be in trouble? Our congressional leaders for certain dont agree with that mentality. That is why they are fighting over how to fix the issue. The idea here is not to see how close we can come to the cliff without diving over, the idea is to stay the hell away from the cliff face. The country is divided roughly evenly between conservatives and liberals or right and left based on our elected officials in office. So in order to stay away from the cliff we have to figure out some way to work together. As to the way those two sides are working together right now. I also quite agree that the Republicans are being bigger dicks than the Democrats in terms of fiscal policy. Part of that is the President being a Democrat and the Republicans wanting this to splash on the Democratic Party (the Democrats didnt make Bushes life a political rose either). Part of that is the Republicans honestly believing in certain principles that they were quite frankly elected to uphold, especially the Tea Party ones. Like I said, no one wants to really bite the bullet and admit how much its going to suck to fix the debt. Now, since it was brought up ... on to the fix the issue side of the argument. I quite agree that raising taxes would increase more revenue. Although frankly I think thats a bad approach. Our current tax structure has so many loop holes and conditions in it that raising the rates themselves doesnt really do anything. It may generate more revenue in the short term, but then people will bitch and sooner or latter the rate will go down. What we really need is to simplify the tax code and remove the loop holes. Once we have an accurate understanding of what a certain tax rate actually produces in terms of revenue, we can have an intelligent debate about what said rate should be. Although I disagree that some of the current issues in the media are irrelevant and should be ignored. The wire tapping one and the Tea Party one needs investigation. Do I think that the President or his inner circle actually ordered either? No (God I hope not anyway). Do I think someone along the line got it into their head to flex their muscle, yes. Frankly, that needs to be stomped on hard. Watergate had long term implications for this country and rightfully so. We dont need to start up that stuff up again. Never.More fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 05:37
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Never.More posted:As to right and wrong of this issue. We have empirical data that countries can indeed go into the economic hell if their debt rises to high. That's the thing I was trying to explain above. This isn't really all that true, or to the extent that it's true it's not remotely relevant to the levels of debt America is facing. The data saying otherwise was recently discredited; Paul Ryan et. al. were mostly arguing based on a paper by economists Reinhardt and Rogoff, and it turns out they had a bunch of spreadsheet errors and the dangers of high debt loads aren't nearly as extreme as they posited. There's still some danger from very very high debt sure but it's nothing remotely like what America's facing. It really is a mythical problem. Never.More posted:As far as a wrong view, you do realize that economists cant even agree on this subject right? People who are paid lots of money and spend all their time studying it. Like I said, google it. You will find directly contradictory claims. So you have a couple of choices at that point. You either pick the economist who agrees with your point, say he is right and the others are wrong. Throw your hands up and say I dont know. Or take a step back and try to apply some basic reasoning to a situation to figure out what you believe. I decided on the third option. On to the other posts.. What I did was experiment. In 2008 a bunch of different economists made predictions about what various policy choices would or wouldn't do for the economy. It turns out all the right-wingers who predicted austerity and cutting debt would fix everything were flat out wrong, and, well, Paul Krugman was right: What he predicted: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithmetic-wonkish-but-important/ WHat happened: http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/96263/paul-krugman-stimulus-unemployment-2009 So on, so forth. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 05:42
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Never.More posted:I listed the national debt, I listed the percentage of the national debt as related to GDP, and finally I listed the number that each of owes if we were to each pay an equal percentage. The last number is important because it gives people something they can relate to. That is hardly a worthless number is often utilized to describe a countries debt situation. It IS a useless number. A worthless number that is often utilized by scaremongers to trick people(you) into voting against their(your) best interests.
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Jun 3, 2013 05:44
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If you're anything like me, you probably spent the waning hours of your Sunday evening asking yourself, "What has brilliant political prognosticator Dick Morris been up to since Dick graciously shares his expert knowledge with videos such as "Backdoor Gun Control: Ammo Purchases", "Obama surrenders to terrorists!", and of course, "Stop losing elections"  The comments are mostly meh, but one patriot cuts to the heart of the issue: SUCKMEISTER005 posted:What is that, real crown molding in the background? It sure is, Suckmeister005. It sure is. God bless you, Dick Morris!  FAKE EDIT: After typing all that up, I went back to the channel page and saw he's been doing this for two years  Also you can learn how to draw a dog 
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Jun 3, 2013 05:45
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A Winner is Jew posted:Citation needed for the first bolded line, actually allow me to teach you what really happened with the fall of the Soviet Union that Reagan (and Thatcher) have historically gotten most of the credit for the work done primarily by the Polish Trade Union, Gorbachev, and JPII. On the Polish Trade Union front, that is a view most people do not agree on. There were a lot of factors involved certainly. However claiming that Reagan's military build up had nothing to do with the issue is a bold one. If you really believe that I would say you should publish a book or article on it. Most historians dont agree with you right now. http://www.history.com/topics/fall-of-soviet-union As for the second part, I agreed that the Republican Presidents havent done the best with the debt over the last couple of Presidents. However, fiscal conservatism is a historical land mark of the Republican party. One that I support. Now its just getting the politicians to do what they were elected on. Which produces its own interesting realities when they actually do, see our current budget situation for ample proof of that.
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Jun 3, 2013 05:45
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Never.More posted:Name calling is not constructive. Tell you what, how about you jump into a thread that is dominated by right leaning people and see how many people agree with you? The point of this was to point out that there are opposing views to the ones held. That a refusal to even listen to opposing view points is counter productive. As for "dumbing it down"; I listed the national debt, I listed the percentage of the national debt as related to GDP, and finally I listed the number that each of owes if we were to each pay an equal percentage. The last number is important because it gives people something they can relate to. That is hardly a worthless number is often utilized to describe a countries debt situation. The whole point we are trying to get across is that the conservative pro-austerity side is largely basing their argument on data that was shown to be shoddily put together, included untenable biases towards some data points and not others, and basically fell apart literally the first time a 3rd party looked at the original spreadsheet. They continue to cite this argument even after it was debunked (or at the very least continue the same arguments they have made using the Reinhart and Rogoff study as a basis on). Yes everyone is entitled to their own opinion/argument. However, not every opinion/argument is created equal and your opinion can be factually wrong.
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Jun 3, 2013 05:47
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You probably shouldn't link to the History Channel website if you want us to take your claims seriously.
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Jun 3, 2013 05:47
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Nice Davis posted:If you're anything like me, you probably spent the waning hours of your Sunday evening asking yourself, "What has brilliant political prognosticator Dick Morris been up to since If there's anything I've learned from seeing PewDiePie, it's that Dick can probably make millions off of asinine vlogging 
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Jun 3, 2013 05:47
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Never.More posted:Name calling is not constructive. Tell you what, how about you jump into a thread that is dominated by right leaning people and see how many people agree with you? I have attempted this many times on a variety of conservative forums and usually they just ban me as soon as they discover I am left leaning, look in the TPC thread in GBS if you don't believe me. Now to be honest I do like it when conservatives show up as D&D does sometimes seems like an echo chamber and it's nice to get some dissenting opinions. You are not the only conservative here, there are previous examples like Arkane, Arzy and Boosted C9 (reregged as Chris Christy due to his toxx I believe) but as lovely as Democrats are today they are still not as blatantly prejudiced, fiscally irresponsible or just downright calloused and cruel as republicans are nowadays. Now would you care to explain why the debt is such a huge problem but at the same time raising taxes on the wealthy is a verboten solution. And again I understand there are many of us and one of you but this seems to be a point you have conveniently glossed over. EDIT: Never.More posted:I quite agree that raising taxes would increase more revenue. Although frankly I think thats a bad approach. Our current tax structure has so many loop holes and conditions in it that raising the rates themselves doesnt really do anything. It may generate more revenue in the short term, but then people will bitch and sooner or latter the rate will go down. What we really need is to simplify the tax code and remove the loop holes. Once we have an accurate understanding of what a certain tax rate actually produces in terms of revenue, we can have an intelligent debate about what said rate should be. I see you answered this before I could post. When Republicans talk about "simplifying" the tax code what they are really talking about is lowering the corporate tax rate and reopening any loopholes closed at a later time. Also when you say people will be bitching what I think you meant was rich people who are already bitching. Axetrain fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 06:03
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Never.More posted:On the Polish Trade Union front, that is a view most people do not agree on. There were a lot of factors involved certainly. However claiming that Reagan's military build up had nothing to do with the issue is a bold one. If you really believe that I would say you should publish a book or article on it. Most historians dont agree with you right now. Seriously dude, read your own sources. quote:The Revolutions of 1989 and the Fall of the Soviet Union Now the second part... "haven't done the best" is being intellectually dishonest. Of the last three republican presidents the best one (H.W. Bush) have increased total % of the debt more than the worst of the last three democrat presidents (Obama), and none of them had to deal with the second biggest recession in the nations history like Obama has. So once again, what historical evidence supports your claim that republicans are actually fiscally conservative instead of just being the party that is associated with being fiscally conservative because they claim to be? A Winner is Jew fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 06:08
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Never.More posted:Name calling is not constructive. Tell you what, how about you jump into a thread that is dominated by right leaning people and see how many people agree with you? The point of this was to point out that there are opposing views to the ones held. That a refusal to even listen to opposing view points is counter productive. As for "dumbing it down"; I listed the national debt, I listed the percentage of the national debt as related to GDP, and finally I listed the number that each of owes if we were to each pay an equal percentage. The last number is important because it gives people something they can relate to. That is hardly a worthless number is often utilized to describe a countries debt situation. Yeah it actually is a worthless number when you consider this. If a large amount of that money is owed to domestic companies/workers and government agencies/workers then you're arguing everyone is equally responsible for upkeep of the debt. That entire metric is based around the idea that everyone throws money in a pot to get rid of the debt, without realizing that the money would wind up largely in the hands of the people who already had it in the first place. It's more akin to moving money from your front pocket to your back pocket than anything. Or do you just want to redistribute the wealth using the debt as a medium.  quote:As far as a wrong view, you do realize that economists cant even agree on this subject right? People who are paid lots of money and spend all their time studying it. Like I said, google it. You will find directly contradictory claims. So you have a couple of choices at that point. You either pick the economist who agrees with your point, say he is right and the others are wrong. Throw your hands up and say I dont know. Or take a step back and try to apply some basic reasoning to a situation to figure out what you believe. I decided on the third option. On to the other posts. I'm going to link you to a Krugman op-ed. I'm pretty sure a Nobel Prize winning economist qualifies as a hell of an expert. I'm pretty sure the average supply-sider doesn't give two shits about the debt considering the tabs we ran under the Bushes and Reagan. quote:Now, since it was brought up ... on to the fix the issue side of the argument. I quite agree that raising taxes would increase more revenue. Although frankly I think thats a bad approach. Our current tax structure has so many loop holes and conditions in it that raising the rates themselves doesnt really do anything Hmmmmm, who is likely to actually do this.. It may generate more revenue in the short term, but then people will bitch and sooner or latter the rate will go downcitation needed. What we really need is to simply the tax code and remove the loop holes. Once we have an accurate understanding of what a certain tax rate actually produces in terms of revenue, we can have an intelligent debate about what said rate should be. Except for the fact that every Republican solution has said the following: "We need to close loopholes, lower rates, and make things revenue neutral." First of all, their opposition to any form of tax increase thanks to one Grover Norquist makes any intelligent debate about this impossible. Second, closing loopholes while lowering rates would stomp on the middle class more than anyone. What do you think a family of 4 does when there are no chlld tax credits around? Third, the idea that we merely need to close loopholes is ridiculous. Capital gains still aren't taxed at the rate of an income tax, despite being used predominantly by the wealthy. Top marginal rates are the lowest they've been since HW, effective tax rates are at their lowest in ages. You can't only take 70% of your tax revenue from a group who holds 90% of the wealth, otherwise you're going to come up very short. quote:Although I disagree that some of the current issues in the media are irrelevant and should be ignored. The wire tapping one and the Tea Party one needs investigation. Do I think that the President or his inner circle actually ordered either? No (God I hope not anyway). Do I think someone along the line got it into their head to flex their muscle, yes. Frankly, that needs to be stomped on hard. Watergate had long term implications for this country and rightfully so. We dont need to start up that stuff up again. The IRS is just a bunch of dicks, that's all there is. As for wire tapping, I hate it too. Why was it okay when it was Bush in office? Why was it okay when it happened to scary brown people instead of reporters?
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Jun 3, 2013 06:16
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TheGreyGhost posted:As for wire tapping, I hate it too. Why was it okay when it was Bush in office? Why was it okay when it happened to scary brown people instead of reporters? Just as a point of clarification, there wasn't any warrantless wiretapping in the AP case. They primarily pulled the phone records (basically who they talked to and when, but not their specific conversation) for the phone lines of the reporters thought to be involved. That's an entirely different beast and you probably shouldn't just accept that if he said something then it's true, considering his track record in this thread.
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Jun 3, 2013 06:37
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