@ obiwanobiwan

The US Military helps 300 million people on a daily basis by making sure that no one can attack the United States of America. The military does more good than any social program could ever dream of doing.

George HW Bush was only the third sitting president seriously challenged for his parties nomination in the 20th century. Most people would credit his loss with the increase of taxes during his presidency.

I would argue with the reason he was elected, since times were pretty crappy under Carter at the time. It was fix this, not end Keynes philosophy.

Reagan increased the growth of government debt more than any other president since WWII. It may have all been defense spending, but it was a helluva lot. And, defense spending is great pork. That money is sent to districts throughout the entire country. Regardless, the entire ideology hadn't solidified when Reagan left office. He did increase spending a ton, but he did do some domestic spending cuts. Lower taxes more spending was something that finally came together fully under Bush, jr. Lower taxes was the only religion till then...lower taxes with more supposed government revenues. The cardinal sin Bush sr broke was raising taxes, though I guess you are disputing that.

@Gunfighter06:
You don't think the nuclear weapons that the DOE manages has anything to do with that? And, who exactly would be invading us? Mexico or Canada, cause there isn't another military on the planet that can project force anywhere in the world they want. If we didn't have that capability, there wouldn't even be one.

"there isn't another military on the planet that can project force anywhere in the world they want."

Not true!, the New Zealand military can parachute a guy with a rifle onto any point on the planet. Be afraid.

@Gunfighter:

I'm not saying the military isn't worthwhile, not at all.

I AM saying that it's a bit exorbitant, the amount we spend on it now...

While it IS definitely good that the private sector mesh a bit with the federal and receive grants and build planes and ships for the military, as this provies many jobs--I actually live some miles away from a Lockheed center, and in the Antelope Valley, wehre I live, is located Edwards Air Force Base in Mojave, one of the leading Air Force military installations in the nation, and a former alternate location for the Space Shuttles to land--the GOVERNMENT doesn't need to spend as much as it does, or ahve as big of an army as it does.

Tantris' point is valid:

Reagan spent so much, and yet it's FDR and Obama--ie, the Democrats--that get labeled as big spenders...

Well, history's shone pretty nicely on FDR, and at least the Right's shone nicely on Reagan, and obviously the jury will be out on Obama for years and maybe decades--we won't be able to fully gouge all this spending's impact for a long time, the New Deal took time as well to jduge accurately--so...either...

1. Spending and spending is necessary for a 21st Century superpower, or
2. Both Partiers' heroes have big spenders, and they're celebrated...so how is it fair for the Right to demonize the Left in this regard?



And, again--we need a military, yes, but this is no longer the Cold War, we don't need one THIS BIG; terrorism is a huge threat, of course, but even still, that warrants other precautions, NOT more and more and more military spending.

Tantris,
I don’t know why you make the false claim that George HW Bush was only the third sitting president seriously challenged for his parties nomination in the 20th century.
Pat Buchanan wasn't much of a challenge.
I guess it was because you were backtracking on your previous false statement that No Taxes was a religion in the Republican Party despite the fact that Reagan and H.W. Bush both raised taxes.
William Howard Taft was seriously challenged by Theodore Roosevelt.
Harry Truman saw the Democratic party fracture. I guess you don’t consider the southern wing leaving the party to run their own candidate (not a serious challenge) or maybe it was one of the ones you considered a serious because you didn’t list them.
I guess it’s easier to backtrack if you aren’t specific.
Lyndon Baines Johnson dropped out because he barely beat Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary and Robert Kennedy was ready to enter the race.
Gerald Ford faced a serious challenge from Reagan in 1976.
Carter faced the challenge of Edward Kennedy which was much more serious than the challenge that H.W. Bush faced from Pat Buchanan.

Tantris, you need to read up on your 20th century economic history.
Reagan did exactly what Kennedy proposed before his assassination. Kennedy and Reagan both followed the policy initiatives of Robert Mundell.

Here is what Kennedy said and Reagan said the same things.

On December 14, 1962, President Kennedy stated at the Economic Club of New York that "The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system; and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963. I am not talking about a 'quickie' or a temporary tax cut, which would be more appropriate if a recession were imminent. Nor am I talking about giving the economy a mere shot in the arm, to ease some temporary complaint. I am talking about the accumulated evidence of the last 5 years that our present tax system, developed as it was, in good part, during World War II to restrain growth, exerts too heavy a drag on growth in peace time; that it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power; that it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking."
President Kennedy specifically advocated cutting the corporate tax rate in this same speech. "Corporate tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital. The Government has already taken major steps this year to reduce business tax liability and to stimulate the modernization, replacement, and expansion of our productive plant and equipment. We have done this through the 1962 investment tax credit and through the liberalization of depreciation allowances--two essential parts of our first step in tax revision which amounted to a 10 percent reduction in corporate income taxes worth $2.5 billion."
President Kennedy went on to say he favored tax cuts for the rich as well as the poor. "For all these reasons, next year's tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes, for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital."
On the same evening, President Kennedy said the private sector and not the public sector was the key to economic growth. "In short, to increase demand and lift the economy, the Federal Government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures."
President Kennedy told the economic club the impact he expected from tax cuts. "Profit margins will be improved and both the incentive to invest and the supply of internal funds for investment will be increased. There will be new interest in taking risks, in increasing productivity, in creating new jobs and new products for long-term economic growth."

Only the third Republican President....I missed a word. Whatever, George H.W. Bush failed to get re-elected, and most people blame the tax increase for that. Every presidential candidate just answered a question based on taxes and spending cuts. The question was, "If you could get $10 of spending cut for $1 of tax increases, would you take the deal?"...They all said no. No tax increases, ever. Can you tell me which portion of the Republican party doesn't belong to this religion?

@Tettleton:
Sorry, I missed the part where Kennedy argued that reducing taxes would increase government revenues. I also missed the part where Kennedy ramped up government spending more than any president since FDR, while cutting taxes. Voodoo economics, and huge federal deficits....wee.

Tantris, You are simply a copy of some of the other boobs I've run into on this site.
Posting fabrications. Making it up as you go along. Vague, ambiguous statements, missing words, etc. etc.
There are a lot of villages out there missing idiots and you've convinced me the list has increased.
How does one website attract so many fools?

Have a good life Tantris. You are out of here.

Fasces, this is exactly why I mute. Just read the posts by Tantris. I don't have time for such idiots. Life is far too short.

Did you get muted by TC, Tantris?

That's alright, trust me...you're in good company...

TC's a future FOX News anchor, muting and shutting out anyone who doesn't totally and completely agree with his own view of the world.

;)

(No wonder you and TC seem to get along, Fasces--shutting out all opinions except for those that are deemed "acceptable" and in line with his...why, he's the perfect Fascist!)

I don't understand why you would mute someone you don't agree with. From then on, don't their statement just go unchallenged by you? Seems like it would be better to be in the conversation. I guess some people just can't have their comfortable world view challenged.

The main sources of the debt are:

1 - Bush tax cuts - which added 1.6 trillion to the debt and keeps adding to it since they were renewed.
2 - Two unending wars, which are paid for with borrowed money, add up to 1.3 trillion
3 - Recession. If the economy does poorly you take in much less revenue, which is why governments around the world are experiencing debt problems, not just the America. Efforts to fight the recession have also added to the debt because they involved stimulus spending since the private sector is sitting on a pile of cash and won't invest to boost demand.
4 - Our debt began to soar in the 1980s, under the previous genius Republican admins, those fiscal conservatives drove the debt from 712 billion in 1980 to 2.412 trillion in 1990. By contrast our debt was pretty much level during the Great Society days of the 1960s, and grew by about 400 billion during the 1970s which was a bad time economically due to the oil shocks.

In short, Bush was the worst President in history and drove our economy off a cliff while cutting taxes and fighting absurd wars.

James Madison forgot to return the books he read proior to the constitutional convention. fifty cents every day for 250 years plus interest and collection fees adds up.

Putin33 you're back :-) I haven't seen you around lately. Good of you to join us.

Speaking as the leftist leftie on this site, do you see the debt as a problem, and if so what do think should be done about it?

The debt is primarily a consequence of a lack of demand which has been the norm since the 1970s. The rich world has been stagnating for a while and been using debt to prop itself up, but there is a limit to how far they can go with that. Honestly I'm pessimistic, especially in a globalized market with a destroyed manufacturing base and aging population, about getting out of this. As Roubini said, capitalism is destroying itself.

Just looked him up. Interesting. He likens the present situation to a "a war economy. You need command-economy allocation of credit to the real economy. "

Generally speaking I believe that a market economy is best (it just seem to make so much sense), but a market economy collapse is not without precedent, just as command economy collapse is not without precedent either.

Does the world need to oscillate between command economy and free-market economy. Do both eventually steer off course and need to be redirected?

... just to be clear by what I mean by "steer off course" - I am talking about sub-optimal allocation of resources based on imperfect information. In a market economy for example we have bubbles because the market got it wrong, while in a command economy we can end up with too many gumboots and not enough umbrellas (for example) because central planning got it wrong.
I think both the market can get it wrong and so can central planning, but the market is more likely to get it right.

Lets see, Iraq War, Afghan War, Public Pension System, Tax Loopholes, A deadlocked Congress, Obama care, and an over funded poorly done economic action plan in 2009.

@ obiwan

I would be open to defense cuts if they were very precise and smart. Do we need 560,000 soldiers and 200,000 Marines on the payroll? Probably not. Do we need the F-35 program and the Ford-class carrier program? Absolutely. I would be open to cutting personnel spending and maintaining R & D spending. We can stay on top without having the most pairs of boots.

@Gun
How about we institute a policy where any wars must be supported using a war tax? If we are going to invade Iraq, we must levy a tax for the full cost of all operations in Iraq for the duration. No deficit spending for wars. Base troop salaries and current equipment (not upkeep, but the actual tank/humvee) that we have could be used without being paid for by the tax.

I am not sure we even need the level of R&D we have, but spending the amount of money we are on wars, especially the fact that we pay Xe contractors more than we pay soldiers by far..and yet we use tons of Xe contractors. Let's bring our troops home from South Korea, Japan, Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the other places we have troops. See how much that can cut our costs by.

hey, you guys have fun rearranging deck chairs! :) I'll be getting into a lifeboat. I hear the water is cold.

@Darwyn:
No, didn't you hear about global warming? The water is going to be nice and warm.

Some perspective:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/US_Federal_Debt_as_Percent_of_GDP_by_President.jpg

notice how on the graph, Obama has the smallest term, and a massive straight jump...

"The US Military helps 300 million people on a daily basis by making sure that no one can attack the United States of America. The military does more good than any social program could ever dream of doing."

The Irish military doesn't have such a difficult or expensive task, they help people by taking on UN peacekeeping missions. (with a triple lock system, needing approval from the irish government, the Dáil, and the UN)

We keep our people safe from invasion by using the diplomatic corp, not pissing them off in the first place by invading, and trying to alter the economic balance of power within a region... I guess the US don't really have that reputation, so you'd better keep paying for the troops to keep all of you safe!

@Fasces:
Notice how on the graph, the Obama portion just follows the same trajectory that Bush, jr had at the end of his presidency, which speaks to the fact that there really has been no large change in policy or spending/revenue.

Only the end of it, when Bush had to bail out fannie mea and freddie mac...

It should have gone down after 2009...

Bail out....you mean Bank of America, AIG, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan....Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were kinda freebies, cause all they did was nationalize and guarantee them.