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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (659397)	6/22/2012 11:29:04 AM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1588641

Presidents can mess up the economy, and they can reduce the amount the government messes up the economy, but usually much of the economic performance when they are president is due to "luck" (more accurately is do to a lot of factors beyond their control, policies of previous presidents, decisions of congress both current and former, state and foreign government decisions, and most of all decisions and changes in the private sector, new technology, new products, new or expanded sources of energy or raw materials, more efficient or flexible or powerful methods of handling financial investment, new business start-ups, or recognition of opportunities by existing businesses, etc.) so while it might involve a lot of decisions not random chance, it is to a large degree luck from the perspective of evaluating the performance of the president). Presidents don't, and cant' effectively, manage the economy. They can reduce or increase the extent the government hampers the economy, or at best they can give very modest boosts at the margin from well tarted additional action. They can't create prosperity. The private sector does that. Clinton became president at a time when 1 - A recession had just ended, so he had a low point to start from. 2 - The cold war had recently ended, and the US military had been restocked with new equipment, so the size of the military and its equipment budget could be cut, freeing up resources for other uses. 3 - There was a huge expansion of the internet and in internet services from the private sector, as well as a lot of development in non-internet technologies. 4 - There was an internet investment bubble, generating private sector wealth, and public sector revenue, and the negative fallout from the bubble partially was delayed until Bush's time in office, and partially was staved off even longer with easy money (which helped lead to the housing bubble and the current mess). "Your forgetting that the money they get comes from somewhere else. In this case from the tax payers" Bingo! That's the issue. The money comes from your pocket and that just pisses you wingers off to no end. You can't accept that that's part of what democracy and culture and civilization are all about. So in your opinion democracy and culture and civilization require this - nydailynews.com We aren't talking about the existence of government. No one is promoting anarchy here. The point is that expanding government employment, or paying more for each government employee, only is beneficial if it produces positives results, not simply from the government employees getting a fat paycheck. That paycheck isn't "democracy and civilization", its a cost, in a number of cases a justified cost, lots of government employees do worthwhile things in order to get the paycheck, but the cost itself, considered in isolation from the sometimes useful work, is a negative for the country. Democracy and culture and civilization are not "all about", and do not require, a bloated government bureaucracy.