2012: Govt spending now porportionately lower than in some Reagan years.

You like to take minutia and play it like it was a reflection of the entire obama term. Stop grasping at straws and join the real world.

obama wins the prize hands down for fiscal irresponsibility. Biggest deficit ever, both annually and on average and total over his term. Biggest debt ever. Worst recovery since FDR, but not quite as bad as carter. No budget since obama took office.

 

And what came of that spending?

 

A bunch of military hardware.

 

A bunch of military hardware.

 

Jobs, the end of a recession, end of the cold war, lower unemployment... Nuff said.

 

You're arguing that Reagan's spending bonaza produced those results? I agree with you it helped.

 

The current situation is much different than those days. Yeah Bush was right the first time to start throwing money at it but then before and real resets were seen Bush/Obummer kept it going and then Obama followed it up again. I do not necessarily blame either of them for following the economists advice I do blame both for being too stupid to realize they were following a flawed economic model.

Obama has shown no awareness of his flaws and needs to go on that alone. I really have no idea if Romney can help fix it but where we are headed is just the wrong direction.

I do believe that the Obama social policies have contributed and will contribute - if re-elected - to many people becoming sedentary and giving up as they have welfare an no need to get a job. This in turn lowers revenues and causes more job loss (they are not spending their own money) and more dependance.

Obama has got to go.

 

When Obama took office, the economy was tanking at a -9% real rate, losing 700,000+ jobs a month, unemployment was skyrocketing upward, and the stock markets were crashing in the worst recession in 80 years. The housing market was destroyed and the economy was headed straight for a depression.

But now the economy has been growing steadily for three straight years, the private sector has added more jobs every month for 32 months in a row, stock markets are up over 100% from their recession lows, the unemployment rate has fallen from above 10% to 7.8%, and over 4.7 million additional private sector jobs have been added since Jan 2010.

And this despite an obstructionist Tea Party Republican party whose stated top priority is not to work with the president to improve the economy but get him out of office.

Sure seems like we are headed in the right direction to me, especially compared to where the last Republican president left us. And so we should put in another Republican with the same policies as the last one, why?

Well sure. We don't really have a recession. It's just that about 12 million Americans all decided to get lazy and live off those luxurious unemployment benefits all at the same time.

Conservative economics makes sense. If you ignore reality.

 

False. The only thing the Stimulus did was pay off the unions and green industrial donors to the DNC. There was almost no economic benefit whatsover for anyone who wasn't in a union or a member of the failing green industrial complex.

Stop calling stagnation "recovery" it is insulting to the intelligence.

Democrats have bad ideas. If we want Obama out it is because he represents everything that is wrong with economic thinking in America. Obama represents the welfare queen and their interests and cannot provide any significant economic growth. What you keep calling recovery is stagnation.

Becuase this stagnation that we see now is the best you'll ever see under the Obama administration.

Pretty much because because good Americans who aren't lazy take whatever jobs are available and if necessary 2 or 3 of them. They don't sit around on unemployment for 2 year waiting for a mythical factory job that is never going to come.

Oh and yes.. 70% of a 20 bucks an hour is a (*)(*)(*)(*) good wage to earn doing nothing but sitting on your ass pretending to look for work.

 

False?

Jeez, some of you conservatives have such a distorted, misinformed world view you get from listening to Sean and Rush. No wonder you think like you do. Your head is so full of distorted lies and bull(*)(*)(*)(*) you can't even think straight and don't know black from white.

Every word I wrote is true.

"the economy was tanking at a -9% real rate"

Here is the line to the BEA.gov website. http://bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp

Educate yourself instead of relying on Glenn Beck for your misinformation.

Quarter - Real GDP $2005 - % chng annualized
2008q3 13,186.9 -3.7%
2008q4 12,883.5 -9.2%
2009q1 12,711.0 -5.4%

"losing 700,000+ jobs a month"

And here is the link to the BLS website for establishment data: http://bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp

Educate yourself instead of relying on Sean Hannity for your misinformation.

Month - Total nonfarm - change
Nov-08 135040
Dec-08 134379 -661
Jan-09 133561 -818
Feb-09 132837 -724
Mar-09 132038 -799


"unemployment was skyrocketing upward"

And here is the link to the BLS website for the unemployment rate: http://bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp

Educate yourself instead of relying on Rush Limbaugh for your misinformation.

Month - unemp rate
Oct 08 6.5%
Nov 08 6.8%
Dec 08 7.3%
Jan 09 7.8%
Feb 09 8.3%


and the stock markets were crashing

And here is the link to the a site that has Dow stock historical data: https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI

Educate yourself instead of relying on Murdoch News for your misinformation.

On it you can see that the market tanked from over 14,000 to 8,000 when Obama took office, and was still tanking down to about 6600 in March 2009 before it turned around. Now it is just about back up to its high at over 13,500.


The fact that you would call all these assertions "false" shows how disconnected from fact you really are. Based on your ignorance and misinformation, I can see why you might hold some of the views you do. Consider reviewing reliable sources of actual factual data if you want to have a more accurate world view.

 

I've said this before so here goes again; IMO comparing government spending to GDP is meaningless. How about comparing government spending to total personal income? The government serves People...not the GDP. If you want to know about government spending, then look at per capita data...

 

Thanks for sharing your opinion. IMO you statement is completely wrong. The overall size of the economy matters. If you didn't look at that we'd be at per capita levels from the 1700s.

That could be appropritate. But gross personal income generally correlates with GDP, since it is the dominant component of it (from an income calculation).

That can be appropriate as well depending on what you are trying to compare.

 

Government is in place to deal with the citizenry. If you wish to measure government performance, then measure it to something within the citizenry. For example, 60 years ago in constant dollars the federal government costs about $2500 per US citizen; today that number is more like $11,100 per citizen. How many US citizens do you know who can afford $11,000 in taxes per year? We have a grossly mismanaged and unaccounted federal government spending $3.5 trillion per year and the collective citizenry CANNOT afford this! No matter all your focus on extracting more money from the wealthy or whomever it is at the political moment, the cost of the current federal government is simply too much to handle. There are only three choices to this; continue trillion$ deficit spending, greatly increase taxation on ALL Americans, or greatly reduce federal spending. Your Obama is now talking about another cash stimulus or tax credit, either because the economy remains horribly fragile or because he is always pandering for votes! Do you actually think Obama is going to encourage any of the three options mentioned above?

 

GDP has to do with the "citizenry" as it is the cumulative total of all goods and services they produce, and good measure for the level of govt than can be supported.

60 years ago, mean family income in constant dollars was $34,696. Today it is $81,007. US citizens can pay that difference and still be way ahead.

Millions can afford that and a lot more easily.

Govt spending today is proportionately the same or less than it was during the Reagan years. And under Obama, it continues to improve.

However, we CANNOT afford tax cuts that cost the government proportionately $800 billion in revenue every year!

 

Less than 1/2 of the citizenry are producing something. GDP has no relevant relationship to government spending.

The median household income is $50,500.

The non-partisan Congressional Research Service has estimated the 10-year revenue loss from extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts beyond 2010 at $2.9 trillion, with an additional $606 billion in debt service costs (interest), for a combined total of $3.5 trillion. This is $350 billion per year. Based on figures from the CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation, federal taxes would increase by a total of $423 billion in 2013, if the tax cuts are allowed to expire. So the number is between $350 billion and $423 billion...not $800 billion.

 

Sure it does. The size of GDP reflects gross national income and profits which is relevant to the amount of tax revenue a nation can reasonable generate to support government activities.

And?

Who said anything about the Bush tax cuts? Though they certainly have had a huge effect on revenues, as your quip states.

 

So a person who doesn't pay income taxes doesn't produce? That's so utterly wrong I don't even know where to start.

Considering the equation for calculating GDP includes government spending, we'll chalk this up to ignorance...

GDP = C + I + G + (X - M)

Want to guess what that G stands for? ....

 

Please, do try ti substantiate that with evidence. I'll wait.

The reality is mathematics that you choose to ignore.

As shown, this statement is complete and utter nonsense.

If GDP is the metric being used, it can certainly be justified. Whether that measurement is useful, meaningful or appropriate is another conversation entirely.

 

Lets do the math. Taxes rose 4.44 times, income rose 2.33 times. So the growth of taxes almost doubled the growth of income. And you call that "still being way ahead"?

 

Assuming the Govt figures are correct. Mean family income in real dollars is about 46,000 richer. Govt costs $8500 more. After paying for Govt, mean family is still 37,500 richer. Way ahead. In fact, even after paying for our expanded Govt, the mean family income is still twice as rich.

Plus we don't have hordes of old people dying in the street and all the other benefits of our expanded Govt.

 

If you can't rationalize that less than 1/2 of the US population are producing something, this is your challenge to understand...not my job to teach you 'rationalization'.

Why not calculate the GDP per the total number of cats in the USA...if someone wishes to use this metric then you believe it is 'justified'...

 

What are you even saying? All but ~8% of the US population are working, so the more absurd claim would be that 92% of the population go to work, but only about half of them "produce" anything. It can't be rationalized because it's ludicrous.

Because that would be stupid and my only contention is that you were wrong about government spending having nothing to do with GDP.

 

Carter and Bush both rank in the worst president ever category, so yes, not surprising at all that it cost us tax payer a nice chunk of change to clean up after them

Carter was a peanut farmer, where he got his nuts, Bush was a drinker (had the driving while intoxicated to prove it), where he got his swaggering from


.

 

92% of the labor force -- those who want to work -- are working. The labor force is a subset of the overall population. According to Gallup, about 46.5% of the population is working.

But we have to put that into perspective -- babies and the aged generally don't work. As our population ages, that figure will probably generally trend lower.