3rd Largest 1 Day Debt Increase Marked
- Thread starter Damocles
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In the context of this discussion, I'm not "advocating" anything. I'm stating economic fact to counter your apparent belief that investment upfront cannot possibly lead to return later on, which seemed strange to me, and illogical.
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The Almighty
A couple of things off the top of my head...
1) The fear of not being paid back
2) The availability of a better investment... in this case, many of the large investment banks are borrowing from the Fed, buying Treasuries and locking in the spread. Risk free money in their pockets. Why risk loaning out money when they can do that?
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
I realize that you don''t want to admit to it, but the fact is that you are advocating that the government make these investments instead of the private sector. That's socialism.
That being said, that's not even what has happened. Instead they've spent most of the money propping up government union jobs. Its a simple election payback. Your children and grandchildren will be paying for The Obama's 2008 election campaign.
I have no problem admitting that I supported the bailouts, and the stimulus. I have said so dozens, if not hundreds of times. I was just pointing out the context of THIS discussion, which was the bizarre contention that investment upfront can not possibly lead to payoff down the road.
And it isn't socialism. "Socialism" is one of the most misused words in the American political dictionary. People like to use it because it's a scary word, but the stimulus was most certainly not related at all to what would amount to socialist practice.
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it is akin to socialism....that is something you can't deny....
socialism is obama taking over GM....
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
Socialism is government ownership of the means of production. How are these "investments" not government ownership?
There really isn't any other way to put this: because they are not.
Investment, particularly of the kind we saw in the stimulus, doesn't even really approach even the most loose definition of "ownership." Whenever I talk to someone who opposed the stimulus, I always have the feeling that they have never really taken a close look at it. A fairly good portion is made up of tax breaks & incentives for small business. Still more is for the kind of construction & infrastructure projects that critics claim is not in there - none of which leads to any form of "ownership." And yes - there is some for the gov't jobs which critics also don't like, but again, it's hard to make a case for "ownership" on that kind of employment.
The stimulus is almost over. Once the money is spent, there won't be anything residual - nothing left over where the government has somehow snuck its way into ownership of private enterprise. It's a weird thing to even contend.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
LOL
Go to this page: http://stimuluswatch.org/2.0/
Then go to the table and click the "most expensive" tab to organize the table. The four most expensive, representing almost $10 billion, are "State Fiscal Stabilization Funds". These are to pay for government union employees salaries: payback to the unions for Obama's 2008 election.
The 5th most expensive is a Department of Energy job, employing all union workers, and includes "$154M increase in cost required to meet site pension benefit obligations in early 2009". Again, payback for Obama's election.
Do you support this?
Aren't all gov't employees "union employees"? If they are gov't jobs, is it necessarily "payback" to the unions?
That seems a little far-fetched.
Regardless, you're shifting the goalposts. I assume that you now understand that this in no way resembles "government ownership" of anything, or socialism in any way?
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
I didn't shift goalposts at all, since I mentioned the union paybacks from the get-go. I focused on the most expensive "projects" and that's were they led to. The fact that most, possibly all government jobs are union jobs only makes the issue more insidious.
Again, do you support this?
Moving on to the socialism issue, the 6th most expensive "project" is a grant to the NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION (their caps, so no I'm not shouting).
How is that not socialism?
Oh, I dunno; because it's a grant, and not any form of ownership whatsoever?
Probably because of that.
Again - you haven't shown any form of ownership, which is likely why you keep trying to change the topic. There is no ownership in the stimulus. It's money, and as soon as it's spent, it's basically over.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
Its AMTRAK. The government owns the track, the rolling stock, the ticket counters, and hires the employees for what would otherwise be private corporations competing against each other. Those are all "means of production". The "grant" is the government giving itself a raise.