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


"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:46:53 -0600, "John Galt"
<whoisjohngalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:14:29 -0600, "John Galt"
<whoisjohngalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


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


<sniperoo>>>

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.

Not a chance. The dot-com bust and associated loss of reciepts, 9/11 and
associated costs, Afghanistan, and the setup of Homeland Security would
have
happened to any president. All these costs would have been incurred
under
any competent administration.


We would have had to rescind the Reagan tax cuts to make
real progress against the debt, granted, but the continuing
"borrow and spend" fundamental philosophy, if anything so
silly can be called a "philosophy", is responsible for the degree
of escalation of the debt.

That will never happen. Period. High marginal rates with all sorts of
unfair
tax loopholes was the law prior to Reagan. Let's think of what's real, not
some high-taxation wet dream. What politician is going to float a marginal
rate over 70%?


What's real is that we didn't have these kinds of deficits until
Reagan, and the most apparent relevant thing that happened
with Reagan was lowering the tax rates on the wealthiest.

What's also real is that the pre-Reagan financial policies produced
stagflation, such that the mortgage rates in mid-1980 were 15%. Certainly
you're not so naive as to think returning to the pre-Reagan tax package
would restore only what you believe was "good", but not any of the negative
ramifications.

The other thing that's real is that the lower quintiles paid more in taxes
than they do today -- a return to the pre-Reagan package puts millions of
people BACK on the tax rolls who today are not. There is even less chance of
*that* occurring than a return to the high marginal rates.

If you're going to advocate a return to a particular policy, you're going to
get the bad with the good.


9/11, while a shock, was not expensive on a National Debt
scale, and Afghanistan was a small war compared to the
unnecessary Iraq war. We wouldn't have gotten into war
against Iraq if Gore had been president.

Right so far.

Homeland Security
I regard as mostly a sham, since its main effect is to promote
the kind of control over the home population that fascist
states like.

The expensive parts of HSA have to do with passenger, port, and cargo
security. The parts you allude to are electronic, not people intensive,
and
relatively cheap. The expensive parts were going to happen anyway.

They were ??? "Homeland Security" itself wasn't
"going to happen anyway".

There still would have been a 9/11 Commission, and a set of recommendations,
one of which is the set up of an uberagency that managed intelligence and
security. That Commission would have made the same recommendations. If
you're suggesting that an HSA would not have been set up, you're suggesting
that Gore would have ignored one of the primary recommendations of the
Comission.

I doubt it. In fact, the Democratic party has been critical of Bush for
*not* implementing the recommendations of the Commission in total, have they
not? Are you suggesting that the Democrats, with a Democrat president,
should have picked and chosen from those recommendations as has Bush? And,
if so, does that not mean that the criticism of the Bush Admin for not
implementing all the recommendations is simply political manuvering?




Even so, we ran the FBI and CIA without the
deficits we've had since Reagan, so why would Homeland
Security be preternaturally more expensive?

See above.

Bush can't presume credit for "preventing another 9/11",
because there's still been more time between the two attacks
on American soil by foreign agencies (the attacks on the
WTC in 1993, and in 2001, during which period there was
no "Homeland Security"), than there has been since 2001.

Granted. I dislike that sort of reasoning myself.


What wouldn't have happened under a Democratic regime would have been
the
tax cuts and Iraq. Payoff of debt wasn't the cards in this cycle.


It looks like there isn't going to be an end to the tax
cuts mostly to the wealthiest under any Democratic
who's going to get elected this round. You yourself
said elsewhere that you wanted to keep your tax cuts.
That makes you part of the problem IMV, but your
personal benefit doesn't do you any good if the country
and the dollar it's based on fall out from under your feet.

Tax increases are not necessary to balance the budget.

We didn't have runaway deficits before the big
Reagan tax cuts, but almost continuously ever since.

This is simply wrong. The deficit was a huge issue in 1980, and was
considered "runaway" at the time. (Yes, it got worse.)

You're using the advantage of hindsight to determine the definition of
"runaway." Neither term (debt or deficit) means anything unless they're
expressed as a percentage of something, that usually being either GDP or tax
receipts. 5K in debt is huge if you earn 20K per year, but a pittance if you
earn 200,000K. The deficit in 1980 wasn't much different than today as a %
of GDP, and certainly today is less as expressed as a % of tax receipts in
real dollars.





<snip>


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.

Yea, but it's not "almost all."


Whatever.


<snip>


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.

I don't see it as misleading at all. I never claimed it was an exact
measurment. As long as it's not 90% or more, my point is made.


I guess that's what you think, since you've put
numbers to the general phrase I put out and then
held me responsible for the boundaries you put
on the phrase.

That's what happens when people toss out hyperbole.

I don't feel responsible for the fact that my nonspecific
term doesn't fit the number you chose to assign to it.

You don't have to watch my victory lap.

JG




.

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