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

On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:07:17 -0600, "John Galt"
<whoisjohngalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"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.



As noted though, and as shown in the charts for
which I gave URLs, the increase in debt dramatically
decelerated under Clinton, and in his last two years
he came close to actually balancing the budget.
Then GWB came in and all hell broke loose, the
deficits took off into the sky again.

Maybe if we'd had another Democratic administration
instead of GWB, we actually would have started
paying down the debt. Even if the Democrats had
just held it steady, we'd be in debt only $6T now
instead of $10T.





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.>



That was only $300B per year when Bush took office,
but his deficits were far more than that. Now it's $500B
per year in interest payments because of the continuing
irresponsibility during GWB's reign, but his deficits are
still bigger than that too. Even if he didn't have to pay
interest on the debt, he'd still have been running us
madly deeper in debt.




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.)



2/3 is "most" in common parlance, at least as I use that
term.

Look at the chart. Not the logarithmic chart which as I
explained is unsuited to the purpose, but at the actual
dollars or inflation-adjusted data. When you do that, the
fact that the bulk of the debt was run up by Reagan and
the Bushes is very plain to see, you don't need to do any
complex math. Here's the URL again:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm


<snip>


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.

I don't see "almost all" but maybe I did write that and
snipped it. The ballpark calculation below shows 78%
of the debt since Reagan, and Reagan is where the
trouble started, since before Reagan the debt was just
simmering, not boiling as it was under Reagan. 78% is
close enough to "almost all" for me if not for you.

Looking at the chart at
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
the debt was about $1T when Reagan came to
office. He ran it up about $2T, Bush 1 ran it up
about $1.5T in his four years, Clinton ran it up
about 1.75T, and GWB has run it up about $3T
so far. That makes $6.5T for Reagan/Bushes
versus $1.75T for Clinton.about 78%.



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 see from the numbers I gave above how
misleading it is.



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.


That's the calculation I ballparked above is 78%, not 67%, for
the contribution to the national debt of ReaganBushes versus
Clinton.

If you want to throw in the first trillion, the number changes
from 78% to 70%, about 2/3 as you say, but that's comparing
the 19 years of Reagan Bush against the 60 years since
Truman. 2/3 of the debt run up over 60 years by only three
presidents, all with the same insane fiscal ideas, is a mighty
lousy record, so I'll stick with my statement that "This
disaster *IS* *IS* *IS* a Republican disaster".


<snip>

.

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