what's your opinion about Obama job plan?

Is this the time to worry about the size of government? We are in a recession that is going to devolve into an other great depression if we continue on our present path.

In this service economy there is no mechanism to end the recession. So little is made in this country that even if spending increases the money will flow out of the country to the third world manufacturing nations our capitalists created.

Government is the only game in town. Banks won't lend. Companies won't hire.

People need to eat every day, no matter what the economy looks like.

 

Where do you get that information? And how do you define richer? As far as I know, we do better on average than we did 30 or 40 years ago.

His government spending extended the depression. It lasted until around 1939 - 10 years. The recession we are in now will last 10 years as well and government spending won't and can't help it at all. Government is a net spender of wealth. Spending wealth is not a way to achieve wealth. Common sense. Think of government in the same terms you would think of your family. You wouldn't spend in order to have more wealth, would you?

It was certainly a nice deal for those that got jobs from them. It didn't do anything for the millions of others that didn't, however.

That is class envy and not very pretty. I prefer to think of it as keeping the government from having even more money to waste.

I'm not sure what is not going to work. The government can't fix the economy. Business has to do that. All of the wealth in our society derives from business - every nickel of it. You have your loyalties in the wrong place.

You allow whatever you want to allow. Personally, I'll take care of myself and spend no time at all hoping someone else will take care of me.

 

$2.5-$3 trillion over the next year and an additional $1 to $1.5 trillion in the year after would be adequate. Why is this required? To kick start the economy. Get people working, spending money, paying bills again. The rest will take care of itself.

That is a great steaming pile of right-wing bull(*)(*)(*)(*) that gets thrown around by austrians and other conservative nutjobs. Your "definitions" are severely distorted to serve your own intellectual bias.

WWII was an inefficient way to jumpstart the economy. It worked, but it would have worked better had we done something productive with the money. World War II was necessary for other reasons, but it was not economically productive. Any endeavor where you're spending huge amounts of money to kill off potential customers is a wasteful endeavor, from an economic standpoint. Obviously the Nazis and the Japanese represented an existential threat to the US and to our economic system as a whole--WWII was justified on that basis alone.

No we don't. While there are instances of long-temr habitual enemies who will fight each other out of habit, that is not true for the US. Any war we are involved in would be an economic calculation on both sides. A force large enough to make an attack risky, uncertain, and more costly than the potential gains is sufficient to prevent an attack. This, by the way, is the reason the US will not attack Iran. We know that it would cost far more than we are willing to pay to win such a war. Iran doesn't need a military large enough to win a war against the US, they just need a military large enough to make the fight more expensive to potential enemies than the enemies would gain from the conquest.

That's the essential basis of defense planning in rational states. Irrational states like the US plan for offense, not defense.

In other words, you admit the government has a role in managing these matters, but won't listen to them when they present an analysis on the matter? That seems like some classic right-wing doublethink to me.

I know the roads and bridges around here are pretty bad. I know that some of the dams in this general region have been facing failure. I know our power grid is not stable enough for computing companies to base data centers here (and I have been involved in that matter). What gives you reason to think our infrastructure is good? Even non governmental agencies give the US infrastructure a poor rating. It's one of the big reasons why companies shift data centers off to India--not only can they get cheap skilled labor, but the infrastructure is way better in some of their more recently developed areas.

Don't even get me started on the state of rail transportation in the US.

Then why won't you trust their analysis of the infrastructure? If you accept that it's the role of the government to manage those issues, then naturally it is also their role to analyze the state of that infrastructure.

We can't base our economy around the needs of people on fixed incomes.

The corporate welfare being paid for by the people. That's the big example. An entire system that's got its priorities backwards, and gotten people so confused that they'll vote against their own interests--dirt poor conservatives voting in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy in exchange for crums.

Not so. Adjust for inflation, and real wages have remained pretty much the same. Virtually all GDP growth over the last 30 years has gone to the wealthy. Only tiny amounts have trickled down, and that doesn't trickle down further than the upper middle class. Unless you're one of those bizarre people who consider someone making $150,000 a year "middle class".

Most of the US debt is held by private investors... most of the remainder is held by the US government itself. Foreign governments are minority holders, to say the least. The Chinese government may be the largest foreign holder, but that's not to say they hold most of our treasury bonds. Despite our credit downgrade, people are still flocking to US treasury bonds because they're considered a safe haven right now compared with European bonds.

You can keep repeating the right-wing kool-aid all you want, that won't make it true.

And the economists you've been reading probably should never have been considered economists to begin with.

Go plot it out on a graph. The positive correlation will stare you right in the face. That is an unavoidable and uncomfortable fact for those who dispute Keynes.

Because when you cut the government spending, you cut the private sector by a greater amount, and that reduces tax revenues. Your position assumes that tax revenue is unaffected by cuts in government spending, which is obviously absurd if you think about it for thirty seconds. Cuts to public sector spending shrink the size of the private sector too.

I've been a business owner and entrepreneur my entire working life. I guess if I'm not contributing anything, no one is.

They already do, and they'll only increase their rates as their businesses and emerging urban middle class demands more services.

You should be less hypocritical.

It's not "that simple". Governments and businesses handle debt and revenue very differently. They are not at all the same. Any fool who tries to base a government's fiscal policy on their own experiences with personal finances has no business making such decisions. Governments have far, far more options and much less in the way of obligation than individuals do. Trying to compare public fiscal policy to private financial management is insane.

The people who want less government spending are those who want to concentrate even more actual power in the hands of unaccountable corporations and the rich. I'd rather we have a competitive political ecosystem than rule by the wealthy.

 

Obviously, there is no point in continuing with you. Clouded facts and lack of common sense. Best of luck to you. See you at the polls.