OT: About America in this NG

Right. That explains Greece.

See above.

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Cheers, 
James Arthur

That's right--the more the government announces plans to take from us, the more we produce! And hire! The more people on benefits, the better the economy!

350,000 more people just quit the labor force altogether, lowering the official unemployment rate. Hooray stimulus! This five year plan's *even better* than the last!

It's truly a Great Leap FORWARD.

Or martians.

Or played guitars.

That's Obama's doing--that what he does. His pathology decries but needs the ultra-wealthy. They're the privileged progressive class that pays for his growing army of dependency, so, he coddles them, tosses them favors.

The stimulus went to Obama supporters, like Buffett and GE, and those failed consumers-of-green companies who donated to Obama.

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Cheers, 
James Arthur

If I called myself a Monetarist, would Japan regain its lost decades, and Greece too?

That misses the point. Does "managing the money supply" change the lost window of the Broken Window fallacy into a gain? No, of course not.

Neither does it do so for gov't reshuffling productive people's stuff to less productive people, aka "stimulus."

It doesn't matter how many entries you use to account it, it's still a less-than-zero sum operation.

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Cheers, 
James Arthur

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Just an oddball question, what were Ombama's grades before and when he was at Harvard? I suspect it would be enlightening. Harvard does not take C or B students without some compelling reason, or so we are told.

?-)

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And yet you falsely believe that the same problem cannot occur for the left wing. Poxy hell what pseudo-pious pompous poppycock.

FYI i despise both far wingers. I use the best tests i can find to detect what is what, though they fail me occasionally, i hardly ever believe the crap form either wing end.

YMMV

?-)

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Alliteration will get you nowhere... But of course it can occur in left-wingers. I'm only referring to the fact that "dcaster" dismissed entire paragraphs with a flippant remark rather

than any sort of intelligent counterargument.

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Yes, it is the same for me. But the conservative ideology has shifted so far right as to be delusional and irrational, while most of what they call leftist liberals are actually very much centrists, and by far reflect the views and ideals of the largest portion of the population. There are a few far left wing "bleedin' heart" liberals, but not enough for anyone with a brain to take seriously. The real problem is that so many of the wealthiest and most powerful 5% cling to the lunatic fringe in an attempt to retain

their hold on politics for their own unfair advantage.

Paul

Wrong again (or still). Higher taxes for the wealthy still allows them to make more money, just proportionally less as their incomes go above $250,000. It's not as much of a disincentive as reducing or eliminating unemployment, welfare, or SSA benefits by the same amount as earned by working. Keeping only 70% of $1,000,000 rather than 75% is only a 6.7% reduction, which will probably be offset by the opportunity to earn 10% more because of an economic upturn. OTOH, the increase of tax revenue from

25% to 30% is a 20% increase in revenue, which is badly needed for public projects and programs.

More evidence of lack of critical thinking and apparent acceptance of right-wing "facts" which aren't. Apparently everything spewed by right-wing media and gasbags like Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh are the only reliable source of "facts", and anything else is somehow tainted with liberal bias. This is because the truth is "inconvenient" when it contradicts the core

beliefs of those whose only purpose in life is material gain and personal power.

BTW, it took you long enough (6 days) to jump back into this thread. Waiting for more "facts" and support from right-whiner media?

Paul

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Not exactly my impression, You are actually something of a sucker for right-wing crap, Not as bad as James Arthur, John Larkin and Jim Thompson, but still distinctly gullible.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

As if anybody with any sense (and that does exclude you) ever paid any attention to what the government said it was going to do.

Only when the economy is in recession - welfare is a particularly useful form of Keynesian stimulus spending, because the people who get it can be rleied on to spend almost all of it/

Stimulus spending isn't planned in advance - it's reactive, and stops as soon as the economy is running close to full capacity. Your ideological blinkers prevent you from perceiving little details like this, which makes your rhetoric look more moronic than satirical.

Whereas James - as a card carrying reactionary - wants a great leap backward to the Great Depression.

How many Martians in the US congress?

Fat chance of that. The Tea Party nitwits don't seem to have any useful skills.

You are confused. It was the Tea Party that hung on to Dubbya's moronic tax cuts for the wealthy. Obama did his level best to get them scrubbed, but didn't have the numbers in congress to make it happen.

Because they were rich. The Tea Party hasn't the wit to realise that some rich people are smart enough to go in for enlightened self- interest, and won't support Tea Party electoral campaigns.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

What's Greece got to do with anything? It was a corrupt government spending more than it collected in taxes in ways that benefited sectional interests rather than the economy as a whole. It differs from the US primarily in that the Greeks were slightly more stupid and several orders of magnitude more profligate. The Greeks did go in for tax evasion (which is illegal) while in the US corporations get sweetheart laws passed to allow them to indulge in perfectly legal, though distinctly immoral tax avoidance, but this is a purely academic distinction.

Like I said, you haven't got a clue.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

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It's not "circular reasoning" and in fact there's no reasoning involved at all. I'm reporting an empirical fact, which you happen to find ideologically unpalatable and decline to accept.

As Daniel Kahneman has established - and gotten a Nobel Prize in Economics for the effort - people aren't entirely rational.

Perhaps.

Sadly for your argument, they do, and have been pretty much since John Maynard Keynes spelled out the idea. Governments don't always implement it correctly, and there is a tendency for the stimulus money to be directed to groups with more political clout, despite the fact that they can't be relied on to spend every last cent that they get, but Keynesian deficit funded stimulus spending does work to get economies out of recession, as it has been doing in the US for the last three years, despite your bizarre inability to perceive this.

You haven't established that I've failed to understand anything. You merely persistently - and correctly - assert that I'm seeing causes and effects that you can't perceive, but can't be bothered to explain the fact that your economy is expanding - if slowly - despite the the Keynesian stimulus spending which you claim to be an unmitigated disaster.

I'm reporting obvious facts - facts which you refuse to address.

ould

Look at the response of your economy to the sub-prime mortgage crisis at the end of 2008 and it's subsequent process through 2009 as the Keynesian stimulus spending was set in motion.

That's exactly what happened

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

That's a remarkably irrational question. The proposition is not that choosing to be a Monetarist makes the market work better - putting Monetarists in charge of an economy normally makes it work worse - but rather that Monetarists can explain pretty much anything they want to (after the fact)

Jame's Arthur is the one making the accounting error, though he's totally incapable of perceiving this.

Since the Broken Window fallacy isn't actually a fallacy but rather a depressing illustration of the fact that market economies are - to some extent - irrational, you are missing the point (as usual).

Pity about your logic. You persist in treating the economy as a linear system when in reality it's non-linear. You ignore Keynes crucial insight - that money that isn't being invested isn't creating economic growth - and proceed to make claims based on the idea that if it's just sitting in a bank account or under a mattress it's still doing something useful (if imperceptible).

It's rather sad, and profoundly irritating.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

As if your opinion was a center reference point. LOL

How would you know? You are even dimmer than the average right-winger, and could improve you knowledge of the world - to derisory - by paying careful attention to Fox News.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

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While the "popular" right wingtip rabble rousers have been increasingly shrill and hyper-extreemiist for the last decades; that does NOT represent mainstream conservative ideology. The exact same claim is also true about most of the "liberals". But the mainstream are not getting in the public eye very much precisely because they are not so divisive and controversial. What sells (?), sensationalism! Thus when i see someone pretty much following any shrill extremist line i doubt their judgment seriously.

?-)

Waiting

You are seriously mistaken, that is how long it took bill sloman to respond to James' post. James responded to BS promptly.

?-)

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He isn't mistaken. You are.

On Google groups my post is dated 4 Dec, 11:02, while James' response is dated 10 Dec, 13:18, which is six days and two hours later.

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Bill Sloman, Sydeny

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The Tea Party Republicans are too extremist for comfort, and do seem to currently define "mainstream" Republican policy.

The mainstream Democrats don't have anything to do with the Occupy movement, which is about as extremist as it gets in the US at the other end of the political spectrum.

Your idea of what constitutes "shrill extremism" suggests that your own judgement isn't exactly middle of the road. I'm afraid that you are a common or garden right-wing nitwit who thinks that his delusions are common sense, rather than vulgar nonsense.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney