Where is the US economy headed?

@talk72000,

The Pelosi-Reid-Democrat Congress are the most responsible for the current recession. Then Obama and finally Bush contributed as well.

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/pdf/hist.pdf
Year.......FEDERAL RECEIPTS FINAL FULL YEAR OF TERM
1980......$0.517 trillion [CARTER]
1988….…$0.909 trillion [REAGAN]
1992.......$1.091 trillion [BUSH41]
2000......$2.025 trillion [CLINTON]
2008......$2.521 trillion [BUSH43]
2010.......$2,931[OBAMA] (current estimate for year not end of term)

Year.......FEDERAL OUTLAYS FINAL FULL YEAR OF TERM
1980.......$0.591 trillion [CARTER]
1988….….$1.064 trillion [REAGAN]
1992........$1,.382 trillion [BUSH41]
2000.......$1.789 trillion [CLINTON]
2008.......$2,931 trillion [BUSH43]
2010........$3,399 trillion [OBAMA] (current estimate for year not end of term)

Year………FEDERAL DEFICITS FINAL FULL YEAR OF TERM
1980.......$0.074 trillion [CARTER]
1988….….$0.155 trillion [REAGAN]
1992........$0.291 trillion [BUSH41]
2000.......SURPLUS $0.236 trillion [CLINTON]
2008.......$0.410 trillion [BUSH43]
2010........$0.160 trillion [OBAMA] (current estimate for year not end of term)

Year………GROSS FEDERAL DEBT FINAL FULL YEAR OF TERM
1980.......$0.909 trillion [CARTER]
1988….….$2.601 trillion [REAGAN]
1992........$4.002 trillion [BUSH41]
2000.......$5.629 trillion [CLINTON]
2008.......$9.654 trillion [BUSH43]
2010.......$10.954 trillion [OBAMA] (current estimate for year not end of term)

1 Reply

@ican711nm,

You like lying and accustomed to dishonorable conduct a sure sign of the Bush League.

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TO DO!
Repeat until Obama stops vetoing, or is impeached & removed, or is not re-elected in 2012.

Quote:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19991&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
How to Cut $343 Billion from the Federal Budget

Federal spending is on an unsustainable path that risks disaster for America, says Brian Riedl, the Grover M. Hermann Research Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

Runaway spending has increased annual federal budget deficits to unprecedented levels, adding $2.7 trillion to the national debt in the past two years alone, including a record $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal year (FY) 2009 and a $1.3 trillion deficit for FY 2010.

If Congress does nothing and simply continues existing taxing and spending policies, federal deficits will grow, reaching a projected $2 trillion deficit in just 10 years -- and even that assumes a return to peace and prosperity.
Soaring spending drives these dangerous deficits.

By 2020, federal spending is set to soar to 26 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), after having averaged 20 percent after World War II.
Revenues will likely return to their post-World War II average of 18 percent of GDP by 2020, even if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent.
Available spending cuts for the new Congress total up to $343 billion. Many of the cuts fall into six areas:

Empowering state and local governments.
Consolidating duplicative programs.
Privatization -- many current government functions could be performed more efficiently by the private sector.
Targeting programs more precisely.
Eliminating outdated and ineffective programs.
Eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.

Implementing the $343 billion in recommended cuts would reduce the deficit by somewhat less than $343 billion because some recommendations would also reduce tax revenues, says Riedl.

Governing involves difficult choices, and Congress simply cannot continue to court long-term disaster for all merely to avoid short-term difficulties for some.

Source: Brian Riedl, "How to Cut $343 Billion from the Federal Budget," Heritage Foundation, October 28, 2010.

1 Reply

@ican711nm,

[quote="ican711nm"

Quote:

Available spending cuts for the new Congress total up to $343 billion. Many of the cuts fall into six areas:

Empowering state and local governments.
Consolidating duplicative programs.
Privatization -- many current government functions could be performed more efficiently by the private sector.
Targeting programs more precisely.
Eliminating outdated and ineffective programs.
Eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.

Could you put some numbers on those 6 areas, identifying the specifics and the dollars? Thanks in advance.

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@realjohnboy,

I notice he said nothing about war, spending our wealth on countries that wont be modernized for 100 years in a stupid effort to democratize them. All weve done is make them hate us as in Iran.

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@realjohnboy,

They always seem to come up with some global ideas on how to do something, but they always miss on the details.

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The Fed's action today is potentially quite a big thing. The word "stimulus" is not used anymore, of course. Will this scheme help or not?
Would you prefer to wait to pass judgment for 6 or 12 months?

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@realjohnboy,

It does seem as we are the stupid mass does it not? What is the difference between "stimulus" and " quantitative easing"?

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

Quantitative easing was explained on NPR. It is not identical with stimulus and was actually tried once before, although not successfully. Truthfully, it was not something that I understood and I was too distracted to listen to the entire piece.

Also heard on NPR, supposedly from a victorious office holder: Government does not make jobs, private industry does.

So, why are the wingnuts so angry whenever I say that the top 1%, the only people who really benefitted from the turn down, shipped our jobs overseas. They say the Democrats taxed them away. I think our resident wingnuts should talk to the man who spoke on NPR.

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@plainoldme,

Jobs go where productivity is high and labor costs low. Labor unions kill jobs. The only U.S. auto manufacturers who needed a bailout were those infected with the UAW parasite. Those with non-union shops didn't fail and their employees kept their jobs.

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@realjohnboy,

rjb, The feds attempts to make money available will not help our economy. Only jobs will help our economy.

The best way for government to get this job engine to work is to work on our infrastructure - which needs much work. Safety of our roads, bridges, and public buildings is for our national security. Those workers earning income will go out and spend that money to create a larger demand for goods and services - and the multiplier effect will take over.

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The economist in me says that QE should work, Reasoning and POM. But there is a disconnect. Banks are reluctant to lend and businesses are not inclined to expand even if they could borrow.
We seem to be in a freeze, right now.
I am not smart enough to figure out what will or should happen. I suspect that A2Ker's can solve this by tomorrow.

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@plainoldme,

Yes I was listening to the same person on npr a couple of weeks ago and it seem to me that it is just another way to give the government money that it can use to help stimulate the economy or to at least prolong the downward spiral.

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From Salon:

Almost the worst thing anybody can call you today is an "elitist." Elites, it seems, are downright un-American. In the face of concentrated wealth that makes Scrooge McDuck's bullion-filled swimming pool resemble a Walmart goldfish tank, people express resentment toward anybody they suspect of knowing things they'd rather disbelieve.

Recently, we had the spectacle of Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, informing an audience of Tea Partiers that "we are ruled by an elite that thinks it knows better than we know." Clueless GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell ran campaign ads sneering that unlike her opponent, "I didn't go to Yale ... I am YOU."

Never mind that O'Donnell's campaign bio falsely claimed she'd attended several prestigious universities, her point's clear enough: Elitists think they're better than you. Sarah Palin can scarcely get through a public appearance without accusing somebody of that terrible sin.

Glenn Beck routinely insinuates that "elitists" are enemies of America. It's bogus populism, the politics of personal resentment.

Meanwhile, since 1980, the rich have grown vastly richer; everybody else, not so much. The inimitable David Cay Johnston at Tax.com shows that in constant dollars, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has risen exactly $303 over 30 years. Their share of the nation's income declined from 65 percent in 1980 to 52 percent in 2008.

So if people feel squeezed, it's because they are.

There's no mystery about where the money's going. There's been astonishing income growth among the super-rich. Even during the recent recession, Johnston shows, the average income of people earning more than $50 million rose from $91 million in 2008 to a staggering $519 million in 2009.

In 1974, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earned 9 percent of the nation's total income. By 2007, they got 23.5 percent. We're trending back toward a society of hereditary aristocrats, a timid middle class and impoverished peasants.

But nobody wants to face it, hence the politics of personal resentment. Now comes veteran controversialist Charles Murray in the Washington Post to second the motion.

"That a New Elite has emerged over the past 30 years is not really controversial," he writes. "That its members differ from former elites is not controversial. What sets the tea party apart from other observers of the New Elite is its hostility, rooted in the charge that elites are isolated from mainstream America and ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans."

Murray's argument is a continuation of his controversial book, "The Bell Curve." To him, the structure of American society is ordained by nature; Ivy League admissions officers basically run the country. Having inherited big brains from their parents, the "cognitive elite" attend fancy colleges, learn to disdain ordinary Americans, and then cluster in upscale neighborhoods where the lives of working stiffs are scarcely comprehended.

It's not so much that the "New Elite" are "defective in their patriotism," Murray argues, but "merely isolated and ignorant. The members of the New Elite may love America, but, increasingly, they are not of it."

To that end, Murray devises a kind of quiz to determine how comfortable his audience would feel in small-town America, which he appears to think consists entirely of pious white high school dropouts with a zeal for making noise with gasoline engines.

The New Elitists are effete snobs: "Talk to them about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach) ... They can talk about books endlessly, but they've never read a 'Left Behind' novel (65 million copies sold) ..."

Sociologically, I'd probably qualify as an elderly New Elitist. But Yoga? Sorry, it's girl stuff. My wife's miffed that size 13EEE feet help me to do "tree" without lessons. Mountain biking? Get a horse. I'm familiar with both Jimmie Johnsons but dislike NFL football and NASCAR. Randy Johnson, aka The Big Unit, is more my style, or Joe Johnson, the former Razorback and NBA guard.

"Left Behind"? I got paid to write about them. They're books for people who don't read books. Anybody who thinks you can predict political events by reading the Bible is a fool. They're also dreadfully bad on a mimetic level.

Last year a Ph.D. candidate I know got me to read the vampire novel "Twilight." It's rubbish, too. She's still mad at me for saying so.

But I'd be patronizing her by faking enthusiasm, exactly what Murray seems to want the "New Elite" to do. Somebody needs to clue him in that out here on the gravel roads of Middle America, people now get the same satellite TV, Internet and cellphone service as everybody else. Alas, what they're getting is Fox News.

I keep my truck radio tuned to NPR and the country oldies station. Does that make me an elitist?

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000)

1 Reply

@plainoldme,

I used bold face to enhance the sections that contradict the rubbish continually posted by ican that leftist-liberals-wish-to-take-money-they-haven't-earned.

"Leftist liberals" can't take anything because the real incomes of most Americans have declined over the years. There are readily available statistics everywhere, from government records of the Census Bureau to the works of economists that prove this reality. People like ican, prejudiced and ignorant, victimize all of us, as do the christine o'donnells and sarah palins and crazy carls who harangue during election season, making direct democracy more hated than ever.

I used italics to show how dumbed down America has become. At the time that the economic slide of the "average" American -- enumerated at 90% of us by David Cay Johnston and at 80% by the Census Bureau (in other words, hardly average) -- began to loose hold of the American dream, people read Malamud and Bellow and Fowles; today they read vampire novels.

But, perhaps, our youngsters should be forgiven for their choice of reading. After all, the top 1% is sucking their lives blood.

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Quote:

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea1.txt
Year……TOTAL US CIVILIAN EMPLOYMENT
1980……………..99 million [CARTER]
1988…………… 115 million [REAGAN]
1992…………….118 million [BUSH41]
2000……………137 million [CLINTON]
2007………..….146 million [BUSH43]
2008………….. 145 million [BUSH43]
2009,……….....140 million [OBAMA]
2010.……………139 million [OBAMA] (as of September 2010 and not final year of term)

Year.…….PERCENT OF CIVILIAN POPULATION EMPLOYED
1980…………………………………….59.2 [CARTER]
1988…………………………………….62.3 [REAGAN]
1992…………………………………….61.5 [BUSH41]
2000…………………………………….64.4 [CLINTON]
2007…………………………………….63.0 [BUSH43]
2008…………………………………….62.2 [BUSH43]
2009…………………………………….59.3 [OBAMA]
2010…………………………………….58.5 [OBAMA] (as of September 2010 and not final year of term)

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@plainoldme,

Why don't you quit your whinin, and go get a better job instead of working in a liquor store? Am I right, I think I read you are working in a liquor store? And you teach part time? I pity the students hearing what you are probably telling them, that life is unfair and so is this country unfair. A hint, pom, you will never be happy until you get rid of the self defeatist attitude.

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@plainoldme,

plainoldme wrote:

"Leftist liberals" can't take anything because the real incomes of most Americans have declined over the years.

I think that is because of poor educational system, underachievement, and too high taxes and too many regulations in this country. Additionally, the unions have helped run some industries virtually out of business in this country. There are real reasons why almost everything is made in China now, and it isn't because of conservative policies. I was looking at my pocket knife last night, I had to buy another one because I lose them all the time. Made in China of course, because I could not find one made in the U.S.A., at least in the store I bought it from. Even made in China, it cost me over $20 with tax.

1 Reply

@okie,

okie wrote:

plainoldme wrote:
"Leftist liberals" can't take anything because the real incomes of most Americans have declined over the years.

I think that is because of poor educational system, underachievement, and too high taxes and too many regulations in this country. Additionally, the unions have helped run some industries virtually out of business in this country. There are real reasons why almost everything is made in China now, and it isn't because of conservative policies. I was looking at my pocket knife last night, I had to buy another one because I lose them all the time. Made in China of course, because I could not find one made in the U.S.A., at least in the store I bought it from. Even made in China, it cost me over $20 with tax.

http://www.buckknives.com/index.cfm

It's not hard to find stuff made in America if you put, oh, about 10 seconds of effort into researching it. And yeah, it probably costs more.

But aren't you willing to pay more in order to help Americans keep their jobs, to keep our economy strong? Or do you only want things to go well as long as it doesn't cost you anything?

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@okie,

What do you think you do but whine and wheedle and beg and get up on your high horse in a state of high dudgeon, demanding that everyone should apologize to you for telling the truth, for posting messages from the real world but, most of all, for remembering all those things you write that you don't remember having posted on these boards?

Maybe, because you whine and whimper so much you think everyone else does. Waaa!!!! Cicerone Imposter is picking on me! Boo Hoo! Cyclops called me a name! Waaaa!!! Parados reposted all of my ramblings and demonstrated that not only am I suffering from early Alzheimer's, I am a douche bag and an insufferable fool!

Look at the reality of the situation, oh you of small logic and even smaller brains.

If either 80 - 90% of the American working public earns, in real dollars, only $303 more than s/he would have earned in the same position 30 years ago, how would replacing said job help?

It unemployment flirts with 10% (during the Vietnam War, I believe that was the stated rate, but everyone on the left said it was closer to 17% and the left always knew what was going on.) how do you expect people to find jobs? I am lucky to have what I have.

I suspect that if you weren't self-employed, you would be unemployed. Who would want to put up with you? I wish I could animate, but I lack the software, so imagine a cartoon figure of a short, balding man with a round pot belly, mincing about, screaming, "I am superior to all of you! In my opinion . . . My parents were FDR Democrats and I have hated them all of my 70 years so I am still rebelling."

Besides, what do you think I am? Some sort of right-wing bimbo like o'donnell who seems to never have held a job?

Or do you think I am someone like you, constantly condemning everyone else? I have worked very hard on behalf of the older female worker. I can not imagine you ever lifting a finger to help anyone else.

Anytime you go to a retail store, and the cashier is a woman with grey hair or a woman with a wrinkled neck and obviously dyed hair, she probably wants another job which she can't obtain because the captains of industry began declaring back in the early 80s that the service industries are the wave of the future and they sent American jobs overseas.

0 Replies

Where is the US economy headed?

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