The babyjesuschristsuperstar on Board: filling the moral void of Clinton’s legacy

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Sure, you did.


Welcome to the No-Fly list.

Is trying to take out a Congressmen like Pombo a threat to national security, or a boon to national security. I think the latter.

They are always doing background checks on me. It wouldn't surprize me if they have connected my name with Spanky and are monitoring this stuff. I actually feel kind of sorry for the poor schlep that has to read this stuff.

[Captain]

Originally posted by Spanky
Is trying to take out a Congressmen like Pombo a threat to national security, or a boon to national security. I think the latter.

They are always doing background checks on me. It wouldn't surprize me if they have connected my name with Spanky and are monitoring this stuff. I actually feel kind of sorry for the poor schlep that has to read this stuff.

We will consider this post your consent to the ongoing surveilance of your telephone lines, where our computers specifically pick up any mention of "Bush", "Dick", "Pombo" or "Serbian".

[SlaveNoMore]

Spanky
I actually feel kind of sorry for the poor schlep that has to read this stuff.

You're telling us.

-the Admins

[Spanky]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
You're telling us.

-the Admins

Aren't you supposed to be in Sin City?

[Spanky]

It just keeps getting better and better...........

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060106/...ess_delay_dc_2

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
You plagiarize more Chomskyites than anyone else on this board.

You find me a post where I plagiarized a Chomskyite and I'll buy you a fancy lunch the next time you're in town.

You offered a broad brush political statement about how Bush was stealing from future generations to fatten his rich friends. That's just cheap crap talk, and its based partly on the absurd presumption that China will one day dump our treasuries (or some other doomsday scenario being spun by Paul Krugman).

I didn't say anything about "saddling" (Spanky) or "stealing" (you). I merely pointed out that if you spend money you don't have, and borrow, someone in the future will have to pay it back. This is so obviously true that I have a hard time understanding why it sends Spanky and you off into verbal gymnastics about crap like "absurd presumptions" about China, or whatever. You guys are displaying the signs of cognitive dissonance.

We have a bunch of Republicans in power right now who have decided to cut taxes to benefit their rich supporters, and to increase the size of the government. It will take taxes to pay for this, and if they're not going to tax people now, someone will have to be taxes in the future.

[Spanky]

Your recent post:

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I didn't say anything about "saddling" (Spanky)

Prior post:

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Then you need a better slogan than "tax and spend." Something like: "Borrowing from future generations so we can give money to the rich and Abramoff's pals." Although that's not very catchy.

I don't see much of a difference between saddling future generations with debt or borrowing from future generations. I am usually good about using prior quotes, and since you like to splice words I will do so in the future.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I merely pointed out that if you spend money you don't have, and borrow, someone in the future will have to pay it back. This is so obviously true that I have a hard time understanding why it sends Spanky and you off into verbal gymnastics about crap like "absurd presumptions" about China, or whatever. .... It will take taxes to pay for this, and if they're not going to tax people now, someone will have to be taxes in the future.

This is simply not true. I don't know how many different ways I can explain it. If the federal goverment borrows money now in the immediate future we have to pay interest on it and it is a problem.

In the longer term (when future generations are paying taxes) the deficits of forty years ago become tiny. And that tiny debt you don't need to pay back and you don't need to pay interest on it. You just leave it there, and to pay any interest on that tiny debt you just take on more debt. The interest is compouding, but the compounding will never catch up to the rate of growth of the economy. So any interest can always be covered by future bonds.

Your debt always has to remain a certain percentage of GNP, so if the economy is increasing the debts needs to increase. If all we had was the debt from 1960, every year we would issue more bonds to pay off the interest on that debt. But the debt we issued to cover the interest on the debt would probably not be enough to increase the debt so we would need to actually borrow more.

The deficits we incur now will cause problems for the next thirty years, but after that the debt becomes irrelevent. It does not have to be paid back.

Since the United States government has an infinted life span, and it continually grows, you don't ever have to pay off the debt. Is that really such a hard concept to grasp?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
the deficits of forty years ago become tiny. And that tiny debt you don't need to pay back and you don't need to pay interest on it. You just leave it there, and to pay any interest on that tiny debt you just take on more debt. The interest is compouding, but the compounding will never catch up to the rate of growth of the economy. So any interest can always be covered by future bonds.

Your debt always has to remain a certain percentage of GNP, so if the economy is increasing the debts needs to increase. If all we had was the debt from 1960, every year we would issue more bonds to pay off the interest on that debt. But the debt we issued to cover the interest on the debt would probably not be enough to increase the debt so we would need to actually borrow more.

The deficits we incur now will cause problems for the next thirty years, but after that the debt becomes irrelevent. It does not have to be paid back.

Since the United States government has an infinted life span, and it continually grows, you don't ever have to pay off the debt. Is that really such a hard concept to grasp?

It was an easy concept for Japan to grasp, until the rate opf growth failed to outstrip the interest payments for long enough that it all collapsed.

I'm not sure how old you are, but unless you are significantly older than me, you aren't old enough for the economic crisis in the US in the early 70's led to things like 20% interest rates. What was that all about?

The ordinary schmoe couldn't afford to buy things, so the economy stopped growing. And yet, we still had to pay interest on our debt. How did we do so? By selling more debt. Only, because the US economy wasn't a good bet, we had to sell that debt very cheap.

But you're right. That was an anomaly and it will never happen again.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by taxwonk
It was an easy concept for Japan to grasp, until the rate of growth failed to outstrip the interest payments for long enough that it all collapsed.

But you're right. That was an anomaly and it will never happen again.

Did Japan collapse? I was living in Japan from 93-96 working in the financial industry and it certainly didn't collpase while I was there. How ever Japan did stop growing and that is where things went wrong.

Before Japan hit their recession ( the so called Bubble burst in 89) they did not run high deficits. It was only after they had slow growth that they ran deficits. So the problem wasn't the deficits run up to 89, it was the deficits run during the ninetys when their was no growth.

So they had slow growth but it was not caused by their deficits. They ran deficits in the ninetys (but not very big ones) which might have helped pull them out of the recession but their inability to switch to a service economy and the fact that they bought all the real estate in the world at premium rates and sold it at firesale prices (e.g. ARCO Plaza in LA) that prevented them from pulling out of the recession.

Unless their economy starts to grow their deficits will get worse. But the key to their problem is slow growth. Not any deficits they ran before they hit the recession.

Originally posted by taxwonk
I'm not sure how old you are, but unless you are significantly older than me, you aren't old enough for the economic crisis in the US in the early 70's led to things like 20% interest rates. What was that all about?

The ordinary schmoe couldn't afford to buy things, so the economy stopped growing. And yet, we still had to pay interest on our debt. How did we do so? By selling more debt. Only, because the US economy wasn't a good bet, we had to sell that debt very cheap.

??????. Yes we had a recession, and in the late seventies we had really high interest rates - Jimmy Carter had accomplished a miracle. High inflation and high unemployment at the same time. No one had ever pulled that off before. But we pulled out of it by a tight monetary policy and running huge deficits. That led to growth that eventually made the debts of the seventies seem like chump change. And the growth created by those deficits has made paying back those deficits relavitely easy. If we had not grown even the debt from the seventies would have seemed onerous.

So basically what you have pointed out is what I have been saying all along. Deficits should be managed purely looking at growth. The worst thing you can do to future generations is to not have growth so future generations can not reap the benefits of the multiplier effect. That is what happened to Japan. The MOF and MITI tightly regulated the economy so it could not adjust to a service economy and therefore couldn't grow. The way the economy was run was Tys wet dream. Corporations were not truested at all to bring the best benefit to the public so MOF and MITI tightly regulated every industry with price controls, subsidies, permits etc. The Japanese government made sure everything was fair and did not allow any competitive moves to happen without their making sure such a move was in the publics best interest. The government did everything it could to protect workers jobs. When I lived there there was practically no unemployement. And the result of those policies (the humane industrial policy that so many liberals want to institute here by not letting the evil non compassionate market run amock) was the economy flattened and growth slowed.

That is why the Japanese today are so screwed. If their economy had kept up the growth it had experience in the 80s the Japanese economy today would be three size the time it is now and they would have no deficit problem and plenty of government revenue.

In the recession of 2000 in the US the proper move was to create deficits to pull us out of the recession. It was not the deficits that we were running in 2001-2002 that was screwing future generations but it was the lack of growth that was screwing future generations. Now that we have the growth back, the deficits could crowd out private investors, thereby reducing the rate of growth. So we now need to balance the budget. But the budget deficts in the first term were entirely necessary and definitely benefited future generations.

[Gattigap]

As an interesting corollary to the Spanky Thesis that Jesus Christ, Debt Is Irrelevant because We'll Simply Grow Out of It, Morons, see the below chart.




Spanky, I understand your point that carrying SOME amount of debt on an ongoing basis is arguably good, because it carries other montetary benefits. Similarly, I agree with the general point that X amount of debt today, standing alone, will decrease in relative size as the economy grows.

We've discussed before the laughable notion that we'll start balancing budgets tomorrow (or in the near future) so that your enthusiastic economic argument will come to pass. In that light, please examine the above graph for me, which demonstrates that debt as a percentage of GDP is in the 60%+ range right now, and is expected to rise to about 70% before the end of Bush's term.

Even acknowledging that SOME debt is just dandy, what's your magical percentage of GDP where the debt just painlessly evaporates in the face of an ever-expanding economy? 60%? 80%? 20%?

If 70% evaporates in less than a generation, then Ty's original comment wouldn't seem to apply. If it takes more than that, please elaborate.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Gattigap
As an interesting corollary to the Spanky Thesis that Jesus Christ, Debt Is Irrelevant because We'll Simply Grow Out of It, Morons, see the below chart.




Spanky, I understand your point that carrying SOME amount of debt on an ongoing basis is arguably good, because it carries other montetary benefits. Similarly, I agree with the general point that X amount of debt today, standing alone, will decrease in relative size as the economy grows.

We've discussed before the laughable notion that we'll start balancing budgets tomorrow (or in the near future) so that your enthusiastic economic argument will come to pass. In that light, please examine the above graph for me, which demonstrates that debt as a percentage of GDP is in the 60%+ range right now, and is expected to rise to about 70% before the end of Bush's term.

Even acknowledging that SOME debt is just dandy, what's your magical percentage of GDP where the debt just painlessly evaporates in the face of an ever-expanding economy? 60%? 80%? 20%?

If 70% evaporates in less than a generation, then Ty's original comment wouldn't seem to apply. If it takes more than that, please elaborate.

I can't really figure out this graph. At the end of WWII our total debt was less than twenty percent of GNP? That can't be right. I think it was more than a 100% of GNP. So this graph is not showing what percentage of GNP the debt was during different administrations. So this graph is really a snap shot of where all the debt we have today came from? That isn't a correct either because this graph doesn't represent todays debt. So this graph is a representation of where all the debt will have come from at the end of Bush's term. But that doesn't make sense either because the overwhelming majority of the national debt at the end of Bush's term will have been created by Bush II. And this graph shows that at the end of Bush's term most of the national debt will have come from Reagan's term.

Can you explain exactly what this graph represents?

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Spanky
The deficits we incur now will cause problems for the next thirty years, but after that the debt becomes irrelevent. It does not have to be paid back.

Catchy slogan. You should make a bumper sticker.

Originally posted by Spanky
Since the United States government has an infinted life span, and it continually grows, you don't ever have to pay off the debt.

There are two fallacies in that passage, although I only worry about the second. So, riddle me this, RINO:

If what you say is so obviously true, why do so many distinguished economists (including Mr. Greenspan), fret about deficit spending?

And, if you're not arguing that we need not worry about deficits, why are you blabbing on and on?

S_A_M

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by Spanky
I can't really figure out this graph. At the end of WWII our total debt was less than twenty percent of GNP? That can't be right. I think it was more than a 100% of GNP. So this graph is not showing what percentage of GNP the debt was during different administrations.

Correct so far.

So this graph is really a snap shot of where all the debt we have today came from?

That's what it purports to be

That isn't a correct either because this graph doesn't represent todays debt. So this graph is a representation of where all the debt will have come from at the end of Bush's term.

The two preceeding sentences seem to be contradictory, but the second one is correct.

But that doesn't make sense either because the overwhelming majority of the national debt at the end of Bush's term will have been created by Bush II. And this graph shows that at the end of Bush's term most of the national debt will have come from Reagan's term.

Not according to the graph. Perhaps you or the graph are mistaken. Would you like to give some sort of basis for your assertion? The more interesting figure to me, at any rate, is the percentage of the current debt represented by the black bar: the leaders who incurred that debt are long dead. The leaders of today were at best children and likely even unborn when that debt was incurred. Yet we're still paying it off.*

*I am certainly in no way implying that the debt should not have been incurred. When the Nazis start invading France and the Japanese start bombing Pearl Harbor, you pull out the national MasterCard.**

** Note that this reasoning also applies to the bombing of the WTC and Pentagon: all the debt that we've incurred to hunt down the perpetraotrs of those atrocities are okay by me.***

*** The Saddam Hussien regime had nothing to do with these bombings, so the debt incurred to invade Iraq needs to be justified some other way, at least in my book.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Catchy slogan. You should make a bumper sticker.


There are two fallacies in that passage, although I only worry about the second. So, riddle me this, RINO:

If what you say is so obviously true, why do so many distinguished economists (including Mr. Greenspan), fret about deficit spending?

And, if you're not arguing that we need not worry about deficits, why are you blabbing on and on?

S_A_M

How many times do I have to say this. Deficits are a problem for the year they are incurred and for at least fifteen years afterwards. Deficits are a problem because the debt competes with private enterprize for available financing. Deficits are a problem long term debt isn't.

I am not blabbing. I made the simple statement that when people cry about saddling future generations with burdesome debt when they complain about the deficit, they are full of it. That was all. But people kept trying to tell me I was wrong.

I am simple defending simple truth. The other people are babbling.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by baltassoc
Correct so far.
That's what it purports to be
The two preceeding sentences seem to be contradictory, but the second one is correct.

Not according to the graph. Perhaps you or the graph are mistaken. Would you like to give some sort of basis for your assertion? The more interesting figure to me, at any rate, is the percentage of the current debt represented by the black bar: the leaders who incurred that debt are long dead. The leaders of today were at best children and likely even unborn when that debt was incurred. Yet we're still paying it off.*

This graph is almost certainly wrong. If the current debt is around five trillion that means twenty percent is one trillion. We did not spend a trillion dollars on WWII. I don't think we even came close to spending a trillion dollars on WWII. I think I remember that the debt was 140% of GDP when the war finished. But whatever that number is today, it is not close to a trillion.

And like I said, if the graphs predictions of how much Bush will be spending up to 2009, I am pretty sure Bush IIs combined debt would greatly exceed all the debt that came before him. Either the graph is wrong, or we don't know whay it is trying to say.