Greatest Threat to World Peace: A Gallup Survey

Coach Z wrote

Harv I've said it before I think about 20 pages ago in this very thread that Iraq 2 was a bad decision.  It never would have happened if Bush 1 would have finished the job the first time around.  It would gave only taken a week or two more in the first Iraq war to gave taken Saddam out.  We could gave then turned it over to the Suadis to run and gotten the hell out.

PeeTex wrote

Matt,
I don't think that chart helps your case - it basically says that Box-O-Rock's best year was worse the Bush-master's worse year. They both SUCK. Let's agree on that and find somebody who can lead us out of this death spiral.

PeeTex wrote

Let's agree on that and find somebody who can lead us out of this death spiral.

Coach Z wrote

I got my mba in the mid 90s by the way

I used to have a 10 buck co pay which now thanks to ACA is 25 and specialists went from 30 to 50.  My deductible want from 500 to 1500 and my share of premiums went way up.  All of this is due to avoiding the crazy provision of the ACA which will tax the crap out of so called Cadillac  plans.  If you had a flex spend account you will be losing that within 2 years due to the same thing.  Obama's plan seems to be to drag down private insurance so they can push for crazy ass single payer.

If you don't think the dems lost control of the house and then senate over this you are delusional

Coach Z wrote

Due to the ACA more people gave to work two part time jobs

This chart is percentages.  Charts are BS you can make them say anything you want.  The truth is less people are working full time and millions have dropped out of the labor force entirely.  Its easier to  draw welfare and food stamps creating an electorate that will ever vote dem.  

The finincial crisis was created under Clinton with dodd frank act which allowed banks and investment firms to mix and forced the loose lending to people that had no way to repay mortgages.  You can't remember that because you were in grade school then.

I'm done with this discussion.  You are delusional.

Coach Z wrote

Its easier to  draw welfare and food stamps creating an electorate that will ever vote dem.  

PeeTex wrote

Matt,
Harding and Coolidge both kept a relatively balanced budget, Truman and Eisenhower had surpluses during foreign excursions, Even LBJ did pretty well during Vietnam. The years since 2001 have seen a hemorrhage of epic proportions. The facts are the neither party have an F'ing clue about how to deal with this problem and still maintain the quality of life the American public expects.

BTW - you mentioned Andrew Jackson and the March of 1000 tears (although you didn't quite cite the March), did you know that during his administration, it was the last time we retired the National debt?

Coach Z wrote

Due to the ACA more people gave to work two part time jobs

mattchuck2 wrote

 W said fuck that, this is the people's money, give it back to them as a tax cut (heavily tilted towards the rich, but he de-emphathized that part), and he won the election.

By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their "big government" projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers. They kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn't seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that made them seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections...

Wanniski decided to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on this simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. In 1974 he invented a new phrase – "supply side economics" – and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn't because people had money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money. The more things there were, the faster the economy would grow.

At the same time, Arthur Laffer was taking that equation a step further. Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up!

Neither concept made any sense – and time has proven both to be colossal idiocies – but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the wilderness....

But Wanniski had been doing his homework on how to sell supply-side economics. In 1976, he rolled out to the hard-right insiders in the Republican Party his "Two Santa Clauses" theory, which would enable the Republicans to take power in America for the next thirty years.

Democrats, he said, had been able to be "Santa Clauses" by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. Republicans could do that, too – spending could actually increase. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people's taxes! For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. The rich, in turn, would use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus increasing supply and stimulating the economy. And that growth in the economy would mean that the people still paying taxes would pay more because they were earning more.

There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They'd have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.

mattchuck2 wrote

When both sides promise benefits with no costs, we're in a tough spot.