Random Political Thoughts

[PB the Deplorable]

By the way he's a nobel prize winning economist.  And you've put up who?

Obama got a Peace Prize after what, 2 months in office.  Arafat has one too.  I'd say the political Nobel awards often don't mean as much a the scientific ones do.

I'll take Milton Friedman anytime

[NowhereInTime]

Obama got a Peace Prize after what, 2 months in office.  Arafat has one too.  I'd say the political Nobel awards often don't mean as much a the scientific ones do.

I'll take Milton Friedman anytime

You can have him and his discredited school of thought.

[wr250]

ill take stanton friedman over them all :p

[AZ/CO]

Exactly right.  Low paying entry level jobs aren't meant to support families on.  Young people entering the work force (even if it's only part time) develop certain skills:  how to have a boss, how to consistently show up, how to work with customers, how to follow orders and do tasks properly, how to act and be presentable.  They can then take these skills to the next level, either with that company or another, and earn more.

It's dynamic, not static.  Yet the 'Progressive' can't see beyond right now.  And the right now is some people earning entry level wages.

These jobs are for high school and college students whose primary focus is school, stay-at-home moms who want to earn a few bucks somewhere close to home while their kids are at school, someone that wants to make a little extra at a second job for awhile, seniors who want to get out and have something to do, new immigrants learning just starting out, and so on. If they didn't currently want these jobs, they would have made other choices and be doing something else.

YES!!  Thank you for saying so!

[AZ/CO]

 Hi!  Just popped into this forum wondering if anyone was discussing the Obama article in the New Yorker...why oh why does this "leader" mention race?  After 5 years in office, does he really have to tell us that he sits around and wonders if folks like him because he his black?

[DigitalPigSnuggler]

he sits around and wonders if folks like him because he his black?

He'd come to a conclusion much more quickly if he wondered if folks hate him because he's black.

[NowhereInTime]

ill take stanton friedman over them all :p

Ha!  Brilliant !!!  Ditto!

[NowhereInTime]

YES!!  Thank you for saying so!

Really?  I must have missed that day in school.  I thought businesses hired people to accomplish tasks/service customers to maximize the shopping experience to capture market share.  I didn't realize they were providing a social service for "high school and college students" (kinda thought that's what internships were for...)
Considering how many social contracts American businesses have broken anyway, what makes you think they have any obligation to uphold your perception of what their staff should look like?
Your naivete (how you always think you know what business is because other white people said so) is exposed in these inane and clearly inexperienced thoughts.
Guess what, country club, it just ain't so.  Youth unemployment in this country averages 50% and in the "inner cities" its near 75%. 
These kids are fine taking min wage jobs to start but they can't find them.  Why?  Because there are adults trying to pay mortgages, rents, power bills, oil bills, put food on the table, etc who don't have another option because the plant they worked at for 20 years shut down and moved to Mexico or China.  They now have a limited skill base and no employer.  Who's hiring them at living wage?  Nobody.  Who's hiring at all? Wal-Mart for min wage.
God, P*B you have no idea what you and your kind have done to this country, do you?

[PB the Deplorable]

...  Youth unemployment in this country averages 50% and in the "inner cities" its near 75%...

And here you are, siding with the destruction of MORE of these jobs by increasing the minimum wage. 

[PB the Deplorable]

... God, P*B you have no idea what you and your kind have done to this country, do you?

I guess you haven't noticed that Obama's failed policies look a lot like Jimmy Carters?

So does his foreign policy, but that's for a different post.

[NowhereInTime]

So I guess you haven't noticed that Obama's failed policies look a lot like Jimmy Carters?

All I've noticed is a man trying to help people who gets his balls kicked by people who already have more than they could ever use.

[NowhereInTime]

And here you are, siding with the destruction of MORE of these jobs by increasing the minimum wage.

Again, so naive. Exactly how many more cashiers can McDonald's or Walmart roll back before the service levels fall to business damaging levels? These jobs cannot be outsourced and every operation is already at bare bones staffing. The only jobs thst can now be cut are 6 & 7 figure jobs to placate shareholders.
Love to see where this goes next.

[PB the Deplorable]

All I've noticed is a man trying to help people who gets his balls kicked by people who already have more than they could ever use.

It doesn't matter how much someone wants to improve things, how hard they work at it, or how confident they are in their ability - if their worldview is wrong and they don't understand how the economy works, they can't improve it.  Obama is in the way of recovery.  He is not helping.  He is destroying jobs and is on course to destroy more.  Any positive turn is in spite of him and his administration. 

Not that he actually cares about improving things, or works at it.

[PB the Deplorable]

Again, so naive. Exactly how many more cashiers can McDonald's or Walmart roll back before the service levels fall to business damaging levels? These jobs cannot be outsourced and every operation is already at bare bones staffing. The only jobs thst can now be cut are 6 & 7 figure jobs to placate shareholders.
Love to see where this goes next.

Where it goes next is me shaking my head at your ignorance

There's your assumption of a static, zero-sum economy again. 

[onan]

Fuck all of you that look down your noses at fast food workers.

First, if you think those jobs are for teenagers and are entry level... well you are pulling your facts out of your ass.

Almost 70% of fast food workers are over 20. 40% are over 30, many in their 40's.

I really like how some of you vilify those that are working... just not to your high level of achievement. Yet I see little discussion supporting ways for people to gain better skills unless they can do so with their individual boot straps. And many of them, with all their "bad choices" have few places to find work other than retail or retail hamburgers.

[AZ/CO]

 
These kids are fine taking min wage jobs to start but they can't find them.  Why?  Because there are adults trying to pay mortgages, rents, power bills, oil bills, put food on the table, etc who don't have another option because the plant they worked at for 20 years shut down and moved to Mexico or China.  They now have a limited skill base and no employer.  Who's hiring them at living wage?  Nobody. 

You've stated the exact point!  An entry level position isn't supposed to be a living wage.  Didn't you have a paper route or a waiter job while in school?  I'm talking about 16 yrs to 20ish years old, before you finished school.  And what Paper*Boy is saying is that if along the way if you didn't finish school or were sidetracked along the way with drugs or criminal behavior, the jobs that are available to you are not going to be a livable wage job.  You are going to end up struggling and scrapping because of choices YOU made - perhaps made worse because of more poor choices like having children you cannot support.  And sadly, the social programs that are in place to give the poor choice makers a hand UP have turned into a hand OUT.  I have no problem giving hard workers who want to turn their life around a second or even third chance.  What I have a problem with is those who choose to live a lifestyle of poor choices and then are upset because it isn't easy

[PB the Deplorable]

All I've noticed is a man trying to help people who gets his balls kicked by people who already have more than they could ever use.

By the way, which of his economic policies exactly has Obama not been able to pass because of his opponents?

He had the House and 60 votes in the Senate for much of his first 2 years.  Didn't need a single vote from the R's.  He pushed through ObamaCare, got the tax increases he wanted, and has been running the government on Continuing Resolutions - no budget fights at all.  He's had the debt ceiling raised time after time to borrow all the money he wanted.

Fiscal and monetary policy has been run by the Fed, and to a lesser extent by Treasury. 

It's not that his economic policies have been blocked, it's that he hasn't really had any.  You don't know what you're talking about.

[NowhereInTime]

Where it goes next is me shaking my head at your ignorance

There's your assumption of a static, zero-sum economy again.

Despite our political differences I like you. You're damned funny on other threads, especially Jorch's Eye Pad.
That is why I will avoid my usual unctuous response and instead ask you to please watch CNBC for one full day. 
There is no way, after watching a whole trading day, you can honestly say that this whole economy isn't a zero-sum game.

[PB the Deplorable]

Fuck all of you that look down your noses at fast food workers...

Well, I don't look down my nose at them.  I'm the one saying don't destroy jobs by raising the minimum wage.  I'm the one saying we'd have a better economy - for everyone - if it weren't for the second coming of Jimmy Carter.

And yes, poor choices leave people with less opportunity.  Maybe we need different people in charge of education - like parents and teachers instead of teachers unions and government educrats - people who can and will point the way towards opportunity instead of convincing the kids they are victims.

[Yorkshire pud]

You've stated the exact point!  An entry level position isn't supposed to be a living wage.  Didn't you have a paper route or a waiter job while in school?  I'm talking about 16 yrs to 20ish years old, before you finished school.  And what Paper*Boy is saying is that if along the way if you didn't finish school or were sidetracked along the way with drugs or criminal behavior, the jobs that are available to you are not going to be a livable wage job.

And what of the vast majority (and I include myself) who through no fault of their own have lost a well paid skilled job, but because, as has been said, the skills have been exported to other cheap labour countries, getting a similar job is very difficult or in some industries almost impossible? 'Yeah, well retrain'.. Sure, and after paid for (because in spite of the assertion by some that the UK is in some way a quasi communist country where everything is free-it isn't) said course, a forty or fifty something year old may find he's on the same list as other graduates with better qualifications, fighting for a low paid job where several (In some cases) hundred have applied. PB lives in a fanciful utopia where everyone's life is mapped out (The proviso being all they need to do is work hard) from birth to death. At aged 20 something they settle down, at 30 something they're having the last of their 2.2 kids, at 40 and 50 something, they've finally got the house they'll retire in...and by 60, they'll be having cruises around the world and baby sitting their own grandkids...

In the REALWORLDâ,,¢, it doesn't work like that for the vast majority of the worlds population, and even fewer of the western world.

  You are going to end up struggling and scrapping because of choices YOU made - perhaps made worse because of more poor choices like having children you cannot support.  And sadly, the social programs that are in place to give the poor choice makers a hand UP have turned into a hand OUT.  I have no problem giving hard workers who want to turn their life around a second or even third chance.  What I have a problem with is those who choose to live a lifestyle of poor choices and then are upset because it isn't easy

Again, the pigeon hole philosophy: People almost always don't make deliberately poor choices. Almost always choices are foisted on them, and they have to make the least bad decision. A couple may have a lovely home, three kids, two cars, lovely life , all the trappings etc...BUT to achieve that, they got sucked into the have now, pay later culture (Credit cards anyone?), banks and other financial institutions have milked the system (How many as a proportion have been prosecuted on that particular fraud?), threw money at them, and paid for it...But the dad comes home on friday and his company has lost big orders because their customers have gone bust. He's lost his job..the mortgage still needs paying, the kids still need feeding. Arguments ensue between them. He looks for another job but everyone is in the same boat, even his former boss can't get a job in McD-too qualified.

Anyway, the marriage breaks down, they try to sell the home, but they can't sell it, because no-one is buying, they don't have the money. The bank give them a month to catch up on the repayments. They can't..Mum takes the kids into emergency accommodation paid for by the public purse (and she's now getting the same disdain, the same looks and contempt she used to feel about families in her position), her 'friends' have abandoned her now, because, well, she's not 'their kind of people'.

Dad meanwhile, can't get a place to live that he can afford. So he stays with his brother's family and sleeps on their sofa. This goes on for a while until the strains start showing, and he leaves. He has nowhere to go, but shacks up where the winos go. He's not a wino, and he knows deep down 'he's not like them'. A wino, an old fella in his 60's tells him he thinks he's 45, his memory is going these days,due to the amount of booze he's going down. "I'm not like you" dad tells himself.."I miss my kids. God I miss my kids. Where did it all go?"

Yeah if only life did plot a path that was full of golden sunshine and green meadows for everyone..

[Lunger]

Smartest economist in the country (NY Times, Princeton, Nobel Prize - you got someone better?)
still says you're wrong and its a good idea:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/opinion/krugman-better-pay-now.html

Krugman is a partisan fool.  No one of a real intelligence listens to him.

[NowhereInTime]

Krugman is a partisan fool.  No one of a real intelligence listens to him.

I shouldn't even bother to respond to this, but Heavens how do people like you exist?
Doctorate from MIT, Columnist for the New York Times, frequent contributor to This Week with G.S., frequent appearances on Charlie Rose, published author, winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, what more qualification could you possibly want?
Not to mention his opposition to austerity has been borne out by the slow/non recovery in Europe and, to a degree, here.
Partisan fool?  Perhaps the most unqualified statement ever made in these threads.  And that's with Ruteger trolling around!

[NowhereInTime]

Well, I don't look down my nose at them.  I'm the one saying don't destroy jobs by raising the minimum wage.  I'm the one saying we'd have a better economy - for everyone - if it weren't for the second coming of Jimmy Carter.

And yes, poor choices leave people with less opportunity.  Maybe we need different people in charge of education - like parents and teachers instead of teachers unions and government educrats - people who can and will point the way towards opportunity instead of convincing the kids they are victims.

Conservative Playbook  
Page 3: "The Devil Came Up From Georgia"

Everytime a Democrat appears to be winning an economic argument, hit them hard with the peanut farmer from Plains!
St. Ronald cast enough aspersion on the man's character to bedevil him in the eyes of the American people as the very visage of economic failure. 
If all else fails?  Stagflation!  Stagflation!
Sure, nobody knows what it means, or that we are nowhere near it, it just sounds so bad it will, much like our other demagougery, scare the shit out the low conscious voter!!
Megadittoes!!

[wr250]

I shouldn't even bother to respond to this, but Heavens how do people like you exist?
Doctorate from MIT, Columnist for the New York Times, frequent contributor to This Week with G.S., frequent appearances on Charlie Rose, published author, winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, what more qualification could you possibly want?
Not to mention his opposition to austerity has been borne out by the slow/non recovery in Europe and, to a degree, here.
Partisan fool?  Perhaps the most unqualified statement ever made in these threads.  And that's with Ruteger trolling around!

and george noory has a bachelors degree in communications. we see how that worked out.

[NowhereInTime]

and george noory has a bachelors degree in communications. we see how that worked out.

Comparing Krugman to Snooron is like comparing apples and pizza rolls.

[PB the Deplorable]

...  Stagflation!  Stagflation!
Sure, nobody knows what it means, or that we are nowhere near it, it just sounds so bad...

It means a stagnating economy with inflation.  Something Keynes* said couldn't happen.


We have the stagnate economy now of course.  Looking around I see the price of things like food and energy continually costing more.  Meaning inflation in certain sectors.

The reason all that money being printed is neither helping the economy nor causing massive inflation right now, is because banks and large corporations are warehousing it.  It's not circulating.  There are some who are not happy holding dollars that are giving them no return, and that is what is supporting the stock and bond prices.  When the dollars start coming out from deposits and into circulation, that's when we will see the inflation. 

And people like Krugman tell us it's working and to keep printing.  No, it isn't.

When Obama follows the same path as Carter - during a Recession, with the same results - it is the correct comparison.



*  Keynes is the economist most followed by the Liberals (the 'Progressives' day-to-day operate under Keynesianism, the long term goals are Marxist) - the Fed, the World Bank, the IMF, the US Government, the media, the London School of Economics, the governments of Old Europe are all Keynesians.  FDR followed his ideas all through the '30s and we never did come out of the Depression until he died and Truman took office. 

It's easiest described as 'Demand Side'.  They claim there is a trade-off between higher inflation and higher unemployment, and choose inflation with low unemployment.  Their only solution is 'pump-priming' (higher deficits, printing money to be spent by the government), and were completely baffled when we had both high inflation and high unemployment in the late 1970s.  They were also confused when we had low inflation and low unemployment in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

Which is why they vilify 'Supply Side' economics.  It worked despite what they were telling us.

[NowhereInTime]

It means a stagnating economy with inflation.  Something Keynes* said couldn't happen.


We have the stagnate economy now of course.  Looking around I see the price of things like food and energy continually costing more.  Meaning inflation in certain sectors.

The reason all that money being printed is neither helping the economy nor causing massive inflation right now, is because banks and large corporations are warehousing it.  It's not circulating.  There are some who are not happy holding dollars that are giving them no return, and that is what is supporting the stock and bond prices.  When the dollars start coming out from deposits and into circulation, that's when we will see the inflation. 

And people like Krugman tell us it's working and to keep printing.  No, it isn't.

When Obama follows the same path as Carter - during a Recession, with the same results - it is the correct comparison.



*  Keynes is the economist most followed by the Liberals (the 'Progressives' day-to-day operate under Keynesianism, the long term goals are Marxist) - the Fed, the World Bank, the IMF, the US Government, the media, the London School of Economics, the governments of Old Europe are all Keynesians.  FDR followed his ideas all through the '30s and we never did come out of the Depression until he died and Truman took office. 

It's easiest described as 'Demand Side'.  They claim there is a trade-off between higher inflation and higher unemployment, and choose inflation with low unemployment.  Their only solution is 'pump-priming' (higher deficits, printing money to be spent by the government), and were completely baffled when we had both high inflation and high unemployment in the late 1970s.  They were also confused when we had low inflation and low unemployment in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

Which is why they vilify 'Supply Side' economics.  It worked despite what they were telling us.

Stagflation doesn't mean my McDouble goes from $1.00 to $1.09 in a slow economy.
If we are printing too much, where is the inflation?  When the Fed signaled it was time to start slowly raising rates, it got a shock in the ass when the December jobs number came out way under projection, meaning there isn't any job creation.  Why?  Still no credit for start ups, even with the free money, which is being used instead to fuck around with commodity prices.
Supply side is welfare for the wealthy. It has never worked to spur anything but coporate profits and the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest 0.1%

Classic conflation.  The price at the pumps has to do with speculators driving prices.  When they can plunk down 7 cents on the dollar to control thousands of barrels of oil and never have to take delivery its very easy to take all of those Reagan and Bush high end tax cut dollars and spore up the prices through mass media.  "India and China! India and China!" Except look at their imports; it's not.      "War in Syria effects Production!"  Even though they neither produce nor refine nor ship a drop.

Supply side economics led us to where we are: consequence free and limitless casino gambling on mortgages, oil prices, currency floats, you name it.  All supply side ever did was "unfetter" the rich from their social responsibilities in the hopes they would "create wealth", which they did for themselves, and "create jobs" which they did in China, Mexico, Indonesia, and India.  The "Reagan Recovery" was a cyclical based on ramped up borrowing to build the defense industry to today's preposterous levels.- it would've happened had Bonzo been President and, if you remember your history, it happened in the nick of time for Reagan.  Circa 1982 the man's name was mud and, for you deficit hawks, was our first trillion dollar debtor president.

Suffice to say, aside from your stilited lecture on Keynes, you hide from the truth again as even David Stockman, St. Ronald's own budget director, has decried what conservatives have done with this economy.
You lack conscience, any such of stewardship, or moral responsibililty to this society but excuse it because it "freedom".
George W Bush said it best: "Freedom isn't free."  Granted I am taking that quote out of context but the time of reckoning is coming. More and more people are finally geting to understand what you and your friends have done in your scheming cash grabs and there will be an effect to that cause.

[PB the Deplorable]

This is exactly why there likely won't be a recovery under Obama, or if there is it will be in spite of this Fed and this administration.

... If we are printing too much, where is the inflation?...

The reason was stated in my post - right now those dollars are being warehoused in bank deposits and are not being circulated.

... Supply side economics led us to where we are...

No, corruption, poor legislation, and lack of proper regulation did that.

... The "Reagan Recovery" was a cyclical based on ramped up borrowing...

You are contradicting yourself - Reagan borrowing* baaa-d, Obama borrowing good.

The truth is the Reagan Recovery kicked off 25 years of growth.  It freed up capital which in turn funded our digitized, computerized world.  It revolutionized communications.  We had what economists consider full employment - mostly good jobs at good pay.  None of that was going to happen under Keynesian inspired policies.

Was it perfect?  No.  Of course not.  Serious mistakes were made - at the top of the list is free trade, which resulted in exported jobs and the rise of an ambitious China.  Mistakes were made during the entire recovery - in the Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations.  The S&L disaster.  The rise of the unregulated investment banks, like Goldman Sachs.  Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and the encouragement of people who couldn't afford them to buy homes.  AIG and their unregulated SWAPS - which continues to his day.

None of that means we should go back to the economic policies of Carter.

... Classic conflation.  The price at the pumps has to do with speculators driving prices.  When they can plunk down 7 cents on the dollar to control thousands of barrels of oil and never have to take delivery...

As far as the traders - they provide market liquidity.  Which in turn promotes availability of buyers and sellers and smoothes out pricing increases and decreases.  Like anything, it can go too far and should be regulated - as George Soros has shown us when he personally set out to destroy the currencies of several nations.  There is a line between providing market liquidity and greedy destructive behavior.

Do you have an idea of how many millions of barrels of oil are produced and used in the world every day?  It's a shockingly high number.  Nearly all are bought and paid for by the buyer/user before they are pumped.  Much of the rest is sold at the 'spot rate'.  A bunch of contracts for a few thousand barrels each traded around Wall St is literally a drop in the barrel.



*By the way, the Reagan economy doubled the amount of tax dollars flowing to the Federal government from 1981-1988 - the result of a very much enlarged economy.  The House Democrats declared Reagans budget 'dead on arrival' every single year and held our country hostage with their spending demands - surely you recall who it was that insisted on all that increased spending?  The defense budget was something like 6% of federal spending, hardly the budget buster the Libs insist it was.

[onan]

85 people have equal wealth to half the population of the planet.

[aldousburbank]

85 people have equal wealth to half the population of the planet.

69 people have equal fun to half the population of the planet.