SlayerRondo said:
To begin with your praise for a preseident who does little to nothing for personal liberty and continues the same policies as George Bush of blowing up anyone who may or may not have a slight connection to Islamic militancy in the middle east woth drones in the sky disgust me. He, as will many other president's throughout history will be remembered as a scumbad, plain and simple. And the beginning of the depression was marred by policies such as raising the top tax rate from 25% to 63%, along with prohibiting wage decreases and tariffs on imported goods (which of course lead to tariffs on our exported goods, many of which linger to today) lead to disasterous results for the economy. And the money gained from this taxation was used for wastefull spending as was done for the recent financial crisis. It was also the governments cheap supply of credit as a result of the federal reserve created in 1913 that lead to widespread malinvestment for years. Government intervention today also created the housing bubble as government policy encouraged the lending of money to people who could not afford it ending with them losing their house and the banks losing money, which inevitabily lead to them getting bailed out by the government. Which has also lead to our high levels of government debt to GPD as can be seen at http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp. Also your claim about the gold standard is absurd as it certainly did not stop the United States government from spending every penny it forcefully took via taxation. Looking at WW2 we can see that from a purely economic standpoint, the war made consumers worse off because it was often difficult or impossible to purchase the goods they needed. The weapon factories were not producing goods and services that Americans could enjoy. The U.S. government had forbidden the production of new cars, houses, and major appliances. Due to government rationing, it was difficult to buy many goods such as chocolate, meat, gasoline, sugar and tires. So what do I thnik ended the Great Depression? Huge government spending cuts after the war did as from 1944 to 1948,the U.S. government cut spending by $72 billion—a 75 percent reduction. Also social security and medicare are the two largest black holes for taxes that exist today, so telling me Obamacare will turn out like them is a nightmare senario for me. They work simple because people have been forced to pay into them their whole lives and now cant speak out against them because they have already paid for them. Medicare gives three times what you put in, they are simply robbing the younger generations by forcing debt upon them. |
Well, at least you're consistant in saying that you oppose SS and Medicare, I always laugh at Republicans who claim that Socialism is the Devil and then say that no one can touch those two programs.
About "Also your claim about the gold standard is absurd as it certainly did not stop the United States government from spending every penny it forcefully took via taxation."
Of course the gold standard didn't stop the US from taking the money in taxation, it in fact encouraged it. When the government isn't free to print money, the money has to come from elsewhere (i.e out of people's pockets) which then exasperated the problem further.
Furthermore "So what do I thnik ended the Great Depression? Huge government spending cuts after the war did as from 1944 to 1948,the U.S. government cut spending by $72 billion—a 75 percent reduction."
So you're saying that the average consumer in America was worse off during WWII then in the great depression? I'm not one of the people that say that wars are good for the economy, but despite this fact I'm sure the US economy was leagues ahead during the war than it was before it began. The Great Depression ended before WWII, not after.
"Government intervention today also created the housing bubble as government policy encouraged the lending of money to people who could not afford it ending with them losing their house and the banks losing money, which inevitabily lead to them getting bailed out by the government. Which has also lead to our high levels of government debt to GPD as can be seen"
Eh, I'll give you this one, it is very true, but it also proves my point to an extent about Obama. It was the recession which slowed the GDP growth to a crawl, and drastically cut revenues which cause the high Debt/GDP ratio, not exessive spending from the sitmulus (which I believe was absolutely necissary).
However, you also fail to mention the benfits of government intervention such as how it allows for a saftey net for the unemployed (which immeiditaly gets pumped back into the economy as it is not considered discretionary spending (reducing the number of defaulted loans and mortgages). It furthermore saved companies like AIG which (whether we like it or not) are essential to the economy.
I think Obamas biggest failing was in not splitting up the companies acquired during the meltdown. Had they been turned from "too big to fail" to a bunch of just kinda big companies, that would have been awesome. To those that say the the stimulous was bad, they don't know what it would be like without it.
BTW I'm a Capitalist through and through and love the models set by America and Hong Kong, but a little bit of Social help goes a loooooong way. and don't go telling me and the ME because I live in Egypt and...no...just no. No comparison between Bush and Obama. I actually support his initiatives in Libya.
Edit: God have mercy where is the spell check on this forum?
