-
Comment -
Comment -
The Scandinavian Socialism Argument Debunked
Comment -
does this moron dwight have an opinion of his own? or does he just go around posting shit other people (who might have two more brain cells if they're lucky) created?Comment -
Checking in
Hes the only candidate that will make a difference for my class of people
Anyone other than the top 1% of earners in America that votes against Bernies, votes against their own interestComment -
But, but, but Trumb will make everyone rich, have the greatest military ever, there will be so many jobs the people
he deported will have to come back with their brothers, sisters, uncles and aunties!!!!!!Comment -
The honest fact is that Sanders has absolutely zero chance to win anywhere but the most liberal states in the country i.e. California, Oregon, etc. The midwest,south and most of the east won't vote for a socialist candidate when they understand what it's really about. Capitalism is what made America great, and why people want to come and live here- because there are still opportunities to make a nice living and raise a family. Most young people today, after years of indoctrination thru schooling and text books, have no clue where a socialistic society would lead us. They only care about "what's in it for me" now, free this, free that- free everything and let the rich pay for it. Well sorry to burst your bubble, but it's the Republicans turn to win (very rarely, if ever does any political party win 3 terms in a row). The economy is always the deciding factor in presidential elections, and the fed (by not raising rates this week) has signaled we're are heading for some deep shit in Obama's last year. Lastly, Obama's 8 years will not be looked at kindly in the history books over time, even an ex-member of the Nobel Prize committee has serious regrets now about having awarding one to Obama. The country is definitely in a free fall and it's time to reverse our direction.Comment -
you would think its a no-brainer but no-brainers there are millions apparently.
Despite 71% of Americans saying they are dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied with the direction of the country while only 10% are satisfied ... there are still those today who think Obama is doing a great job and unbelievably would actually vote for Obama again if he could run. You have a few on this site that will following him right off a cliff to prove their unconditional love.
Fact: 2 million more people live in poverty since Obama was elected and median income has dropped by $2000 a year for all Americans.
After 7 years of obamanomics, there are millions more who are used to the new entitlement society. Sanders uses this to prey on these poor souls by attempting to deflect away from career politicians. These incompetent politicians like Sanders, who got the country into the mess they are in today, have the audacity to look people in the face and ask them to trust me once again. LMFAO!Last edited by DwightShrute; 09-19-15, 09:11 AM.Comment -
halfwit acts like a declining america correlates with us electing a ******.
fact: it fell more under bushConsider first the median income. When Bill Clinton left office after 2000, the median income-the income line around which half of households come in above, and half fall below-stood at $52,500 (measured in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars). When Bush left office after 2008, the median income had fallen to $50,303. That's a decline of 4.2 per cent.
surprise, surprise, poverty grew more under bush too.Bush's record on poverty is equally bleak. When Clinton left office in 2000, the Census counted almost 31.6 million Americans living in poverty. When Bush left office in 2008, the number of poor Americans had jumped to 39.8 million (the largest number in absolute terms since 1960.) Under Bush, the number of people in poverty increased by over 8.2 million, or 26.1 per cent. Over two-thirds of that increase occurred before the economic collapse of 2008.
this penetrating retard!Comment -
how the penetrate do droolers like dwight even exist? people like him should be dead long ago from sticking his dick in an electrical outlet or some other retarded shit.This originally appeared on Robert Reich's blog.I’ve had so many calls about an article appearing earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal – charging that Bernie Sanders’s proposals would carry a “price tag” of $18 trillion over a 10-year period – that it’s necessary to respond.
The Journal’s number is entirely bogus, designed to frighten the public. Please spread the truth:
1. Bernie’s proposals would cost less than what we’d spend without them. Most of the “cost” the Journal comes up with—$15 trillion—would pay for opening Medicare to everyone.
This would be cheaper than relying on our current system of for-profit private health insurers that charge you and me huge administrative costs, advertising, marketing, bloated executive salaries, and high pharmaceutical prices.
(Gerald Friedman, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, whom the Journal relies on for some of its data, actually estimates a Medicare-for-all system would actually save all of us $10 trillion over 10 years).
2. The savings from Medicare-for-all would more than cover the costs of the rest of Bernie’s agenda—tuition-free education at public colleges, expanded Social Security benefits, improved infrastructure, and a fund to help cover paid family leave – and still leave us $2 trillion to cut federal deficits for the next ten years.
3. Many of these other “costs” would also otherwise be paid by individuals and families – for example, in college tuition and private insurance. So they shouldn’t be considered added costs for the country as a whole, and may well save us money.
4. Finally, Bernie’s proposed spending on education and infrastructure aren’t really “spending” at all, but investments in the nation’s future productivity. If we don’t make them, we’re all poorer.
That Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal would do this giant dump on Bernie Sanders, based on misinformation and distortion, confirms Bernie’s status as the candidate willing to take on the moneyed interests that the Wall Street Journal represents.Comment -
who's talking about Bush?
Facts are facts. Those are facts under the Obama administration. Spin and deflect like you guys always do. Yawn.
Maybe you can post some facts under Lincoln to make yourself feel better?
normal person: under Obama the debt rose almost 10 Trillion (or it will be by the time he leaves office)
scumbag liberal type: well Bush added around 6 trillion
normal person: funny how Obama called Bush unpatriotic for the amount of debt he added
scumbag liberal type: *crickets*
normal person: 2 million more people live in poverty since Obama was elected and median income has dropped by $2000 a year for all Americans.
scumbag liberal type: it fell more under bush
Comment -
are you really this stupid? i'd bet my life you couldn't crack 90 on an iq test.
if you could crack 90. you'd have the intelligence to read information, process it, and come to obvious conclusions.
lets practice:
There are two kinds of debt. One that’s relatively harmless. And one that can destroy us all. There’s public sector debt – or government debt – which is over $16 trillion. This is the sort of debt that politicians scream and holler about when they demand austerity.
And then there’s private sector debt – the debt owned by you and me and millions of Americans across the nation in the form of ************, home and auto loans, along with America's corporate debt. This sort of debt doesn’t seem to bother politicians at all, even though total private sector debt is $38 trillion, more than double government debt.
Now here’s what you need to know. Public sector debt is not a problem at all. Our national debt, despite the big number, is not a threat to the nation.
Currently, our national debt is roughly 100% of GDP. After World War 2, it was much higher – over 120% of GDP. But, rather than freaking out in the 1950’s and demanding austerity spending cuts, both Republican and Democratic Presidents and lawmakers grew our nation out of this so-called debt problem with government spending.
There were massive government investments to build the Interstate Highway System, send returning GIs to college, and to grow the social safety net.
And it worked. With more government investments, more Americans were put to work, which meant they had more money to spend, which meant more businesses hired more people to keep up with the higher demand, which meant Americans all around were earning more money and paying more revenue into the government through taxes. Our debt-to-GDP ratio plummeted from its peak of over 120% in the 1950’s to around 20% in the 1970’s.
Then Reagan came in, gave billionaires a massive tax cut, increased defense spending, and our national debt exploded again. But, two Presidents later, Bill Clinton had the budget balanced and the nation on track to completely eliminate the national debt within ten years.
George W. Bush blew up that plan with his tax cuts, wars, corporate giveaways, and his economic crash, so now we have a pretty massive debt, although not as big as the one Truman and Eisenhower faced and beat.
Our nation has a long history, from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to World War II of dealing with our national debt, and reducing debt levels that are much higher than we see today. That’s why government debt is not a problem right now. With just a small amount of political will, it can be solved pretty easily: more government investments to put people to work and more taxes on the rich so that they pay their fair share again have always solved it in the past.
On the other hand, private sector debt is a huge problem. Not only is it devastating the livelihoods of millions of Americans around the nation, but it’s also pushing our economy toward collapse.
After World War 2, total private debt was below 50% of GDP. Today, it’s more than 250% of GDP, which is even higher than it was during the Great Depression.
There are several reasons for this.
The first is that when Reagan stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, businesses started merging and acquiring each other like crazy. Because of changes in the rules on how that could be done, Private Equity or LBO firms came into existence, driving the monopolistic merger process with trillions in debt. Today virtually every corporate merger involves the company taking on huge debt, while the executives and the Pirate Equity boys take home billions. The result is that most of this private sector debt is corporate debt, and it's dangerously high, a teetering, towering house of cards.
And then there's household debt.
Since Reagan, Americans have not been paid more for their increased productivity, so wages have failed to keep up with the rising costs of housing, energy, education, and healthcare. To make ends meet, Americans had to extend their credit lines and home mortgages, thus sinking further into debt.
Also, there was the housing bubble, which was caused by banksters pushing mortgages – or debt – on millions of Americans, knowing that those same Americans were unlikely to be able to pay down those mortgages and debt.
But the banks made a ton of money selling off that bad debt to other investors before the market went bust, and skimming fees off the top of every single transaction.
And, of course, all of the losses that the banksters did incur during the crisis were promptly repaid by our government thanks to the bailout.
But nobody seemed to care about the debt that everyone else who wasn’t a bankster still had. Nobody except the banks, which are still trying to suck more and more money out of their indebted customers, and are now bringing back debtor’s prisons to help in this effort.
In Arkansas, a breast cancer survivor, Lisa Lindsay, was thrown in jail because she didn’t pay a $280 medical bill, which was charged to her by mistake.
Debtors’ prisons haven’t officially been used in America since before the Civil War. But today, a third of the states in the country allow debt collectors to use the public court system to go after people who owe them money. So, rather than being thrown in jail for specifically owing money, Americans are thrown in jail for not showing up to court hearings or not paying legal fines stemming from their debts.
There’s even a law in Arkansas that allows landlords to throw tenants in jail if they're late on their rent. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, hundreds of tenants in Arkansas who’ve fallen on hard times and can’t pay their rent are taken to court and sometimes jailed.
So, in a roundabout way, the debtors prisons have returned to America.
This is a huge problem because economies depend on consumers – people like you and me – spending money. But, if we’re in debt up to our eye-balls, and being thrown in prison for that debt, then we can’t spend money to stimulate the economy.
As economist Steve Keen told me, “That’s why we’re in a crisis.”
He added that it wasn't the government deficit we have to worry about. Instead, he said, “It’s the dynamics of private debt that have determined the crunch we’re in now.”
While debt can be useful and free up more spending in the economy, we’ve reached a point where businesses and individual Americans can no longer afford to go deeper into debt.
And a major reason why the economy continues to stagnate after the collapse is because Americans are paying down their debt rather than spending money in the economy. And the more Americans continue to pay down their debt instead of spending, the worse the economy will get.
When this happens, Keen told me, “You plunge off the cliff.”
Even government stimulus can’t help at this point. Whether it was Bush’s stimulus at the end of 2008 that gave everyone a couple hundred bucks, or Obama’s stimulus in 2009, any extra money Americans get from the government is diverted away from the economy and put instead toward paying down their huge individual debts, which has no stimulative effect on the economy at all.
If private debt was 50% of GDP like in the 1950’s, then Americans could afford to both buy things and pay down their own debt. And ditto for businesses. But at 250% of GDP, that private sector debt strangles the economy and sets the stage for a looming economic collapse.
So then, what’s to be done?
We should wipe the worst and most destructive of the private sector debt, the debt that prevents people from spending.
Keen calls for a debt jubilee. That means using the government to simply pay off much of the individual debt across America, from mortgages to student loans to ************.
This is also the approach Occupy Wall Street is taking with its “Strike Debt” campaign, though the organization is also relying on private donations to help buy people’s overdue debt at a cheap price and then completely wipe it out.
A debt jubilee isn’t a radical idea. In fact, it’s promoted in the Bible in the Book of Leviticus, which calls for a debt jubilee every 49 years. As Leviticus 25:10 reads, "This fiftieth year is sacred—it is a time of freedom and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property, and slaves will return home to their families."
Debt cancellation is supported in the Koran, too. And it was used in Ancient Athens and many Native American societies.
Wiping out private debt would unleash enormous spending in our economy in ways we haven’t seen since the boom years of the 1950’s and 1960’s. The only reason it’s not seriously being considered by our lawmakers today is because a debt jubilee would diminish the profits of the banksters who thrive – and prey – on an indebted nation.
But, in the not-to-distant future, as our economy continues to collapse under the weight of tens of trillions of dollars in private sector debt, our nation will be faced with an ultimate choice: Strike Debt or watch our economy completely collapse in a way that will make 1929 look like a picnic.
Let’s make the right choice now!Comment -
you're so penetrating stupid you think there is a difference between bush and obama on economics.
wake up you simpleton!Comment -
Comment -
drooler!Blogs / Lucinda's Blog
Lucinda's Blog
BY LUCINDA
Follow This Article
Fri, 06/01/2012 - 12:05am
No! Obama Did Not Control Congress His First Two Years!
Can we, once and for all, put that lie to rest? People I actually like and respect heard this on Fox (to be precise, you probably heard it the last time on “Morning Joe” with Joe Scarborough in mid-April of this year) and keep repeating it. But I don’t care if you heard it in Sunday School (and in Kansas… you may have) – it’s a lie.
Before I accuse anybody of being unbelievably forgetful, I will admit that I can’t remember what I had for breakfast today. Being forgetful is not a crime. Lying is sometimes a crime, but when you lie on internet political blogs, that’s not a crime. However, it should tug at your conscience a bit.
Let’s take a trip back to 2008.
And let’s brush up on some basics. First, did you forget that the President needed 60 votes to pass legislation? The healthcare bill is a good example of that. There were NOT 60 Democrats in the Senate. Remember that? So there had to be reconciliation.
What about the Stimulus? Again, there was NOT 60 Democratic votes to pass it. Reconciliation did not work. It was blocked by the Republicans, and Obama traded job-creating for tax cuts. Remember those tax cuts he let go on? Yep, traded for job creation - which it did accomplish as much as the baby stimulus that he was able to get would allow.
Is it all coming back to you now? How about this: It was Obama’s inaugural dinner. Senator Kennedy suffered a seizure. It’s kind of hard to work when you’ve had a seizure. He went back to Massachusetts.
Old news is so much fun to go back and read about. Here’s one I had forgotten, too. Al Franken had not yet been seated because the previous senator had challenged the election. Mein Gott, that went on forever with no way for him to vote in the Senate.
With Kennedy in Massachusetts and Franken in purgatory, awaiting his chance in the hell that is Congress, that left just 58 votes in the Senate. Memory Refresher: It took 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. The Republicans were already playing dirty politics and would not work across the aisle with the Democrats.
By the way, that was 56 Democrats and 2 Democratically-minded Independents. Not 58 Democrats.
Then, in April 2009 – good news. Republican Arlen Spector switched to Democrat. That gave the Democrats 60 seats with which to discourage a Republican filibuster (their most prized procedure at the time). But… oh no… we forgot, Al Franken was still in Purgatory out there in election recount turmoil. So… back to 59 votes.
We can pause here to lovingly remember the filibuster I just mentioned. Republicans made history during that time by using it more than any time ever before. Reminder (because this can get confusing): It takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The Democrats only had 59 at this point… technically. One of those votes was the very ill, Senator Kennedy. He did cast one vote during that time.
Then, Senator Byrd was admitted to the hospital.
Then Al Franken was sworn in but Byrd was still in the hospital and Kennedy was too sick to ever vote again.
Senator Byrd finally returned, but Kennedy did not.
It wasn’t until August- 2009 that Senator Kirk was appointed to Kennedy’s seat, and finally they had the 60 votes.
That filibuster-proof 60 votes lasted exactly 4 months – Not 2 years. Not 1 year. Not 6 months.
Just 4 months – from August 2009 to February 2010 - when Scott Brown was sworn in.
But here’s a fact that nobody can deny:
Republicans had the presidency, the House, and the Senate from 2001 – 2007.
For six years, Republicans had total and complete and undeniably absolute control over everything.
And how did that work out in the final analysis?
It doesn’t bear repeating. You know the answer to that as well as I do. Six years to screw up the whole country – nay, the entire damned world!
And you whine because Obama could not fix it all in four months?
Alright, I expect you to whine. But from this point on there is no excuse for lying. Not now that you know the truth.
Comment -
Guys, the things you are arguing about have legions of phd's lining up on both sides with valid arguments. When you continually attack each other with personal insults, constantly calling each other dumb fukks because you have ideological differences, well, it makes you look like dumb fukks.Comment -
economics lesson:
Currently, our national debt is roughly 100% of GDP. After World War 2, it was much higher – over 120% of GDP. But, rather than freaking out in the 1950’s and demanding austerity spending cuts, both Republican and Democratic Presidents and lawmakers grew our nation out of this so-called debt problem with government spending.
There were massive government investments to build the Interstate Highway System, send returning GIs to college, and to grow the social safety net.
And it worked. With more government investments, more Americans were put to work, which meant they had more money to spend, which meant more businesses hired more people to keep up with the higher demand, which meant Americans all around were earning more money and paying more revenue into the government through taxes. Our debt-to-GDP ratio plummeted from its peak of over 120% in the 1950’s to around 20% in the 1970’s.
Question: did we cut taxes for job creators and slash spending to deal with the debt that was way higher than current levels?
dwight's answer: let's do a greece and fix everything with harsh austerity measures. cut taxes too!Comment -
i've argued plenty with guitar josh, and never said a bad thing to him. despite our significant differences.
what i say about dwight i say because i dislike him and feel he might be one of the dumbest people on this entire forum.
dwight lacks the capacity to think on even a marginal level and it's beyond tilting. it would be less so if he just quite engaging with me at every turn.Last edited by scumbag; 09-19-15, 07:16 PM.Comment -
you haven't argued much actually. You're a typical classless moron who acts like he knows a lot when everyone sees how full of shit and stupid you actually are. Sure everyone is a little over exaggerated because we all can see you have a few that subscribe to your stupidity. You make me laugh actually. Hey, didn't you put me on ignore a couple times now? lol.Attached FilesComment -
-
what was your answer to economics lesson?Comment -
says the halfwit who thinks we should cut spending during recession/depressions.
"OMG THE DEBT"
austerity doesn't work you moron.
your whole understanding of economics is that of a housewife.
Part of the answer is that politicians were catering to a public that doesn’t understand the rationale for deficit spending, that tends to think of the government budget via analogies with family finances. When John Boehner, the Republican leader, opposed US stimulus plans on the grounds that “American families are tightening their belt, but they don’t see government tightening its belt,” economists cringed at the stupidity.Last edited by scumbag; 09-20-15, 04:44 AM.Comment -
Comment -
[IMG]https://****************************/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/12039525_734473250020048_458196132876697 6707_n.jpg?oh=8146bf986927503859ef85cccb 408b7d&oe=56A02C9F[/IMG]Comment -
says the moron who thinks governments create jobs. You truly could not be anymore stupid; but wait there's more!..
The same moron who thinks unions gave us the work week and weekends, and same moron who thinks those are two different things because they don't understand basic math; moron.
Also your BS quote is from Paul Krugman, liberal extraordinary with nothing to show for it except years of teaching at liberal schools to spread liberal BS to sheeps like you. The guy is SO smart at economics that is why he is just filthy rich... oh wait.. Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.
ya putzComment -
Funny you highlighted halfwit and then responded.
Comment -
yea, hilarious how posting works. you're stupid rkelly. Honest truth, that is how you come off. Of course, I don't need to tell anyone this, I can just let you prove it yourself.
Hey rkelly, give us some more examples of government job creation...lolLast edited by brooks85; 09-26-15, 09:37 AM.Comment -
Comment
