What the US needs is Bill Clinton.

[Coito ergo sum]

Rev -- you're not aware that there are lots of Conservative Democrats, and also some Liberal Republicans? Thought so...

[pErvinalia]

If you were paying attention, you would have realised that I am no fan of the democrats either. Your excuses "yeah, but, the dems do it too", is not an answer.

[pErvinalia]

Look, i'm just going to apologise for being so cranky. It's not CES's fault that I hate conservatives so much. But I do, hence why I go off.

[Coito ergo sum]

If you were paying attention, you would have realised that I am no fan of the democrats either. Your excuses "yeah, but, the dems do it too", is not an answer.

Let's hear your litany of complaints against Obama and the Democrats....

[Coito ergo sum]

Look, i'm just going to apologise for being so cranky. It's not CES's fault that I hate conservatives so much. But I do, hence why I go off.

I'm not conservative on most issues -- MOST issues. You're just one of those people who get all "cranky" when someone expresses agreement with conservatives on anything. It's like, oh, yes, I'm pro gay marriage, pro-civil rights laws, pro-reasonable gun control measures, pro-choice on abortion, pro-immigrant, etc., but let me express pro-conservative fiscal policy, and all of a sudden you burst into namecalling and childish bullshit. Grow up a little, and realize that things aren't all black and white, and that it's just possible that the Republicans don't actually WANT to destroy the economy and make everyone poor. If you find yourself buying into the idea that the "other side" is an inhuman monster, salivating to eat your babies, then you might want to check your premises a little.

[pErvinalia]

Seriously, don't get me started. My premises are based on years of studying the data. Neoliberalism is sending us all down the toilet, led of course by the US. Anyway, I'm heading back the the pub forum where I don't have to get all shouty and cranky...

[MrJonno]

The only people who vote republican who arent racist, sexist, religious wingnuts are those who think tax cuts are more important than whether you are racist,sexist or a religious wingnut.

Met a few on other forums they generally seem quite nice people but think taxes trump any other concern of course if you are worried about tax levels are pretty well off in the first place. Most other people tend to worry about whether they have a job or not

[Randydeluxe]

The only people who vote republican who arent racist, sexist, religious wingnuts are those who think tax cuts are more important than whether you are racist,sexist or a religious wingnut.

This is generally correct, but the economic side isn't based as much in faith as you might think.

(The racist, sexist, religious stuff is all faith-based, and all of the right wing in the U.S. is aiding and abetting that.)

There are two reasons that tea baggers in the U.S. love to refer to themselves as "libertarians". One is that they can't stand how their party, the republicans, are forced by the arrangement of the republic to occasionally move toward the middle and compromise. In a universe with a god, there is right and there is wrong, and compromise assigning points in the grand scoresheet to that which is wrong. Therefore, rather than even admit the name of the party that they uniformly vote for in the privacy of a ballot, they call themselves something else. "I'm not a republican; I'm a conservative." The sad thing is, the set of issues on which conservatives agree with libertarians are issues of economics: the discrete set of issues on which republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and tea baggers have been uniformly and consistently wrong every single election cycle for decades.

In that awful Venn diagram, there is one section of people who are generally correct on social issues, such as how we should treat people of different races, sexes, religions, orientations, etc.: the libertarians. On those issues, they overlap with the left wing in the U.S.

Unfortunately, what really matters is economics. People don't care about equal standing if they're starving, they don't care about improving the world if they aren't educated, and there's no point in putting some jam on the bottom shelf where the little man can reach it if the little man's arms don't work because he has no access to health care. When we get the economics right, we create a platform on which the social issues can stand.

Back in February, there was an interesting poll of of economists regarding the effectiveness and value of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. You should read it: http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic- ... LNJL1oz4Xi

In the United States for the last 30 years, there has been a natural experiment that is testing the two major macroeconomic theories - Neo-Keynesianism and Real Business Cycle. At any given time, there have been a *lot* of economists on the RBC side. However, the facts are kicking their asses. The RBC models have been predicting rampant inflation and skyrocketing Federal bond rates for four years now, and the trends keep going in the directions predicted by the Neo-Keynesians.

On these very discussion forums, you can look back a couple of years and find certain individuals guaranteeing inflation in 2010, then again in 2011. That happen.

The question of whether there are stimulus effects from tax cuts is not a Laffer question, but a Keynes question, and the distribution of answers is unsurprising and uncontroversial. Income tax cuts would impact demand and thereby stimulate a demand-depressed economy. However, they aren't very efficient at it. The rich have a much higher marginal propensity to save, and much of the tax cut would likely be banked. Demand-focused stimulus is best focused on those who have high propensity to spend, or on activities that unlock other spending (mortgage relief).

The empirical research on the Laffer Curve is that you don't actually get a net-positive fiscal result from tax cuts unless effective tax rates are north of 70%. Few governments have ever tried that, and the only example I know of comes from a short-lived taxation experiment in Sweden.

That said, inefficiencies and incentive problems in tax policies are real, and thus any government program funded by them needs to have a sufficiently high payout to be worth the economic burden of taxation, on top of the cost of the actual program itself. Since the high wealth of the rich lowers the marginal benefit of income to them (a dollar to Bill Gates is worth much less than a dollar to a homeless man), mild redistribution and well-designed safety net policies are usually easy to justify on the basis of economic analysis.

Keynesian economics is really, really hard to understand. It's extremely counterintuitive, flying in the face of what everyone "knows" from how to manage a household. Just remember:

[*]Households can't print money.
[*]Households can't borrow money at a rate lower than the rate of inflation.
[*]When households cut the budget, that doesn't result in household income dropping because half the household had to be laid off, as they were household employees, or worked for household employees, or sold stuff to household employees, or had contracts with the household.

The U.S. doesn't need Bill Clinton. It definitely doesn't need any more republicans in congress. The entire economic situation would improve dramatically if the Fed just bought every underwater mortgage, re-issued it at 95% of actual value, and monetized (printed money to cover) the loss. Logistically, that is a difficult task (identifying, purchasing, and pricing) but the economic impact would be vast.

[Tero]

It wasn't Bill, it was the internet business bubble. And a blue dress. He improved the sales of dresses to all kinds of interns.

[Coito ergo sum]

Seriously, don't get me started. My premises are based on years of studying the data. Neoliberalism is sending us all down the toilet, led of course by the US. Anyway, I'm heading back the the pub forum where I don't have to get all shouty and cranky...

O.k. -- what data? By way of example, provide some links or citations, please.

[Coito ergo sum]

The only people who vote republican who arent racist, sexist, religious wingnuts are those who think tax cuts are more important than whether you are racist,sexist or a religious wingnut.

Met a few on other forums they generally seem quite nice people but think taxes trump any other concern of course if you are worried about tax levels are pretty well off in the first place. Most other people tend to worry about whether they have a job or not

It's not just taxes. It's a fundamental disagreement with the promised "fundamental transformation" that this administration promised and is attempting to effectuate.

[MrJonno]

Sorry if someone said they thought the Earth was 6000 years old and the other guy was a pedophile rapist who have a £/$200 a day crack habit it won't be the creationist getting my vote.

Its quite possible to rationally run a government with a decent salary to pay for your crack and a supply of 12 year old girls its not possible to do so if your understanding of reality is from 2000 year old goat herders or that supernatural angels go around leaving magical plates in the middle of the desert.

Taxes unless they are going up by stupid amounts really arent that important in the general scheme of things

[Randydeluxe]

Sorry if someone said they thought the Earth was 6000 years old and the other guy was a pedophile rapist who have a £/$200 a day crack habit it won't be the creationist getting my vote.

Its quite possible to rationally run a government with a decent salary to pay for your crack and a supply of 12 year old girls its not possible to do so if your understanding of reality is from 2000 year old goat herders or that supernatural angels go around leaving magical plates in the middle of the desert.

Taxes unless they are going up by stupid amounts really arent that important in the general scheme of things

As long as you're talking about a progressive tax system where monies that aren't otherwise in play are used to pay for expenditures, yes. It is somewhat better to pay for expenditures with taxes than loans. Some amount of debt is generally a good thing.

A proposed benefit of a more-steeply arranged progressive tax system is that we might actually see the ridiculously huge military shrink, as the wealthiest of the wealthy finally begin to have some skin in the expenditures game.

I don't understand why you felt it was useful to burden your alternative candidate with pedophilia. I realize that you're going for the most-extreme way of saying that you prefer reality-based thinking over faith-based thinking, but the alternative candidate could have a host of unfortunate habits falling well short of horrific criminal behavior and still be preferable.

[MrJonno]

Point I'm making is some people see taxation as an issue that allows you to overlook all over faults in a person even when you agree with them being faults.

Ideally in a working democracy while you might get some unpleasant people to choose between all candidates should be sane. I'm glad to say every major leader of British political parties at moment is functional rational human being. Not to say some are complete bastards but none are going to launch a nuclear missile strike to bring about the end times

[Coito ergo sum]

Your home-town bias is showing.

Taxation is an issue, among the whole panoply of issues facing the nation. Some folks prioritize certain issues more than others. Don't mistake the fact that you prioritize issues one way as an indication that others aren't sane.

Tax policy effects the entire economy. It isn't a minor issue, and it takes a pretty high spot in my book, as does government spending programs, cronyism involving subsidies and crippling regulation, etc.

I find issues like "religion" to be important in the sense of "freedom of and from" religion -- however, I think that to a great degree, greater than in most countries, we have that here in the US. We have a government founded on secular principles which by and large does not marry itself with religion. We do get the odd prayer breakfast, national prayer day, and symbolic gestures toward religion, but while those are objectionable to me they aren't as important as national defense and the economy/taxation. Issues of somewhat greater importance to me would be government funding of religious institution, which for the most part does not occur in the US (although it does occur in most European countries) -- here in the US the biggest issue is with the funding of private schools, but even that isn't the biggest issue in the world since there are regulations in place to ensure that said private schools offer a standardized education.

I think gays should be allowed to marry, but it isn't, to me, an issue that trumps national defense and the economy/taxation. We're headed in the right direction. Forty years ago Britain and the US decriminalized -- deCRIMINALIZED -- homosexual acts. For a while it was generally considered a mental illness and most people considered it a perversion. In the 1990s, things started to ease up and psychologists stopped categorizing it as per se a mental disorder, and by the late 1990s, the first few nations started allowing gays to marry. The first few nations to do so were in the late 1990s and the early 2000s -- like 10 or 12 years ago. So, when someone pipes off about how horrid and horrible and homophobic and hateful someone is for not thinking gays should be allowed to marry, I have to take that with a grain of salt, because, frankly, this is all brand new. And, societies take a while to change in this regard. Frankly, in 40-50 years to go from jailing people for sodomy and now we're at the point where some US States are recognizing gay nuptuals is pretty fucking good. If it takes another few years for the tide to completely turn, then so be it. That is why it's not a top issue for me.