*shrug* If you say so. I disagreed with Citizens United but, in my opinion, things like "free health care for all people" is not found in the Constitution no matter how interpret it...unless you are *mis*-interpreting it. Powerful central governments wind up doing things like Stalin or Mao did to their own people, but if that is what you want then you weren't paying attention to them.
Corporations want only your money; government wants your *obedience*. I don't want to blindly obey some virtually omnipotent Nanny State government which purports to tell me how I am going to live. I prefer freedom and I wish more people did, as well.
The Republicans may be bad but Democrats are *worse*. That is why so many large cities which have been run by Democrats for decades--Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit--look like they came straight out of Fallout.
*shrug* If you say so. I disagreed with Citizens United but, in my opinion, things like "free health care for all people" is not found in the Constitution no matter how interpret it...unless you are *mis*-interpreting it. Powerful central governments wind up doing things like Stalin or Mao did to their own people, but if that is what you want then you weren't paying attention to them.
Corporations want only your money; government wants your *obedience*. I don't want to blindly obey some virtually omnipotent Nanny State government which purports to tell me how I am going to live. I prefer freedom and I wish more people did, as well.
The Republicans may be bad but Democrats are *worse*. That is why so many large cities which have been run by Democrats for decades--Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit--look like they came straight out of Fallout.
You ever look at the pictures and poverty statistics of rural Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia??
Top ten poorest states (by poverty rate):
Louisiana 20.8%
Mississippi 19.7%
New Mexico 18.2 %
West Virginia 17.7%
Alabama 15.6%
Arkansas 15.4%
Kentucky 14.8%
South Carolina 14.8%
Arizona 14.7%
Georgia 14.3%
A deregulated toothless government that tolerates corruption, nepotism, and unchecked greed leaves you at the mercy of forces with greater access, resources and power than you have. That's a dangerous situation to be in.
A powerful, efficient government which will gladly take away your rights with the excuse "but this is for the greater good" is *more* dangerous.
Those 144 Federal judge appointments will help protect the country from anything Progressives might want to try and implement.
The United States is on track to attain "energy independence"--oil and natural gas production will, before the end of this year, surpass consumption. Can we finally stop doing business with countries like Saudi Arabia?
I think, overall, you are correct that too much state power is more dangerous than too much corporate power, but it's not an important comparison to me, as long as an excess of either is acknowledged to be detrimental. In Europe I see many negative effects of too much state power, and that's a timid example, given the many more totalitarian parts of the world. In America I think it's pretty clear that the state is mostly just a servant of the moneyed interests no matter who is in charge.
I think they accomplish this far more effectively through the control of information in media than they do through money in politics, but that's another matter.
You ever look at the pictures and poverty statistics of rural Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia??
I feel like it should be pointed out that many of these places are still better off than in inner cities. Almost all of Kentucky including the cities are below the average crime rate, for example, no matter how poor they are. Even the poorest counties are only slightly above average.
In fact in some of the poorest white towns in the US, all crime is well below average.
You ever look at the pictures and poverty statistics of rural Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia??
I would rather live in those places than in decaying cities...and I *love* Fallout.
Speaking of fallout....did anyone mention the United States withdrawing from the INF treaty from the late 1980s? I don't keep up with this thread like I used to.
You ever look at the pictures and poverty statistics of rural Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia??
I feel like it should be pointed out that many of these places are still better off than in inner cities. Almost all of Kentucky including the cities are below the average crime rate, for example, no matter how poor they are. Even the poorest counties are only slightly above average.
In fact in some of the poorest white towns in the US, all crime is well below average.
The population of Beattyville, Kentucky is 1206 people. Exactly what kind of data are we supposed to extrapolate from that kind of sample size?? It's SLIGHTLY larger than the town I grew up in, and if we'd had a SINGLE murder in a decade it would have been viewed as a catastrophic event. And since I come from a town about that size (if not that poverty level) I'll tell you exactly why the crime rate is so low, which is that one officer is probably patrolling the entire county at any given time. And this is from the article:
At about that time, Beattyville’s police chief, Omer Noe, and the Lee County sheriff, Johnny Mann, were jailed for taking bribes to protect drug smugglers. Five years later, the next Lee County sheriff, Douglas Brandenburg, went to prison for a similar crime.
I imagine your drug arrests are definitely going to go on a downward trajectory when the police department is taking BRIBES to keep the operation going.
Moreover (and this is a real doozy) out of those roughly 1200 people, there are 58 registered sex offenders. Which means 1 out of every 25 people in town. The rate in Chicago for that statistic is 1 out of every 920.
Point being, even a SINGLE murder or rape in a town this small would immediately cause their violent crime rate to skyrocket. Two in one year would cause the scales that measure such things to break.
Corporations want only your money; government wants your *obedience*. I don't want to blindly obey some virtually omnipotent Nanny State government which purports to tell me how I am going to live. I prefer freedom and I wish more people did, as well.
"I owe my soul to the company store."
You live in the company town. The company pays you in scrip. You shop at the company store. Your pay isn't enough to make ends meet. The company will front you the credit. You now owe the company money. If you try to leave, the company-owned sheriff will throw you in jail.
This was reality for a large percentage of the US population. Something came in and stopped it.
Corporations want only your money; government wants your *obedience*. I don't want to blindly obey some virtually omnipotent Nanny State government which purports to tell me how I am going to live. I prefer freedom and I wish more people did, as well.
"I owe my soul to the company store."
You live in the company town. The company pays you in scrip. You shop at the company store. Your pay isn't enough to make ends meet. The company will front you the credit. You now owe the company money. If you try to leave, the company-owned sheriff will throw you in jail.
This was reality for a large percentage of the US population. Something came in and stopped it.
Well, we KIND of stopped it. It's coming back. If Trump ends up appointing another 20% of federal judges I wouldn't be surprised to see people thrown in jail for missing the rent or being late on a utility payment within 20 years.
We'll see. About half of these end up being bullcrap.
"At least two police sources have expressed skepticism over Turan's account of the story, saying they believe the injury may have resulted from a fight between the victim and one other person."
Edit: "Liberals say he deserved it"?? Which "liberals" exactly?
The economy right now is the best the economy has been in my entire lifetime...and Democrats had nothing to do with it. My only complaint is that my previous employer downsized me and my current job does not pay what I previously earned. The only people really complaining are those just like to complain.
Detroit, I have to admit, is experiencing a bit of a comeback with the recent investment in its downtown area. If you recall, the Democrat leadership of the city wound up having to file the largest bankruptcy in the history of the United States. Anyway, capitalists are revitalizing the downtown area as opposed to government handouts.
In other news, Governor Rosello is set to be ex-governor in about 3 hours. Normally, Puerto Rico's Secretary of State would assume the office....but they don't have one. Rosello appointed someone--the non-voting Member of Congress Puerto Rico has--but the Legislature has not confirmed the appointment. The person next in line, the Secretary of Justice, has stated that she does not want the job. The person after her, the Secretary of Finance, is too young for the job--he is only 31 and the office requires the occupant to be 35. As things stand right now, Puerto Rico will not have a governor in 3 hours.
Trump did good things like cutting regulations, but did bad things too like Tarifs. Unfortunately Trump is "love or hate", is rare to see someone who partially agrees with him. And honestly, i think that Mark Rubio or Ted Cruz would be much better than him.
Too little government is every bit as bad as too much government. The difference is - while libertarians want as little government in their lives as possible, progressives *dont* want as much government as possible. We aren't totalitarians. We want more government influence in the economy and in guaranteeing individual rights, and we want that because we have a voice in government.
The economy right now is the best the economy has been in my entire lifetime...and Democrats had nothing to do with it. My only complaint is that my previous employer downsized me and my current job does not pay what I previously earned. The only people really complaining are those just like to complain.
I'm curious how you can defend this statement. At a minimum, national economics rebounded under Obama that has HEAVILY contributed to the current strong national economy.
How quickly we forget that the Bush administration precipitated the second worst economic disaster in the history of the country
The bailout plan for the recession, notably, was initially written up by the Bush administration and later passed by the Obama administration. It was a bipartisan effort in that sense, though I think it failed to live up to certain liberal expectations in the sense that companies who received bailouts, received them without strings attached--a common complaint among Democrats was that there were CEO's who ran their companies into the ground and were not only allowed to remain in their positions, but actually directed bailout funds directly into their own pockets.
I would say, however, that the Bush administration's deregulation of the finance industry played a critical role in the financial crisis that began just before Obama took office. The recovery was a victory of Keynesian economics and bipartisan compromise, but the recession itself was the product of aggressive deregulation, and destroying regulations (basically any kind of regulations, honestly) is a key pillar of Republican orthodoxy.
The economy isn't the product of political parties; it's the product of government policy. Government policy is strongly tied to political parties, but it's more important to pin down the policies the Bush administration implemented, rather than just saying it was a GOP thing.
I would say, however, that the Bush administration's deregulation of the finance industry played a critical role in the financial crisis that began just before Obama took office. The recovery was a victory of Keynesian economics and bipartisan compromise, but the recession itself was the product of aggressive deregulation, and destroying regulations (basically any kind of regulations, honestly) is a key pillar of Republican orthodoxy..
What regulations did he removed and how it affected the crisis?
Peter Schiff(investor) predicted the crisis far before it happened. Some people seems to believe that regulations was never made with obscure interests in mind, that regulators never do anything wrong, and that more regulations is always good.
About Keynesians, Paul Krugman LITERALLY called for an Housing bubble https://mises.org/library/krugmans-call-housing-bubble
Regulators aren't gods. Is near impossible to determine what is the best for me, only an deity can determine what is best for 300 M+ people.
Peter Schiff(investor) predicted the crisis far before it happened. Some people seems to believe that regulations was never made with obscure interests in mind, that regulators never do anything wrong, and that more regulations is always good.
Literally no one here is saying or had said that more regulations are always a good thing.
The plain fact of it is that almost every country in the world that has some measure of control of its economy has chosen to regulate their economy. So the argument isn't "no regulations" vs "all regulations". It's a negotiation on what we should regulate and why.
Again. No one here is advocating for totalitarianism.
Also - The Mises institute is generally regarded to be a far-right libertarian think-tank. So citing evidence from there will probably invite skepticism due to bias (Doesn't mean it can't be useful or insightful, but it may not move the needle much).
The economy right now is the best the economy has been in my entire lifetime...and Democrats had nothing to do with it. My only complaint is that my previous employer downsized me and my current job does not pay what I previously earned. The only people really complaining are those just like to complain.
That's not the way it looks from afar. Obama inherited a difficult situation and spent most of his presidency successfully getting things back on a stable footing. It's interesting to see that the Fed raised interest rates a number of times towards the end of that period to try and avoid over-heating of the economy. They've just recently made the first cut in interest rates since 2008 - reflecting they are now concerned about the slowing economy.
Overall growth still looks relatively healthy as a result of strong consumer spending. That's a legacy of Trump's fiscal stimulus (which has of course caused other problems by increasing the budget deficit). However, that stimulus is only short term and business investment (which will be needed to underpin longer term growth) looks pretty weak. That, along with concerns about the current tariff war, is why the Fed thinks it necessary to provide more support now for the economy.
Trump has of course been telling the Fed to reduce interest rates for some time and would have liked a bigger cut now. His reasons for wanting a cut are very different though. The Fed are interested in keeping the economy stable in the long term, while Trump is interested only in appearing successful in the very short term, whether or not that 'success' is sustainable - that's one of the reasons why he has such a terrible record in business.
What regulations did he removed and how it affected the crisis?
He removed lots of regulations, but the changes that were largely blamed for the financial crisis were easing the restrictions on financial services. That allowed banks to reduce their balance sheets, meaning they were more vulnerable. It also allowed them to incur higher levels of debt and package those debts in 'innovative' ways that disguised the nature of the debts.
The result of that was a large amount of low quality debt swilling about the financial system, without anyone really being aware of the fact - until lots of people started defaulting on their debts. Banks and other financial institutions suddenly woke up to the fact that they might not have the capital to cover the risks on their debt holdings, but as they didn't know at that time just what the risks were (as they typically didn't know what the actual debts were behind those innovative packages) they couldn't judge their real liquidity (or that of other institutions) and reacted by no longer loaning money to each other.
In that situation, where balance sheets are poor quality and there's no liquidity, bank failures are inevitable for the weaker institutions and there's a real danger of a knock-on effect that could quickly swamp everyone else. That's why the US (and other governments) chose to intervene in the market to provide liquidity.
The purpose of regulations in the economy is rarely to require individuals to do anything. Instead the regulations are normally aimed at preventing businesses from harming individuals. That might be through preventing them taking excessive risks (as in the background to the 2008 crash referred to above) or more directly, e.g. rules against businesses causing pollution (that's another area in which Trump has removed lots of regulation, which will I'm sure result in plenty of scandals in future years).
I'm curious how you can defend this statement. At a minimum, national economics rebounded under Obama that has HEAVILY contributed to the current strong national economy.
How quickly we forget that the Bush administration precipitated the second worst economic disaster in the history of the country
Why don't I let the Bureau of Labor Statistics do the work for me? These numbers are better than they have been in a long time. https://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm#empstat
I understand, though. The economy doing well simply *has* to be because of Obama, right? I have no doubt that if the economy were doing poorly we would be hearing all about how it is Trump's fault. As noted, the POTUS has nothing to do with the economy, which is precisely why I did not credit the current POTUS--he didn't have anything to do with it, either.
The Bush Administration did not precipitate the housing collapse in 2008...but it didn't do enough to stop it, either. The true culprits there were people working for Wall Street banks engaging in activities they should not have been doing. The infamous "credit default swaps", when they came to the attention of the SEC, were not subject to regulation because (paraphrasing the SEC here) "they could not figure out what they were". Seriously? If the SEC doesn't know what a financial instrument is or how it works then it should default to "not allowed". (see? I know that a modicum of regulation is necessary) All those ridiculous "you can get rich quickly, too, by flipping houses" shows did not help at all--they led to an artificially inflated market.
Keynesian economics? *pfft* Keynes was an idiot. To date, no one has ever tried *my* "economic stimulus policy" which I call "bubble up"--give tax breaks to the lowest income brackets *and* put money directly into their hands. What will those people do? Pay bills and buy things at local businesses, thus putting money in their hands. Those businesses, in turn, will restock inventory and put money into the hands of suppliers and manufacturers. That money will eventually wind up in the hands of banks and investment firms but it will have circulated a handful of times before landing there--economic stimulus attained.
Keynesian economics? *pfft* Keynes was an idiot. To date, no one has ever tried *my* "economic stimulus policy" which I call "bubble up"--give tax breaks to the lowest income brackets *and* put money directly into their hands. What will those people do? Pay bills and buy things at local businesses, thus putting money in their hands. Those businesses, in turn, will restock inventory and put money into the hands of suppliers and manufacturers. That money will eventually wind up in the hands of banks and investment firms but it will have circulated a handful of times before landing there--economic stimulus attained.
Keynes would have been very supportive of your policy. Typically politicians look to reduce taxes in good times (when they don't need the money) and increase them in bad times. Keynes' view was the exact opposite. He advocated reducing taxes during a downturn and increasing them during an upturn to help balance the tendency of the market to oscillate between boom and bust.
Why don't I let the Bureau of Labor Statistics do the work for me? These numbers are better than they have been in a long time. https://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm#empstat
I understand, though. The economy doing well simply *has* to be because of Obama, right? I have no doubt that if the economy were doing poorly we would be hearing all about how it is Trump's fault. As noted, the POTUS has nothing to do with the economy, which is precisely why I did not credit the current POTUS--he didn't have anything to do with it, either.
The BLS report has a ton of data here. However, it breaks all kinds of rules about how to present data to reach a conclusion such that it's pretty much worthless. Those statistics don't capture all instances of unemployment. And employment in low paying mcjobs are not something to be proud of.
The economy we have now is a continued trend of recovery that began under Obama. Trump has done an average job given what he's been handed according to some economists. But more importantly people who claim the economy is the best ever, I've got a question. For whom?
-According to the Federal Reserve, 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank for emergency expenses.
- Medical bankruptcies, which are a thing in the US that doesn't exist in other countries, is the leading cause of bankruptcies for millions of Americans every year at 66% of all bankruptcies.
-Wages have been stagnant for decades . Since 1978, and adjusted for inflation, American workers have seen an 11.2 percent increase in compensation. During that same period, CEO’s have seen a 937 percent increase in earnings. Who's benefiting from Republican policies? Which states are the poorest again?
- The U.S. is the only developed country without paid sick days or maternity leave
Is this is the best ever? Is this the best we can do? I'd say emphatically NO. But suppose we play along and say it is better than we've had before. So what? It sucks and we need to do better and progress must be made, this is not enough. The things that the average american needs, Trump isn't doing. He's looking out for rich interests. He's rewarding himself and his billionaire buddies. He is not helping the average American. He's hurting them by rolling back environmental protections and job safety and literally putting on the Supreme Court the one guy who ruled that an ice road trucker should have died rather than jeopardize corporate profits.
I'm curious how you can defend this statement. At a minimum, national economics rebounded under Obama that has HEAVILY contributed to the current strong national economy.
How quickly we forget that the Bush administration precipitated the second worst economic disaster in the history of the country
Why don't I let the Bureau of Labor Statistics do the work for me? These numbers are better than they have been in a long time. https://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm#empstat
Taking the data directly from your source, we see a very obvious trend towards lower unemployment that started many years before Trump took office, during Obama's terms:
Whether you give the credit or blame to a given president is another issue, but @BallpointMan's claim was that the recovery "under Obama" "HEAVILY contributed to the current strong national economy," and these data indicate precisely that.
It's misleading to suggest that these low numbers are some novel shift. This trend has been going on for about 10 years now.
If we wanted to take the historical view, it looks like Obama oversaw the fastest drop in unemployment since the 1980s.
<...>
The plain fact of it is that almost every country in the world that has some measure of control of its economy has chosen to regulate their economy. So the argument isn't "no regulations" vs "all regulations". It's a negotiation on what we should regulate and why.
Again. No one here is advocating for totalitarianism.
Also - The Mises institute is generally regarded to be a far-right libertarian think-tank. So citing evidence from there will probably invite skepticism due to bias (Doesn't mean it can't be useful or insightful, but it may not move the needle much).
Theft and Murder exists in every country in the world. This doesn't means that are good thing. Same with regulations, less regulations are always good.
About mises, see the references. They mentions a lot of reliable sources and call then "far right wing libertarian" is not an argument. Is like call CNN Clinton News Network.
What regulations did he removed and how it affected the crisis?
He removed lots of regulations, <...>
Name one. Just one. The government has all incentives to focus on short therm and what caused the massive debt is the government pressure to make housing more "affordable".
Obama walked into office at "pretty close to having a depression", and Trump walked into.....normalcy, at worst, from an economic perspective. Even if we assume they are both running the same 400m race around the track, Trump is allowed to start from the normal line, and Obama was running another whole lap just to get there (at least his entire first term).
The dynamic is Bush, between the economy, Iraq etc, drove everything into a ditch. Obama then spent the bulk of his time not trying improve the road the car was on, but just make sure the car was running on the road again. Meanwhile, Republicans spend every second complaining about HOW he was removing the car from it's current state. And to top it all off, they then give all the credit to their guy who comes along after. I'm not going to rummage into the depths of the old thread, but there were polls taken right after the election in 2016 that showed a vast number of Republicans believed the economy had improved basically the MOMENT Trump was elected, and months before he was even inaugurated.
As for deficits, I mean, it's been transparently obvious for DECADES that Republican rhetoric on that subject is nothing but a tool to hammer Democratic Administrations. In two separate instances in the last month, both Mitch McConnell and the voice of the American right for 3 decades, Rush Limbaugh, basically came out and admitted as such, because they know no one will hold them to account when they do a complete 180 the next time a Democrat is sworn in. Here is Limbaugh responding to a caller who (likely because people like Limbaugh have told him how important it was for decades) is concerned about it:
“Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around."
Apparently I've been listening to a doppelganger in my car from 11-2 in the afternoon for the last twenty years. You can call out both sides for hypocrisy if you want, but there isn't anything CLOSE to a bigger sham in politics than the Republican position on deficits. If they were planet sizes, it would be Jupiter and everything else is Mercury.
I'll bet there aren't any dramatic shifts in wealth distribution during the Obama years, or the Bill Clinton years, or the Carter years. Puzzling if that's the only dynamic at play.
Interesting graphic I found. The split between the bottom 20% and top 5% has gotten bigger since 1980. However, under Trump all income levels have gained when compared to 1973 real income levels. I love you guys, I'd never find any of this stuff if it werent for you all!
1980, election of Reagan, supply-side economics, the total destruction of unions, and the start of the decline of manufacturing. The top marginal tax rate in 1960 where those lines converge was 91%, which if proposed today would be compared to Trotsky and Lenin taking power.
1980, election of Reagan, supply-side economics, the total destruction of unions, and the start of the decline of manufacturing. The top marginal tax rate in 1960 where those lines converge was 91%, which if proposed today would be compared to Trotsky and Lenin taking power.
16 years of Democratic presidents didn't seem to put much of a dent in anything though. Just saying...
Congress has the REAL power to change things (ie: write laws and controls the purse) and the party composition of Congress has been a mixed bag since the early 80's. Note, Reagan got his 'horrible' policies through a Democratic Congress for most of his tenure. How did he manage that I wonder? Democratic candidates are all talk and change nothing. They're just as complicit as the Republicans. They just hide behind their pseudo-convictions and hope nobody figures out that this is a two-shell shellgame and there's nothing under either of them for us regular schmucks...
Does anybody really believe Yang would ever be able to 'give' everybody $1000/month? If he does, I'm going ro make sure he puts the bills on rollers for me so I can at least wipe my ass with them...
Comments
Corporations want only your money; government wants your *obedience*. I don't want to blindly obey some virtually omnipotent Nanny State government which purports to tell me how I am going to live. I prefer freedom and I wish more people did, as well.
The Republicans may be bad but Democrats are *worse*. That is why so many large cities which have been run by Democrats for decades--Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit--look like they came straight out of Fallout.
You ever look at the pictures and poverty statistics of rural Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia??
Top ten poorest states (by poverty rate):
Louisiana 20.8%
Mississippi 19.7%
New Mexico 18.2 %
West Virginia 17.7%
Alabama 15.6%
Arkansas 15.4%
Kentucky 14.8%
South Carolina 14.8%
Arizona 14.7%
Georgia 14.3%
9/10 of them have one thing in common.
I think, overall, you are correct that too much state power is more dangerous than too much corporate power, but it's not an important comparison to me, as long as an excess of either is acknowledged to be detrimental. In Europe I see many negative effects of too much state power, and that's a timid example, given the many more totalitarian parts of the world. In America I think it's pretty clear that the state is mostly just a servant of the moneyed interests no matter who is in charge.
I think they accomplish this far more effectively through the control of information in media than they do through money in politics, but that's another matter.
I feel like it should be pointed out that many of these places are still better off than in inner cities. Almost all of Kentucky including the cities are below the average crime rate, for example, no matter how poor they are. Even the poorest counties are only slightly above average.
In fact in some of the poorest white towns in the US, all crime is well below average.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Beattyville-Kentucky.html
I would rather live in those places than in decaying cities...and I *love* Fallout.
Speaking of fallout....did anyone mention the United States withdrawing from the INF treaty from the late 1980s? I don't keep up with this thread like I used to.
The population of Beattyville, Kentucky is 1206 people. Exactly what kind of data are we supposed to extrapolate from that kind of sample size?? It's SLIGHTLY larger than the town I grew up in, and if we'd had a SINGLE murder in a decade it would have been viewed as a catastrophic event. And since I come from a town about that size (if not that poverty level) I'll tell you exactly why the crime rate is so low, which is that one officer is probably patrolling the entire county at any given time. And this is from the article:
At about that time, Beattyville’s police chief, Omer Noe, and the Lee County sheriff, Johnny Mann, were jailed for taking bribes to protect drug smugglers. Five years later, the next Lee County sheriff, Douglas Brandenburg, went to prison for a similar crime.
I imagine your drug arrests are definitely going to go on a downward trajectory when the police department is taking BRIBES to keep the operation going.
Moreover (and this is a real doozy) out of those roughly 1200 people, there are 58 registered sex offenders. Which means 1 out of every 25 people in town. The rate in Chicago for that statistic is 1 out of every 920.
Point being, even a SINGLE murder or rape in a town this small would immediately cause their violent crime rate to skyrocket. Two in one year would cause the scales that measure such things to break.
"I owe my soul to the company store."
You live in the company town. The company pays you in scrip. You shop at the company store. Your pay isn't enough to make ends meet. The company will front you the credit. You now owe the company money. If you try to leave, the company-owned sheriff will throw you in jail.
This was reality for a large percentage of the US population. Something came in and stopped it.
Well, we KIND of stopped it. It's coming back. If Trump ends up appointing another 20% of federal judges I wouldn't be surprised to see people thrown in jail for missing the rent or being late on a utility payment within 20 years.
We'll see. About half of these end up being bullcrap.
"At least two police sources have expressed skepticism over Turan's account of the story, saying they believe the injury may have resulted from a fight between the victim and one other person."
Edit: "Liberals say he deserved it"?? Which "liberals" exactly?
Detroit, I have to admit, is experiencing a bit of a comeback with the recent investment in its downtown area. If you recall, the Democrat leadership of the city wound up having to file the largest bankruptcy in the history of the United States. Anyway, capitalists are revitalizing the downtown area as opposed to government handouts.
In other news, Governor Rosello is set to be ex-governor in about 3 hours. Normally, Puerto Rico's Secretary of State would assume the office....but they don't have one. Rosello appointed someone--the non-voting Member of Congress Puerto Rico has--but the Legislature has not confirmed the appointment. The person next in line, the Secretary of Justice, has stated that she does not want the job. The person after her, the Secretary of Finance, is too young for the job--he is only 31 and the office requires the occupant to be 35. As things stand right now, Puerto Rico will not have a governor in 3 hours.
I'm curious how you can defend this statement. At a minimum, national economics rebounded under Obama that has HEAVILY contributed to the current strong national economy.
How quickly we forget that the Bush administration precipitated the second worst economic disaster in the history of the country
I would say, however, that the Bush administration's deregulation of the finance industry played a critical role in the financial crisis that began just before Obama took office. The recovery was a victory of Keynesian economics and bipartisan compromise, but the recession itself was the product of aggressive deregulation, and destroying regulations (basically any kind of regulations, honestly) is a key pillar of Republican orthodoxy.
The economy isn't the product of political parties; it's the product of government policy. Government policy is strongly tied to political parties, but it's more important to pin down the policies the Bush administration implemented, rather than just saying it was a GOP thing.
What regulations did he removed and how it affected the crisis?
Peter Schiff(investor) predicted the crisis far before it happened. Some people seems to believe that regulations was never made with obscure interests in mind, that regulators never do anything wrong, and that more regulations is always good.
About Keynesians, Paul Krugman LITERALLY called for an Housing bubble https://mises.org/library/krugmans-call-housing-bubble
Regulators aren't gods. Is near impossible to determine what is the best for me, only an deity can determine what is best for 300 M+ people.
Literally no one here is saying or had said that more regulations are always a good thing.
The plain fact of it is that almost every country in the world that has some measure of control of its economy has chosen to regulate their economy. So the argument isn't "no regulations" vs "all regulations". It's a negotiation on what we should regulate and why.
Again. No one here is advocating for totalitarianism.
Also - The Mises institute is generally regarded to be a far-right libertarian think-tank. So citing evidence from there will probably invite skepticism due to bias (Doesn't mean it can't be useful or insightful, but it may not move the needle much).
That's not the way it looks from afar. Obama inherited a difficult situation and spent most of his presidency successfully getting things back on a stable footing. It's interesting to see that the Fed raised interest rates a number of times towards the end of that period to try and avoid over-heating of the economy. They've just recently made the first cut in interest rates since 2008 - reflecting they are now concerned about the slowing economy.
Overall growth still looks relatively healthy as a result of strong consumer spending. That's a legacy of Trump's fiscal stimulus (which has of course caused other problems by increasing the budget deficit). However, that stimulus is only short term and business investment (which will be needed to underpin longer term growth) looks pretty weak. That, along with concerns about the current tariff war, is why the Fed thinks it necessary to provide more support now for the economy.
Trump has of course been telling the Fed to reduce interest rates for some time and would have liked a bigger cut now. His reasons for wanting a cut are very different though. The Fed are interested in keeping the economy stable in the long term, while Trump is interested only in appearing successful in the very short term, whether or not that 'success' is sustainable - that's one of the reasons why he has such a terrible record in business.
He removed lots of regulations, but the changes that were largely blamed for the financial crisis were easing the restrictions on financial services. That allowed banks to reduce their balance sheets, meaning they were more vulnerable. It also allowed them to incur higher levels of debt and package those debts in 'innovative' ways that disguised the nature of the debts.
The result of that was a large amount of low quality debt swilling about the financial system, without anyone really being aware of the fact - until lots of people started defaulting on their debts. Banks and other financial institutions suddenly woke up to the fact that they might not have the capital to cover the risks on their debt holdings, but as they didn't know at that time just what the risks were (as they typically didn't know what the actual debts were behind those innovative packages) they couldn't judge their real liquidity (or that of other institutions) and reacted by no longer loaning money to each other.
In that situation, where balance sheets are poor quality and there's no liquidity, bank failures are inevitable for the weaker institutions and there's a real danger of a knock-on effect that could quickly swamp everyone else. That's why the US (and other governments) chose to intervene in the market to provide liquidity.
The purpose of regulations in the economy is rarely to require individuals to do anything. Instead the regulations are normally aimed at preventing businesses from harming individuals. That might be through preventing them taking excessive risks (as in the background to the 2008 crash referred to above) or more directly, e.g. rules against businesses causing pollution (that's another area in which Trump has removed lots of regulation, which will I'm sure result in plenty of scandals in future years).
Why don't I let the Bureau of Labor Statistics do the work for me? These numbers are better than they have been in a long time. https://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm#empstat
I understand, though. The economy doing well simply *has* to be because of Obama, right? I have no doubt that if the economy were doing poorly we would be hearing all about how it is Trump's fault. As noted, the POTUS has nothing to do with the economy, which is precisely why I did not credit the current POTUS--he didn't have anything to do with it, either.
The Bush Administration did not precipitate the housing collapse in 2008...but it didn't do enough to stop it, either. The true culprits there were people working for Wall Street banks engaging in activities they should not have been doing. The infamous "credit default swaps", when they came to the attention of the SEC, were not subject to regulation because (paraphrasing the SEC here) "they could not figure out what they were". Seriously? If the SEC doesn't know what a financial instrument is or how it works then it should default to "not allowed". (see? I know that a modicum of regulation is necessary) All those ridiculous "you can get rich quickly, too, by flipping houses" shows did not help at all--they led to an artificially inflated market.
Keynesian economics? *pfft* Keynes was an idiot. To date, no one has ever tried *my* "economic stimulus policy" which I call "bubble up"--give tax breaks to the lowest income brackets *and* put money directly into their hands. What will those people do? Pay bills and buy things at local businesses, thus putting money in their hands. Those businesses, in turn, will restock inventory and put money into the hands of suppliers and manufacturers. That money will eventually wind up in the hands of banks and investment firms but it will have circulated a handful of times before landing there--economic stimulus attained.
Keynes would have been very supportive of your policy. Typically politicians look to reduce taxes in good times (when they don't need the money) and increase them in bad times. Keynes' view was the exact opposite. He advocated reducing taxes during a downturn and increasing them during an upturn to help balance the tendency of the market to oscillate between boom and bust.
The BLS report has a ton of data here. However, it breaks all kinds of rules about how to present data to reach a conclusion such that it's pretty much worthless. Those statistics don't capture all instances of unemployment. And employment in low paying mcjobs are not something to be proud of.
The economy we have now is a continued trend of recovery that began under Obama. Trump has done an average job given what he's been handed according to some economists. But more importantly people who claim the economy is the best ever, I've got a question. For whom?
-According to the Federal Reserve, 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank for emergency expenses.
- Medical bankruptcies, which are a thing in the US that doesn't exist in other countries, is the leading cause of bankruptcies for millions of Americans every year at 66% of all bankruptcies.
-Wages have been stagnant for decades . Since 1978, and adjusted for inflation, American workers have seen an 11.2 percent increase in compensation. During that same period, CEO’s have seen a 937 percent increase in earnings. Who's benefiting from Republican policies? Which states are the poorest again?
- The U.S. is the only developed country without paid sick days or maternity leave
Is this is the best ever? Is this the best we can do? I'd say emphatically NO. But suppose we play along and say it is better than we've had before. So what? It sucks and we need to do better and progress must be made, this is not enough. The things that the average american needs, Trump isn't doing. He's looking out for rich interests. He's rewarding himself and his billionaire buddies. He is not helping the average American. He's hurting them by rolling back environmental protections and job safety and literally putting on the Supreme Court the one guy who ruled that an ice road trucker should have died rather than jeopardize corporate profits.
And what about the deficit?
2008: 5.8%
2009: 9.3%
2010: 9.6%
2011: 8.9%
2012: 8.1%
2013: 7.4%
2014: 6.2%
2015: 5.3%
2016: 4.9%
2017: 4.4%
2018: 3.9%
Whether you give the credit or blame to a given president is another issue, but @BallpointMan's claim was that the recovery "under Obama" "HEAVILY contributed to the current strong national economy," and these data indicate precisely that.
It's misleading to suggest that these low numbers are some novel shift. This trend has been going on for about 10 years now.
If we wanted to take the historical view, it looks like Obama oversaw the fastest drop in unemployment since the 1980s.
Theft and Murder exists in every country in the world. This doesn't means that are good thing. Same with regulations, less regulations are always good.
About mises, see the references. They mentions a lot of reliable sources and call then "far right wing libertarian" is not an argument. Is like call CNN Clinton News Network.
Name one. Just one. The government has all incentives to focus on short therm and what caused the massive debt is the government pressure to make housing more "affordable".
The dynamic is Bush, between the economy, Iraq etc, drove everything into a ditch. Obama then spent the bulk of his time not trying improve the road the car was on, but just make sure the car was running on the road again. Meanwhile, Republicans spend every second complaining about HOW he was removing the car from it's current state. And to top it all off, they then give all the credit to their guy who comes along after. I'm not going to rummage into the depths of the old thread, but there were polls taken right after the election in 2016 that showed a vast number of Republicans believed the economy had improved basically the MOMENT Trump was elected, and months before he was even inaugurated.
As for deficits, I mean, it's been transparently obvious for DECADES that Republican rhetoric on that subject is nothing but a tool to hammer Democratic Administrations. In two separate instances in the last month, both Mitch McConnell and the voice of the American right for 3 decades, Rush Limbaugh, basically came out and admitted as such, because they know no one will hold them to account when they do a complete 180 the next time a Democrat is sworn in. Here is Limbaugh responding to a caller who (likely because people like Limbaugh have told him how important it was for decades) is concerned about it:
“Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around."
Apparently I've been listening to a doppelganger in my car from 11-2 in the afternoon for the last twenty years. You can call out both sides for hypocrisy if you want, but there isn't anything CLOSE to a bigger sham in politics than the Republican position on deficits. If they were planet sizes, it would be Jupiter and everything else is Mercury.
Interesting graphic I found. The split between the bottom 20% and top 5% has gotten bigger since 1980. However, under Trump all income levels have gained when compared to 1973 real income levels. I love you guys, I'd never find any of this stuff if it werent for you all!
16 years of Democratic presidents didn't seem to put much of a dent in anything though. Just saying...
Congress has the REAL power to change things (ie: write laws and controls the purse) and the party composition of Congress has been a mixed bag since the early 80's. Note, Reagan got his 'horrible' policies through a Democratic Congress for most of his tenure. How did he manage that I wonder? Democratic candidates are all talk and change nothing. They're just as complicit as the Republicans. They just hide behind their pseudo-convictions and hope nobody figures out that this is a two-shell shellgame and there's nothing under either of them for us regular schmucks...
Does anybody really believe Yang would ever be able to 'give' everybody $1000/month? If he does, I'm going ro make sure he puts the bills on rollers for me so I can at least wipe my ass with them...