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Originally Posted by IanC
Umm... are you serious? How long has Obama been in office? Do you realise how long it will take to get out of the mess the US is in?
This is my first time in the General Forum room, and I've already seen a few 'hate on Obama' threads from you. Considering the time in office Obama has been in, and the fact that he has done nothing wrong, you just come off as a hate spewing republican. You can bet Obama will be in office for 8 years, will you be ranting for 8 years GoldenRivet? I almost feel sorry for you buddy.
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Don't let it get to you, boss. Emotional political discussions are commonplace here, but they can still be enjoyable. Just do a search on threads with "Bush" in the title and you'll see. No reason to be anything less than civil.
If you'll permit, I'll even answer your stated position right now;
There is a valid cause for concern about President Obama's administration, even though he has not been in office for long. While you claim that "he has done nothing wrong", his stimulus bill says otherwise. He may not have authored it, but he did encourage congress to pass it and he did sign it into law.
One does not simply drop an additional trillion dolllars into circulation without experiencing serious ramifications. And though you would be correct in pointing out that this money will not all be introduced to the money supply at once, it will still be introduced in a very short period of time. Some of this money is being borrowed and some of it will be printed, but all of it will decrease the value of the dollar.
Now, assuming that you care to know, I'll be more than happy to provide fairly current figures on the U.S. money supply, GDP, GDP growth rate, and money supply growth rate, and explain why this bill is going to cause a lot of inflation, especially when the interest on the federal debt is excacerbated by it.
The point is that the excessive Federal spending that President Obama has already set a precedent for is a prime cause of stagflation. That is, the growth of the money supply outpaces that of the GDP. An increasing ratio of money to production. This can produce an economic state that will never improve unless a new market is found (more production) or the currency supply contracts (deflation).
In a normal economy, left unchecked, stagflation will fix itself, eventually. More people enter the workforce, labor and wages eventuallly stabilize, new markets are found, the currency supply contracts because people save more and invest, borrow, and loan less.
However, in a system like the one that Obama is trumpeting, to the tune of hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars per year, the GDP will never outgrow the currency supply. The government borrows or prints money at such a fantastic rate that the economy cannot keep pace, and the system eventually collapses under the weight of a mountain of worthless currency.
There are those who say that the stimulus will be able to create jobs and invigorate the annual growth of the GDP enough to offset and even negate its' cost, but such a thing has never happened in U.S. history. The Great Society was the last program on this scale and that is universally acknowledged as a complete failure. The New Deal came before that, and it was also a catastrophic failure. One that, incidentally, you are still paying for in spades today. Social Security entitlements make up a tremendous amount of the Federal budget. Somewhere in the neighborhood of one third last time I looked, and growing every year.
And for the better part of a century prior to that there were "progressive" programs here and there, and the creation of a central bank and etc etc ad nauseam....
Oh and don't forget the price controls and federal measures imposed in the 70's gas crunch. Those were similarly brilliant.
Now, we are to look at this "stimulus bill" as some kind of salvation, despite the huge expenditures on programs and grants that have no relevance to the economy contained therein, as well as the utter failure of all similar measures? You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical.
No state authority can ever effectively regulate or otherwise affect an economy of any type, other than to make it less efficient. Th economy is simply too complex. Millions upon millions of individuals making untold numbers of transactions every day according to their own criterion and the laws of supply and demand. The type of centralization of economic control that we are facing here is akin to checking all of your calculator's computations manually. Yeah, you can do it and you can still get stuff done, but it is horribly inefficient and ends up being wrong a fair amount of the time.
History has proven this time and time again. Even "successful" centralist states are beset by the same problems the U.S. has now and is steadily making worse. Many are "new"(in various senses of the word) states and have not died as much, but they are dying the same death.
So yes, to summarize, there is reason to worry about what President Obama's administration and the Democratic Congress are doing, already.
To be fair, I don't think he's a bad person or that he intends to cause the damage he is causing. I think he really means to help. He really does want a change for the better. But, like so many others who thought they knew enough to lead others and provide for their welfare, I think he'll end up doing more harm than good.
No matter what your views on the state may be or what party controls it, it is, in effect, a monopoly. Would you let your choice of grocery stores or doctors or toy stores or whatever be governed by a two-company system that only lets you choose every two or four years? Of course not. Because it'd be stupid.
Our government uses that system, and admittedly, it has to do so, because the administration of the state cannot be changed at a whim without impairing its' ability to enforce Constitutional law. But why give more power to that monopoly than is absolutely necessary? Why give it more money, more authority? This bill gives more money and authority to the state. Could you not use your freedom and income more wisely yourself?
GoldenRivet probably has a similar set of ideas, though we may disagree on several points.
So anyhow, that's my 2 cents. And don't think that because I disagree with you to whatever extent that your opinion is not welcome or will not be considered. But please don't imply that my friend GR, or anyone, is a "hate-spewing Republican"
Jokes and jabs are fine, of course.
Hope to see more of you on the boards
