Newt- Winning GOP nomination? I hope not

[Klath]

Originally Posted by G13 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I made an honest mistake with that quote

You were spreading misinformation.

You pasted and quoted freaking Wikipedia like it's FACT and you want to play the source game now? Really bro?

Absolutely. Lets play. I pasted a quote from Wikipedia that had references to the original sources. You posted an unsourced quote that turned out to be from a fake news blog. See a difference?

There is a lot of information within my post that you can't even begin to refute.

The argument is over whether the stimulus helped or hurt the economy. If I have to choose between the opinion of IHS Global Insight, Moody's.com, Economy.com, and Macroeconomic Advisers and a guy in the Project1999 forums who can't fact-check his sources then I'm affraid you're seriously outgunned.

[Hasbinbad]

Originally Posted by G13 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I made an honest mistake with that quote. I take responsibility for that. Instead of trying to use it as an excuse so you don't have to debate the merits of my entire post, why don't you refute what I actually said in the entire body of my post.

I am totally ignorant of what you two are talking about, and I fucking hate Bronson, but the man has a point here.

First he admitted his mistake, which - even if you think that is facetious - had to have been a hard thing for Bronson to do based on watching him in action previously (he is as stubbornly pig headed as they come).

Then he makes a perfectly reasonable request to not continue to employ ad hominem (however justified it was before his apology), and address the rest of his message.

Now I feel ill.

[Awwalike]

Originally Posted by Hasbinbad [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Now I feel ill.

yo dawg are you ever going to tell me what bank you use?

[Hasbinbad]

I don't use a bank, nor will I ever. I use a credit union.

[G13]

Originally Posted by Klath [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You were spreading misinformation.

You can't quantify "saved jobs" in an economy. Your premise doesn't begin to address Opportunity Costs and Negative Externalities such as private investment, that is adversely affected when the Government taxes private investors to employ people in public jobs (even temporarily). Those are resources that are shifting in an economy. It isn't new wealth being created. You can only calculate created jobs. In order to understand economics, which you clearly don't, you'd understand that Government doesn't create wealth. All Government does it taxes private income and calls it "revenue".

In order for Obama to have even been able to spend a trillion dollars he has to take it from someone else. The Government can print money, but if it prints too much that causes inflation. The wealth you have sitting in the bank devalues as a result, therefore it shrinks. People who use class warfare rhetoric always base their arguments on the premise that there is a set sized pie. That wealth is somehow this finite resource. That's a fallacy. Wealth can expand and contract depending on the markets. Just ask the people who's 401K plans lost a third of their value overnight after financial crash of 2008.

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

We have a president who has ran a record trillion+ deficit 3 years in a row. If the Stimulus was such a success, why is our Government running and accumulating such debt and deficits? The Stimulus cost more than the entire 8 year Iraq War. Claiming the Stimulus was a "success" is spreading misinformation, unless you believe that success with your tax dollars that have been confiscated from you were efficiently spent in the following examples:

Obama's stimulus "created" 3,545 Green Jobs. Total amount of Stimulus/tax dollars invested = 17.2 billion. When calculated, that equals 4, 853, 000 per saved or created job.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...3SK_story.html

Look at all the taxpayer money that was wasted just in this "Green Jobs" program alone. See those billions next to Solyndra? That's an example of Obama paying off his crony rich elite bundlers like George Kaiser with your tax money. These people donated and bundled millions for Obama's campaign, and in return they get Government grants in the billions where we now have solar panel factories with brand new equipment sitting empty and collecting dust. Meanwhile Kaiser and friends pocketed a nice profit off of their campaign investment. The Stimulus dollars hard at work:

https://lpo.energy.gov/?page_id=45

In comparison Obama only helped small businesses, the engine of the US Economy, with 645 million. You're not addressing what kinds of jobs the Stimulus "created". They are Government jobs. Census workers. The DMV. Teachers. There isn't any productivity in the public sector anywhere near that which occurs in the private sector.

http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency...agency_code=73

Zero jobs created in August 2011

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-mone...t-jobs-figures

6.4 billion in stimulus funds just disappeared:

http://watchdog.org/1530/6-4-billion...tom-districts/

Absolutely. Lets play. I pasted a quote from Wikipedia that had references to the original sources. You posted an unsourced quote that turned out to be from a fake news blog. See a difference?

Taken directly from Wikipedia:

Anyone can be bold and edit an existing article or create a new one, and volunteers do not need to have any formal training. The people who create and edit articles in Wikipedia come from countries all around the world and have a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Any contributor to this encyclopedia, unregistered and registered alike, is called a "Wikipedian," or "editor" more formally known.

I even clicked your Wikipedia link again and it directs you to a specific area on the page which is headlined with the following:

Recommendations by economists

On the very area you have used as your only source, it stated the following:

On January 28, 2009, a full-page advertisement with the names of approximately 200 economists who were against Obama's plan appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The economists denied the quoted statement by President Obama that there was "no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy." Instead, the signers believed that "to improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth."

Here's the ad:

http://www.cato.org/special/stimulus...o_stimulus.pdf

The argument is over whether the stimulus helped or hurt the economy. If I have to choose between the opinion of IHS Global Insight, Moody's.com, Economy.com, and Macroeconomic Advisers and a guy in the Project1999 forums who can't fact-check his sources then I'm affraid you're seriously outgunned.

http://blogs.reuters.com/james-petho...made-it-worse/

Respected Stanford economist John Taylor, perhaps the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, has analyzed the actual results of the ARRA. Not what the White House’s garbage-in, garbage-out models say happened, but what actually happened as gleaned from government statistics. Taylor, simply put, looked at whether consumers actually consumed and whether government actually spent in a way that produced real growth and jobs....

Taylor's piece: http://johnbtaylorsblog.blogspot.com...-not-have.html

Individuals and families largely saved the transfers and tax rebates. The federal government increased purchases, but by only an immaterial amount. State and local governments used the stimulus grants to reduce their net borrowing (largely by acquiring more financial assets) rather than to increase expenditures, and they shifted expenditures away from purchases toward transfers. Some argue that the economy would have been worse off without these stimulus packages, but the results do not support that view.

I'll refer to my points in my previous post you have still failed to properly address for my evidence to confirm what the above source is stating. Lower median income. An expanding poverty rate. A shrinking job market. More food stamp usage than ever before. If the Stimulus was a success, you would see these areas trending up. Not down. We're talking about a trillion dollars of wealth here. Not monopoly money.

African American Unemployment is the highest it's been in almost 30 years.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/02/news...rate/index.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...IxI_story.html

One thing the Stimulus did do was expose hacks and frauds like Stiglitz and Krugman. Economics is now thankfully trending away from failed Keynesian policies and towards the Austrian school as it should be.

http://news.investors.com/Article/58...Nobel-Aces.htm

Failed Policy: The Nobel Prize for Economics goes to two Americans who have separately exposed the flaws in government stimulus spending. For a Keynesian president, it's the Anti-Peace Prize.

[Loke]

Bronson, you've clearly got a decent head on your shoulders and while I agree with just about everything you posted, my only real question is this: given that you're clearly not retarded, why have you spent the past like 2 years convincing us all you are?

[Hasbinbad]

Bronson, you're way over my head with all that economics jibber jabber dude, I can't even pretend to keep up.

I do have a couple of honest, basic questions for you, and one observation about the first sentence in your last post. First the questions - mind you these are not meant to be snide or rhetorical, and I would appreciate it if you could use your education and knowledge to give me real answers, but please do dumb it down for the lay person:

Is it "A-OK" with you that millions of hard-working middle-class Americans are actually or very close to actually losing their retirements and homes, which they have spent their entire lives working for?
Is it "A-OK" with you that simultaneous to the above scenario, 2 huge stimulus packages went to bail out banks and auto companies to "stop them from going bankrupt," and came out of that deal with billions of dollars in profits, while we got basic low interest payments in return for it? They made huge profits off of the money we gave them which was just supposed to keep them afloat long enough that they could make their own money. Isn't there something wrong with that?
What does "7.7 trillion dollars" mean to you? Is that scandal true? Because those loans would make both stimuli packages seem like chump change, and nobody was ever consulted about it. Don't we have starving / sick / homeless / working poor / mentally ill people in this country that money could have helped? Don't we need to buy asphalt and better ways to create energy?
Do you think it's cool that we live in a system where I can go find a dumb person, have them sign a contract I know they won't be able to fulfill, and then make bets for them to default on the contract, making a huge profit where no service was provided? Shouldn't that kind of stuff be best left in vegas?
What about all of those people now being able to give unlimited amounts of money to politicians, ensuring that US policy reflects their interests?
Do you know what the tax rate on the richest bracket was in 1954? What else do you know about the achievements of this country during that era and the years immediately following? Weren't there rich people then regardless of their taxes? Wasn't that the era of Sinatra and the high life? What has happened to this country as tax rates on the rich have been eroded over time (hint: wealth concentration and disparity)?
Why were 23 million jobs created during the Clinton administration?

Now for an observation:

Originally Posted by G13 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You can't quantify "saved jobs" in an economy.

My observation is that just because you can't quantify something doesn't necessarily imply that it doesn't exist. For instance, if I asked you to quantify all the stars in the universe, you wouldn't be able to do that, because our understanding of the universe is limited. In the same vein, our understanding of how "saving jobs" works is limited.

Mind you, I'm definitely not defending Mr. Obama or agreeing with the empty rhetoric "created or saved X # of jobs," I'm just saying that concept can't be discounted out of hand simply because you don't have the proper metric to quantify it.

Carry on.

[Hasbinbad]

Originally Posted by Loke [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bronson.. ..why have you spent the past like 2 years convincing us all you are [retarded]?

[Humerox]

Originally Posted by Loke [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bronson, you've clearly got a decent head on your shoulders and while I agree with just about everything you posted, my only real question is this: given that you're clearly not retarded, why have you spent the past like 2 years convincing us all you are?

Gotta chime in here.

[Klath]

Taken directly from Wikipedia:

As I said before, the specific information I quoted included references. See those two links at the end of the text on the wiki page?

On the very area you have used as your only source

If you’re going to include the reference to the ad from Cato then at least include the reference to the response:

“On February 8, 2009, a letter to Congress signed by about 200 economists in favor of the stimulus, written by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said that Obama's plan "proposes important investments that can start to overcome the nation's damaging loss of jobs," and would "put the United States back onto a sustainable long-term-growth path."[60] This letter was signed by Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow, Lawrence R. Klein, Eric Maskin, Daniel McFadden, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow. The general consensus among non-partisan economic sources including IHS Global Insight, Moody's.com, Economy.com and Macroeconomic Advisers is that the economy "could have been worse" without the ARRA.[“

The Stimulus cost more than the entire 8 year Iraq War.

That's a gross underestimate of the cost of the war (talk about a complete waste of time and money). I’ll even use a source from Cato:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13436

"Just to date the study has found that appropriations have been between $2.3 and 2.7 trillion; with an additional $884 to $1,334 billion already incurred for future costs for veterans and their families. This makes a total, incurred thus far, of from $3.2 Trillion to $4.0 trillion in inflation-controlled 2011 (constant) dollars through FY 2011. The final bill, going out to 2020 will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion."

If the Stimulus was such a success, why is our Government running and accumulating such debt and deficits?

One can legitimately make the argument that the stimulus did not live up to expectations. It didn't. It was an imperfect bill that was diluted in order to get it to pass. And, to be fair, for a variety of the factors you've mentioned. However, we also didn’t get a picture of just how bad the recession was until this year.

If you were expecting the stimulus to reverse deficit spending then obviously you're going to be disappointed. My hopes for the stimulus were that it would prevent a collapse of the economy into a depression or a prolonged recession. Many economists believe it did exactly that.

that is adversely affected when the Government taxes private investors to employ people in public jobs

Tax rates are at near-historic lows and investors are doing pretty well. Companies are sitting on historic stockpiles of cash.

The CBO also released a report that says each "saved or created job" in the Stimulus cost US taxpayers more than 200K PER Stimulis job. What a bargain.

Those costs include the equipment and materials to carry out the job. Making a highway, for example, has a high cost in materials. When all is said and done you've not only employed someone, you have a better highway.

I'll refer to my points in my previous post you have still failed to properly address for my evidence to confirm what the above source is stating. Lower median income. An expanding poverty rate. A shrinking job market.

Employment and jobs market are lagging indicators which appear to be improving (slowly). If you look at leading indicators, the outlook is better.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index
http://www.conference-board.org/data...ntry.cfm?cid=1

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

“The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 8.6 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment rose by 120,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.” The rate hasn’t been that low since March 2009.

See those billions next to Solyndra?

I see $527 million (with an M, not a B) next to Solyndra. Still, poor use of the money.

One thing the Stimulus did do was expose hacks and frauds like Stiglitz and Krugman.

Krugman wasn’t particularly happy with the stimulus bill and predicted that it wouldn't live up to expectations due to the way the money was apportioned. The parts of the stimulus that were most successful were the parts that Krugman pushed hardest for, like infrastructure spending. In any case, it's nothing but conjecture on the part of the Austrian Schoolers that their approach would have left us any better off.