What's causing rising debt?

[Truth Detector]

That would be to return to the massive failure we had before SS, when retirement saving was entirely voluntary. That gave rise to widespread poverty among the elderly, which is why we abandoned that failed approach in the first place.

What massive failure would that be? SS doesn't solve poverty.

Be specific: why not just raise taxes in this case?

Be specific; why is raising taxes the only alternative math challenged leftists have?

Yes. The law requires them to. Why not require the same of the wealthy?

Wrong; because they don't pay enough in to reach the "no-pay" stage, fool. Why should the wealthy be forced to pay and not get anything back? Be specific?

At pretty much all points since taxes came into existence.

Wrong; the poor do not pay taxes.

You misunderstood. Try rereading.

I understood, answer the question.

A wealth tax is a tax on accumulated wealth. That's not what we're talking about here, obviously.

There is no distinction; why pretend there is? Be specific.

[Oneuli]

But your okay with dodging questions or giving coherent factual answers.

I'm not okay with dodging questions, which is why I refuse to enable you in doing so.

Do you imagine that Obamacare isn't costing trillions?

Do you imagine the existence of costs to government budgets somehow negates the fact that Obamacare hasn't been fully phased in (as you'd wrongly assumed)?

Apparently it isn't.

Your failure to identify any math error is noted.

If you imagine you got any of your math correct, you need to re-examine your math skills.

If you imagine I've made some mathematical mistake, please point it out specifically, so we can see if that's correct.

[Truth Detector]

Yea I'm starting to get alarmed. In Trumps first year my investments had an annuall ROI of 14%. I was like...GO TRUMP!! This year its currently at -3%. If averaged out over the last two years Trumps significantly below the historical average and currently headed in the wrong direction. Fuck man I lost 20 grand last week.

Thinks the stock market is about the short term.

[Truth Detector]

I'm not okay with dodging questions,

But that is what you do.

which is why I refuse to enable you in doing so.

Wrong; that is why I refuse to enable you in doing so.

Do you imagine the existence of costs to government budgets somehow negates the fact that Obamacare hasn't been fully phased in (as you'd wrongly assumed)?

I'm not okay with dodging questions by asking another question. Do you imagine that Obamacare isn't costing trillions?

Your failure to identify any math error is noted.

Your failure to comprehend yours is noted.

If you imagine I've made some mathematical mistake, please point it out specifically, so we can see if that's correct.

If you imagine you got any of your math correct, you need to re-examine your math skills.

[PoliTalker]

Hello cawacko,

That doesn't address the Fed. Do you believe they should have gone into negative rates?

No. I think the Fed did a good job under tremendous pressure.

[signalmankenneth]

[cawacko]

It's definitely not. Two questions:

(1) How much did GDP grow during the recovery that ended July 1981?
(2) How much has GDP grown during this recovery?



Wow, William Henry Harrison must have broken the spacetime continuum to make that true.



In what sense? Both Clinton and Obama were extremely market friendly. For example, think of the way that Obama beat up his own party-mates to get the public option and "Medicare for All" taken off the table, in favor of what was basically just a national roll-out of Romney's Republican, market-oriented solution to healthcare. Both were arguably more friendly to markets than Trump, for example, given his hostility to international markets.



I'm sorry to be a stickler, but that's simply not a true statement:





You can. The Fed could have intentionally brought about higher inflation, allowing for real negative interest rates. Instead, the Fed left inflation rates well below their own (overly conservative) target for almost entirety of Obama's presidency.

This is from CNN of all sources:

Yes, this is the slowest U.S. recovery since WWII

https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/05/new...wii/index.html


I'm not pulling this out of thin air, it has been written about by many sources quite a bit.


They didn't measure GDP during William Harrison's time. It became a tool for measuring the modern economy in 1944. No President since then has gone without a single year of 3% GDP growth.


In Dec 2008 they cut the Fed funds rate to effectively zero. They did not raise them until Dec 2015.

[Getin the ring]

Obama has us so far in debt it's almost comical to think of getting out of it.
the interest alone will have us buried for generations to come.

Everything Obama did was with funny money, and zero interest from the feds
Like someone pointed out earlier, we could have voted in a 5th grader in 2008 and he could have told the feds to print money and save us from the great recession, give some to the banks, the auto industry and anyone else who acts like they are sinking, abra cadabra

[katzgar]

Obama has us so far in debt it's almost comical to think of getting out of it.
the interest alone will have us buried for generations to come.

Everything Obama did was with funny money, and zero interest from the feds
Like someone pointed out earlier, we could have voted in a 5th grader in 2008 and he could have told the feds to print money and save us from the great recession, give some to the banks, the auto industry and anyone else who acts like they are sinking, abra cadabra

You are scum

[Flash]

Who do you think pays the 2% interest rates on those Government treasury notes diwmit? If SS pays for itself; why all the Government trustees saying it is headed for insolvency unless we.....INCREASE the age of access to SS or INCREASE the SS tax?

The same people pay the 2% interest on the SS treasuries as pay the 3%-18% interest on treasury bonds sold on the open market which government would be selling if they did not have the SS surplus.

SS only paid for itself until about 2010 when expenditures began exceeding revenues---that was the purpose of letting a surplus accumulate. The trustees say it is headed for insolvency because about 2034 the surplus will be gone and expenditures will exceed revenues. It will not be insolvent but able to cover only about 70% of benefits. Raising taxes or raising the retirement age are only two possible methods to help the problem.

[Oneuli]

But that is what you do.

What you're hoping is that I help you dodge my questions by jumping, on command, to your questions. But, as you can see, this strategy of your has failed. I remain focused on the question asked, until you find the courage to answer. So come on, little coward, what's the answer? What makes you imagine I know nothing about them? Be specific, please.

I'm not okay with dodging questions by asking another question. Do you imagine that Obamacare isn't costing trillions?

As a remind, you asked that question to try to distract from your error with regard to whether Obamacare has been fully phased in. Do you acknowledge that error now? If so, I'll be happy to move on to your new question.

If you imagine you got any of your math correct, you need to re-examine your math skills.

My math skills are excellent, which may be part of why you've found yourself unable to identify any actual error.... or it might just be that you're innumerate.

[rhym3pays]

The Republicans are engaged in their usual two-step swindle. Step one, they give massive tax handouts to the rich and spending increases for their buddies in the military industries. Step two, they say the resulting run-up in debt requires austerity measures to be taken when it comes to programs that regular Americans rely on, like Social Security and Medicare. Mitch McConnell insists that cuts to those things are needed, because they're what's causing the problem. Let's test that rhetoric.

Here's what the budget projections looked like the day Trump took office:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170120...et/Historicals

Here they are now:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/historical-tables/

As you can see, when Trump was coming in, the anticipated gross federal debt, as of FY 2019 (the fiscal year we're currently in) was 103.2% of GDP and falling. But now it's 108.1% and rising. Clearly, things have taken a turn for the worse. But why?

Well, dig into the numbers and you'll see it isn't Medicare. When Obama left office, Medicare spending for FY 2019 was projected to be $663 billion. Now it's estimated at $631 billion. Medicare has actually wound up being about 5% cheaper than we were expecting it would be, back when we thought debt would now be lower as a share of GDP (and dropping).

It's not Social Security, either. Back when Trump was sworn in, we were projecting that Social Security would cost us $1.095 trillion this year, where now it looks like it'll cost $1.052 trillion. Again, Social Security is proving to be about 4% cheaper than we thought it would be, back when we thought debt would now be lower and falling.

It's not other social spending, either. For example, back when Trump first took office, the projection was that in FY 2019 we'd spend $127.9 billion on "education, training, employment, and social services." Now it looks like we'll spend $100.6 billion. That part of the budget is expected to be about 21% less expensive than previously anticipated. We're also on track to spend a lot less than we anticipated on income security, energy, natural resources and the environment, transportation, agriculture, and just about every other area of domestic spending.

So, why is it that debt is significantly higher than expected, and rising, when previously we thought by now we'd have a manageable and improving situation? Well, there are a couple reasons, neither of which have anything to do with the stuff Republicans want to talk about.

One is that our military spending -- which was already anticipated to be preposterous high -- has risen still higher. We're on track to spend about 15% more on "national defense" this year than we had anticipated (despite having anticipated a budget that would already have more than doubled the spending of all our potential adversaries combined). Veterans spending is also up a bit.

The big change, though, was from the tax cuts. Back when Trump came to office, we were projecting $4.095 trillion in receipts for FY 2019. Now we're on track for $3.422 trillion. That $673 billion shortfall more than accounts for the difference between where we thought our debt situation would be and where it is. Even as the government has become stingier and stingier when it comes to middle-class American needs, deficits have sky-rocketed, because of the tax changes.

Specifically, individual income tax receipts are down by a little over 15% compared to where they were projected to be (with the VAST majority of the change impacting the very wealthy), and corporate income tax receipts are down by a little over 57% compared to projections. Excise taxes have also plummeted, relative to projections, by about 29%. That last category includes a drop in taxes collected in relation to Obamacare (e.g., taxes on tanning services and medical devices), as well as a huge (56%) drop in excise taxes on tobacco, relative to the earlier 2019 projections.

So, don't fall for the Republican bullshit. The reason our debt is rising isn't because of Social Security and Medicare, much less other social spending programs. We're spending considerably less on those things than was projected, and yet we've moved from debt being a falling share of GDP, to it rising rapidly. That's about Republican-backed changes: higher military expenditures and lower taxes, especially for corporations and the wealthy.

Unfortunately, most political and budget reporters are innumerate. They didn't learn basic math in j-school, so they'll take the lazy way out and report this as a he-said, she-said thing. Effectively, they'll just be transcriptionists for the party leaders' respective talking points. But the budget numbers and history are available at the links I provided. You can follow up on your own and confirm what I've said. Medicare and Social Security are even more affordable now than we thought they'd be, but reckless upper-class tax cutting and obscene military overspend have broken the budget.

Illegals, minorities and libs are causing it

[Oneuli]

This is from CNN of all sources:

Yes, this is the slowest U.S. recovery since WWII

Do you see how you shifted the goal posts? Your claim wasn't that it was the slowest, it was that it was, based on GDP growth, the worst. Those are, obviously, two very different things. Tell me, which of two recoveries would you consider better:

(1) One that lasts four 12 months, with 4.3% real growth, followed by a terrible recession wherein we get the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression.
(2) One that lasts for seven and a half years, with significantly lower average real growth rates, but still enough to take us to the highest real GDP per capita in history (to that point), near full employment, record real incomes (to that point), etc.?

The first describes the first Reagan recovery. The second describes the Obama recovery. Of the two, I'd say the latter was clearly better. If you, on the other hand, prefer a quick little recovery that flames out before most people have even noticed it has started, such that at no point are people anywhere near as well off as before the prior recession..... well, I guess that's just a matter of taste.

Regardless, using the metric you indicated --GDP growth, not GDP growth rate-- there have been a lot of worse recoveries than Obama's. That's an important distinction. Say, for example, you wanted to say which mountain climbing excursion was the most successful -- would it be the one that was ascending the fastest over some arbitrarily determined period of time, or the one that made it furthest up the mountain? If an expedition was like Reagan's first recovery -- briefly ascending quickly, then falling apart long before they reached the peak -- I'd say that was a lousy expedition. If, on the other hand, it ascended slowly and methodically, and eventually reached a higher point than any prior expedition had ever reached, I'd say that was pretty good.

They didn't measure GDP during William Harrison's time

The point is, it wouldn't matter if they did. He didn't even serve for a year. You're fond of broad, sweeping statements that are obviously untrue on their face. I prefer to stick to saying things that are actually correct.

In Dec 2008 they cut the Fed funds rate to effectively zero. They did not raise them until Dec 2015.

So, you've spotted your error, then, right? Even if you look at target federal funds rates (as opposed to the effective rates I posted), it's simply untrue they were zero throughout Obama's presidency.

[cawacko]

Do you see how you shifted the goal posts? Your claim wasn't that it was the slowest, it was that it was, based on GDP growth, the worst. Those are, obviously, two very different things. Tell me, which of two recoveries would you consider better:

(1) One that lasts four 12 months, with 4.3% real growth, followed by a terrible recession wherein we get the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression.
(2) One that lasts for seven and a half years, with significantly lower average real growth rates, but still enough to take us to the highest real GDP per capita in history (to that point), near full employment, record real incomes (to that point), etc.?

The first describes the first Reagan recovery. The second describes the Obama recovery. Of the two, I'd say the latter was clearly better. If you, on the other hand, prefer a quick little recovery that flames out before most people have even noticed it has started, such that at no point are people anywhere near as well off as before the prior recession..... well, I guess that's just a matter of taste.

Regardless, using the metric you indicated --GDP growth, not GDP growth rate-- there have been a lot of worse recoveries than Obama's. That's an important distinction. Say, for example, you wanted to say which mountain climbing excursion was the most successful -- would it be the one that was ascending the fastest over some arbitrarily determined period of time, or the one that made it furthest up the mountain? If an expedition was like Reagan's first recovery -- briefly ascending quickly, then falling apart long before they reached the peak -- I'd say that was a lousy expedition. If, on the other hand, it ascended slowly and methodically, and eventually reached a higher point than any prior expedition had ever reached, I'd say that was pretty good.



The point is, it wouldn't matter if they did. He didn't even serve for a year. You're fond of broad, sweeping statements that are obviously untrue on their face. I prefer to stick to saying things that are actually correct.



So, you've spotted your error, then, right? Even if you look at target federal funds rates (as opposed to the effective rates I posted), it's simply untrue they were zero throughout Obama's presidency.

No ma'am. There has been no shifting of goal posts. I posted the evidence from CNN that it's the worst recovery since the Great Depression. That's been my stance all along and it is fact and it's been reported as such throughout multiple media outlets. You can claim the media has no idea what it's talking about but it is fact.

It's not a broad sweeping statement to say Obama didn't get a single year of 3% GDP growth (and yes, it's implied since they started tracking GDP), it's a fact. You don't like it which is why you are putting up such a fight.

And again with the Fed Funds rate, that they raised them in his final year means nothing. Obama had historically low interest rates his entire term and with that stimulus he couldn't achieve 3% GDP growth in a year. Those are facts.

[Celticguy]

Please note the vast quantities that are entitlements.
It is not difficult to see why it is not sustainable.

total_spending_pie,__2015_enacted.jpg