Thread: Question about ignorance

Originally Posted by Atmoscheer

But more importantly, these are bad ideas, that often perpetuate underlying social issues that cause these systemic issues. Barney Frank's bullshit idea that every American should own a home created a market for mortgage derivatives that didn't have the safeguards in place to prevent a bubble. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme sustainable only if the population and economy grow perpetually in lockstep with stable unemployment and life-expectancy-after-retirement. Universal Healthcare would relieve of a lot of families of a major stressor--and instead burden every family with paying existing entitlements for significantly longer periods than they were ever intended.

I mean, there's actually a handful of social programs I fully support and would even be willing to debt finance. Public and/or subsidized preschool/daycare for all children is one. I also support an FDIC-equivalent for owners of futures contracts in the wake of MF Global. But there are also hundreds of programs that we can cut outright, defund, or otherwise privatize.

I agree with all of this, although my comments were more about being glib than accurate. The social security thing ignores the thought that a system like that should still be in place, just not funded in the way this one is. The problem is that even talking about SS gets everyone's backs up immediately, so I doubt anything will be done until it starts redlining.

Originally Posted by Atmoscheer

My issue with your statement is that the opinion of much of the left is that "Bush got to do what he wanted with the national debt, now we should get our turn" and the opinion of the right is a more unilateral "we need to fix the present issues with the national debt, and few of these proposals will do that."

I feel like this is overly simplistic. While the bottomfeeders on the left would probably have this sort of attitude, the motives of the right could never be that simplistic. The right has a stated goal of playing oppositional politics by attempting to stymie everything the left tries to do. Every campaign focuses less on what needs to be done to fix the problems and pays more attention to beating Obama. In the end, of course, it hardly matters who wins because both parties are currently deepthroating the schlong of neoliberalism and will put out policies identical economically while covering it up to appeal to their fanbase more appropriately.

Originally Posted by Atmoscheer

Obama, for what it's worth, has given up on the former (ie, most of his campaign message), and rightfully so. I'm not saying that both sides aren't playing political chicken with the national debt, or that Republicans would be more receptive to these programs if we weren't in the midst of a revolving debt crisis, but again--this is the right thing for right now.

I don't know about rightfully so. Obama has, so far, made a career of bending over and begging for more from the bureaucracy and the republican party. His signature legislation has 0 credibility (since individual states determine how much of it actually applies) and everything he's done has been nothing more than overwhleming concession after overwhleming concession to his political rivals. Obama clearly does not have the seniority, power or political finesse to get anything he wants done and the republicans are taking outrageous advantage of this.

I'm also curious as to why national debt is such an important issue now and not, say, 8 years ago. I'm sure the recession has something to do with it, as well as a Friedman approach to solving these problems through austerity (which, anecdotally, have a 0% success rate, if I'm to believe Naomi Klein), but I've never studied economics and can't offer any kind of meaningful opinion on it.

Originally Posted by Atmoscheer

The government and individuals have to get fiscally conservative if either plans to avoid catastrophic repetition. If you don't recognize this, you are a Nancy Pelosi-scale moron; if you attribute this to political extremism slanting the landscape republican, you're not viewing the situation from a meaningfully close enough perspective.

Fiscal conservatism is fine. As many have said before, why not tax the super rich? They have exploited systems to get vast amounts of cash and are impacted less by paying a higher rate of tax, especially considering many of these people and corporations already pay less tax proportionally than the middle class (although I do think it's funny when they play games with statistics to justify how little they contribute), not to mention benefiting from subsidies from a government that's already beyond broke to begin with.

edit: even the social programs run at national debt that you say you'd support would never get funding from the hard right. Suggesting these things would surely bring up cold war ghosts and communist fingering, specifically because there is no fiscal RoI for this (in spite of the social impact and benefit across the country)