What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[RightField]

It depends.

If you're taxing middle and lower class people who spend almost 100% of what they make, yes it's like trying to fill a pool by taking water out of the deep end and pouring it in the shallow end.

If you tax wealthy people who were going to save it or invest in foreign companies, then yes it actually is stimulative for the government to pay people to do jumping jacks all day. Because what's happening is that money that's sitting around stagnant or actually leaving the national economy is being converted into salaries for people who then convert it into pure demand for goods in the local economy.

Of course I'd never advocate for a Department of Jumping Jacks. Give the funding to teachers, social workers who protect kids, county hospital staff, VA professionals to treat our wounded warriors, the military, etc. All these government programs create a ton of value.

You're thinking too concretely again though. A "thing" doesn't have to be created for spending to be stimulative. A county can expand its substance abuse treatment program by hiring a new team of professionals. Or government can fund research into prostheic limb replacement for wounded vets, or to develop Alzheimer's drugs. Those things all create value.

You can repeat the old demand-side mantra all you want but that doesn't change the fact that it doesn't work. It didn't work for Jimmy Carter and it won't work now. It is not stimulative, it doens't create new economic activity and it won't turn around our sinking fortunes. Throwing money at play trains for the unions isn't going to help anyone and will further erode our economy and standards of living, you can't throw good money at programs that have little benefit except for a few campaign supporters.

I agree that we should continue to fund prosthetic limb replacements and other services for veterens. There are many other valuable programs too. I'm not advocating for the elimination of government, I just want to go back to the traditional level of spending in the 18-19% range, maybe another couple % higher until we can wrap up the wars.

At the heart of it though, you want them to continue to fund your field. That's why you're so adamant about Obamacare, to keep the funding going for you. I can understand that and good luck with it. Nevertheless, for the health of the country we have to get spending under control one way or another.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

What I observe is this: Government funds every permutation and combination of 'scholarship' on the planet. Government passes out money like it was bread to starving war refugees. Consequently the money creates conflicts and struggles and confusion rather than enlightenment.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

It depends.

If you're taxing middle and lower class people who spend almost 100% of what they make, yes it's like trying to fill a pool by taking water out of the deep end and pouring it in the shallow end.

If you tax wealthy people who were going to save it or invest in foreign companies, then yes it actually is stimulative for the government to pay people to do jumping jacks all day. Because what's happening is that money that's sitting around stagnant or actually leaving the national economy is being converted into salaries for people who then convert it into pure demand for goods in the local economy.

Of course I'd never advocate for a Department of Jumping Jacks. Give the funding to teachers, social workers who protect kids, county hospital staff, VA professionals to treat our wounded warriors, the military, etc. All these government programs create a ton of value.

You're thinking too concretely again though. A "thing" doesn't have to be created for spending to be stimulative. A county can expand its substance abuse treatment program by hiring a new team of professionals. Or government can fund research into prostheic limb replacement for wounded vets, or to develop Alzheimer's drugs. Those things all create value.

That is a fallacy, have have pointed out many times.

I recommend Bastiat's Sophisms for all government does in spending on jumping jacks is to rob the actual economy of capital and incentive. Even Keynes got that fallacy as in the India story where men were using shovels to dig a canal; Keynes asked why not get some heavy equipment in to do the job and they reply was jobs (a variation on the labor is dear fallacy, see the Robinson Crusoe parable in Sophisms) to which Keynes retorted, then why not take away their shovels and give them spoons?

Your mistake was outlined in the story of the broken pane, you see economic activity and think, man that's good, but then you never step back and say, what might have the money done had first it not been plundered? There is a hidden effect to government spending that is very real and this is reflected in the fear (as Mises would say Human Action) and the refusal to hire by those currently being plundered; they know how successful blackmailers act: they blackmail (they plunder, with a grand sense of self-justification be it altruism or greed).
__________________
You loot the private sector, strip every dollar of 40¢ for overhead, and then give the other 60¢ to your political base in order to revitalize the looted.

What's not to like about that plan?
A_J, the Stupid

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

...

At the heart of it though, you want them to continue to fund your field. That's why you're so adamant about Obamacare, to keep the funding going for you. I can understand that and good luck with it. Nevertheless, for the health of the country we have to get spending under control one way or another.

I think you have hit the nail squarely on the head.

I think that to the main body of liberalism the government and the university are like a comfort blankie whereas the free market is a very scary and intimidating place; you mean I have to spend 20 hours a week selling me and my services when I could be curled up with a good novel learning life's lessons in clever metaphor?

I won't have time to pick stocks??? Why not government??? It provides security!

What class does not solicit the favors of the state? It would seem as if the principle of life resided in it. Aside from the innumerable horde of its own agents, agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, the arts, the theatre, the colonies, and the shipping industry expect everything from it. They want it to clear and irrigate land, to colonize, to teach, and even to amuse. Each begs a bounty, a subsidy, an incentive, and especially the gratuitous gift of certain services, such as education and credit. And why not ask the state for the gratuitous gift of all services? Why not require the state to provide all the citizens with food, drink, clothing, and shelter free of charge

__________________
A_J's corollary #2, “The New Age Liberal prefers the truthiness of expert-driven consensus to a personal examination of the facts and the application of reason.”

A_J's corollary #2a, “In reading, the New Age Liberal prefers fiction to biography.”

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

That's the game, it's always been the game with the left. During the 50s they called it The Big Red Lie, Radio Moscow and Vladimir Posner were expert at advancing the technique.

The liberals have fully absorbed the lessons taught by their ideological progenitors, the Nazi socialists and Soviet communists. They understand that the big lie, if endlessly repeated, is extremely effective. Its purpose is to establish in the minds of the target audience an automatic stimulus-response connection, a Pavlovian conditioned reflex: capitalist = fat cat; George Bush = moron; Sarah Palin = idiot; Barack Obama = genius, any Kennedy = gift to mankind, etc. Ask the liberal spouting any of the above for proof that, say, Sarah Palin is an idiot or Barack Obama an intellectual giant, and the answer would be a puzzled stare -- why, everyone knows that she is a moron and he a towering intellect, so it must be true. Just repeat your slogan often enough, and once embedded in the minds of the people the mantra becomes reality for them. So effective is this technique that the left has made the former Alaska governor unelectable in the view of independents and even many conservatives, in effect dictating the available choices for the conservatives....
If tomorrow they decide to call the Tea Party members, say, Ghoulish Ghibellines, the moniker will stick though the people who would use it will have not the remotest idea of what it means (they would probably decide it denotes a particularly vicious breed of goblins). Why do you think liberals have such a conniption fit whenever Obama is called a socialist -- a neat and catchy label? It comes straight out of the liberal playbook and potentially is very effective.

__________________
A_J's corollary #1, “The New Age Liberal prefers intuition to reason.”

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

What I observe is this: Government funds every permutation and combination of 'scholarship' on the planet. Government passes out money like it was bread to starving war refugees. Consequently the money creates conflicts and struggles and confusion rather than enlightenment.

It also destroys the value of the commodity itself as well as that as the value of the recipient; it feralizes...

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=773814

 

[RightField]

As for me, I've had enough of Wiley E. Obama...Supergenious.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

As for me, I've had enough of Wiley E. Obama...Supergenious.

That made me smile...

 

[unregistered]

 

[busybody..]

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): New jobless claims rise to 414,000 last week. “New U.S. jobless claims rose unexpectedly last week, further evidence of a weak labor market just hours before President Barack Obama delivers a major address to Congress on the issue.” Unexpectedly!

I can’t find the link now, but somebody was criticizing this feature a while back as “juvenile.” Well, I am quite deliberately rubbing it in, as the ridiculously inflated expectations for Obama are regularly and repeatedly exposed as . . . ridiculously inflated. But what’s really juvenile is expecting that an inexperienced former community organizer could successfully execute the office of President of the United States. And if I’m peeing all over the wave of hope-and-change hype that got him into office despite his obvious unsuitability, it’s to help ensure that nothing this disastrous happens again in my lifetime. I realize that it’s painful for those who fell victim to the mass hysteria to constantly be reminded of their foolishness, but I hope it’ll be the kind of pain that results in learning. . . .

 

[busybody..]

POLITICO: The incredible shrinking Obama. “The once-muscular presidency of Barack Obama has undergone a dramatic downsizing – in power, popularity, prestige and ambition – to the point where even Obama die-hards are starting to question his ability to right the economy or win reelection.”

That Politico says this is bad, but what’s worse is what Andy Stern says:


“He has sort of lost the sense of power and mystique of the presidency,” says longtime Obama ally Andy Stern, former president of the powerful Service Employees International Union. “There’s also a sense that people aren’t scared of him. That’s very dangerous.”

Well, he’s proved a paper tiger over and over again — but, then, so has the SEIU. But this kind of public disrespect from his core constituency — and SEIU is certainly his core constituency — bodes poorly. Is the Hillary primary challenge coming?

Hey, who needs Hillary? I’ve got your primary challenger right here! Al Gore unhappy with Obama for dropping EPA’s new smog standards. “Gore’s obviously deeply pained that his pet issue has been given short shrift by the White House; nothing would do more to push climate change back on the national radar than a surprise presidential run by a former VP turned Democratic nominee turned Nobel winner.” Run, Al, run!

 

[richard_daily]

That's the game, it's always been the game with the left. During the 50s they called it The Big Red Lie, Radio Moscow and Vladimir Posner were expert at advancing the technique.

Christ, you're still afraid of a boogieman from 60 years ago? You really are naive. So much for the theory that with age comes wisdom.

 

[unregistered]

 

[JohnnySavage]

When was the last time a sitting President failed to get his party's nomination for a second term?

 

[unregistered]

 

[busybody..]

http://moonbattery.com/mr-fish-economic-plan.jpg

 

[NeverEndingMe]

Nobody is afraid clown, unlike you, we've read this book before. You need to apologize for voting for Obama, and the harm your naivete has inflicted on the country.

how did we go from being a country of leaders to a country of pussies like Richard and Merc?

 

[unregistered]

 

[NeverEndingMe]

They've been afflicted by the mental disorder we know as Liberalism.

and the writing is on the wall, "we ran out of other people's money" yet they come back looking for more free money

 

[shoulderblade]

When was the last time a sitting President failed to get his party's nomination for a second term?

Right. It makes perfect political sense to stick with a winner.

Who in hi party could seriously challenge him ?

 

[JohnnySavage]

Right. It makes perfect political sense to stick with a winner.

Who in hi party could seriously challenge him ?

I dunno, was just curious.

 

[richard_daily]

Nobody is afraid clown, unlike you, we've read this book before. You need to apologize for voting for Obama, and the harm your naivete has inflicted on the country.

You're afraid of your own shadow, and I doubt you've read a book in decades... Maybe a book-on-tape.

I didn't vote for Obama... but he's done a better job than McCain would have.

Have you apologized for voting for W twice, or Awnowld twice?

 

[richard_daily]

They've been afflicted by the mental disorder we know as Liberalism.

Are you going to offer to "toss" me now?

 

[unregistered]