If USA enters second recession is YOUR job safe ?

[buster]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Buster,
You are one of the few who actually gets it.
NASA, DARPA, Air Force RFPs as well as massive federal money granted to many universities have brought us most of the technical advances we use daily, including the one on which we are now interacting.
You also had an earlier post in which you quoted someone decrying the very low current tax take as a proportion of GDP.
I've made this argument in other threads.
Federal spending is not far out of line with the average level of the past forty years.
Federal tax take as a proportion of GDP is well below the average of the last forty years.
Do we have a federal spending problem, or a federal tax code problem?
You, Buster, seem to have a better grasp of the realities than do most, including those elected to lead our country.


Thanks, but in this country conservatives have waged war on how bad government is and saying it plays a positive role is taboo now. You're a socialist or communist if you don't listen to what Beck and Hannity are saying. It's out of control. How much more proof do these fools need?

Brooksley Born said this was going to happen back in the 90's. Many municipalities are broke due to derivatives fraud. Then you have Warren Buffet saying that billionaires have been coddled too long but people like Tempest will continue to blame the people that were hurt most by the Wall St. elite. It's pretty pathetic if you ask me.

Banks dominate governments worldwide.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
if you surrender I'll let you use the excuses that it is because people are not coming to LV to gamble and the real estate bubble popped.

Yes, and our government raised taxes as well so they could "stimulate" the economy. Didn't exactly work out that way.

Governments have simply spent their people into oblivion. Debt levels at %150 GDP in some countries. If that isn't "stimulus", then I don't what is.

Government spending makes things worse, not better.


So do you propose your local government to eliminate tax and not paying back the existing loan?

 

[buster]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
if you surrender I'll let you use the excuses that it is because people are not coming to LV to gamble and the real estate bubble popped.

Yes, and our government raised taxes as well so they could "stimulate" the economy. Didn't exactly work out that way.

Governments have simply spent their people into oblivion. Debt levels at %150 GDP in some countries. If that isn't "stimulus", then I don't what is.

Government spending makes things worse, not better.


You still don't get it. Monetarism is a Milton Friedman idea. There hasn't been substantial fiscal stimulus that went directly into the economy. More is needed.

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
Amazing you fail to realize that consumers are in debt and don't have the spending power they had. Demand creates jobs.

There is $2.6 TRILLION dollars out there in private business alone. There is NO shortage of money. The banks don't have to lend more, the government doesn't have to spend more, and FED doesn't have to print more. It's already there, being sat on. This economy should have taken off long ago but there is too much uncertainty from the government for people to plan, to many taxes looming on the horizon for people to part with their money.


So? I'm sitting on a little cash I'm looking to invest and I don't know where to stick it, either! People spend their EXTRA money on luxury items... what are the new luxury items? How can I make one's life better if they already hide in their condos playing "farmville" on facebook, contentedly? I wouldn't call it uncertainty, more lacking in creativity. Have we found a utopia? Is this what it feels like to not want?

I'm not afraid of taxes, just afraid of dumb investments. Businesses aren't run any more transparently (to me) than they were ten years ago, and they still have as many douchey MBAs as ever. My cash is sitting on the side-- some of it-- though the rest is in index funds as I pragmatically hedge my bets that "The Man always wins."

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

Stimulus will not help the structural problem. End of story.

 

[Turk]

Debt has now gone up & passed $4 Trillion just since January 2009, the most & fastest in history. If this keeps up at this rate, how will it ever be re-paid?

This is not a good thing and needs to be reversed, not 8-10 years from now, but now.

 

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Buster,
You are one of the few who actually gets it.
NASA, DARPA, Air Force RFPs as well as massive federal money granted to many universities have brought us most of the technical advances we use daily, including the one on which we are now interacting.
You also had an earlier post in which you quoted someone decrying the very low current tax take as a proportion of GDP.
I've made this argument in other threads.
Federal spending is not far out of line with the average level of the past forty years.
Federal tax take as a proportion of GDP is well below the average of the last forty years.
Do we have a federal spending problem, or a federal tax code problem?
You, Buster, seem to have a better grasp of the realities than do most, including those elected to lead our country.

Why didn't the Soviet Union, Greece, Spain, California....work? If government spending was the answer, these places should be the utopian paradise that they promised.

Please explain.


Easy enough.
You make a facile but fallacious argument.
I might merely respond with "What about China. Please explain",
but I can do better than that.
The USSR was a pure command economy.
The Soviets developed technology the equal of our own, but they never trusted the market to direct resources.
This is far different from our mixed appraoch where the government invests money in developing technology, and then allows private entities to commercialize it as they see fit.
Greece is a country that produces nothing.
When was the last time you saw a Greek car, PC or even alarm clock?
The Greek governments of the past few decades have spent money to smooth things over, not with any productive goal in sight.
Also, Greece, like Spain, is a victim of the Euro.
What a horrible mistake it was to allow these countries to incur debt in a currency they didn't control, with the creditors knowing that other Europeans would have to bail them out, as is happening now.
It is obvious that either country would have been better off with its own currency, and they were.
California is a unique case.
California constructed a very progressive socio-economic policy, which was in turn destroyed by Prop 13.
California was the most progressive of our states.
It is sad that its residents wanted the benefits of a progressive state government, but were unwilling to pay the taxes needed to keep it running.
Almost every sucessful economy of the current world relies upon some measure of economic planning, including every EU country, Japan, Korea, China and our own United States.
There are many more.
I'd suggest that you expand your horizons a little.
Reading "The New Industrial State", a good bite of Galbraith, would be a good start.

 

[PandaBear]

Quote:
Many municipalities are broke due to derivatives fraud.


This is the #1 reason how many municipal gov went bankrupt in Europe and US. They use derivatives to increase income and lower tax, hedge against a black swan probability that certain financial event will not likely happen (quote directly from the investment banks' presentation), then wham, this hit and they will be bankrupt and never be able to repay their debt, or have to massively increase tax to cover that.

You can blame spending all you want, but if government make the wrong shortcut (because tax cut is popular) by using debt (or worse, the wrong kind of debt with uncertain risk) to lower tax, then sooner or later it can back fire. Voters usually won't know about all these details or understand these details until it is too late.

Quote:
Like homeowners who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford and didn’t understand, Jefferson County officials rejected fixed- rate debt and borrowed instead at rates that varied with the market.

The county paid banks $120 million in fees — six times the prevailing rate — for $5.8 billion in interest-rate swaps. That was supposed to protect the county from rising rates for their bonds. Lending rates went the wrong way, putting the county $277 million deeper into debt.



Quote:
Orange County also became well known for being the largest US county ever to have gone bankrupt, when in 1994, longtime treasurer Robert Citron's investment strategies left the county with inadequate capital to allow for any raise in interest rates for its trading positions. When the conservative residents of Orange County voted down a proposal to raise taxes in order to balance the budget, bankruptcy followed shortly thereafter. Citron later pleaded guilty to six felonies regarding the matter.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
Not a fan of Fisher.

Then you can specifically tell me how he is wrong.
Quote:
Public purpose has been lost to private interests.

Please define public purpose, as it is a meaningless term. Typical of demand side economics.

And you want politicians that have been bought by the banks to oversee "public purpose".......really??

 

[Pablo]

And these municipalities needed the money so badly because?

Too much spending on bloated pensions, etc. Many people retiring on the tax payers dime. Classic example of government gone bad? Government Unions. For crying out loud buster, even FDR was opposed to Government Unions. Why the heck should government employees have better benefits than real productive working people?

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: buster

You still don't get it. Monetarism is a Milton Friedman idea. There hasn't been substantial fiscal stimulus that went directly into the economy. More is needed.


Ok, so I will ask yet again....how much should that be, where should it go, and who should be in charge? Didn't Mosler and your MMT guys actually come up with a working plan? Or is it all pie in the sky theory and talk?

I already know the answer.

P.S. Mosler is a Wall Street guy. Wall Street LOVES lots of free money to jack up the market. The more money in the system, the more money he makes. He's trying to make money on the backs of others. Put it together.

 

[Ursae_Majoris]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27

The USSR was a pure command economy.
The Soviets developed technology the equal of our own

Was it a joke?
Buran--stolen Space Shuttle plans.
Ural motorcycle--WWII BMW motorcycle.
Zenit Optics--WWII Carl Zeiss plant moved to Russia as reparations.

Color TVs were not available until 1980s. Even than there was only ONE make you dared to buy, the rest caught fire as a clockwork (I personally know a Russian firefighter).

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Pablo
And these municipalities needed the money so badly because?

Too much spending on bloated pensions, etc. Many people retiring on the tax payers dime. Classic example of government gone bad? Government Unions. For crying out loud buster, even FDR was opposed to Government Unions. Why the heck should government employees have better benefits than real productive working people?



Orange county use trade position to earn income to reduce tax and back fired.

Regarding to why governments have debt, why don't you tell me why most well run and healthy business have some debts and poorly run business have massive debts? Since you are a business owner you would know better.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
The Greek governments of the past few decades have spent money to smooth things over, not with any productive goal in sight.

And our government is different than this how? They SPENT the money and that is stimulus. The demand side people don't care how it is spent, only that it is. And you are calling for a command and control economy with a "productive goal" determined by government, not individuals making their own choices.

And I have explained China more than once. They were a command and control economy that liberalized and became more capitalist, hence their improved condition.
Quote:
What a horrible mistake it was to allow these countries to incur debt in a currency they didn't control

The politicians that you want making economic plans are the very same ones that incurred this debt, and our politicians are causing us to borrow 44% of our current spending. That is what Keynsianism, that you support, brings to a society.

Do you consider these people competent to run an economy as they have clearly demonstrated that they are not.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Ursae_Majoris
Originally Posted By: fdcg27

The USSR was a pure command economy.
The Soviets developed technology the equal of our own

Was it a joke?
Buran--stolen Space Shuttle plans.
Ural motorcycle--WWII BMW motorcycle.
Zenit Optics--WWII Carl Zeiss plant moved to Russia as reparations.

Color TVs were not available until 1980s. Even than there was only ONE make you dared to buy, the rest caught fire as a clockwork (I personally know a Russian firefighter).


Russia's military technologies were actually not too bad compare to the rest of the world. I wouldn't call them equal but they can cause a lot of grieve for a very cheap price vs ours.

They got jet engine figured out before we do, sending a satellite into space before we do, nuclear weapon right after we do (although it was stolen from our technology) but they fall behind later on because they focus too much on military and not on civilian life and productivity improvement in the local level due to central planning, and have no resource to pay for all the continual improvement in the military technologies they wanted so badly.

We are spending a lot on military now, and will follow Soviet's bankruptcy if we are not careful.

 

[urchin]

Hey lets not forget about the hundreds of trillions in undisclosed "black budget" projects with the DOD and who knows what else.

The biggest drain on this country is the military official budget and that black budget.

Eisenhower warned the people about the Military Industrial Complex. He was right it is sucking the taxpayer dry far faster then the measly few bucks that go to SSI or WIC for welfare.

Almost the entirety of the upper echelons of our gov't are corrupt!

3 trillion to prop up the zionist gov't of Khazarstan (so called Israel) about 10 billion per year since 1948.

I love when Rumsfeld was speaking on September 10, 2001 and was telling the press about the 2.3 TRILLION missing from the Pentagram budget.

The next day we have the demolition of the twin towers likely by rogue elements in our own government. Not some random arab guys that couldn't even fly a prop plane for a minute.

Also **** Cheney told NORAD to "stand down" on the morning of 9/11.

Follow the money. Don't be distracted by the welfare mom peanuts or such look at the MIC.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
They got jet engine figured out before we do

They had to steal the metal out of a British jet engine factory in order to keep their fan blades from exploding. Stalin had a tendency to kill top engineers that didn't perform. Kinda' causes a brain drain and incentivizes people not to take risks.
Quote:
We are spending a lot on military now

Military is about 20% of the budget, or about 5% GDP. Not much for a super power.
"Entitlements" account for well over 50% and produce nothing.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
Hey lets not forget about the hundreds of trillions in undisclosed "black budget" projects with the DOD and who knows what else.

The biggest drain on this country is the military official budget and that black budget.

I'm sorry but that simply isn't the case. Stay off the political names, please.

 

[urchin]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
]We are spending a lot on military now

Military is about 20% of the budget, or about 5% GDP. Not much for a super power.
"Entitlements" account for well over 50% and produce nothing. [/quote]

There are hundreds of TRILLIONS in military black budget projects that are NOT on the books !!!

Those entitlements are peanuts compared to what that black budget is, of course we will never know even though THE PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW! Taxation without representation. No redress of grievances either! = TYRANNY!

 

[PandaBear]

Military budget should include foreign aid, that'll make it easily another 10-20%.

Since when is wasting 20% + another 10-20% on nothing a good idea?

I'm not saying 50% on entitlement a good idea (actually it would be a good idea to reduce it if it is to pay off the debt rather than tax cut), but when the individual pay for social security and medical care and get it back later, it is very different than paying tax and going back into some guerrilla fighter in the middle of some rough nations directly or indirectly.

Why aren't your 401k and IRA considered entitlement too? You are getting your money back and your employer contributed as well as your government (via pre tax money or no tax when you get it out in the case of Roth).