The sad cost of war

[Danzig]

i'm not quite sure how this thread got off on the tangent it did...but i went to factcheck.org to see if they had anything on obama's great health care plan, and whether it would add to our already incredibly bloated deficit. it does:


http://www.factcheck.org/2009/07/oba...ws-conference/


■Obama promised once again that a health care overhaul “will be paid for.” But congressional budget experts say the bills they’ve seen so far would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade.


and as for his overall budget? ~■Obama claimed his budget "reduced federal spending over the next 10 years by $2.2 trillion" compared with where it was headed before. Not true. Even figures from his own budget experts don’t support that. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $2.7 trillion increase, not a $2.2 trillion cut.


so, if obama has great ideas, fine. if he turns out to be a great president-wonderful. but MY beef with him is his spending, and the above shows why i'm concerned. i don't give a damn what party he belongs to, i don't care about his ability to give good speech. but all i've seen from his treasury secretary and from economists is that our economy will not do well, will continue to take blow after blow, if our deficit isn't brought under control. yet our president wants to spend even more that we don't have.

[Danzig]

and here's this, on the stimulus spending, from a few months back:


http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/mak...ulus-spending/


~The Obama team originally estimated, for example, that unless a stimulus plan was enacted, the unemployment rate would reach nearly 9 percent sometime in the first three months of next year....


...But as things have turned out, even with the big spending package in place, the jobless rate shot up to 9.4 percent in May, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

and here's this, on the stimulus spending, from a few months back:


http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/mak...ulus-spending/


~The Obama team originally estimated, for example, that unless a stimulus plan was enacted, the unemployment rate would reach nearly 9 percent sometime in the first three months of next year....


...But as things have turned out, even with the big spending package in place, the jobless rate shot up to 9.4 percent in May, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Please look at the link I posted, which has the CURRENT information.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Riot

Please look at the link I posted, which has the CURRENT information.

that article is not exactly old info..and i did read your link. and i also read a few weeks back how unemployment rose to the same numbers with the stimulus plan as it was projected to without it. so, what exactly did all that proposed new spending accomplish job wise? nothing. but it sure added to our humongous deficit. so, i'd think in the end that it will do more harm than good. no job increase that they expected, no decrease in job losses, and a further drag overall due to more spending of money we DON'T HAVE.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

that article is not exactly old info..and i did read your link. and i also read a few weeks back how unemployment rose to the same numbers with the stimulus plan as it was projected to without it. so, what exactly did all that proposed new spending accomplish job wise? nothing. but it sure added to our humongous deficit. so, i'd think in the end that it will do more harm than good. no job increase that they expected, no decrease in job losses, and a further drag overall due to more spending of money we DON'T HAVE.

The job loss picture is slowing, stablizing. Those are the facts, based upon current data.

??? There are many state projects out there that have hired on - projects funded by stimulus money. Mostly road projects so far. Geesh, it's there in the news. There was just a huge article about it the other day (I'd have to google, it was on an internet news site like CNN or something) - about different states, what they have done with the initial stimulus money (again, mostly road projects).

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Riot

The job loss picture is slowing, stablizing. Those are the facts, based upon current data.

??? There are many state projects out there that have hired on - projects funded by stimulus money. Mostly road projects so far. Geesh, it's there in the news. There was just a huge article about it the other day (I'd have to google, it was on an internet news site like CNN or something) - about different states, what they have done with the initial stimulus money (again, mostly road projects).

job losses continue. the deficit grows, which the stimulus added to. if we are five years from job GROWTH, and our deficit continues to increase, how can you feel any confidence right now based on those two things? a few road projects don't reduce the deficit. overall, i think our economy is further battered by all the added spending.


are a few jobs added here or there, when the overall true unemployment rate is over 16%, worth our growing deficit?

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

job losses continue. the deficit grows, which the stimulus added to. if we are five years from job GROWTH, and our deficit continues to increase, how can you feel any confidence right now based on those two things? a few road projects don't reduce the deficit. overall, i think our economy is further battered by all the added spending.

are a few jobs added here or there, when the overall true unemployment rate is over 16%, worth our growing deficit?

What should we do if we are five years from job growth? Just sit here and wait for it to happen? How will it happen if we are in a depression, or still in a recession?

Those "few" jobs here and there add up (the money is there to be spread over two years of it), and those jobs are sure important to the people that were unemployed two months ago, but have them now.

Is it your position that it would have been better to not spend that money, not improve our dangerously crumbling and outdated infrastructure (bridges collapsing on people, highway repairs, etc) and not hire those people?

Look at just the auto industry: what if, instead of stimulus, cash for clunkers, etc., the government did a complete hands off, and allowed the auto industry to fail?

Where would we be right now, six months later? Were would unemployement be? Would we be in a stabilizing recession, or would we have fallen off the cliff?

Clinton handed Bush a balanced, rapidly decreasing deficit, and Bush raised it to the highest deficit ever, and ignored a developing recession. Now we have to get out of it.

We are not in a place where hands off or cutting spending are really viable options at this time, and that's what most of the major economists have been saying all along.

[Danzig]

[quote=Riot]The job loss picture is slowing, stablizing. Those are the facts, based upon current data.
QUOTE]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32349809...s_and_economy/


Though the unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent in July — its first drop in 15 months — economists predict it will start climbing again. Many, including people in the Obama administration and at the Fed, say it could still top 10 percent this year.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32314827...n_the_economy/


even if the economy quickly returned to the peak job creation performance of 2007, when the economy was adding roughly 400,000 new jobs a month, it would take more than two years to rehire the 7 million workers who lost their jobs to the recession.

Few economists expect a return to those 2007 growth levels any time soon.



you might want to wait for more than one weeks happy headlines before you start thinking we're out of trouble.

[Riot]

[quote=Danzig
you might want to wait for more than one weeks happy headlines before you start thinking we're out of trouble.[/QUOTE]

I never said we were out of trouble. It will take 2-4 years until we are out of trouble. It will take a long time until jobs come back. The positives are that we haven't dropped off the "let's ignore it and let business find it's own level" cliff into the second great Depression, nor is the recession currently deeping. It appears at this time to be holding steady, with small positive indicators here and there.

We still haven't seen the credit card crash, nor commerical real estate.