New President of United States

Talk about anything under the sun or stars - but keep it civil. This is where we really get to know each other. Everyone is welcome, and invited!

Will Obama Be a good president

Yes
21
84%
No
4
16%
 
Total votes: 25

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New President of United States

Postby shadow_8818 » Fri Nov 07, 2008 5:23 pm

I looked up and down the forums, but could not find the topic i want to discuss. So what do most of you think of Barack Hussein Obama.
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Postby mr_thebrain » Fri Nov 07, 2008 8:50 pm

my wife and i are very excited and hopeful. my whole family is, actually.

i might add that none of us are democrats. hell, my wife is a canadian.

i just hope people have patience and will give him time to work on things before criticizing him too much.
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Postby shadow_8818 » Fri Nov 07, 2008 9:10 pm

I am a moderate but i tend to swing to the left a little but not as liberal as most democratic. I think Obama will be what we need to fix what the last administration screwed up.
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Postby Jayelle » Fri Nov 07, 2008 10:22 pm

Hey, what's the deal with him being "President-elect" till January? Does he have power now (to make policies, etc) or is it just... a waiting period?

How does the overlap work?
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Postby neo-dragon » Fri Nov 07, 2008 10:50 pm

I was wondering about that too. It seems so anticlimactic. All the build up to election day and there's still another 2 months before he's actually president? Silly Americans.
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Postby shadow_8818 » Fri Nov 07, 2008 11:02 pm

It gives obama time to assemble his staff and prepare his plan so when he is placed in power he can make change
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Postby surditate_vero » Sat Nov 08, 2008 1:06 am

Shadow's correct.

Technically speaking, Obama is unofficially the president-elect until 15 December, when the Electoral College meets to formally cast its votes for him (as per the division of votes as a result of the election). After that, he officially becomes president-elect until January.

He officially becomes President at 12 noon on 20 January 2009.

Hope this helps!
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Postby wigginboy » Sat Nov 08, 2008 10:08 pm

Speaking from a Canadian point of view, I can honestly say I welcome Obama's influence on my country's government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper does not like George W. Bush for the most part and did not work well with him in office. There has been a bit of speculation as to whether two opposing ideologies will work well together. The Canadian government is the Conservative party and their ideology is, you guessed it, conservative. Will our right wing government coexist well with the liberal leaning Democrats? Mr. Obama seems like he wants to strengthen ties with America's neighbour. Apparently he wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. This is good as NAFTA is fair to everyone but Canada. I really hope he can bring it off and not get assassinated. I know he has a huge Secret Service contingent, but you never know. America is still a split nation when it comes to things like race and gender equality. As shadow said, he will need to work hard to fix the foibles of the previous government, but I believe he has support where it is needed. America needs a better taxation system, closer to the one Clinton's administration had. The nation was prosperous under Clinton and the rich were taxed more than the poor. The current taxation system that gives large income earners breaks is too biased toward the elite and big business. Another indication that GWB only cares about money.

Anyway, I am confident that Obama will do a great job in office if no one shoots him.

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Postby Eaquae Legit » Sun Nov 09, 2008 9:40 am

Mr. Obama seems like he wants to strengthen ties with America's neighbour. Apparently he wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. This is good as NAFTA is fair to everyone but Canada.
I somehow doubt that he has Canada's best interests at heart in that matter. If he tries to renegotiate NAFTA I hope Canada nails him to the wall.
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Postby shadow_8818 » Sun Nov 09, 2008 4:21 pm

How is Canada ousted in the trade agreement.
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Postby Rei » Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:54 pm

First to mind is softwood lumber, nevermind the other areas where NAFTA is ignored or excused. I hope they nail him good and hard to the wall because last I recall the States are getting a hell of a deal on our oil and they have been trampling on anything that does not come for a song.
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Postby Olhado_ » Mon Nov 10, 2008 3:39 am

Honestly, I have mix feelings about him.

I want him to be a good leader; but at the same time I have my own reserves about him. I mostly voted for him, so he can raise taxes; but not to start all of his programs. It was just the only solution I heard that could to anything to decrease our national debt - raise income or decrease spending - and the second would never happen. (Heck, it did not even happen with a guy who said those things during his campaign.)

As for the free trade thing, I am becoming a skeptic and I would definitely lose all my reservations about him, if he cancels free trade agreements. Of course don't worry he will never do that. :)


On a different comment, thorough I am ready to give him a shot, I find this interesting.

http://shop.cafepress.com/impeach+obama ... swodMmFFPA

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Postby locke » Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:46 am

You reduce national debt in periods like the nineties when there aren't any wars to speak of, major emergency spending and whatnot. Part of the way we're going to get our way out of the economic mess is by the government spending a lot on infrastructure to create the jobs that will stabilize the economy. That's what the national debt is for, times like these.

but believe me I very much want it reduced. Hopefully we can keep the wretched credit card republican policies out of power for the next couple decades and we can make real headway towards eliminating a lot of debt once the wars are done and the economy is growing again. *crosses fingers*
So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

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Postby Syphon the Sun » Mon Nov 10, 2008 10:03 am

Sometimes it amazes me that people really don't understand history. Everyone is proclaiming that Obama is the next FDR. Besides the fact that our financial situation is nowhere near the level of the Great Depression (our unemployment rate is what, six percent, as opposed to in the twenties), FDR was not good for the Great Depression. His economic plans (most of which he stole from Hoover, anyway, after running a campaign of "change") actually worsened the economic situation and extended it by years.

Now, Obama might be the next FDR, in that he inherits a poor economy and proceeds to make it worse, but heralding him for it is more than a little silly.

And while I'm at it, I'll genuinely feel sorry for those people that have their taxes increased under Obama. Think what you want of the wealthy; saying they don't deserve what they work for (while those who didn't work for it deserve it, instead) is bat s*** crazy.

An example:
Take a self-employed Vermont man and let's say he makes about $500,000 this year (a lot higher than needed to get into the top bracket, but I digress). Under the current plan, he’d pay about $153,600 in federal taxes, $47,500 in state taxes, and another $80,000 in Social Security and Medicaid taxes. That comes to about $281,100, a little more than 56% of his earned income. And Obama is raising that.

Not that any of you care, but hey. After all, what does anyone need that much money for, anyway? If you make that much money, it's only right that the government takes three fifths of it and hands it out to everyone else. Spread it around, baby.
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Postby Bean_wannabe » Mon Nov 10, 2008 4:14 pm

As a British citizen, the most important thing I am hoping for is a quick withdrawal from Iraq. Maybe then out government will follow suit.

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Postby Syphon the Sun » Mon Nov 10, 2008 4:49 pm

As a British citizen, the most important thing I am hoping for is a quick withdrawal from Iraq. Maybe then out government will follow suit.
And that's what I'm most afraid of. The surge worked. We're actually winning this thing. Hell, even Obama admitted that it worked.

Pulling out of Iraq is just as irresponsible today as it would have been four years ago. The only difference is that people don't care much about responsibility anymore.
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Postby locke » Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:44 pm

ah the lovely current republican meme that roosevelt made the depression worse because WWII, not his policies finally took us into a growth economy. Of course his policies provided power, sewage, telephone and clean water access to the vast majority of america, employed millions (and the unemployed level was greatly reduced by 1941 from its high in 1933) he renewed confidence in the banking sector (according to this meme if he'd just let EVERYTHING fail we'd have come out of the depression a lot faster, so what if millions starved and the government didn't survive it), created programs such as the FDIC which are doing a good job today of preventing cascading collapses that brought on the depression, created the single most popular government program of all time which, unusually for a government program, operates with remarkably low overhead and managerial expenses in implementing social security, and in general the frameworks he set in place allowed us to climb out of the depression and also to stave off further collapses of that magnitude for two-three generations.

In fact it's only been as we dismantled parts of those frameworks that the situation we're in now even becomes possible. Reagan started the dismantling and we promptly had the savings and loan collapse and keating five scandals that were staved off from becoming nation crushing crisis by strong intervention which was possible due to roosevelt era policies that had not yet been done away with. Deregulation continued in the late nineties under, iirc, Krugman, and was rapidly and recklessly accelerated in the last eight years in order to encourage extremely high new home ownership rates to keep the economy growing in favor of a stable slow growth economy. And low and behold that has been part of contributing to the current economic crisis.

But yeah if we let everything fail we'll probably come out of this crisis faster, unfortunately that means unemployment rates in the 30s for a year or two but why does the regular joe need to eat really? He's always thinking with his stomach instead of his long term bank account, what a dummy.

additionally, of course the surge worked. In Iraq I we had 500,000 troops on the ground and we didn't even invade Iraq all the way to Baghdad. In Iraq II, due to the disasterous strategies, tactics and military theories of Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney we had barely 200,000 troops on the ground for the invasion. We never had enough troops to stage the operation in the first place due to the gross incompetence, and jingoistic blindness of those running the operation, then, rather than admit they were wrong, they decided to take the McClellan route and keep doing the same thing for three-four years before finally taking the necessary steps to try to actually win the war rather than trying to prove Rumsfeld theories of modern warfare.
So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

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Postby shadow_8818 » Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:59 pm

bye
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Postby Syphon the Sun » Mon Nov 10, 2008 10:50 pm

Funny, I didn't know it was a "Republican" meme. I thought it was the conclusion that some economists at UCLA came to, which happened to be published in the top academic economics journal in the world and whose research on the matter was heralded by Nobel prize winning economists. A conclusion supported by the analysis presented by famed economist Murray Rothbard in 1963. The same analysis that was detailed in longtime Roosevelt supporter John Flynn's 1948 book and then again in historian Jim Powell's 2004 book. And let's not forget world reknowned economist and journalist Henry Hazlitt came to the same conclusion while it was happening. Oh, and add Robert Higgs, vehement anti-Bush economist to the list. Oh, don't forget Thomas E. Hall, J. David Ferguson, Richard K. Vedder, and Lowell E. Gallaway, either.

But sure, let's just label it as a Republican meme (nevermind the fact that not one person in that whole slough have ever been Republican) so we don't have to actually, you know, talk about the issues they present.

And for the record, I'm a former Obama-supporting libertarian. I supported him in 2004 over Alan Keyes right here in my own state. I supported him over several Democratic candidates during the primaries and for a time, supported him over John McCain. But I'm one of those pesky voters both parties reach out to, not one of the foaming-at-the-mouth base. So what would I know, right?

Anyway, I don't come at it from a political standpoint; I come at it from a historical perspective because, you know, that's what I was trained to do.

But I digress. So, let's look at your (misguided) beliefs.

You say that FDR brought power, et al to the vast majority of America. The reality? Hoover sought the construction of a whole host of power plants a full three years before FDR took office, leading private companies like AEP sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into utilities projects. Why? Because residential use of electricity had been increasing at pretty high rates under Hoover. There's a reason that he has a dam named after him, you know, despite the efforts of FDR's cabinet. In fact, the vast majority of FDR's public works policies were taken directly from Hoover's playbook. The same policies that FDR followed in New York (with the rest of the states), but was so against in his campaign for the presidency.

You say he employed millions and the unemployment rate dropped drastically. Let's look at the facts. FDR took office with an unemployment rate of a little under 24%. Five years later, it was still at 19%. A year later, he managed to get it to drop almost two whole percentage points by lowering the maximum amount of hours people could work in a given week. So, wait a second, he "created" jobs by cutting the hours of those with jobs so that other people could work instead of them. So, sure, he "created" jobs, but only at the expense of other workers. And he did it again. And then again. But, it was still hovering around 10%, eight years after his New Deal. And then all of the sudden, millions of hours of labor were open and needing to be filled. Why? Because the laborers were drafted. The result: an unemployment rate of less than two percent. But, sure, by all means, insist it was the failed policies of the New Deal that employed millions. After all, who cares about reality and cold hard facts?

You say that he renewed confidence in the banking sector. History says that he did absolutely nothing to prevent the vast majority of bank failures (most notably: he refused to do anything about unit banking laws). And then his magical reform weakened the banking industry by breaking it up. That's why investors were dissatisfied with the New Deal; even with the creation of the SEC, their rates of returns were no higher than before it was created.

Oh, and the FDIC? FDR was against it and only signed it after being pressured. Though, to be fair, he did utilize its direct predecessor (the RFC) much better than Hoover ever did, even if the idea was Hoover's from the beginning (and back as far as the NCC, actually).

As far as the housing crisis goes, maybe you should take a long hard look at where you're shifting the blame. Deregulation was recklessly accelerated in the last eight years? No more so than under Clinton, who was the first to loosen mortgage requirements so first-time buyers could qualify for loans they would never have been qualified to get before. And maybe it could have been lessened if warning about Fannie and Freddie hadn't been ignored in 2004. Or maybe if requirements on down payments hadn't been lessened to allow more lower income families to buy their first homes. And maybe lawyers like our next President could have kept from suing banks that were offering fewer loans to poor blacks than to wealthy whites, insisting that racism was at play, rather than just admitting that income was at the heart of it. Lawsuits like that just fueled banks to give out more loans to people they knew couldn't pay or face billions of dollars in court costs, settlements, and money damages.

Sure, Bush didn't go around undoing all of Clinton's work, but most of that work is being heralded as economic genius. The fact is that most of the regulatory changes pointed to as contributors to the crisis happened under Clinton's watch.

And, for the record, the way out of the Depression didn't lie in letting everything fail. But it sure as Hell didn't lie in FDR's policies, either.

But don't take my word for it. Do a little independent research. Read what economists have to say about it. Or don't; listen to whatever your sixth grade history teacher told you. It doesn't matter to me one way or the other. And with that, I'll conclude my post. There are dozens of more things to say; but frankly, the Uniform Commercial Code is calling my name and I really need to keep this scholarship.

ETA: Shadow, cupcake, why don't you let the grown-ups talk while you go play with your new Star Wars action figure. K?
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Postby shadow_8818 » Tue Nov 11, 2008 12:15 am

what
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Postby locke » Tue Nov 11, 2008 12:45 am

But sure, let's just label it as a Republican meme (nevermind the fact that not one person in that whole slough have ever been Republican) so we don't have to actually, you know, talk about the issues they present.
I learned how to argue against strawmen by setting them up and knocking them down at OSC's knee, what do you expect?

and here you're bringing facts into it. I said republican meme because I've only seen ardent republicans making this argument elsewheres on the intertubes.

going back to reading the rest of your post.

ETA, thanks for your defense, you're definitely swaying me, I've actually been meaning to read up on FDR's presidency and the Depression/New Deal for the last month or so, and this just motivates me moreso.

I do think that intervention is probably better than no intervention. And if he cut unemployment from 19% to 10% that is hardly a complete failure, that's a pretty big success from the glass half full types.

I would agree with you that Hoover has been unfairly discredited because he is contrasted so unfairly to FDR and doesn't get the credit he should (I remember covering this point in AP Govt way back when) from the historical record.

What do you think of the idea that New Deal reforms brought increased transparency to the United States financial sector leading to the unexpected return of attracting stronger world wide investment post WWII? I don't think the rise of USA economic hegemony is entirely due to just post-war reconstruction hampering former banking strongholds of Europe, I think there was an element of US policies changing the risk/reward of investment dynamics to better favor investors under the US system.

I shouldn't have generalized on the current economic crisis, it's much more complex than the simple issue of deregulation, or even of fannie and freddie's lowering of standards. You also have to bring in the issues of over-the-counter securities trading. Off-book CDSs and CDOs and ancillary packaging issues. the way these (and other) factors led to an overleveraging of banks, hedge funds etc and the subsequent deleveraging drying up the credit market (and all the complex responses to this, such as the freezing of the commercial paper market) leading to the stock market declining, only to have that decline exacerbated further by the selling off of options as the market declined in order to meet various obligations and sell points, leading to a further decline. You also have the ban on short selling increasing market volatility (100 point swings on the dow are becoming a daily routine rather than a once or twice a quarter outlier) because investors can only bet one way in sectors banned from short selling (this is not to say naked short selling should be allowed again, it should be banned, but regular shorting is a very important tool we've taken away from the market, meaning it can't do what Friedman and other linear economists expect it to do, meaning it's operating on a more non-linear complex scale than it usually trends). The point is that the market we're in right now is caught in an array of negative feedback loops that are catalyzing each other further downwards. When engineers design a complex system, such as a power grid, they set in place circuit breakers to keep an entire system from going offline, the financial system is in need of some engineering to isolate and resolve the myriad of problems currently ongoing.

Luckily it looks like we'll probably keep one new feedback loop from further worsening the economy in bailing out the big three automakers. I hate bailing them out, but the accumulated cascade of letting them fail would probably lead to 10% unemployment within two years. Additionally the new money directed towards AIG today allows them to buy some of those bundled securities and obligations they're insuring. Once they have them in their possession they can begin the process of unbundling them and hopefully start to take that feedback loop out of the system. We've also staved off the failure of the commercial paper market, which although not back up to full steam is longer facing a crisis scenario. So we're managing some good in there even if it frustratingly seems as very little is being done.
So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

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Postby wigginboy » Tue Nov 11, 2008 1:47 am

(Heck, it did not even happen with a guy who said those things during his campaign.)
It should be apparent by now that what a candidate says in his/her campaign, and what they do in office are two different things. At least that's the way it seems with Canadian politicians.

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Postby zeroguy » Tue Nov 11, 2008 2:12 am

Funny, I didn't know it was a "Republican" meme. I thought it was the conclusion that some economists at UCLA came to, which happened to be published in the top academic economics journal in the world and whose research on the matter was heralded by Nobel prize winning economists.
Allegedly there is a rebuttal to this here.

(Allegedly because I have not been following this discussion, but I saw another discussion (that I also wasn't following) that seemed to mention the same, or a similar UCLA report. I also haven't even looked at the link I posted, due to the NY Times prompting for info and whatnot. Just throwing it out there, if it's relevant. :D )
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Postby locke » Tue Nov 11, 2008 6:12 am

thanks zero, very interesting article, and gibes with what I've heard elsewhere.
So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

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Postby Eaquae Legit » Tue Nov 11, 2008 10:05 am

funny but i don't play with star wars action figures. Oh by the way unless your a professor or teacher i think your just a regular college student because nobody has time to remember this kinda stuff unless you did research for your comeback witch is sad. the more sad thing is that you think I am a kid
Well, you type like a kid. What do you expect? Also, what's sad about being knowledgeable about something you're passionate about?
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Postby VelvetElvis » Tue Nov 11, 2008 12:28 pm

I'd just like to say.... "Knowledge is power!"
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Postby Syphon the Sun » Tue Nov 11, 2008 1:24 pm

Zero, I wouldn't call it much of a "rebuttal." It's an opinion piece of one of the biggest liberals in journalism. Granted, he won a Nobel prize in economics this year, but he still offers absolutely no evidence for his analysis, while other (just as prestigious) economists do.

He (like locke) just dismisses it as something conjured up out of the depths of right wing think tanks. Nevermind that the people who have done the research aren't Republican. Nevermind that many of them are Democrats and even FDR supporters. Nope, let's just label it some kooky nonsense from right-wing nutjobs so we don't have to talk about it.

locke, when he cut unemployment from 19% to 10%, it was through lowering hours for people with jobs. (Note: he managed to cut it from 24% to 19% without doing that.) It's a pretty sneaky way to get unemployment down, since you're not creating new jobs, just giving part of some jobs to other people. (They've done something similar in France I want to say in the past twenty years.) But at the same time he was doing this and pouring money into projects for infrastructure (in hopes of creating jobs), he was creating a harder time for employers to actually hire new people. It was counter-productive and netted very few actual jobs. He did some things right; but other policies of his were so off base that they (mostly) cancelled out a lot of the good of the others.

Hoover certainly got the short end of the stick. He just happened to be in office at the wrong time and FDR's smear campaign took advantage of that, calling him a socialist and an unjustified intervener. Then they just became hypocrites, in a matter of minutes. The same day he took office, he instituted a banking holiday, a policy he refused to endorse three days earlier.

As far as New Deal reforms bringing increased transparency goes, I am (again) mixed. Some policies helped; some hurt. However, it'd be quite specious to say that the market situation we found ourselves in post-WWII was the result of New Deal reforms. FDR and Congress had to repeal quite a portion of investment and banking reforms to get us to that point.

As for the current crisis, globalization had a big role, as well, particularly in global hedge funds. And of course, people panicking and taking their money out (at a huge loss) only exacerbates the problem. There were a billion causes of this financial crisis (and several to the housing crisis alone). Unfortunately, it looks like just about every group passed the risk on and greedily took their cut, thinking that when the s*** finally hit the fan, it'd fall on somebody else.

Shadow, the point I was getting at was this: if you're not going to contribute anything positive to the discussion, keep your childish nonsense to yourself.

And for the record: I have a degree in History (though my concentration is in revolutionary America) and another in English Literature. I also happen to be in law school, now. I've taught at the high school and college levels, but only for a semester each. I tutored college students in history for two years. I worked as a historian, researching myths, legends, and traditions of my alma mater.

But here's the catch: I love history. I don't research it because I want to sound intelligent, or because they pay me to. I do it because it means something to me. As far as this topic: my senior thesis was almost on FDR. I have a whole FDR section to my personal library. But given my concentration in revolutionary America, I decided it was better to write on the illegality of drafting and implementing the US Constitution.

But guess what: it doesn't matter what your qualifications are, here. What matters is whether you contribute thoughtful discussion supported by evidence. And you don't.

So: stay in school. Don't do drugs. And when you've got something to add, feel free. But this "pWn'D!!11!!one1!!11!" nonsense (and the rest of your silly, childish posts all across the forum) needs to stop.
Step softly; a dream lies buried here.

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Postby shadow_8818 » Wed Nov 12, 2008 10:04 pm

what are you talking about i started this topic and i answered some question on here i am to contributing to this discussion you went off topic. genius
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Mich
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Postby Mich » Wed Nov 12, 2008 10:09 pm

I'd just like to say.... "Knowledge is power!"
And knowing is half the battle!
Shell the unshellable, crawl the uncrawlible.

Row--row.

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Syphon the Sun
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Postby Syphon the Sun » Wed Nov 12, 2008 10:15 pm

A cunning remark by an equally cunning linguist.

So, what exactly does "oMg!11!!one! u GoTz pWn'D11!!!1!!!one!! harharhar!!!!!one!111" add to?
Step softly; a dream lies buried here.

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Postby lyons24000 » Wed Nov 12, 2008 11:04 pm

Syphon,

He wants you to jump on his words. Sometimes, small annoyance's go away if you ignore them. If you pay attention to them they'll stay around.

Just a thought. :D
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Postby locke » Thu Nov 13, 2008 12:19 am

when you talk about cutting hours, are you talking about instituting the 40 hr work week (from 50/60 etc hrs) or cutting that down to 30 hours/week? 8 hrs divides nicely into three shifts for a 24 hr plant (wwii) but 6 hrs divides into four shifts, creating a huge boost in jobs hired, even if hours paid out by the company are the same, individuals on the whole are making less.

in terms of globalization, yes it had a big role, it may also have a big role in getting us out of the mess. for instance, the united states government should probably have its credit rating downgraded, but if the globalized market were to do that you'd have a domino effect that leads to virtually every government's credit rating in the world being downgraded. The net effect is credit tightens up much more severely than what was causing a panic four weeks ago, and becomes more expensive in general (otoh, this stops or reverses inflation, increases the value of the dollar and increases interest rates leading to more investment for those with capital, this is not necessarily good, because it's essentially only the rich getting richer in this scenario, as no one else has the liquidity to benefit from the high interest rates, so it's a massive wealth transfer to the top). What that probably means is that the united states keeps its credit rating (because no-one wants that global domino effect) which buys us time to stabilize and strengthen our economy, rather than being forced into a deeper recession by a downgraded credit rating. Just as the big 3 are 'too big to fail' for US industry, The united States is 'too big to fail' for the global economy.

So globalization has its upsides as well. :P
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Postby Syphon the Sun » Thu Nov 13, 2008 11:19 am

It was already capped at 46 hours a week, so he lowered the cap to 44, then 42, and finally 40. He got about a percentage point decrease in unemployment for every hour lowered it. He didn't support a 30 hour work week when it went through Congress, but less than a year later regretted that fact and tried his best to get it through again (with little success, as his economic failures had given his opposition an opportunity to rise to power).

But, it wouldn't matter if it were going from 60 to 40, or 40 to 20, because the principle is the same: it is "creating" more jobs by taking away others. Instead of spreading the wealth around, it's spreading the jobs around.

You're not creating new jobs; you're simply telling someone who already has a job that he has to share it. It may help unemployment rates and it may help the unemployed, but it doesn't help the employer and it certainly doesn't help the already employed. Everyone seems to look at who is being helped out by any given policy, but rarely do they think it through and see who's being harmed by it, too. And in this case, it was the same kinds of people they were trying to protect: the working class. Only this working class already had jobs that they needed to feed their families. How dare they not share that, right?

And you're right; globalization has its positives and negatives. I was merely mentioning it (specifically, global hedge funds) as another piece of the wonderful puzzle of why the hell we're in this mess. Not that we can, you know, back out of the global market at this point, anyway.
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Postby shadow_8818 » Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:52 pm

A cunning remark by an equally cunning linguist.

So, what exactly does "oMg!11!!one! u GoTz pWn'D11!!!1!!!one!! harharhar!!!!!one!111" add to?
what I never said "oMg!11!!one! u GoTz pWn'D11!!!1!!!one!! harharhar!!!!!one!111"
so what are you talking about. and lately I stopped annoying post.
Daniel- you know speaking in the third person has proven that your crazy.
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Postby Syphon the Sun » Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:10 pm

For the record, clever editing doesn't erase history. But have your fun. Just don't be surprised or offended when nobody takes you seriously.
Step softly; a dream lies buried here.


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