Democrats & Liberals Archives

Clearly, there must be a conspiracy to make the numbers look worse than they really are…

Posted by: phx8 at June 1, 2012 11:20 AM

What has happened? How could the “job creators” have failed so miserably for so long and still get a free ride from conservatives? How can we still believe that if we lower taxes on the top 1% they will hire us? What kind of sickness pervades the conservative mind that we still hear them bellering this nonsense as their policy?

Posted by: j2t2 at June 1, 2012 11:30 AM

J2

Obama extended those tax cuts for 2 years and the Democrats in Congress went right along despite majorites in both Houses.

Posted by: George at June 1, 2012 1:02 PM

George, Yes he and they did and yet not enough jobs. The “job creators” have let us down despite assurances from the conservatives that extending the tax cuts would allow these “job creators” to create jobs. It is time to rethink the issue.

What we have is the conservatives telling us that giving more money to the rich motivates them to provide jobs to the rest of us. However providing more money to those out of work is counter productive as they would only spend the money and not work.

Or as George Carlin says;
“Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money.”

Posted by: j2t2 at June 1, 2012 1:51 PM

J2T2,

Since when is taking less of their money the same as “giving more money to the rich”. It is their money to begin with. You, other liberals, and the government just want to confiscate it and dish it out in your programs as you see fit.

Posted by: adam at June 1, 2012 2:36 PM

Adam, Taxes are the price of a civilized society. The earned benefits such as SS, Medicare and Unemployment Insurance are part of a civilized society. We a nation learned this over the past 100 or so years and have adapted the laws of the land accordingly. Government has obligations which they must meet and since we the people don’t want them to own the business’s and revenue sources we have taxes. Tax rates have been lowered for years, which is good, but it has caused problems for the government and us, we the people.

The rich have responsibilities as well as rights, the same as the rest of us. The lowered rates, the wars and unfunded mandates of the GWB era has put us into a self inflicted tailspin. The answer is not cutting the earned benefit programs, so the government needs additional resources to bring us out of the mess. Taxes are the means to accomplish this.

I prefer this way as opposed to the libertarian utopia of Somalia.

Posted by: j2t2 at June 1, 2012 2:58 PM

adam-
Their money to begin with? First, it starts out as money printed or codified in whatever electronic way at the Federal reserve, on the authority of Congress’s power to mint currency. Then it goes to banks who are lent the money at the Fed’s current interest rate. Then it circulates in the economy, going from one person to another, often through many middle class and poor hands before it accumulates at the top.

For crying out loud, for their income to be taxed, it’s got to be coming from somewhere else, first! Taxes are not a theft of money, they are a diversion of it. In most cases, for most people, it’s a diversion that occurs even before they get their check.

I cannot name a single functional nation which functions without taxation. I know conservatives have so radicalized themselves that they cannot conceive of anything paid for in common, but the federal government is what we pay for in common to make sure there is a functioning United States of America going forward. Freedom ain’t free.

Unfortunately, Republicans want to appear like folks riding to our financial rescue, so what they do is they tease most of us with the notion of putting money back in our pockets that belongs to us, and then turn around and hand most of the cut to those who already have more cash than they can spend. They claim this will change things for the better, but the rich don’t pay for new jobs, and they don’t share the wealth out of uncharacteristic altruism. The Bush tax cuts failed to make things better under Bush, and they haven’t helped us out of our doldrums under Obama.

You can talk about confiscation, but without taxes, you would have to worry about your wealth being confiscated by people that certainly were never elected by you, instead.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 1, 2012 4:26 PM

Adam,
In order to avoid the odious burden of taxation, in which other people are using your money to get free stuff, you should secede, and declare yourself ‘The United State of Adam.’ Naturally, the US of Adam would be tax free, and could serve as a tax haven for others who also do not wish to see their money used by underserving people to get free stuff. Being a tax haven could be hugely profitable. There’s no reason why the Cayman Islands and Switzerland should get all of the money a guy like Romney hides in order to not pay taxes. Why shouldn’t the US of Adam get a cut of that Romney tax evasion action?

Of course, the United States of America would frown on the formation of the United States of Adam. It might be necessary to relocate. I hear there’s plenty of operating room in places like Somalia, Yemen, western Pakistan, and Myanmar, veritable edens of free of governmental taxation. Let us know when you leave, and the forwarding address, or at any rate, the United States of Adam post office box. If you’re lucky, it might be the PO Box next to the one used by Romney in Bermuda.

Posted by: phx8 at June 1, 2012 5:11 PM

Adam

You are of course correct, but as you can very well see, ANY talk of limited Constitutional government and the sensible taxation to pay for it as our founders planned, will be met with fearful comparisons to war torn third world countries.

Many people just can’t comprehend life without a nanny-state providing for them and dictating how they live.

Posted by: kctim at June 1, 2012 5:46 PM

Adam

It looks like another recovery summer. How’s that stimulus working out?

We can paraphrase the old Reagan quip -

What do you call it when you wife loses her job? - a recession.

What do you call it when both your wife and you lose your jobs? - a depression.

What do you call it when Barack Obama loses his job? - a recovery.

Phx8

“The rich have responsibilities as well as rights, the same as the rest of us.”

And the rich pay more in taxes than the rest of us. If you raised the marginal tax rates to 99% on the top 1%, it still wouldn’t make much of dent in the deficit.

Like you and most people, I am at least a little jealous of people who make significantly more than I do, but to blame the bad economy on them is silly.

The Obama doldrums continue.

Posted by: C&J at June 1, 2012 6:15 PM

Now, a few words of warning on establishing the United State of Adam. As a person who has earned everything without any help from anyone else, you must be a real go-getter, unlike those lazy people who want your money just to get free stuff. Your money is your money. But first, you’ll need to convert your money into a United State of Adam currency, free from the grasps of the Federal Reserve, IRS, Democrats, Obama, and other socialists. Gold might work, although it is very heavy. After the necessary conversion, you’ll need to reach a place where you can be isolated with your money- money that you earned, by golly, in a place free from the evils of communist redistribution- but reaching that place might be difficult. You’ll need to build your own mode of transportation, and possibly your own road. It’s hard work, but you earned that money all on your own, buddy, so now a little effort should be no sweat.

Careful! Avoid contact with the locals. First, without socialist organizations like the National Health Institute and the EPA, disease could be a serious problem. Now, those locals in the governmentless region of the United States of Adam will probably be blissfully free of the pernicious evils promoted by public education, evils such as tolerance and diversity and multiculturalism, but that also might have some negative consequences for the United State of Adam… And without that jerk Holder and a legal system, and without those “Fast and Furious” ATF people, FBI, or any other protection, even a Second Amendment in the United State of Adam might not be adequate. Invest accordingly…

Posted by: phx8 at June 1, 2012 6:22 PM

C&J-
My first response to your comment was anger. But then I remembered something: After Reagan boasted about how he was going to do so much better than Carter, he led America into a worse, deeper recession, his tax cuts failing to keep unemployment from going above ten percent for ten months.

So you know what? People should realize that sometimes the grass is greener on the other side because that’s where the bulls have been fertilizing. If Americans jump over to Romney on basis of the economy, you know what? They may just wake up one day to find they’re wading in the bull****.

There’s nothing that returning to the policies of George W. Bush is going to do to return our economy to good shape, nor any of the austerities pushed on us by the conservatives trying to run away from their fiscal irresponsibility in the last decade.

We need to free ourselves of the anxiety-driven embrace of economic self-mutilation.

As for the Stimulus? Well, imagine this economy with three or four million fewer jobs.

On the other hand, let me ask a question: you folks took over Congress, whatever happened to “jobs, jobs, jobs”? All I’ve heard out of your people was more Bush policy. Why should we credit your side with anything, given what THEY’VE done for jobs? Why does Congress get a free pass for stagnation, especially since they’re inflicting austerity left and right?

I mean, to put this in a little perspective, part of what held this economy back in Reagan’s day was the anti-inflation austerity, and he got his jobs back when interest rates went down.

Why are you trying to precipitate another recession? Do you not have people scared enough to submit to your grossly unfair economic policies in the name of salvaging the economy?

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 1, 2012 6:38 PM

Stephen

Be angry if you want. By this time in Reagan’s presidency everybody felt and knew that things were getting better. What followed was a quarter century of generally good times, depending on how you want to count, either one of the best economic times in world history or THE best time in history.

History moves on. We cannot move back to the policies of Ronald Reagan nor does anybody propose moving back to the policies of George Bush. Rather we should move forward. We learned the the growing government spending under Bush/Obama did not work well. We need a more intelligent and nuanced approach that takes advantage of the ambitions and intelligence of the American people and helps create conditions where they can pursue their aspirations.

Re the stimulus - I say again, I do not oppose the stimulus per se. I say that it was implemented by people too much the prisoners of politics and w/o sufficient knowledge of the economy to do the job right.

Re another recession - people are not as stupid as Democrats think. They see what is happening in the real economy and react to that. The Obama folks, indeed, believe in form over substance. They think that they can talk their way to prosperity. Positive talk can help an economy that is already going in the right direction, but this is something Obama has not achieved.

Re imagining the country with four million fewer jobs - I don’t have to imagine much. Isn’t four million fewer jobs about the number of people who have dropped out of the job market since Obama took over? If they were still in the labor force, unemployment would be above 10%.

Posted by: C&J at June 1, 2012 7:40 PM

Stephen Daugherty started out with this paragraph to adam:

“adam-
Their money to begin with? First, it starts out as money printed or codified in whatever electronic way at the Federal reserve, on the authority of Congress’s power to mint currency. Then it goes to banks who are lent the money at the Fed’s current interest rate. Then it circulates in the economy, going from one person to another, often through many middle class and poor hands before it accumulates at the top”

And the Stephen moved on to several more paragraphs justifying taxation, redistribution of wealth, and of course “that lower taxes never helped the economy”.

I have only one question, based on several recent polls showing the flight of retirees, business owners, and individuals fleeing high tax states and relocating in lower taxation states; could Stephen Daugherty tell us why this is happening? And could Stephen Daugherty explain to us why these lower taxation states are financially secure, while the high taxation states are broke?

Posted by: Billinflorida at June 2, 2012 9:33 AM

As pertaining to Adam Ducker’s original post trying to make poison ivy look like a rose bush; meaning the economy is in shambles and as it continues to worsen, liberals like Adam Ducker continue to carry the water bucket for the Obama supporters.

I heard an interview the other day with an older man who had taken over a failed company in Silicon Valley; he turned it around and eventually it was sold on the open market. He then started another company, it became successful and he sold it on the open market. He was asked about Obama’s attack on Romney’s work with Bain Capital. His response was, Obama is an idiot with no understanding of how the economy or corporations work. When asked if a Republican could turn things around, he said, at this point it doesn’t matter who becomes president, America is headed for a REAL great depression. His statement was, you can’t keep spending money you don’t have and the politicians are only concerned with kicking the economic can down the road far enough to allow them to get what they want, retire, and dump the mess on someone else. He went on to use the European situation as an example. I’m not sure if he is right or not, but I do know Europe is in trouble.

Re/gas prices; $3.70+ a gal is not a good price for working people, although the left now accepts it as the norm. The price of oil has come down because there is less demand; that’s not hard to understand. But the price of commodities continues to rise.

Posted by: Billinflorida at June 2, 2012 9:54 AM

C&J: “What do you call it when Barack Obama loses his job? - a recovery.”

Yes, the right seeks to do to Obama what it wanted to do to Clinton and what it succeeded in doing to Carter. Get the man out, smear him as a failure, and take credit for all the success that comes in the next four years due to the policies of the previous years. This economy is on the road to recovery and the right can’t wait for a chance to cheer it on again so they can claim Mitt Romney causes it. Right now everything is a “doldrum” but I’ve already established that you didn’t think it much a “dolrum” when Bush was in charge of the economy. Funny how that works.

Posted by: Adam Ducker at June 2, 2012 10:16 AM

Billinflorida: “…poison ivy look like a rose bush; meaning the economy is in shambles and as it continues to worsen…”

The economy is doing OK. But I’ve seen you be a bad judge of that. You’re in a group that sees only the bad signs and you’re forever questioning any positive number or poll that goes against your view that the economy is in a shambles.

“Re/gas prices; $3.70+ a gal is not a good price for working people, although the left now accepts it as the norm.”

It’s higher than $3.70 for a lot of Americans but for many more Americans it’s lower than that. I paid $3.30 the other day for instance.

We do accept it as the norm. The left simply knows that drilling won’t decrease the price of oil. We’re not duped by that like the right is. As long as we rely on oil as a primary energy source we’re stuck with prices like we have. The left seeks to tackle the demand side of the curve while the right seeks to tackle the supply side.

What Obama needs to do is just take one for the team and come out against alternative energy and touting an anti-science agenda like the right is now. Then the right would have no choice but to support science, support alternative energy, and less reliance on fossil fuels. That’s how pathetic the American Right has become.

Posted by: Adam Ducker at June 2, 2012 10:29 AM

Adam

The economy is - or at least was - recovering. Obama’s mismanagement is not helping but not hurting too much, but if we had people who do a better job, economic growth will quicken. Presidents do not actually manage the economy, so it does not turn or quicken based on their particular policies. But they do create conditions by which the people can produce wealth.

What is necessary for the people to prosper are good, consistent & predictable laws and conditions. Along with maintenance of security, this is government’s main responsibility.

Obama policies have created uncertainty. Nobody knows how ObamaCare will be administered; nobody is certain what taxes will be next year. Nobody can tell you banks will be regulated. Meanwhile, government “stimulus” has helped create business models that depend on the capriciousness of favor and rules promulgated by government experts and bureaucrats rather than on the realities of conditions.

The president’s own outrageous attacks on private capital and VP Biden’s strange pronouncements, coupled with Eric Holder’s selective use of the law have produced an environment where those who must make business decisions don’t know what to do. The confused mind always says no. When government creates confusion, it leads to widespread inaction, which is what we are seeing.

Meanwhile, Obama is messing up his own prospects. His attacks on Bain have backfired. It rallied people in the OWS, but people who actually understand how business works, including many Democrats, were appalled by his ignorance.

We have a man in the presidency who was very good at what he did before in academia and is very charming, but he is in over his head.

You mention Carter and Clinton. They are not similar. Carter is more like Obama. They both came in to change things in Washington after disillusionment with previous presidents. They both rode in on great hope and popularity. Neither really understood the system they were trying to change. I actually give Carter more credit than Obama. Carter had a basic understanding of small business and he made some excellent moves in this direction, with the deregulation of trucking and railroads. But he didn’t understand how to work in Washington. Obama BOTH doesn’t understand how to work in Washington and doesn’t understand business.

It will be better for everyone involved when he goes back to academia. He can teach classes at Harvard and impress all those young and experienced minds telling them what he would have and could have done.

Posted by: C&J at June 2, 2012 10:57 AM

Adam Ducker; if you are paying $3.30 a gal for gas, it is because you live in a state with lower taxes on fuel. The national average is close to $3.70 and I guarantee in states like IL, NY and CA the state taxes make it much higher.

If drilling for more oil won’t lower the cost of crude; then tell me why a recent increase in the production of natural gas has lowered the price of natural gas? It takes an idiot to say production does not affect cost. It’s called supply and demand. When supply is up, or demand is down, the price goes down. Only in the make believe utopia of a socialist liberal could the laws of supply and demand be ignored for make believe bullshit.

Why is it that America and the world is going to totally collapse during this present lifetime? We are going to run out of fossil fuel, we are al going to die of GW, we are going to see millions of acres and some low lying countries completely submerged under rising ocean, and let’s not forget we will all die of illness unless obamacare is passed right now. I believe you would qualify as alarmists.

C&J, evidently Adam Ducker was not around when Carter pushed his famous war on oil companies and set prices; which led to shortages, long lines, and high prices. Once again, they are ignorant of supply and demand.

Posted by: Billinflorida at June 2, 2012 11:24 AM

billinflorida writes this lie:
“C&J, evidently Adam Ducker was not around when Carter pushed his famous war on oil companies and set prices; which led to shortages, long lines, and high prices.”

The first Oil Shock came in 1973, during the Nixon administration. In response to the Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel (and Syria), OPEC placed on oil embargo on the US. Oil prices skyrocketed, long lines formed at the pumps, and the economy took a huge blow. As part of the response, on November 27 1973, the Nixon administration imposed the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act, “authorizing price, production, allocation and marketing controls.”

The second Oil Shock came in 1979, during the Carter administration. In response to the Iranian Revolution and the ensuing decline in oil output, oil prices skyrocketed and long lines formed at the pumps again (although panic played as much or more of a role than shortage). In April 1979, Carter DEREGULATED oil prices, thus making the Alaskan oil fields viable. The Iran/Iraq War in 1980 gave a secondary shock.

The key diplomatic initiative, and the most successful Middle Eastern peace initiative of the past several decades, came when Carter brought Sadat and Begin together for the Camp David Accords. Carter won the Nobel Prize. His diplomatic efforts crafted a treaty which ended open conflict between Egypt and Israel ever since, and stopped the cycle of destabilizing wars involving Israel in 1956, 1967, and 1972.

Billiniflorida is lying. Carter neither launched a war against oil companies nor set price controls. In fact, Carter deregulated prices and took actions to bring Prudhoe Bay oil to American consumers much faster. In addition, Carter did more than any other modern president to stabilize Middle East, and prevent addtiional oil shocks.

That is fact. Billinflorida is lying.

Posted by: phx8 at June 2, 2012 11:54 AM

C&J-
Reagan’s employment policies were basically a wash at this point. 7.2% unemployment was the December 1980 figure. Besides, Reagan had functioning banks that weren’t high-risk betting houses, and interest rate points to burn.

Obama simply doesn’t have the monetary tools at his disposal to just flood the economy with money willy-nilly. He does have the fiscal tools, theoretically, but this Congress won’t go for that.

You can play word games, but what I want from you is a clear headed assessment of what things would have been like for the economy if three or four million additional people had lost their jobs in the years after the economy collapsed. You may blame the stimulus for everything, which odd since it provably addded jobs (thereby reducing the number of people who would have otherwise dropped out), but let’s put aside political unprovables, and ask what it would have been like for the economy to be up around 11.5 unemployment, with no end in sight.

I did an average of the rate of increase in Unemployment, and determined that if the average rate of increase had been maintained, then By October of the year 2009, we would have been at something like 11.7% unemployment, instead of 10.0. Taking the hypothetical further, I basically had the economy develop from there as it has since October 2009. This isn’t meant to be taken as anything but a hypothetical, but I think it’s interesting to work out the what ifs here.

In this case, unemployment doesn’t go down below 10.0% until February of this year.

But let’s assume something different. Let’s assume that somebody comes in and does Reagan’s policies, which is to say a huge increase in federal spending and a large decrease in interest rates and austerity measures,(It was something like 39% more outlays through fiscal 1985 from Fiscal 1982), after the fact, after we’ve hit 11.7%.

Well, unemployment at Reagan’s pace, with the changes in the months from peak unemployment reduced overlayed on that 11.7% rate gets us right about where we are now, which would be equivalent to June 1985 in terms of distance from peak unemployment. It wouldn’t be that much different if you took November of 1984’s number, because job growth plateaued at that point.

So Reagans numbers would have us back at that point earlier, in April 2011, rather than March 2012. Only, Obama wouldn’t have suffered just one month of unemployment above ten, he’d have suffered, he would have suffered 14 months.

If he had done nothing at all, and our pattern holds true? Then 35 months, almost three whole years, if we recovered at the same pace we did after Obama’s peak unemployment. 15 months of that at 11% or above.

If we had done nothing, then at that rate, we’d be at 9.9% right now. Can you imagine an economy punished with unemployment figures of that magnitude for that long?

Even if you bring up how many people have quit the workforce, you tell me, how many would have quit if they were looking at the conditions for more than 10% unemployment for almost three years? I doubt it would be a smaller figure.

Obama intervened just in time to keep a bad situation from getting much, much worse. Where do you think deficits would have been? Do you think firing people and cutting state and local spending would have helped the situation?

I mean, really, looking at the GDP figures, state and local governments were a MAJOR hole in productivity, dragging down everybody else. And now, through the magic of hostage-taking, you folks have engineered that on a federal level, and boxed the President, whoever it is, into further cuts.

I congratulate your party on doing everything it can to make a bad situation worse. And you know what? To have avoided this like Reagan avoided this, Obama would have had to had interest rates to lower (which he didn’t), and he would have had to have increased spending by about ten percent a year, which he didn’t.

The long and the short of it, is that conservative policies like the Republicans are trying to employ would have been economically lethal earlier, and right now are stagnating things needlessly. We need, if not greater spending, a shift in Federal spending towards the kind of spending that creates jobs. Obama has a plan to do that, Republicans have a plan to recreate the disaster of the last decade, during which their policies had free reign.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 2, 2012 2:20 PM

Nice quote from Wikipedia; but you are correct, the idiot Carter did no impose price controls, it was Nixon. However, Carter did not phaze out the price controls, it was Reagan. In fact Carter used laws that were introduced by Nixon and made things worse. But the credit must go to Reagan for understanding supply and demand.

“Carter and Reagan on energy
Energy policy represented one of President Ronald Reagan’s best accomplishments and worst legacies.

Under his administration, an unworkable price control and gasoline allocation system was abolished, and oil prices were left to the working of the free market. The free market worked the way it was supposed to work. Prices went up, demand went down, producers looked for new sources of oil, and the price went down and stayed down (in inflation-adjusted terms) for the next 20 or 25 years.

President Jimmy Carter inherited gasoline price controls from the Nixon administration, and began a long-range phaseout. During the oil price shock of 1979, however, he clamped down on prices and instead imposed a gasoline allocation system based on previous use. This didn’t work. Restrictions on availability of gasoline changed the patterns of use. Too much gasoline was allocated to tourist destinations, for example, and too little elsewhere. There actually were gasoline riots.

Reagan’s insight was that a market system of supply and demand works better than central planning would.”

http://philebersole.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/carter-and-reagan-on-energy/

“The second Oil Shock came in 1979, during the Carter administration. In response to the Iranian Revolution and the ensuing decline in oil output, oil prices skyrocketed and long lines formed at the pumps again (although panic played as much or more of a role than shortage).”

This cannot be true phx8; simply because Stephen Daugherty and the rest of the socialists on WB have said repeatedly that increased production WILL NOT bring the price down. Therefore a cut in production canot possibly increase the price…this is simple liberal logic.

Posted by: Billinflorida at June 2, 2012 2:28 PM

Billinflorida-
Why, indeed! You do realize that we’re also in the middle of a Shale Oil boom, right? That’s what the whole Bakken Formation stuff is about. So, we’re getting that boom. The trouble is, supply isn’t the only thing going up!

Demand has gone up as other countries around the world have developed into industrialized and post-industrial nations, as more cars have hit the streets in more places, like China and India. As nations increase their wealth, and globalism spreads it all around, well, consumption will go up, and demand with it.

That’s what folks like you don’t understand about our energy position. We’ve been getting little reprieves, with oil prices dropping after the spikes, but now supply is getting to the point where Cartel production quotas or drilled supplies in one place or another no longer have such a downward pull on price.

You think folks like me are just tree-hugging, but the fact is, we do need to seek alternatives now if we want to benefit from the inevitable changes a tightening fossil fuel energy market is going to create.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 2, 2012 2:30 PM

“Obama simply doesn’t have the monetary tools at his disposal to just flood the economy with money willy-nilly. He does have the fiscal tools, theoretically, but this Congress won’t go for that.”

He had it for the 1st two years and thank God he doesn’t anymore. Our national debt would be $26 trillion.

Posted by: Frank at June 2, 2012 2:38 PM

phx8

The shocks were a stimulus to higher prices, but the idiotic price control on gasoline are what made the whole thing a crisis. When controls were removed, prices quickly stabilized and then went generally down for the next twenty years.

I have mixed feeling about cheap gasoline, but if that is a goal the Carter policy accomplished the opposite of that goal.

If only Obama could accomplish such a “wash” he would not be in the big trouble he is in today.

Re my word games - you assume that an additional four million would have lost their jobs. Your assumption is based on the same sort of analysis that led Obama’s policy folks to claim that unemployment would have gone above 8% absent the stimulus. These models were sadly wrong. You assume that they were necessary sadly wrong only the side of higher unemployment.

If the stimulus had been applied correctly, by more competent people basing their analysis on better models, perhaps unemployment would be lower.

So the reason I answer your question with “word games” is because I do not accept the premise of the question. I believe that Obama’s generally poorly directed stimulus did indeed manage to reduce unemployment in 2009, but it did this at the expense of a robust economy today. Had he acted in a more intelligent manner, we would have suffered a little more in 2009 and been better off today. That was the trade off.

Obama and his folks thought that their intervention would produce a strong recovery in 2010 and/or the economy would being to recover by itself and they could get credit.

I do not believe that presidents have such immediate control over economies, so I do not blame Obama for the economy in general. But I know he labors under the misapprehension that he can manage the economy and that is dangerous. That is why we need to get better management.

The way I see it, the Obama folks rolled the dice and lost. THEY are the ones who chose the game and rules. Now they must pay up politically. Payback is unpleasant, isn’t it?

Posted by: C&J at June 2, 2012 2:39 PM

Stephen

Re shale gas and oil - It is possible to make an environmental argument against using fossil fuels in general, but there is absolutely no intelligent economic argument that can be deployed against them.

Increased supply will keep prices lower than they otherwise would have been. Even if domestic prices continue to rise, is it not better for people in Pennsylvania or North Dakota to benefit.

Let’s make a simple analogy. Say you are unhappy about rising food prices. Each time you go to the store, they are higher. You have a garden in your back yard. Do you refuse to use the produce as a protest against the higher prices?

Posted by: C&J at June 2, 2012 2:44 PM

C&J-
Finite resource. By necessity, it gets more expensive as the supplies go down. You might find more of it in one place or another, but it’s still finite. Additionally, many of the new finds aren’t so much new, as accessible at the price per barrel, the costs now coverable within the value of the fuel. So, new supply cannot reduce cost below that without removing that supply from the market.

Solar, on the other hand, is infinitely renewable, as is wind. It will remain available forever, and never diminish. What will diminish is the price per watt over time. That’s what’s important.

As for your last analogy, the thing I would have to ask you, is whether or not you can refresh your resources from that garden at the same rate that you refresh them from the store. Economic arguments like this depend not just on the fact that you can produce something, but that you could produce them at an equal rate, for equal cost.

Is it really less costly, especially if you have little land, to get your vegetables from a garden? There’s a reason we get our produce from mass producers now, rather than grow it ourselves.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 2, 2012 2:51 PM

Stephen

It is a finite resource only in the theoretical sense and its price depends on other considerations. At some point, we will shift to other forms of energy as the price rises. We do not need to plan for this. It will happen based on incentives over a long period.

In the shorter run, supplies grow and shrink depending on technologies. We have much more natural gas and significantly more oil available to us today than we did twenty years ago. How much we have in theoretical terms matters about as much as hypothetical goal deposits in the mountains of the moon.

Re your response to my analogy - your response shows that you understand the problem. Now apply that to energy and you have it made. The supply depends on conditions, but you would be foolish not to take advantage of an abundant supply today because you feared it would not be equally good tomorrow.

Posted by: C&J at June 2, 2012 3:22 PM

The answer is not cutting the earned benefit programs, so the government needs additional resources to bring us out of the mess. Taxes are the means to accomplish this.

Posted by: j2t2 at June 1, 2012 2:58

Libs love to talk about “earned benefits”, but are they truly “earned”?

It they are earned, does that not imply that they are paid for by the person on the receiving end? This is not the case with SS or Medicare. If the beneficiaries of these programs had paid in enough to earn the benefit neither program would be in jeopardy or require fixing every so often.

Posted by: Royal Flush at June 2, 2012 4:46 PM

C&J-
So, you’re saying that in reality, oil resources are infinite? No, it’s finite. As for not needing to plan for it? Well, if you want all the outcomes to be haphazard, if you want our interests to be dealt with on a short-term, rushed basis, sure. We can repeat what happened in 2006-8, or back in the Seventies as many times as you want to.

Technology will only get you so far before cost and energy requirement become a concern. There is no sense using more energy to extract the same amount. You realize, don’t you, that we have waste quite a bit of natural gas just to extract tar sands oil? Arguably, that natural gas could be better used just creating good old fashioned energy all by itself.

As for your analogy, I would say that if we’re dealing with how we extract it, and what pace, the pace is being set by demand that isn’t diminishing, but the oil extraction is going to take place at an increasingly limited pace. Technology may improve what stocks we are able to access tomorrow, but cutting edge technology often brings with it a premium of its own.

Royal Flush-
Which do you want to pay, the cost of paying, or the cost of not paying, at least not from this side? Medical costs already go up without much restraint. Would getting rid of Medicare as we know it guarantee better deals, or would the companies simply divide and conquer?

As for social security, the amount people get does depend on what they pay in. More to the point, though, do you want to pay the social and economic costs of having these people destitute, dependent on their children?

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 2, 2012 7:51 PM

Stephen

For our lifetimes they are infinite. Nothing is forever.

If/when/as oil and gas become rarer, the prices will rise and people will make other choices. We will stop using fossil fuels as a primary source of energy long before they “run out”. As somebody said, the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stone.

IMO alternatives such as solar and wind will indeed come to be used more. This will be greatly helped when we develop better batteries. I am sure there will also be some forms of energy currently not contemplated. But for the here and now we have oil and gas.

We have a tautology. People use particular forms of energy because they are cheap or convenient. When they stop being one or the other, they change. You don’t need to make intellectual arguments about what something would cost because we know what they DO cost. If extracting energy from oil sands or shale is too expensive, nobody will do it. The only way this will not happen is if government gets involved to support or subsidize the process. So our common problem/threat is politicization.

Re investing in energy - I invested in hydrogen energy - lost money. I invested in bio-ethanol and lost money. I invested in advanced batteries … you are getting the picture. Some things just don’t work. Investors are always trying to find those advances you are talking about and they are willing to risk loss to get at the winners. What you advocate is already happening. You really cannot speed it up. Government can help with basic research but should not be an investor.

Royal and Stephen

Re SS - some/most people get more than they paid in. That is the problem. If they got what they paid in plus a reasonable interest rate, we would not have a problem, as Royal points out.

Re having some people dependent on their children, that may not be a terrible idea. Beyond that, prudent people should save for their retirement. Government can make that easier with tax deferred or tax free savings accounts. Current tax laws do not encourage saving. We should all advocate rules that allow rollover of investments w/o incurring capital gains tax liability. That would be very helpful in building retirement portfolios so that more old folks don’t have to depend exclusively on SS or their children.

Posted by: C&J at June 2, 2012 8:51 PM

Stephen

Interesting article for you re solar - http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/06/solar-power

Posted by: C&J at June 2, 2012 10:30 PM

Libs love to talk about “earned benefits”, but are they truly “earned”?

I’ve paid into the SS and Medicare systems for 40 years, at the rates called for by Congress and administrators of these systems. So why would they not be earned benefits Royal? Certainly by paying into the systems I have “earned” the services of these systems when it is my turn to collect on said services.

It they are earned, does that not imply that they are paid for by the person on the receiving end? This is not the case with SS or Medicare. If the beneficiaries of these programs had paid in enough to earn the benefit neither program would be in jeopardy or require fixing every so often.

I don’t believe they have to be paid by the person on the receiving end at all Royal, in order for them to be earned. I have prepaid for many years, technically to benefit others but at the same time benefiting myself and my family at a later date. Do you not,Royal, when you collect a cut of your employees commission when they sell an insurance plan earn your cut? Yet you did less than what is expected of those paying into the earned benefits programs. Posted by: j2t2 at June 3, 2012 12:30 AM

However, Carter did not phaze out the price controls, it was Reagan. In fact Carter used laws that were introduced by Nixon and made things worse. But the credit must go to Reagan for understanding supply and demand.

In April 1979, Jimmy Carter signed an executive order which was to remove market controls from petroleum products by October 1981, so that prices would be wholly determined by the free market. Ronald Reagan signed an executive order on January 28, 1981 which enacted this reform immediately,[14] allowing the free market to adjust oil prices in the US.[15] This ended the withdrawal of old oil from the market and artificial scarcity, encouraging increased oil production.[citation needed] The US Oil Windfall profits tax was lowered in August 1981 and removed in 1988, ending disincentives to US oil producers. Additionally, the Alaskan Prudhoe Bay Oil Field entered peak production, supplying the US West Coast with up to 2 million bpd of crude oil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_oil_glut

The USSR had become a major oil producer before the glut. The drop of oil prices contributed to the nation’s final collapse.

OPEC had relied on the price elasticity of demand of oil to maintain high consumption, but underestimated the extent to which other sources of supply would become profitable as prices increased. Electricity generation from nuclear power and natural gas;[20] home heating from natural gas; and ethanol blended gasoline all reduced the demand for oil. New passenger car fuel economy rose from 17 mpg in 1978 to more than 22 mpg in 1982, an increase of more than 30 percent.[21]

http://www.enotes.com/topic/1980s_oil_glut

So it seems that Reagan has stolen much of the credit from Carter for the well just about everything. Reagan is and was an opportunist who was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately the conservatives who idolize Reagan also believe the supply side economics was the reason for the recovery from the OPEC caused “malaise” of the Carter years.However the voodoo economic system wasn’t the reason. It was oil prices returning to near record lows IMHO that gave Reagan this unearned free ride into leader of the cult status. He is however as much a fraud as conservative ideology is today.

Posted by: j2t2 at June 3, 2012 9:40 AM

j2t2 & Royal

Royal’s point approaches a tautology. If indeed people pay enough into SS and Medicare, then there is no need for them to be in any financial difficulty.

The problem is that your payments and mine have been going to support growing benefits for current and past beneficiaries. When this was a spread among our large generation to pay for the smaller generations that went before us, we could afford to be generous.

As our generation retires and lives a long time in retirement, smaller generations of our children and grandchildren will need to shoulder a growing burden to pay for us. This is unjust to them.

Social Security really does resemble a Ponzi scheme or at least a chain letter. It depends on the continued growing contributions from new payers.

SS has done an admirable job of helping virtually to eliminate poverty among senior citizens. But like almost anything born 80 years ago, it needs an update to adapt to current conditions vastly different from those when it was created.

If you think you are getting a raw deal, why don’t you join us in advocating personal accounts, so that people in future can get what they deserve based directly on what they contribute?

Posted by: C&J at June 3, 2012 9:53 AM

C&J-
Tautologies are logical creatures. In the real world, we have feedbacks, and though some are simple, others are not. One negative feedback to building new infrastructure is the degree to which old infrastructure crowds competitors out. Germany is over there producing record amounts of solar power, and that place sure as heck isn’t so sunshiny or high latitude. We? We’re beginning to slump, because the current Congress is not suited to changing the status quo. Their solution is more support for fossil fuels.

The truth is, though solar panels are most efficient when you have a lot of direct sunshine, they’ll create current when just about any light hits them. What they’re working on now are batteries, ultracapacitors, and other methods for storing energy. Once they got that problem licked, solar and windpower’s inconstancy becomes less of a problem.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 3, 2012 1:30 PM

Stephen

It depends on the relative costs. I could grow bananas in North Dakota if I threw enough resource at it. This is precisely the problem. It is a little stupid of the Germans to produce solar electricity in their cloudy land. Even if they were interested exclusively in environmentalism and not cost, it would be best for them to invest in solar facilities in sunnier places.

Did you read the link I gave you? It is not meant to prove or disprove either of our positions, but is merely interesting. When reading that same Economist magazine, however, I found an interesting discussion of gas. I wrote re with the quote.

“America’s emissions have fallen by 450m tonnes in the past five years, more than any other country’s. Ironically, given its far greater effort to tackle climate change, the European Union has seen its emissions rise, partly because of an increase in coal-fired power generation in response to Europe’s high gas price.”

Germany is a big part of the EU. Maybe their efforts would be better spent elsewhere.

Posted by: C&J at June 3, 2012 2:40 PM

C&J-
Why is it stupid? This isn’t like bananas, where you have to put all that effort in to get anything. This is the photoelectric effect, and even cloudy days feed light to the solar panels. Germany generated nearly 22 GWs of power at one point, so they’re not doing that badly. I mean, at the very least, its power they don’t have to use fossil fuels for.

I mean, I’m realistic. Right now it doesn’t necessarily meet all their needs, but even then it’s a good replacement for the less green sources. And for their trouble, they’ve generated no nuclear waste, no fly ash as from coal, no carbon emissions whatsoever, and they’ll never need to buy more fuel to support that generation capacity.

Your response, each time, seems to be to say “oh, it’s not working perfectly, lets go back to the old standbys.”

Which is precisely the sort of thinking that means America isn’t number one at these things, number one at reducing carbon emissions, creating the technology that China might pay for, that other countries might want more. Even China has to consider what it pays for coal, and the consequences of the pollution and everything. They know the value of the market, which is why they pulled their market manipulation with the rare earth ores.

My point would be, if you wait for necessity to compel this change, you pay for it by having to go through this premium phase at a time when necessity means people have you over the barrel on price. The companies that wait for somebody else to innovate in the market are the ones that end up being made obsolete. Just look like Blockbuster and the record industry.

The market, in my opinion, is not a substitute for an energy or technology policy, and is no substitute for individual judgment. As a matter of fact, individual judgment is what makes the market what it is. If people aren’t being encouraged by forces in our society to innovate, to move forward, many will just sit on their butts and encourage others to do likewise. Personally, I’m tired of seeing our society in a holding pattern it knows is not in its best interest, simply because a powerful few profit from it. I have nothing against people profiting from energy and technology, but the American people as a whole should not have to give up their prosperity and security to ensure theirs, otherwise, what’s the point of a country like ours?

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 3, 2012 6:37 PM

C&J,

There is little doubt that the Europeans have done a better job at controlling emissions. US emissions have trended upward with economic recovery. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-rise-as-economy-recovers-from-recession/story-e6frg6so-1226329739931

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Steep_increase_in_global_CO2_emissions_despite_reductions_by_industrialized_countries_999.html

Posted by: Rich at June 3, 2012 6:42 PM

Stephen

Every decision has costs and benefits. If we install lots of solar panels in cloudy Germany, we are choosing an expensive energy solution. If the goal is to avoid CO2 emissions, this is not the most efficient means. The Germans might reduce more CO2 by using the available gas to more quickly replace coal and/or invest in energy generation using solar in places more propitious. Or they might increase their use of biomass.

You probably know the story of flowers from Kenya. They imported them to Europe using airplanes. Environmentalists cried foul. But a careful analysis found that flowers delivered in Amsterdam from Kenya actually produced less CO2 than those locally grown, since conditions in Kenya were so much better for this sort of thing. You could argue that Europeans should not have flowers at all during their long gray seasons, but if you want to have flowers the clear winner is to import them.

Bottom line - our German friends are using lots of resource to produce not much result. They made a bad choice based on imperfect analysis and ideology rather than truth.

My response it NOT to criticize what is not working perfectly. I do not expect perfect ever. But when there are better alternatives available, I suggest we use them.

BTW - you mention fly-ash. This is not the problem you think it is. Fly-ash is a useful component of concrete and can reduce the amount of Portland cement needed. Portland cement manufacture, as you know, is a significant source of CO2. In fact, cement production produces around 5% of all the CO2 emissions worldwide. This green thing is harder than it seems.

Rich

I suspect the authors of your article know they are being deceptive but let me explain it to you.

They choose 1990 as the base date. This is important because in the 1990s the sadly inefficient industries of the former communist block closed down. This created a fantastic one time bonus for Europe unrelated to any emissions targets. Beyond that, the coal industry of the British Midlands was phasing out, again for good old fashioned economic reasons, while gas from the North Sea was coming on line. Gas produce 1/3-1/2 as much CO2 as coal.

If you look at the figures since 2000, they are very different and in the last five years, US emissions have dropped while European ones have increased. This is a better comparison time, w/o the extraordinary single and unrepeatable event of the collapse of communism. Communism, as everybody now knows, was not only bad for people but also a disaster for the environment.

This comes despite the fact that the US generally has grown faster economically than the Europeans.

The promises of politicians European or American, including President Obama have had little or no effect on the emissions. Although the Obama doldrums has kept economic growth lower and so emissions lower. American emissions will not increase much and will drop as we replace coal with newly abundant natural gas (as the Brits did in the 1990s) and as we drive less (as we are doing even in the recovery_

Posted by: C&J at June 3, 2012 7:10 PM

C&J-
Again you’re using the example of a grown product, which only brings returns after considerable time. This option, however, brings returns every day. You talk about their return not being much, except this record they set met almost half their energy needs. How much space did they set aside how much did they pay for it? Would coal or nuclear plants provide the same power much cheaper, once you added in all the subsidies and everything?

As for the drop in emissions, you complain that Rich was taking data from a time when Europe got a one-time reduction in carbon emissions. Have you yourself forgotten the big, unrepeatable event that happened between 2007 and 2012 that would reduce carbon emissions in the US?

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 3, 2012 7:43 PM

Royal’s point approaches a tautology. If indeed people pay enough into SS and Medicare, then there is no need for them to be in any financial difficulty.

The reality is we have C&J. People who received paychecks paid into SS, much more than was needed to fund the previous generation. So mythology not tautology comes to mind.

The problem is that your payments and mine have been going to support growing benefits for current and past beneficiaries. When this was a spread among our large generation to pay for the smaller generations that went before us, we could afford to be generous.

Why do conservatives act so surprised about the baby boomers. Is this really the first time you guys have heard of the boomers retiring? The fact is C&J, is those of us that earn a paycheck subject to SS contributions have been paying much more into SS than was necessary to fund Mom and Dad’s SS. We have paid in enough to support our greater numbers of SS recipients but the money was used and the SS trust fund received treasury notes instead.SO the government will need to borrow to fund the SS program in the future. Seems a shame we cut taxes as we went to war and ran up a huge debt but obligations are obligations. The choice for us boomers is are we going to screw the next generation to save a few bucks in taxes.

Posted by: j2t2 at June 3, 2012 7:57 PM

Stephen

The Germans have not met even a small % of their energy needs with solar and they probably never will.

Re subsidies for coal etc. I would eliminate all subsidies. But there is nothing in the fossil fuels industry that get even a small % of the subsidies wind and solar get per unit of energy produced.

Re the emissions drop - the economic downturn that his us hit Europe even harder, so it doesn’t figure into a comparison. Beyond that, our emissions were dropping in 2006, at a time of robust economic growth. Europe never managed this.

In any case, the collapse of communism was the biggest single piece of environmental good news any of is likely to experience. Of course, the discovery of fracking technology might be almost as good and we will/are benefiting from that.

Posted by: C&J at June 3, 2012 8:31 PM

As our generation retires and lives a long time in retirement, smaller generations of our children and grandchildren will need to shoulder a growing burden to pay for us. This is unjust to them.

Unfair, what about paying to nation build in Iraq for years. Why aren’t we discussing the military and war budget that will financially enslave the next 2 generations under the pretense of self defense. Seems with immigration and the boomer generation stepping up to the plate and demanding to pay their fair share of taxes we wouldn’t need to leave the grand kids in a mess.

Social Security really does resemble a Ponzi scheme or at least a chain letter. It depends on the continued growing contributions from new payers.

The fix is simple raise the ceiling on the current 104k level.

SS has done an admirable job of helping virtually to eliminate poverty among senior citizens. But like almost anything born 80 years ago, it needs an update to adapt to current conditions vastly different from those when it was created.

Returning to where we were 100 years ago isn’t an update C&J. Since conservatism has become the reigning mindset in this country we have went downhill in almost every category tracked. yet we continue to have these mythologies dominate our conversations.

If you think you are getting a raw deal, why don’t you join us in advocating personal accounts, so that people in future can get what they deserve based directly on what they contribute?

I already have a 401k why would I want one from an insurance program? As it stands we do get what we deserve based upon what we contribute. Those that contribute more over the years gets a larger monthly check. Is that to fair for conservatives?

Posted by: j2t2 at June 3, 2012 8:44 PM

j2t2

Re being surprised by the baby boom - we have been talking a about this for decades. President Bush tried to reform the system but establishment interests and Democrats blocked it.

Re paying into the system - I do not think we have paid in enough. If you invested the 12% of your salary at an average 3% return (after inflation this is normal and good), you probably would not have enough to live off in retirement AND pay your medical insurance.

Re taking from the fund. That was the fault of Lyndon Johnson, who wanted to fund his great society w/o raising taxes. Others followed.

However the same people who paid in SS and got “ripped off” paid these lower taxes, made possible by the diversion of the money. So it just moved money from one pocket to the other. “We” were not ripped off. We paid relatively more in SS and relatively less in taxes. It washed.

Re screwing the future generations - that is one reason I think we should reform SS, so that we do NOT rip off the kids, at least in this case.

We should get our fiscal course in order. I think this means raising some taxes but also cutting spending.

As I have said on many occasions, let’s go back to the last time when things seemed to be okay, 1999. We can go to the same % of GDP for government and tax to that level plus a sinking fund to pay the debt. Don’t tax more; don’t tax less. That would mean your side must accept spending cuts and my side has to accept tax increases.

Nobody in power is really advocating these solutions, but we should think about them.

Posted by: C&J at June 3, 2012 9:05 PM

j2t2

Your additional response came in as I was writing mine. I would only add a few things.

Re reforming SS - I do not advocate “going back” at all. I advocate going forward. It is small c conservative to keep SS w/o reforms and it is small p progressive to advocate change. We have kind of changed places here.

Re calling SS an insurance program - insurance against what? In 1933 it was perhaps insurance against living too long, since the life expectancy was lower than the retirement age. Today most people live beyond 65. You really do not call something insurance if you are reasonably sure that almost everyone will be affected by the condition.

Re 401K - I have a system where I pay in money and my employer matches up to 5%. I save 10% with the employer match I am saving 15% of my income. I have been doing this for twenty-five years. This + savings + SS + pensions will be my retirement income. Nobody is supposed to depend only on SS. You and I have planned ahead. We should encourage others to do so.

Re SS. I have been paying the highest SS since 1999. In the interests of helping young people, I would be willing to take a smaller SS benefit than I am “entitled” to. I also plan to work as long as I am able. You should retire when you cannot work anymore and/or that you can afford it out of your own savings. I don’t understand how some of us have come to believe we are entitled to a government supported time of leisure. Reforms should take into account factors like this.

Posted by: C&J at June 3, 2012 9:18 PM

Re being surprised by the baby boom - we have been talking a about this for decades. President Bush tried to reform the system but establishment interests and Democrats blocked it.

GWB tried to privatize the SS system, it is a bad idea and the dems rightfully rejected it for the nonsense it is.

Re taking from the fund. That was the fault of Lyndon Johnson, who wanted to fund his great society w/o raising taxes. Others followed.

So why not reform this instead of using “reform” as code for privatizing SS. GWB and the conservatives think that by putting our retirement in the hands of Wall St. we will be better off!

However the same people who paid in SS and got “ripped off” paid these lower taxes, made possible by the diversion of the money. So it just moved money from one pocket to the other. “We” were not ripped off. We paid relatively more in SS and relatively less in taxes. It washed.

Unless of course you made more than the ceiling at the time right?

Re screwing the future generations - that is one reason I think we should reform SS, so that we do NOT rip off the kids, at least in this case.

Does reform mean privatize C&J?

…. That would mean your side must accept spending cuts and my side has to accept tax increases.

Does this going back to ‘99 plan include funds to cover the additional debt incurred and funds to cover the additional costs for the differences in commodities since ‘99?

Posted by: j2t2 at June 3, 2012 10:43 PM

j2t2

Reform would mean - means testing benefits (“rich guys might get less); raising retirement ages and allowing more private accounts for younger workers.

Re raising the caps - that is more a form of redistribution of income than fairness. The potential benefits are capped, which means that contributions should also be capped. The SS system is already very redistributive, with lower earners getting a bigger share than their contributions would merit and higher earners getting a smaller share.

Re going back to ‘99 - we would establish a sinking fund to pay off the debt, although if we merely stabilize it by balancing the books the debt will decline as a % of GDP as the GDP grows. It is not too late. If we balance the books soon, we will not have a wrenching problem later. We were actually doing okay until 2007. In 2006, we had record high revenues. If we had maintained spending at 1999 levels, we would have run a surplus in 2006.

The different prices for commodities should make no difference, since commodities are counted as part of the GDP and we are talking % of GDP as spending target.

Posted by: C&J at June 4, 2012 12:05 AM

C&J-
Give me some numbers, a nice little ratio, if you will, about the ratio of fossil fuel subsidies to green subsidies. I know the Right Wing media tends to have a distorting effect, but the difference probably won’t be in green energy’s favor.

Common sense-wise, I would not expect any new energy source or infrastructure starting out to be more efficient per subsidy dollar than it’s counterpart. The main questions are A) Why does the Fossil Fuel Energy Sector, with tens of billions of dollars in profit a year need subsidies, and
B) Why are Republicans, who personally saw the need to put in many of the subsidies, especially those that were in that 2005 energy bill, so opposed to subsidizing alternatives.

If you clear away the brush of obfuscating rhetoric, you can plainly see that what we have is not a libertarian energy policy that favors oil and gas merely because the market does, but an explicitly tilted playing field, which Republicans are trying to tilt further to help their contributors in that industry by doing the things, like opposing environmental regulations,supporting subsidies and opposing new sources of energy that might displace them.

We need a new policy. We have the oil prices we do because it’s getting harder to get to a cheap supply, and whatever discounts consumers enjoy through those subsidies, they lose over time through the tax dollars required to invest in them, or pay back the money borrowed in order to let the fossil fuel companies win the market.

A subsidy is an act explicitly meant to change the weight of consumer choices in the market, so that an industry can develop more, expand. Solar power is nearly omnipresent. Somewhere, the sun is shining, and even where it’s not, it still generates something. If we encourage, through energy policy, the development of batteries and other forms of storage to take up the excess during the day, we can make solar and wind more stable energy sources.

But if we continue the status quo, we will be dealing with a much more stressful transition, when the time comes, an energy crisis that will likely have economic results.

As for going back to ‘99 budgets? Good God that will never happen. Why do you think this economy can handle losing 1.5 Trillion dollars worth of economic activity? Public sector layoffs and budget cuts are already weighing down heavily on the GDP as it is. We don’t need to balance the budget as it was more than ten years ago, we need to deal with it as we have it now, with the economy we have now.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 4, 2012 8:28 AM

Stephen, According to the Institute For Energy Research, Renewable energy subsidies are 6.4 times greater than fossil fuel subsidies, reported on 31 May 2012.According to CBO rates for 2011 16 Billion was allocated for renewables and 2.5 Billion for fossil.

Posted by: KAP at June 4, 2012 11:56 AM

Reform would mean - means testing benefits (“rich guys might get less); raising retirement ages and allowing more private accounts for younger workers.

Private accounts means trusting Wall ST. with OASDI. Trusting a Fox to guard the chickens. Why is it conservatives cannot tell the difference between a 401k and an insurance plan. Just because it doesn’t fit your scenario doesn’t mean it isn’t an insurance program, C&J. Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance. So when your 25 and are killed in a car wreck your daughter who is 5 can survive. When you are disabled and cannot work you can survive.

Not to mention any safeguards put into place to protect us from the Banksters would soon be overturned as unelected representatives bribe our elected representatives with campaign monies. It is after all easier for Wall ST. to have laws changed to benefit themselves than it is for our elected representatives to make changes to OASDI.

Posted by: j2t2 at June 4, 2012 12:05 PM

On a lighter note…Maureen Dowd writing in the June 2nd edition of the NY Times writes;

“The president who started off with such dazzle now seems incapable of stimulating either the economy or the voters. His campaign is offering Obama 2012 car magnets for a donation of $10; cat collars reading “I Meow for Michelle” for $12; an Obama grill spatula for $40, and discounted hoodies and T-shirts. How the mighty have fallen.”

“To a very real degree, 2008’s candidate of hope stands poised to become 2012’s candidate of fear,” John Heilemann wrote in New York magazine, noting that because Obama feels he can’t run on his record, his campaign will resort to nuking Romney.”

“In his new book, “A Nation of Wusses,” the Democrat Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, wonders how “the best communicator in campaign history” lost his touch.”

” On Thursday, Bill Clinton once more telegraphed that he considers Obama a lightweight who should not have bested his wife. Bluntly contradicting the Obama campaign theme that Romney is a heartless corporate raider, Clinton told CNN that the Republican’s record at Bain was “sterling.”

Posted by: Royal Flush at June 4, 2012 1:55 PM

Royal Flush-
The key here is that you have beaten and beaten and beaten on the guy, the economy’s still crap, but his numbers are right around fifty.

All that effort, and he still has a chance to win.

After four years of vitriol that could peel the paint from your house and give everybody permanent orange afros, your guy is still running second place to the man you made your target.

What’s worse, is that if the Republicans don’t go negative, don’t make this all about hating and blaming Obama, they’ve got literally nothing to talk about! No achievements that people would see as positive, just obstruction, bills that go nowhere but strut their political stuff, and months and months of immoderate rhetoric that will be played back day after day during the campaign to ill effect.

The Republican Party is tired, its ideas are tired, it’s candidate is tired. Obama, for all the scorn you’ve dropped on him, has endured.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 4, 2012 3:49 PM

Sorry SD, these are prominent dems dishing obama.

Posted by: Royal Flush at June 4, 2012 4:43 PM

j2t2

Private accounts - I prefer personal accounts - will not trust Wall Street. It means that I will trust myself.

I would like to see personal accounts that could include a wider variety of investments. For example, I invest in forestry. Forestry can be an excellent investment and it is the epitome of long-term thinking. The problem is that it produces no returns for many years and then big ones that are heavily taxed. It would be great if investments like this could be in a retirement fund, untaxed or tax differed as a retirement account.

Re protection from “banksters” - I protect myself from banksters. If more of us were willing and able to do this, the whole system would work better.

Stephen

KAP gave the figures on subsidies.

Re 1999 - we target that % of GDP spent by government.

Don’t you agree that 1999 was basically a good year for the economy? At the time, it seemed like neither conservatives nor liberals were completely content, which was probably a sign of balance.

Re energy transition - you really cannot plan ahead as you think. We use the energy sources that are most convenient and least expensive until they stop being those things. Then we change. The change comes gradually and we adjust. The shocks we suffered in the 1970s were politically motivated (Arab, Iranian, price controls) or other random shocks. This could not be avoided. It creates disruptions when we move from one primary form of energy to another and/or the mix changes.

It is interesting to note that the shocks of the 1970s have been completely reversed and were by the 1980s. Today we have access to more oil and gas than we did in 1973.

I understand that in theory there is less, but what matters is what you can get. In 1000, oil was just a nuisance in most places. You would not want land with oil bubbling up. Such land was considered cursed. Even if you lived on top of what are now Saudi oil fields AND you wanted oil, you would have none, since you would have lacked technology to get it or even know it was there.

Re Obama - he is a weak president and in many ways an accidental president. He showed up at the right time with the right characteristics. His lack of qualifications were glossed over by his assuring manner and the fact that anyone who questioned him could be portrayed as a racist.

Now we have see what he has wrought and even Democrats (as Royal quotes) know he is not up to the job. They will stick with him because they have no other choice. They hope he will win in order to preserve their places, but they also hope, against experience, that he will do better in a second four years.

Posted by: C&J at June 4, 2012 8:49 PM

” On Thursday, Bill Clinton once more telegraphed that he considers Obama a lightweight who should not have bested his wife. Bluntly contradicting the Obama campaign theme that Romney is a heartless corporate raider, Clinton told CNN that the Republican’s record at Bain was “sterling.”

Royal Clinton made a good point. Why attack Romney for Bain when it is his economics that are the problem.

Former President Bill Clinton warned Monday that a Mitt Romney presidency would be “calamitous” for the nation and the world, going further than even President Barack Obama in depicting the consequences of a return to Republican rule of the White House.

Read more: http://tdn.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/clinton-romney-would-be-calamitous-for-us/article_14c50a5e-61e2-5893-aaf0-0c4b754b8334.html#ixzz1wt8UanJn

Posted by: j2t2 at June 5, 2012 12:05 AM

Private accounts - I prefer personal accounts - will not trust Wall Street. It means that I will trust myself.

Putting your money in a mattress isn’t the answer for most of us though C&J. But that’s ok Wall ST. loves your attitude they eat people like you for lunch. Their computers are faster and their schemes are better than that of an individual investor. Sure there may be exceptions to the rule but that confirms the rule.

Re protection from “banksters” - I protect myself from banksters. If more of us were willing and able to do this, the whole system would work better.

See above C&J.

I would like to see personal accounts that could include a wider variety of investments. For example, I invest in forestry. Forestry can be an excellent investment and it is the epitome of long-term thinking. The problem is that it produces no returns for many years and then big ones that are heavily taxed. It would be great if investments like this could be in a retirement fund, untaxed or tax differed as a retirement account.

Sounds good but it is still a 401k plan C&J. It’s not OASDI. What happens when your trees are young and the market is down and your injured and unable to work at the age of 27. Other than firewood….

Or your turning 77 years old (the new conservative retirement age) and the trees are found to have some imported insect killing them off and making the wood unusable for anything other than firewood….

Look it seems to me C&J, the problem conservatives have here is the idea that someone may get more out of SS than they do. That someone else may benefit from “their” money. How far am I off the mark on this?

Posted by: j2t2 at June 5, 2012 12:27 AM

BillinFlorida:

“Adam Ducker; if you are paying $3.30 a gal for gas, it is because you live in a state with lower taxes on fuel. The national average is close to $3.70 and I guarantee in states like IL, NY and CA the state taxes make it much higher.”

I’m paying 3.20 this week actually and then I typically get a 7 to 15 cent discount on top of that if I buy gas where I shop for groceries. Gasoline national average was below 3.70 and is way below it now as prices continue to fall. I don’t deny that some pay even over 4 dollars but the vast majority of the country is paying less than 3.70. This is not to suggest that price is great but it is to counter your attempt to ignore falling prices by exaggerating the price that some are paying. Conservatives on this site were watching for five dollar gas a few months back but it never even reached four before it started to decline again.

“Only in the make believe utopia of a socialist liberal could the laws of supply and demand be ignored for make believe bullshit. … Once again, they are ignorant of supply and demand.”

Thanks for that, Bill. Having noted previously that I believe liberals are more concerned with demand while conservatives are more concerned with supply, I appreciate your suggestion that I think the laws of supply and demand should be ignored. Of course it’s much more complex than you’d have us believe. Liberals are calling for investment in alternatives but your side keeps pretending they’ll never be useful. You’d crush the space race today if Kennedy was president with you folks in the country.

“I believe you would qualify as alarmists.”

I think liberals know a thing or two about alarmism having lived through the Bush years that your side put us through. You probably voted for Bush twice. Am I right? You probably live in a world where you think the Earth is young, that evolution is “just a theory” and that global warming is a complex conspiracy to hide the truth about the environment for multiple gains inside and outside of the scientific community. Tell me when I say something that is wrong about you. I don’t mean to attack you but your additude and name calling makes you particullarly anoying even as you spread misinformation and lies about the Carter years to further your conservative world view.

Posted by: Adam Ducker at June 5, 2012 10:28 AM

J2t2

I always worry that I am just stupid and maybe somebody is ripping me off surreptitiously. But I have been investing for more than thirty years now using my simple minded methods. In that time, I have managed to go from a poor guy with nothing – in fact with a negative net worth, to a having a fairly comfortable life. If those shark-like guys ripped me off, they did it in such a way as to leave me well-off and with enough funds to pay for my retirement even if I live to be 105. I don’t try to beat these guys at the timing of buying and selling. My best investment, however, has been forestry. I now have almost 500 acres of pine, that literally grows more valuable every year and it is really fun to manage the investment. I suppose the local timber firms also don’t pay me top dollar for my pulp and timber, but they pay me enough. But it was the investments in the stock market that produced the initial capital for this fun investment.

I think we need to diversity our investments. I do not advocate, as president Bush never advocated, that we get rid of SS entirely, but rather that we supplement it with personal accounts. I have been able to do this kind of investment because I have been smart/lucky with my work and money. I simply want to let others have the kind of opportunities I do.

“Look it seems to me C&J, the problem conservatives have here is the idea that someone may get more out of SS than they do. That someone else may benefit from “their” money. How far am I off the mark on this?”

I will get less SS than I pay in and lower wage earners will get more. I don’t have a problem with redistribution like this within reason. But I believe in a “team approach” to life. We all have a right to expect help from others but that comes with a duty to do better than we think we can and do our part. I indeed do not like people to ride free on my work or anybody else. But the big reason I think we need to reform SS is because it will run out of money unless we choose to overtax our kids. I don’t want to rip them off so that people who were profligate in their own youth can be guaranteed complete comfort. SS, as originally proposed was supposed to provide a minimum for those who had no other resources and a supplement for the more prudent, not as an income for people to have leisure. It may need to return to that.

Posted by: C&J at June 5, 2012 5:27 PM

j2t2

Thinking a little more re your question about not wanting people to get my money - I think it is a matter of deserving or not. I give lots of money to charity and I don’t mind sharing what I have. I don’t like people who don’t deserve what I give them. I don’t like people who are asking for a lot and not prepared to do their part. I worry about this.

I sometimes give money to beggars on the street. I know most of them are just going to buy booze or waste the money, so how do I decide who to give money? I give money if they have a very good story and they take the time to tell it. I give money if I am convinced that the person is a veteran. I don’t give money to those who think they deserve it or the ones who have signs that say, “will work for food.” On a couple occasions I have asked them how much work they would do for food and gotten obscene responses.

Posted by: C&J at June 5, 2012 5:46 PM

I will get less SS than I pay in and lower wage earners will get more. I don’t have a problem with redistribution like this within reason.

There are so many variables C&J that I can’t see how you can make that statement. First of all it depends on how much you earned over the years, As an example someone that averaged 60K the past 20 years will have benefits of 1900 per month. Someone that averaged 32k will have benefits of roughly 1300.

Secondly you do not know how long you will live, if the “lwe” outlives you by a decade perhaps they will earn more than you, but if you both live to the norm then no they won’t.

But the big reason I think we need to reform SS is because it will run out of money unless we choose to overtax our kids.

The answer is to raise the ceiling on income to $250k or so, C&J. It will be solvent for years to come. If you prefer to not burden your children perhaps the answer would be to voluntarily forgo SS until or unless you need it.

I don’t want to rip them off so that people who were profligate in their own youth can be guaranteed complete comfort.

Complete comfort? SS doesn’t pay enough to provide complete comfort. It seems to me your seeking retribution against those you deem not worthy. Your asking us to assume that all “lwe’s” are that way due to their profligate lifestyle in their younger days, aren’t you C&J? It may surprise you that a lot of good honest people started out with more rungs on the ladder to climb. I also wonder if your measuring success only on the amount of money one accumulates in their lifetime.

It seems that J.K. Galbraith was right when he told us “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

SS, as originally proposed was supposed to provide a minimum for those who had no other resources and a supplement for the more prudent, not as an income for people to have leisure. It may need to return to that.

I’m confused now C&J. How much do you think these “LWE’s” would collect on SS? How much do you think someone in the “lwe” range can put away for retirement?

Posted by: j2t2 at June 5, 2012 9:04 PM

j2t2

So if you raise the ceiling, you are giving up the idea that it is a contributory system. A person making $300,000 would be paying ten times as much as a person making $30,000. Would he get 10x as much in benefits?

You are asking for a redistribution of income. You can advocate that, but it is a different thing.

Re forgoing SS - If I could forgo SS and relieve my kids of that tax, I would do it. But my decision affects them not at all. You are employing the typical invalid argument. If we are forced to pay, why would someone forgo benefits. This is one of the dangers of intrusive government. It can bribe you with your own money.

Re selfishness - I give 10% of my income away in charity, plus paying all my taxes. It is not selfish, it is justice that I seek.

In fact, our argument here shows which of us is advocating selfishness. I am arguing that recipients, which will include me, should accept less and work longer in order to be fairer to young people. You argue for taking more money from others so that you and I can get more.

Re “I also wonder if your measuring success only on the amount of money one accumulates in their lifetime.” - I measure my life success by lots of things. Money is only one of them. But we are talking about money here, are we not? Nobody is advocating taking away anybody’s pleasant memories of a life well lived. Presumably if someone like that is not materialistic, he won’t need the money anyway.

I advocate a system of rights AND responsibilities. I think it is good and smart to help people become successful. It is good and smart to help people who are in temporary distress. But it is neither good nor smart to treat people with bad or destructive behaviors the same as people with good ones.

There clearly are behaviors that lead to success and those that lead to failure. MOST of us know what those are.

I had two aunts (one by blood, one by marriage), both named Loraine. Loraine K was frugal. She and her husband saved and bought a house. Loraine G and her husband lived well. I recall Loraine G making fun of Loraine K for not having fun. Both their husbands died in their 50s. Lorraine G would always complain about her bad luck and how lucky it was that Loraine K owned a house etc. Luck indeed was involved. But so was prudence.

Success is NOT distributed randomly in our society. Differing behaviors make significant differences. Government should step in to ensure that few people fall completely, but it should avoid measures that compensate people for the bad habits and behaviors that they could change.

BTW - what is a LWE? If you mean low wage earner - let me answer that it is the duty of a LWE to become a higher wage earner. Many people start out making minimum wage, but if you are still making that near the end of your career there is something wrong with what you did. Maybe it is bad luck. That is possible. But you have not made the contribution society could have expected of you.

Posted by: C&J at June 5, 2012 10:01 PM

So if you raise the ceiling, you are giving up the idea that it is a contributory system. A person making $300,000 would be paying ten times as much as a person making $30,000. Would he get 10x as much in benefits?

Probably not C&J but then we don’t want then to live in leisure off of SS do we? We would need to figure out the actual formula to include the higher wage ceiling to know what the figures would be. In 1980 90 % of wages were subject to SS this has fallen to 85% now. We keep excluding the top 20% from their responsibilities. Now I’m sure most of them would like to think nothing could happen to them and they are financially able to handle all, but as you say many are wealthy one year and poor the next.

I am saying that we, the boomers, knew we were larger in numbers than the generation before us and the generation after us, We have known it for years. How prudent is it to not have enough in the trust fund to pay for this anomaly? We spent it, or should I say our elected representatives spent it on our behalf. We can ask those that contributed the smallest percentage of their income in the past to pay their 4.6% and their employers to pay their 6.2% to do just this.

In fact, our argument here shows which of us is advocating selfishness. I am arguing that recipients, which will include me, should accept less and work longer in order to be fairer to young people. You argue for taking more money from others so that you and I can get more.

We will end up having to do both C&J. Those of us born after 1950 are already working longer, which is fine by me but then aren’t we doing a disservice to the next generation if the number of jobs continue to fall over the next decade or two as they have since ‘00? But you also argue for privatizing this insurance plan through Wall st. which is self serving based upon your superior ability to deal with brokers and such, isn’t it? Or have we gotten over the privatization thing?

Posted by: j2t2 at June 6, 2012 12:13 AM

j2t2

This is in some ways an emotional as well as a financial argument.

I get annoyed at lefties telling people like me - well off but not rich - that somehow we are not doing our part, when we already pay a lot more in actual money and more in % of income than people who are poor.

There really is no virtue in being poor. In the old days and in the Bible, poor people were oppressed. Their work supported the rich because it was much more a zero sum society. This is no longer true. Today people like me work to support the poor.

I understand helping the old and poor. But I also question a life a choices that leaves one poor. We all see in our own experience what a difference chance can make, but also choices. I studied ancient history. It is not economically useful but good for me. A luxury. But when I needed to work, I got an MBA. I did not like the math. It was a hard course for me. I could have complained the the world didn’t respect my education. Instead I changed it. We also moved. We could have stayed put and taken worse jobs and complained. We worked long hours, volunteered for unpleasant jobs. Bought houses and cars that were much less than we “could afford.” Now I feel some human sympathy for someone who made the opposite choices, but he/she is not necessarily deserving of too much support from me.

The second part is important too. I did mostly the right things and now I am better off. I will indeed help others through taxes and charity. Those receiving should be thankful, instead of complaining that they should get more.

I have noticed a big difference between good people and less good ones. Good people know how to be grateful for what others give them. Bad people think others should be grateful and show their gratitude by giving them stuff.

Re vicissitudes of fortune - we can all have bad luck. That is why we have social safety nets. But there is an old Polish saying that misfortunes enter through a door left open for them. People need to arrange their affairs to minimize the chances for such disruptions. When you meet a poor person who gives you a story of woe, telling you he used to have a million dollar house and a BMW, ask him why he had that kind of house and BMW and didn’t prepare for a downturn.

Re selfish - I don’t have superior natural ability to work with brokers. My father was a HS dropout. My mother never worked outside the home. Their financial advice was much like some we get around here. They thought the rich were ripping them off and nothing a poor person like us could do about it. Had I believed that, I would still be poor. A person needs to develop skills AND know his limitations. A person like me cannot contend with the professionals on Wall Street and we do not have to.

The best thing we can do for poor people like my parents is not let them think that they are victims. This is hard. It means that they have to take more initiative. My father turned down a job as foreman where he worked because he didn’t want the responsibility. He chose to be poorer, even if he didn’t see it.

I find that people who lose lots of money in investments tend to be a little dishonest. They are looking for that big score. They do risky and sometimes questionable things to get it and end up with much less.

The Obama doldrums will end. The economy will return to its roughly roughly 3% average long term growth. If you work and save, and avoid bad habits, you can have enough to retire in reasonable comfort. If you are very unlucky, you can rely on the help of your friends and family or in the last case the government. It is not rocket science.

Posted by: C&J at June 6, 2012 7:07 AM

What we need to remember C&J is those amongst us who would like to continue to extract some kind of revenge or retribution from those that will need SS money to survive is they are no longer in a position to do so. They are old.

The Obama doldrums will end. The economy will return to its roughly roughly 3% average long term growth.

ARe we planning to go to war C&J? We have another downgrade coming in January. We are doing the same thing the conservatives forced in ‘37,expecting different results, so the “doldrums” will need to be renamed.

Posted by: j2t2 at June 6, 2012 10:06 AM

j2t2

I advocate a safety net for those who were unable or unwilling to plan for the future. We should not always give to people in relation to their contribution and those of us who were more successful sometimes should contribute more.

However, we should still reform SS. We could maintain the welfare system for the destitute, but we should ask all other retirees to take less and perhaps work longer.

I would also like the “poor” to be more grateful to the society that pulls them along.

Posted by: C&J at June 6, 2012 6:46 PM

I get annoyed at lefties telling people like me - well off but not rich - that somehow we are not doing our part, when we already pay a lot more in actual money and more in % of income than people who are poor.

Are you one of those guys that earn most of their million plus dollars a year income in capital gains and then gets off with a 15% tax while those that actually work for a living pay higher rates? If not C&J you must be one of those guys that allows those other guys to hide behind them besmirching your good name for their gain.

There really is no virtue in being poor. In the old days and in the Bible, poor people were oppressed. Their work supported the rich because it was much more a zero sum society. This is no longer true. Today people like me work to support the poor.>/blockquote>

Were it true that you worked only to support the poor do you believe you would continue to do so? In fact you work to support yourself and your family C&J. You pay less taxes percentage wise than you have at any other point in your life. Your taxes support a military industrial complex that now outsources it’s work to the competition. You pay into SS and Medicare for yourself and your family.

The poor are probably still oppressed or are in the process of returning to being oppressed as the corporatist continue to take over the government. But it’s alright now because it is for profit not the government doing the oppressing, right?

I understand helping the old and poor. But I also question a life a choices that leaves one poor.

Many people do C&J, but most would probably have to walk a mile in their shoes to understand why they just don’t go and get an MBA. I would offer up debilitating illness, chronic mental conditions, lower IQ’s, and a host of other issues that preclude an advanced education. College isn’t for every one and until recently trades and manufacturing paid good wages. But those that chose that route have been kinda screwed by the MBA’s and capitalist that hired them. And yes a certain percentage of poor are their due to self inflicted abuses and such. Some lack enough motivation to do anything about their condition as well but most are hampered by mental issues or disease IMHO.

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