The more things "Change" ...

Discuss life, the universe, and everything with other members of this site. Get to know your fellow polywell enthusiasts.

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KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

jgarry wrote:* the GOP has probably not had such unfettered access to the levers of power as they enjoyed under Bush since Hoover. ...they have promptly returned us to an economic depression.
* As I pointed out, the GOP under Bush had its most unfettered access to the levers of power since Hoover and promptly proceeded to produce another depression...
* The GOP had their most unfettered access to power since Hoover and promptly returned us to a state of economic depression.
* OOOHM...
* OOOHM...
* oh, mm you aren't chanting a mantra? Sorry, thought you were.

:wink:

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

jgarry wrote:One could admire your sophisticated arguments, the way you artfully skate around the point. The GOP had their most unfettered access to power since Hoover and promptly returned us to a state of economic depression.
I was under the impression that it took a Democrat Congress to do that. After all the Ds won in 2006 and the recession began in 2007. December of 2007:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/20 ... essio.html

And what was the most pressing economic problem in 2006? Well we had 2. The mortgage problem caused by law - Bush tried at least 17 times to get Congress to address that. The other was the high price of oil: we had a dual bubble.

Now what could our Current Genius for President and the Smartest Congress Ever do to reduce the chances of that happening again soon? Open up more of America to oil drilling. What are they doing? The opposite. They could also reign in the CRA and GSEs. What are they doing? The opposite.

BTW I have been predicting that Obama's genius policies will lead to stagflation. Time will tell.

But I'm behind Obama. And plan on administering an education to him from in front and behind as well as to his party. To the best of my ability.

He wanted the job. Let us see if he is up to it.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

jgarry
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Post by jgarry »

It's like talking to a drunk driver whose just killed a family of four whose explaining to the tow truck driver that the accident is his fault.

Mike Holmes
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Post by Mike Holmes »

Huh... I guess you guys disagree on this stuff. Huh.

Mike

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

jgarry wrote:It's like talking to a drunk driver whose just killed a family of four whose explaining to the tow truck driver that the accident is his fault.
Well no. I'm blaming the tow truck driver for leaving the wreck in the middle of the Interstate and causing a 14 car pile up killing 20.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

jgarry
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Post by jgarry »

No reason we can't torture this metaphor further. When you've got a wreck down in the ditch the tow truck's gonna have to anchor itself sideways on the street to pull it out.
Yeh so running huge deficits is normally a really bad idea. But in this case consumers aren't spending, businesses are going into survival mode, so the spender of last resort, the government, has to step up and spend, spend, spend.
As you have correctly noted, the great depression only ended with WWII, the greatest public works project in the history of man.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

They were the party that touted the need to deregulate and free the financial system;
The critical "deregulation" happened under Clinton and was soundly endorsed by Democrats.
they were the ones who staffed the SEC with toadies tasked to avoid inhibiting the financial markets with any sort of enforcement;
What SEC enforcement do you imagine would have prevented risky investments in subprime mortgages that Democrats were insisting FNMA and Freddie Mac continue to push onto the market so that their high-risk, low-income constituents could buy homes they couldn't afford? Bush tried to rein them in, but Fank and Dodd and other Dems called any attempt to stop the subprime racism and discrimination, and blocked it. This is all public record.

they were the ones who had no notion of developing the economy other than some sort of ponzi scheme of infinitely rising real estate values.
What do you imagine "developing the economy" entails? The GOP pushed for free trade, lower taxes, small business incentives, and education reform. The Dems pushed a social justice agenda that poisons the economy for the benefit of the unproductive.
But in this case consumers aren't spending, businesses are going into survival mode, so the spender of last resort, the government, has to step up and spend, spend, spend.
If that approach worked, Cuba and North Korea would be socialist paradises.

The government is very bad at spending money, mostly because spending other people's money for other people never works well. Giving government control of more of the economy just makes the economy worse.

Recessions happen. They're a difficult but normal and necessary part of the business cycle. But overall, things continue to improve -- thanks to Friedman's economic theories of free markets, today's living standards are so high that the inflation-adjusted poverty line today is about where the average income was in the 1950s.
Last edited by TallDave on Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

jgarry wrote:No reason we can't torture this metaphor further. When you've got a wreck down in the ditch the tow truck's gonna have to anchor itself sideways on the street to pull it out.
Yeh so running huge deficits is normally a really bad idea. But in this case consumers aren't spending, businesses are going into survival mode, so the spender of last resort, the government, has to step up and spend, spend, spend.
As you have correctly noted, the great depression only ended with WWII, the greatest public works project in the history of man.
I have no problem with deficit spending in this case. It should go to tax cuts for producers. This has a few advantages over giving the money to cronies of politicians.

1. It will be less inflationary since it will tend to increase production
2. It will tend to go to the most efficient (profitable) companies.

Where has the money gone so far? To the places where it was managed worst.

The plan to tax low cost producers of energy to subsidize the high cost producers. Brilliant. If the guy was for real (and not your usual political crook) he would say that what we need to do is a LOT of research on how to bring down the costs of AE to below that of coal and oil. If it gets cheap enough we will find a way to store it. But the research required might if very extravagantly done suck up $10 billion. He needs to move 100X that. Two reasons.

1. Political control of those selected to receive the largess.
2. Because he can - (the usual political power grab)

BTW it wasn't the public works that did it. It was Roosevelt stopped screwing the productive sector because he wanted those he invested in (the anglo countries) to win WW2. In other words - supply side economics.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Elected in 1932 on a buoyant tide of promises to balance the increasingly uncontrollable national budget and reduce the catastrophic unemployment rate, the charismatic thirty-second president not only neglected to pursue those goals, he made dramatic changes to federal programming that directly contradicted his campaign promises. Price fixing, court packing, regressive taxes, and patronism were all hidden inside the alphabet soup of his popular New Deal, putting a financial strain on the already suffering lower classes and discouraging the upper classes from taking business risks that potentially could have jostled national cash flow from dormancy. Many government programs that are widely used today have their seeds in the New Deal. Farm subsidies, minimum wage, and welfare, among others, all stifle economic growth -- encouraging decreased productivity and exacerbating unemployment.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/141659 ... 1416592229
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Heh, it's like the 1990s Japanese "lost decade" recession never happened for some people. If there was eevr a case study against stimulus that was it. It bought them a $2B bridge to nowhere used daily by approximately a dozen people, but didn't end the recession.

At this point, though, I guess we should just hope Obama doesn't continue following the Zimbabwean economic model of spending way more money than the government actually has while nationalizing industries.

Of course, the other big problem besides subprimes is that people have stopped buying cars. This certainly hasn't been helped by the apocalyptic anti-CO2 doomsaying of Al Gore.

jgarry
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Post by jgarry »

Well we'll just have to hope that the polywell people get cracking and we have pretty much infinite power from a fuel cheaply available. Why then we can even run huge refrigerators and cool the planet. And maybe a few debates too.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

WARNING: WARNING TRULY OFF TOPIC...

"Huge refrigerators" shouldn't be necessary. Way down antarctica way the winters get so cold they ALMOST freeze CO2 right out of the air. How bout just installing some static radiators and removing the CO2 that way. Cools the planet AND reduces CO2. Double bennie there! :wink:

Roger
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Post by Roger »

TallDave wrote:
Again, that's certainly a selective reading of events. Democrats have controlled Congress since 2006,
Whats wrong with this picture ? Its false. Republicans held the majority in the senate until Jan 2009.

Facts getting the way of idiocy, LOL.
Mike Holmes wrote:Huh... I guess you guys disagree on this stuff. Huh.

Mike
You are so kind. But so right.
----------------

Forget that, GDP, Unemployment, Chevy sales, Louis Armstrong record sales, radio sales, blah blah blah, in every category, 1936 was better than 1929. Recovery.
----------------
I like the p-B11 resonance peak at 50 KV acceleration. In2 years we'll know.

ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

Roger wrote:
TallDave wrote:
Again, that's certainly a selective reading of events. Democrats have controlled Congress since 2006,
Whats wrong with this picture ? Its false. Republicans held the majority in the senate until Jan 2009.

Facts getting the way of idiocy, LOL.

Well, according to Wikipedia...
Following the elections, the party balance for the Senate stood at 51-49 in favor of the Democrats (including independent Bernie Sanders and Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman, who caucused with the Democrats).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Senate_election,_2006



Even so, this overlooks the effect of the RINO's (Republicans In Name Only) like Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, etc.

It has long been the bane of the Republican party that they are plagued with members who won't act like Republicans.


David

Roger
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Post by Roger »

ravingdave wrote:
Roger wrote:
TallDave wrote:
Again, that's certainly a selective reading of events. Democrats have controlled Congress since 2006,
Whats wrong with this picture ? Its false. Republicans held the majority in the senate until Jan 2009.

Facts getting the way of idiocy, LOL.

Well, according to Wikipedia...
David, first you said Congress, see my bold. Then you provide a wiki link to an article on the House of Representatives. Get your act together.
I like the p-B11 resonance peak at 50 KV acceleration. In2 years we'll know.

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