RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock

RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (Full Version)

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LookieNoNookie -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (6/28/2009 12:14:47 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: cougar11 Has everyone lost all sense of scale ? AND It does not matter who is doing it ...this out of control and somewhat wasteful spending will ruin this country! "somewhat"?

Politesub53 -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (6/28/2009 12:33:10 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Sanity No, you're mistaken - everything that Barack Obama is doing is OBVIOUSLY Bush's fault. The English tell me so. [sm=lol.gif] As if you listen to us [8D]

UncleNasty -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 8:10:05 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: CallaFirestormBW and it will -keep- going up, because we are paying interest on every dollar that we owe, to the tune of ~$215 billion dollars already this year (as of June 6th). And that interest (compound interest--the greatest rip-off in human history) won't stop accruing until the balance is -zero-. It isn't so much what we've -borrowed-, but what we're having to pay as extortion to have been able to borrow (and this is for the government, who gets the best interest rates!) There is no way to push the debt clock backwards unless the government shuts down and we stop spending more than we earn -- which isn't working out so well for the State of California (where people are flipping out at losing their 'benefits') OR we agree that our taxes aren't high enough for the social programs that we want, in which case, we will have to break down and start paying for what we want via our taxes. Right now, we're -still- paying, but we're paying to corporations who don't give a -crap- except for raising their own profit line.... and we're paying it to corporations who could benefit the public good, like universities (my step-daughter's tuition for her Freshman year is $35,000, and they're expecting an increase of 2.5% a year for each of her 4 years of school!), pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, medical research facilities... So... the point? Dame Calla A question few people ask is "Who is the beneficiary of this interest?" Imagine not paying this interest and how different the landscape would be. Politesub53, there is another question I prefer that is similar to yours. Would letting everything collapse have been any worse? That was never considered as an option. I think it should have been considered and seriously discussed. Uncle Nasty

DomKen -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 9:10:02 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: UncleNasty A question few people ask is "Who is the beneficiary of this interest?" Imagine not paying this interest and how different the landscape would be. Politesub53, there is another question I prefer that is similar to yours. Would letting everything collapse have been any worse? That was never considered as an option. I think it should have been considered and seriously discussed. Uncle Nasty I am one of many beneficiaries of those interest payments. I directly own a couple of T-bonds and my 401 holds many treasury securities. I strongly suspect virtually every American with a 401 or IRA or other diversified investment vehicles are also beneficiaries. Let almost the entire financial industry collapse? Please look up 1929 to 1937.

samboct -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 10:10:42 AM)
Ken I must admit, after seeing the affects of the financial bailout, I'm struggling with the rationale behind it as well. There's no question that we need to revamp our financial services industry- it's one of the biggest reasons manufacturers have relocated to China- capital is cheaper there. Banking has never made a country rich in the long run (pretty sure Switzerland's GNP is dominated by pharma) and its crushed empires ranging from the Dutch to the English. Bankers get control, declare that the country will be a global banking powerhouse- and a few decades later, the country is broke because all the countries which weren't banking powerhouses decided to make money the old fashioned way- i.e., build a better product than the next guy. Science and technology have been responsible for most of the economic development in the past millenia- not banking which existed as long as language. From my perspective- we've watched our auto industry get sold off to foreign countries while we've protected the damn bankers. And while the auto industry is definitely going to be a very different place when (or if) it emerges again- everything I've seen says that the bankers are basically returning to business as usual, with financial compensation for their employees at 2008 levels. Our economy is in deep trouble if autoworkers can't make a decent buck, but somehow, I fail to see the need of the bloated 7 and 8 figure compensation packages of the imbeciles in the banking industry. Furthermore, that's effectively a tax on the rest of the economy, so I think we'd be far better off with a much smaller and not so wealthy banking industry. Also see the 1930s-not everybody was losing their shirt- think a bunch of bankers did pretty well. The average person was furious with the banks. So while everyone's warned about the terrible calamity that would happen if we began allowing these mega financial powerhouses to fail- I'm not so sure it's any different than the auto industry. In short- I agree with Uncle Nasty at this point- we need a bit more dialog as to what we hope to get out of the banking business and how much we want to pay to keep it afloat. Note to Lookie etc. on taxes. I'm pretty sure that there's some jiggery pokery going on there. While the percentages may be true of income taxes, if you look at the total tax burden, I think you'll find that the percentages are much flatter across the board when you add in all the taxes such as alcohol, gasoline, sales tax, tolls, social security, Medicare/Medicaid etc. Please spare me the financial gobbledygook that social security is not a tax- the AARP is perhaps the most destructive lobbying group in our countries history. Sam

DomKen -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 12:27:10 PM)
Sam, While I believe some form of bailout was absolutely essential, that much capital cannot be allowed to simply vanish from an economy overnight, I also think the bailout was too easy for the financial industry. Those responsible for securitizing sub prime mortgages, creating and manipulating credit default swaps and most of teh rest of the derivatives industry should have been banned for life from working in companies that trade stocks or bonds. All the institutions should have been required to seel the government common stock for their bailout funds and the fed should have used that ownership stake to put serious reformers from outside the finance industry on the boards of the businesses in question. The US is big enough that it would be possible to be the world leader in finance, as we were for most of the 20th century, and a leading industrial/manufacturing nation. I think a number of things have combined in the last 30 to 40 years to cause us to falter indsutrially. Primarily is the baffling rise of short term only thinking. Making a little more profit now at the expense of future profitability should be cause for termination not promotion. That covers a gamut of decision making from downsizing, outsourcing etc. to cutting corporate R&D labs. Consider what the world would be like without the efforts of engineers and scientists at Bell labs and PARC. PARC is a specially telling example, they essentially invented the modern desktop computer but new management at Xerox couldn't be bothered to see the potential and closed the facility and didn't bother to patent the gui, LAN, mouse etc.. Where would Xerox be today if they had held the basic patents on the desktop computer from 1979 to 1997?

servantforuse -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 3:26:23 PM)
45 % of Americans pay No Federal income tax, and that percentage is growing. Lets not blame the top 10 % for not paying enough. A quote from Margaret Thatcher " The trouble with socialism is, eventually the rich run out of money"..

samboct -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 3:27:38 PM)
Ken I'm not sure that the bailout really did all that much other than preserve the rich folks bank accounts. The problem is that while you really wouldn't want that much "capital" to vanish overnight, the money that's been played with really isn't capital- it's a fraud- or at best a bubble. Just like the crash of the tulip market in the 17th century (think it was the 17th) in Holland- when reality sets in and a bunch of your assets are wildly overvalued, there's going to be a price to pay. The housing market was- and I suspect still is- wildly overvalued, since it's based more on the anticipated rise in the cost of a home, rather than in any rational pricing for manufacture or affordability. What happened to the idea that a house should cost no more than 2x your yearly income? Since housing represented a major chunk of the economy and it was indeed overvalued- I don't see how that chunk of "capital" doesn't vanish overnight. I certainly agree with you that the rise in short term thinking is a definite problem. I think this is a function of our tax system- pretty sure the idea of quarterly accounting goes back to Nixon-which started the short term trend, but removing the banking regulations which were enacted after the Depression has been dumb, dumb, dumb- and I'll lay that one at the feet of Reagan and all his buddies. In terms of your example of PARC- the strength of this country is not in its large corporations which become dinosaurs (and I keep pointing out that failing to something about global warming is protecting these dinosaurs) but in the ease with which new companies can be created. Now if we'd fix the tax structure so its indeed progressive to give smaller companies a fighting chance to get established, we'd be in better shape. Sam

DomKen -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 4:21:52 PM)
Certainly some contraction was needed after the real estate bubble popped but as was true when the stock bubble popped in 1929 if we let all that capital, and all the lending leveraged by the capital, disappear the results would have been disastrous. As to large vs small businesses there needs to be a balance. GM, with its plethora of brands, may have been too large to be properly managed. But auto manufacturing on any sort of efficient scale requires a big business. Very large corporations can be innovative if managed well, for instance Daimler's design of the Smart Fortwo. Of course a truly progressive tax structure would benefit smaller companies but such a dramatic overhaul of the tax code seems unlikely in the near term.

slvemike4u -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 6:05:29 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: servantforuse 45 % of Americans pay No Federal income tax, and that percentage is growing. Lets not blame the top 10 % for not paying enough. A quote from Margaret Thatcher " The trouble with socialism is, eventually the rich run out of money".. So your going to hang your hat on a plithy little comment by the high priestess of coservatism....Ronald Reagan's dearest friend Margaret Thatcher...the woman whose views have been repudiated by the British themselves.She's who you want to quote....really?

servantforuse -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 6:57:33 PM)
Obama has promised that there will be no tax increase for 95 % of Americans. That is one promise that will be impossible to keep. The middle class will bear the brunt of paying off this huge debt.

slvemike4u -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/7/2009 7:14:17 PM)
When have they not servant?.....I mean if your going to lay that on Obama...how did you feel about every other U.S. President since income tax started being levied?

MmeGigs -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/8/2009 5:12:05 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: servantforuse 45 % of Americans pay No Federal income tax, and that percentage is growing. Lets not blame the top 10 % for not paying enough. A quote from Margaret Thatcher " The trouble with socialism is, eventually the rich run out of money".. The reason that so many in the US pay no federal income tax has nothing to do with socialism. They pay no taxes because their income is low. We've replaced the decent-paying blue-collar jobs that we've sent overseas with poorly-paid retail jobs. The wages for the decent-paying blue-collar jobs that are still here have been shrinking because those employers are competing for workers with retail rather than with other decent-paying jobs. This has done a great job of keeping prices down, but has left us with more folks who need financial help and fewer folks with taxable-level income. Even with that extra pressure on tax dollars, the effective tax rate for the top 10% has not changed much in a long time. These folks are paying more in taxes because their income has increased substantially. I think we should make more taxpayers. Raise the minimum wage to $15/hr and index it to inflation. Prices would go up some, but we'd be paying closer to the real cost of the things we're buying because wages wouldn't be subsidized with tax dollars through things like the Earned Income Credit and financial assistance programs for low-income workers. We'd not only end up with more tax payers, we'd end up with a smaller total tax bill.

servantforuse -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/8/2009 5:28:31 AM)
A $15 dollar an hour minimum wage ? Small business simply cannot afford it. Under your thinking why not make it $20 an hour. If wages like that were to be mandated, every small business in the Country would be forced to close their doors..

Sanity -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/8/2009 6:27:43 AM)
President H.W. Bush famously said, "Read my lips - no new taxes" and then went back on his word, and that cost him his next election. Why should Obama held to a different standard than that? quote: ORIGINAL: slvemike4u When have they not servant?.....I mean if your going to lay that on Obama...how did you feel about every other U.S. President since income tax started being levied?

servantforuse -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/8/2009 10:37:40 AM)
He should but I won't hold my breath. You can also bet that the State run media, CNN, CBS,NBC and MSNBC will never mention it. It's a double standard that we all know exists.

samboct -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/8/2009 1:41:12 PM)
"A $15 dollar an hour minimum wage ? Small business simply cannot afford it. Under your thinking why not make it $20 an hour. If wages like that were to be mandated, every small business in the Country would be forced to close their doors.." You know- this sounds suspiciously like the bellyache about Henry Ford paying his workers $5 a day back in 1914- effectively doubling their wages. And strangely enough, there was a deep recession back then too. And Ford had lines outside his factories of people looking for work. Of course, all the other capitalist cheapskates who didn't match Ford had far more successful companies- so that Ford's market share had dropped to 57% by 1923. Three years ago, Leonhardt of the NY Times wrote this article- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/business/05leonhardt.html He puzzled over how the economy in 2006 was so successful even though the middle class was getting squeezed and wages were falling. Now we know the answer- it wasn't- it was a shell game. Sam

servantforuse -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/8/2009 2:38:56 PM)
Talk to the manager of any grocery store, restaurant or any other small business. Ask them what it would do to their company if they were forced to pay any kid that showed up for work $20 an hour.

samboct -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/8/2009 5:42:43 PM)
That depends...And let's just say $15/hr for the sake of argument. We'd see a rise in prices- probably making US goods more competitive with Chinese. Couple it with a decrease in taxes so that small businesses can put something away for a rainy day and you might have some thriving businesses. As prices increase relative to housing costs, we'll effectively have something of an inflation. Given that we've got horrific debt, some inflation actually sounds pretty good to me- better to pay off the debt with cheaper dollars. That may leave the Chinese holding our paper a bit miffed, but hey, dem's de breaks. And of course, the folks with fat bank accounts will see the relative value of their money plummet- but that also works for me. We've got too many rich folks in this country used to getting their way and not enough in the middle class. Sam

LookieNoNookie -> RE: I just did some calcs on the national debt clock (7/8/2009 5:55:54 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: samboct "A $15 dollar an hour minimum wage ? Small business simply cannot afford it. Under your thinking why not make it $20 an hour. If wages like that were to be mandated, every small business in the Country would be forced to close their doors.." You know- this sounds suspiciously like the bellyache about Henry Ford paying his workers $5 a day back in 1914- effectively doubling their wages. And strangely enough, there was a deep recession back then too. And Ford had lines outside his factories of people looking for work. Of course, all the other capitalist cheapskates who didn't match Ford had far more successful companies- so that Ford's market share had dropped to 57% by 1923. Sam...no offense meant but....you need to read a bit more history before you type. Recall "Any color is fine, so long as it's black". Other companies came in and filled a gap that Ford was insistent didn't exist. That's why he lost market share...not wages. Within 60 days, every motor car manufacturer matched Fords wages. (It's an historical fact).

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