Ok, sure lets compare major policies between the 2..... Afghanistan is a wash cause both parties would have approved it.... Iraq is all Bush Medicare part D cost 410 billion over 10 years, Obamacare is set to cost 1.5 trillion over 10 years...... Ill give you that as a wash like i did before Bush - TARP, Obama Stimulus, once again ill give obama a freebie, most of TARP got paid back, none of the stimulus did. Bush tax cuts - Obama extened with new added tax cuts.... Bush TSA - Obama Consumer protection agency.... Please Ricter explain to me where these big discrepancies are in Obamas spending vs. Bush, I have been more than lenient letting Obama off for both the stimulus (vs. TARP) and Obamacare (vs. Medicare part D) Those are both losers for Obama when compared to Bush's spending...... The only discrepancy now is the Iraq war.....I will fully concede the Iraq war was All Bush......Where is this so called shift Obama took towards paying for shit that "epik-titios" is talking about? From my point of view all i see is a bunch of fucking bureaucrats, both Bush, and Obama, and a willing congress..... spending more and more money, with reckless abandon, there is no discernible difference between bush polices and Obama policies.....Both of them didnt think they had to pay for spending, and both of them didnt think they had to pay for tax cuts..... and that is exactly why we are running 1.3 trillion dollar deficits.....
I don't want to argue in detail, as you and Epik have been doing--budget analysis is a full-time job, clearly. ; ) My point of view on the entire issue is still basically the same, all these numbers have to be considered in context, and their real effects have to properly understood, not "we're all gonna die", which is too common here. For me, "in context" is a constant referral back to our level of debt, who owes who, what percentage of GDP it is, can it be serviced, is productivity growing, what are the effects of rapidly reducing it, and, this just in, how long can the debt be carried: mainly macro Comment on macroeconomic issues Saturday, 26 May 2012 Government debt and the burden on future generations Simon-Wren Lewis " In an earlier post, I looked at how we might think about the âcostâ of additional public debt, if that debt financed public investment, and our concern was intergenerational equity. Here I want to examine the question of how great the burden of extra debt is on future generations, if that debt financed not investment, but consumption spending or tax cuts that had only current period benefits. Our initial instinct would be that this burden is bound to be positive. The current generation gets the benefit of additional spending, or a tax cut, but future generations pay the cost in terms of finding the money to pay the interest on the debt. However, if the additional debt is never paid off, and remains a constant share of GDP, then there is a situation in which it is not a burden, which I discussed in that earlier post. Let the âgrowth corrected real interest rateâ be r-g.[1] Suppose r-g=0. In that case the interest on the outstanding debt each year could be entirely paid for by issuing new debt such that the total debt to GDP ratio remained unchanged. The debt is only a burden on the final generation, but there is no final generation. Normally r>g, so taxes do have to rise (or government spending has to fall) to pay part of the interest on the debt. Debt is a burden on that account. There is a trap that we can fall into here, which is the following. Suppose all the debt is owned domestically. What the government does is raise taxes to pay interest on the debt, so this is a transfer from tax payers to debt owners. The government is just taking with one hand and giving back with the other. If society is just paying itself, how can debt be a burden?" Article continues: http://mainlymacro.blogspot.ca/2012/05/government-debt-and-burden-on-future.html Edit: oh, the current account data and trends are also part of the context, productivity gains are just a part of the battle, my bad.
Ahh, here's lucrum again, constantly looking to diminish arguments by "analyzing" the man making them. (And going to the trouble to look up the man's last post, LOL.)
By the way, I disagree with "the stimulus never got paid back". Propping up economic activity, which is taxed, means that revenues have been propped up. To some extent the stimulus is (being) paid back.
So if you believe spending pays for itself yyou must believe in the flipside and that tax cuts pay for themselves, too, right?
I understand your argument, your arguing that spending increases have a stimulative effect, thus the cost is not the same as it originally seems.... something i agree with, to some extent....... except that the longer the money takes to move around, the less the stimulative effect is, this is the problem with government, and keynesian economics... So what is the best way to stimulate the economy? Get the money into the hands of the consumer as quickly as possible and let it work its way through the private sector.... so the best way to get the money into the hands of the consumer is to either stroke a cheque to each citizen (which left wingers would never do) or cut taxes on the lower class leaving them with an extra amount to spend each month which will work its way through the free market..... The least stimulative effect is to put the money through the government via increased spending, as it stalls at every different level because of red tape and bureaucracy, and the money can not possibly circulate at the same speed it can in the private sector
...and sorry to say they are also wrong, FY 2009 was signed by Obama, not Bush. Obama is responsible for what he signed into law. If not then we clearly open the door to assign blame for Reagan's deficits on a democrat congress as they forced him into concessions that deepened the deficit. Your chart and premise are incorrect epiktetos, FY 2009 is Obama plain and simple. The transfer of $140B is understating this by a lot, Obama topped off Bush's budget request with about $400B new spending then signed it, it is his. He didn't have to do that, he had choices, isn't that the point of have the authority? This entire premise of lefties is so stupid- that somehow percentage change from insanely high deficits define fiscal conservativism. It is EASY to be 'conservative' in your sense when you are spending at nosebleed high levels.
Isn't that just the rub? If this type of spending were paid back then economic policy would be really simple, just print and spend. This has been tried countless times using the same logic. Integrated over all gov't spending, it never works.
I do, if they land on the right persons. I've said as much during the argument with jem and Brass some time back. It's ludicrous to say that tax cuts never pay for themselves, it is not hard to imagine circumstances (not our present circumstances) where they would. I think tax cuts and spending, done in the right way (for the benefit of the many) both return a certain percentage back to government. I have a hard time thinking it ever reaches 100%, even if no economic or natural disaster comes along in the meantime. So, yes, spending prods can pay in part for themselves, under certain conditions, and tax cuts, the same.