And with Obama, you don't double the national debt and call that a budgetary success.

Yeah, because the USSR was an ally in World War II. He wasn't dumb enough to know that things wouldn't deteriorate with them when the war ended, but he didn't live that long.

When you look exclusively at the national debt and not at the deficit and the progression in how much money was added over a select period of time under Bush and then under Obama, you miss the point. Obama inherited a huge deficit. He has dramatically cut it. You can't just reverse a trillion dollar a year deficit with the flick of a pen or your power would have been cut seven years ago as part of a budget cutting decision and you would be eating bread and celery off a tin plate with two pints of water as part of your daily rations.

People that ask a guy who inherits that kind of deficit and a national economy on the brink of an epic collapse to not only stop spending money but to actually spend *less* money when things need fixing are flat out stupid. Do some research.

And the near-miracle in all of this is that he actually succeeded by listening to bipartisan economic plans and making the best plan he could for national industry as opposed to listening to whiners and cheats that think that fixing the economy is nothing but a political charade.

Look there is a lot of buffoonery in governments even when there are competent leaders. Take WWI as an example. How can European powers at the height of their power and prestige commit the suicide that they did in going to war against each other? Of course if they didn't we wouldn't have Diplomacy to play.

GW Bush was no genius either. Still, budgets can be moved to balance by stopping growth. There is no budget that cannot absorb a 3, 5 or 10% cut. I worked in government. We were asked to 'cut' all of the time. We spend money where we don't have to. Even the tax system is flawed; it is not a revenue source, it is a political control mechanism.

@bo

5.73 trillion to 10.63 trillion under Bush, the Obama:

10.43 trillion to... still counting. Expected to be at 20 trillion by the time the next President is inaugurated.


the problem with measuring it as % of GDP, is that the Government measures it's OWN expenditures, AS GDP. the more they spend, the more GDP increases. It's thus NOT entirely a proportionally relevant statistic, it has a threshold with actual Domestic valued project through VS Gov't self spending to the debt.

We have LOOOOOWWW interest rates, and we're spending 6% of the Federal budget on the debt.

the rates will be forced to raise again. The FED can only hold off for so long. @bo, if it doesn't start shrinking and SOON, we have a problem. (Trump is SOMEHOW worse than Clinton is this matter....)

GDP=G+I+C+N

Consumption, Investment, Consumption, Net exports, as a multiplier of taxes ratios. some do N(X-T)

but the formula is the same.

Gov't spending increase GDP b/c Gov't spending IS GDP. not because it helps consumption and investment. THAT is different math, that Obama has not excelled in

@CAPT Brad

I disagree with your assessment of taxes. OVERtaxation is a control method, but it is vital for a normal gov't

The problem is we need more ratios than percents. percents mislead.

Obama has done well compared to Bush in many aspects, but Bush started a war during an inflationary time period. Then again... we did say he was stupid

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/debt_deficit_history

much of the debt the gov't owes to itself, which is a funny matter MANY conservatives don't understand

No, I will give you an anecdote. My daughter made a small income working part time. with the tax tables we worked out that she paid $36.00 when we submitted her return. The IRS gave her back the $36. So she paid Nothing! You may not agree, but if they kept that money she would have been a 'Federal' taxpayer. Instead they gave her money that she could have lived without, but instead they took away her contribution. Thus she becomes one of the large percent of people who PAY NO TAXES! That is an insult. If we cannot contribute then how can we remain invested in our system?

there's a god moral argument for a flat tax rates, but as far as economic sustainability goes: it puts a LOT of pressure on the lower class. This can lead to cascading debt effects, which create social conditions that can affect generations

but a stratified system, where some pay NONE? immoral... but economically workable. the problem is, our welfare system is trash, and we have excess expenditures in many departments, so "economically workable" is turning into a failure.

I have no simple answers to this. I'm in college for these very questions

I have a military commission, an history degree, an MBA and I taught economics and accounting. The system we have in place causes inefficiencies, inequalities, and social structure breakdown. Our welfare system promotes dependency, our school system and education philosophy produces incompetence and unemployability. Even a place like Harvard has dropouts who have done better because they left before finishing.

I feel very sorry for today's youth. I have had success because the system had not begun to fray too badly when I was young. I was given the chance to be successful with the small opportunities I had. But, for you it is not so. Public schools had not become the 'factories' they are now. College was not necessary for most as there was quality in a high school diploma.

Back then we looked for a hand up. Today, people look for a handout.

^^+1

If your daughter buys anything, she pays sales taxes. If she earns money, she also pays payroll taxes. If she's not paying either of those, we shouldn't be asking her to help out. Trust me, every one has a stake in the system. If you breathe air, or interact with police, you need the system to work. Money is a small part of it.

And yes, it is a bugetary success of "only" double the debt, when if he'd kept going the way Bush had left things, it'd have been quadrupled. he largely stopped the bleeding. There's absolutely no way Obama doesn't go down as a successful president if only for dealing successfully with the worst economic disaster in 80 years.

I might agree if there were more bankers in federal prison.

Democrats are absolutely comparable to modern-day Nazis. They are on course to create a totalitarian society complete with thought-crime and doublethink. Liberals hate freedom of speech and want to tear down the First Amendment. See for example the Vice Chancellor at UC Irvine's justification for vandalism of Milo posters. http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/10/28/milo-posters-vandalised-uc-irvine/

"The university maintains a neutral position when it comes to political speech. Yet on occasion that posture of neutrality must be augmented with a counternarrative when certain organizations or speakers use language and tactics that assault the dignity and humanity of our students, faculty, staff or administrators."

Read that several several times. If this isn't doublethink, what is? It's literally indoctrinating the new generation with the "right" ideas and teaching us that it's right to suppress certain "wrong" ideas. This is also why liberals want free college education for everyone, so they can speed up the indoctrination process.

That's funny, because those posters certainly remind me of something...some kind of anti-religious propaganda, perhaps from Europe around WWII?...ah, there it is:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-B0N9qiL1Ux0/U100pNRPlUI/AAAAAAAAaL0/ty-t3IHXIk4/s1600/a.jpg

Don't worry, though, everyone knows making someone angry proves you're right. That's why trolls are regarded as paragons of society.

We can keep this up, too. Everyone will be Nazis by noon.

That's the only way for this to go, of course. We can't acknowledge the harmful things we're doing, only whine about the harmful things the other side is doing. Anything else would just be silly, am I right?

Always makes me laugh to hear us being called socialists and fascists. Man were such an evil party. Lol

I dont think these clowns even know what facism is.

"If this isn't doublethink, what is?"
Doublethink involves people believing anything at a moment's notice such that they can simultaneously "know" a contradictory statement to be true when they had immediately believed the alternative as true.
The university was not doing that. They are saying "we will not take a political side, but we will not condone behavior which can be reasonably said to harm or attack our students." These are not contrary to each other.

Fascism has ceased to have meaning due to excessive overuse. Hurray for Godwin's Law.

Rockin around the christmas treee

@"CAPT Brad
I might agree if there were more bankers in federal prison."

But what laws did they break? (Also you can't apply new laws retroactively... So assuming the laws were written to allow the bankers behave as they did, it is a human rights violation to create a law which punishes people for past violations... )

@leon: why the fuck do you think it's acceptable to call out Democrats for 'indoctrination,' whilst citing a breitbart article? I don't mean to be rude, but I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding what that quote is stating and ignoring the fact that education system is but one of millions of influences on the decisions that people make.

Perhaps if you had went to university, you would have read Michael J Sandel, who argued that the value in our first amendment freedoms comes not from our ability to utilize them, but of our respect for the individuals who hold those rights. Perhaps if you went to university, you would have encountered individuals whose lives have been negatively impacted by "free speech." Perhaps, if instead of rejecting new sources of information on the principle of bias, you would be capable of hearing other perspectives and logically evaluating their argumentative merit. Humans are prone to bias, we have no way of maintaining consistent neutrality. Nowadays, we have social media and near-everyone has the opportunity to propagandize an issue. That is why it is doubly important that we teach people to have respect for their freedoms. When we compromise the integrity of national coherence for the advancement of individuals' political agendas, we put ourselves at risk for things that the Nazis actually did...