2012 Moron Award - Obama or America public?

[Epinephrine]

Wow the forum is finally working for me after 6 months of being completely unable to reply to posts!

[Epinephrine]

(Hmm still can't edit posts though because the stupid editor within the thread is broken for me)

There's multiple very good reasons why Obama isn't the worst president ever even if he doesn't agree with what Ephemeral believes in.

First of all, it's absolutely true that the Republicans are obstructing congress in a historic manner. There have never been as many filibusters as in the last 4 years in the history of the senate, which completely hampers the will of the majority of the country. Until the 11th hour deal in the senate to avoid the 'fiscal cliff' on New Year's, the Republicans in the senate have went out of their way to completely obstruct any level of serious business in the senate by abusing the filibuster. Meanwhile it's been absolutely ridiculous that the Republicans in the house can endlessly bring up a bill to repeal 'Obamacare', endlessly threaten to not increase the debt ceiling, but yet never offer an actual concrete plan on what 'cuts' they'd like to see. It's one thing to obstruct but have an alternate plan. It's another to obstruct for the sake of obstructing, and then not offer absolutely anything in return.

I think it's even worse when you consider the fact that over 50% of the country voted in Democrats in the last election for Senate, House and the President, but yet due to the completely screwed up electoral system the Republicans still have a sizable majority in the House.

So yes, the Republicans are to blame. And yes the system is also to blame for giving these guys so much power even if electorally and historically with the number of votes that they received, they really should not have so much power to completely paralyze any rational discourse within government.

As for the specific issue of raising taxes, all I can say is that the rich in the US pay way too little. As a share of taxes, the rich pay less then they have ever paid in the last ~100 years, a time where the USA has seen considerable growth, which basically completely nullifies the entire 'if you tax the rich you will destroy jobs' argument. It's a cash grab bar none. The very top 0.1% of the population is the only part to consistently see income gains while the rest of society have not. Simply put everyone has been swindled by those at the top and if you aren't one of those people but you believe that they should be taxed less you're an idiot that has been played.

Meanwhile if you ARE one of those top 0.1% and are trying to get yourself taxed less, no sympathy for you, you have enough and there is a price for living comfortably in a civilized society which still vaguely has the idea of the 'American Dream' where anyone can be rich, instead of the old stagnant societies of medieval Europe where you are born into a class forever.

But yes I do agree with Eph that it was dumb for Obama to just harp on the 2%. In fact everyone should be paying a bit more taxes, as the share of taxes relative to GDP is again at historic lows compared to the past. Simply put, a huge reason why the government is in a huge deficit is because the revenues are lower than they have ever been.

But is there a spending problem? This is a multifaceted question.

First of all, the market simply does not think so. Because interest on US debt is at historic lows. Factor into account inflation, and people are actually PAYING the US to take their money. If the market truly believed there to be a revenue problem and that the US could not pay back it's debts, then interest rates would rise. It's as simple as that.

Secondly, looking at it in a macroeconomic point of view, which I believe Obama has taken as he's a pragmatist more than anything else as he's consistently shown you can see why he keeps harping on unemployment insurance and payroll tax cuts. Simply put, these are very effective stimulus methods. For every dollar you cut in payroll taxes, or give out in unemployment insurance, you will get a huge multiplier effect back into the economy. Without getting into the math, it's easy to see if you just think about it logically and with common sense. Give someone who has no money $10, and he's likely to spend all $10 of it because that person needs food and shelter. Give someone with $1,000,000 already a $10 tax break, and he probably won't spend most of it if any because that money won't make that much difference to their lives. The money may be saved, and saved money is money that doesn't move in the economy, doesn't contribute to GDP, and doesn't help anyone else.

Thirdly, there's the issue of why we even need stimulus. The entire point of the government creating artificial stimulus, is because private business isn't spending enough! Businesses are sitting on record profits right now, not investing, not hiring, not doing anything. The reason is because they are worried that they have no customers and if they use their hoarded profits, they will see nothing in return. Without demand, you do not need to increase supply. If there isn't enough customers, then there isn't enough demand, then you have a problem. In this case, the government, which has unlimited funds (they can literally print money) can artificially increase supply. Basic Keynesian economics.

Fourthly, even if you don't believe in Keynesian economics, there's a social-moral argument. Ephemeral argues for a certain morality that says 'everyone for themselves' and 'people should settle for less and just get a job'. I don't necessarily have any comment on this position personally, but in terms of the beliefs of the country, I think that he is way off the mark. If you were to truly believe in that, then you would be willing to accept that because of the financial crisis and the resulting recession that millions going into poverty should be willing to accept a significant destruction of their standard of living.

I've been to countries where everyone tries very hard every day to make a buck and not starve. We call those third world countries. If you want to have slums ringing American cities. If you want to have an explosion of petty crime, of a completely separate class of second-class citizens, who will be making $1/hour wages of beggars, migrant workers, and so on then by all means, destroy the entire social support system. The only thing keeping a huge amount of people off the streets, off petty crime, off accepting any job possible, sweatshop conditions, and super dangerous occupations which are the norm in third world countries is the social support system. If you destroy the system, the very quickly America will look like Brazil, or China, or India.

Hey, Brazil's a nice country, but have you ever been to Rio and seen the endless favelas? The shantytowns around Mumbai? China's millions of migrant workers working in sweatshop jobs? That's what you'll end up with eventually if you completely gutted the social support systems and gave the rich even more money, especially after a recession of the level that we've just experienced.

While some people are perfectly fine with seeing this, because then at least people will get 'exactly what they deserve', I believe that a majority of Americans would never go for this. And as such, in terms of social-moral reasons the social support systems have no choice but to go on until employment can slowly rebound, which of course it is already.

Is Obama perfect? Nope. I don't think anyone out there thinks that he is. In fact many democrats believe that he could be better at many things about his job, but is he so bad that he's worse than Bush? No way in hell.

[gran guerrero]

Until the day we realize that the blame is not placed upon the left or right, but on all of us is the day we can save ourselves from ourselves.

[Supreme]

What a generic thing to say

[T3l Ca7]

the day we can save ourselves from ourselves.

Doomed!!!

[Ephemeral]

Epinephrine,
Glad you are back, you raise the IQ around here.
But I am mystified that you would still be supporting Obama after such an obvious failure of leadership. The buck either does or doesn’t stop on the President’s desk. I happen to think that it does but you are arguing that it stops with the republicans? That makes no sense to me. In my view the primary role of the President is to lead, be above the shit storm that is Washington and figure out a way to bring opposing sides together. Washington always has had, and will continue to have, have the differing parties battling it out. This is what makes the system good.

And although we would like to believe that leadership qualities would exist even at the Congressional levels (which they don’t) I am failing to see how that trumps the Presidential role. Please explain how you think that the Presidential leadership role gets a ‘get out of jail free’ card when one of the parties has majority power.
Other good presidents have managed to do this, a typical and notable example was Reagan bringing the parties together to address the ozone issue. At a time when not only his own party, but corporate America and even the rest of the world was calling bullshit of the ozone issue, Reagan figured out a way to bring them all together and fix the problem.

But I do agree with you that the Republicans are “a” problem. But in my opinion this has nothing to do with the lack of leadership skills that Obama has demonstrated. A good leader would have blown off his Hawaiian vacation and stayed in Washington even if the only effect was to highlight that other Congressional members weren’t doing their jobs. And if Bush has done this? Yet many people are willing to not apply the same leadership measuring stick to Obama. I see no difference whatsoever between Obama and Bush leadership failures. They both will go down into history as awful Presidents with zero leadership qualities.

As to the discussion regarding spending, you have always been a ‘kinder’ and more socially aware person than I. I admire that trait in a person like you who also processes intelligence (as opposed to others who espouse the ideals but are clueless). You have dedicated your life to the betterment of others and that is incredibly impressive. I, on the other hand, took a more capitalistic role and made jobs. Many people might say that I didn’t make jobs but rather made money. Without going into a lot of boring self-serving details this simply isn’t true. I, and my family, made more sacrifices over the last few decades for the betterment of the companies I owned. This includes paying 90% of the employees and their families health insurance, having many years where I took little or no income home; instead pouring it all back into the companies. But if people want to paint every business owner as some money-grubbing pig so be it. I am here to tell you that not all business owners or companies are like this, many are owned by good people who try to do the right thing.

In terms to spending our way out of the recession, I concur that there are two possible ways for this to happen. Either consumers spend our way out or the government spends our way out. And historically it has indeed been proven that it is possible for a government to pull this off. Not only has this country done this before but god examples also exist with countries like Japan. But this isn’t the same world as decades past. This is a world economy and all indications are China for the win. For the foreseeable future I simply do not see how any country will be able to have a strong economy without being total enslaved to China and buying of debt. By spending money today that we don’t have, we are banking on two things. First, our economy will recover and recover with the same strength and growth as in the past when we were the strongest country in the world. Second, we trust those countries which are floating our debt. In my book this is simply not a sure thing at all.

I really think that our economy is going to languish for several decades and this has nothing to do with large corporation hording money. They simply believe the same thing I do, the economic future looks very bleak and they are running scared. The business owners I know are scared to death to spend money at this point, whether it be investing in new people, products or infrastructure. And keep in mind that the low points in the economic cycle is when the smart money has traditionally invested in these things.

And the last point I would like to hear you opinion on is the decline of family and community when it comes to helping those who need a hand up. In generations past this was a generally effective support system for many people. And while tragedies like the mass shooting in Connecticut demonstrate that we are still willing to be benevolent, the day-in day-out help is no ling there. Could it be that this is impacted by the perception of mandated help that is available. In others words, if I know that my nephew can easily get a 3 years of unemployment benefits why should I ‘make’ a job for him? If I have to listen to my neighbor stand in the street and proudly boasting about how he has ripped off military benefits for 32 years by claiming false disabilities and how to best take advantage of local services without deserving them, should I feel responsible for giving him a helping hand when he says he needs it? Should I really think that having more people in the Department of Agriculture than we have farmers in this country is acceptable?

Yet time after time our society has proven that it is willing to reward some 7’ moron who can throw a ball into a hoop more than the teachers or care providers. And not just a few times more, but exponentially more. I simply have to believe that in general, people are stupid and lazy and constantly increasing a mandated system of support only serves to increase the problems. Again, I am all for an occasional hand of support, my concern is the perpetuation of generational ‘I come first’ and ‘I don’t have to rely on my own support system ’ that we seem to be rewarding. Do you not share this concern?
eph

[Spock!]

Both Parties are a problem and should be deleted from society.

Anyway, the American people didn't put Obama back in office, the election has and always will be just something to keep the American people content, thinking they have some say in what the government does. Do you really think they would let us mess with their plans?

Government never really had the interest of the American people in mind. They just want an easily controlled population to blindly follow them.

And they got it.

[Epinephrine]

Epinephrine,
Glad you are back, you raise the IQ around here.
But I am mystified that you would still be supporting Obama after such an obvious failure of leadership. The buck either does or doesn’t stop on the President’s desk. I happen to think that it does but you are arguing that it stops with the republicans? That makes no sense to me. In my view the primary role of the President is to lead, be above the shit storm that is Washington and figure out a way to bring opposing sides together. Washington always has had, and will continue to have, have the differing parties battling it out. This is what makes the system good.

Thanks Eph (the other Ep it's good to be able to post again.

I actually really do think that this time it is different. In the past, there were still some politicians which were willing to sacrifice for the 'good of the nation' and vote for what was right, instead of toeing the party line and doing anything they could to obstruct. The most obvious and logical way of demonstrating this is how many of Obama's proposals were originally Republican supported ideas, Obamacare being the most obvious example. Key people who supported the idea just a few years before Obama took office (Romney the most obvious) were suddenly 100% against any part of it once it was Obama's proposal. In many issues Obama has disappointed Liberals by trying to move right towards what was accepted during the Bush and Reagan years (they raised taxes multiple times in the 1980s under a Republican president) but Republicans have responded with just moving further and further to the right. Or perhaps witness gun control, how not a single Republican will support it, when back in the 90s a huge minority of Republicans voted FOR the assault weapons ban.

The fact is, the Republicans in the house are so motivated by right-wing pressure groups (and these people also go out of their way to vote the most) and are in districts so safe thanks to demographic changes, that all they want to do is move so far to the right that they would not have supported many proposals of previous Republican presidents (i.e. Bush supported TARP!). When you see something like this, then yes it isn't really Obama's fault that he can't get both sides on board for a lot of things, because frankly these people have gone too far extreme to heed anyone but the most extreme.

But I do agree with you that the Republicans are “a” problem. But in my opinion this has nothing to do with the lack of leadership skills that Obama has demonstrated. A good leader would have blown off his Hawaiian vacation and stayed in Washington even if the only effect was to highlight that other Congressional members weren’t doing their jobs. And if Bush has done this? Yet many people are willing to not apply the same leadership measuring stick to Obama. I see no difference whatsoever between Obama and Bush leadership failures. They both will go down into history as awful Presidents with zero leadership qualities.

I think the whole Hawaiian vacation thing is a red herring. Basically the only people who seem to care about that were right wing blogs. The rest of congress also took Christmas holidays, so him being there wouldn't have mattered one bit, and in the end they reached a deal so it didn't matter.

The thing is, even with what he was dealt, Obama has done a huge amount. He manage to do what he could using executive powers, and his first two years to halt and reverse a huge recession that could easily have gotten much worse. He has been hugely positive on a great number of social issues (i.e. supporting gays) that the majority of the country believes in and which a Republican president would never have supported. He also has not started any completely pointless wars like Iraq, enacted a prescription drug plan which was a huge giveaway to the drug companies of which it is pretty hard to top Bush. It's true the deficit has gone up under Obama, but it also massively went up under Bush as well, and Bush had a pretty decent economy for most of his term and inherited a budget surplus. And how about the Patriot Act and all of it's privacy issues? Not to mention Bush was always on vacation 'clearing brush' 180 days of the year while Obama takes like 1 week a year off. I honestly believe that it is pretty hard to top the disaster of the Bush years.

But if people want to paint every business owner as some money-grubbing pig so be it. I am here to tell you that not all business owners or companies are like this, many are owned by good people who try to do the right thing.

Honestly, the more I work in the Canadian public health care system, the more I think that having free healthcare, and very easily gotten welfare is harmful to society. People abuse the system so much, it's ridiculous. That said, even though I know there is abuse, I still support the system, because of the externalities of not having the system. As long as there are clear safeguards to abuse, there are certain things that first world countries really do need to provide. Take free healthcare for instance. Very few people in the US or Canada would ever honestly believe that if you are bloody and dying, that the ER should tell you to take a hike if you have no money. This is pretty normal in China and India. No money? Too bad, go die across the street (I work with some doctors who recently came from India and this is what they tell me). For certain religious/social/historical reasons we would never accept this in North America, so in the US it is mandated that ERs have to treat these people. Yet, where does the money come from? By raising fees on everyone else.

In the end, we are providing free healthcare to everyone, but at extraordinary cost (if poor people had good primary health care which was free, they wouldn't use ERs which cost 10x as much per visit). It's just smarts to do it.

This carries over to things like welfare. Would you rather have people living in shantytowns like they do in third world countries? It's true, they work harder there, because if you don't work... you die. But this creates environments which we would deem completely unacceptable in our first world 'developed' countries. People without clean water. Vastly higher levels of petty crime. Do you want to live in a society like that, or at least have the poor have the very basics provided at very little cost? There is no good answer to this, and it is a philosophical question.

It would be completely naive to think that if 'government got out of the way', then capitalist systems would eventually make everyone rich. We're both old enough to realize that people naturally like taking advantage of others in this world. Eventually without oversight, without any redistribution, all of the money and power would concentrate to one segment of society and they will do anything they can to ensure that they never lose it. We will go back to older societies that humans always had for the previous 4000 years before the modern era. Is this what people really want?

In terms to spending our way out of the recession, I concur that there are two possible ways for this to happen. Either consumers spend our way out or the government spends our way out. And historically it has indeed been proven that it is possible for a government to pull this off. Not only has this country done this before but god examples also exist with countries like Japan. But this isn’t the same world as decades past. This is a world economy and all indications are China for the win. For the foreseeable future I simply do not see how any country will be able to have a strong economy without being total enslaved to China and buying of debt. By spending money today that we don’t have, we are banking on two things. First, our economy will recover and recover with the same strength and growth as in the past when we were the strongest country in the world. Second, we trust those countries which are floating our debt. In my book this is simply not a sure thing at all.

I really think that our economy is going to languish for several decades and this has nothing to do with large corporation hording money. They simply believe the same thing I do, the economic future looks very bleak and they are running scared. The business owners I know are scared to death to spend money at this point, whether it be investing in new people, products or infrastructure. And keep in mind that the low points in the economic cycle is when the smart money has traditionally invested in these things.

We both agree that without demand, there is no need for supply. So it comes down to this. If there were no government stimulus, then supply would take years and years to ratchet up again. Perhaps philosophically you may think 'well allow people to default on loans, allow those with jobs too high paying for their skills to get subsistence level jobs, and the systems will be better next time, people won't be living above their level in life and when we recover we will be stronger than ever'. This is one way to approach it. Unfortunately, this would mean a huge segment of the population would live in crushing homeless poverty for years and years. They might never recover, and certainly their children would suffer immensely. We've already seen what happens when there's a huge financial crisis and government does nothing, it was called the great depression. Sure the country eventually got out of that, but it took 10 years of massive suffering, and the stimulus of endless manufacturing for world war 2 to end it.

So what does this have to do with your point? Well you mentioned China. Guess which country had the largest stimulus program per GDP in the entire world? That's right, China. Guess which country's government spend more money than any other investing in it's future? That's right China. Guess which country is willing to accept hugely substandard living standards for most of it's citizens in order to struggle for a better future? That's right... China. None of these traits are to be found for better or worse in the first world, and certainly not in the USA.

And the last point I would like to hear you opinion on is the decline of family and community when it comes to helping those who need a hand up. In generations past this was a generally effective support system for many people. And while tragedies like the mass shooting in Connecticut demonstrate that we are still willing to be benevolent, the day-in day-out help is no ling there. Could it be that this is impacted by the perception of mandated help that is available. In others words, if I know that my nephew can easily get a 3 years of unemployment benefits why should I ‘make’ a job for him? If I have to listen to my neighbor stand in the street and proudly boasting about how he has ripped off military benefits for 32 years by claiming false disabilities and how to best take advantage of local services without deserving them, should I feel responsible for giving him a helping hand when he says he needs it? Should I really think that having more people in the Department of Agriculture than we have farmers in this country is acceptable?

Yet time after time our society has proven that it is willing to reward some 7’ moron who can throw a ball into a hoop more than the teachers or care providers. And not just a few times more, but exponentially more. I simply have to believe that in general, people are stupid and lazy and constantly increasing a mandated system of support only serves to increase the problems. Again, I am all for an occasional hand of support, my concern is the perpetuation of generational ‘I come first’ and ‘I don’t have to rely on my own support system ’ that we seem to be rewarding. Do you not share this concern?
eph

I am absolutely and endlessly annoyed at the 'breakdown' of the family support systems of years past. Many times at work, I will see families 'dumping' their elderly relatives at the hospital because it's obvious that they just don't want to take care of them and don't want to pay for a private nursing home so they ask society and 'free healthcare' to 'do something'. It's absolutely appalling that this happens and there's very little I can do about it. (relatives will always make up some 'health' reason why granny can't go home, when it's obvious they just don't want to deal with them anymore because it's too much work).

That said, at the other end of the spectrum, I think you are seeing that family is more accepting. I'm sure you've heard of the huge numbers of Generation Y people (25-34 year olds) who are still living with their parents after they graduated college. Without being able to find good paying jobs, people increasingly do not leave the home when they are 18 anymore and are forced to stay home. Perhaps these kids will grow up to one day take care of their parents when they are old, unlike their 'me first' baby boomer parents who dump granny in the nursing home.

Overall though, I think the biggest problem is a shift of how society sees itself. Eph, your generation, the baby boomers created this idea of hyper-individualism, how everyone is responsible for themselves. Yes there is the social safety net, but really what people truly believe is 'everyone for themselves, and if I feel like it I will donate some extra money to charity because I pity the poor'. What people believe is that if they are 'wronged' by anyone else, they will litigate and sue them in court because they are always correct and so someone else is at fault if they do a wrong. What people believe is that they are 'too busy' and too wrapped up in their lives to really care about taking care of family anymore. People seek personal pleasures in endless ways, where in the past and in many more traditional societies people have fun in extended family units.

I cannot blame the 'welfare state' for this. I think the welfare state is merely a symptom of the me-first hyper individualism of today's society instead of being the cause, I truly do. But I think that is a massive topic for another thread.

[gran guerrero]

What a generic thing to say

your face is generic

[Epinephrine]

(still can't edit my posts).

Just one last thing. To be very clear, I fully support capitalism. I believe in it's efficiency and the beauty of markets. While I do believe people who run businesses are completely in it for the money (why else would you run a business?), I think that the incentives of making money and doing well is exactly what makes capitalism work and why it is actually good. If I had the ability to actually sell anyone anything, I too would run a business or be in business because I would like to have a lot of money, but since I actually cannot sell anyone anything, I have a job where people come to me no matter how bad a salesman I am. Gotta make a living right? So no, I have absolutely nothing against businesses, and nothing against corporations making money. It is the nature of the system, and if I had any salesmanship skills, I would be in it as well.

[Galleleo]

Yet time after time our society has proven that it is willing to reward some 7’ moron who can throw a ball into a hoop more than the teachers or care providers. And not just a few times more, but exponentially more. I simply have to believe that in general, people are stupid and lazy and constantly increasing a mandated system of support only serves to increase the problems. Again, I am all for an occasional hand of support, my concern is the perpetuation of generational ‘I come first’ and ‘I don’t have to rely on my own support system ’ that we seem to be rewarding. Do you not share this concern?
eph

This is capitalism though. The 7' tall moron who can throw a ball into a hoop is paid more than teachers because the people are willing to pay a shitload of money to watch him do it. Which means that it's attractive for businesses to invest in and for TV networks to pay incredible amounts of money to be allowed to broadcast it. They very best players know that they are the source of income for the team, or at least have managers who know this. The threat of a team losing the biggest source of income is so high that they'll have to pay him a lot of money just to be able to keep him. However, no one wants to watch teachers or care providers do what they do on national television, there is no market for businesses to invest and sponsor these things. Organizations such as schools and hospitals have to get by with the little money they can scrape together from whatever place they can get it. And with the ever increasing costs of just about anything nowadays, little money is left for your employees and they are not as important for your budget as a basketball player is. They are replaceable.

[the_paul]

It will never cease to amaze me how, when Bush made a mistake (and he made plenty), the country was immediately up in arms against him. When Obama makes a mistake (he's made/is making more than enough of them), it's still the Republicans fault. I wonder how long people are going to keep buying that mentality from the media.

Until the day they stop buying into it, the American people win this award.

[Supreme]

I think its the general feeling/perception the democrats were trying to get the best out of the deal and the republicans are just in it to screw the other guy (say no to everything) like a child

[the_paul]

which is what the media told everyone. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the record shattering spending that was still going on wantonly and that maybe they didn't think it was a wise decision for any of a variety of reasons.

But no, most likely just sour grapes right

[genocidal]

fucking bo bummer and congress, bunch of grimy shit stains. if a bill doesn't involve boobs or drugs i don't care