# 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse

Unemployment is higher than a year ago and home prices and salaries haven’t recovered. What little improvement has been seen has been accomplished through massively raising the deficit. I think the majority has a good argument here.

# 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit

Medicare and Medicaid already eat a huge chunk of the budget. Obamacare massively expands these programs and claims that it will save money by doing this. Save money through a massive new Government entitlement? Yeah, right. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. The CBO has already raised its cost estimates for Obamacare and even those are probably optimistic. Fox is right again.

# 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs

The only jobs it seems to have created are a few Government make-work positions. But it sucked up public money and scared the crap out of potential private employers. Did we get a trillion dollars worth of jobs out of the “stimulus”? I dare anyone to say so.

I’d say the Fox viewers are right on target.

That’s an impressive array of incorrect assertions, odd opinions, and outright lies, GK.

Unemployment is higher than a year ago

No it’s not. Civilian unemployment rate

home prices and salaries haven’t recovered

Home prices are neither here nor there since they were fantasy valuations driven by suicide lending practices that were innovated 2003-2007 and withdrawn from commerce 2008-2009.

While salaries have not recovered to the bubble times, they have been increasing:

Wages & Salaries

I think the majority has a good argument here.

The economy is only getting “better” through government stimulus. Without it, hello collapse. But it has been getting better, so you and your fellow conservatives are utterly wrong on this.

Speaking of which:

But it sucked up public money

what is this supposed to even mean? It sounds bad, but government is getting this “suckage” at 1-3% interest rates. I have no idea how you think the Keynesian counter-cyclism “scared” private employers. Scared them of what? Tax cuts? $100B of infrastructure spending? $200B of local bond issues and another $150B of transfer payments so states didn’t have to cut payrolls in 2009-2010?

The bubble times of 2003-2007 were unsustainable. We crashed in 2008-2009 and we’ll continue crashing until we find a bottom. THAT’S what “private employers” should be “scared of” — the motherf—ing 1930s and/or Japan’s deflationary collapse of the 90s.

Since you have lived in Japan since 1995, it deeply puzzles me how you can’t see the parallels between your host country’s bubble aftermath and the US experience.

Did we get a trillion dollars worth of jobs out of the “stimulus”?

Given that a third of it was tax cuts, of course not. Now that ARRA is winding down, and other idiot Republicans of your stripe are back in power in the House, we’ll get to see how well an unstimulated economy is going to do in 2011.

The stimulus did what it could, arrest the collapse. It wasn’t good policy, it wasn’t bad policy (the admin has been pretty conservative about releasing funds only for vetted projects at least), it was something.

Only when one understands that the 1999-2007 good times were an utter bubble and aren’t coming back — at least not for large segments of the former middle class — will one get a feel for the contours this administration, and now the House Republicans, are facing.

The CBO has already raised its cost estimates for Obamacare and even those are probably optimistic

typical unfounded assertion we get from you every time you spew your crap here. No link, no numbers, no analysis, just some bullshit to make you sound like you have an argument.

Geoff, I have a questions for you:

Did we get 4,693 American lives worth out of invading Iraq? Was it worth 32,000 wounded soldiers? Thousands of suicides? Are you getting your money’s worth out of the billions it costs to keep Al Qaeda at bay?

Blaming Obama for rescuing the banking industry is like blaming Franklin Roosevelt for D-Day.

Those challenges are always Pyrrhic Victories because they come at too great a cost. Unfortunately, it was a choice between an emergency stimulus package or the collapse of the entire American banking system.

One can only imagine how many jobs would have been lost if that had happened.

Oh, you overlooked the point that the Recession began BEFORE Obama took office. Funny how FOX news forgot to mention that…

Ken, Obama didn’t even “rescue” the banking system. That was Bush and the TARP, passed in October 2008.

What has been going on under Obama is the Fed monetizing much of the bad debt, providing liquidity to get iffy assets off of the bank’s balance sheets, and also allowing the majors to borrow printed money cheaply and then lend it to the Treasury for a small but significant spread.

> Since you have lived in Japan since 1995, it deeply puzzles me
> how you can’t see the parallels between your host country’s bubble
> aftermath and the US experience.

Yeah, thanks to Japan’s constant “Stimulus” spending, we now have a debt 200% of our GDP, sluggish economy and hiring, and a stock market that hasn’t effectively gained in 15 years. There are lots of savings in the banks, but the financial markets are strangled by costs and regulations. Is that the ideal model that you’re advocating?? The only bright spot in the last 15 years, was (Prime Minister) Koizumi, who came in advocating deregulation and spending control. Sadly, we’re back to more “stimulus” now.

Too bad there are no Reagans in Japan’s political class.

> typical unfounded assertion we get from you every time you spew
> your crap here. No link, no numbers, no analysis, just some bullshit
> to make you sound like you have an argument.

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/c-b-o-raises-cost-estimate-for-senate-bill/

But, honestly, what Government medical program *hasn’t* gone wildly over it’s initial cost estimates? Medicare and Medicaid did. The Massachusetts plan did. And most of the other State plans are going the same way. Anyone who predicts cost savings from a Government Medical entitlement program is kidding themselves (or just plain lying).

There are lots of savings in the banks, but the financial markets are strangled by costs and regulations.

Since there is very little external debt, the great amount of private savings and the great amount of public debt basically cancels each other out.

Is that the ideal model that you’re advocating??

Not at all. The issue tho is how to get the economy out of the deflationary spiral and have enough revenue to fund government.

I think the high-tax high-service economies of Scandinavia, Germany, and perhaps France are a better model than the US or Japan.

The strength of these economies are evident in the sovereign debt credit ratings:

http://imgur.com/PGlJX.png

Too bad there are no Reagans in Japan’s political class.

You ARE aware that Reagan TRIPLED the national debt (doubling it in real terms), right?

From your CBO link:

The new budget office analysis puts the price tag of the new insurance coverage provisions in the Senate-passed bill at about $875 billion over 10 years, an increase of about $4 billion from the previous estimate.

$4 billion, 0.46%? Literally a rounding error? This is your support for your assertion that “he CBO has already raised its cost estimates for Obamacare and even those are probably optimistic”. This cite you gave doesn’t even give you any support since it is referring to the bill before it was signed into law!

Anyone who predicts cost savings from a Government Medical entitlement program is kidding themselves (or just plain lying).

Thing is, the current system is so screwed up that even mild government intervention can make it better. And you’ve steadfastly refused to address the actual fact that “ObamaCare” is just the Chafee plan warmed up, which is what it became having passed through the Senate sausage machine.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Graphics/2010/022310-Bill-comparison.aspx

Obama didn’t even “rescue” the banking system. That was Bush and the TARP, passed in October 2008.

OK, thanks for clearing that up, Troy.

I still feel the stimulus package, however unpopular, was a matter of necessity rather than of choice. I think we all hoped for better results. But the jobs that were created will generate more income in the middle-class sectors and stimulate demand.

It may still be too early to measure the results of the stimulus. Could take years to feel its impact.

The stupid thing is that people complaining about the ARRA don’t understand the macro situation in the slightest.

To do so, one must first at least superficially understand what happened to the economy 1998-2008:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CMDEBT

Household debt went hyperbolic, doubling from $7T in 2000 to $14T in 2007.

This chart breaks the debt-driven Bush economy down into two parts — household debt (red) and household salaries (blue).

In a sustainable economy wages support debt, but I think it’s pretty clear from the above graph that debt was feeding into wages.

THAT IS WHY THERE WAS A BUBBLE (along with the abandonment of traditional mortgage lending standards starting in 2002-2003).

In 2009 the question was WTF do we do know. Do we stand around with our d*cks in our hands like the Bush admin, or do we try to limit the collateral damage.

So we kicked the can down the road and saved the domestic auto manufacturing sector (Ford was trading under $2 during the crisis, GM and Chrysler were quickly BK’d and kept as corporate entities).

GK’s ideology or whatever his mental damage is simply cannot admit that the private sector can f-ck things up just as bad if not worse than government.

That is what happened 2002-2007. It was essentially a looting.

I don’t really have any positive policy suggestions going forward. Anybody who does doesn’t really understand the seriousness of the situation.

Every policy we do is going to create pain somewhere, eventually. If I were King I’d start instituting tax rises and money creation to defend the low interest rates, cut military spending, wring the economic rents out of medicine and housing, invest in a serious national public transit system on the scale and general excellence of Tokyo’s, and just give everyone in the country a basic dole to meet the minimum of life’s necessities — food, medical care, etc. I’d also do urban redevelopment like Japan does (and hopefully better than our experiences with this in the previous century).

The cold hard fact is that we’ve outsourced our productive economy overseas — the number of factory jobs in this country is what it was during the RECESSIONS of the 1940s. Sending our jobs overseas is not a bad thing (as long as they can work for 1/10th our wages), but it does require us to figure out what to do with the millions of people whose labor is no longer required in this country.

GK’s right-wing laissez faire ideology doesn’t have an answer to that, not at all.

Every policy we do is going to create pain somewhere, eventually.

Yes, this is becoming increasingly clear. There seems to be a “side-effect” to every possible economic remedy. Even the stimulus has made a significant bulge in our national debt.

Since you guys have better economic sense than I have, I want to get your thoughts on my idea:

How about an increased tax on the wealthy [those earning over 250K annually] to 38%, UNLESS they create X number of new jobs, in which case they would receive a considerable tax break.

A plausible solution?

Going back to the Clintonian taxation of the rich isn’t going to solve anything — that’s only about $70B of the $1.5T hole we’re digging each year.

“Creating jobs” isn’t going to solve anything either.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tomtoles/2010/12/17/c_12202010.gif

The core problem is simply excess capacity. We’re like the Titanic with too many people and not enough lifeboats.

Not that the US is “going down” like the Titanic necessarily, but so much of our present economic reality is under “compression” — thanks to NAFTA and the internet lowering trade barriers with China, India, etc.

A Chinese factory worker gets paid $300 a month. American factory workers get paid more than that for just clocking in each shift.

So many subsectors of the economy are well out of control. Medical services are a nest of rent-seeking bastards. Investors are scooping up tons of houses now as “investment properties” ie literally rent-seeking targeted on the actual productive members of society who just need a place to live in this world.

This is counter-intuitive, but if we’re looking at income taxes, to solve our problems we actually need to raise taxes on EVERYONE, not just the rich.

This is because that, at the first approximation, all taxes come out of rents. What the Bush tax cuts did in 2001-2003 was really push a lot of money into real estate and land rents — they were what got the housing bubble started, along with the rate cuts.

By raising taxes, we would find rents and home values going DOWN in response, and we would in fact get things more in balance.

But this would put pressure on existing homeowners, and also savers (bank loans to home owners are somebody somewhere’s savings, as depicted in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”).

There are going to be no actual solutions to the challenges we face for the foreseeable future. Collapse is coming. I could be wrong about that, I was wrong in 1992 when I first went to Japan (jumped from the frying pan into the fire really), but I think I’ve learned a lot about economics the past decade and what I’ve learned is that the world is really unbalanced and getting more so.

Oh, that was tried already? OK, Troy, thanks for posting that reply.
But to Clinton’s credit, I believe his administration was one of the most fiscally responsible, nearly eliminating the national debt. So maybe his economic policies were not so bad?

Clinton’s tax rates were a start, yes. Not that the Bush tax cuts did in fact cut taxes across the board, not just on the rich.

The Republicans made tons of dire predictions in 1993 that the additional taxes would destroy the economy, and the taxes were a factor in their 1994 takeover, but they were wrong about them causing harm.

But what balanced the budget in the latter half of the 90s was the tech bubble and greatly limited growth in government spending, especially on the military — the military budget was basically held constant throughout the 90s — $300B.

We’re not spending more than twice that, plus the wars, plus the added anti-terrorist costs, another $100B or more. That’s about half the deficit.

To put things in perspective, Clinton’s 2001 budget was $1.0T in actual Federal spending (+ $450B for social security and $300B transferred to states).

In 2011, Federal spending is going to be $2.5T, plus $800B in social security and $500B transferred to states.

That’s a 150% growth in Federal spending in just 10 years.

Something’s gotta give here.

gah: change “Not that the Bush tax cuts did in fact cut taxes across the board, not just on the rich.”

to “Note that the Bush tax cuts did in fact cut taxes across the board, not just on the rich.”

Change: “We’re not spending more than twice that” to “We’re now spending more than twice that” too

I got the changes/editions.
Yeah, it’s a different world now so that yesterday’s economic policies may not work anymore.
Cheers!