What's causing rising debt?

[evince]

If you say Trayvon was killed for good reasons you are a fucking racist

PERIOD

[cawacko]

You are so used to doing it from the conservative perspective that you assume it must be the same in the other direction, but it really is different. For example, imagine that you and I each had a task: to argue that presidents of our own preferred party tend to be better for job creation than presidents of the other party. My task would be very simple. I'd just need to go to the BLS site, download the job creation numbers by month, and show that the average monthly percentage growth of payrolls during Democratic presidencies was quite a bit higher than during Republican presidencies. There'd be no need to cherry-pick. I could look at the last 30 years, the last 50 years, or the entire data set going back to the first recorded numbers and it would show the same. It would be a very easy argument. You, on the other hand, would need to work to craft special pleading -- arguing, for example, that we shouldn't count certain great Democratic years because war time was artificially enhancing job creation, and that we shouldn't count certain horrible Republican years because demobilization following a war was weighing down job creation.

It's that way for a long list of potential arguments. We could also offer up arguments for whether Democrats or Republicans are better for GDP growth, stock markets, reducing poverty, reducing violent crime, reducing deficits, enhancing incomes, reducing teen pregnancy, and so on. In each case, I'd have an easy job: just find the data, do the math, and present the results. Time and again, the superiority of the Democrat-led eras would be self-evident. In each case your job would be difficult, because you'd need to craft plausible-sounding arguments for why we need to put asterisks next to the data.

Sure we can list job growth under each President, we can list GDP growth under each President, we can list amount of debt that grew under each President. We can also argue what role Congress played in those numbers because President's aren't kings. And many people forget the Fed because the Fed plays a huge role by setting monetary policy.

We can both spin and weave stories to fit our narrative and make our "side" look better.

For example here's a Bloomberg opinion article on GDP growth under each President. Look at this paragraph and the "spin" for Eisenhower:


""Eisenhower, meanwhile, had to endure three recessions that were at least partly the doing of Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin Jr., who famously said in 1955 that his job involved taking the punch bowl away “just when the party was really warming up.” Eisenhower’s time in office was also characterized, though, by fast-rising median incomes, a fast-shrinking federal debt (as a share of GDP), and a gigantic increase in infrastructure spending, mainly but not exclusively for interstate highways, that paid economic dividends for decades. So maybe his two terms weren’t really an economic bust, whatever the GDP numbers say. Again, GDP growth is a flawed measure.""


https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...-by-gdp-growth

[Truth Detector]

Trayvon was stalked by a man with a gun at his fathers home because he was black

You have it ass backwards you dumb twat; it was Trayvon stalking an armed Hispanic guy. BIG mistake.

the man who stalked him with a gun had a violent record

Again, he wasn't "stalking" anyone. Again, he was acquitted by a jury of women and men and found to not be guilty of anything but defending his life.

Trayvon did not have a violent record

We don't know that; but suffice it to say he had violent tendencies which is why he assumed room temperature.

why is it you feel black children have no right to defend themselves when attacked?

Why is it you engage in false strawmen and lying like a fucking dumb twat?

[Truth Detector]

If you say Trayvon was killed for good reasons you are a fucking racist

PERIOD

It is never "good" when someone is killed. There is nothing racist about the FACTS you ignorant race hustling twat. But, Trayvon did assume room temperature thanks to his stalking an armed Hispanic man and trying to beat him.

[Tkaffen]

The budget deficit is caused by three things
1) two thirds are do to mandates out of Trumps control.
2) military budget
3) tax cuts

[Flash]

I'm not clear on how you think that impacts what I said. Payroll taxes have been used to finance general spending. General taxes can, similarly, be used to finance Social Security and Medicare, if we wish. We could easily have tax rates high enough to do that and still have below-normal effective taxation by the standards of wealthy nations generally. But the Republicans would rather impoverish the elderly and leave them medically undertreated, in order to make it possible to preserve ultra-low tax rates and sky-high military spending.

Because of this statement: "Mitch McConnell insists that cuts to those things are needed, because they're what's causing the problem."

Obviously, cutting Social Security or Medicare (A) would not reduce the deficit (although it would reduce the debt).

Your partisanship is distorting your judgment with statements suggesting Republicans want to "impoverish" the elderly. Social Security has to be reformed in some way to continue to pay benefits at current levels. There are many ways it could be cut that would not impoverish anybody---suggesting necessary cuts or tax increases means Republicans are trying to impoverish anybody is just scare tactics.

One of the few times government has done something to solve future problems is the 1980s payroll tax increase that provided Social Security the $2.5 trillion surplus that is financing the current revenue shortfall.

[cawacko]

SS and medicare have nothing to do with the national debt.

[evince]

Reagan is on tape saying it to the nation wack

[evince]

It is never "good" when someone is killed. There is nothing racist about the FACTS you ignorant race hustling twat. But, Trayvon did assume room temperature thanks to his stalking an armed Hispanic man and trying to beat him.

see

Lying about Trayvons death is what a racist would do


no one claims Trayvon was following his killer

the entire police record says the asshole was following a child at night with a gun and had a violent record

then killed that child for trying to protect himself

[Flash]

Yet, it is built on a ponzi scheme whereby the Government borrows money from SS, hands suckers like us the IOU and uses it to fund more government spending and making you and I pay the interest on that IOU. It is really clever and if you or I tried to create a similar scheme, we would be arrested.

That is somewhat misleading. The original Social Security law requires any surplus in the trust fund be placed in government treasuries at 2% interest. If those funds (provided by the 1980s payroll tax increase) had not been available government would still have borrowed that money from the market; so, you would be paying interest on those funds either way--in SS treasuries or bonds sold to the public. It makes more sense to use the SS treasuries since it puts less press on interest rates.

The problem is the government spends and borrows too much money, not that it used the SS treasuries.

[Oneuli]

Are you familiar with something called tactical calculus?

Of course.

One concern is the aging planes of our air force. They are mostly outdated

Outdated RELATIVE TO WHAT? That's the issue the military-industry-welfare flacks don't generally address. Outdated relative to what they'd need to be to keep billions of dollars flowing into the right defense industry pockets? Yes, to be sure. Outdated relative to the planes that make up the bulk of our adversaries' air forces.... not even close.

For example, take a look at Russian fighter aircraft. The great bulk of their jets are essentially "Soviet Surplus" -- aging hulks from the mid-80s and earlier, which generally haven't had the updates our continually get. Even in their primes, many of them were just cut-rate rip offs of old western designs. That includes around 210 SU-27s, in service from '85, 125 IL-76's, in service from 1974, 143 Mig-29s of various sorts, from 1982, 196 Su-25s from 1981, 170 Su-24s from way back in 1974, and 24 Mig-31s from 1981.

They have a handful of more modern fighters and attack jets: a combined force of Su-34s, Su-33s, Su-35s's, and Su-30s, of about 350 total jets. They range in unit price of between about $30 million and $65 million. To put that in context, our F-22 has a unit cost of about $120 million and the F-35 has a unit cost of about $90 million. Even the latest F/A 18-E Super Hornet has a unit cost of a bit over $70 million. Of the Russian options, only the Su-35 arguably exceeds the capabilities of our last-generation fighters, and Russia has fewer than 100 of them in service.

So, what would have happened if out "outdated" fleet of updated F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s had gone up against the Russians, without any of those F-22s and F-35s? Well, keep in mind the huge gap in numbers. We have 435 F-15s of various sorts in service (with a unit cost and overall capabilities in line with the Su-34 and Su-30.) We have 791 F-16s in service. In addition, we have almost 800 F-18s of various kinds in service. We're talking about well over 2000 of those fighters and multi-role jets, versus a bit over 1200 Russian equivalents. Without the need for the next generation of fighters or any help form out allies, we'd already have had an overwhelming advantage.

The same basic analysis applies with regard to China, too. The bulk of their fighter jets are Chengdu J-7s and J-10s, the former of which is basically just 1960s-era Soviet technology, while the later is roughly on par with our F-16s, in terms of unit cost and capabilities.

and we do not have anywhere near enough stockpiles of munitions or spare parts. Our troops are not properly trained because of a lack of funding.

Again, if those in charge of our military are so horrifically incompetent that they can't find the funding to train our troops with a budget four times larger than any other military on Earth, then they should be fired immediately, and then investigated for embezzlement.

I've seen it first hand, so don't even try to deny it. Our military is weaker than most people realize.

Weaker relative to what? Unless you've also served in the Russian and Chinese militaries, I'll go ahead and assume you're not claiming first-hand knowledge of how weak our military is relative to our likely adversaries. Rather, you're comparing it to some ideal you have of how strong it should be.

[Oneuli]

...and increased again in 2011, and was still in the trillions. Yet here you whine about things you know nothing about.

What makes you imagine I know nothing about them? Be specific, please.

Again, the full effect of Obamacare hits in 2016 and 2017.

Read up on the implementation timetable of the tax on cadillac plans.

Apparently you can't do the math; even if you cut the entire Military budget, Obamacare and social welfare will still create a deficit.

As a reminder, I never claimed we wouldn't have a deficit if we'd stayed on the trend-line Obama left us with. It's just that the deficit would have been significantly smaller and falling, instead of the high and rising deficit we now have.

[Superfreak]

why is Trayvon dead?

Because he tried to beat up a guy with a gun.

[Getin the ring]

As a reminder, I never claimed we wouldn't have a deficit if we'd stayed on the trend-line Obama left us with. It's just that the deficit would have been significantly smaller and falling, instead of the high and rising deficit we now have.

suppose you explain to us in a few short sentences how Obama put us 10 trillion MORE in debt,
but YET he was trimming the deficit

does that make any sense to anyone, except you

[evince]

Because he tried to beat up a guy with a gun.

who hit him on the chest for calling him a creepy assed cracker

Why is it Trayvon has no right to try and defend himself from an attacker in your mind racist?