How is Obama doing?
Posted by SnowQueen690 on Jan 28, 2010 · Member since Jun 2005 · 1569 posts
My dad hate's Obama. He is convinced that he is going to lower the standard of living for future generations, such as his younger children, and my son and going to make the economy worse before it gets better.
My dad is also facing his business failing after it has been very prosperous for the past 8 years due to higher taxes and the horrible economy, he is loosing his customers.
I am not so crazy either as I think he is spending way too much money and my son and other children of today are the ones who are going to have to pay for it, and I am really worried about that.
What is your opinion?
Regarding the IMF and the World Bank, I find it hard to condemn support of those institutions. They play a pretty pivotal role in regulating global economy and contributing to the restructuring and support of second and third world countries, particularly in conjunction with other major international actors like the EU and NATO. If you look at it in the security sense, there's a very good argument to be made that financial institutions working in tandem with supranational/intergovernmental actors increase global security by fostering a sense of community and accountability to liberal Western democratic norms. It's in everyone's best interest to encourage international cooperation on more than a purely soft diplomatic level.
The way I was raised you have to earn respect, its not just given.
I don't really understand what you mean by this. Respect in what sense?
I really cant tolerate people that just think they should be respected without doing anything that merits it. I can also only respect other people's opinions and values to a certain extent before i feel like Im cheapening my own. I just feel like some very liberal people think we should respect everyone's ideas as being equally important. For example, I had this really chill hippie kid tell me that we have to respect everyone as being equal, even fascists and white supremacists because they are people too. Sorry, I can respect boneheads.
Regarding the IMF and the World Bank, I find it hard to condemn support of those institutions. They play a pretty pivotal role in regulating global economy and contributing to the restructuring and support of second and third world countries, particularly in conjunction with other major international actors like the EU and NATO. If you look at it in the security sense, there's a very good argument to be made that financial institutions working in tandem with supranational/intergovernmental actors increase global security by fostering a sense of community and accountability to liberal Western democratic norms. It's in everyone's best interest to encourage international cooperation on more than a purely soft diplomatic level.
Very true. Its hard to imagine (and unrealistic to believe) that a presidential candidate that is against world bank and the IMF would have a snowballs chance in hell at winning the election. And world bank has done some good, but i dont completely buy all their efforts. I mean look at Haiti now, it is in total chaos because they had no economy or infrastructure. Im pretty sure this is the case because in the 80's and 90's world band subsidized US corn and soybean farmers to go into Haiti. the Haitian farmers couldn't compete and were forced to close their farms and move to the cities. Anyways, my point is that they can kinda be bullies.
I think what I thought when election was going on.... we had two completely horrible choices up for president... and sadly since no one votes for anyone other than those two parties, any good choice was a 'waste of a vote'
Well, we certainly got what we voted for.
I still don't understand the bailouts... say what you will about it being necessary or everything will collapse, but I sure hope its not leading to that anyways!!
And GM being bailed out is utter bull. (Come on, help out the students who went to colleges to get nothing but debt in return... bail out students? Then maybe they can spend their money on the economy?)
The middle-class is disappearing or maybe the lower-class is getting trapped even deeper with no hope of rising out.
Our government talks money and looks out for people with money. Its a shame because we've become such a selfish nation. Back in the last recession people were willing to pay more taxes to bring their nation out of debt. Nowadays all I hear are people wanting the government to take care of them.
I don't really want higher taxes or anything like that... but maybe my opinion would be changed if we had a government that was actually investing in good things.. like education, healthcare, and bringing production of US merchandise here..
Has anyone seen our military budget? Are these Patriarchal leaders trying to make up in size for something they lack? Do big guns make you feel manly?
I'm all about having a military that can defend its nation, but we can have that with much less of a budget for that!
I'll cite a source: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
We have a nation where poor men are fighting a rich man's war.
We need to get rid of the two party bullsh*
We need to re-read and re-educate the people on the actual constitution and quite inhibiting our right with the PATRIOT act and others.
Freedom of religion: USA should not be a christian country. Wasn't it founded by freemasons or something to that extent..and they made a point to accept other religions..
If we celebrate a national religious day, we should celebrate all religions, not just christianity.
Otherwise, make no religious day and let religion be handled outside of politics!
Done. haha. I'm not really into politics sooo I'm sure I've got a lot to learn.
Obama's motorcade just drove through my town....we were about 10 feet from it, 2 miles from my house. Pretty exciting! A LOT of waiting around because the times were not known...and then we just saw the cars. Noah claims he saw him in the window and so did my friend, but I did not. :(
Hi all, new vegetarian here! I am in the process of phasing out dairy/eggs one product at at time so soon I will be vegan! Anyway I am very interested in economics/politics so I figured I would comment on this post.
How is Obama doing? First let me start off by saying that when I refer to Obama, I am really talking about him, his cabinet and the congress. They are all partners in crime and I don't think everything is Obamas fault necessarily. I hear a lot of people on this forum saying "yea but he inherited a huge mess", which is 100% true. However your political blinders (or lack of economic knowledge) are preventing those of you that think this from realizing he is, in almost every way (economically), making this exponentially worse. He and Ben "Helicopter" Bernanke are repeating the mistakes of the Bush/Greenspan era, but on a much larger scale unfortunately.
A good place to start would be the economic stimulus package. From an economic perspective, this is just a terrible plan. Much of the stimulus went to tax cuts which was the least offensive part of the bill. Borrowing money to make tax cuts is a bit counterproductive however. You are merely trading economic growth today for economic contraction later because (we sometimes forget) interest has to be paid on the debt. The most offensive parts of the stimulus bill were the transfers of wealth to the Democratic parties lobbying groups. This was the real intent of the stimulus. This should be no surprise considering this is politics. What was so offensive IMO was the fact that this transfer of wealth to the lobbying groups was marketed as an economic cure-all, when in reality it is more of the cancer. After the collapse of the Nasdaq bubble, "free-market" G.W.B. and his cabinet decided to prevent the recession from running its course by passing a stimulus bill in the form of a tax cut because they thought that it would look bad politically to take office during an economic slump. So we borrowed more money from Asia to finance our growing deficits and Greenspan lowered interest rates to 1%. The collapse of the Nasdaq bubble was met with record car sales and home sales. What kind of recession was that? Where did the bad investments go? Did the mistakes of the Nasdaq bubble magically vanish into thin air? Well, no. Billions of dollars were lost and many investments were made that never should have been made in the first place. There were companies in existence that had no profits whatsoever and they, rightfully, went out of business. The recession that should have occurred was the cure for the mistakes made in the dot com bubble. Instead of letting the free market reallocate the misallocated resources (called a recession), the government stepped in and cut taxes. This would have been great if they also would have cut spending, but of course, they didn't. In fact, they increased spending and debt by a tremendous amount during the wars. The result of the monetary and fiscal stimulus was a housing bubble and a derivative bubble caused by low interest rates set by the Fed and the partial repeal of Glass-Steagall didn't help either. To be clear, Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the housing or derivative bubbles, but it would have kept commercial banks somewhat intact. Considering Goldman Sachs basically owns the treasury I am sure we still would have had bail-out mania. Again to be clear, I am all for deregulating the banking system, but not if the deposits are insured by the FDIC. Please don't gamble with my tax money, k thanks!
So to make a long story short, low interest rates and government stimulus following the Nasdaq bubble were the cause of the 2008 financial crises. The solution offered by Obama/Bernanke? A stimulus much larger and interest rates even lower! If the consequences of the Bush/Greenspan stimulus were the 2008 debacle, what are the consequences of the Obama/Bernanke stimulus going to be? Well, I and many others think the result will be the collapse of the US dollar. As interest rates on our debt rise, the Federal Reserve will be forced to resort to debt monetization until the confidence in the currency completely collapses. I hope I am wrong but all signs point to this outcome.
Furthermore Obama's bailout of GM and Crystler and the health care bill are complete economic disasters. I will revisit the health care bill later.
Obamas economic grade: F- (Bernanke would get an even lower grade if that were possible)
On social issues, Obama promised many things during his campaign including the repeal of Dont Ask Dont Tell and the close of Guantanamo Bay. Now that his regime has been elected, we can clearly see that by change he meant "more of the same, except bigger!". We are still involved in 2 wars, we still have Dont Ask Dont Tell, and United States citizens can now be assassinated by executive order without a trial. Yay! I hope the administration doesn't see this post! I might be considered a terrorist! I kid I kid. Do I think Obama's administration intends to misuse this power? Probably not, but they shouldn't have that authority in the first place. What happens when a real nutcase takes office and there is a precedent for this type of thing? What about his work on cap and trade and the environment? Well, cap and trade doesn't solve any of the anthropogenic gw problems, and it costs a whole lot of money. I think I'll pass. Thankfully this appears to be dead.
Obamas social grade: F, he still has time to fix this one if he so chooses.
Now on to healthcare. Obama and the Dems claim that in order to fix the healthcare system we must have a government insurance option because the greedy health insurance companies are overcharging their customers, delivering subpar outcomes, and in addition to we have anywhere from 15-45 million uninsured depending upon whose numbers you look at. This appears to be an attack on the profit motive. They are basically saying that because the health insurance companies must profit, they are unable to provide services at a low cost. However, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the profit motive. The profit motive (in the absence of government interventions into the marketplace that distort incentive systems) is what drives DOWN costs, improves quality, and drives innovation.
The reality is that the problems in our healthcare system stem from too much government intervention into the healthcare system already. For starters, we have medicare which is essentially bankrupt ($10 trillion in unfunded liabilities that are NOT included in our national debt figures). The original Obama plan? To expand medicare! Well...okay, but this is contrary to the claim that Obama made in regard to not taxing citizens that make less than $250,000/year. If they are not taxed directly, they will be indirectly taxed in the form of the individual mandate or the inflation tax which devalues their wages and savings. If their employer is taxed this just lowers their wages as well, so you can't get away with that either. Second, we have legislation in place that encourages the over utilization of health insurance (employer mandates, etc). Originally, health insurance was only to cover emergency care and it was very cheap. Anyone could afford catastrophic insurance, almost no one was denied coverage, and routine medical procedures were paid for by customers out of pocket. When customers paid out of pocket for routine care, they made sure to do their best to get their monies worth and prices fell as they do in almost all other industries where the customer pays directly. Examples to consider are the cosmetic surgery industry and lasik procedures. The costs of these types of treatments have fallen drastically even in inflationary periods because the patients pay the doctors directly, and are much more involved in the decision making process. When patients pay directly, prices fall and the poor can afford to purchase and have complete control over their own care. When the government intervenes and subsidizes health care (or in our current case, creates a corporate health insurance welfare system like ours), they make the poor dependent upon the government and remove them from controlling their own medical destiny. Furthermore, quality decreases and cost increases (as we have seen with medicare). As the cost of providing government healthcare increases, taxes go up (or inflation occurs) and the supply of productive jobs the poor and dependent desperately need to get out of the welfare trap is further reduced, which has the effect of making them more dependent.
To summarize my views on Obamacare: The current system is horribly broken, and Obamacare might not make anything better. In all likelihood things will actually be worse. I would have almost preferred a total government takeover of healthcare for two reasons. 1. The insurance companies and profit motive couldn't be blamed for the problems that will inevitably result from Obamacare. 2. The debt load would have crippled the U.S. government sooner, perhaps expediting the process of restructuring our economy.
Obamas grade on healthcare: D-. He gets a bit of credit because he actually managed to somewhat keep his word.
Wow that was longer than I thought it would be lol. Anyway I don't think it really matters who we elect, our government is broken almost beyond repair. Does anyone that feels the way I do about Obama really think that McCain would have done a much better job? Perhaps he would have been less bad, but not by much in my estimation. And if he died and Palin got in....well....it scares me to think about that to be honest lol.
Hi all, new vegetarian here! I am in the process of phasing out dairy/eggs one product at at time so soon I will be vegan! Anyway I am very interested in economics/politics so I figured I would comment on this post.
Wow that was longer than I thought it would be lol. Anyway I don't think it really matters who we elect, our government is broken almost beyond repair. Does anyone that feels the way I do about Obama really think that McCain would have done a much better job? Perhaps he would have been less bad, but not by much in my estimation. And if he died and Palin got in....well....it scares me to think about that to be honest lol.
Welcome to VegWeb....good to hear your opinion. Not quite sure I agree 100%, but a good post and very well defended position.
I do definitely agree that McCain and Palin wouldn't have given better results, when conservatives practically ruined the economy two years ago.
I will also say that in my lifetime I think we've seen the worst and most ineffective congress in our history.
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