Things are getting worse...

[StreetScooby 5]

George Will has a column titled Our floundering ‘federal family’ here today:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-floundering-federal-family/2011/09/13/gIQA9oaxSK_story.html

I've copied it below. Obama and the liberals have to get out of the way.

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Our floundering ‘federal family’

By George F. Will, Published: September 14

In societies governed by persuasion, politics is mostly talk, so liberals’ impoverishment of their vocabulary matters. Having damaged liberalism’s reputation, they call themselves progressives. Having made the federal government’s pretensions absurd, they have resurrected a supposed synonym for the government, the “federal family.” Having made federal spending suspect, they advocate “investments” — for “job creation,” a euphemism for stimulus, another word they have made toxic.

Barack Obama, a pitilessly rhetorical president, continues to grab the nation by its lapels, demanding its attention, and is paying the price: The nation is no longer listening. This matters because ominous portents are multiplying.

Bank of America, which reported an $8.8 billion loss last quarter, plans to lay off 30,000 out of a workforce of nearly 300,000. The Postal Service hopes to shed 120,000 of its 653,000 jobs (down from almost 900,000 a decade ago). Such churning of the labor market would free people for new, more productive jobs — except that to reduce unemployment, the economy needs an approximately 3 percent growth rate, triple today’s rate.

Consumers of modest means are so strapped that Wal-Mart is reviving layaway purchases for the Christmas season. The Wall Street Journal reports that Procter & Gamble, which claims to have at least one product in 98 percent of American households, expects hard times for a long time: It is putting new emphasis on lower-priced products for low-income shoppers.

Just as Obama administration policies have delayed the housing market reaching a salutary bottom, Europe’s policies designed to delay Greece’s default on its debt are probably making that inevitability worse. If the contagion reaches Italy or Spain (“Too big to fail and too big to bail”), we shall learn how hollow Europe’s banks are, and how much U.S. banks are entangled with them.

During the debt-ceiling debate, the New York Times, liberalism’s bulletin board, was aghast that Republicans risked causing the nation to default on its debt. Now two Times columnists endorse slow-motion default through inflation: The Federal Reserve should have “the deliberate goal of generating higher inflation to help alleviate debt problems” (Paul Krugman) and “sometimes we need inflation, and now is such a time” (Floyd Norris).

Ken Rogoff, a Harvard economist, suggests “trying to achieve some modest deleveraging through moderate inflation of, say, 4 to 6 percent for several years.” This is an antiseptic way of saying we should reduce the weight of our indebtedness by reducing the value of the dollars in which it is denominated. But does the nation need more uncertainty? And note Rogoff’s serene confidence in government’s ability to control such things — inflation will be fine-tuned within a narrow band, switched on for just a few years, then off, like a government-approved light bulb.

It is a wonder, this faith-based (and often campus-based) conviction that the government that brought us the ethanol program can be trusted to precisely execute wise policies that will render the world predictable and progressive.

For two years, there has been one constant: As events have refuted the Obama administration’s certitudes, the administration has retained its insufferable knowingness. It knew that the stimulus would hold unemployment below 8 percent. Oops. Unemployment has been at least 9 percent in 26 of the 30 months since the stimulus was passed. Michael Boskin of Stanford says that, even if one charitably accepts the administration’s self-serving estimate of jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus, each job cost $280,000 — five times America’s median pay.

And research by Garett Jones and Daniel M. Rothschild of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center indicates that just 42.1 percent of workers hired by entities receiving stimulus funds were unemployed at the time. More (47.3 percent) were poached from other organizations, and 10.6 percent came directly from school or outside the labor force.

Obama’s administration, which is largely innocent of business experience, knew its experts would be wizards at investing taxpayers’ dollars. Oops. After receiving more than half a billion stimulus dollars in loan guarantees, bankrupt solar-panel maker Solyndra has shed nearly all of its more than 1,100 workers.

The economic policy the “federal family” should adopt can be expressed in five one-syllable words: Get. Out. Of. The. Way. Instead, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department has become a venture capital firm for crony capitalism and costly flops at creating “green jobs,” praises the policy of essentially banishing the incandescent light bulb as “taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money.” Better to let the experts in his department and the rest of the federal family waste other people’s money.

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

Through October of this year, the US government has spent $434,131,324,866.27 ($434B) servicing debt. This is completely out of control.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

Yet another article of interest...

A Blue-State Bailout in Disguise
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904353504576568352231645730.html

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The costs go beyond dollars and cents. The more often the federal government bails out the states, the more Washington bureaucrats will insist on regulating state and local affairs. At some point the United States will see the end of state fiscal sovereignty and the demise our federal system of government.

California comes to mind here... "Leading the way", as Pelosi put it, ....to economic ruin...

We are all engines of karma

[marks2065 0]

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Yet another article of interest...

A Blue-State Bailout in Disguise
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904353504576568352231645730.html

Quote

The costs go beyond dollars and cents. The more often the federal government bails out the states, the more Washington bureaucrats will insist on regulating state and local affairs. At some point the United States will see the end of state fiscal sovereignty and the demise our federal system of government.

California comes to mind here... "Leading the way", as Pelosi put it, ....to economic ruin...

I am starting to think that the progressives are trying to break the bank to put the federal government in control of everything making us a socialist country. Why would Obama continue to try to do the same thing (more spending) knowing the results would be the same as before (continued high unemployment and greater debt).

[DanG 1]

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Why would Obama continue to try to do the same thing (more spending) knowing the results would be the same as before (continued high unemployment and greater debt).

Maybe because every economist in the country knows that slashing government spending during a recession would only deepen the recession.

- Dan G

[Lefty 0]

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Why would Obama continue to try to do the same thing (more spending) knowing the results would be the same as before (continued high unemployment and greater debt).

Maybe because every economist in the country knows that slashing government spending during a recession would only deepen the recession.

I'd love to see the support behind this claim.

Provoking a reaction isn't the same thing as saying something meaningful.
-Calvin

[marks2065 0]

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Why would Obama continue to try to do the same thing (more spending) knowing the results would be the same as before (continued high unemployment and greater debt).

Maybe because every economist in the country knows that slashing government spending during a recession would only deepen the recession.

Why is it that nobody wants to pay for what we need? you are correct that slashing government spending would deepen the recession, but that is what is needed is to stop government from spending our future now. The extended length of this recession is caused buy the government because it won't let the recession finish it's course and government is robbing our future income to slow the course of the recession. If the government had not spent the 5 trillion over budget in the last 5 years we would be out of the recession by now or at least close to it. The weak companies would have failed and the stong lean companies would take over.
This is a repeat of what happened in the 30's and 40's under Roosevelt. After the new deal under Roosevelt the depression got worse and unemployment went up in his second term because the stimulous dried up and we will see the same again. I cannot believe the left would do the same thing and expect different results! At least with the new deal the money was mostly spent on infrastructure.
Bottom line is we need to tighten our belts and become lean and fiscally conservative and let those that want handouts suffer until they realize that they will need to take any jobs available to feed themselves. Why would anyone go back to work when unemployment and welfare pays more than a job?
The takers are running out of people to take from and the real suffering is about to begin. Obama and his buddies have just about spent our futures. How much debt will it take to satisfy them? When nobody has any retirement left? when all the major companies have left the US? When all the people with money are broke? It is sad to see the government destroy so many peoples futures under the cover of "helping the less fortunate". The less fortunate would be better off just taking a meanial job and struggling than to accept any government handouts.

[DanG 1]

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The extended length of this recession is caused buy the government because it won't let the recession finish it's course and government is robbing our future income to slow the course of the recession.

That makes no sense.

- Dan G

[marks2065 0]

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The extended length of this recession is caused buy the government because it won't let the recession finish it's course and government is robbing our future income to slow the course of the recession.

That makes no sense.

Why? because the government is taking the money and spending it? look what happened in the 40's, the government spent the money and the depression continued and got worse. when the government ballance the budget and started to pay down it's debt the depression went away. As long as people are unemployed the recesion will continue and people will stay unemployed until it is better to take a job than to sit on the couch taking handouts.

[DanG 1]

Do you realize that only a small portion of the proposed stimulus is unemployment insurance extensions? Most of the stimulus is in the form of infrastructure spending and payroll tax reduction. That type of spending doesn't go to people getting handouts, it goes to people who are working.

- Dan G

[fossg 0]

All I know is somebody needs to do something, but nobody is doing anything except fiddleing while Rome burns

[fossg 0]

I've said this before, I have more respect for a prostitute than a politician

[billvon 2,402]

>Why is it that nobody wants to pay for what we need?

Because people think that is "what is needed is to stop government from spending our future now."

The solution to this problem has two parts:

1) Increasing taxation
2) Decreasing spending

These are both best done when we can afford to do it - when the economy is in an upswing and cutting spending will not result in an even deeper recession. A great time to do it would have been around 2000 when we were running a surplus. If we had cut spending and increased taxes, we could have made a big dent in the deficit and not impacted the (then-thriving) economy as much.

Instead we increased spending and cut taxes - which led to our current debacle.

>If the government had not spent the 5 trillion over budget in the last 5
>years we would be out of the recession by now or at least close to it. The
>weak companies would have failed . . .

The idea that increasing company failures (and thus increasing unemployment) would have caused the recession to end is absurd. There are good arguments to be made for letting weak companies fail - but there is also no question that the SHORT term effect is to damage the economy even further,

Is it worth it? Perhaps - but you better be clear up front that you want to put another 500,000 people out of work, and deal another massive blow to the economy, to accomplish your political goals.

[ECVZZ 0]

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I've said this before, I have more respect for a prostitute than a politician

That's a reasonable position. After all, a prostitute is up front and honest about the fact that she is taking your money while fucking you in return.

G. Jones

"I've never been quarantined. But the more I look around, the more I think it might not be a bad idea."

[marks2065 0]

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Do you realize that only a small portion of the proposed stimulus is unemployment insurance extensions? Most of the stimulus is in the form of infrastructure spending and payroll tax reduction. That type of spending doesn't go to people getting handouts, it goes to people who are working.

the previous stimulous was mostly not infrastructure and failed, this one is mostly not infrastructure spending. What good is a tax break to an employer that can not afford another employee? the tax break ends in a couple months and then has to pay full price for that employee. I would not hire an employee at 30k to 60k a year for a 2k to 4k discount. What we need is to reduce costly regulations and make the tax code permanent so employers know what it will cost them to do business in 2 to 10 years. A smart employer understands the costs of doing business and sets aside the money that they will need. knowing that the epa is adding over 300 new regulations that will cost businesses over 9 billion to implament, Obama care taxes to start kicking in in 1-3 years, and the tax cuts to expire in 2012 means that you need to have substatial capital to cover these costs. If you hire extra employees over what you absolutlely need will cut into your reserve and leave you open to shortages in the near future. What smart business owner would hire more employees they do not need and reduce their cash knowing these costly things my bite them later?

[marks2065 0]

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>Why is it that nobody wants to pay for what we need?

Because people think that is "what is needed is to stop government from spending our future now."

The solution to this problem has two parts:

1) Increasing taxation
2) Decreasing spending

These are both best done when we can afford to do it - when the economy is in an upswing and cutting spending will not result in an even deeper recession. A great time to do it would have been around 2000 when we were running a surplus. If we had cut spending and increased taxes, we could have made a big dent in the deficit and not impacted the (then-thriving) economy as much.

Instead we increased spending and cut taxes - which led to our current debacle.

>If the government had not spent the 5 trillion over budget in the last 5
>years we would be out of the recession by now or at least close to it. The
>weak companies would have failed . . .

The idea that increasing company failures (and thus increasing unemployment) would have caused the recession to end is absurd. There are good arguments to be made for letting weak companies fail - but there is also no question that the SHORT term effect is to damage the economy even further,

Is it worth it? Perhaps - but you better be clear up front that you want to put another 500,000 people out of work, and deal another massive blow to the economy, to accomplish your political goals.

the problem in indreasing taxes is that the government then increases spending, always has and always will. the only way is to make the feds only spend what they have and no more no matter what. Do not give the feds more until they learn to use what they have properly. If you spent more than you have would your boss give you a raise to cover the increase? No he wouldn't and we should be the same with our government.

[billvon 2,402]

>the problem in indreasing taxes is that the government then increases
>spending, always has and always will.

Yep. And when they decrease taxes they increase spending - AND you get to a 14 trillion dollar debt.

Like I said, the solution is to change both. Spend less and increase taxes. At this point it's the only way out of the hole.

>If you spent more than you have would your boss give you a raise to cover
>the increase?

They always have. I just manage to not increase spending faster than I expect to get raises - and I'm able to manage the debt I have.

[StreetScooby 5]

Yet another good article today:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904060604576570821884273638.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond

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For Mr. Obama, there is no such thing as the American economy. Instead, there are two Americas with separate economies—one public, the other private. The economy of the public sector—the money it spends and the direct or indirect recipients of its spending—is the real economy, the one that matters for the health of the country. Mr. Obama's second economy, the one most people think of as the private sector, is an intellectual abstraction. It's like the distant planets that astronomers regard as real but have discovered using mathematical calculations. It is believed that life forms exist in the private economy, but they do so as datapoints inside the White House Office of Management and Budget.

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Obama's Two Economies
For Barack Obama, the private economy is an intellectual abstraction.

Thus repeated Barack Obama on Monday, promoting his jobs plan: "Should we keep tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires?"

So said a news report Monday on the plan's tax details: "The largest chunk of Mr. Obama's tax package comes from limiting itemized deductions for families with more than $250,000 in yearly taxable income and individuals with more than $200,000, including those for home-mortgage interest, state and local property taxes and charitable donations. The White House says that measure would raise roughly $400 billion over 10 years."

There was more clarity in a previous presidency about the meaning of "is" than about Barack Obama's elastic definition of a millionaire. Another familiar part of the political background noise in politics is the president's animus toward something called "business." This is taken to mean he dislikes the undeserving fat cats of banking and corporate management. At this level, the president's American Jobs Act is progress: From its details emerges a clear understanding of Mr. Obama's beliefs about what he takes to be the engines of the American economy. How it works. How it grows.

For Barack Obama, the private economy is an intellectual abstraction.

For Mr. Obama, there is no such thing as the American economy. Instead, there are two Americas with separate economies—one public, the other private. The economy of the public sector—the money it spends and the direct or indirect recipients of its spending—is the real economy, the one that matters for the health of the country. Mr. Obama's second economy, the one most people think of as the private sector, is an intellectual abstraction. It's like the distant planets that astronomers regard as real but have discovered using mathematical calculations. It is believed that life forms exist in the private economy, but they do so as datapoints inside the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The plan's biggest outlays are the payroll tax cut and tax credit for new hires. Few owners in the private economy would have identified a 12-month break from payroll taxes or the credit as the best incentive for elevating long-term employment. The payroll tax cut's primary purpose is to enable an Obama mathematical abstraction known as the Keynesian multiplier.

By the way, the plan's third-to-last paragraph—call it the Rick Perry Footnote—says the $175 billion payroll tax holiday won't impact Social Security payments: "Social Security will still receive every dollar it would have gotten otherwise, through a transfer from the General Fund into the Social Security Trust Fund." This sounds like a Ponzi scheme.

Once past the tax-cuts-for-temps, the jobs plan drops anchor in the public economy. The "targets" of the plan's $447 billion of spending are industries and people who are or always will be dependent on payments from public budgets. The plan's parts operate almost entirely inside the public-sector ecosystem.

The primary categories of workers identified helped by the plan are teachers, police, firefighters, construction workers, "boiler repairmen." The plan would put people to work modernizing 35,000 public schools, repairing transit systems and airports, and developing "high-speed rail corridors." The $10 billion National Infrastructure Bank is a "government-owned entity," with the government guaranteeing loans due to "market gaps" for infrastructure financing. The American Jobs Act sounds like a jobs plan more for developing China than for the 21st century U.S. economy.

The plan asserts it will put people back to work "in key areas that are central to America's future competitiveness." Then it says it will allow the rehiring of teachers, police and firefighters "who have been laid off because of budget cuts." But people have been laid off in the other economy, too. This week Bank of America said it would lay off 30,000 people. Last month, HSBC bank announced massive layoffs. Stories abound of new college graduates living at home, unemployed. A study out this week from the Institute for Financial Literacy says college graduates have become the fastest-growing group of bankruptcy filers.

The Obama $0.5 trillion jobs plan reflects no recognition of the unemployed people connected to the U.S.'s most competitive and dynamic industries. Notwithstanding all that Democratic intellectuals such as Richard Florida have written about the party's future lying with sophisticated knowledge workers, these people fall outside the president's field of vision. Barack Obama (and his activist base) has talked nonstop about helping "the middle class," but it's clear this is a static, backward-looking notion of what makes up the American middle class.

Because Mr. Obama and his circle divide the economy into two parts, with the private economy merely a satellite orbiting the public sun, he has proven incapable of offering policies for the whole nation. A Whole America plan to lift both blue-collar and white-collar workers would have included some gesture toward a broad-based Bowles-Simpson tax reform, rather than wait for the debt panel to act. The plan's mention of reforming Sarbanes-Oxley (for small and new business only) merely promises to "work with" the SEC to "explore ways." A pipedream.

The American Jobs Act is a jobs plan for Barack Obama's America. The United States is a bigger country than that.

We are all engines of karma

[marks2065 0]

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>the problem in indreasing taxes is that the government then increases
>spending, always has and always will.

Yep. And when they decrease taxes they increase spending - AND you get to a 14 trillion dollar debt.

Like I said, the solution is to change both. Spend less and increase taxes. At this point it's the only way out of the hole.

>If you spent more than you have would your boss give you a raise to cover
>the increase?

They always have. I just manage to not increase spending faster than I expect to get raises - and I'm able to manage the debt I have.

The country cannot afford more Obama spending and barrowing from future generations. Drilling a bigger hole in the boat doesn't make it float, plugging the hole does. It is time to plug the hole in Obama's budget. cut up his credit card and send him packing.

[beowulf 1]

But but it's change you can believe in ...

[Gravitymaster 0]

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But but it's change you can believe in ...

Like Santa Claus?

[StreetScooby 5]

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A great time to do it would have been around 2000 when we were running a surplus. If we had cut spending and increased taxes, we could have made a big dent in the deficit and not impacted the (then-thriving) economy as much.

Instead we increased spending and cut taxes - which led to our current debacle.

There's much more going on here than that. The Senate's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's report (http://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-reports/fcic_final_report_full.pdf) does a good job describing how we got into this mess. The dissents do a good job analyzing the reason why.

Couple the irrational phase most of the country went through with the housing bust with the govt's incredibly irresponsible spending, and here we are...

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

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After all, a prostitute is up front and honest about the fact that she is taking your money while fucking you in return.

And, there's a genuine happy ending involved in this transaction!

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

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Is it worth it? Perhaps - but you better be clear up front that you want to put another 500,000 people out of work, and deal another massive blow to the economy, to accomplish your political goals.

Obama needs to stop strangling business in this country. We need to raise revenues, and he's going about it completely wrong.

We are all engines of karma

[billvon 2,402]

>There's much more going on here than that.

Of course. But you can't get away from the basics; tax cuts + spending increases = deficit.