i dont wear shoes inside... but my gf does.. because im a retired germophobe... now i eat dirt for fun.

The middle class is dying because industrial jobs are drying up. Industrial jobs are drying up because we are competing in a global market where many countries can pay their workers far less than what someone here would accept. It's not the fault of any particular president. How do you fix that?

sonicare

tariffs.

Stimulus is necessary, just liket he bail out is necessary. If government doesn't do stimulous, it will create panic and people would start to riot and the damange would be drastic. But, of course we cannot have stimulous for too long. It is not magic, we cannot keep printing money as if there is no consequences to it. There is only a limited time to recover, once that time is over, it is basically doomed. Honestly I think we are going into true depression. It is not somehting I want to experience myself and I so very hope I am wrong, but, I fear true depression is coming. It is not entirely Obama's fault if we really going into depression, we are all to blame if that really happened. I just hope he can prove me wrong and turn it around.magicalclick

Well ideally you try to save during times of prosperity, and spend during times of recession to help damper the boom/bust cycle. The only reason we cant spend our way out of the recession is because someone already spent us into the toilet before the recession when we should have been saving.

Its like if you own a ski resort... and you spend all the money you have during the winter... then summer comes and you cant figure out why you are broke, arent making any money, and cant pay the rent on your facilities. We were too far in debt before the recession came. If it wasnt for wars and trickle down, we probably could have spent our way out of it with minimal impact.

[QUOTE="SoBaus"]

[QUOTE="Mafiree"] It is not "unreasonable" to expect an economist to forecast unemployment to a +/- 2%......... And if this predictions had such a great margin of error, Obama should not have presented the results in the manner he did.Mafiree

This recession was rather unprecedented.... as its being called the worst financial disaster since the great depression. Its hard to predict all the ins and outs of something like that.

What previous data did they have to go on to estimate the impact of a 700 billion dollar stimulus on an incredibly fragile economy? Obama trusted the smartest economists in the country, and the smartest economists in the country were off on their predictions.

I dont understand why this scenario is so difficult for you to accept and you assume there needs to be an elements of fraud.

Even Stephen Hawking has been wrong on his theories regarding black holes (and the many brilliant scientists that agreed with him), hes not stupid... and i wouldnt consider anyone that trusts stephen hawking to be a liar. Sometimes even incredibly smart people are wrong... its just how life works. The unnkown is never knowable, no matter how smart you are.

Again you are insinuating fraud, of which there has been no evidence... and no prominent economist that i know of has even hinted at. The overwhelming best course of action according to the economist community at the time is that which Obama took.

And its not just about a direct creation of jobs, alot of it is based on restoring investor confidence. Things like the stimulus help keep the markets from bleeding. When investors lose confidence in the market it creates a snowball effect.

The stimulus didnt come about thinking they would straight up recoup spending costs on jobs created via taxes (that kind of stupidity is reserved for trickle down economics).. the entire point was to help ease the woes of investors that were rapidly withdrawing their money from the markets.

The stimulus helped stabalize the markets... any economist worth his salt will tell you that, just the magnitude of the effect was miscalculated... which I doubt was done with any ill will. Which brings me back to my original point, that even the best and brightest arent correct 100% of the time and the more unprecedented the circumstances, the more likely they are to misjudge.

[QUOTE="theone86"]

[QUOTE="limpbizkit818"] And how do you know that is Obama's doing? The thing with Government stimulus is that it is win win for whoever passes it: If the economy gets better, they get full credit. If the economy struggles then o well, it would have been worse without the stimulus. And if it fails then screw it, the government can't really fix the markets. Blame the corporations. Yet one must remember that running deficits now means higher taxes later. With incomes down and the poverty rate up across the nation, raising taxes is going to suck. I wish the President could have put our country in a better position than it is right now. His foreign policy has not helped any of this (increases in the defense budget). But the fact remains that I personally do not feel like Mr. Obama has helped this country in his 3(ish) years in office. Unemployment is higher then the government projected post-stimulus. Cash for Clunkers was a joke and failed to create a long term auto sales boost. The debt problem had gone almost untouched until his party lost the house. Now it's a nightmare trying to get anything done. Blame Republicans all you want, but Obama has to take some responsibility for where we are economically. Also, the US is no closer to energy independence than we were when Obama took office.limpbizkit818

Couple of things. One, every President since Eisenhower, perhaps even before Eisenhower, has increased the military budget, that's nothing unique to Obama. Obama has, however, supported decreases in the military budget that have met with opposition in Congress, I don't see how the blame is exclusively his.

Two, what is this logic amongst conservatives, that if Obama does anything to try to address the economy he is expanding government authority too far, but if he doesn't do anything then he gets reamed because the economy is doing poorly? Is there any scenario where he doesn't get criticized? This is perfectly epitmoized in your statements about cash for clunkers, what do you expect him to do, keep passing bailout after bailout to stimulate auto sales? The problem here is demand, and demand won't rise until the workers have money to spend and put back into the economy, which means hiring has to pick up. That's not something that President Obama can rectify.

Three, there are objective ways of measuring the stimulus. Cash for clunkers, for example, shows a direct correlation between car sales that were not projected to go up by any economist until the program was announced, and immediately after many car dealerships had their business and hiring pick up. You can also look at some government work projects to see that there are jobs being created, and that without those jobs the economy would be in worse shape now than had it not been done at all. This isn't just conjectural mud-slinging, these are objective facts about certain initiatives and what their impact has been on the economy. Here are the jobs that President Obama has created, now where are the jobs that private business is creating?

Running deficits now means higher taxes later? Since when? We've been running defecits since Clinton and for years before he came into office and taxes have only gone down. I highly doubt that an increased 3%, even across the board and ignoring the idea of just raising the top rate, would affect Americans all that much. That means a small bit less money for people who have stability in order to increase the stability of the whole nation, I think it's a fair trade-off.

What do you mean the debt problem has gone untouched? Obama had been speaking about deficit reduction since before the midterms, a huge part of his impetus for medical reform was based on deficit reduction, he's put forward proposals for cutting military spending, for cutting oil subsidies, for raising taxes by a marginal amount, for reforming the tax code, and all of these things have consistently been rejected by Republicans. In fact, Paul Ryan's own estimates of the savings that would be created by his medicare and medicaid reform rely on OBAMACARE for a huge chunk of the savings, and at the same time he is criticizing the President for demagoging. Same thing with energy independence, it's the Republicans who are blockading efforts to wean the nation off oil. How can you possibly blame the President for that? What do you expect him to do?

It's easy to blame Obama's foreign policy for the need for an ever increasing defense budget. The fact that every president has spent more on the military than his predecessor is part of the problem. And did Obama correct this? No, he continued to to perpetrated it.

I see no reason for your statement about conservatives. What other people think about Obama has no bearing on my statements or what I think. I said nothing of expanding government authority too far. This is irrelevant.

You're objective ways to measure the stimulus are far to short term. The cash for clunkers is a great example. You say that " many car dealerships had their business and hiring pick up" yet if you go look at the numbers for the months following the pick up you would see a large decline in sales. All the cash for clunkers program did was push future car sales to the present. There is no net gain in the economy. People took advantage of a short term deal and the program cost the government money.

Most of the stimulus jobs are short term. I would love for you to post some of the "objective facts about certain initiatives and what their impact has been on the economy."

Ofcourse running a deficit means higher taxes. Did I say the taxes would have to be raised right away? No, but you even say that they will have to go up, even if only for the rich. Now I don't know for sure what type of tax or how much they will need to increased in the future, but they do have to go up. There is no way around that fact that the US is going to need to increase tax revenue in the coming years. I highly doubt only the top earners are going to feel the effects of American's growing debt.

This is what I mean by saying the debt problem has gone untouched. Great, Obama TALKED about solving the problem. So have a lot of other politics. But honestly he has done little to nothing to correct the problem and I don't see why I should vote for 4 more years of talk. I am not going to get into the healthcare thing, as I personally believe it's going to cost us more money. The CBO is almost always wrong with their estimates. It's great that he talked about theoil subsidies, yet even their repeal would hardly affect the budget shortfall (although I support such a move). It's a great talking point but not really the big issue. The fact is that the debt has gotten larger durning Obama's presidency. If he was serious about it he would have done something. Instead he's going to wait until right before the election and make it look like he cares to get some votes.

I would love for you to list what Obama has seriously done (outside of talk) aboutenergy independence. Both parties seem committed to keeping the US on oil, but I don't see why I can't criticize the president for that. Why is your first defense for him "Well the Republicans want oil too!" I don't care what the Republicans want. I am sure you rememeber the President's remarks in Brazil (about how ready the US is to buy their oil). I think he has shown over and over that he is not the leader this nation needs to tackle such a large problem.

All of these issues have led to a weak presidency. The biggest problem facing the country when (and the reason why) Obama was elected was the economy. Three years later and it's still the same problem.

Obama isnt a dictator, his crap still has to go through congress. And everyone in congress wants to make it rain for their campaign contributors.

I dont know what you want him to do about the debt... republicans wont let him raise taxes and democrats wont let him kill old people.

[QUOTE="SoBaus"]

[QUOTE="Mafiree"] No..... I'm saying he is he either has incompetent economist or lied to the American people to pass the stimulus.Mafiree

Im sure he had the most competent ecnonomists, but sadly even gifted economists are not fortune tellers. They made predictions to the best of their ability... again you seem to have incredibly unrealistic expectations.

Think of it this way... the most knowledgeable person in football in the world... still cant predict 100% of football outcomes, there is always a rather large margin for error. This is the case anytime anyone tries to predict the future.... even the greatest minds in the world cant predict the future.

This recession was rather unprecedented.... as its being called the worst financial disaster since the great depression. Its hard to predict all the ins and outs of something like that.

What previous data did they have to go on to estimate the impact of a 700 billion dollar stimulus on an incredibly fragile economy? Obama trusted the smartest economists in the country, and the smartest economists in the country were off on their predictions.

I dont understand why this scenario is so difficult for you to accept and you assume there needs to be an elements of fraud.

Even Stephen Hawking has been wrong on his theories regarding black holes (and the many brilliant scientists that agreed with him), hes not stupid... and i wouldnt consider anyone that trusts stephen hawking to be a liar. Sometimes even incredibly smart people are wrong... its just how life works. The unnkown is never knowable, no matter how smart you are.

i would be drafted...

if you are asking if we would be draft dodgers or not... no i wouldnt be a draft dodger.

[QUOTE="SoBaus"]

[QUOTE="Mafiree"] It is unreasonable for the president of the United States to be able to higher economist who know how to forecast? There were lots of economists who predicted the housing bubble and the deep recession......Mafiree

Yes and all those economists predicted it under the presidency of GW Bush. Remember the bubble popped under bush, all the chances to avert the crisis happened under bush. Obama came in post financial meltdown.... the best he could do was try to pickup the pieces. So apparently you except obama to have access to time machine technology as well?

Im sure he had the most competent ecnonomists, but sadly even gifted economists are not fortune tellers. They made predictions to the best of their ability... again you seem to have incredibly unrealistic expectations.

Think of it this way... the most knowledgeable person in football in the world... still cant predict 100% of football outcomes, there is always a rather large margin for error. This is the case anytime anyone tries to predict the future.... even the greatest minds in the world cant predict the future.

[QUOTE="SoBaus"]

[QUOTE="Mafiree"] 2.5 years in office is enough time to have some effect. Obama himself believed that unemployment would not go above 8% if the stimulus package he introduced was passed.Mafiree

Thats because everyone undestimated the impact of the financial crisis.... and not just the government, same goes for for the all-knowing private sector. If you are asking why obama isnt smarter than everyone else on the planet.... well i dont have an answer... other than thats an incredibly unreasonable expectation.

But the stimulus certainly helped to some extent.

Yes and all those economists predicted it under the presidency of GW Bush. Remember the bubble popped under bush, all the chances to avert the crisis happened under bush. Obama came in post financial meltdown.... the best he could do was try to pickup the pieces. So apparently you expect obama to have access to time machine technology as well?

[QUOTE="BMD004"][QUOTE="Nibroc420"] Perhaps it's a sign that people should get off their ***es and back to work? People who feed off welfare and unemployment benefits sicken me. Leaches.Nibroc420

Government pays people money when they do nothing, then has less money to spend on the things that are important to the people who actually put money into the government.

Eventually they "run out" of money, and have to print more to pay for the leaches who dont work and dont pay taxes.

If people went out and got jobs, they'd put money into the government to pay for the services they QQ about, rather than the Government having to print money and go deeper into debt to feed the lazy ones.

You understand what the unemployment rate is right? people looking for jobs that dont exist. Even if all the "leaches" decided to go out and look for work there is no work for them to get.

By cutting off the leaches you are actually shrinking demand which deinsentivizes investment in the economy... which further shrinks the economy.

When McDonalds went on a hiring spree a couple months ago they rejected something like 93% of applicants. That means its basically harder to get a job in fast food than it is to get accepted to a high level university.