maybe I am naive but...Follow

No, I think that was the Hundred Years' War...

I am trying to resist the temptation to jump on this one...

....must...not...post...d1ck jokes.....

Ah... Was wondering how long it would take for Smash to pop his head in here...



Can we please cut the hyperbole out for just a second Smash? I assume by "entire history of the country", you are including the Great Depression? Need I say more? Or can you conceed that you just are just making stuff up because it sounds good?

Economic recovery, somewhat by definition, is when the economy is doing better today then it was yesterday. Um... so yeah. The fact that people are getting jobs, companies are moving back into the black, and consumer confidence is up are all good solid indicators that we are in fact in economic recovery.





Hmmm... More like the percieved lack of jobs, and only if the Dems continue desperately to try to convince people that things are vastly worse then they really are. While I'll admit that lots of people were scrambling for jobs in the 200-2002 time period, that's an old dog that just don't bite today. I work in the field that was hardest hit during that time period. I think I have a bit better of a feel for how the employment proscpects are right now. They are *vastly* better then they were 2 years ago.

I interview people for IT positions. Trust me. The desperation that some people had a couple years ago simply isn't there today. People aren't scrambling for jobs. They're taking their time and using job interviews as ways to improve their economic position, not just to keep them off the street. Huge difference.

Economics is not a static thing. It's a process. Are you seriously suggesting that the events that went on between 1995 and 1999 had absolutely nothing with the economic downturn of 2000? Every serious analysis of what happened comes to the same conclusion: We over-estimated the growth of many tech fields, especially internet businesses. Speculative investment in those fields led analysists to believe that there was more money to be made there then there really was. This was made worse by the y2k bug, which caused mostly tech companies (the ones who relied most on computer systems) to budget *alot* of extra funds for IT departments in the last two years of the millenium then they would during normal operation, which in turn made the profit margins in IT work *seem* to be greater then they were, which led to more rosy estimates of that field as well. When the bubble burst, alot of companies went belly up, and a lot of people were out looking for jobs.

That's where your economic crash of 2000 came from. It had absolutely nothing to do with any economic action taken by the Bush administration. We would have had the exact same thing happen if Gore had won. Who was president at the time was irrelevant. What's telling is that in less then 3 years, the Bush administration turned what was by all accounts an economic disaster back around. We're now seeing growth in virtually all the areas that crashed in 2000.

Looked at another way: We *didn't* have another Great Depression. Now maybe that's not an accomplishment at all. Maybe we would have recovered exactly as we did if Gore had been in office. But in any case, you can't say that the Bush administation "drove the economy into the ground". They did no such thing, and anyone claiming such is simply spreading mud.


fishtaco. First off. The difference in budget size isn't that great. It's not like Clinton spent 10M and Bush is spending 500M. More like Clinton spent 10 and Bush is spending 11. Still a significant increase, but not on the scale you keep implying.


You also implied from your question what the difference was between Rep spending and Dem spending in general. That's what I addressed. I'm not a Bush fan by any means. I certainly don't think he's the sharpest knife in the drawer. I also am not defending *his* budget. Heck. I've hardly looked at it. I'm defending the Rep economic approach in general (since that seemed to be what you're asking). Remember that we're also arguing about a budget proposal. Congress is still going to have to approve it, and will probably trim some parts and add others. Everyone starts out asking for the moon (or mars in this case), then settles with what's realistic. We have an adversarial system. The "other side" will try to take away stuff just on general principle. You may as well start with more and let them trim, then start with what you want and end up with less. Yeah. It seems silly, but that's the way budgets work.


Um... Just to address one other issue in general. 100% of the Bush budget is not about the Iraq war. It's not a matter of chosing between spending money to shoot people in the face, or spending money to feed the hungry. That's a gross oversimplification that may look good on a protest sign, but has only marginal relevance to what's really going on.


How many people do you know who are starving in the US? Anyone? How much money do we already spend on that? As I said before. If you are giving stuff away, an eternal line of people will form for the handout. At some point we *have* to say: "Gee. We're spending enough on this, let's look at other things". I would hope that we can agree that that point arrives far before 100% of our budget. It probably arrives far before 10% of our economy. So, it's quite possible to fund a war in Iraq without increasing the number of starving people in the US by a single person. The entire Iraq/Afghanistan wars, when totaled and applied to a single years budget cost us less then 3% of our budget. Yeah. That's still a lot of money, but hardly so much that we can't also afford food for our own citizens...

It was actually Gore's fault, since he's the one who invented the intarnet.


ps. I love the fact that it came out to $666B. That's just beautiful.

Lol, not the first time you have called me a plant or sock puppet actually, nor the first time I have posted I had about 400ish posts on the old board as Hamiltion Starsucker, and was a member of Smash's guild til well it disappeared. I again quit playing EQ. I know Tacosid, Patrician, Baldisking and a few others from FV. BTW, I dont like Smash and probably doesnt like me. We just happen to agree on this to some degree.

As to answer I am bored at work I type budget get some hits and real easy come up with a way to refute you. You tried to massage the numbers to say that the difference would be like 10% when we find that the numbers actual numbers are like Bush spending like 50% more then Clinton and us still having a huge hole to fill in that we started with.

I just cant get the Vodoo math that you do I guess. To me losing like 470 billion a year ( Clinton's profits + Bush's losses) is mismanagement and if you are spending like 50% more in your efforts to get less government your either a liar or an idiot.

Ok. If that's the case, then could you please list the exact dollar amount of Clinton's 1999 budget and Bush's 2004 budget, and include a source for your data. You keep claiming that Bush's is X amount larger, but haven't yet actually put any numbers out there to support your argument. You started out by saying that it was like Clinton's budget was 10M and Bush's was 500M (yes, I'm aware that's not supposed to be real numbers, but you're still implying that Bush's budget is 50 times the size of Clintons). Now you are saying it's 50% higher. If I keep arguing with you, how much more will you adjust your numbers?

I just want to see the numbers. Then we can all see how "large" the budgets are in relation to eachother. I assume you wouldn't have brought up the issue of budget size if you didn't actually know the sizes involved...



Again. Support the "spending 50% more" with numbers please.


Also. You are looking at total dollars alone and making assumptions. That doesn't tell the whole tale. Let me provide a link that's interesting:

http://www.cato.org/fiscal/2003/factsfigs.html

Look at the first chart. Does it surprise you to find that the amount of federal revenues (that's the money that the Fed has to start with for the year) is a smaller percentage of the GNP (that's all the "money" in the country), in 2004 then it was in 2000? Hmmmm... "smaller government" ring a bell?

Note that a surplus or deficit is the amount left over or run over *after* you subtract what the government actually spent from the amount the government made in revenues (via various taxes and tarriffs and such). The point being that (I'm going to make up numbers here) if I increase taxes and generate 1.6T in government revenues, but only spend 1.4T in my budget, I will end up with a 200B "surplus". If I tax less and only generate 1.2T in government revenues and also have a budget of 1.4T, I will have a 200B "deficit". In both cases, the "size" of the government was the same. The amount we spent was the same. Both governments miscalculated the amount they'd gererate in taxes in comparison to their budgets by 200B. Neither is "better" or worse then the other.


That's not "voodoo" math. That's very real math. The government does not have the luxury of being able to predict with 100% accurace how much revenue they are going to generate with this year's tax plan. They can't. The best economists in the world can't do that. They just estimate and keep going. You simply can't look at deficit or surplus numbers and derive anything useful about the budget in particular or the economy in general. They are really just indicators of whether you over or under estimated the amount of tax revenue you'd take in that year.

Ah... Ok. So let's look at numbers for cbo.gov then, shall we?

Link (this is how you do a source btw!) :
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1821&sequence=0

Outlays in 2003 = 2157.6 billion
Outlays in 1999 = 1701.9 billion

That's an increase of 26% over 4 years during the Bush administration.

Outlays in 1995 = 1515.8 billion

That's an increase of 12% purely during the Clinton administration during the same number of years.

So yeah. Bush is increasing the size of government outlays. However, the increase is vastly smaller then you are letting on (only 26% in 4 years, and that's only about 10% more then we'd get "normally"). Actually, I don't feel like doing the math right now, but we could calculate an average increase of budget size per year over the last 30 years or so and get a good idea of what's going on.


The really telling info is farther down the page (and something I mentioned in my last post).

Look at outlays as a percentage of total GNP (that's our whole economy). You'll see the following figures:

1995 20.7
1996 20.3
1997 19.5
1998 19.2
1999 18.6

2000 18.4
2001 18.6
2002 19.4
2003 19.9


Um... The average budget as a percentage of total GNP is *lower* during Bush's administration then during Clintons. That, coupled with the fact (that you keep going on about) that Bush's budgets grew faster then Clintons, tells us two very important facts:


1. The GNP grew much faster during Bush's first term then during Clintons last term. This is absolute fact. There is no other way to account for a higher budget growth *and* smaller size as a percentage of GNP, unless the GNP grew faster during the last 4 years then during the 4 previous years.

2. Bush's government is still "smaller" in relative terms then Clinton's was. Size has to be relative to GNP, or it's meaningless. So in fact, your entire arguement from the beginning is patently wrong.



Um... Just to throw in one more plug for Rep economic theory. One of the reasons for running a "small government" is that you are leaving the money in the hands of production instead of in the hands of government. In many cases, the gains by leaving 200B of money in the hands of production over time will outweigh the costs of running that same 200B as a deficit. The basic theory is that if you put that money into the right spots (means of production), your economy will grow, so the totals down the line will be higher (meaning you get more for your 18% of the GNP, then you did 5 years ago with 20%).

The numbers on that page would seem to support the Republican economic model rather then the Dem. By taxing industry less, and not being afraid to run a deficit, we've been able to grow our GNP at such a high rate that even though our government has grown faster then it did 5 years earlier (much faster) the GNP has grown even more. The end result is *more* money available while impacting our economy less.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you can get 26% more tax revenue while actually taxing a smaller percentage of the total GNP, you must be doing something right.


Oh. And all that whilst in the middle of (in Smash's words): The biggest economic downturn in US history. Hmmm...

Edited, Thu Feb 12 21:12:57 2004 by gbaji

Agreed. There are certainly going to be variations based on geographic area and type of work. But that's true of any time period. I could just as easily state that your anecdotal evidence is only one city (ok, two!), in one state and one particular subset of employment.

Which is the norm nationwide? That's a bit harder to say. But that's also why I disagree with folks who look at some very basic figures and leap to conclusions from them. It's easy to find some area where employment is hard hit. Especially during "upheaval". But that doesn't mean that "upheaval" isn't good in the long term.

How many wagon wheel builders are there employed today? Wouldn't you say that at some point, as we went from using wagons to using cars, that some number of people ended up unemployed and had to find new jobs? Would we have been better off not having our industry develop the automobile (thus requiring that new skills be learned by our workers)?

Also, even raw unemployment figures aren't telling the whole story. Which is better: A 10% unemployment rate with an average unemployement duration of 1 week, or a 5% unemployment rate with an average duration of 1 month?

The latter is what you'll often get (ok, it's an extreme really) with Rep style economics. By encouraging industry and growth, new products are built, and competition is increased. This will result in a greater turnaround of employment, but also means that there are more "new" jobs out there for people to get.

The former is what you'll tend to get with Dem economics. Jobs are more stable. "protecting" jobs is important. Unions gain strength. Industry is discouraged from building new products and encouraged to just keep making the same things over and over. This certainly allows for a more stable employment, but it can also stagnate the economy. If you do find yourself out of a job, it might take you a long time to get re-hired simply because there's a shortage of new jobs out there, and presumably the current products already have enough labor allocated to build them.


I'm certainly not going to say that high turnover rates are a great thing. People want some safty and stability in their lives. I'm just suggesting that usually, large amounts of unemployment mean that some industry that used to employ lots of people has failed in some way. That's not always related at all to a federal policy. It does just happen, and just like our wagon wheel builders, often is just an indication of progress...

This is were you will try and blind with smoke and mirrors but I have the facts and it is a joy to show them to you. I thought you were some kinda engineer or something gbaji, a shame remind me not to use what ever it is you design =)

Twist me some numbers Vodoo boy =). Try and make the Bush's not spend crazy =) Of course you have no choice you got the biggest tax cuts. One last time and lets see if you ignore it again or try and warp some more voodoo math to cover it up, What exactly is Bush spending his extra money on that will save 99% of Americans money on while he is shrinking the size of the government?

Edit--as I said in the quote that you tried to pathetically parse I used the "proposals" that Bush has already submitted for 2004 and 2005 to get to the 2.2 number, my orginal number was based on Bush's proposal for 2005 which is 2.4 and Clintons rounded up average of 1.6 which is exactly 50% dumbass.

Edited, Thu Feb 12 22:55:37 2004 by flishtaco

I'm sorry but I have to call ******** on that statement. Smaller government does mean less spending which also means less taxes. This is exactly what the republican party used to be about. Barry Goldwater is a perfect example of what the republicans used to stand for. Unfortunately in this day and age both major parties are for bigger government and less personal freedom. They just disagree on what to spend the taxes on and which freedoms should be restricted.

If we as a society truly wanted a smaller government, less taxes and more freedom and personal responsibilty we would vote for candidates that lean more towards a libertarian philosophy. Unfortunately most of todays society has grown so used to the "cradle to grave" government that we have now that no one would know what to do with themselves if they actually had to take care of themselves with the minimal government intrusion that our forefathers fought for and spelled out for us in our Constitution. It really is a shame that we have gone so far backwards in the last 100 years as to have less freedom now than we did prior to the Revolutionary War that we fought to gain those freedoms.

Um... What twisting? What voodoo? All it requires is the ability to add and divide to be able to pull the exact numbers I generated out of that data. Being an engineer has nothing to do with it. If you've got a 10th grade education, you can do the exact math that I did.



Um... Stawman? Exactly where did anyone state that Bush's goal (anyone's goal) is to save "99% of Americans money"?

And shrinking is still correct. Bush's federal outlays so far in his administration, are the smallest in relation to GNP then any administration in the last 30 years.

this just isn't that hard.




Ah... I see. So it's an accurate statistics gathering method to compare the average of a 4 year span during Clintons administration to, not just a single year of Bush's administration, and not just the highest budget year of that administration, but a year that's still only "proposed", so we dont' know what the actual federal outlays will be...


Nice bit of work there fish. Look. Anyone with even a tiny bit of common sense can see that you're comparing the data specifically in a way designed to exagerate the differences. If you compare apples to apples (averages of whole terms), you'll find that the numbers I provided are accurate. You can't compare different sized sets. Comparing 4 years to 1 will throw off the numbers. In the case of the budget, a cursory glance at the charts shows that the numbers go up, by several percent ever single year. Thus, averaging a larger number of years will automatically exagerate the trend depending on the direction. If you compare 1 year to the 4 that follow, you are averaging in 4 years of "normal" budget growth, which will make that 4 year average seem high. If you averge 1 year to the 4 years previous, is will make that 4 year average seem abnormally low.

That's just basic math and basic statistics. If you can't grasp that, then you really shouldn't be arguing about sizes of governments, much less critisizing anyone. You simply don't seem to have the tools to make an analysys, so maybe you should just stop.


Dyzalot. I can understand what you're saying. There are lots of different aspects to "small government". Probaby as many opinions on it as there are politicians. Most people include any of a number of factors: Real size (raw dollars), size in relation to GNP, size in terms of projected future growth due to programs initiation, and (interestingly enough) an inverse of size in relation to taxes levied. There are some amounts of each of those concepts applied when one is talking about "small government".

The problem with the libertarian idea is that it's unpractical in todays world. Sure. If we decided that we didn't want things like the interstate system, and interstate commerce laws, and any public education, and we were happy with just closing our borders and letting the rest of the world fend for itself, then I suppose libertarianism would work. However, most politicians (and most of the people, hence why they get voted in) believe that we need to provide some amounts of each of those. The difference really is about how much and in what way.

Edited, Fri Feb 13 15:29:20 2004 by gbaji

Yes, there were indeed times when our country operated without a deficit, but those were in a different era where our global interests were considerably smaller than now, and we were not the foundation of the world's financial institutions. Our GNP was smaller, our budgets were smaller, our tax base was smaller, our everything was smaller and more introspectively focused.

Our world has changed considerably since then.

Totem