[quote]artw wrote:
[quote]polo77j wrote:
[quote]artw wrote:
I’m not a big Obama fan, but most of the posts so far are completely asinine. Has Obama fixed things? No, but the huge deficit he has helped to create is part of a solution to a problem. Will it work? It isn’t right now, but it may. The economy is just like driving a car. When it’s going well and thriving (ie moving fast), you simply take your foot off the gas/deficit spending, hit cruise control and try not to run off the road. When the car is stopped, you step on the gas to get it moving.
Whether or not his tactics will work remains to be seen, but putting the blame for the economy’s condition squarely on his shoulders without seriously examining the disastrous fiscal policies of the Bush administration (essentially increasing spending while decreasing taxes) is like suing the doctor who botched your surgery after you got shot while neglecting to identify your shooter for the police.
As for his emphasis on promoting the use of green technology and so forth, why the fuck not? Who cares if global warming may be a fraud? The production and implementation of green technology (along with biotechnology, which the Bush administration significantly set us behind in due to attempts to limit stemcell research) is the next major industry in this country and could be a very viable source of jobs for this country in the future.
Besides, global warming IS occurring at an accelerated rate that far surpasses any natural processes the Earth has gone through in the past, so the industry as a whole is legit to begin with. Who cares if Al Gore gets rich off of it? Good for him. Maybe Bush and Cheney will get a piece of that pie too. [/quote]
no offense atrw, but that has got to be the worst metaphor for fiscal policy I’ve ever heard. Ceterus parabus, you have complete control of a car, but you can’t control the invisible hand you can only hope to influence it in some way…[/quote]
Actually, the analogy is perfect, albeit simplistic. That’s why it’s taught in virtually any economics class. What the fuck is this “invisible hand” you talk of, and do you really think you ever have complete control of a car?
I don’t like the huge deficit any more than most people on this thread, but it went through the roof in an attempt to fix the results of the previous administration’s disastrous policies. This criticism of Obama’s attempts to fix an economic problem more severe than anything any other President this side of FDR has had to deal with is pointless. We won’t see the results of his “fixes” for several years. The Depression took over ten years to reverse. The current situation may take almost as long. Some fixes aren’t even designed to benefit this generation as much as they are designed to benefit the next generation of Americans.
I’ll gladly live with high unemployment rates, high taxes, high deficits and so on if it means that later on down the road my children and grandchildren can enjoy a better standard of living than this generation does. Now all of this may never happen and this deficit spending may end up being a total nightmare (and I certainly don’t downplay the highly negative impact our debt has on our foreign policies toward China), but let’s wait and see before we start lambasting Obama for being a blamesome crybaby.
After all, were the same people deriding Obama’s criticism of Bush deriding Bush equally hard when he blamed 9/11 on Clinton? I don’t think so. It’s all ridiculous. Shit, people are starting to have the same passion and subjectivity for politics (not a good thing) that football fans have for their teams. A 49ers fan would never say or acknowledge anything good about the Raiders and vice versa, and the political landscape in this country has ended up the same way. It’s a shame.[/quote]
yea, cause the economy is best described in simplistic ways … and if you’ve taken most economic classes you should know what the invisible hand is I speak of
Have you ever heard of the USS Cole? Maybe our Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? If Clinton had actually done something rather than just issue a condemnation Al Qaeda may not have had the resources or ease to attmept the acts of 9/11 … while Clinton isn’t directly responsible and all the blame shouldn’t be laid at his feet, his inaction certainly didn’t deter anything.
Oh, and how do you expect your children and grandchildren to have a better standard of living when Obama’s spending us right back into the Stone Age? Since when does it make sense, in an attempt to fix a problem, you make the problem larger? Yea we have a spending problem so … let’s … spend … more? On what? Jobs? That’s funny, because last time I checked Unemployments around 10% … And I understand about implemental delays for policy … yea it takes time … well how much time? It usually takes 6 months for effects to be felt … well it’s been a year and unemployments still going up along with inflation … how’s that for effect?
So stop defending this guy, he’s a putz and patsy. If his policy cause this shit to turn around then I’ll eat my words, but right now, I don’t see that happening.