[Dragaera] Off-Topic Discussion: Occupy Wall Street

[phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 10:00:57AM -0600, Matthew wrote:

> The real idea behind the tea party is simple: we want a balanced budget
> without increased taxes.  "TEA" was originally an acronym for "Taxed

You do know that US taxes are at their lowest rates in decades, after 30
years of tax cuts?  You do know that Obama also cut taxes?

If you want to balance the budget without restoring taxes to levels
consisted with past prosperity (like Clinton's surplus, or the 1960s
boom), what do you want to cut?  Social Security?  Medicare and
Medicaid?  Defense?  Safety nets?  Interest payments?  Those are 80% of the
federal budget right there, as I'm sure your "new media" has told you;
everything else, all the 'pork' and 'earmarks' are little things that
add up to the rest.

> the issue of the tea party.  Specific secondary issues include Obama's
> health care law, which (despite the way that the CBO analysis was gamed)
> spends a dramatic amount of money for the foreseeable future and the
> government bailouts of various industries. 
> 
> I don't see how any of that is "ultra right".  Right-leaning, yes, which
> says a few uncomfortable things about the political left, but certainly

Uncomfortable would be that you put a higher value on not raising taxes
than on providing health care to everyone.

> some common ground to be had here?  Regardless of what we think we
> should be spending money on, can't we agree that spending money we don't
> have is a bad idea, and spending money to bail out companies with

Spending money while in a Keynesian liquidity trap is not a bad idea.

But I bet you don't believe in Keynesianism, aka textbook
macroeconomics, in which case there won't be so much common ground.

> political connections is corrupt?

True, a better approach would be Germany's, where they bailed out all
the businesses, providing subsidies during the worst of the bust so that
companies wouldn't lay off workers.  They recovered pretty quickly.

OTOH concern about "bank bailouts" can be overblows, as governments
typically make a profit on such 'bailouts', given the particular nature
of banks, which is to be vulnerable to liquidity crunches en masse even
when they have positive net worth. 

-xx- Damien X-)