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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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Eh, per the basic Keynesian model, government should run a surplus in boom times and a deficit in bust times. The surplus fuels your "rainy day" fund and makes it politically easier to run the deficits needed to recover from a slump. Clinton did fine. He could have done more to combat poverty and inequality, of course, but the country was looking up (at least superficially) when he left office. Bush screwed it all up by running pro-cyclical economic policy: deficits in a boom merely pumped up the investment bubble that burst and caused the 2008 crash.
Which is not to say that all was hunky-dory in the Clinton era, as I said previously, just that there was nothing blatantly wrong about him running a surplus.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:34:37 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
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Still better than the times we find ourselves in now.
National moral at an all time low, racism at an all time high, defeat in Iraq and humiliation just about everywhere else, a declining economy. Honestly what we need to do is dig up one of the Roosevelt's, reanimate them, and reprogram their brains with modern social values, and elect them President.
Edit: Oh and inequality of the kind not seen since the guided age.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:34:39 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.Oh right. So much of the current news cycle has basically caused that to leak out of my ears, I've been poor at retaining econ stuff recently. Apologies.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:36:38 PM by PotatoesRock
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The problem today can be distilled down largely to Republican pandering to the racist Southern Democrat bloc. Everything else derives from that, which itself derives from our nation's original sin of slavery.
Really we aren't in disaster mode; we still have a lot of advantages, it's just that the GOP insists on stonewalling all the solutions. If it helps you sleep worse at night, know that we have much farther to fall before we're really at the bottom and facing that revolution.
Regarding Iraq: As silly as it sounds, that war is virtually irrelevant to our national interests. Certainly it has less economic impact now than it might have been, as we are much closer to energy independence than we were in the 70s and 80s. We're fighting it mainly because we are concerned about the balance of power and letting Russia or China seize political control over the Middle-East.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:38:34 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Not everything, the Dems are at least partially at fault in my opinion, for fueling the dam sense of cynicism that pervades our times (yes I know I'm to dam cynical, do you think it's fund being like this)
I miss the liberals of FDR's era. Who could point out how wrong things were, how dire the odds were, but still, to steal Donald Trump's catch phrase, make America great again. The current Left, with it's pseudo Marxism, hatred of all things American, and worship of all things European, stands as a less than stellar substitute.
I said update them with Modern Social values before we reanimate them. Otherwise we have Zombie TR running around trying to conquer Cuba and the Philippines.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:42:36 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.FDR was psuedo Marxism to prevent the workers from coming to proverbially lynch the government and institute a communist coup.
They didn't in 2007-2009, ergo our current political issues.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:43:36 PM by PotatoesRock
Umm, [citation needed]. Like, a lot. The problem with the modern Left is that it's much too concerned, in many people's opinion, with not offending the centrist mythos that both sides are equally at fault for the political disunity of our country.
The Left sees an America whose future is one of racial equality, economic equality, clean energy, and fewer wars. Tell me how that's "hatred". Or "Marxist". Nobody but a few nutballs wants to tear down capitalism or make us all speak French, and emulating the successes of other nations is not "worship of things European".
Quite frankly, the problem of bullheaded resistance from the reactionary right is immense. Nothing progressive can be accomplished until their stranglehold on the primary nominating process of the Republican Party is broken.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:47:09 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Greatest economy, greatest military, produced of much of the worlds greatest tech, leader of the worlds greatest military alliance, guarantor of peace and security in many places around the world, largest nuclear power, largest spender on space exploration.
You guys realy aren't doing so bad.
@Fighter I get that they don't think they hate America but look at their rhetoric, they do, they hate it and have no patriotism or national pride, don't play their games by acting like they do.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
I'm saying that the type you're talking about exists because people have spent fifty years sabotaging reforms at every opportunity. The left appears that way because conservatives have spent half a century painting them as delusional fools and they got tired of it.
Who hates it, the left? If the left really hated America they'd just let it sit and rot. The fact that they actually give enough of a damn to try and fix shit proves that they have far more love than the conservatives do.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:54:55 PM by Kostya
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And all of those things will be gone very soon.
Again, they "revolted" against a Democratic President who had passed some of the greatest reforms in US history, and in the process, ushered in a counter revolution that unbuilt everything. Oh and I think Silas means the Right.
This may sound like the Golden Means fallacy, but it seems to me that the left, the real left not Clinton and her types, want to turn America into France, or whatever country their onto idolizing now. And the Right wants to turn us into 1950's America, without the welfare or infrastructure spending of course.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:57:33 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.![]()
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Because our economy's gone to shit. Because our citizens, maybe rightly, don't believe int he country, because we've lost the will to be a global power, and because we fucking let our infrastructure rot. I could go one if you'd like.
edited 1st Feb '16 5:59:27 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
No. I guess it's just how I was raised. I was always taught that the country was amazing, the greatest on Earth and all that BS. Finding out it isn't has been, disconcerting to say the least. Sorry if I've been a pain, I'll quite posting for a bit.
To shift things away from my Wangst The uncertain fates of early voting states.
edited 1st Feb '16 6:02:31 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.Posting this here. I'm getting some popcorn and wings, anyone want in?
https://www.idpcaucuses.com/#/state

edited 1st Feb '16 5:31:27 PM by PotatoesRock