Discuss the US Presidential Election & the Economy

A number of folks have been submitting topics that indicate that they want to have a serious discussion on the issues surrounding this election. Since we're under a week now, I've decided to run a series of discussion stories to give you guys a place to discuss the issue. So here's the first one: The Economy. It's the biggest topic these days, eclipsing even war as the most important issue to most Americans. But how will that affect your choice next week? And why?

Oh, Is there an election going on?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I hadn't noticed

any evidence

[iocat (572367)]

Has there been any evidence shown that either guy running for president has any idea how the economy works? All I've seen is platitudes and empty stateents from both of them.

Re:any evidence

[Lord_Frederick (642312)]

Anyone that has a clue how the economy works is smart enough to not be in politics.

Re:any evidence

[Atriqus (826899)]

It'd probably be more effective if we knew the credentials of the economists they're talking to... assuming their decisions are being run by competent people in the field.

Re:any evidence

[Eunuchswear (210685)]

It'd probably be more effective if we knew the credentials of the economists they're talking to

Well, in the case of McCain it seems to be (among others) Kevin Hassett, author of "Dow 36000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market", published in 1999. http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/06/other-list-mccains-economists.html [blogspot.com]

Re:any evidence

[the4thdimension (1151939)]

Has there been any evidence to show that ANYONE knows how the economy works? The world economy is based on emotions and speculation, which are faaar from exact sciences. Find me anyone who can predict the market and knows how it works and I will find you a billionaire keeping a secret. No one knows how it works exactly, there are some that just read it better than others.

No one knows how to bend the economy in certain directions, they just take stabs in the dark and hope for the best.

Short answer

[icebrain (944107)]

Has there been any evidence shown that either guy running for president has any idea how the economy works?

Nope. One says "we'll just give people money, that'll fix it!" and the other says "we'll just cut taxes on businesses, that'll fix it!"

I just hope that whichever candidate wins realizes that he does not have a "mandate" from the people to implement every policy idea, and swing far to the extreme positions of his party. This is going to be a very close race, and he will have wound up being elected by just a slight majority of the fraction of the eligible voting population that bothered to actually vote. Almost nobody who votes for a candidate agrees with him on every single point; it's quite possible they disagree on everything but one or two issues.

Point is, winning by a tiny fraction does not mean everyone wants radical "change". 90% might indicate that, but 50.7% doesn't.

Re:any evidence

[bentcd (690786)]

Has there been any evidence shown that either guy running for president has any idea how the economy works? All I've seen is platitudes and empty stateents from both of them.

Like most politicians, the leading contenders don't have personal expertise in the field of finance so, no, they don't know a whole lot about how the economy works.

Nor should they need to. It is not necessary that the president has personal expertise in all areas relating to the running of the state. What /is/ important is that he surrounds himself with competent advisors.

What you need to watch out for is a candidate who /presumes/ to know /exactly/ how to resolve the situation and who justifies this with a reference to some ideology or other. Chances are such a candidate is much more interested in carrying through his ideology rather than in actually solving any problems. Candidates that devolve into generalities, however, are much more likely to enlist actual competent aid when it comes down to actually getting something useful done.

In this case, then, the question generally boils down to "does my candidate accept that there is a problem and that action is necessary?" and both top candidates seem to fit the bill.

Re:any evidence

[cvd6262 (180823)]

Saw this on a bumper sticker:

We're screwed: 2008.

I couldn't summarize my feelings any better.

Re:any evidence

[dmomo (256005)]

Our CEO cannot program for shit. But he makes a great product happen. I would worry less about how much the President knows about the inner working of the Economy and more about whether that person has the skills to make decisions based on intelligence taken from the advisers they employ. Fingers crossed.

As far as the empty statements go. Well, that's politicking. Yes it sucks. But each of the two main candidates in this election have clearly polarized strategies for our Economy. Promisises aside, we can assume that each will pursue the general direction of their part. Let's hope whoever wins will follow their strategy in earnest (i mean assuming it's the person we voted for :) ) with their sights on straightening out this mess.

... and I feel fine.

[symbolset (646467)]

Lots of money moving around. If you're quick you can catch some of it - or lose everything.

Me, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing - go to work and pay my bills and tough it out.

The election? I'll be glad when it's over and everybody can shut up about it. Whoever wins is in for a lot of stress.

Ridiculous

[eldavojohn (898314)]

Well, for those of you that might think to argue in favor of "conservative" liberals or Reaganomics, check out this interesting graph [cedarcomm.com] that illustrates National Debt by president. While it's not always true that the president can control spending (it's mostly congress & senate proposing them), it sure does nullify any idea that Republican presidents spend less than Obama.

They're both going to spend the hell out of our money. The only difference might be whether it comes from us or gets put on our nation's maxed out credit card.

Neither of them are going to solve the economic problem. This economic downturn is too deep and complicated for it to be put down as Bush's fault or for either of them to solve. So it's not going to affect my vote, what's done is done. How they propose to handle it sounds fairly similar--more preventative regulation. And I'm pretty much all for that. Who's the dumbshit that was allowing institutions to hand out loans to people without even checking their income level? Yeah, laissez faire is great and all but in its purest form idiots will ruin things. Need a happy middle ground.

Re:Ridiculous

[Strawser (22927)]

Should we also mention that Congress, not the President, makes the budget.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget [wikipedia.org]

The President writes & submits the budget, Congress votes on it, amends it, votes some more, etc., then sends it back. Then the President signs it into law.

is obama a marxist?

[Adult film producer (866485)]

I read in a very important email that Obama may be a crypto-marxist and may have converted to judaism during his teenage years :~( When this is revealed it will blow the lid off of civilization.

Small Government

[dethndrek (870145)]

I'm a small government person. At least that's what I would prefer. However, we haven't seen anything like that with this Republican administration and I see no reason to believe that we would see it with another one. In addition to that, we've just effectively taken ownership of several incredibly large entities and in effect, nationalized them. Because of these reasons, I see no prospects of smaller government from either party. This removes my one philosophical reservation about voting for a democrat. Therefore, Obama.

Only one question to ask yourself

[by Anonymous Coward]

Are you going to vote for Barack Obama or are you a racist?

The real issue: voter suppression

[MarkWatson (189759)]

I don't care a whole lot who wins, if it is a fair election. That said, from what I have been reading, the republicans have pulled out all the stops in suppressing voters in groups that are polling strongly pro-Obama (e.g., active duty military, students, minorities.)

Who ever does win will not be able to keep election promises since the economy is probably going to keep getting worse.

Speaking of the economy, I think that the only real money that the government should spend is on critical infrastructure (education, roads, defend our borders in the least expensive way possible, support local agriculture and in general push local sustainable business and infrastructure,...) Notice that I did not include government sponsored health care (would be nice if we could afford it though.)

I think that it is obvious that the "being an empire" thing is not worth the money that it costs.

flint knapping

[plopez (54068)]

I'm learning to flint knap so that I will have the skills I need to make it in the new economy. I am also working on learning how to build an atlatl.

National Debt!!!

[kalpol (714519)]

Neither major party candidate has mentioned addressing the crushing national debt or deficit spending. If I'm going to listen to platitudes, I want to hear about reducing spending and paying down the debt, not battles over who gets tax cuts.

Economy: a no brainer

[Anivair (921745)]

The economy is a no brainer for me, and I'm not going to duplicate long posts I've already made elsewhere, but it works like this: Bush broke the economy, plain and simple. There were probably other factors, but everything he did only made it worse. McCain voted with him 90% of the time, especially on the economy. People are under some delusion that under a republican president they'll pay less taxes. Not true. Unless you're rich (and if you're not sure, you're not) you'll pay less taxes under a democratic president. But also, paying less taxes doesn't make you richer. if you pay less in taxes, but more in property taxes, mortgages, and gas prices, then where is the savings? And if gas prices rise, then so does transport and your dollar is worth less. And that makes you poor as well. Hell, i'd vote for obama even if he were raising my taxes. I might shell out a hundred extra bucks in taxes, but if I make it up in savings spread out over the year, then good for me.

The real story is the media

[Orgasmatron (8103)]

The media have been at best negligent in reporting on the economic issues at hand. At worst, they have been complicit.

The causes of the housing bubble and meltdown aren't a secret. The identities of the people that have been calling for investigation and oversight aren't secret. The names of the people that have blocked every attempt to address the problem for the last 5 or 6 years aren't secret.

Why does the news media consistently accept the bald lies of the people responsible? Why don't they bother telling people the truth?

Does anyone really believe that if the roles of the parties were reversed there wouldn't be serious investigation?

Re:Thank you, Taco

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Agreed. Now we just need someone to act as a mediator over all the comments. That way we won't have to sift through all sorts of useless drivel. Any volunteers?

Re:Thank you, Taco

[bepe86 (945139)]

Whoooosh

Re:Thank you, Taco

[yali (209015)]

CmdrTaco: "have a serious discussion on the issues surrounding this election"

You must be new here.

Re:None of this is important.

[Shakrai (717556)]

Nobody's vote counts, and as soon as we realize that we can start actually fixing problems.

So your purposed method of fixing the problems is to allow the same asshats to keep getting re-elected year after year because you don't bother to vote or get involved?

It takes courage and conviction to resist the "vote or die" crowd, but it MUST BE DONE.

Yeah, it takes a lot of courage and conviction to sit on your ass watching American Idol instead of taking 15 minutes to go to the polling place and vote.