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Styles Bitchley
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#31 Post by Styles Bitchley »

Jake wrote:It was the administration who made promises that the stimulus package would keep unemployment below 8%. After $800 billion and a boatload of promises the economy is weak at best, and the unemployment rate blew past 8% and kept right on going. Your right about one thing, the CBO is typically fair in their scoring; however they are at the mercy of the data/assumptions given to them to run the models, and both parties play games with the numbers so even CBO scores don’t always reflect reality. The amount of jobs created by the stimulus spending is a highly debated topic, primarily because the administration used some really shady assumptions to come up with a magical number of “jobs saved” which is added to the total. Furthermore many of the “jobs created” were temporary – things like the census workers, research grants, and adding road crews for extra projects do not create permanent jobs. The biggest beneficiary of the stimulus were people in public sector union jobs, which given the ties the unions have to Obama the whole thing reeked of political favoritism. So the 1.2-2.8 million jobs “created” is not a solid figure, but even if you take the average and say the stimulus created 2 million jobs that means that the price tag for each job is a whopping $400,000! I will stick with my assessment that the stimulus was a failure, a big steaming pile of failure! And I strongly disagree with your statement that the that the majority of economists claim otherwise. Now we have the current proposed stimulus-2 (“jobs bill”) which is another $447 billion travesty, no thanks.

The spending is out of control. The Bush administration raised the national debt $4.9 trillion (from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion) during their 8 years in office, which is horrendous. But Obama has made that seem like childs play. He rolled into town and immediately expanded the federal budget by a trillion dollars, dished out $800 billion in stimulus, rammed thru Obamacare (with a down payment of $634 billion and more to come) and kept right on rolling. Keep in mind that the price tag of the first stimulus package alone had the cost of the entire Iraq war beat by a 100 billion dollars (CBO scores cost of Iraq war at $709 billion thru 2010). In only 2.5 years Obama has managed to tack on another $4.2 trillion to the national debt and the hits just keep coming, debt and deficit projections are simply staggering. Serious financial reform is needed - cut spending, reform the entitlement programs, and rework the tax system ASAP or we will be in a major world of hurt very soon.

Although it may sound it to you that I am hard right person, I am not. Common sense is all that is needed to see how screwed up things are and I am very frustrated with the current path this country is on and how the current administration is governing. You seem to be a fan of the tax and spend policies, and I doubt I will ever be able to convince you otherwise (nor will you change my mind either), so let’s just leave it at we agree to disagree. But I know down deep that you know that you are wrong and I am right….LOL! Or maybe I should end with the classic……I’m rubber and your glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!
I think it's inevitable that the discussion turn partisan and have people blaming president x for this and president x for that. It strikes me as funny though because Americans are all in the same economic boat and everybody seems to be convinced that they're right and the other guys are wrong. I have a unique perspective as a non-American and in my admittedly short life I've never seen the country so polarized. It seems as though both the right and left in the US are crossing their fingers hoping that whatever the other guy (or gal) does will blow up in their face and prove that the other political party is right.

The truth is that from the outside, the two major political parties in the US aren't that different at all. Sure, they have different approaches to certain issues, but its not as left/right as the pundits make it out to be. Realistically, on social policy the Democrats would be far too right wing to win an election in the vast majority of Western countries.

I guess my point is that regardless of who's in power, its going to take a long time to get out of the mess you're in. Much of the huge growth over the 80s and 90s was made by a lot of free wheeling companies and stock brokers who have figured out how to "work" the stock market. I think the market has reached its breaking point and, let's be honest, today it's just a casino. There are no more "blue chip" stocks. I just read an interesting piece by Andrew Sorkin on the wild swings that characterises the market today. The truth of the matter is that a lot of the economic volatility seen in the US is influenced by mindless piles of "virtual" money that flies around the world at the click of a mouse.

It's not a matter of political ideology...no government vs. lots of government. Companies need room to manoeuvre and grow away form government restrictions, but they also need to be regulated. There are a lot more Madoffs running around looking for an opportunity!

When do you guys think Americans will be able to come together again around a President? Isn't the first classic move in warfare to divide the nation to make them weak? Seems like that's been the case since 9/11.

BTW, if I'm getting out of line or offending anybody just tell me off! :wink:
"How fiendishly deceptive of you Magnum. I could have sworn I was hearing the emasculation of a large rodent."

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Visiting Stewardess
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#32 Post by Visiting Stewardess »

Styles Bitchley wrote:
The truth is that from the outside, the two major political parties in the US aren't that different at all. Sure, they have different approaches to certain issues, but its not as left/right as the pundits make it out to be. Realistically, on social policy the Democrats would be far too right wing to win an election in the vast majority of Western countries.
Fully agree!
Styles Bitchley wrote: I guess my point is that regardless of who's in power, its going to take a long time to get out of the mess you're in. Much of the huge growth over the 80s and 90s was made by a lot of free wheeling companies and stock brokers who have figured out how to "work" the stock market. I think the market has reached its breaking point and, let's be honest, today it's just a casino.
Again, couldn't agree more. Many years ago, I read a book by Tom Clancy (I read so many by him, I can't remember which one it was, might have been Red Sun Rising) where he described such a crash, because all our markets were based on virtual values (e.g. a building in New York, Tokio or London is worth a few hundred million because of the demand, so what if the demand is suddenly no longer there?) And I thought, yeah, scary, but it will never happen. Ha, a few years later it DID happen.

This world economy has gotten out of hand, and it's not the fault of any particular American president, but the GREED of the BANKERS.

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ConchRepublican
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#33 Post by ConchRepublican »

Pahonu wrote:These statements are true and well meant, but then something big happens like 9/11 and people cry out for more protection and now we have the Department of Homeland Security.
Which I was totally against from the get go. We never needed it, just remove the famous Jamie Gorelick wall
Pahonu wrote:Or in the case of pandemic people demand access to vaccines and the Center for Disease Control is born.
Which has yet to happen, but the fear of one (which seems to come every season of so) makes sure we can't do with out them. Last time I checked, polio was cured by an individual working in a university environment.


We can go on . . . the thing is, bureaucracy is like cancer, it grows and grows and destroys it's host. Anything run by the government needs to be tightly watched and rigidly reviewed because before you know federal money, 5.8M dollars worth, is spent on a museum for old Las Vegas neon signs. (http://www.economiccollapse.net/the-20- ... ng-in-2010)

It's easy to use fear to say "what would we do without" when the great achievements of this nation are/were based on the accomplishments of an individuals idea. Don't bog us down with petty restrictions, which a government, when it has to include any and every possible permutation, does.

I like to refer to this quote:

Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America, volume II, Part 4, chapter 6.

Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood… it provides for their security, foresees and suplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs…


The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulation – complicated, minute, and uniform – through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own… it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.



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Pahonu
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#34 Post by Pahonu »

ConchRepublican wrote:
Pahonu wrote:Or in the case of pandemic people demand access to vaccines and the Center for Disease Control is born.
Which has yet to happen, but the fear of one (which seems to come every season of so) makes sure we can't do with out them. Last time I checked, polio was cured by an individual working in a university environment.

In 1947, Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In 1948, he undertook a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to determine the number of different types of polio virus. Salk saw an opportunity to extend this project towards developing a vaccine against polio, and, together with the skilled research team he assembled, devoted himself to this work for the next seven years. The field trial set up to test the Salk vaccine was, according to O'Neill, "the most elaborate program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 physicians and public health officers, 64,000 school personnel, and 220,000 volunteers." Over 1,800,000 school children took part in the trial.[1]

It's never a simple as it seems.

1. Rose DR (2004). "Fact Sheet—Polio Vaccine Field Trial of 1954". March of Dimes Archives. 2004 02 11.

One of the most interesting things I've noticed about the whole movement, and also noticed by LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, is seeing Occupy Wall St. demonstrators holding up "stop the bailouts" signs just as some did in the Tea Party demonstrations previously. Two sides the same coin? One side mad at government for handing them out, and the other mad at corporations for taking them. It's something to consider.

I agree with Styles that the two parties are not as far apart as those in other nations, but they both share one massive fault. They are beholden to large corporations for donations, and now the Supreme Court has ruled those corporate donations have no limits. It's seems were moving in the wrong direction in regards to this.

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#35 Post by Steve »

Jake wrote:
Pahonu wrote: I'm not taking a personal shot here, but it is overly simplistic to say that because the stimulus didn't keep unemployment below 8% as predicted that "it was a total failure" to use your words. The majority of economists have stated it has been successful, creating between 1.2 and 2.8 million jobs. Unemployment would have been 1% to 1.5% higher according to the Congressional Budget Office http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=967 . I would add that the CBO is the closest thing to a non-partisan group you will find anywhere near Washington.
It was the administration who made promises that the stimulus package would keep unemployment below 8%. After $800 billion and a boatload of promises the economy is weak at best, and the unemployment rate blew past 8% and kept right on going. Your right about one thing, the CBO is typically fair in their scoring; however they are at the mercy of the data/assumptions given to them to run the models, and both parties play games with the numbers so even CBO scores don’t always reflect reality. The amount of jobs created by the stimulus spending is a highly debated topic, primarily because the administration used some really shady assumptions to come up with a magical number of “jobs saved” which is added to the total. Furthermore many of the “jobs created” were temporary – things like the census workers, research grants, and adding road crews for extra projects do not create permanent jobs. The biggest beneficiary of the stimulus were people in public sector union jobs, which given the ties the unions have to Obama the whole thing reeked of political favoritism. So the 1.2-2.8 million jobs “created” is not a solid figure, but even if you take the average and say the stimulus created 2 million jobs that means that the price tag for each job is a whopping $400,000! I will stick with my assessment that the stimulus was a failure, a big steaming pile of failure! And I strongly disagree with your statement that the that the majority of economists claim otherwise. Now we have the current proposed stimulus-2 (“jobs bill”) which is another $447 billion travesty, no thanks.

The spending is out of control. The Bush administration raised the national debt $4.9 trillion (from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion) during their 8 years in office, which is horrendous. But Obama has made that seem like childs play. He rolled into town and immediately expanded the federal budget by a trillion dollars, dished out $800 billion in stimulus, rammed thru Obamacare (with a down payment of $634 billion and more to come) and kept right on rolling. Keep in mind that the price tag of the first stimulus package alone had the cost of the entire Iraq war beat by a 100 billion dollars (CBO scores cost of Iraq war at $709 billion thru 2010). In only 2.5 years Obama has managed to tack on another $4.2 trillion to the national debt and the hits just keep coming, debt and deficit projections are simply staggering. Serious financial reform is needed - cut spending, reform the entitlement programs, and rework the tax system ASAP or we will be in a major world of hurt very soon.

Although it may sound it to you that I am hard right person, I am not. Common sense is all that is needed to see how screwed up things are and I am very frustrated with the current path this country is on and how the current administration is governing. You seem to be a fan of the tax and spend policies, and I doubt I will ever be able to convince you otherwise (nor will you change my mind either), so let’s just leave it at we agree to disagree. But I know down deep that you know that you are wrong and I am right….LOL! Or maybe I should end with the classic……I’m rubber and your glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!
I'm with you Jake, your entire post is my feelings exactly. I would add to those that point out that our tax rate now is lower than in years that if you take into account the higher local taxes, fees and fines that seem to multiply and grow like tribbles in places like my hometown (Chicago), county (Cook) and State (Illinois) just to find out most of it goes to corruption and pension boondogling it's no wonder we as citizens are so frustrated. I would also like to add that we have highly intelligent members on this site and proud of the well thought out and researched arguments on both side of the issue. We all do seem to want to reach the same conclusion...A more perfect Nation............

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Styles Bitchley
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#36 Post by Styles Bitchley »

Steve wrote:I would also like to add that we have highly intelligent members on this site and proud of the well thought out and researched arguments on both side of the issue. We all do seem to want to reach the same conclusion...A more perfect Nation............
I think that's a fitting conclusion to our virtual discussion over cognac and cigars at the King Kamehameha Club. I'm totally impressed by everyone's intelligence, passion and respect for each other's points of view - if only the politicians could act so civilly... One thing I'm sure of is that the political actors on both sides of the spectrum want the best for the country and believe they're doing the right thing. We'll all be watching closely to see how things unfold in the coming months/years.
"How fiendishly deceptive of you Magnum. I could have sworn I was hearing the emasculation of a large rodent."

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#37 Post by Pahonu »

I've fully enjoyed the discussion, and it's alot more fun with people of varied opinions and knowledge. It is too bad the same civility is lacking so often in politics.

Now I'm distracted by Sam's photo updates of the estate. I need to make some changes to my model.

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#38 Post by Visiting Stewardess »

A very civilised discussion. I was worried at first that it might end up in a brawl and people would be thrown out of the club.
Very nice to see that it is possible to have opposing views but not get at each other's throats.

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#39 Post by The Birdman »

Styles Bitchley wrote:
Pahonu wrote:While on a slightly different subject, Warren Buffet has also pointed out the unfairness of the property tax situation here in California where he pays less property tax on his multi-million dollar beach house in Laguna Beach than he does on his childhood home in Oklahoma.
My brother in law just inherited his mother's home in Pebble Beach a stone's throw from the golf course and under California tax law, the property cannot be reassessed. So while the house would likely sell for several million bucks, my sister and her husband are paying taxes based on the value of the home in the 1960s. I think they pay a little over $1,000 a year! No wonder Sacramento's broke.
The Birdman wrote:I can't agrre with that. Sure, if you banned all chinese goods tommarow, but I'm saying in the next 10 years. How about just charging a tax/tarrif to support the welfare system for all the out of work americans? I got a real eye opener a couple years ago when I started cleaning house and I was finding old boots, jeans and hats and stuff, stuff I had bought at wal mart 10-15 years ago, AND IT WAS MADE IN THE USA! Right now it is almost impossable to find anything made in the USA. People argue with me that to make things here they would "cost so much that nobody could buy them". Well, this stuff was not "expensive" 10-15 years ago. I did not bat an eye lash at buying American cowboy boots and american hat, american knife, ect. Right now our government is actually barrowing money from China just to keep afloat. :roll: FYI: I have HEARD that manufacturing is starting to come back to the US on its own BECAUSE the chinese are going union (higher wages) AND American companies that outsourced are now realizing there is a serious LACK OF QUALITY CONTROL.
The shelves at Wal Mart will simply be filled with more American made items, that's all.
I totally feel where you're coming from. I'm nostalgic about the good ole days when my Levis were made in the USA. But turning back the clock is harder than it appears.

First of all, erecting trade barriers just because you don't want to import goods from a certain country is illegal under WTO law. Basically, it would give China the right to erect their own trade barriers against US goods, which, believe it or not, would be very bad for the US economy. China has now surpassed the US as the world's largest consumer of new cars and Ford, Chrysler and GM are all lined up to get a bigger piece of that market.

Another line is formed behind the back of China, where an array of developing countries (India, Bangladesh, Brazil, etc.) are anxious to get a piece of China's manufacturing sector. If China wasn't there, somebody else would be and, trust me, they will work for cheaper than the average American. The only way you would be able to pay an American a liveable wage to manufacture the majority of goods consumed today is by subsidising the industry...which, of course, is illegal under WTO law.

I think there are a few notable exceptions though. American Apparel, for example, has managed to successfully make and sell their clothes in the US. But let's be realistic, a $24 T-Shirt ain't gonna sell at Walmart. But even that example isn't perfect as the founder and CEO is Canadian!
I know you wrote this over 3 months ago, but it has weighed heavy on my mind ever since. What are you talking about being illegal??? :?: In 1989 Bush #1 banned Chinese guns made by Norinco. And back in, I want to say the '80s, Congress imposed an embargo on Japanese cruiser motorcycles over a certain CC size all to save Harley Davidson from bankruptcy. So where do you get you info that it is illegal? It has been done!

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Styles Bitchley
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#40 Post by Styles Bitchley »

The Birdman wrote:I know you wrote this over 3 months ago, but it has weighed heavy on my mind ever since. What are you talking about being illegal??? :?: In 1989 Bush #1 banned Chinese guns made by Norinco. And back in, I want to say the '80s, Congress imposed an embargo on Japanese cruiser motorcycles over a certain CC size all to save Harley Davidson from bankruptcy. So where do you get you info that it is illegal? It has been done!
The details of WTO trade law are, as you can imagine, extremely complex (I work on WTO issues every day and I'm constantly learning new things). However, the basics are pretty simple. By joining the WTO, a country agrees to allow "like goods" from another WTO member country the exact same access to their markets as any domestically produced good. If a country believes another WTO member country is making it more difficult (or expensive) for them to sell their product in their domestic market they can file a complaint to the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body. If the Body agrees with the complaining party, they will then be allowed to impose duties on the other country's goods to make up for it (tit for tat type of thing).

An example would be the US complaint against the EU for not allowing US beef into European markets. Europeans say they think the hormones used in the US cattle industry makes the beef dangerous for human consumption so they won't allow it to be imported. The US filed a complaint and won, which is why they're allowed to put high duties on things like Perrier, champagne and other stuff with impunity.

There are, however, several exceptions that allow a country to discriminate against another country's goods. The primary means to justify this is under Article XX of GATT. You can see the list of reasons here: http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp ... #article20

In your examples, WTO law doesn't apply to military goods and, unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the Harley Davidson example. As I say, there are justifications, but they have to be legally sound.
"How fiendishly deceptive of you Magnum. I could have sworn I was hearing the emasculation of a large rodent."

- J.Q.H.

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