The Official Obama Scorecard Thread

[hblask 1]

This is not true. I definitely lean pretty Austrian, but a statement like that could only exist in a theoretical vacuum. At the end of the day, you still have to resolve the human factors. You're judging his success and failure based on his strict adherence to Austrian principles (closer-to = success, further-away = failure) and whatever comeuppances we're now facing because of natural Keynesian cycling, including some that have been brewing for a long time and some others that are a fiscal can we just keep kicking down the road. Unfortunately, a capitalist Republic with a democratic system cannot exist by economic ideals alone, as every bust left unaddressed by the government would inevitably lead to the election of the hard left (Marx knew this and LOL'd about it...) As such, if the system itself is to be preserved, the government must intervene on certain macro stuff. A Capitalist Republic is just as much about preserving a certain 'sentiment' amongst the populace as it is facilitating productivity. If that sentiment goes belly-up, the whole system goes to shit. From time to time, the overseers must be benevolent and shorten the bread lines.Doesn't fit in with any particular ideology, but a totally, totally necessary thing lest the Capitalist sentiment break and the rabble storms the gates.

So we need to behave sub-optimally to prevent the wrong people from taking over the economy? Damn you, Scram, just damn you. It's hard to know if you are correct here, but it seems like a reasonable assessment, based on some of my discussions on other forums, where people can't understand the difference between the simplest economic concepts and fall for all sorts of foolish soundbites.But in the end, the Austrians predicted the 70s oil crisis, the S&L crisis, and the mortgage crisis, all years before they happened, and for the exact right reasons. The Keynesians, meanwhile, continued to argue to accelerate in the wrong direction, much as Krugman is doing now. At some point, maybe another 200 or so years, we'll have enough data that those who insist that a big dose of deficit spending cures all will finally be swayed. Personally, I would think 80 years would be enough, but I guess when you make your living sucking at the government teat, it takes a little longer. The public will probably be about 50 years after that, which is why it's so important to get it straight now.

[AmScray 355]

So we need to behave sub-optimally to prevent the wrong people from taking over the economy?

Yes, of course we do. The fuel that drives our engine is an enormous underclass of drooling retards. They outnumber smart people 100-1. Because of this, the only way to keep them punchin' that clock is to tempt them with Horatio Alger stories that they too can one day be successful- keep voting the 'upward mobility ticket' and working your ass off and you too may one day own an island or a yacht- but it will never happen. The only people who get to enjoy the good life are the ones who born into the goldpile or the freak instance of genius that crops up now and then and cannot be ignored. Everyone else?LOL. Keep working that grind, baby... The best they can ever hope for is three or four weeks of vacation instead of two. Otherwise, a sealed 12 pack and Monday Night Football is as good as it gets. That's 'capitalism' for them. From time to time, when the 'big stuff' managed by much smarter people- 'stuff' that Joe Everyman doesn't even begin to understand- goes awry and their regular supply of bread and circuses gets interrupted, they must be thrown a bone, lest they vote in people who will 'change things'.There's no economic idealism at those levels. It's just a handful of smart at the top manipulating much dumber people who happen to outnumber them way down there at the bottom. It's all framed up in economic ideals that they 'understand' in the most superficial ways, but lacking the needed depth to actually be of benefit to their own lives.

[Roll the Bones 74]

mk, (or others) I have seen some of the debate on here about Keynesian economics and was browsing another message board and came across this discussion. The guy is conservative obviously and keeps blasting away with this critizism of Keynesian economics.

The Great Depression wouldn't have been so "great" without Keynesian economic policy. It's pretty well accepted, ironically even by Keynesians, that WW2 was the event that ended the Great Depression. And, WW2 also positioned the U.S. in the perfect situation to prosper in a post-war world. The U.S. was virtually unscathed by the war where as all other industrialized nations were a shambles including Britain. They had to rebuild their infrastructure while the U.S. was positioned to produce goods.Post WW2 was an ideal time economically for the U.S. There really is no way the U.S. couldn't be prosperous."Stimulus" spending might work a little in the short term, but ultimately it produces more of a drag on the economy than a stimulus. It's like trying to build a perpetual motion machine. It doesn't work. If you hooked up an electrical motor and a generator in a loop the energy being used up in friction would quickly use up the available energy and it would stop. Whatever boost to the economy you would get from deficit spending would eventually be used up in interest costs and a devalued dollar. It would take other factors as in post WW2 to keep the economy going.

Thoughts?

[akoff 0]

Thoughts?

the guy is using his head...it isn't rocket science. Keynesian theory gets blasted because it is stupid and doesn't work.

[El Guapo 8]

The issue with the new deal was all of the entitlement programs that were created surrounding it. Specifically Social Security. When it was created the average life span of an adult male was in the mid 60's. They only planned on paying people for on average about 5 years of social security. If that stayed true, then the system would not only have worked great but would have a huge surplus.The reality is many people claim social security for 30+ years. There is also disability and medicare. The age base of the US is growing, the retiring baby boomers are growing, the working class is shrinking. The reason it worked is because it pushed out a lot of the fiscal responsibility 50+ years in the future.

[CaneBrain 95]

the guy is using his head...it isn't rocket science. Keynesian theory gets blasted because it is stupid and doesn't work.

There is always some conservative telling us how basic this is and how foolish Keynesian economics is and then the GOP gets in power and the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and then everything collapses. I'm guessing it's not as simple as you think. Every time....things go wrong...and then every conservative falls back on 'well, the GOP was just NOT CONSERVATIVE ENOUGH then.'

[mk 11]

i'm too busy these next few days to write anything lengthy, and then i'll be on a beach for a few days after that but i want to get into it next week.in short, though: deficit spending obviously creates growth and spurs employment short-term. it's like a defibrillator. the question is what happens in the long run, which led to keynes most famous quote, and despite what happened in the 70s here and in the uk, i think the jury's still out (though many industries were obviously way way over-regulated). edit: meant to add here that commodity prices played a big role in stagflation.i don't consider myself a keynesian or an austrian. i'm for what works, practically, shown empirically. i love free market capitalism, but i also think that absent any regulation whatsoever, the deck can get stacked very, very quickly, which goes against the beauty of the competitive nature capitalism is supposed to foster.what's going on with the fed right now isn't really keynesian either. they grew the balance sheet because they were the only ones who had a balance sheet big enough to absorb the giant mess the banks left. it was the least bad option.more later

[Balloon guy 158]

mk, (or others) I have seen some of the debate on here about Keynesian economics and was browsing another message board and came across this discussion. The guy is conservative obviously and keeps blasting away with this critizism of Keynesian economics.Thoughts?

What I most get out of this is that saying that doing X will result in Y because they did X and Y happened over a span of many years a few decades ago is so simplistic and without merit.MK has praised Bernanke, but I remember a lot of people for a long time praising Greenspan, and now we all see he was average at best, and in fact may have been applying policies that caused much of the problems we faced. The housing market had one huge contributor that gets a pass, but record low interest rates for a long time didn't help an over-heated economy.Clinton didn't DO anything to acquire the 'surplus' or the economic boom, Reagan also reaped the rewards of a global situation with regards to currency and global economics that fit nicely with his efforts. W. Bush had to deal with 9-11 and the economic hit that followed, and he was there when the policies and actions of many resulted in near global meltdown.To argue that all they need to do is cut taxes or increase spending to fix the problem is so indicative of people who can't look at the deeper nuances like you and me Randy.It's lonely being rational.

[Balloon guy 158]

in short, though: deficit spending obviously creates growth and spurs employment short-term.

Serious question.Can the deficit spending be done wrong? Or is any spending on anything going to always result in the results you are laying claim to?

more later

No, you will respond now.

[akoff 0]

There is always some conservative telling us how basic this is and how foolish Keynesian economics is and then the GOP gets in power and the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and then everything collapses. I'm guessing it's not as simple as you think. Every time....things go wrong...and then every conservative falls back on 'well, the GOP was just NOT CONSERVATIVE ENOUGH then.'

The rich always get richer and the middle class here are rich compared to any standard of history in any country in history...they just don't know it. The poor here, if they chose to stay that way, are going to be poor no matter where they are...sorry just the truth.the sky is the limit if you are man (or female) enough to go get it.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

mk, (or others) I have seen some of the debate on here about Keynesian economics and was browsing another message board and came across this discussion. The guy is conservative obviously and keeps blasting away with this critizism of Keynesian economics.The Great Depression wouldn't have been so "great" without Keynesian economic policy. It's pretty well accepted, ironically even by Keynesians, that WW2 was the event that ended the Great Depression. And, WW2 also positioned the U.S. in the perfect situation to prosper in a post-war world. The U.S. was virtually unscathed by the war where as all other industrialized nations were a shambles including Britain. They had to rebuild their infrastructure while the U.S. was positioned to produce goods.Post WW2 was an ideal time economically for the U.S. There really is no way the U.S. couldn't be prosperous."Stimulus" spending might work a little in the short term, but ultimately it produces more of a drag on the economy than a stimulus. It's like trying to build a perpetual motion machine. It doesn't work. If you hooked up an electrical motor and a generator in a loop the energy being used up in friction would quickly use up the available energy and it would stop. Whatever boost to the economy you would get from deficit spending would eventually be used up in interest costs and a devalued dollar. It would take other factors as in post WW2 to keep the economy going.Thoughts?

Here's a thought: explain, using any amount of words, how World War II was not a massive stimulus program.Hint: You can't

[strategy 4]

how do dead people stimulate the economy?hint: they don't

[El Guapo 8]

Here's a thought: explain, using any amount of words, how World War II was not a massive stimulus program.Hint: You can't

It had an end. Things like the healthcare bill don't.

[CaneBrain 95]

The rich always get richer and the middle class here are rich compared to any standard of history in any country in history...they just don't know it. The poor here, if they chose to stay that way, are going to be poor no matter where they are...sorry just the truth.the sky is the limit if you are man (or female) enough to go get it.

This is the great lie that the GOP sells. All the kids I grew up with in Palm Beach are doing somewhere between well and super-duper amazing. Even the ones who got kicked out of high school (4 of them) and the ones who are not smart (half of them) or never worked that hard (most of them). It's because we all started on 3rd base (though the GOP likes to pretend we hit a triple!).Where you start is more determinative of your future than anyone wants to admit because it's ugly and depressing. Sorry, just the truth.I highly doubt most people could have half-assed their way through their first 22 years like I did and still have everything fall into place so easily. I have been in all the places and situations that prove that your background is so important. Whereas all the super-poor kids my wife works with....they barely have a chance. Most of their parents are in jail; they are lucky to get two meals a day; they have no support system....and one mistake will probably doom their chances. I think you should go tell them how the sky is the limit if they just want it enough!Sure, a couple kids from my wife's school will make it....but the deck is stacked against them whereas people in my boat can make a plethora of mistakes and still lead a pretty decent to very successful life.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

It had an end. Things like the healthcare bill don't.

The healthcare bill is not stimulus.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

how do dead people stimulate the economy?hint: they don't

Of course, it'd be way smarter to spend the same amount of money on infrastructure instead of on building tanks and blowing them up. But, Hitler, you know.

[strategy 4]

This is the great lie that the GOP sells. All the kids I grew up with in Palm Beach are doing somewhere between well and super-duper amazing. Even the ones who got kicked out of high school (4 of them) and the ones who are not smart (half of them) or never worked that hard (most of them). It's because we all started on 3rd base (though the GOP likes to pretend we hit a triple!).Where you start is more determinative of your future than anyone wants to admit because it's ugly and depressing. Sorry, just the truth.I highly doubt most people could have half-assed their way through their first 22 years like I did and still have everything fall into place so easily. I have been in all the places and situations that prove that your background is so important. Whereas all the super-poor kids my wife works with....they barely have a chance. Most of their parents are in jail; they are lucky to get two meals a day; they have no support system....and one mistake will probably doom their chances. I think you should go tell them how the sky is the limit if they just want it enough!Sure, a couple kids from my wife's school will make it....but the deck is stacked against them whereas people in my boat can make a plethora of mistakes and still lead a pretty decent to very successful life.

this post, it is good."The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

Of course, it'd be way smarter to spend the same amount of money on infrastructure instead of on building tanks and blowing them up. But, Hitler, you know.

he was an otherwise reasonable man that turned against us due to roosevelt's "axis of evil" rhetoric.

[Balloon guy 158]

how do dead people stimulate the economy?hint: they don't

Welll...The funeral expenses pump money into the economyThe government death tax ( which was retroactively applied under Clinton ) takes accountants and lawyers and pumps money into their coffers.Black dress markets get a boostAnd some of them throw parties.

[Balloon guy 158]

Of course, it'd be way smarter to spend the same amount of money on infrastructure instead of on building tanks and blowing them up. But, Hitler, you know.

Try to defend yourself from an Alien invasion with a well paved highway.Hint: You CAN'T

[Roll the Bones 74]

Article about two recent biographies of Keynes.http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articl...rn_of_keynes_10Clarke and Skidelsky both remind us that deficit spending in emergencies was a small part of the Keynesian revolution. Keynes was equally concerned about avoiding inflation at full employment. His deeper purpose in the use of deficit spending was to promote investment and enterprise, not just consumption. His was not an economics only for emergencies; Keynes' challenge to the economic orthodoxy was systematic, not merely tactical, demolishing the classical premise that markets were self-regulating, that savings necessarily equaled investment, and that the sum of individual preferences aggregated to an efficient whole. He was also deeply concerned about the curse of austerity policies, the role of uncertainty in undermining the premise of economic rationality, and financial speculation in undermining the real economy -- all insights urgently relevant today.Keynes was dismayed at the watered down and overly mechanical version of his work that passed for "Keynesianism" in much of the economics profession, especially in the United States. Clarke writes, "After dining with a group of American Keynesian economists in Washington, DC, in 1944, Keynes said at breakfast the next morning, 'I was the only non-Keynesian there.'"Skidelsky picks up the story with an excellent, concise account of the turning away from Keynes as the postwar era evolved and the abrupt reversion to a quintessentially Keynesian crisis in 2007. The crisis, he writes, combines three interconnected failures that would be all too recognizable to Keynes: an institutional failure -- "banks mutated from utilities into casinos"; an intellectual failure of the new classical economics and the older theory on which it rests; and a "moral failure: that of a system built on money values."----------I began with Keynes' observation about World War II -- written well before the U.S. entered the war and before the wartime buildup fully cured the Great Depression -- because the point is so chillingly apt. Today, the Federal Reserve is out of tricks. Deficits of about 10 percent of GDP are plainly not curing the slump, but they are giving politicians hives and inviting new austerity crusades. In the four years of World War II, we incurred annual deficits of nearly 30 percent of GDP, damned the torpedoes, and blasted out of depression into durable recovery. As Clarke quotes Keynes speaking a decade earlier, "You will never balance the Budget through measures which reduce the national income. ... Look after unemployment, and the Budget will look after itself."With the postwar boom, the huge debt ratio indeed came nicely down. A similar burst of public investment and deficit spending, but without the war, is the obvious and perhaps the only cure for today's mess. But we do not have anything like the political leadership to make that case to the public.If the Times' "Great Recession" is misleading, a better phrase is the Great Stagnation. Though the dynamics are all too similar, to call it Great Depression II would be, well, too depressing. If we revisit Keynes and take his insights to heart, we may still avoid that fate.

[akoff 0]

This is the great lie that the GOP sells. All the kids I grew up with in Palm Beach are doing somewhere between well and super-duper amazing. Even the ones who got kicked out of high school (4 of them) and the ones who are not smart (half of them) or never worked that hard (most of them). It's because we all started on 3rd base (though the GOP likes to pretend we hit a triple!).Where you start is more determinative of your future than anyone wants to admit because it's ugly and depressing. Sorry, just the truth.I highly doubt most people could have half-assed their way through their first 22 years like I did and still have everything fall into place so easily. I have been in all the places and situations that prove that your background is so important. Whereas all the super-poor kids my wife works with....they barely have a chance. Most of their parents are in jail; they are lucky to get two meals a day; they have no support system....and one mistake will probably doom their chances. I think you should go tell them how the sky is the limit if they just want it enough!Sure, a couple kids from my wife's school will make it....but the deck is stacked against them whereas people in my boat can make a plethora of mistakes and still lead a pretty decent to very successful life.

I agree with this and most of your post...i can't change how they grow up or how the ultimately chose to live. the statement that couple of kids will do well stands on its onw. NOBODY is holding them down but themselves and nothing you or I or your wife or the goeverment is going to be able to help them if they don't want it for themselves. It has nothing to do with the system, it has everything to do with them....and the one reoccuring theme i have seen people that don't take responsability for themselves. it is always somebody elses fault, always.

[CaneBrain 95]

I agree with this and most of your post...i can't change how they grow up or how the ultimately chose to live. the statement that couple of kids will do well stands on its onw. NOBODY is holding them down but themselves and nothing you or I or your wife or the goeverment is going to be able to help them if they don't want it for themselves. It has nothing to do with the system, it has everything to do with them....and the one reoccuring theme i have seen people that don't take responsability for themselves. it is always somebody elses fault, always.

Amazing that you could agree with me and miss the point entirely. If you grow up poor and in a bad situation, you need to be exceptional to succeed. If you grow up middle class, you need to be pretty good to succeed. If you grow up rich, you probably will succeed unless you are a total spaz.Circumstances are very much holding them down as few people are actually exceptional. I love personal responsibility but your position ignores logic and circumstances and the other factors that determine success to the point of being ridiculous and ideologically self-serving. The system matters; you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

[SAM_Hard8 50]

Amazing that you could agree with me and miss the point entirely. If you grow up poor and in a bad situation, you need to be exceptional to succeed. If you grow up middle class, you need to be pretty good to succeed. If you grow up rich, you probably will succeed unless you are a total spaz.Circumstances are very much holding them down as few people are actually exceptional. I love personal responsibility but your position ignores logic and circumstances and the other factors that determine success to the point of being ridiculous and ideologically self-serving. The system matters; you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

If you are poor you don't have to be exceptional to succeed you just have to have someone you trust point out to you that you're not automatically fucked because you are poor and if you work hard you will succeed.

[strategy 4]

being smart isn't enough. if you aren't fortunate enough to know the right people, some doors will never open for you. I wouldn't wish my situation on anyone, but part of me wants the self-mades here to briefly experience the helplessness right now in the job market.

[CaneBrain 95]

If you are poor you don't have to be exceptional to succeed you just have to have someone you trust point out to you that you're not automatically fucked because you are poor and if you work hard you will succeed.

I think this is complete and utter bullshit, sorry. The idea that if you work hard you always get rewarded is just false....but it feels good to say!