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Author Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over  (Read 772163 times)

Nadaka

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10575 on: January 04, 2013, 09:39:25 am »

No opportunity for investment in infrastructure? What the fuck are you smoking?

We have hundreds of billions of dollars worth of general maintenance that has been ignored for decades.

You do realize that American Infrastructure is woefully under repaired. Our bridges are falling apart, bad roads add billions of dollars in gas and auto repair costs. Our power system is barely functional at the best of times and a complete failure given regular natural disasters. Our power plants are ancient. Our internet is laughable, barely better than third world countries when every other western nation is 10 times faster.

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Frumple

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10576 on: January 04, 2013, 09:41:06 am »

That... chart. That chart is hilarious. I particularly like how the longer-term one that actually included '08 data included projections for '09 that was more than the spending budget for 2012. Also nice how it completely ignores population growth and revenue and doesn't tell you what those numbers mean. Millions, billions? (Turns out it's billions because the heritage foundation chart it's ripping off actually labels its unit of measurement, but whatev'.) It's a cute, but terrible, graph.

This is the job market informing people that white-collar work has jumped the shark. We need people who can actually accomplish things other than shuffling papers.
We need something for them to accomplish. If white collar work's jumped the shark, where the blazes does that put the rest of it that's generally even worse off?

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someone who makes food on a farm, a solid line of work in even the worst catastrophe
Minor point of order, here. It may be a solid line of work in the worst catastrophe, but it's a pretty terrible line of work in a time of excess (which we're still thoroughly in). There's only so much food you can sell at a profit and by and large we're way over that point and have been way over that point for quite a while. We're just too good at growing food to really support a notably growing workforce (unless we use pretty cost inefficient methods of farming).
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Nadaka

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10577 on: January 04, 2013, 09:49:52 am »

They're not litteral terrorrist. What we mean is that the same principle apply. If you reward dangerous behaviour, they'll continue. Giving up mean they'll do it again in a few months (By the way, if the debt ceiling is broken every six months, it's because the result of the last deabt ceiling crisis was that the GOP only agreed to rise it by a small amount so that we'd face the same problem again now).

The fact is that whether or not America has a debt crisis (I don't think there is one short-term), it should not be solved this way, by threatening default twice a year. And the only way to make this insanity stop is by holding firm once and letting the GOP (and future Democrat majorities under Republican president) learn that this is not the way to do politics.

No, they literally are terrorists. The create terror for political and financial gain. They cause financial harm to America. The intentionally fabricated the "uncertainty" in the markets and publicly stated they would be willing to crash the economy to harm the president. It is completely insane.
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Leafsnail

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10578 on: January 04, 2013, 09:52:15 am »

I'm pretty impressed that a country with 300,000,000 people only spends about $3000 a year on government services
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Zangi

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10579 on: January 04, 2013, 09:53:46 am »

No, they literally are terrorists. The create terror for political and financial gain. They cause financial harm to America. The intentionally fabricated the "uncertainty" in the markets and publicly stated they would be willing to crash the economy to harm the president. It is completely insane.
At least not all of em are that conservativecrazy...
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Nadaka

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10580 on: January 04, 2013, 09:59:17 am »

No, they literally are terrorists. The create terror for political and financial gain. They cause financial harm to America. The intentionally fabricated the "uncertainty" in the markets and publicly stated they would be willing to crash the economy to harm the president. It is completely insane.
At least not all of em are that conservativecrazy...

There are a lot of "conservatives" that are theoretically individually ok, except they vote these supreme ass-hats into positions of authority in their party and in this nation, repeatedly.
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RedKing

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10581 on: January 04, 2013, 10:01:31 am »

Also have to factor in population. Of course raw spending is going to increase over time. US population in 1965 was just around 195 million, compared to the 315+ million we have now.

Per capita government spending is right now at about $11K. That's actually below the average for the 20 largest economies, which is just over $16K. Within that group of 20, we're #14 in terms of per-capita government spending. Top of the list is Norway, at $40,908. (2011 figures, from CIA Factbook).

As a percentage of GDP, we're at about 23-24%, well below the average of 44.2% (for that same grouping of top 20 economies). Basically, you can divide that group into three chunks:

Europe + Japan = high govenrment spending
USA = moderate government spending (though still on the low side of moderate)
BRIC + Mexico + South Korea = low government spending

Now while the bottom group may have the fastest-growing economies, it's the top group that has the highest quality of life. I guess the question is what people want: to make yet more money, or to enjoy their lives?
« Last Edit: January 04, 2013, 10:05:11 am by RedKing »
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Sheb

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10582 on: January 04, 2013, 10:35:42 am »

Man the internet kraken ate my post.

Well, just wanted to say that there is no real need for cutting spending. I'm living in a country where the state account for 50% of GDP and I dig it. Oh, and our deficit is half the US's (despite paying twice the interest rate), because we actually pay for that spending through taxes. I don't really know where you decided that you can't reduce deficit through taxation, but Belgium would like to tell you you're wrong.

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Trollheiming

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10583 on: January 04, 2013, 10:43:13 am »

You have to adjust the spending to the GDP to get a meaningful graph. And there is a slight dip in ~1987 :P

I need a better magnifying glass, I guess. GDP growth matters only if you really think that America has years of robust GDP growth ahead to broaden the tax base. Frankly, I don't think so. I realize that the CBO loves to pretend so, but it's the era of the new normal in America now.

No opportunity for investment in infrastructure? What the fuck are you smoking?

We have hundreds of billions of dollars worth of general maintenance that has been ignored for decades.

You do realize that American Infrastructure is woefully under repaired. Our bridges are falling apart, bad roads add billions of dollars in gas and auto repair costs. Our power system is barely functional at the best of times and a complete failure given regular natural disasters. Our power plants are ancient. Our internet is laughable, barely better than third world countries when every other western nation is 10 times faster.

Increasing that infrastructure by building more roads and bridges hardly solves your problem of unemployed sociology majors. I mean, it helps the Mexican economy, I suppose, and I read about a Chinese company that won a bid to build a bridge in America and imported Chinese nationals because it couldn't find Americans with dirty enough hands for the job, so Chinese economy, too; but average Americans no longer want to work at anything remotely useful for a living.

I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, and I know that I need to spell this out, because Bay12 rarely has a sense of humor. The more important part here is that those infrastructure improvements have dubious real worth. Your current number of bridges are probably getting you to work on time. If another bridge doesn't decrease commute times, it failed as an investment.

American internet is plenty fast. If you have faster internet, how will it increase your productivity? It'll be fun with faster internet, true, but fun doesn't make the world go round. If you set out to borrow trillions more, you better have gotten serious about these questions. The numbers game is real. You eat the numbers game every time when you toss bits of paper at a cashier and she gives you a week's worth of food.

Quote from: Frumple
That... chart. That chart is hilarious.

That chart is a quick image search. never went to the website. You didn't say shit about whether federal spending has ever decreased, though. Do you have a problem with the base data, or just that the base data wasn't goosed and lipsticked enough to your tastes? Maybe it wasn't hilarious enough. The rest can be spun various ways, as you're gleefully doing right now. Spending has never gone down. The rest is pointless trivia. If we enter an age of flat GDP growth, the spending will be the spending, pure and simple. GDP can grow a country out of debt, but America won't do that anymore.

Quote
Minor point of order, here. It may be a solid line of work in the worst catastrophe, but it's a pretty terrible line of work in a time of excess (which we're still thoroughly in).

A time of excess when people are complaining about unemployment and underemployment? We're living on the table-scraps of excess now.

No, they literally are terrorists. The create terror for political and financial gain. They cause financial harm to America. The intentionally fabricated the "uncertainty" in the markets and publicly stated they would be willing to crash the economy to harm the president. It is completely insane.

It takes two sides to tango. The Democrats are also terrorists. They're doing the same thing, but more cravenly and opportunistically, because they know that the blame will be stuck on the Republicans.
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Sheb

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10584 on: January 04, 2013, 10:49:31 am »

I don't remember Democrats threatening to make America default on its debts if they didn't get it their way. I don't remember Democrats tying their hands with stupid pledge that forbid them to do any meaningful compromise. Sure, they're not perfect. But they'r enot nearly on the levels of republican congressmen.

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Nadaka

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10585 on: January 04, 2013, 10:51:04 am »

It also takes two for someone to stand up against a terrorist.

Can you cite any specific terroristic things that democrats have done to harm America? Anything other than cower in fear before the threats of the right?

I can point to things the republicans have done. The debt ceiling fiasco. The fiscal cliff fiasco. The fabrication of justification for invading Iraq. Then there is the whole randian movement that explicitly wants to see the federal government completely dismantled.

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Take me out to the black, tell them I ain't comin' back...
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Sheb

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10586 on: January 04, 2013, 11:00:24 am »

Also, I just found this.

Just adjusting for population shows in fact falls in spendings.


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mainiac

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10587 on: January 04, 2013, 11:06:19 am »

It's more like the villain is telling the hero to shoot the girl or he'll shoot her.

The "hero" is putting everything on the line, including America itself, to make sure that the rich get taxed a little more and government can still spend increasing amounts of borrowed money. Without that stubborn insistence, no one gets hurt.

So your modification to the analogy fails. The hero wants the villain to take the fall for shooting his girlfriend.

What you are ignoring here is that one side is a goddamn hostage taker!
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Leafsnail

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10588 on: January 04, 2013, 11:10:39 am »

Are you seriously suggesting that America's infrastructure can't be improved?  Like, look at mainland Europe or Japan's rail systems and tell me they aren't a) beneficial to their economies and b) better than the one in the US.
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mainiac

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Re: American Election Megathread - It's Over
« Reply #10589 on: January 04, 2013, 11:12:56 am »

Anybody else get reminded of the run up to the civil war with this debt ceiling crap?

Quote from: Lincoln Cooperstown Address
Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"

Also "that is cool" in the sense that Lincoln uses it is a great phrase and I wish we used it more.
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Ancient Babylonian god of RAEG
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"Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value"
« Last Edit: February 10, 1988, 03:27:23 pm by UR MOM »
mainiac is always a little sarcastic, at least.
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