Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Sense vs. Nonsense in Debt Ceiling Debate

There I go again, forgetting to put on the super-duper decoder ring, Chuck.;-)
Yours,
Issodhos

Not my shot to take, rporter314. I am not one of those who has been pontificating on economics in this thread -- or I should say, pontificating on economic policy -- and from a biased party perspective, as well.

And again, the statement you made that I replied to (or rather, had a good chuckle over) was, "...no one knows what makes the economy contract and expand.", so why now demand that I provide you with a predictive economic model?

I am somewhat curious though. Are you saying that intelligent people did not know that a bust was coming (contraction, if you prefer) or are you saying they failed to specify which day of which month of which year it would happen?:-)
Yours,
Issodhos

if by pontificating you mean have i pointed out some of the nonsensical statements regarding the current debt crisis ... well you got me

i don;t recollect advocating any particular strategy for mitigating the problem except a glancing reference to a plan i have, so to say my plan is from a biased party well if you mean the anti-ignorance party then you got me again

you will also note i have not advertised nor promoted any particular economics school of thought. my fundamental guiding principle is from the Constitution i.e. government will provide for the general welfare, and part of that welfare is to mitigate economic contractions. How it is done will depend on instantaneous circumstances so it may incorporate conservative as well as liberal economic principles. The stim was exactly that. Conservatives don;t want to see it but there was $690 billion in tax cuts/incentives in that bill and a paltry $200 billion in projects.

weeeeelllll ... your chittering suggested to me you are privvy to a singular economic model of which i am ignorant and which confutes my statement. I therefore asked to view it. If it was as, you could have advertised, then I would have retracted my statement buuuuttt you didn't offer a model instead you preferred to continue with some inane crapola.

There are several possibilities when one makes a statement ... you could have ignored it as uninteresting, you could have agreed with it, you could have disagreed with it but didn't know how to respond, etc or you could respond in disagreement and when asked for some substantive evidence you could have produced it or if there was no evidence you could have said gee i dont have any evidence but still believe it etc or simply said i retract what i said, i just dont have anything. yeah well whatever [proverbial cliche]

LOL really did you ask that ... yeah i want the very second no millisecond no no the nanosecond

let's see i know a psychic who predicted ... o wait a sec you said intelligent people (guess that leaves out a whole boatload of folks) ... perhaps you ... did you predict the contraction? using turtle shells or some economic model you won't let me see

look i am assuming (yeah yeah) you realize that in the realm of intelligent people the thoughts and ideas for any one particular theory be it physics mathematics or economics that there are people spread over a spectrum and when they are in agreement the curve describing agreement becomes very narrow with some outliers. Thus there will always be some people who are not in agreement (the contrarians) with any theory. So yes there was at least one person who vaguely predicted at some time the impending collapse of the economy based on an economic "tell" akin to psychic analysis i.e. he threw turtle shells, counted howling wolves, or whatever technical analytical tool he thought was better at predictive economics than those currently used by the majority of economists.

the short answer is yes there was at least one but the majority did not see it coming until it was too late.

To get back to your interest in exact timing, I suspect a reasonable level of granularity would be 1-2 years, however, over the years I have become convinced that "the economy" is an organic entity which continuously evolves, so that the economic principles which described it last year may not be applicable this year. So my level of confidence may be too optimistic, so perhaps it should be closer to the event. Now if that is the case then perhaps a better description would be an accumulation of variables which at some point in time explode without warning, which would be one idea to prove my original statement that no one is predicting economic variation. But, since at least one person can divine the future ...

Iss ... perhaps you will offer an answer to this (gee actually related to thread)

as an example (based on 2010 budget), there is $175 billion available per month while the budget calls for $283 billion per month so $108 billion will not be spent

SS = $58B/m
Medicare = $66B/m
defense = $57B/m
interest = $16B/m
subtotal = $197B/m

as can be seen there is no money for the government to function i.e. no one in Congress would have any money to pay staff or even get their own paycheck, but that is minor compared to the shutdown of essential services the government provides ...

can you offer your critique on what would be paid??? (i am using the 2010 numbers since they were the available numbers ... there is no loss in generality since the current numbers would be about the same)

rporter, again, you are seeking substance. There isn't a Libertarian response to this issue because a Libertarian would expect anyone to honor an agreement, which pretty much mandates Congressional action, because the Executive cannot unilaterally change the terms of an agreement already entered into. But, Congress is not acting. The other problem is that Congress has already made promises and is therefore obliged to keep them, from a Libertarian viewpoint (except those quasi-libertarians who don't see a problem with the government reneging on promises they shouldn't have made, and/or who don't think that the government should exist). So, Congress can only cut from areas where they haven't made promises (i.e., discretionary spending), or for future requirements. But, that doesn't fix the fact that there is nowhere to cut that doesn't result in a default right now.

The only real answer is to borrow now, cut later - really much later, but that is another discussion point. Unfortunately, that is not the extortion point du jour.

i have to agree that borrowing now to cover the shortfall and get control later. It is far more important to stabilize the economy than to undermine it at this time.

tea people apparently only think in the instantaneous and are unaware of a 50 year plan ... ahh ... i ain;t gonna solve it for them and besides the tea people want their lollipop now

Five Reasons the House GOP Is to Blame

I have repeatably stated that this whole thing, ostensibly all about the national debt actually has NOTHING to do with the debt. This should, by now, be glaringly apparent. The FAA deal alone is costing more, per week, than the supposed cuts. Its also generally agreed that the coming increase in interest rates, due to this 'debt' stuff, are going to seriously increase the debt yet again. On the other hand its also agreed that the house Republicans can no longer depend on their own caucus to vote for ANYTHING to stop the default (they do have hope, however). The simple fact is that a minority of the house Republicans have taken over and they WANT a default as that will force the government to lay even more folks off. These people do not care about the debt, unemployment or anything else, other than cutting the government to the bone.

When this is all over the Republicans are going to OWN any negative results of their own actions. I suspect those who have been most vocal will be the ones most likely to be replaced, IF the Dems can get their act together, stop squabbling, and start educating the public instead of letting everything slide in the hopes that the Republicans become their very best buddies. My own hope is that we can actually survive the coming economic mess (unless they can actually raise the debt and start really lowering the debt).

Then, again, perhaps the Right is right and not raising the debt will have no negative results, everything will be dandy, unemployment will melt away, taxes will forever remain low, and the entire congress will, every morning, join hands and sing Kumbaya and proceed to pass laws actually regulating the financial monsters, stopping the tax rewards for moving jobs offshore, make sure that them that put up political ads also put up their own names on their ads, stop the war on drugs and, instead, start regulating and taxing said drugs, get rid of the TSA, completely overhaul the tax system whilst adding a constitutional amendment which would state taxes are for paying the bills and cannot be futzed with to socially engineer, help anybody, etc., shut down a minimum of 500 of our over 740 foreign bases, privatize FAA airport operations, get us the hell out of Afghanistan and Iraq, actually fix our infrastructure, and that would be for starters. (how was that for an alternate reality?)

Vote Postponed: It’s crunch time ... if he has votes to pass his debt plan.