bush's economy...

[bishop]

so, now he's inherited his own mess...

MASSIVE budget deficits, job growth that remains exceptionally weak (despite all the babble during the campaign)... i'm sure the bushistas here know inside and out what bush's plan is for reducing the deficit... i was paying attention, but i never found a clear plan - so please, enlighten me.

also, we have rising energy prices which hurt lower income people the most. and it's eating into GDP - about 0.5% last year.

interest rates are set to rise again. and what's especially interesting is that despite rising rates - inflation is also rising. textbook economics states that when you raise rates, inflation falls.

about 100,000 job cuts are expected this coming month.

and, he's about to ask for $70 billion more for iraq.. where is he going to get this money?? if he borrows more, we'll get a healthy dose of inflation - which will cause more rapid interest rate increases - which will cause another recession. or, he can pay for the $70 billion by raising taxes.. that isn't something i expect to happen.



i ask any bushista here - what will bush do to fix the SERIOUS financial and economic problems that he did not fix during his first term? (and if no bushista is capable of answering, i welcome comments from anyone else.)

[Vee]

he'll have to pull a Reagan (circa second term)

[bishop]

huh? all reagan did was further increase the deficit.

[Vee]

oh, my memory must be failing, I thought he mentioned to decrease it second term after blowing it out initially

[giuliano]

no that was clinton. clinton controlled his discretionary spending and miraculously brought reagan's originally huge deficit under control.

conservatives call that strategy "tax and spend liberalism". and no, it doesn't make sense so don't think too hard about it.

[CivicRacingGirl7]

MASSIVE budget deficits, job growth that remains exceptionally weak (despite all the babble during the campaign)... i'm sure the bushistas here know inside and out what bush's plan is for reducing the deficit... i was paying attention, but i never found a clear plan - so please, enlighten me.

Jobs have been created... but they are entry-level jobs that most cannot afford to make a living from.

As for Bush's plan, your guess is as good as mine. For all of the Kerry-haters attacking him for not having a "plan" that they heard, Bush did the same. Kerry could have said everything the same as Bush, and it seems as though Bush supporters would have still hated him.

[Sonart]

oh, my memory must be failing, I thought he mentioned to decrease it second term after blowing it out initially

Actuallly, it was George H.W. Bush who started to slowly reverse the deficit, although it involved the political suicide of breaking his 'No New Taxes' pledge. Oh well, no good deed goes unpunished.

Then, as Guiliano said, it took Clinton to really go after it his 'Tax & Spend' liberalism, to lead us into the nation's greatest ever economy, despite increasing some taxes.

Versus, say, Dubya, whose economy still sputters to life under a crushing deficit. Despite cutting taxes. Ironical, huh!

[bishop]

interesting that we have dieval flaming in one thread, but refusing to participate in this one - which is a lot more substantive.

he really does have two options from all that i've seen.. either he has to raise taxes, or he's going to permit inflation to creep up.

[CivicRacingGirl7]

I always enjoyed, during the campaigning, how Bush claimed Kerry would raise the taxes. It always seemed to me that Kerry only wanted to undo the decrease in taxes that Bush put into effect. It really wasn't a necessary decrease, IMO. Yes, everyone would love some extra money, but unfortunately, few of us saw anything of those decreases anyway...

[bishop]

ok... the campaign and election are OVER. imo, it's a total waste of time debating allegations made during this last retarded campaign cycle. about taxes - i'll repeat, the taxes cut today contribute bigtime to the current deficits. so, today's tax cuts will produce tomorrow's tax hikes.

and that's only with respect to the current debt level. it doesn't take into account the problems we'll see with social security and medicare.

[Vee]

I thought reagan caused a deficit (like bush now) then reduced it and more recently clinton put it into surplus?

i don't know what Bush 1 did

[bishop]

no.. reagan and congress caused the deficit.. it continued into bush 1's presidency. and he had to choose between inflation or raising taxes - so he made the right decision and rose taxes. stupid voters, however, didn't understand the reasoning for raising taxes, so perot was able to take some 22% of bush's votes in '92. the deficit continued to increase under bush the first.

clinton and congress were the first to reverse that trend in decades. we were set to eliminate all public debt in roughly 10 years. the savings created from that would've extended social security and medicare's solvency for years. plus, it would've lowered long-term interest rates which would've been a boom for the economy.

but alas... now we're in one horrible mess and it isn't going to get any better. that is to say, after seeing bush in action for these past 4 years, i have absolutely no faith in him actively working to cut the deficit. it isn't a priority for him - since virtually none of his supporters give a flying shit about the deficit. they like him because he's "moral" and he's their war president. the deficit isn't important - because they haven't paid any attention to the long-term implications of his policies.

[PatrickHenry]

I am paying $2.59 a gallon for regular. I think I am gonna have to raise my prices. It's the beginning of an inflationary cycle. My advice to those who are able to do so: Don't get behind on keeping prices up. Don't make any long term contracts too cheap. It's a-comin'.

[bishop]

i had to do a mini-research project on oil prices for my economics class... this is the first time in history where a rise in nominal oil prices have been accompanied by a rise in long-term prices. that didn't even happen during opec 2 in the 70's..

inflation's 2.5% right now, or 2.0% if you exclude energy and food prices (eg. core cpi).. the increase in core-cpi was the largest since april. my model said that 3% inflation was acceptable and you could get 4.25% real gdp growth. i could email you the work if you're interested..

the issue with inflation isn't that it's going to cause an immediate shot, but rather, one that will slowly accumulate. it's the long-term that's the problem, not so much the short-term..