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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (60073)	4/19/2008 5:22:49 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542905

Kyrosl is right. Right about what? He argued GDP and debt. He never argued GDP and debt. He asserted GDB and debt with a big, fat pictorial flourish. He offered no argument to support its relevance. (No rationale, just assertion. Does that sound familiar?) And the thread is telling him either that it will positively reinforce anything as long is it is presented as opposition to some perceived other or that they've been drinking the same Kool-Aid. I find those dynamics fascinating. Why is the debt increase/during during the term of a president attributed to the sitting president? Why is the an increase/decrease in GDP a blanket attribution to the sitting president? If anyone here knows, he's not telling. What about impacts on the debt that are totally outside the control of the president like droughts or the baby boom retiring? What about the congress, which is the player most directly responsible for the budget? What about the fed and its fiddling with interest rates? What about the lag time between programs a president implements and their effect on the debt. The effect of this stimulus tax rebate will be attributed to Obama under the construct of that chart. Is that valid? Lag time is the clearest of the fallacies. What about the acts from long ago like Roosevelt's Social Security showing up on Obama's tally? What about this recession, which will show up on Obama's tally? I can't wait to see how the presentation of this changes after Obama has a few years of rising debt and falling GDP, pretty much inevitable in the first years. At the very least the pretty picture will be the logarithmic chart, which will flatten the debt increase that will then be awarded to Obama. If you want to determine the role of various presidents, add up the deficit/surplus for each year and tack on the effects of any tax increases or decreases pushed by the president. Those factors are at least reasonably attributable to an administration if not the whole picture. But if you want to sum that up and attribute it to a party, well, there just aren't enough data points to do that. Or, the simplest thing is to acknowledge that both parties have more often than not fallen short in safeguarding our treasury. In an earlier post you mentioned changing history. These thread dynamics might be explicable if there were an actual challenge to history or to the good guys in any of this. But I suspect a figment. I sure can't find anything real. I posted two challenges. One was that neither party has a great record when it comes to the treasury and the other was that the chart is too far off base to add light to the first challenge. I don't need a break. There is too much of interest going on here. Particularly given the alternative of the Allentown bowling league poll results. <g>