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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (69135)	2/19/2014 11:31:01 PM
From: LLCF	Respond to of 71588

Exxxxxxxxxactly. DAK

To: RMF who wrote (69135)	2/21/2014 3:41:15 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

If Carter had been reelected in 1980 and then the National Debt had run up as much as Reagan's during the period 1980-1984 you seriouly don't think the Republicans would have been SCREAMING (including Reagan himself)? Quite likely they would have, but what does that have to do with anything we are talking about? Your comment is about people's reaction to deficits, not about the deficits themselves, let alone the trend in deficits at a particular time. If the debt in "nominal" terms doesn't mean much then how come the conservatives keep shouting 17 Trillion, 17 Trillion, 17 Trillion? If conservatives disagreed with you would you make much of their claims? Changes in nominal dollar deficits don't mean a lot, but they are the easiest type of changes in deficits to grasp, and the easiest to make a big deal about, so statements about deficits are often about nominal dollar deficits. Why soundbytes about deficits be any different then other shallow political discussion? That was a DOUBLE of what it had been when Bush was elected. "Double" etc. is particuarly meaningless. Not just because its a statement about nominal dollar deficits (although in this case the period in question wasn't long enough for inflation and real economic growth to be huge factors), but also because its based off of what went before. If the previous administration (and congress, too often such discussion is overly focused on the president) ran up deficits by a lot that fact would make high deficits (and thus a large increase in the government's debt) look less important, but the reality is that after a big run up, its more important to have restraing on spending and deficits, not less, and large deficits after a series of other large deficits are more harmful not less harmful then the same large deficits after previous small deficits. In case expressing this point generically is unclear, I'll put in some actual numbers. The current national debt is over $17tril, and Obama's term is not over, but for simplicities sake I'll go for $17tril as the figure for the total debt we are left with after Obama (it probably would be more like $19 or $20tril). Using your figure of $8tril debt after Bush (it sounds in the ballpark and the precise figure doesn't matter for my purposes) it would mean Obama increased it by $9tril (so its more than doubled BTW) If the total debt after Bush was $1tril. And it went up by $9tril Then it would be "Obama increased the debt by 900 percent". With $8tril. and the same increase of $9tril. Then its only up by about 212 percent. The former sounds much worse. But the nominal and real deficits, as well as the deficits as a percentage of GDP for Obama are the same in the 1st counterfactual scenario, and the 2nd historical scenario; and in the 2nd scenario the deficits are a much larger problem. Or to use an even similar scenario - If the debt was a dollar and then it was $1bil, the percentage increase would be huge, but the actual debt and deficits would be "so what issues". If it was $10tril, and it went up by another $10tril (assuming modest inflation and real economic growth that they don't make a huge difference), then the increase would likely (all else being the same as the current situation for the government and the country), then the increase would be much more serious then the first scenario in this paragraph even though the percentage increase is 500 million times smaller. but it sure would be a LOT easier to do something about it if the two parties would actually worry more about the country than their reelection and start to work together to work things out. I think some of them do care, but that's one of the reasons why they have problems working together. They have very different ideas about what is needed to do something about the problem.