Re: Is Anyone In This Group Enthusiastic About Any Candidate?


"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:p08fo39fg6te2g4uftj404v3v457vmvfiq@xxxxxxxxxx
On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:34:28 -0600, "John Galt"
<whoisjohngalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


<snip>


I suspect GWB would take the rebates and the food stamps in return for an
extension of the tax cuts. Of course, that's crappy long term policy.

I personally am totally against extending the tax cuts for
the wealthiest under any circumstances. It's would even
be worth fighting for, I mean as in war. I know I'm not
going to get what I want, unless Kucinich gets elected,
but as I've said, and you disagree, the "commoners"
were better off in the 1970's than they are now.

The skew on the quintiles is now definitely in favor of the upper quintile.
It's difficult to justify retaining them on the $350K and up group.


I see near the end that the article says "Leaders in
both parties also will have to deal with the deficit
hawks in each." They're talking about me, and the
idea they just have to "deal with" us seems to me to
mean that they're going to keep traveling down the
road to ruin, and put off yet again doing what must
be done.

When Huckabee was on CNBC the other day, you got a really clear picture on
how Wall Street sees the issue. The Mensa Blonde asking the question put
it
this way: "Are you for balanced budgets, OR are you a supply sider?" The
politicians won't admit the two are different. Wall Street knows better.


I didn't realize anybody thought they were the same issue.
It sounds like the stock false dichotomy "Did you walk to
school today, or did you bring your lunch?"

Many political supply siders believe tha they stimulate the economy to the
point that they result in higher tax collections than one would otherwise
have. This is bogus. Marginal rate decreases make up about 66% of of the
decrease in compensory tax receipts per Greenspan.



....meaning that there are precisely zero people in Washington who
aren't
supply siders, albeit not all are "trickle-downers".


I wish somebody, someday, would notice what a pass
that philosophy has brought us to. Kucinich has, and has
pointed it out repeatedly, but most unfortunately he's not
going to get elected this time.


< Granted, that won't bring in as much
money as it did when the USA was still producing most of its
own stuff, but we can't keep going on the way we have been.
We have to stop the flow of blood to survive, and we have to
start paying down the debt to do anything more than just
survive.

All you have to do is flatline the budget for three years and you're in
balance -- probably less.


I don't know what you mean by that, but if it means
"keep expenses no higher than receipts", that's not
enough but I'll take what I can get for the moment
just to keep the debt from getting any higher. Ain't
going to happen though, I don't think.

Federal agencies have built in budget increases tied to inflation. If
inflation is 3%, the Dept of Education STARTS the next year by budgeting a
3% increase. In Washington-speak, that 3% increase would be called a "zero
budget increase for the fiscal year."

Only in Washington do they think like this.


Actually, I agree with that. Because of inflation, money keeps
getting worth less and less, so, like Alice, we have to keep
running faster and faster in order to stay in the same place, until
we can't run fast enough to stay in the same place, and we may
have passed that point now. I'm against inflation, and balanced
budgets would go a long way toward eliminating that. Tying the
paper money to something that's actually worth something, as
gold was in the old days though there isn't enough of that for today's
money supply, would do the rest.

So, since nobody will ever have the cojones to try and cut specific
nonfunctional programs in the goverment (and if they do, they'd likely
lose
their cojones, and their job, in the attempt) seasoned deficit hawks like
to
talk about flatlining the budget. So, if this year's discretionary budget
is
1.25T, then you hold the line at 1.25T for as long as it takes to come
into
balance, considering that tax receipts increase each year (unless we're in
recession.)

That would only take about three years. Now, obviously during that time
existing agencies have to do more with less, since they're being eaten
away
a bit by inflation during this period. Employees that retire won't be
replaced, federal workers don't get raises, and agencies have to make some
choices as to what they can and cannot do. Some subprograms might have to
be
cut, particularly in the final year of the effort.

But it would only take 3 years. Agonizingly close, eh? Makes you wonder
why
we did'nt do it a long time ago.

Which programs though? One man's oxygen is another man's
sulfur dioxide.

All programs. Across the board.

<snip>

The purpose of a log scale is to remove compounding effects. GWB is not
responsible for the interest on the debt that any previous president
incurred. If you use a non-log scale, it looks like the majority of the
debt
has been incurred in the last 8 years. That's misleading.


That's a side issue. Any president who doesn't at least
balance the budget is responsible for increasing it, including
Clinton. If we don't get presidents who can do the job,
we're doomed - Alice can't keep running faster forever.

Well, nobody balanced it, ever. The debt increased even when Clinton
ostensibly had it "balanced.

The debt has nearly doubled in the last eight years,
even the "official" debt. "Official" inflation hasn't been
supposed to be that high, though of course just in the last
year or so, inflation, if you base it on the value of the dollar
has been 60%, though those chickens haven't come home
to roost yet, most of them anyway, though some have.

Sure. We're now borrowing money to pay the interest.>

In 1982, the debt was only $1T, so nearly all the current
debt happened since then. It looks like only about $1T of
the debt from Reagan on was Clinton's, and you notice
the increase went nearly flat at the end of Clinton's term,
the only time it has done so since Reagan, only to suddenly
rise again with GWBush in office.


Reality is that this is a bipartisan issue. Every POTUS since Truman has
been looking and a debt and failed to address it. That's 5 Democrats and
6
Republicans. Nobody held a gun to Tip ONeill's head and said "pass the
Reagan budget". The Dems had the House, he obviously failed in his
oversight
function, a single glance at this graph tells us. Clinton raised taxes,
but
then TRIED to pass a hugely expensive government health care plan which
I;m
sure you supported. Had he passed it, his slope would have been just as
large as Reagan's, perhaps more; then, he presided over the dot-com
boom.
Simply put, Clinton got lucky twice in this regard, first because his
health
care initiative failed, and second because of the dot-com bubble. Switch
either of those two, and he's no different from Reagan and Bush. (IOW,
he
TRIED to increase debt at Reagan rates, but Gingrich succeeded where
ONeill
failed.)


All but about $1.5T of the current $9T debt came from Reagan
and the Bushes. Don't forget, the curve at the URL you gave is
logarithmic.

How much of that is compounding on previous debt?


It doesn't matter, because compounding is just as bad as
new additions to the debt, and both parties have to take
responsibility for the compounding when they're in office.
Compounding is of course why we shouldn't get into
perpetual debt, and why the disgusting fiscal irresponsibility
has brought us close to where ruin is "unavoidable"
because we can't keep up with the compounding.



What matters, when "judging" these presidents on this issue, is the
compounded sum of the absolute deficits they incurred during their
presidency. The log scale comes closer to showing that, but you have to
back
out the compounding. Taking your own figures cited (1T in 1982) compounded
at any average rate of 5% over 25 years is. 3.225T. So, if today's debt is
10T, we can accurately state that a third of that debt was incurred prior
to
the Reagan tax package.

If you do that, most of it was still run up by Reagan and the
Bushes. It's a pretty meaningless figure as the real world goes
though, because we're in trouble because of the TOTAL debt
including compounding. Shifty accounting might make
distinctions to make things look better, but reality is not so kind.

2/3 until proven otherwise. I'm not of a mind to do the math, but I may
later on (I had a dental implant today and my patience is slim.)


This country has a low tolererance for taxation, which is why precisely
NO
candidates are suggesting tax increases on anybody making less than
200K,
oftentimes more. That's the way it is,


If that's the way it is, the country is doomed, and that's the
way that is.

That's the way it is. Whether it is doomed or not waits to be seen. The
candidates recognize it -- some voters on the far left deny it.


Very much the contrary, it's the right wingers who have been
denying it all along - their leaders for doing it, and the voters for
electing those people.



Reagan exposed that low tolerance,
now the only thing to do is the thing that politicians hate most -- take
things away. Explain to the Pentagon that they don't get ALL the new
toys
they want.


We don't have to explain anything to the pentagon unless
they take over as in Greece, Chile, and Argentina.


Accept that we cant afford to keep A THOUSAND military bases
overseas, which is about what we have.


We're on the same page there. Most of those bases
should have been closed before, and really should be
closed now that we're on the brink of economic collapse.

Tell the farmers theyll have to go it
along without ag subsidies.


Most of the subsidies go to mass farming, and we could
kill those. We could kill the rest, but that would hurt
ordinary people rather than plutocrats, and it's relatively
little money compared to the pentagon and the size of
the tax cuts, so I'd be less sanguine about that. That's
based on "for the people" rather than "for the plutocrats".>

Use the very clear statistics that show that
Head Start is a failure, and kill it. Give up on this damnable "war on
drugs" and move to decriminalize. Freeze federal hiring for three years,
and
use contract employees until the budget is in balance.

I don't even know what Head Start is, though I seem to
recall it has something to do with education. A lot of stuff
in education these days seems to me like piffle, though I
wouldn't want to be the one myself to decide what is and
what isn't.

HS is a pre-K program for low income students. HS kids go into the first
grade reading at 2nd grade level. At the end of the 3rd grade, they read
at
the 3rd grade level. At the end of the 4th grade, they read at the 3rd
grade
level. HS does not give low income kids any sort of "head start" that
isn't
destroyed in short order by the crappy government schools they have to
attend in their neighborhoods. Not money well spent.

Marijuana and hashish should be decriminalized and be
legally available as they are in Holland, IMV. For the others,
the question for me is addictiveness and potential for
violence, though when politicians mixed with Christian
fundamentalists and "status quo" get into the act, all
chance of honesty flies out the window. Alcohol, one of
the most addictive and most violence-prone drugs, and
certainly the most accident-causing drug of all, is legal,
while marijuana which is less harmful than coffee is not.

Clinton added some, but proportionately much less,
and the debt burden was starting to turn around at the end
of his administration until Bush II came in and blew everything
all to hell again. This disaster *IS* *IS* *IS* a Republican
disaster.

As you can see from the graph, Clinton never "turned it around". He just
flattened the slope. There was never a Clinton year that debt was not
added,
due to the use of off-budget gimmickry.

As you can see from the graph, Clinton's rise was much smaller
than that of Reagan or the Bushes, and at the end of Clinton's
reign, the line almost went flat, until GWBush got in. Don't
forget, this is a logarithmic curve.

That's the entire point -- the slope is the slope, and tells you what's
going on. Of course, had Clinton had his way on health care, he never
would
have changed that slope.


The slope looks very different on a non logarithmic
scale, even when adjusted for inflation which is the
"real" way of doing it of course. The same data is
thus graphed, unfortunately apparently not in
inflation-adjusted dollars, but the trend is clear, at:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
Note the reversal of the change of slope from the
Reagan-to-present years, which only reverses during
the Clinton administration

Note also the comment under that graph which says
what I've been saying about the deceptiveness of
using a logarithmic scale for the data since Reagan:

"For those who would prefer to see this debt data
presented on a log scale click this link. The log
scale certainly shows the WWII debt in a different
perspective, and tends to flatten the more recent
debt numbers. Changing the scale does not mask
an obvious slant towards increased debt during
Neo-Con administrations."

I didn't disagree. What I disagreed with was your characterizatoin of the
matter as "ALMOST ALL". To me, that means 90+%, and that's simply not the
case.

Here's an even more damning bar chart of the
increases under Reagan and the Bushes versus
Clinton, though unfortunately not in inflation-
adjusted dollars, but the trend is nevertheless clear:
http://www.lafn.org/politics/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html

The only possible reason for choosing a logarithmic
scale would be deception, since it's so completely
unrealistic for financial matters. The distance between
1 and 1,000 is the same as the distance between
1,000 and 1,000,000, but if I'm in debt $1 or $1,000
there's not much difference, whereas if I'm in debt
$1,000,000, I'm ruined. Logarithmic scale is the right
tool for a lot of things, but it's very decidedly the wrong
tool for financial matters, certainly including the National
Debt. I only bother with this because most people don't
seem to understand logarithms. I think you do
understand logarithms, which would make it inexcusable
for you IMV to try to pass off the chart you presented,
but maybe I'm wrong and you don't.

The log scale more closely represents reality in a compounding financial
scenario over time, which is why they are often used in financial analysis.
You can figure out the exact contribution of each president by calculating
the net increase of the national debt during their tenure, then determining
the net present value of that amount discounted to an arbitrary point in
time at the average inflation rate over that time. My 'sperience with this
stuff tells me that the contribuiton of Reagan/Bush II to the national debt
is about 2/3 of the total, when I eyeball the raw numbers, the log graph,
and the standard graph.

I may be wrong, but I don't think so.

JG







If $10T is paltry, we should be able to pay it off.

It's not paltry at all -- it's just paltry in comparison to Medicare's
fiscal imbalance. You can't pay it off, it's five times the current
annual
tax receipts, and the Dems are about to become Santa Claus and send
everyone
a post-Christmas rebate to stimulate the economy. All you can really do
is
*require* a balanced budget and an end to off-budget gimmicks, and pay
it
off over time. Most of that debt would be gone in 10 years.


If Medicare doesn't pay these bills, the people will have to
do it out of their own pockets. They can't afford it, so more
people will die. That is one solution, granted. A better
solution, or partial solution, would be National Health, so we
can control costs the way other countries do. That would
cut down on the costs, Medicare or not.

Americans will not accept a rationed care program or one that restricts
choice, ultimately. Not a lot of savings in managed care if patients
aren't
cooperative.



Just
collect $40,000 from every person in the US.

Great idea. Send my dunning letter to the Caymans. I can't think of a
faster
way to cause capital flight.

Ah, now we get to tariffs, and also doing something
to make such exportation of profit without paying taxes
a criminal and lively-prosecuted offense, which is
something that hasn't been discussed lately in
soc.retirement. It is criminal morally, and if it isn't
criminal legally then we need to make it so. The
solution to thievery is not to make things easier for
the thieves.

You can do anything you want with bootjacks and laws that restrict
people's
freedom to do what they want with their money. As I said before to GZB,
feel
free, but what you have at the end of the tunnel isn't an America that's
worth living in anymore.

JG



"Some folks rob you with a gun, and some folks
rob you with a fountain pen." -- Bob Dylan



<snip>






.

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