Discuss the US Presidential Election & the Economy 2369
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?
Ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Small Government (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not just have a forum section? (Score:3, Interesting)
Too many Americans wind up settling for the "lesser of two evils," and this is the ultimate election for that, I think.
Incentives (Score:1, Interesting)
The real story is the media (Score:5, Interesting)
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:any evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
The Canadians seem to know something: during the Great Depression not a single Canadian bank failed. This time around, at least so far, the same thing.
Re:The real story is the media (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: The reason for the disdain of Conservatism (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in the US, the reason we have the right to bear arms is because the founders of the Constitution essentially said "If we fuck up, take us out." - point being, the government should act in your benefit only, as that is the way it was intended when it was founded.
Conservatives have proven time and time again they don't think about consequences, and they assume what is good for them is what is good for everyone. I don't know about you, but when I vote, my vote is supposed to count for ME and what benefits me, but also what benefits everyone else around me and everyone else in my country. (Side note: A healthy economy and NOT pissing off the rest of the world with military occupancy is good for my country)
After hearing all this neocon rhetoric over and over and being disgusted (Ann Coulter especially comes to mind), I can't say with any kind of conviction I can morally support anyone with opinions like that.
They've made irrational choices, they've been WRONG plenty of times, and they've outright LIED to us to further their own agendas. Not that liberals don't have some folks who are downright nuts, but by and large the conservative movement has proven itself to be untrustworthy on several fronts and, quite frankly, un-American.
(Disclaimer: Discussion thread. The preceding is my humble opinion.)
Re:Incentives (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:any evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
That is why I will walk to the somberly walk to the polls with head bowed and pull the lever for McCain. My head and heart are with Bob Barr, but there is reality to contend with.
Both houses of Congress are controlled by a Democratic majority. Obama has voted 97% of the time with the Democratic leadership, and nothing I have heard about or from him has led me to believe that he is anything other than a warmed over 60's style activist acting as a mouthpiece for a socialist agenda. History has shown that when one party has control of the entire legislative and executive branches of our government, the economy suffers. A president that will walk lockstep with a Congressional leadership that has shown it has an axe to grind (re: Nancy Pelossi's partisan speech right before the Bailout Bill was to pass the first time) is not what this country needs...now or ever.
An Obama presidency with a rubberstamp Congress, or a Democratic Congress with a rubberstamp Obama presidency, either way you want to look at it, will be disastrous.
Re:Small Government (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Agreed.
Also, I understand your wish for a small government, but for example: a national healthcare plan is "big government" kind of talk. Why can't we have a few things be "big government", while other aspects be smaller? Do you feel it would lead to "swelling" of all aspects of government? (Really, I am interested to know)
Ok..how about taxes? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm against Obama's plan to give tax rebates to people that do not pay federal income taxes. I'm sorry, but, if you get a rebate for something you didn't pay for, that isn't a rebate, it is welfare and income redistribution.
I don't like how Obama is planning to turn Social Security into a progressive pay system like income taxes. This is a major retooling of the system. He wants lower income people to start paying less of a percentage (possibly down to a zero point?) yet still recieve full benefits. This [aei.org] is an interesting article describing what BHO is planning to do with SS.
On the other hand, with McCain, he's wanting to start taxing heath benefits on employees rather than let them pay those premiums pre-tax. That BLOWS.
Why can't they just cut wasteful, federal spending....and let ALL tax payers keep more of their own money?
Historical graphs [Re:any evidence] (Score:5, Interesting)
The historical data shows that government spending goes up with Republican administrations, and stays constant or goes down with Democrats. Don't look at what they say-- look at the graphs.
It's not often mentioned, but a huge part of the current crisis is runaway government spending, which spiked to record levels under the Bush administration (much of it due to the war, of course-- "this war will pay for itself," they told us).
The Republicans criticize the Democrats for "tax and spend" policies, but the Republican policy, going by what they do (instead of what they say) is "spend spend spend spend spend." They don't bother to tell us, but spending money isn't a "tax cut"-- what it is is a tax on the future.
Anybody remember the surplus under Clinton?
Re:any evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
Ummmmmm. No, they weren't. I worked for a bank for nearly a decade, and amazingly enough didn't get caught up in the subprime fiasco. I do not know where this lie started. Banks are required to make a certain percentage of their loans in depressed areas, and are required to prove that they are not discriminatory in lending. This does not equate to the massive spate of 125% LTV loans, no proof of income loans, and blindly purchasing portfolios of loans.
Please stop letting Rush and Fox news think for you.
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cutting federal spending will almost ALWAYS rock the boat of some large, buff, angry man in a cell very close to yours. Instead, the objective becomes to take advantage of the prison guards, instead of pissing off your fellow convicts.
Life isn't fair... but that is the game.
The dirty secret of American capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it somewhere between hilarious and deeply disturbing that People can get up there and call Obama a socialist for wanting to tax rich people, while at the same time supporting the buying of banks by the federal government, which actually is socialist
You're actually right, but its the kind of socialism first described by Alexander Hamilton, rather than Karl Marx.
The dirty secret of American capitalism is that America has always been a socialist country when it comes to home ownership via central banks. Republicans and Democrats have created a system that is inherently socialist at the top and privately owned at the bottom. Like many things American, it anticipates some social ideas, and is a compromise that is ugly on the surface but works very well.
Everyone gets to own their own home, but the government gets either the benefit of property taxes and stability back, or, in the worst case, assumes the risk of the mortgages. Democrats want to bail on the bailout and this basic economic crisis and their role in it, and, if anything finally proves that Bush is an idiot, it was his utter failure to see that if he had claimed responsibility for this mess, then he could have also claimed responsibility for its successes, thus accepting the social goodness of putting 50 million people into homes.
I mean, really, after 30 years of putting people into their own homes, the government is only on the hook for a trillion dollars. Let's, see, a trillion dollars and a few tough weeks on the stock market for pulling people out of the slums and into nice little houses. That's a damned good deal compared to some other stupid stuff we've spent a trillion dollars on.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a big difference between the Republican party as represented in Congress now (and during G.W. Bush's first term) than the Republican party in 1995 after taking control of Congress. The Republicans, led by people like Newt Gingrich, were for the most part actually fiscally conservative. After opposition from the Republicans in 1995, Clinton pretty much abandoned his health care platform; before that he and Hillary pushed hard for some form of universal health care. Clinton was also fiscally conservative compared to many in his party. Income taxes were relatively low during the Clinton years compared to most of the post-World War II era, with the wealthiest paying about a 39% marginal tax rate (compared to levels over 50% in the 1960s and 1970s, and modestly higher than our current top tax bracket and that under Reagan). Both Clinton and the Republican Congress deserve credit for not increasing spending after taxing in a dramatic increase in tax revenue and generating the first federal budget surplus in decades.
However, once G. W. Bush came along and new Republican leadership emerged in Congress, the party transformed to become as fiscally liberal, if not more so, than the Democrats. The only thing conservative about their fiscal policy was the choice of recipients of federal spending. Reagan had a similar fiscal policy, and the liberal Democratic Congress at the time went along with his approach of cutting taxes without adjusting spending patterns.
My ideas... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sticking to the economy. I don't think either candidate gets "it". A few things that need to happen IMO for the economy to not only make a rebound but to also be strong fundamentally
1) Outlaw sub prime loans(i.e any loans that have significant bumps in the interest rate or require a significant down payment on those loans.
2) Pay down the national debt. High debt devalues the dollar and increases inflation.
3) Of course we have the distressing situation of American automobile manufactures cut jobs faster than new industries can replace them. Much of this is self inflicted. They should have been converting current vehicle line ups to to hybrids a long time ago. I like the idea of moving to a "green" economy where new jobs a re created in the search and production of cleaner and more efficent products.
It is with some hesitance I say this I am a Republican(albeit a liberal republican) and veteran of the USMC. I think we need to cut our defense budget as much as possible. Close all bases overseas Korea, Okinawa, Japan, those native people don't want us there we pay a lot of money to be there and the actual people who serve there don't like it there either(with some exceptions of course). We have the technology and ability to quickly moves forces to any location on the globe from the US.
Of course I am still in favor of combing the through other branches of the government to look for instances of fraud, waste and abuse and looking for way to make things run more effiecently.
Regarding Social Security we should get rid of the 92K cap. and consider raising the age benefits take effect.
One last thing regarding National health care, I am not opposed to the concept in and of itself I only worry about the tax implications. If it can be done with minimal effect on taxes then it should be done.
That's my take.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
Incidentally, I'd like someone to, someday, make a graph without interest on the debt.
In other words, which president would have balanced the budget if no president before them had spent them into a hole they had to pay interest on.
I suspect the differences between Democratic and Republican presidents would be even more obvious.
Clinton barely managed to balance the budget, and only by using money that eventually we'll have to pay back to social security (Better than having to pay it back to other people.)...but he also was paying 238 billion, more than 10% of the budget, to pay for Reagan and Bush I's excesses, and without that, he could have more than balanced the budget in actuality.
It's too late (Score:3, Interesting)
USA pop. projected to grow to about 450 mil (50% increase) by 2050 which will make everything below worse
World oil production by 2050 to be about 25% of current rate -- not a pretty picture especially when the third world can't afford fertilizer and transportation of food
Baby boomers leaching off the economy as a greater fraction of the population (me included)
Politicians afraid to ask any real sacrifice of us
Ideas for sacrifice: make cost of living for Social Security about 1% less than actual (for 2009 4.8% vs 5.8%)
Increase tax rates on those who can afford it. Note Bill Gates has about a billion shares of Microsoft stock which pays 52 cents a share dividends which he pays 15% tax on. Likewise for many other folks, just look at company annual reports at what these folks get paid.
Declare energy emergency and push nuclear, wind, geothermal power. We are going to need this power for transportation.
Maximize use of electrically powered trains for transportation.
65 mph speed limit
Cut cost of medical care by setting max price on drugs. No coverage for Viagra.
Just wishing of course since about half the country is listening to Joe the Plumber for advice.
Under an Obama administration (Score:3, Interesting)
You'd be exempt from paying tax on capital gains from small business investments [barackobama.com]. Such an exemption would encourage investors to buy equity to help finance start ups rather then buying equity in big corporations. In a way, it would dampen the need for small businesses to get loans for capital improvements.
Obama's philosophy is things work better from the bottom up rather then trickling down from the top. Make life easy for those with the least and they'll have a better time making a go of things and moving up the ladder.
Regan, and by extension Bush and the republican party, is about the idea that if you make things easy at the top, there will be more incentive for people to move up. The idea is that you provide a nice carrot at the top of the ladder, and everybody will want to climb up.
When this election is over, I believe history will show this election is the rejection of Regan theory of trickle down economics. We've tried it, and it just doesn't seem to work.
Will bottom-up economics work better? Will our nation have more success by making it easier for people on the bottom rungs in hopes they move up? Only time will tell...
Definitive Question: Does Trickle Down Work? (Score:2, Interesting)
Is there any definitive answer to whether trickle down economic theory works?
Does flat or regressive taxation make sense to encourage economic growth? Just like many other issues I tend to think the answer lies in the grey areas that our polarized political system seems to ignore.
I see this primarily as a balance between social welfare (not the government program) and economic growth. There's plenty of discussion around this comment [slashdot.org] but is there any real sense by the crowd here whether these two elements (society's welfare and economic growth/sustainability) are at odds with each other or if this is just more political rhetoric?
JGG
Goverment (Score:2, Interesting)
Economy is more important than the war... (Score:2, Interesting)
So we're on the brink of a recession/depression and the Economy is more important than the war. The Economy has ALWAYS recovered, and I am 100% sure it will recover again(Feel free to tell me I'm wrong if it never recovers), but the people at war are permanently dead. Why are we placing a temporary problem before a permanent one? Money can be earned, but we can't revive the dead....
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering that the average CEO...has been raiding pension plans
Citation? Pension plans have been declining since the 90s, which is why IRA's and other retirement plans were put into place.
I can tell you that I worked on the taxes of people who were making many times more than I was (as a graduate student) and who paid much less because of tax loopholes
Two things. First, did they pay less overall (ie you paid $1000, they paid $800), or did they pay less as a percentage of the amount earned? Second, what tax loopholes and why aren't they closed off? It seems that you want to solve the problem through treating the symptom instead of the disease.
The workers are putting in tons of work (albeit of a different expertise), and being cheated of overtime pay, healthcare and the works
How are they being cheated out of what is recognized as a benefit instead of a requirement? Why aren't they suing for their overtime pay or arranging for a strike? When you show me a worker who's exhausted their other options that are already well known and in place, then I'll start to believe that we should be redistributing income. Right now, it sounds like you want to use the federal government to solve a problem that could just as easily be solved on a lower level where the consequences of the decision will be more easily dealt with. The federal government should be the last resort, but it seems like that's the first thing most people go to.
It's not just the candidates; no one is listening. (Score:4, Interesting)
I read a lot on Economics because I intend to go back to school and get a PhD so I can teach during my retirement years. Paul Krugman, recent Noble winner, wrote a book called, "The Accidental Theorist." Now Paul is surely a Democrat, critical of right-wing politics, and inclined toward a liberal government, but he still sounds like a conservative when he talks about Economics. Why? Because there exist some discovered economic principles, proven over time, that even the most liberal Economists don't dispute. The problem is, neither Congress nor the Executive Branch listens to Economists. In the past, when they listened to Milton Friedman we got taxes taken from our paychecks, and when they listened to Alan Greenspan we got pretty good money management. Score: 1 1.
(To ward off a minor distraction; it was Congress, not Alan Greenspan, who dictated the "easy money" policies for sub-standard mortgage loans which precipitated our current situation.)
This election, is probably better analyzed by Sociologists than Economists. The models of crowd behavior certainly show what's going on better than any analysis of public economic opinion. Most of the population is woefully ignorant about even the most basic Economics principles. So, by pandering to the crowd's superstitions, candidates get elected on the size of their fans, not the issues. Here is a nice little article for those with the motivation to read it:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa594.pdf [cato.org]
For those of you who would criticize me for being a libertarian (small "l"), you might like to look at this chart:
http://blog.createdebate.com/2008/04/07/writing-strong-arguments/ [createdebate.com]
There is a link on this page to the original article by Paul Graham.
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Economy: a no brainer (Score:3, Interesting)
We've been living on credit cards since world war II. You can't blame one administration. The problem was easy money. If we had free market interest rates, the economy would grow much slower and people would have to be more careful with their investments. The added bonus would be that government would be forced to curtail its spending lest they drive those interest rates so high that nobody would be able to borrow. But instead, we're going to fight our easy money problem with free money as the bailout bill allows for Paulson to lower the bank reserve requirements to 0% and Bernake is about to bring fed rates down to almost 0%. Our problem is the banks and the fact that we allow them to legally counterfeit money. Right now, we're in the process of making the problem so much worse.
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Government hands out billions of dollars of welfare a year and most of it does NOT go to struggling citizens. Most of it is wrapped up in corporate tax credits or in under-valued water, mining, forestry, radio-frequency, grazing and other leases that convert public property into private profits.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
I'll take the libertarian "The government is not your daddy" position seriously when the libertarians start talking about the real welfare system.
It is important not to confuse Libertarians with Republicans in this and other respects in that the Libertarians, as part of their official platform, have long criticized any government bailouts, interventions, subsidies or any other government involvement which serves to alter or distort free market outcomes. Again, Libertarian != Republican so please take some time to understand our platform [wikipedia.org] before criticizing us for the positions of our opponents.
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:5, Interesting)
be forced to make me their equal
You judge equality by how much money someone makes? I'd hate to think like that.
Under Mr. Obama I would get more money and I would have to change nothing. That is not what I want.
So you're happy for rich corporations or individuals to get tax rebates (I don't know much about the US tax system, or any tax system to be fair, so I just have to go by people whining about the rich being made even richer through political corruption), but you don't want poorer people to get any breaks? Nice.
Personally I think it's good to ease up on poorer people, and then perhaps a few of them will be able to afford to send their kids to college. Then everyone benefits through better average levels of education in the country, which can only be a positive thing IMO (though I live in the UK so we have a different tax system, and it seems to be a lot harsher than the US one, but there are all kinds of other taxes that perhaps balance everything out.. then again, perhaps not). A tax rebate isn't about giving more to those worse off, surely? It's just about taking less from them. That's a similar idea but it's not exactly the same thing. Is it possible to actually get more in rebates than you paid in tax?
I used to think that higher taxes for higher levels of pay would really suck, but that was when I wasn't making that much money. Now I'm earning almost twice what I did when I was a student, so I don't feel like I'm struggling to get by anymore. The idea of more tax coming off my wages if I get a payrise doesn't worry me. I'm happy to pay a bit more tax (okay it's a lot more, it jumps from 20% to 40% on all earnings over £35k), and for those taxes to go back into running the country and even looking after those less fortunate than me.
My parents didn't have that much money when I was growing up either, but mum got money for each of us kids, which must have helped a lot (especially when my dad left the police and went to get an undergraduate degree). I remember my mum saying how she had less money once I turned 16. The downside to welfare like that is of course that some people just take advantage of it. I've heard that people in poorer areas often have kids just to get the benefits - and indeed most parents seem to treat their kids like shit in the housing estate next to where I work, always shouting at them. Once I honestly heard one shout "DON'T YOU FUCKIN' SWEAR!" at her toddler. *sigh*
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the UK, they merged the Revenue service, basically equivalent to the IRS, with the Social Services payout system, which pays money to the poor. Sounds like a good ides, because both parties need to know about your income do decide what tax you need to pay/subsidy you are awarded.
But actually it turned out a bit of a disaster because the Revenue is used to people with regular jobs and paychecks, and sorting out the balance at the end of the year. And the sort of people to whom a few hundred pounds under/over payment is not a disaster. But the Social Services clients are the sort of people who are in and out of jobs, and live from week to week. People who lost jobs didn't get their "safety-net" payments because the Revenue couldn't act fast enough, and ended up in serious trouble. And some people got over-paid, spent the money as they received it, and were threatened with starvation when the Revenue tried to claw back the overpayment.
The "efficiencies" didn't appear, and whole load of problems due to cultural differnces between different groups sprang up.
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:3, Interesting)
My original point was that there are several other methods for people to get what they deserve from the companies they work for that the federal government doesn't need to intervene, and that government intervention at a national level wouldn't work as well as a granular, state by state approach. I have yet to see why that's not the case.
Re:any evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait a minute. 'Socialist' and 'Capitalist' are words, with definitions and meanings. You can't redefine them just because you don't agree with the dictionary.
By any reasonable definition, Obama is *not* a socialist. He's a moderate capitalist -- to the right of Clinton, for god's sake.
Assuming you're not a troll, the rest of your post is just hard-core ignorance. Look up 'redistributive change' and realize that it has nothing to do with money -- it's a specific legal term that applies to civil rights.
The right-wing has hit Obama in any way they could, and that includes redefining words and phrases in any way that gives them an attack angle. They are lying to you, and you apparently are eating it up.
Stop drinking the cool-aid, man. Really. For your own sake.
Re:You've really bought the Propoganda (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. As someone wise once said, "The best government is that which governs least." I'd much prefer gridlock to one party having control of everything, regardless of which party it is. The people who cry "BUT NOTHING WILL GET DONE" miss the entire point. The less government does, the better.
Maybe because Slashdot is a geek site (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also interesting that I can tell your political leanings from the articles you cite. It's all about "voter suppression," most instances of which are better known as enforcing the law and trying to prevent fraud.
Nothing about Obama's extensive voter suppression during the primaries to steal the nomination from Clinton. Not enforcing the law types, but dirty tricks to single-out Clinton supporters and keep them from voting. Nothing about ACORN committing massive registration fraud either.
Re:any evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
How can you consider a system with fractional reserve lending, a central bank, and fiat currency to be a "free market". The market is decidedly UN-libertarian and UN-free.
If Greenspan's policies were libertarian, he would have abolished his own job and the federal reserve and returned to sound asset-backed currency (like it says in THE CONSTITUTION).
Please don't consider de-regulation of certain industries while maintaining a grossly unbalanced system to be libertarian.
Re:Socalist (Score:3, Interesting)
Also can anyone actually explain why we should be bailing out these banks in the first place?
Oooh, car analogy time:
Let's say you are driving through the scorching desert and your car breaks down far far away from nearest civilization. A tow truck happens to drive by and the driver agrees to tow you to the nearest garage in return for some consideration. Halfway there, it turns out the tow truck driver is an idiot who has failed to fuel up his car sufficiently and it coasts to a halt. Also, in your conversation with him you have found him to be a complete and total asshole with very few redeeming qualities.
With all this in mind, can you think of any reason why you might want to bail him out by transferring some gas from your tank to his?
Re:any evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't watch Fox News because I've never seen News on it. There is a factual snippet, followed by an hour discussion that is an opinion piece following it. CNN is boring as hell because it's actually news. People like Fox because it's interesting. And it's interesting because it's *not* news. It's mostly opinion pieces that are done to look like news, not a simple reporting of facts and conjecture, if any, should get done with a specific mind to keep it unbiased.
Is there crap coming from FOX? Sure enough. Same can be said of the other news organizations, which is WHY one needs a variety of sources, and get all perspectives.
But Fox is a waste of my time. I have to watch for hours to get 5 minutes of news. They'll "report" a 5 second quote, then spend 30 minutes on commentary about it. That's not news. That's not a news chanel. That's not a source that should be on anyone's list. Bias in the news is reporting some things and ignoring others. They may or may not do that any differently than anyone else. What they do differently is present mostly opinion stuff and trick people into thinking it's news.
The saddest part of all of this is that the press has done a horrible job this election. Most of the press is practically humping Obama's leg, and I can't believe that he only has a 4% lead considering it. THAT is the real story this election, why does a person who has all the money, all the free press proclaiming him Messiah, all the wonderful articles in the NYT manage only a 4% "lead".
I don't read the NYT. I read my local paper and check out some online sources. I would say that the coverage has been about equal. Perhaps you are discussing the quality rather than quantity, but that would be a different issue.
Fairly straight shooter on economics: (Score:2, Interesting)
Obama, by a whisker (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I watched the last debate along with a couple of friends. I realized that it would be criminal to let this old angry coot into the White House along with his ditzy sidekick who is more suited to a late night comedy show than the serious business of governing, especially when we are in such a mess. There was a time when I used to find McCain's gestures and way of acting appealing. Even supported him then. However, its clear he has gone senile since. Joe the Plumber does not even have a license to be, ahem, a plumber. He makes nowhere close to the amount of money he would need to buy the business of his employer. And his employer does not want to sell it. The fellow even thinks Social Security and the progressive income tax are socialist ideas. They might well be, but its about the only certainty that people retiring these days can count on.
Plus, I am completely ticked off by McCain's antics - he attacks Obama personally almost all the time, and never gets specific how his tax plan is simply = Obama for middle class / 3 + tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. I can understand how it is impolitic to defend tax cuts for the wealthy in this environment, and why McCain won't come out and say that is what is fighting for. However, that kind of a weasel is not the McCain I knew back when I voted for him.
I am still not happy about Obama's FISA betrayal, but the fellow puts specifics on the board in explaining why he thinks he is better. I do not agree with all of his positions, but at least he is not hiding his plan behind the smoke screen of character attacks on his opponent.
I will be voting early for him to avoid any creative ideas the local Republicans might come out with on suppressing the vote on the 4th.
Re:Thanks for the positioning (Score:3, Interesting)
it's only a distraction away from the real issue of prohibitions against consensual acts and abusive authority
I agree that this issue would be very important, if we could be sure that we'd be around in 50 years. However, my reading of climate science puts that very much in doubt. It would seem to me from rapidly mounting evidence that if we don't take immediate, profound action on environmental issues, there will be no more consentual acts by anyone. Here [youtube.com] is a quick introduction to global risk management, although the presenter has since addressed the underlying questions in great and depressing detail in related videos. Of course, if he's right, then our best chance is to boot the corporations out of the government.
Big business will continue to run the government no matter who wins
I disagree on this one as well. Look at whence the two hopefuls are getting their money. McCain's comes largely from corporations, which is pretty much business as usual. But Obama's comes more from normal citizens (a July report [jedreport.com] put Obama's mean donation around $68 to McCain's $5754 (allowing for loopholes)), and there's a very interesting breakdown of what kinds of citizens here [neoformix.com]: McCain's individual donors tend to be CEOs and corporatists (and a smattering of the usual rednecks), whereas Obama's tend to be, well, everyone else. A week-old look [jedreport.com] puts McCain's median inidividual non-loopholed donation at the limit of $2300, compared to Obama's median, perhaps a little under $200. So it is very reasonable to hope that Obama will answer not to corporations but to the people.
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:3, Interesting)
"So you're happy for rich corporations or individuals to get tax rebates (I don't know much about the US tax system, or any tax system to be fair, so I just have to go by people whining about the rich being made even richer through political corruption), but you don't want poorer people to get any breaks? Nice."
I and many others who have worked their way up from very meager beginnings don't want a tax code that penalizes anyone. What part of PERCENT don't you understand? If someone who makes 251k a year will be taxed at a certain percent then someone who makes 2k a year should also be taxed that same amount. Don't they use the same roads? Same schools? Same fire department? This is class warfare at its finest. Also you make the HUGE assumption that the government will do "good" with the taxes it receives and be very efficient with it. Care to show me an example of a well run government program? How about an efficient one? Private charitable companies are considered bad if less than 90% of the income coming in doesn't go directly to those who need it. They take in a fraction of the >3 TRILLION in taxes that the government gets.
"Personally I think it's good to ease up on poorer people, and then perhaps a few of them will be able to afford to send their kids to college. Then everyone benefits through better average levels of education in the country, which can only be a positive thing IMO (though I live in the UK so we have a different tax system, and it seems to be a lot harsher than the US one, but there are all kinds of other taxes that perhaps balance everything out.. then again, perhaps not). A tax rebate isn't about giving more to those worse off, surely? It's just about taking less from them. That's a similar idea but it's not exactly the same thing. Is it possible to actually get more in rebates than you paid in tax?"
You make quite a few assumptions, but speaking as someone who came from a poor family that didn't take any government funding, it is quite the opposite. "If" you see your parents getting by on other peoples tax dollars and they seem ok, then you start to believe it is ok to live the same. Then you start t feel entitled to that money, and thus a welfare state is born. In my situation my father chose to go out and work 3 jobs to put food on the table, and to keep the table. This had a profound effect on my family and taught us that NOBODY bails you out and to make sure you can take care of yourself. Obviously this is radically different than many of the socialist views espoused here and on places like Digg.
"I used to think that higher taxes for higher levels of pay would really suck, but that was when I wasn't making that much money. Now I'm earning almost twice what I did when I was a student, so I don't feel like I'm struggling to get by anymore. The idea of more tax coming off my wages if I get a payrise doesn't worry me. I'm happy to pay a bit more tax (okay it's a lot more, it jumps from 20% to 40% on all earnings over £35k), and for those taxes to go back into running the country and even looking after those less fortunate than me."
Again, you make the assumption that the government knows what is best and can and will distribute that money correctly. You have faith in the government "cradle to grave" and I have faith in the citizens to do what is best with their money. Again, it bears in mind that you also assume the government is efficient. They are the opposite of efficiency because they
"My parents didn't have that much money when I was growing up either,"
Sorry to hear that, but again, that doesn't mean going more socialist is the answer. Quite the opposite is really true.
Enforcement (Score:4, Interesting)
Enforcement is good. Selective enforcement is of course wrong.
The many allegations were officially made [cnn.net] by the campaign of Hillary Clinton, and they are far worse than any allegations I have seen against Republicans.
Did I say voter fraud? No, I don't believe I did. I guess this kind of fraud is okay with you though, as long as it serves your purposes.
Re:Thanks for the positioning (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's why I'm voting against a planned economy (Score:4, Interesting)
More regulations, judiciously applied, would have prevented this crisis.
Which regulations? Give details.
I'd personally be interested in regulation like "You can't offer to insure someone for $x or to borrow $x from them unless you keep y*$x on hand to pay them off if necessary. And yes, this applies to anything that will make you similarly financially liable to them, whether you call it 'banking' or 'savings and loan' or 'insurance' or a 'CDS' or a 'rose by another name'."
Sell people a specific argument like that and you might get surprising agreement - I'll bet you can even get some of the "No! Regulation evil!" libertarian types to insist that y should be 1.0 unless the customer signs a contract stipulating otherwise.
But the vague word "regulation" just tells people: "We need more economic decisions to be made by people who have no financial stake in making them correctly, and who just agreed to give hundreds of billions of your dollars to people who made them incorrectly." You can probably convince lots of people of that argument, too, as long as you phrase it more obscurely than I did. But you still won't be able to make it into a good idea.
Re:Yes (Score:2, Interesting)
True if we were talking ONE acorn employee. Maybe even 2 could happen in different states. 3 convictions in 3 states for voter fraud by the same organisation is starting to become less "it's just the employees". How many does ACORN have ?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003982533_acorn30m.html?syndication=rss [nwsource.com] one instance, 7 defendants, at least 3 guilty, All ACORN, Seattle
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/missouri-acorn-voter-fraud-scandal.html [blogspot.com] another, 16 defendants, all guilty, All ACORN, Kansas City
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=3433 [traditionalvalues.org] Ohio, 600.000 fake votes
In the conviction (first article) these people state that ACORN management specifically asked them to do this. But don't worry. Obama is giving them "at least 10%" of the $700 billion bailout package. Surely that'll improve their behavior, right ? But it's possible that he just doesn't know, right ?
possible as in "it's possible you get hit by a meteor right now" that is.
Re:Charity as an alternative to the gov't is a mir (Score:3, Interesting)
....The Federal government is limited in its actions by the 14th Amendment's requirement to provide equal protection under the law...
So you are equating "protection under law" with handouts and forced wealth redistribution? That idea was foreign to most, if not all societies until Carl Marx and those of like mind came along. Before then, charity for the less fortunate was an individual choice rather than a societal coercion. The second commandment God gave was to love your neighbor as yourself. In the early days of our country, most people, even if they did not believe in the Bible personally, gave at least some lip service to that by freely giving to the needy either directly, individually, or through the churches or other faith based organizations.
As for taking care of the old folks, that has for millennia been the responsibility of the next of kin, usually the children. Nowadays we have to send the police after selfish men, just so they will take care of their own children and their mothers, not to mention their aging parents. Human selfishness is a social cost no government can wholly counteract.
Before health insurance was invented, doctors were less money hungry and were interested foremost in the health of their patients, not whether a given patient was able to pay. Many of the old country doctors would treat indigent people for nothing, because in those days people became doctors in order to serve their fellow human beings, rather than having a way to make a big income. Their hippocratic oath still was paid attention to. Therein it says something about not doing harm. Does that harm include taking a person to the cleaners financially?
Watch the second debate, then. (Score:5, Interesting)
You should probably watch the second debate, then. Compare the two candidate's answers the following question (trimmed for space, full text of debate here [cnn.com]:
Brokaw: There are new economic realities out there that everyone in this hall and across this country understands that there are going to have to be some choices made. Health policies, energy policies, and entitlement reform, what are going to be your priorities in what order? Which of those will be your highest priority your first year in office and which will follow in sequence?
McCain: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom.
[...]
[W]e can do them all at once. There's no -- and we have to do them all at once. All three you mentioned are compelling national security requirements.
Obama: We're going to have to prioritize, just like a family has to prioritize. Now, I've listed the things that I think have to be at the top of the list.
Energy we have to deal with today [...]
Health care is priority number two [...]
And, number three, we've got to deal with education so that our young people are competitive in a global economy. [...]
Note which candidate prioritized and which one didn't.
Re:Short answer (Score:3, Interesting)
After seeing all those polls last year showing Guiliani as the clear GOP frontrunner, I find it difficult to believe that they have stable predictive accuracy.
Re:Charity as an alternative to the gov't is a mir (Score:3, Interesting)
So you are equating "protection under law" with handouts and forced wealth redistribution?
No. I'm saying that when we have handouts and forced wealth distribution, we don't get to choose favorites and let the scary brown people or the people with funny hats or the pagans, the gays, or whoever we (as a people) don't like today all go hang because they don't go to the same churches as us or have the same skin color as us or vote for the same candidates that we do.
The second commandment God gave was to love your neighbor as yourself. In the early days of our country, most people, even if they did not believe in the Bible personally, gave at least some lip service to that by freely giving to the needy either directly, individually, or through the churches or other faith based organizations.
And if they were doing such a great job of it, we wouldn't have Social Security today. Can you deny this?
As for taking care of the old folks, that has for millennia been the responsibility of the next of kin, usually the children. Nowadays we have to send the police after selfish men, just so they will take care of their own children and their mothers, not to mention their aging parents. Human selfishness is a social cost no government can wholly counteract.
This is why we cannot rely upon the kindness of neighbors to replace the government. While the government cannot wholly counteract human selfishness, it is in a far better position to mitigate it than small organizations that rely on its opposite. Not only was it ineffective in the 30s, but it would be even more disastrous today.
Before health insurance was invented, doctors were less money hungry and were interested foremost in the health of their patients, not whether a given patient was able to pay. Many of the old country doctors would treat indigent people for nothing, because in those days people became doctors in order to serve their fellow human beings, rather than having a way to make a big income. Their hippocratic oath still was paid attention to. Therein it says something about not doing harm. Does that harm include taking a person to the cleaners financially?
I would agree with the sentiment, but healthcare has changed significantly from the time when old country doctors could carry all the tools of their trade in a handbag and in their heads. If an indigent person has come down with MRSE, a regiment of vancomycin will cost $70/day (plus hospitalization expenses). That comes down to a cost of about $1600 for a full treatment regimen. An MRI machine can cost $2 million to install and $800K/yr to operate. Etc.
While doctor's fees are very high in the US, a lot of the cost of modern healthcare is equipment costs that simply won't go away. Not only can't we rely on doctors to do "the decent thing," like they used but, but we can't even fairly ask them to. Other costs like administrative overhead (particularly from dealing with multiple insurance carriers) and malpractice costs (particularly compensatory damages) could be greatly reduced in a public system in a way that charity-driven operations could not.
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh for christ's sake, where does the notion of land ownership come from? Sovereignty. It is not your land it belongs to that entity which is willing to protect it by force: Your government. The only way such a notion exists as 'land ownership' is because your government enforces such an idea, much like the idea of fiat currency when you think about it. There is no inherent ownership of anything other than that which is enforced by some powerful entity: Your government. It could be you in principle but something tells me you aren't going to be so willing or able to physically defend your property without the help of a more powerful entity. Sure I bet you think you'd be sitting there on your porch with shotgun in hand should all else fail but in reality you would lose in this scenario to the bigger dog.
So its socialism to the left, socialism to the right, if you think about it. Get over yourself mate, the idea of ownership as you understand it is gifted to you by a more powerful entity which actually enforces it. I suggest that the logical conclusion of this line of reasoning is that you own what that powerful entity tells you you own, and good luck to you if you believe otherwise.
Goddamn libertarian ;)
I never believed he wasn't a citizen (Score:3, Interesting)
And the Democrat (yes, Democrat) who brought the suit is a tin foil hat nut job.
But the arguments against this suit amount to saying that nobody, and no entity, in the country has standing. Kind of strange that a constitutional requirement can't be enforced.
Still, Obama's stubbornness in keeping the records sealed doesn't lend itself well to his trustworthiness and claims to desire openness. I bet the simple fact is that it will show the birth certificate Obama released as being a forgery, and that will hurt his credibility.
Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score:3, Interesting)
To pay for our UHC, Aussie taxpayers have a 1.5% levy on their taxable income, in the US there are a miriad of state and federal schemes that cost the average US taxpayer around 2-2.5% of taxable income. This is a very important point, you pay MORE to the goverenment for the privalage of not having universal cover and that's BEFORE you pay for private cover.
The US has ~40 million people not covered by anything. In Australia everyone is covered, nobody has to face the choice between health care and bankruptcy, that's right NOBODY not even a "minority".
Australia is placed in the top 10 for health outcomes, the US is around 30th (ie: near the bottom of the 'developed' countries list).
As for paperwork, I don't have any - I simply walk into a surgery, show my card and wait to see the doctor. There are rarely more than a couple of people in a doctors surgery and it's unusual to wait more than half an hour or so. I recently went to the UK and took ill, to my surprise I also recieved "free" medical care in the UK because the two governments have an arrangement to look after each other citizens. The only paperwork involved in that episode was my passport.
From an outsiders perspective your health system was trully the envy of the world 40yrs ago but now "the most expensive health system in the world" is also widely seen as dysfunctional. It will not change one bit until your politicians see the problem of health care as a bipartisan issue that needs to be managed by proffesionals rather than used as an ideological club to bash each other over the head.
Re:Thanks for the positioning (Score:3, Interesting)
In the normal view of politics, Democrats are leftist, Republicans are right. Democrats *generally* agree with socialism as a solution, Republicans don't. Centrists might go either way.
I'm a SLIGHTLY right of center, centrist... who likes to vote either to dead-lock the system (so they HAVE to work together and insane ideologues aren't in FULL control), or anti-incumbent... as in "Well, I don't know who this moron is, so he must not be representing me very well, or something great would have come out of his being in office."
When you say "things staying the same", what particular "things" are you talking about? Let's have a real conversation, not a platitude phrased in the form of a cliche'.
Reality is: Change happens no matter who is President.
The things a PRESIDENT has control over are vetos over BAD legislature, and Supreme Court appointments.
They have influence but NOT CONTROL over all this stuff BOTH idiots are promising the public.
The public apparently didn't pay attention in "Social Studies" or "Civics" class. Or they just like the rah-rah and can't be bothered to stop and think very often. Probably both.
As far as the 90's go... 90-93' was G. W. Bush, and 93 through the turn of the Century was W. J. Clinton, so I'm not sure what your point is. Want to make a real assertion about what you think happened with real details?
If you want to go back that far, we could go ALL the way back to Carter and the laws and systems that essentially FORCED banks to lend to 30% more people than they ever had before under the banner of Fannie Mae "guarantees" which were EXTENDED under Clinton... everyone's enjoying pointing at the Republicans saying their lack of oversight is "causing" the current credit/finance problems, but no one wants to go back and point out that 30% of the people who HAVE loans, simply should NOT. They never could afford them, and still can't.
That particular fiscal disaster is NOT over yet. People who HAVE to move to follow a job or whatever... is a LARGE percentage, and they're going to be in serious pain for years to come, trying to get banks to accept their short-sales, or paying off huge losses in the property they never should have purchased in the first place.
Ahh well, I'm just a spectator, and trading the market whether it goes up or goes down. The best rallies always happen during a bear market... down down down we go... normal 7 year cycle... recession's just starting. Get used to it. Neither Obama NOR McCain can stop it.
I just feel that under Obama, we'll see some really bad legislation passed along party lines, and he will be forced by his party to swallow hard and sign it, even if he is a good person and disagrees with it. At least SOME of it.
Re:platforms are irrellevent at this point (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong. The panic of 1907 is exactly same as today:
A Republican moralist in the White House.
War fresh in [public] mind.
Immigration fueling dramatic changes in society.
New technologies changing people's everyday lives.
Business consolidators and their Wall Street advisers creating large, new combinations through mergers and acquisitions, while the government was investigating and prosecuting prominent executives--led by an aggressive young prosecutor from New York.
The public's attitude toward business leaders, fueled by a muckraking press, was largely negative.
The government itself was becoming increasingly interventionist in society and, in some ways, more intrusive in individual life.
These are views from 1907. See the similarities?