We're borrowing 43% of our budget? Talk about unsustainable.
I would seriously make plans for when the US is forced to stop this destructive pattern. Its going to be ugly.
I would seriously make plans for when the US is forced to stop this destructive pattern. Its going to be ugly.
http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/
This isn't to cheerlead Republican strategies (after all, I think the heart of Ryan's proposal is decidedly anti-Republican, since Republicans and Democrats alike seem to have based their party orthodoxy on not cutting spending, be that in the form of tax cuts or increased entitlements, respectively), merely to offer an example of the kind of cutting that will, but necessity, have to happen.
Of course, there's always the "collapse of the US" scenario.
Optimists, therefore, will prepare for the painful years of budget-cutting by refusing to rely on entitlements in their later years.
Pessimists? Well, I suppose joining a survivalist encampment doesn't sound that bad...
Like Monopoly's "Get Out Of Jail Free" it's a card you can only play once, though.
One person mentioned some numbers however, such as 2500 Yuan per hour. I am sure that figure one day was 25 Youan, but inflate and inflate, some zeros have been added.
I guess however having prices go up also, such that say bread is 1000 Yuan you do not get real inflation if you print slowly. But, I doubt anyone want to take a chance.
I would think also that it is not so easy and it is not really a get out of jail card. Money have value as long as they have power. They can print as much as they like, as it seems to be the case with Japan, but if prices go up accordingly, they would need to print more, and prices go up and print more and Germany 1930s or Zimbabwe 2007.
Paying off debt is a good policy, whether be it a country or individual. Saving is a good policy too.
I think if the dollar became a fonny currency people would switch quickly. It would for example not make any sense for a British man to trade in dollars if he gets say one pence for every dollar. Especially if by the next day it is worth 0.5 pence.
Plus there is the small matter that we already know how to get oil from Middle Eastern countries... We buy it.
But when we blow it and are deep in debt with declining ability to borrow cheaply, we could also lose this special status. and $4 trillion will come back and make goods more expensive for everybody stuck with no far-less-desirable paper.
Now, you can say that after 8 years of castigating Bush for deficits, he's all of a sudden ok with them under Obama. And you'd be right.
But it's also true that Bush took inherited a surplus and doubled the national debt in a "boom" economy, while Obama inherited an already-massive deficit while in the most severe economic crisis we've seen in decades.
For eight years he castigated Bush for not paying down the debt. Krugman's advice is: borrow your way out of the bad days, pay it back on the good ones.
There's plenty of policy there to disagree about. There's no reason or benefit to misrepresenting people's positions.
The deficit under the last Repub congress was $100B/year and the trend was downwards. That changed when the Dems took congress for Bush's last two years. The current deficit is $100B/month.
Note that Congress didn't pass a budget in 2008 - they held back until after Obama became president.
He still didn't inherit a surplus and double the national debt.
Bush also did a prescription drug plan that was a financial disaster. However, the Dems wanted something even more expensive so ....
In fact, that's generally true; Repubs overspent, but Dems wanted more. The Repubs weren't fiscally conservative in absolute terms, but they were significantly more so than Dems. Since the alternative to Repubs isn't perfection, but Dems, that's relevant.
As to the financial disaster, it's due to Dems pushing "affordable" housing. The Repub's contribution is that they didn't try very hard to oppose it. (When McCain suggested looking at Fannie and Freddie in 2005/6, he got his teeth kicked in.)
Tax revenues increased under Bush. And fewer paid income taxes. (The poor get a decent return on SS while the rest of us are hosed. The rich don't care because both "contributions" and payouts are capped.)
You opened this thread saying "yeah but if we figure the calendar this way i can put all of the 2008 stuff on Obama". You advertised that you don't give a crap about reasoned conclusions, you're just going to attempt to twist the facts. You said out loud, "I'm doing this". Deficits don't matter in 2003, they're the most important thing ever in 2010. Whatever.
It's your right, freedom of speech and all that. But I'm not going to take you seriously.
It was mostly repubs for and mostly dems against on final passage. The vote to substitute the Dem proposal, which was more expensive, it was mostly Dems for and mostly Repubs against.
Yes, the Repubs passed a monstrosity. The Dems tried to pass something worse. It's unclear how these two facts make the Dems look better than the Repubs.
> How many of those same people, institutions and editorial pages are huge deficit hawks now? What happened to "deficits don't matter"?
One might argue that there's a difference between $100B/year and $100B/month. You're claiming that it's wrong to be concerned about $100B/month yet be okay with $100B/year....
More to the point, I'm not claiming that the Repubs were/are correct. I'm saying that they're bad, but better than Dems on this.
> yeah but if we figure the calendar this way i can put all of the 2008 stuff on Obama
It's a fact that the 2008 budget wasn't passed until after Obama took office. Congressional Dems said that Obama had significant input into that budget. Do you really want to argue that they were lying?
> you're just going to attempt to twist the facts.
Some actual examples would be nice.
> You said out loud, "I'm doing this".
Oh really? Where?