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[GlyphGryph]

Meaning its a valuable convenience for you. But notably not a necessity. Still a convenience.

I'm not sure exactly what your point is?

[alway]

Uh, this doesn't look good... All 3 US stock futures are down by over 1%, japanese and hong kong markets over .7% down, aussies 1.5% down, chinese markets over 2% down.

[Nadaka]

Uh, this doesn't look good... All 3 US stock futures are down by over 1%, japanese and hong kong markets closed over .7% down, aussies 1.5% down, chinese markets over 2% down.

Exactly as expected. shit is getting fucked up. if it isn't done tomorrow, its going to stay fucked up and get worse. If we go past the second without a debt limit bump... it will be bad, very bad.

I know people in real life planning to march on the local TV stations with cardboard signs in protest. If you have the time to do so, you might want to do the same. By going to the TV stations, the news crews don't have to go looking and it may produce more coverage and support.

[SalmonGod]

I live about 5 miles from work.  If I was only taking care of myself,  I could easily walk or bicycle. 

But I'm not, and that would impact my life with my family, as there would be less time at home to be shared between myself (recharging as an introvert) and my family.  Plus, I wouldn't be able to make it home for lunch breaks, which would result in me spending more time preparing food for myself and probably not eating as healthy, which is a type of issue that tends to snowball.  Right now I just come home and eat with my family, which is the most efficient possible thing for us.

Bicycling would also be dangerous, since there aren't any sidewalks for most of the distance and drivers here are oblivious/just don't care.  Only major roads have a shoulder, and they're barely a car width.  You don't see many bicyclists here outside of parks.

Not having a car when you have kids also means that if anything ever happens, you have to call an ambulance.  Kids get hurt or sick a lot such that it's urgent, but not enough of an emergency to justify the horrendous cost of an ambulance.

And those other luxuries (like gaming systems) are truly pitiful.  They're dirt cheap in comparison to anything that actually matters, and really only serve as condolences to the general lack of freedom of the poor and especially the children who need something to occupy them so they're not killing themselves or each other while both of their parents are working all the time.  I know I would be a lot worse off today without video games or internet to keep me out of trouble as a kid.

[alway]

And those other luxuries (like gaming systems) are truly pitiful.  They're dirt cheap in comparison to anything that actually matters, and really only serve as condolences to the general lack of freedom of the poor and especially the children who need something to occupy them so they're not killing themselves or each other while both of their parents are working all the time.  I know I would be a lot worse off today without video games or internet to keep me out of trouble as a kid.

Yep. Even compared to car insurance, let alone car payments, you would have a hard time finding enough to spend an equivalent amount on gaming systems and games. Even if you got the latest and greatest games as they came out and kept your system/console fairly modern, you probably won't spend much more than about $500 a year. If you are actually concerned about cost, it would be much less. I spent about $300 in total on my system and games this year; I have all the games I actually want and a PC capable of running any game at maximum settings. Most of that $300 was to upgrade my video card to a brand new $200 card, with most of the rest spent on Portal 2's release day purchase.

In comparison, the average auto insurance in the US is approximately $1500 per year.

At what point did the U.S. ever actually abandon Keynesian economics?

The 1970's during stagflation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics_in_United_States_2008#Displacement_by_monetarism_and_New_Classical_economics:_1979.E2.80.931984
It actually just came back because of this economic depression. For example, had we been using Keynesian policy during the Bush II years, there would have been no bush tax cuts and that money would have instead gone to paying down the national debt.

[counting]

So Asia markets had vote their lack of confidence. Let's see what Europe markets have to say. It's opening.

[penguinofhonor]

Meaning its a valuable convenience for you. But notably not a necessity. Still a convenience.

I'm not sure exactly what your point is?

It's a convenience to me because I'm a college kid. If I was a poor parent with kids to raise, being around them for like four hours a day tops wouldn't really let me parent all that well.

[Aklyon]

Spoiler: Relevant (click to show/hide)

[Phmcw]

Yeah car are between convenience and necessity most of the time. Beside they are not that more expensive than public transportation, and much faster. Given that you can be poor in America while working full time, and that you lack of social security may leave people with disability or disease paying for their own care, there is absolutely nothing surprising if a lot of your poor have a car. Now I want to see those poor described by the right wing, living in luxury in huge houses with top gaming system and two big TV they've paid with thousands of our tax dollard and understand why every single poor I know live a shitty life, counting every dollards, in way too small houses, with second hand everything (and you'd be surprised how cheap a second hand Xbox can be). The only ones who are rather poor and live well are just expert at making every Euro count. Huge familly, father working full time, mother working as kid's book illustrator, but they have a projector (second hand 50 €) car (second hand) big house (heritage) second house (bough it for nothing, repaired it themselves during holidays) and two kids in college (ours are mostly free, U jelly?).
But they are just hard working people, and they just make do.

[Heron TSG]

I'm helping organize a large protest outside one of my state's Senator's office tomorrow. We'll see how this goes.

[counting]

The Europe markets have the similar result as Asian markets. A bit of lacking confidence. Now, it's time to see what U.S domestic markets say. (Opening low)

And a post about what really might happened in practical sense when debt ceiling not raised. The interesting things is the spending cuts are necessary regardless whether the debt ceiling raised or not. (either you stop paying about 40% bills right now due to out of revenues, or stop paying some bills in the future so the budgets will be balanced).

From what I can tell the negotiations so far result in mostly temporary solutions (like raise debt ceiling only enough till the end of the year). And although stepped plans are good for the soft landing, its bad for elections.

Asia major markets indices performance 7/25
http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/asia
Aside from India and Thailand, everyone falls.

European major markets indices
http://in.reuters.com/finance/markets/europe
Aside from Germany.

[PTTG??]

I'm helping organize a large protest outside one of my state's Senator's office tomorrow. We'll see how this goes.

I'm looking forward to our fair. They rent out booths and we're expecting to see the Tea Party there.

[mainiac]

Oh wait, what's that you say? oh wait, less than 60% of the country pays taxes, hows about instead you make people pay taxes instead of raise them.

There's lies, damn lies and statistics.  This is all three.

What you actually meant to say was:
"About half the country doesn't pay any INCOME TAXES, a tax that falls mostly on high income households, however they do pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, fees and (directly or indirectly) property taxes.  As a result, instead of having an outright regressive tax structure, the progressive nature of the payroll tax means that we have a narrowly progressive tax base."

Oh wait, what am I saying, that's something that someone who knows what they are talking about would say.

Sometime I'd like to see a rightwing poster who isn't mindlessly reposting the same goddamn memes that were refuted back in the 80s.

Time to party like it's 1929? >_<

Just talked to a Republican. According to him it's the Democrat's fault because they didn't do anything about it when they controlled congress.
Jaded... cynicism... rising.....  D:

More like time to party like it's 1937.  People often forget that the great depression was two separate recessions.  There was the initial slump after 1929, then we recovered partly, then in 1937 we decided to balance the budget by firing all the WPA people and unemployment shot back up again.

[counting]

Many people remembered 1929 because of the stock market crash. And it effected the investors only. It's more like the first wave of a giant tsunami. But most casualties come after the second and upcoming waves of depressions. 

The tax reform is more important than tax cut or increase income tax.

[mainiac]

And a post about what really might happened in practical sense when debt ceiling not raised. The interesting things is the spending cuts are necessary regardless whether the debt ceiling raised or not. (either you stop paying about 40% bills right now due to out of revenues, or stop paying some bills in the future so the budgets will be balanced).

Not really, spending cuts are preferable because we have allowed inefficiencies to fester in some areas but not strictly necessary and that spending should be fixed for its own sakes.  Current US law has us on track to have a sustainable budget within the decade and keeping that way for as long as projections have any relevance.  However current law says that various things happen like Bush tax cut expiration, no AMT patch, no doc fix, etc.  The law says all these things because all the things breaking our budget were passed as "temporary" measures that would expire.  However we expect that congress will continue these "temporary" measures and not pay for them and that is where the longterm deficit comes from in our "baseline scenario" which is where we dont expect congress to pay for some of these budget busters when it does them again in the future.  It's this baseline scenario that we are always talking about, not current law.

Again, I'm not saying that it would be preferable to go with current law.  A lot of these spending programs are based on old laws and grow more inefficient every year.  But that's a reform and efficiency problem not an overall size of government is too high program.  The only way our government is too high is if all the "temporary" deficit creators of the past few years are made permanent without offsets.