x2 Clinton>Reagan
:lol:
+1
Clinton managed the economy well. As for exporting jobs, my issue is with things like automotive industry workers, who make $60,000-$70,000 a year or more, with better retirement, unemployment, and medical benefits than anyone out there, with the possible exception of the Congress, President, and Supreme Court. They’re doing mostly unskilled production jobs, and making a completely irrational wage.
We have an expectation that less valuable jobs should be treated to comfortable wages that drive up prices, and while I believe in a living wage, the expectation that someone doing something that’s effectively useless to the economy should be able to make a comfortable wage (like when I was a Sales Rep for Verizon Wireless and made $39,800 after a fairly easy to achieve target commission), just because… well, it irks me. While I believe in a strong safety net for people who fall unemployed due to no fault of their own, we shouldn’t expect that unproductive, entry-level jobs should receive more pay than is required to sustain a reasonably comfortable life. If the UAW is going to block pay and benefits cuts with threats of a strike, and strangle GM, for instance, I’m fine with GM exporting entire factories to Mexico and Canada, where they won’t be bound up by a greedy base of workers.
I’m just about the only anti-union liberal you’ll ever find, because I believe strongly in the free market in most regards, and this is one. I don’t believe we should be shipping specialized, skilled jobs overseas to unskilled workers, but if we have unskilled jobs here that should not be reasonably sustained on a living salary, we should export them to where labor is cheaper, not support American workers for the sake of supporting American workers, to the detriment of our economy.
So what did Clinton do then? Besides cutting military spending, giving the chinese military grade technology fro their “space program” (which jumped their military tech by over 20 years), opening the flood gates regarding trade with china, being caught up in more scandals and federal investigation than any other president, not having a single domestic policy, and giving away money like candy on halloween? The economy started going good BEFORE he got into office and started to tank BEFORE he left. So seriously…what did he do? what jobs did he create? How did he “ballance the budget”?
Thats where you are wrong. by supporting American workers you support and stimulate the economy. If nobody is working, how do you expect people to pay for things?
(1) Why is it bad to develop a trade dependency with China? It makes us interdependent. You know, President Bush brought us closer to the British, is that bad in the same way?
(2) Yes, he had a few womanizing scandals. Which affected the economy and governance how?
(3) What do you mean by domestic policies? The country didn’t suffer, anyway, it boomed.
(4) Yeah, he spent lots of money, and yet he still managed to turn a surplus, because his tax policy made sense. Bush took all that money and gave it to the vast minority of rich people by cutting high end taxes and gave us a huge deficit.
He balanced the budget because he eliminated the deficit. It’s what it means. He did it. It’s just numbers. Don’t see what your confusion there is.
The only way Obama could attack the 2nd amendment was through supreme court nominations. John Paul Stevens is 88 and the mostly likely to retire/die, but replacing one lefty with another lefty doesn’t shift the balance of power.
Easy. He raised taxes and cut spending in an effort to balance the budget and reduce the deficit. The decrease in government borrowing caused the bond market to take off and give people back the money they paid in the higher taxes, many times over. The people reinvested, mainly in equity, and particularly in technology companies, causing the stock market to go through the roof. More profits for everyone meant more tax revenue coming in, and less government benefits being paid out. More tax revenue meant further lowering of the deficit, continuing the successful cycle.
Then Bush comes in. Takes our surplus out and distributes it, giving the little guy a couple hundred bucks and lowering corporate and rich people’s tax rates. Then he starts military spending out the ass, causing the deficit to skyrocket much higher than it had ever been. We tapped out all of our domestic buying power, so we had to start borrowing from other countries, mainly china. The deficit becomes overbearing and devalues our dollar internationally. As for your lack of domestic policy and “giving away money” bullshit, i’m not going to dignify them with a response.
The problem is the vast majority of it was false profits tied into the .com boom. Much of which ended up crashing and people LOST their investments. As far as Bush increasing military spending out the ass, he had no choice in that matter because Clinton cut military spending so much that just to get them back to their normal functioning level cost a shit ton. People accuse Bush of ruining the economy, and I am not saying he didn’t have a hand in it to some degree, but the fact that we have been in a war for the past 7 years and the economy was STILL going means he did something right. The main problem with the economy right now is the whole housing market crash, which was overseen by the democrats. Fanny May and Freddy Mac had been going under for years. Then it took $700,000,000,000 to bail them out. That is 700 billion that is not being circulated into the economy. Government bailouts do nothing but HURT the economy. As far as raising taxes, every time you raise taxes, that takes money way from businesses who would otherwise invest it into the economy. It is the CONGRESS that controls the spending of the federal government, NOT the president. The president only sets policies. The Democrats had been saying for years that the housing market has no problems and has been doing great, particularly their pets Freddy Mac and Fanny May. Republicans had been saying there needs to be regulation on it for years, but none ever came. Now the housing market is in shambles and everyone blames Bush for it. When he had NOTHING to do with it. If it wasn’t for these companies going under, the economy would still be doing decent.
You are doing exactly what they want, arguing but ignoring the real problem.
This is one scary picture, the New World Order is commencing…
:fail: That sums up your argument.
I’m done here.
:eyebrow:
Umm…so by your lack of a counter argument you are admitting I am correct.
Oh and I hope to god Patterson doesn’t give the new senate position to Kennedy. She is a fucking moron.
E: Yeah, the Republicans are ALL about fiscal regulation. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
LOL You are remarkably well spoken for a paranoid schizophrenic.
…sure pal. or i gave up politics on here until the inauguration, at the minimum, because I think a rock would absorb more of what i’m saying.
Oh wait, I’m sure the experience you get plunging the toilets at darien lake taught you far more about the economy than my masters in economics and finance. I tip my hat to you, sir. Please tell me more about current macroeconomic issues. I’ll talk about toilets.
Finally someone with some education. You sure disprove Cavi Mike’s thesis about education - except the fact that you disagree with him would just reinforce his belief that people with education are worthless. But that’s beside the point.
Unfortunately, my Bachelor’s in History and Political Science seems to be worth less than an Economics and Finance degree, because people seem to think that all opinions are created equal, even when they’re demonstrably wrong. I won’t be able to pull the degree card until I finish my law degree. :lol:
Yeah, unfortunately both of our degrees are in fields where everyone has an opinion, and the more uninformed, the louder people generally are about theirs, to compensate. (See: O’Reilly, Bill, Limbaugh, Rush.)
The political party breakdown in the last study of economists was Democrat: 47%, Republican: 10% Independent/Non-affiliated: 43%. These are generally very wealthy, overwhelmingly white, and overwhelmingly male. Hardcore republican demographic, traditionally. Doesn’t that tell you something about who truly understands the economy?
It doesn’t take a masters to understand that the biggest problem is the fact that we have lost millions of jobs to overseas competition.
What would you replace them with though? And if we can’t all be skilled labor then you need to allow those who work unskilled jobs the ability to make a living. It’s good to have a decent salary; it helps the economy through spending. I know a decent amount of people working at GM and they are not making $60-$70k.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the UAW needs a major overhaul but not all unions are like that.
HAHA Don’t say that you’re being elitist. And his interpretation of the constitution is more informed than my Masters in American History with my concentration in Constitutional Historiography.
People cannot be allowed to starve on the streets. This does not mean that we should create jobs with artificially high wages that serve no purpose to the economy. If there are available, unskilled workers, the economy will provide employment, if there is capital available to entrepreneurs to start new businesses or to expand their existing businesses. Whether it’s retail, customer service, or basic production, we don’t need to have the basic jobs in our country.
Those same workers can build and improve roads, infrastructure, development of our renewable natural resources. If we expand student loan funding, most can go back to school and get themselves better qualifications so they can become police, firemen, accountants, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and managers. We need basic production jobs, don’t get me wrong. But we don’t need ones that are a net drain on the economy rather than a boon to it. Those people and those resources can be better allocated elsewhere.
We have talked about the economy time and time again, it is far too complex for this format.