why do conservatives want the US to be like Europe?

Everything you just mentioned is opinion based.

When the government shutdown, why did 82% of workers still receive their salaries?

Name me one time since 1971 where Congress was ever in danger of not receiving a paycheck. Tell me who is going to bailout the U.S. government?

Everything you speak of is a dream. The U.S. government is the sole issuer of the U.S. dollar, and can do so without limits, regardless of it collecting a single dime of tax revenue or not. The only constraint to its sovereignty is hyperinflation. Hyperinflation isn't even an afterthought until your economy reaches full employment. Inflation is caused by market demand, not currency.

 

So your argument is:

"The laws of economics are screwing Europe because their financial picture always sucked. They can't apply to the United States."

The US is not exempt from macroeconomics.

Cool story. Is this supposed to somehow make your argument credible?

 

The Fed should take over US Treasury, clear its book then print and spend as long as the public is demanding the dollars. Just cut out the middle men - banking cartel primary dealers. No political headache. It's a WIN-WIN.

Hah.

 

Dead wrong of course erik. Taxes are currently running at 60 per cent of current spending but you keep trying to live in your silly damn dreamland. The prime rate is currently so close to zero that the difference is scarce worth noting and the economy remains in a low growth mode. and what gropwth we've got is alrgely a fiction created but pumping more money into the system. There is little inflation because work force participation rates are at historic lows and most job searches today are conducted on line. Which means no one drives about or walks about handing out resumes anymore.

 

My argument, which is correct, is that you are trying to compare apples to oranges, and pretending they are the same.

Im not sure how "cool" the story is, but it is clearly a valid analogy. As a valid analogy, yes it does in fact illustrate the credibility of my argument.

 

It's the *******s that want the U.S. to be more like Europe, with social agendas, free healthcare, and government control of life.

Conservatives have always been for less government at the federal level, leaving local regulation at the state level.

That Euro countries may be pursuing austerity is a more recent development of reality. One that's a real poke in the libruls eye.

 

Taxes have been lower than total spending 55 out of the last 60 years. Tell me when bankruptcy will happen please? Don't worry I'll wait. There is no day of reckoning.

So now you just make up things? We are in low growth mode because of the same Austerity that is shrinking the European economy. A country in a recession cannot cut spending and grow. It has never worked and never will.

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What does this have to do with Austerity?

Exactly the point of Austerity, reduce government at the cost of shrinking your own economy.

And it is crippling their growth. It is only when they cut back on austerity last year that they witnessed gains in their GDP.

 

My argument, which is correct, is that macroeconomics works the same in the UK as it works in the US. They both are sovereign governments in a fiat currency system. You are some how trying to paint them as different. In your own fairy land the US can exercise the same destructive fiscal policy that is crippling the UK and still work. Maybe the US is that exceptional?

I'd pick formulas, numbers, graphs, and raw proof over analogies. Your argument is not credible at all.

 

OK.......I will give you they are both sovereign governments AND both use fiat currency systems. LOL....What about the other 10,000 or so variables? I guess using the same logic that since both you and I are humans, and we both require oxygen, if we have a stomach ache it therefore must require the same cure.

Formulas numbers and graphs are FANTASTIC when you are comparing apples to apples. Unfortunately that does not apply in this case.

 

Absurdist nonsense. It has worked dozens of times. You cut spending and you do ot raise taxes and regulations and things recove quite nicely as they did under Coolidge and most of tose Presidents in the nineteenth century before Keynesians decided they were omnipresent and omniscient.

 

What is this? Opposite day?

 

They are the same. Europe was in a recession. The US was in a recession. Europe tried Austerity and it didn't work. Why would it work in the US?

 

Dodge noted.

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We left gold standard in 1971. Give me one example since then where austerity worked to cure our problems.

This just in.. Reagan spent us into oblivion, TRIPLING the national debt, and increasing the deficit by 180% during his tenure, and inflation went DOWN during his Administration. Give me an explanation for that.

 

OK.....we have come back full circle to where you and I started.

As I stated in the beginning...."Lets take a look at two different families

Family A is 2 years behind on their mortgage for a total of 48k in debt. They can start a payment plan paying down an additional $500 per month. It will not benefit them at all, because within a few months the bank is going to foreclose in a few months regardless, and the truth is any money they spend on now paying their mortgage they would have been better off keeping.

Family B is 5 months behind on their mortgage for a total of 10k in debt. They also can start a payment plan paying down an additional $500 per month. Their debt is low enough that the bank will see those $500 payments as good progress to being able to tackle their debt, and they will continue to let them pay it down until it is in balance."



It seems to me that you are insinuating that because family A was too far gone to be able to save their home, that Family B clearly shouldnt attempt to get their financial house in order. In reality, the two families are in two entirely different financial situations, and the proper course for family A is NOT the proper course for family B. You are attempting to compare apples to oranges, and that simply doesnt work. "

Using your logic..... Family A was delinquent on their mortgage. Family B was delinquent on their mortgage. Family A tried paying down their mortgage and it didn't work. Why should family B pay down their mortgage?

 

Your examples are irrelevant. There is NO FINANCIAL HOUSE TO GET IN ORDER. THE UNITED KINGDOM AND UNITED STATES DO NOT NEED TO PAY BACK DEBT. Ever. They cannot go bankrupt. Nothing is unsustainable for them. There are no "prior economic conditions" that are relevant. They are monetary sovereign. Both countries have no monetary limitations to live beyond.

The point of the thread is why the Eurozone and the UK recently are hellbent on pushing Austerity over a bunch of blatant lies that Austerity is necessary to improve their economy. It has been proven false in practice. It is only when they lifted their austerity policies at the beginning of this year that their economies recovered. Austerity is poisonous to the economy.

Pretty simple summary.

National debt is nothing more than an accounting notation.. conveniently used to LIE to the public to wage war on whatever political policy they hate the most. Republicans spend like drunken sailors when they have the White House than suddenly annoint a massive spending problem campaign when Democrats are in power so they can convince the public entitlements and services need to be reeled in.

 

Perhaps they cannot technically go bankrupt, but the value of their currency can go to near zero. The difference is primarily semantics.

I fully realize that Krugman and other rabid Keynesians have been decrying austerity as a source of Europes ills, and I also realize that is a highly nuanced argument they are trying to make. The EU has 8 out of its 30 countries that have tried any form of austerity in the last 4 years, and 6 of those countries have performed better GDP growth wise versus the EU average, and 2 have performed worse than the EU average. This hardly constitutes it being "proved false in practice" as Krugman and his army of minions keep shouting from the mountaintops

High levels of national debt significantly increase interest rates which significantly decrases investment which significantly decreases economic output. The alternative to this is simple printing money, which depending on how much money must be printed in excess of our output, the greater the inflationary pressures that result. In no way shape or form is this "just an accounting notation", regardless of how many times Krugman says so.

I notice that you complain about Republicans now being deficit hawks, but nary a word from you on Obamas rantings on the subject while Bush was president. Interesting.

 

For hyperinflation to be a concern, one needs to be near full employment.

I'd like to see some links for that.

Japan has proved this completely false. Japan has 229% Debt / GDP and the lowest bond rates in the world (less than 1%). If there is a limit to how high national debt can go before it starts to kill a country's economy, it has yet to be reached.

Austerity is bipartisan. Both parties use it to attack policies on the other side that they don't like.

The ironic point is that republicans spend like drunken sailors and (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) about our spending problem on entitlements being unsustainable. The democrats (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) about our spending on wars. The people tend to like social security more than war.. just saying.

 

This claim is stupid on its face. If the only way that people can increase wealth is through Government spending, then our country would not have grown so expansively in its earliest years.

You're nothing more than an akphidelt sock.

 

What needs austerity in a very big way is military/security spending. It is a fiscal black hole and has been completely out of control in the US since Ronald Reagan was President. It is and will continue to be a large reason the government runs a deficit and it is totally unnecessary.

 

Interesting. I guess this means that if an economy is in recession with high unemployment, they should simply print a million dollars for every man woman and child and distribute immediately?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffrey...ity-in-europe-it-will-work-if-its-ever-tried/

Japans economy is a mess. They have been able to maintain low interest rates via artificial financial repression, but the downside to this is that household savings rates have went to zero, and this artificially low household savings rate serves as a stealth tax that is further suppressing economic activity. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and never is this more evident than in the disaster that is the current Japanese economy. I really don't think you want to use Japan as the poster child for your views.

Nah nah nah nah boo boo. Who cares?.....jus sayin

 

Did I say the ONLY way is government spending?

The government spends when the private sector refuses to do so, which it has been doing post-recession. If the private sector decides not to hire and spend, and the government practices austerity, you get a lagging recovery. Guess what we are in?

 

Did you name another?

I can see how a simpleton would hold this binary view. Has it occurred to you that Government spending - and the inefficiencies and debt burdens it causes (as well as the favorites it creates - read: cronyism) affects the ability for the private sector to spend?

We've 'spent' more than any US Government in history, and the FED continues to drop 85 billion a month in our stock market. Yet, the lagging recovery (which isn't) - continues.

Perhaps you should be less simple.

 

How would it? The government doesn't need the private sector to spend its own denominated currency.

The lagging recovery continues because people like you think cutting government services and workers will help the economy. Did you not watch how many businesses suffered during the government shutdown?

 

Reagan spent nothing that his Democratic congress did not appropriate. In fact, the Democrats spent more than Reagan requested every year except on defense where they spent very slightly less.

And economics did not change just because we chose to back back our money with essentially nothing other than trust.

 

Erik, the reason you're getting your ass handed to you in this thread is precisely because of asinine statements like this. You whined when I called you out on your contention that Government spending is the only way to grow wealth - denying it - and now you're back to making the exact same claim.

If you cannot see that our currency's value is determined by {a} how much of it there is, and {b} how viable our solvency remains, then no one here is ever going to get past the Keynesian foggyland you've built around you. Governments should not run economies, nor should any ever be allowed to grow so powerful as to be able to ruin them.

What percentage of new hires in the last quarter were Government, Erik? You know: the same rash of hires which the Obamanamable Adminstration is crowing about with the unemployment rate supposedly at 7%?

Answer: nearly 50%.

50% of new hires were Government positions. What percentage of the remaining 50% are temporary holiday positions, Erik?

And yet you're claiming that we have a lagging recovery because we're supposedly cutting Government workers.

You don't know a focking thing - but you're ABSOLUTELY SURE of what about which you're ignorant.

They didn't. That is a completely fabricated claim. In addition, whatever 'suffering' took place was largely CREATED by Obama's petty political maneuvering, like intentionally shutting down Veteran's Memorials, FOR WHICH FUNDING WAS ALREADY IN PLACE.

You lose. Stop expelling asinine Krugman methane.