Thread: Obama won re election

Originally Posted by sheffieldlover

Many of the western european governments do what their people want. We've seen it recently - try to take anything away from them, and there's rioting in the streets. USA's government isn't afraid of its people.

That movie V for Vendetta had it right - People shouldn't be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people

There is a GIGANTIC difference between (belgium, switzerland, spain, germany, holland) and (greece, spain, portugal...). The ones I'm referring to are the former, the riots are occurring in the latter, even though it seems a popular choice to just rob from the former to fix the latter. The same thing would happen in the US if there was austerity type measures and those outliving their means were forced to live within them in exchange for some of the savings of those who were living within their means. Despite basically being legalized theft by the former, it would be those people who were rioting.

I don't think anyone in the US governments is really afraid of any citizens. I think if they become unpopular, they feel that rather than listening to the citizens, it's a matter of spinning what they're doing to mislead them.

Originally Posted by sixsixty

This thread makes me very happy for the IGNORE LIST feature.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful

Fiscal responsibility needs to come from both sides. The GOP needs to cede on tax breaks for the ultra wealthy, and take the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommendation to make appropriate cuts to our bloated military, and the Dems need to cut back on social security and medicare. The point is, there is enough blame to go around on both sides, and partisan bickering only inflames tensions and solves nothing. Now is the time for our elected officials to use the honeymoon period to come together to solve this issue, or we will all be jumping off the fiscal cliff together.....

Originally Posted by ryanjewell

I think that's a pretty vast oversimplification of what this election was about. I have a job, I've had a job since I was fifteen and was the only white kid on a mowing crew which i was not so affectionately dubbed "pendejo" (i had no idea what that meant at the time)...so when I go to vote, I'm not looking to do nothing and get something for it...in fact, the percentage of this country that honestly truly does behave in that way is pretty small...certainly not enough of a percentage to be the deciding factor in a presidential election when the candidate wins both the electoral and popular vote.

Both candidates have plans on how to deal with "numerical reality" and reduce the deficit...it's a matter of how it's done. Honestly, I think this was the Republican Party's election to lose...but it's moved so far right that they made that more difficult for themselves than it should have been. Mitt the moderate probably would have trounced Pres. Obama had he not gone "severely conservative".

I don't think DaveW was that far off. While his explanation might not cover all of it, he's definitely on to something.

"...more than half of all Americans paid no Federal income tax in the tax year 2009, and the number of people who did pay taxes was even lower -- 51 percent, not 53 percent. For tax year 2011, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates that only 54 percent of Americans will pay Federal income tax."

I don't see how anyone could have bought into the president's theory of managing the deficit. His record on the deficit speaks for itself. I suspect he will attempt to correct that in the next 4 years on the backs of those that he disagrees with most. The idea of redistributing wealth is not isolated to different tax brackets. It will happen between sectors of the economy as well. And as for Romney being "severely conservative", are you kidding me? Romney is definitely NOT conservative. I keep hearing people say that the republican party needs to be more middle of the road and less conservative. To that I point out two realities. The first being that every time the left takes another step to the left, they redefine the what is now the middle. Don't think so? We have candidates that openly state that they are socialist.....AND THEY WIN. Twenty years ago that would not have been possible. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it seems that no one has any fear of socialism any longer. I can already hear our European friends stating that its not so bad and that it works to some extent in their countries. To that I say, congratulations but here in the US it flies in the face of everything our forefathers stood for and fought against. It is contrary to our very Constitutional way of life (if that exists any longer). And second, I ask, is that how the democrats won the presidency? By appealing to the middle? No, they put fourth the most radical, most liberal voting member of Congress as their candidate and have convinced the public that anything to the right of their point of view is radical. Its absurd. Romney was NOT conservative. Perhaps if he was we may have had a national discussion worth listening to.

Originally Posted by DaveW

Many of the western european governments are very tidy with their money, and very smart about their fiscal setup in terms of future social benefits, funded or not. Unlike us, when they make an obligation for themselves, like pensions, they make part of the obligation variable based on economic experience, and they fund a lot of their obligation up front uniformly.

How nice for them. Sounds very responsible. I haven't seen anything like this out of Washington in my life. There isn't one major entitlement in the US that isn't bankrupt. With that in mind, how many more can we tolerate?

Originally Posted by sheffieldlover

I see Obama's first term as four years cleaning up the mess of the previous administration - I'd say that's a 10 year job.

Well, I clearly don't think the first term did anything except dig a bigger hole. It's pretty arbitrary to claim that it's a "10 year job", especially if there is no incremental improvement. And FTR, I think second term GWB and Obama is about the same. There are no saints in this.

Anyone objectively looking at the situation right now would view the last 4 years as the promise of future delayed inflation or more difficult future solutions just because 4 years has passed, and the public dollars that have been borrowed and spent are being spent on things that will yield little future economic gain. The solutions claimed as savings (like the savings in the health care bill) really don't exist, they are on paper, and dependent on things like cutting medicare physican reimbursement. It won't happen, every year, updated reimbursement rates will come out, physicians will threaten to drop their patients, and medicare patients will pressure politicians and threaten to vote them out.

The result will be the same as it was last year, the cut in reimbursement rates is stayed for a year by a bill...and there will be one like that every year. We are incenting more use of health care and drugs, the overall cost will be higher, there's no free lunch.

In 2010, there was a bill passed that was funded by a delay in pension contributions. It claimed some number of billions of savings due to reduced pension contributions by employers. If you examine that, what they're saying is that if you have a pension and your employer delays putting money in the plan as a temporary relief measure, the government gains revenue because the employer won't deduct it.

But in future years when they're forced to make up for it with additional contributions and lost interest, there will be greater deductions. There is no savings, it is a change in timing, BUT the first part of that was claimed as savings in the bill under the pay-as-you-go requirement and the last part was completely ignored. In reality, what happens is perhaps $10 billion of deductions don't occur this year, the returns on those contributions are lost, but maybe in 5 years, $12 billion additional is deducted for make-up contributions due to the prior holiday. The last part is intentionally ignored, figuring that nobody will remember or account for it.

Things like that do not fix the problem, they ignore it. This isn't even a political issue, it is a numerical issue. In the late 1990s, there was false revenue growth and taxes collected due to relaxed borrowing, all the time while manufacturing in the 1990s was going overseas - it was like we were taking cylinders out of a car engine while we were speeding up. If you borrow $100,000 without the means to pay it back, but pay a contractor with it, the contractor will pay taxes. So will the bank who originated and sold the loan - they'll pay taxes that year, which creates the illusion that income was earned and that the budget was balanced. Nothing was created except default proned- debt. That loan will come due, and with relaxed standards, there was no chance it would be paid. The cycles of deficits up until about 2004 were a function of leveraged spending. In the mid 80s, it was borrowing, in the mid to late 1990s, it was borrowing. In 2006,7,8 and all the way through now, we're seeing the cost of that leveraged spending, we are paying for it in defaults and reduced revenue now.

It is numerical issues. Almost every bill that goes by, regardless of the administration, it's easy to pick out examples where the numbers are spun - like I pointed out above. There is no honest accounting for what is going on, but there is a huge glom of the population that believes only the other guy does it, and "my guy is trying to fix it".

I have to agree that the fiscal mess in this country has little or nothing to do with the presidency. It has to do with a total lack of compromise in the houses of Congress. America is really missing Congressmen like Ted Kennedy and others who, although liberal or conservative, had a way of either crossing the line or bringing others across the line to get what was needed done.

Originally Posted by Theseus

I absolutely love reading and hearing all of the post-election doomsday rhetoric every four years from both sides. In my near 35 years, I've yet to see the end of the world or even the end of America. I'm certain it won't happen this time either.

Thats what the Romans thought, and they were around a lot longer than America...

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Stock market is showing Love today for Mr O

Yeah, I first got scared by the doom:




but then I zoomed out:

Originally Posted by DaveW

Well, I clearly don't think the first term did anything except dig a bigger hole. It's pretty arbitrary to claim that it's a "10 year job", especially if there is no incremental improvement. And FTR, I think second term GWB and Obama is about the same. There are no saints in this.

It's hard to make changes when the GOP does everything in their power to prevent that change. Also, there WAS incremental improvement. Preventing a total economic collapse counts as improvement. Unfortunately, it takes more than 4 years of good policy making to change the direction of a nation in a downward spiral. High unemployment, our debt...its all the tip of the iceberg. When the underlying issues are fixed, those too will be fixed.