Liberals vs. Conservatives - Page 2

Im not a Republian, I have never voted Republican either (except for a judge or two here and there - I like Republican judges - they kick ass).

If you have $2 trillion dollars in debt, and you are paying annual interest on that debt at 13%, and you can't figure out that you must get out of the recession and lower the interest rates AT ALL COST, then you must be a democrat.

Bush's tax cuts were also bipartisan. They served the same purpose as the Regan tax cuts, and they got us out of the recession that hit at the end of Clinton's term, just like Regan's tax cuts got out of Carter's recession.

I agree with the others. Conservatives think in the short term ( to gain votes ). Everything they do points to this. The enviroment, world politics, abortion, the economy. It's all designed to look good......now. Never mind the enviroment's poisoned, everyone now hates us, there are already too many unwanted children, and speaking of our children. They ( and possibly theirs ) will be paying for this bloated, miscaluculation of an administration for many years. From a surplus to a huge record breaking deficit in only 4 years.

Yup, short term.

Financially, the conservatives seem to be just the opposite of what you say. In your post you, in fact, are looking at a short term (4-year) view, without noticing that the economy tanked before Bush took office. The conservatives usually fix the problem, which involves a lot of flack in the short term for long term gain (tax cuts -> fix the recession).

Not like it tanked after he took office! All that debt ( mainly due to the war ) came after! Typical put a band aid on it now never mind later conservative thinking.

Yes we were already primed for a recession while Clinton was still in office. We were over due. But we'd been in the longest running bull market in history. It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out!

For someone who claims not to vote republican you sure seem to love everything Bush in your posts!

e16, for someone who has talked about how dishonest all Democrats are when they talk about budgets and taxes, you really have some "interesting" views on economics.

First of all, when Bush proposed his tax cuts, we weren't in a recession; we were in the midst of the longest expansion in modern American history. He did not propose them as a way to get out of a recession. Second, by the time his tax cuts took effect, the recession that did occur was already over (Nov. 2001).

Republicenomics (tax-cuts-with-spending-increases) isn't necessary to get us out of recessions - if it was, the aftermath of Clinton's tax increases would have been economic disaster rather than the longest expansion in history.

Just compare Clinton and Reagan.
1. They both had a recession before they took office.
2. Clinton raised the top rates, Reagan reduced them.
3. Clinton had a recovery, Reagan had a recovery.
4. Clinton had a surplus, Reagan had a deficit.

Look at Bush now, it's the same thing. We had a recovery, as we always do, but we also got a deficit. The only thing we know for sure is that Republicenomics cause deficits.

The facts are in and they couldn't be more clear. There are economic cycles of growth and recession that we simply don't have much government control over. But government policy does significantly effect our budget situation.

Not all Republicans hold to the crazy view of economics. Our president's father called it "voodoo economics." Many Republicans in Congress are, or used to be, true fiscal conservatives. Where are you, e16? Fiscal conservative or voodoo economist? From your statements so far, I'd have to peg you as a voodoo guy. Am I wrong?

I am both - I believe that high taxes, high spending, and high debt are all bad for the country.

I believe that the Europeans have it even worse than us in these three respects, and that Canada can only afford its social programs because the US is forced to provide for their national defense (we can't invade them, and we can't let them be invaded, so the Canadians spend token amounts on defense and let the US foot the bill).

Since the Europeans and Canada are often sited as models that the Democrats want to follow, I say that a prolonged democratic govenment would be a financial disaster.

Also, you say that we don't have control of the recessions, and then credit Clinton for the boom? Not very fair on your part. Clinton just happened to catch a wave, and his tax increase was not enough to derail it.

Well folks that's one opinion.


I just love the fact that when conservatives ( Bush supporters in particular ) are on the defense tend to ignore the bottom line. The over all out come of these presidents.

Their bottom line is : " Oh, that was someone else's fault ". I do believe that we were primed for a bull market when Clinton took office. I also beileve that it's all in how you handle these trends. Clinton helped to turn this into a really lucrative time for us ( " focus on the economy like a laser beam " ). Just as Bush turned this into a really long term downturn with bad unemployment. Spending tons on a unnecessary war in a time of economic strife just isn't wise.

I absolutely do not believe that Clinton caused the boom. Republicans believe that government policy effects the economic cycle - they were very clear in their prediction that we would go into the worst depression in the history of the universe. It was fundamental to why they crushed the Democrats in Congress in 1994. And they were unequivocally, embarrassingly, absolutely, rub-your-face-in-it wrong.

They were only wrong because of an extremely unusual occurance. The dot-com boom was producing massive amounts of capital gains (and capital gains taxes) at the time. If it was not for the dot-com boom, I believe that they would have been right.

No - we just notice that most of the effects of a president's decisions come to fruit during the next guy's reign. So if the white house jumps back and forth every 4 years - the good guy gets the blame, and the bad guy get the praise.

That's called " passing the buck ".


Oh! The dot com boom is getting be an over used excuse for something that was truly phenominal in our economic history. Just like the one for WOMDs in Iraq.

Yup! Bush came into office with a recession. He also came into office with a U.S. economy in a surplus ( in the black ) for the first time in a very long time. And you can see ( very clearly ) what he did with it.

If he were working for a private company he would have been sacked a long time ago.

There's no question that the dot-com boom was responsible for the happiness of the late-90s stock market. But to argue that it was the only reason that Clinton's top-rate tax increase didn't put the nation into recession doesn't match the timeline. Clinton's tax increase was put into place in 1993; we had significant growth and were well on our way to budget surplus by 1997, reaching it the next year; and the dot-com boom started in 1999, peaking in mid-2000.

Wrong -

"In 1994 the Internet came to the general public's attention with the public advent of the Mosaic web browser and the nascent World Wide Web, and by 1996 it became obvious to most publicly-traded companies that a public web presence was no longer optional."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com

You are thinking of the telecom boom, which was still 1 year earlier than you are thinking of.

And it is quite obvious that both booms countered the effect of Clinton's tax increases. You don't care about taxes when you are raking in so much money that you can't spend it even after you pay the tax.

WRONG!
"The advent of the Mosaic browser" had nothing to do with the dot-com boom of dot-com STOCKS.

eBay went public in September of 1998, which to me indicated the beginning of the dot-com stock boom. Or maybe it was Amazon.com in mid-1997, but certainly not before then.

Other than Amazon, Yahoo and Netscape, please cite a specific dot-com initial public offering that was earlier than 1998.


For example, a company that's very representative of the dot-com boom-to-bust is Pets.com.


"Founded in 1998, Pets.com raised $82.5 million in an initial public offering in February (2000)."

"Pets.com is shutting down its retail operations and laying off hundreds of employees, the company said Tuesday (November, 2000)"

"The Amazon.com-backed company was the leading online pet store and was known for its wildly popular sock puppet spokesdog. The San Francisco-based company said it would sell off its assets, including its catchy URL and the rights to the sock puppet icon."

http://news.com.com/2100-1017-248230.html?legacy=cnet

That's when web browsers started appearing, not when the dot-com stock market boom occurred. That was 1999. You could say the first signs that it was going to happen started in 1998, but the stock market book itself was clearly in 1999.

From your link:

Hmm - looks like you are mostly right. After the netscape IPO in August of 1995, there was immediate activity, though - it did not take 3 years for the first companies to jump on the bandwagon. Amazon just waited a long time before their IPO.

However, there is nothing that says that the huge promise that everyone saw Auguest of 1995 (due to the Netscape IPO) did not keep money flowing into the markets and prevent a recession.

It wasn't the advent of browsers but many companies realizing that they could do business in a big way on the internet that brought about the boom. That didn't happen in a big way until much later in the decade. It was a late 90's thing.

This :

" However, there is nothing that says that the huge promise that everyone saw Auguest of 1995 (due to the Netscape IPO) did not keep money flowing into the markets and prevent a recession. "


is a bit of a stretch.

BTW guys, when looking for information on Clinton's tax increase, I found this:

"That 1982 tax increase only slightly exceeded Clinton's in inflation-adjusted dollars ($37 billion a year vs.. $32 billion) but it was much bigger in relation to the size of the economy. The '82 increase amounted to 4.6% of GDP (average for the first two years) while Clinton's was 2.7%"

Regan had an even bigger tax increase in 1982 than Clinton had in 1993.

I found this discussion of taxes, which seems pretty coherent:

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_k...cz103001.shtml

"Nominal GDP has risen 53% since the 1993 third quarter, while individual income-tax payments have soared 110% more than doubling from $510 billion to an estimated $1.073 trillion. By comparison, corporate income taxes have risen 81%, and Social Security and other retirement payments have increased 61%. Individual income taxes now supply more than 50% of total federal revenue (versus 44% in 1993). Corporate income taxes account for 10% of federal receipts (little changed from 1993), and retirement payments contribute 32% (versus 37%)."

Income tax is out of hand. I can't wait to hear what Bush's tax committee comes up with - they are producing their report by the end of the month.

What part of that 110% is due to the tax restructuring of the Clinton era? It seems to me that moving away from retirement payments as a source of tax revenue is a Good Thing (tm), and the last two lines indicate that that is precisely what occured.

I'll also be interested. I don't trust them with taxes though - they'll probably just find a new way to cut them. Taxes need to be raised unless someone suggests a way to cut health costs. And I'm skeptical of most of the more radical reforms, like a national sales tax.

I'd like to see basic simplification, like they did in 1986. Go even further - give people a much larger standard deduction, and maybe keep the mortgage and the charity deductions, and that's it. No more "deduct the sum of lines 76 through 89 if your grandmother is blind and you purchased solar equipment for your soybean business in the last year."

All of it. Only Clinton and Bush have been in charge since 1993, and Bush sure hasn't raised taxes.

Come to think of it, I moved down here from Canada in July 1993, and I expected to save a bunch in taxes. When I checked things out after I moved, taxes were the same - I wasn't very pollitically interested at the time, so I didn't notice that taxes changed right when I moved, I remember thinking at the time "Damn, Canada must have lowered their taxes". Ha ha ha.

It isn't a reduction in payroll tax - payroll tax also is up more than the GDP.

And simplification of the tax code would save a whole bunch of money, which would let them lower taxes without lowering revenue. The instructions that Bush gave to the comittee included simplification, and keeping charity and progressive taxation.

Exactly. This is why i support the FairTax

Hey, Why was Chtis Cuilla banned? This is a good thread. Was it becuase of this? Though I have disagreed with Chris before, usually she was thoughtful and respectful.

Nick's style of "conservative" actually believes that in general, people who earn more money (1) work proportionately harder (2) are proportionately more important (3) are proportionately smarter than those who earn less money. He thinks a CEO who earns 20 times more than his secretary is in fact 20 times more important and 20 times more worthy than his secretary, and that if the CEO, earning 500 thousand dollars a year pays 35% taxes, and the secretary, who earns 25 thousand a year pays 34% taxes than the CEO is getting treated unfairly by the government.

I think you ignore the fact that Bush spending has gone up -- way up -- even when you take defense and national security out of the equation. What I'd like to know is how in any way is that "conservative".

Bush throws money to big business like it is rice at a wedding.

Actually, I agree with you. The main things that really make me uncomfortable with Bush are the huge domestic spending and the religious stuff. The democrats are even less to my liking, though.

BRussel - I am reading "wealth and democracy" as you suggested - it seems like a pretty good history book, but I have two major problems with it, two chapters in.

1. He flings around all kinds of numbers without adusting for inflation - which makes them useless. He seems to be kind of saying "we only had a few millionaires in the 1790s, and we have lots now" while forgetting that these 18th century millionaires would match up with deca-billionaires now.

2. He notices that during times of large technological change and bull markets, that the inequality between the social classes increases, forgetting that the reason they increase is that the rich fund (and profit from) those technological changes (which would not happen otherwise).

I'll continue reading it, though.

Alot of time people with more money don't always work harder, they just make smarter choices with the money they make(investments). I'll admit there are alot of CEOs that are overpaid for work they do, but a good many of them work their asses off trying to keep the company afloat and expanding. And for the record a secretary isn't nearly as important as a CEO or anyone else on the executive board. She can easily be replaced. As for your example about taxes, I don't think that's unfair. I think instead of a graduated income tax there should be a flat income tax. Noone should be punished with higher taxes for being more successful.

So the immigrant who is working as a janitor cleaning Shell gasoline station bathrooms is not investing wisely with the minimum wage she earns? Give me a fucking break. After she pays for her cockroach infested flat and buys food for the two children that her deadbeat husband left her with, there's nothing left to invest. It's not about choices. It's about necessities and social responsibility.

The thing here is, that you really, really, no matter what anyone ever says to you, will continue to deny and fail to understand, is that the people with more money have more power. They have more power in companies to choose who gets a raise and who gets a paycut (and of course they will always give themselves a raise), and they have more power in government to decide who gets a tax write-off and which jobs and industries get financed (of course they will support their own industry).

The scalable tax system addresses this inequality to some extent, though not nearly enough. If you check the average pay increases of CEOs and that of janitors, you'll find that in the last 20 years, CEOs' salaries have gone up tenfold while janitors' pay hasn't even kept up with inflation. The rich get richer and it has to stop.

You're not punishing the successful. You're punishing the greedy.

Don't preach to me about social responsibility. In the end the only person I'm responsible for is myself. You know I alwasy find it ironic how the left always screams about how the right tries to force their morals on everyone else (banning abortion, gay marriage) but you do the same thing here. Who are you to say what I or anyone else owes society?
The only person who should be able to decide that is me. And at least woman has a job. More than what she deserves considering she's probably illegal anyway. You have not right to force me to be socially responsible. If I want to hoard all of my money and share it with noone else, THAT'S MY BUSINESS, NOT YOURS. You have no right to punish me with higher taxes because of it. This is America, I can be as greedy or giving as I want. If you want more money to go towards social programs and all that other crap, then YOU pay more taxes voluntarily. But you have no right to try and force everyone else to do the same.

You're remarkable for your ability to cut right to the chase. Bravo!

LOL! What a maroon!

Kids will be kids. And some adults will be kids too.

I love this part...

"Don't preach to me about social responsibility! I deny that it exists!"

LOL!

You benefit from society, and pay for it also. While taxation, technically, seems very similar to armed robbery - taxation is part of the groundwork of rules that provide a solid society in which you can make money, so it is part of the cost of doing business.

The social programs benefit you even if you don't use them - they are insurance. If there is a stock market crash, and you lose everything including your job, you will be glad of the social safety net.

I'll agree that the government is out of controll with spending, and we need to get them to cut that out. Maybe we can afford a flat tax or sales tax (replacing the income tax) if we cut out a good chunck of the 90% of the government that is totally useless, but until then the current tax system is about as good as we can get. The poor can't afford to pay more, and the rich have to pay way more than their fair share because the government flushes the money down the toilet.

I agree with you about social responsibility and getting the government out of our personal lives (minus the disrespect of immegrant single mothers).

Why, instead of poking fun at my age, don't you make a reasonable response? Oh, that's right, you can't

To e#: Maybe some misunderstood me. I don't mind the gov't collecting taxes when they are used for things everyone benefits from like police and fire protection and public education. I also don't mind paying for unemployment benefits (never know when you are goin to need those). BUt I don't like paying for failed social welfare programs like social security and medicare/medicaid. I'm tired of paying for someone else's living expenses. Ths programs only encourage laziness and don't force individuals to take responsiblitiy for their own futures. That's why I'm happy Congress toughened up on backruptcy laws, making it harder for a person to declare bankruptcy. You should be forced to pay off your debt (for the rest of you life if need be) because noone forced you to sign the dotted line to incur that debt. I don't mind government spending as long as it's on something important (military, funds for municipalities to provide free broadband access) and in my book SS and medicare/medicaid are not important.

Actually - I think that Social Security is one of the few government programs that works well. It is not subsidised by the rich, due to the 80K (or whatever) income limit for taxation, for one thing. There are two things that the government could do to make it better - 1) make it illegal for the social security fund to invest in government securities (i.e. right now the government loans the money to itself and then spends it), and 2) means test before giving benefits (i.e. change it from a guarenteed check to "poverty insurance" - you don't want to end up like the billionaires in the Eddie Murphy movie Trading Places.

Also, I agree with the bankruptsy law changes, but only if the credit card companies are forced to obey loan shark rules. My citibank credit card is in violation of loan shark rules, I am sure of it, when you miss a payment - the real interest rate is almost 40% because they base it on maximum balance, not average balance.

Why is free broadband access more important than health care?

I think I may have figured it out, though. If everyone can access WebMD, people won't need to visit the doctor!

But, really ... ?

I'm thankful that it isn't clear-cut. I wish it was less clear-cut. I want to have opinions that make sense to me; not ones that follow a political archetype.

I think its a case of "No bread? why not eat cake?"

Health care is available to everyone (provided tht you can afford it) broadband isn't available to everyone even though some can afford it.

Maybe so, but if Social Security was gone then the government wouldn't have anything to steal money from would they? And if you do something as dumb as what they did on Trading Spaces you deserve to starve in my opinion.