Why Do Some People Say The Government Shouldn't Expand?

I would say an equal amount of blame goes to Wall Street (if not more).

 

Expansion doesn't guarantee corruption or incompetence, although admittedly, it is often the same with our government.

I can definitely sympathize with keeping our government limited, but it's mostly because we have a combination of too much lobbyism and a culture of corruption. There are elites that run every country, but it would appear that our elites are even less ethical than the ones in a lot of our peers.

 

Neither in my opinion. I believe we are paying for over 50 years of sending our manufacturing, jobs and wealth to other countries. The real estate fiasco was certainly the government's fault. The Wall Street and bank failure was an economic blip that should have cleared up in a year or year and a half. Remember, the banks were bailed out so that they would loan money again. They took the money and didn't loan, as you may recall. TARP came and went with no effect on anything other than politics. Luckily that TARP money has mostly been repaid but had nothing at all to do with easing credit or the economy overall. The fact that we're still in the bad economy tells me the problem is way more fundamental than that. Take a long look at our balance of trade for past several decades. There is the problem.

 

Most of our manufacturing jobs didn't go over seas they died because of increased efficiency. Production that used to take 10 men a week is now done in an hour by one guy and increasingly the one guy is being replaced by a robot. Certain things have been move overseas because the EPA or some other alphabet soup agency made that particular process far to expensive to do here. Raw casting are one of the primary things that were moved overseas because of EPA. We still do investment castings in this country but that probably doesn't account for more than 10-20 percent of all castings used in this country.

 

TARP had a huge effect on the money supply, and by extension, sets us up for both far more inflation and more market collapses.

People keep saying it was paid back, but think about how. We paid for the bailouts twice. The first time was via tax money, the second time by banks charging interest.

Add to this the fact that millions of individuals lost their retirement funds and haven't been bailed out. In effect, we have a massively plutocratic system.

When it comes to trade, however, outsourcing is inevitable. All you can do is better educate your workforce so that they can find jobs that aren't so easily outsourced.

We need more engineers, doctors, and technicians. Service-based jobs are what most First Worlders should be working in.

 

You can thank representatives like Ted Cruz for the whole "not paying taxes thing." They have fought tooth and nail against Obama's immigration reform plan, which would bring these illegals into the fold and get them paying taxes.

 

Gotta love leftist logic. Their president illegally floods the nation with illegals and then they WAIL that the GOP should help break yet more laws by making them legal citizens just so that they could officially enter tax rolls which, because most of them would not be earning enough money, would end up being refunded to them . . . anyway. Sheesh!

 

Ok...

First: He's not "my" President. I didn't vote him either time. Hell, you were in the thread where I said I voted for Gary Johnson in 2012.

Second: Obama has not "illegally flooded the nation" with immigrants. He's not bringing them here on buses. They are coming here on their own, more often than not to escape the horrible conditions created by the drug cartels that spawned in the wake of US Drug Prohibition. Also, the Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in deportations:



Third: We are "wailing" because we, too, see the harmful effects of tons of immigrants coming into the nation and not paying taxes. But we have actually come up with a reasonable solution. One that is not just embraced by "leftists" but also by moderate Republicans like Rand Paul and Jeb Bush.

 

Jeb Bush is a stinking RINO. As for your other points they have been refuted by -- gasp -- leftist inclined sources. Last week Yahoo! News pointed out that Obama's pen and phone presidency has ENCOURAGED countless hordes of people to flood over the border into the United States and he has essentially forbidden Immigration Services from doing anything to put a halt to it. Really it pays to keep up with current information. Obama has opened the floodgates during his presidency and this nation is going to pay the costs for that for decades to come.

 

Yeah, ok. And how about Rand Paul? Marco Rubio? Ronald Reagan? Are they "stinking RINOs" too?

Yahoo should stick to email services.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cfc36b92-ffa2-11e3-9a4a-00144feab7de.html#axzz3ZN9afY00

 

lots of interesting and thoughtful points
probably the basis for multiple separate threads and endless discussions among economists, politicians, and
ideologues

perhaps starting with sending jobs overseas----and trade deficit
certainly the gov was involved.... either through direct policies or ignoring the problems
but such things do not happen in isolation
there was a general agreement (left and right) on the ideas supporting increased global
trade.... the idea that this trade makes everyone richer
and of course that idea was eagerly supported by corporations that wanted to increase sales abroad as well as reduce costs here at home... and all of this folded into the reduced regulation meme of that reagan popularized, but was also adopted by democrats

undocumented workers have played a role as well.... functioning as imported off shore labor to reduce costs...the flip side being eroding wages

the thing is that there is no one locus of blame. we all enjoy the benefits of walmart prices, low cost dish washers and yard care, non union construction workers, 24x7 phone support from india, japanes german and korean cars....

when other peoples jobs are outsourced and our costs are reduced, it seems great
but more and more good jobs are disappearing
and what cannot be outsourced is working at mc donalds, or walmart

that is the left overs for a large segment of our labor force

 

Why did you bump a three year old thread?

 

Not like the topic isn't still applicable.

 

There is very little government can DO for the economy that isn't being done, government policy now is more in the way then helpful.

 

This is all true, but inefficiency does not equate to "can't do anything," as the OP stated.

 

Interesting with a 3 year old thread how many posters have been (seemingly) permanently banned. And how many just have chosen to not participate any more.