So many falsehoods and dumb statements in one paragraph.

1 - You need consumers to buy the products produced. If the private sector isn't buying enough products, then the unsold products turn into unemployment and negative GDP growth, unless the government spends enough money to make up the difference.

2 - The Soviet and Chinese had very high levels of GDP growth. They didn't have a problem of the products produced not being bought. In fact the problem was the opposite - shortages. You have no idea what you're talking about. Look at the savings rates of the Soviet Union, especially from the 1920s to the 1960s, and the GDP growth rates. That alone crushes your stupid comments.

3 - Chinese government spending is 40% of GDP. US spending is 23%. Yet Chinese growth has been far faster than US growth. Your argument is terrible.

@Putin....Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ha ha ha ha haha haha hah a hah ah ah a! What a fucking retrad!

The Soviets had shortages because they produced too much?!?! What a fucking ass clown...

There is no point in even having a discussion with such a fool as you.

Let's go back to discussing how you - an educator - blame children and children alone for all the problems in schools, even though you admit teachers give passing grades to students they have failed to educate just to move them through the system. Tell us again how much you hate children, and why. That's always a fun topic.

Emac:

1- the metric economists and investors care about is the public debt-to-gdp ratio as it gives an indication of ability to repay and puts things in perspective.

2- You are wrong FYI. Read up on QE.

3- Correlation does not imply causation. Many other things than tax cuts happened during these time periods. By your logic refrigerator sales cause car accidents cos well.. when one goes up so does the other! Proper studies would control for these effects. I will dig up some references when I have more time.

4- maybe it is a good idea to start investing as well then.

seriously if I knew this little about a topic I wouldn't open my mouth about it...

"seriously if I knew this little about a topic I wouldn't open my mouth about it..."

You would be the first on this Forum then...

"The Soviets had shortages because they produced too much?!?!"?

What? No. The Soviets had shortages because Soviet citizens' desire and capacity to spend exceeded production targets for certain consumer goods. Gosplan usually erred on the side of keeping prices lower than they needed to be.

Putin, if they had such great wealth and capacity to spend, then why didn't they just build more production facilities? Or import goods from other countries?

There isn't a single thing about your ridiculous assertion that even you believe.

You don't keep prices low by under-producing, that drives prices up. Of course, in an economy that is controlled by the central government, you don't need to worry about prices rising, because the government controls the means of production, and therefore the cost.

Unfortunately, the Soviet citizens more often than not had to stand in line for essentials, like bread.....what sort of a hellish country do you admire where - by your assertion - the government keeps the production of a basic food product artificially low?

Of course, we all know that you are lying, and that your above assertions were some asinine attempt to try to glorifying the non-functional communist regime that failed, bankrupt, because it couldn't compete with American capitalism...but even you should have a little integrity, or at least a little creativity when consttucting your lies.

As always, everything you write in absolute garbage. You are a man of lies.

So again - if the economy and the Soviet regime was such a wonderful place, if the citizens had evreything they needed and wanted, and all were content....then why did they storm the government, and tear the country down? Why did a popular uprising from within topple this glorious, generous regime?

You, ass always, are King of the Ass Clowns, you stupid shit sucker.

For example. Meat production & consumption kept going up. But there was a shortage of meat at times because the price did not keep pace with the rapid growth in meat demand. This doesn't mean the economy wasn't growing. Far from it. It's clear that Soviet incomes were rising and people were getting richer, and production was increasing. It was a problem of price adjustment. The Soviets were committed to full employment so the main error to avoid was setting prices too high and thus have overproduction. The trade-off was the tendency to have shortages.

They didn't storm the government. The USSR was abolished in a backroom deal in Minsk between Yeltsin, Shushkevich, & Kravchuk. Nobody voted to get rid of it and nobody stormed anything to get rid of it.

1-analari, I disagree with your basic premise about what investors care about. They are looking for the "best" investment given their appetite for risk. At this point investors prefer the stock market over US T-Bills.
2- No I'm not wrong. The Fed doesn't print money. You should read up on what institution prints money in the United States. A doctoral candidate would surely understand that responsibility belongs to the treasury and not the Fed.
3-So present your alternative to explain the growth that occurred after the tax cuts. Claiming there isn't causation isn't an argument. You don't offer an example of a proper study your refer to. Do they teach you to make arguments absent evidence in your doctoral program?
4-It would be wise to reduce wasteful, duplicative, and unnecessary public spending in favor of investment in infrastructure. The historical fact of the matter is that the United States Congress so not do that though.

Putin - I was home watching TV the day they stormed the Kremlin. You can attempt to rewrite history for yourself all you want - you may convince the ignorant youth around you that weren't alive, but it doesn't change history.

You claim the Soviet couldn't keep up with the demands of meat production? Haaaa ha ha ha ha....pretty fucking funny. You are right, they couldn't, but not for the reasons you state, of course, but rather because their system was so broken they didn't have the means to produce. Funny, at the same time, the US produced enough food to feed itself like gluttons and export food around the world.

Thank god for US capitalism....helped keep a lot of Soviets alive by importing food from the US when the stupid communists were unable to feed themselves.

What is it like living a life in which you wrap yourself in a web of lies?

"Watch that green back tumble ....... you can sell your mother, you can buy another."
Are we not seeing countries who were the biggest proponents of capitalist ideology all heavily in debt. Not due to any failings in the market economy but due to the following:-
1) Corporate greed - tax avoidance/evasion
2) Price fixing, cartels keeping prices artificially high
3) Deregulation of credit markets leading to a temporary and unsustainable credit boom
4) Govt failure to set adequate sustainable tax rates on corporations and individuals.
5) Voters failure to understand or accept what is required to bring about a sustainable economic system e.g. voting for parties that offer tax cuts they cannot afford.

If we took all the private wealth in the world and compared it to the amount of govt debt there would be far more wealth, it is the govts failure to tax the wealth of the nation that has created this situation.
If you want to finance over-zealous foreign policy you can't just expect to pay for this by flogging T-bills to pay for it, sooner or later the bills have to be paid back.
How can a govt or any organisation or individual run a budget that constantly has more going out than coming in, it's a ludicrous concept and you know it will end in tears.
The simple answer, although unacceptable to many because they see it as anti-capitalist, is to take more wealth from the rich and give it to the poor, simple redistribution of wealth to consumer spending, because rich people hoard cash and people spend cash.
What could be more positive for an economy that increasing consumer spending, only problem is if you now don't tax the ensuing profits that will inevitably flow from such growth then we will be back to the same position, the money inevitably ends up back in the hands of the rich and wealthy (because they own the means of production).
To sustain the market system and prevent an economic meltdown and a move to a planned economy wealth needs to shift back into the treasury, due to years of under-taxing the rich this imbalance has been created. Forget the concept of whether it is fair or not, try thinking of a system that is sustainable because the current one is not.
Misguided people think the problem will be solved by cut backs to social programs but this will only exacerbate the situation because the more money you take from the hands of the poor the more you stifle growth because you reduce consumer spending, if the cake is getting ever-smaller who is gaining, nobody.
If there was a govt brave enough to tax the wealthy and pay off the national debt this could lead to an age of austerity.
The very people who fear Marxist ideology the most are the people most likely to guide us there through their own greed, the poor and the unemployed and the under-employed are not the enemy, they are the untapped engine of growth for any economy.
The sooner we lobby the govt to tax the wealthy to pay off govt debts the sooner you can get back to a sustainable economic system. If you don't sort something out soon everyone will suffer, even the rich.

Putin fabricating again with absolutely no evidence to support his statements.
Sure Putin, the Soviet economy was expanding right up to the point their shelves became completely empty.

Nikolai Leonov, a general in the KGB, made this comment in the early 1980's.

"First there was a visible decline in the rate of growth, then its complete stagnation. There was a drawnout, deepening and almost insurmountable crisis in agriculture. It was a frightening and truly terrifying sign of crisis. It was these factors that were crucial in the transition to perestroika."http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sovietcollapse.htm

Sorry to present concrete evidence that directly contradicts your completely unsupported opinions Putin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_GDP.gif

Also, I'm back!

Completely unsourced quote from another one of your absurd little websites.

Also how does one talk about perestroika in the early 1980s before it even happened?

A direct quote from a university website and all Putin can do is lie and say it isn't true. No one can discredit Putin as easily as he does it to himself.

Emac: It's almost 5 am, so I dont have time to do a proper literature search, but a few off the cuff references I could find:

William G. Gale and Samara R. Potter, “An Economic Evaluation of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001,” National Tax Journal, vol. 55, no. 1 (March 2002), pp. 133-186

William G. Gale and Peter R. Orszag, “Economic Effects of Making the 2001 and 2003 Tax Cuts Permanent,”
International Tax and Public Finance, vol. 12 (2005), pp. 193-232.

Hungerford, T.L. "Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945", CRS 7-5700, R42729,

Putin, I'm sure Professor Thayer Watkins at San Jose St knows that only an idiot on a website like Putin would call a direct quote from a KGB general on his own faculty page "an absurd little website."

Anlari, thank you for the sources. I'll pay you the compliment of reading them.

also since you wont do your own research:

QE or Fed's asset purchases basically involves Fed buying hundred billions of dollars worth of government treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. Fed does not bill the Treasury for these purchases - it just credits the accounts of the sellers without deducting anything from its own balance sheet - which is equivalent to printing money - whether it is physical money or not does not make a difference.

I am not going to follow this discussion anymore, so please reply in PM.

Gale & Orszag on the effects of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 & 2003
"Several studies have quantified the effects noted above in different ways and used different models, yet all have come to the same conclusion: Making the tax cuts permanent is likely to reduce, not increase, national income in the long term unless the reduction in revenues is matched by an equal reduction in government consumption."
So who supports the Bush tax cuts ... time to pay up.

Yes, Anlari I did do my research and gave you specific pieces of legislation. I'm sorry that choose to be another individual who resorts to misrepresenting what you can't refute. As far as your shoddy research-The study you referenced by Thomas L. Hungeford was retracted an no longer on the Congressional Research Service website. I don’t personally know the flaws in the study that led to its retraction, but I would contend that a retracted paper is a poor source to cite. I was able to access PDF’s of the other articles through the Brookings Institute. The article “An Economic Evaluation of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001” does not address any of the legislation I mentioned from the 1920’s, 1964, or 1981.
The same is true of another article you provided “Economic Effects of Making the 2001 and 2003 Tax Cuts Permanent.” I stand by my statement that you provided no evidence to support your opinion that the tax cuts I mentioned in 1921, 1924, 1926, 1964, and 1981 did not cause the growth that immediately followed those cuts when in fact there was not growth before the cuts.

Emac mate - you're living in the past old boy. What was govt debt in the 1920's?
Need to wake up and smell the cappafrappacino.
To be fair you don't have to do anything because with your blinkered mindset you will always be part of the problem and never part of the solution.
Thank goodness to change things for the best the govt only need over 50%.

Baby, if you had any idea of what you were talking about you would understand that the aggregate isn't important it is the percentage of GDP. I'll explain something simple that even you might understand. If a government worker, a public school teacher, does a bad job the only person that suffers is the person receiving their service, the student. If person at a private company, a training supervisor, does a bad job they can lose their job. This is the problem with government programs there isn't any incentive to perform well relative to the private sector. I know that is a bit much for you pea brain to digest. You'll sleep great though because you know what a total incompetent you are, and even the worst government employee can run your retirement, health care, and everything else better than you can. In my case the best government employee holds me back because almost everything the government forces me to use them for I could get a higher quality at a better cost in the private sector, not everything but almost everything.

"A direct quote from a university website and all Putin can do is lie and say it isn't true."

It's not a "direct quote". How did you get out of college? The quote is completely unsourced. No reference is given for the quote whatsoever.