So, Who'has read all the way through Obama's Budget?Follow

"Lack of inaction."

=) I wondered if you were going to get that. The market will fix itself. It doesn't need a president seeing how many trillions he can spend. If anything his stimulus plan has hurt the chances of an economic recovery.

and gravity.

Far more likely

Edited, Mar 3rd 2009 3:55pm by Nobby

Invent an anti-gravity machine, Nobby. I'll give you all my Star Wars guys if you do.

For once, I agree. However, I don't think it's the Obama administration that's going to end up with the power. Who controls the Fed, after all?

This is because the economy needs to be overseen by an impartial group with nothing to gain.

Well, a failing economy means less tax revenue, which means less money with which to buy fancy toys and defend the shores.

So yeah, the government wouldn't want a failed economy.

Now, a shadow organization of powerful men behind the government? Maybe. The US owes the Fed an awful lot of money right now.

ETA:

Edited, Mar 3rd 2009 3:15pm by AshOnMyTomatoes

Not one republican was happy with the way W spent the taxpayers money, aside from the war on radical islam.



Ash,

It isn't about tax revenue. If it were the govn would have implemented a national sales tax long ago, and done away with the federal income tax. It's all about control over peoples money. That's far more important than increasing the tax revenue.

And right up until the mortgage crisis crashed the financial markets, he appeared to be correct.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Ahhhhhahahahahahaha.

Right up until I declared bankruptcy, having 1000 maxed out credit cards seemingly boosted my income....

Right.


He is massively increasing spending *and* massively borrowing money to do it. The only way he's going to be able to pay that back is by raising taxes down the line.

No ****. This may be why he stated "we're going to raise taxes". You are the ONLY PERSON ON THE PLANET who sees this as some sort of magical clairvoyance. Here's another tip for you, Captain, Obama won't be appointing any pro-life SCOTUS justices. I know, right??? Shocking!!!!


It may be later this year, or sometime next year, but he'll have to do it. How many times have I talked about how both sides "play games" with the deficit. Republicans lower taxes and generate a deficit, then use that deficit to push for cutting spending. Democrats increase spending and create a deficit, then use that deficit to push for raising taxes.


The minor difference being, of course, raising taxes on high income earners *really does* generate revenue surpluses, while lowering taxes on high income earners, just facilitates the transfer of wealth from poor to rich.

Hey, maybe we'll get a VAT! Wouldn't that be great?


Edited, Mar 3rd 2009 6:01pm by Smasharoo

Stop saying "the government" forced banks to make bad mortgages. All the government did was say that banks couldn't discriminate based on race, gender, location, language, etc, so the banks took that as a sign from the heavens that they should relax regulations regarding INCOME.

Stop even arguing the point "bad mortgages" have anything, at all, do to with the credit market problems that led us down this path. THEY DON'T. Bad quantitative analysis that ignored systemic risk because it was assumed the government would be forced to step in led us down this path. That mortgages happened to be involved was UTTERLY INCIDENTAL. It could have been life insurance, or junk bonds, or wagering on when certain inland lakes in Alberta would freeze solid. The problem was an intentional, calculated, cynical, willful ignorance of systemic risk, because it was clear that if the system began to fail, Government would provide capital. This led to risk ratings that were far, far, far, too low for many traunches of investments.

Here's an easy to understand metaphor. The FDA allows rounding of the amount of fat when corporations label food products. If there's less than 1g of Fat, it can be labeled as 0g. There are regulations against gaming this system, but there weren't in investment banking. So, if there were no regulation on the FDA system, I could sell buckets of lard, list the serving size as .5g, the fat content as 0g, 10000 servings per a bucket and claim the bucket of lard contained no fat.

In banking, risky investments were packaged with less risky ones just aggressively enough that they could be rated to be essentially risk free. They had less than .5g of fat per serving, you see. Then these packaged vehicles, which were fairly small in total value, were grouped with millions of other similar, apparently very low risk vehicles, sliced into shares and sold as high grade, low risk investments. What the asset at the end of the bullshit rainbow was hardly matters, it's a ludicrous fools errand to try to argue either side of a flawed premise. If no one ever defaulted on a mortgage, it would have simple happened with something else in similar fashion.

Lol. Cause generating a deficit by lowering taxes is so much more like maxing out the credit card than generating 3 times as much deficit by increasing spending...

Fact1. Obama is borrowing massively more money than Bush did.

Fact2. Obama is borrowing that money because he is massively increasing spending, while most of Bush's deficit occurred as a result of tax cuts.


Which one is more or less "fiscally responsible"?



That he was lying when he promised not to raise taxes? That he was lying when he said that he'd lower taxes for 80% of the people? And that he's *still* lying about both of those things?

You may have know this Smash. But then you approve of massive taxes. Most of the people on this board, let along most voters in this country, were led to believe that Obama was running on a "no new taxes" platform...



In the short term, sure. But so does borrowing money on your credit card. Hence, the analogy. You're taking a bigger piece of the pie. But the size of next years pie is a function of the size not taken this year. Each year, the pie gets smaller. You may not notice at first, but eventually even the larger slice wont be big enough, and you'll have to take more, and more, and more. Until there's no pie left that isn't controlled by the government.

Which is exactly the objective of the ideology you hold.




No. It facilitates the creation of wealth in the first place. What wealth moves from poor to rich occurs as a result of previously poor people becoming wealthy as a result of greater opportunity. But that's not a bad thing.


It just never ceases to amaze me that you actually do seem to want people to lose everything to the government. You would be happy with a government that controlled all jobs, all wages, and collected all profits, wouldn't you? That would be your utopian world I guess... Brave New World to the rest of us though.