To all conservatives and moderates, what were on people's minds when
they saw President Barack Obama as the president of promise and reformation? During President Obama's administration, unemployment and national debt is the HIGHEST it has been. More and more civil liberties are being eroded. Despite Obama's dismal and horrific record, Americans voted for him TWICE! What are people "thinking"? America as we know it has been HAD and totally BAMBOOZLED!One of the insurance agents I talked to was pretty depressed. She said that her livelihood has been largely destroyed, because now she can't sell insurance until the next Obamacare open enrollment. Her job is now going to be a feast-or-famine kind of job. She needs a good laugh. I think I'll call her and read your post.
Please, I urge you to call an insurance agent, any insurance agent. You'll find that Obamacare has increased insurance premiums, and you'll find that it has also made it much more difficult for people to change insurance plans.
I have a lot to complain about. My insurance DOES cost more because of Obamacare, and yes, Obamacare has made it more difficult for me to change insurance.
You said, "The Feds can pay for this (and they are paying for much of it) with deficit spending. And no, nobody has to 'pay that back.'" That's part of the problem with the Left. Yes, deficit spending is a problem. EVEN if you don't intend to pay back the debt, you have to pay the interest. If you stop paying the interest, you've defaulted. The interest on 18 trillion dollars isn't a small sum, and that perpetual interest payment sucks our country dry, leaving less and less money to spend on important infrastructure and the taxpayers.
"Erskine Bowles, a co-chair of the president's bipartisan deficit-reduction commission known as 'Simpson-Bowles,' has called the nation's compound interest burden one of the biggest long-term challenges facing the United States."
"'We'll be spending over $1 trillion a year on interest by 2020. That's $1 trillion we can't spend to educate our kids or to replace our badly worn-out infrastructure,'" said Bowles at a recent forum hosted by IHS Global Insight. 'What makes it doubly bad is that trillion will be spent principally in Asia, because that's where our debt is.'"
What's worse than that is the fact that we're paying low interest rates right now. What happens when global interest rates increase?
"'Interest rates have fallen through the floor,' says Baker. 'What that means is at the moment our interest burden is pretty low.'"
"But low interest rates will eventually disappear as the economy recovers. And if investors should decide that U.S. debt is a risky investment, that would also drive interest rates up, making U.S. debt increasingly difficult to manage."
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/201 … -stacks-up"Look around and appreciate that the less fortunate people around you, the ones that ring you up at the store or cook your lunch, can now get affordable, subsidized health insurance for the first time in their lives."
And now, in order to help pay for less fortunate people, I may be working right next to them. After working 10 hours in my regular job, I may have to go work for a few more hours in a second job, so I can afford insurance under Obamacare.
It seems that, now, I will be the less fortunate person. Thank you Obamacare!
Your policy is to let the good times roll, to print, borrow, grow government, and pretend that none of this matters? Are you from Greece?
Actually, we're spending more, per person, than Greece was. How did that turn out for Greece?
My insurance poor, and I pay a lot for it. You don't want to acknowledge that insurance premiums have increased under the debacle we call Obamacare. Fine. Let's talk about whether or not the insurance has improved. The answer is a resounding. . . NO.
Obamacare is a total failure.
- Beth37posted 9 years ago
0 No.
Good evening, John. Happy to run into you here.
Perhaps, when it comes to economics and the many causes of inflation, you may not have read all there is to read and, hence, you may not know all there is know. I know near to nothing about economics, but I do know that Wilderness did not fabricate the notion that unions in the '70s caused inflation.
In a paper by Robert L. Hetzet, “Arthur Burns and Inflation”, the author explores the unusual inflation of the ’70 while Arthur Burns was Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) from February 1970 until December 1977. When discussing Mr. Burns' inflation views as chairman, Mr. Hetzet says, “He believed that a central bank could cause inflation by monetizing government deficits but did not attribute inflation to that source in the early 1970s. Instead, he attributed it to the exercise of monopoly power by unions and large corporations.” {1}
"Burns drew the conclusion that the contemporaneous inflation arose primarily from a rise in wages due to the exercise of monopoly power by labor unions...
The Nixon Administration designed the wage and price controls program that began August 15, 1971, on the assumption that the monopoly power of labor unions was producing a cost-push inflation." {2}
You heard it from Wilderness. You heard it again from me with a link to a verifiable source. Finally, if you follow the link and read the source, you will have heard it for a third time from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Economic Quarterly.
I think NEVER is NEVER as far off as we think and I think Wilderness would do quite well in the bakery business.
Your posts are interesting, John. I enjoyed reading them.
{1}
http://www.richmondfed.org/publications … hetzel.pdf P.23
{2} Ibid. p.35-36
"I didn't mention inflation. I didn't mention the inability to sell bonds. I didn't mention high interest rates; I mentioned paying interest. The interest rate and the interest paid are not the same thing, and we both know it."
Sorry. These are the standard arguments that go along with the fear of deficits. When you went on to quote Bowles and what he had to say on the possibility of interest rates rising, I assumed you went along with that thinking, since you did quote it.
"I said, "Yes, deficit spending is a problem. EVEN if you don't intend to pay back the debt, you have to pay the interest. If you stop paying the interest, you've defaulted. The interest on 18 trillion dollars isn't a small sum, and that perpetual interest payment sucks our country dry, leaving less and less money to spend on important infrastructure and the taxpayers.""
This is incorrect, because there is not a finite number of dollars. Paying interest does not remove dollars from a finite pile from which we pay for other things. Also, "paying back the debt" is a misnomer. There is no extinguishing sovereign debt in the same way you or I extinguish a bank loan when we finish payments. The government exchanges bonds for dollars - this is commonly called "debt." When the government completes its bond obligation, it returns the dollars, plus a few more, in exchange for the bond. But their liability has not changed - dollars are accounting liabilities, too, same as bonds. On the government's ledger, there is no difference between the two. And fiat dollars are not true liabilities, like convertible dollars were - they are just out there, and the government has no further obligation on them. The only thing the government does with dollars is replace them from time to time when they get too ragged.
"I did that "simple research." I found people like Alan Greenspan warning about crushing debt one day and then explaining it all away by saying that we'll never default if we own our own currency. It seems pretty fickle if you ask me. Why was he so concerned prior to his epiphany?"
Greenspan (like any Fed chair) understood the mechanics of dollar creation - the govenrment can produce dollars at will, they can buy their own bonds without limit, and they can control the interest rate. But he was also a monetarist who believed that, somehow, you controlled inflation by controlling the number of dollars in play. That includes interest payments, even though interest payments are overwhelmingly rolled over into more bonds, and never spent.
"I appreciate that you've listed some people who you claim agree with the TDC, but I'd like to see some quotes by these people, quotes that truly show that they believe in the TDC."
You aren't going to find a lot of quotes out there. You would have to dig through the comments sections of blogs, and (sometimes) know who was behind the screen names. The coin idea was a product of discussion forums, not research papers. I know this, because it came from the discussion forums and blogs that MMTers (including myself) participate in. There is an understandable reluctance for big name economists to officially endorse something like the coin, because there is so much immediate blowback (like on this thread, for instance ), and it's hard enough to get people to give heterodox ideas a fair chance without tossing an easy talking point like a trillion-dollar coin out there for reactionists to jump on before they even hear the details. (If you doubt that, just look at the crap a Nobel laureate like Krugman got from a bunch of nobodies for even discussing the subject.)
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