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Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

forbes.com

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Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#211

Post by nhaehnle »

pyoung wrote: post #196
nawitus wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In fact, you can see this difference play out in slow motion in the Eurozone, which still has not recovered from the financial crisis. Things would have played out very different had their been a Eurozone federal government that provides at least the basic components of the social safety nets. I don't understand this argument. Are you claiming that there's no social safety nets in Europe? There are and have been and…

The issue is with the ability to issue currency, not with the social safety net. The sentence that you reference is a little misleading. What was implied, was that if the Eurozone had a federal government with the ability to issue currency, and that same government was also in charge of the social safety net (among other programs), then there wouldn't be as much of a crisis because they could print money to pay for t…

Thank you for helping with a clarification.

I would add the following: If there had been a federal government, then that government would not even have had to do anything that looked like "printing money" in public discourse.

This is because this federal government would not have had any trouble issuing new debt in the form of bonds. Why not? Because everybody would have known that the European Central Bank would effectively guarantee those bonds under any condition, and therefore there would not have been a panic about the debt in the first place. It's all a psychological game.

As evidence, consider that the fiscal policy part of the US federal government has not done anything that looks like "printing money" up to this point. All they have done is issue bonds, i.e. get loans from creditors.

Yes, the Fed has done things that look like "printing money", but that's monetary policy which has nothing to do with social safety nets.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#212

Post by nhaehnle »

steve19 wrote: post #152
nhaehnle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truly positive contribution of a federal government (besides the questionable benefit of military protection) comes in the form of automatic stabilizers for the economy. When there is a shock to the economy, social safety nets dampen the pain significantly. Local and state governments would never be able to provide a reliable social safety net, because they have to operate on the same principles as every other us…

"questionable benefit of military protection" ... You may not like the extent of their protection, or how they go about protecting, but it is childishly naive to suggest the country does not need protection. But I know it is cool these days to pretend that the military is 100% evil and every dollar spent on it is a total waste.

I was not overly precise due to time constraints. The "questionable" part refers to the problem of the military-industrial complex that tends to arise.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#213

Post by nhaehnle »

scottjad wrote: post #95
nhaehnle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truly positive contribution of a federal government (besides the questionable benefit of military protection) comes in the form of automatic stabilizers for the economy. When there is a shock to the economy, social safety nets dampen the pain significantly. Local and state governments would never be able to provide a reliable social safety net, because they have to operate on the same principles as every other us…

This is basically argumentation by story. You told one of many possible stories as if it was obviously and indisputably true. You provided no support for it. What about all the other plausible stories that you ignored? What if these "stabilizers" (i.e. money creation) are doing more harm than good, or even causing the business cycle? What if social safety hammocks decrease growth? What if welfare provided by prudent…

The fact that you equate economic stabilizers with money creation strongly suggests that you are not interested in genuine discussion. If you seriously believe that equating those two things is in any way reasonable, then believe me, you're just confused - and if you are genuinely interested in learning more, holler (but it might take a while for me to respond in detail because I'm traveling).

One important point though is that welfare provided by local governments cannot be sufficient. Local governments are entirely dependent on tax revenue and the goodwill of creditors. If a local government is hit badly enough by an economic crisis, they will be unable to continue providing this welfare.

This is especially true if other local governments in the same currency zone are less badly hit by the crisis. In this case, creditors will "flee" towards those other local governments, which creates a vicious cycle.

The previous paragraph is exactly what happened in the Eurozone, except that national governments played the role of local governments.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#214

Post by mkr-hn »

anigbrowl wrote: post #142
nostromo wrote: post #24

We all spend so much time focusing on the Federal Government but I doubt many of us will even notice the "shut down." Compare that with what would happen if your local and state governments shut down: Trash would pile up. Criminals would run free in the streets. Fires wouldn't be put out. Water and electricity would stop. Sewage systems would back up. Schools would close. We're talking about services that are the ver…

Oh, you will if it goes on more than a few days. I remember the 1995 one quite well; you may be surprised by the ripple effect.

I was 11 and busy with more important things (like video games) then, so this is all new to me. Exciting.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#215

Post by jarek »

darkarmani wrote: post #184
robomartin wrote: post #57

I've actually had time over the past few weeks to spend time watching the various duscussions in the Senate. In other words, I chose to go to the source and take the time to understand rather than get fed a bunch of ideologically loaded bullshit by various news outfits. Here's reality: Obamacare is a complete disaster. Don't take my word for it, go research what unions are saying, what businesses are doing an go figu…

> It is an absolute disgrace that we are plunging this country deeper and deeper into debt. You mean since Bush slashed taxes to create massive debt?

I like how this is the only post the OP hasn't replied to. I guess at least Bush had experience as a CEO - even if not quite the hard work, dedication and a healthy dose of risk taking OP values so much.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#216

Post by Steko »

robomartin wrote: post #210
Steko wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry you didn't make an argument. You claimed to be impartial and then let the truth slip with your tirade about Obama and right wing talking points. You don't need to watch CSPAN to know exactly what is happening here: one half of one branch of the government decided they wanted to take the US economy hostage and run it back into recession if their demands weren't met.

You are showing exactly why we are in trouble. You refuse to look at facts and, instead elect to engage in personal attacks. I have news for you: reality does not change in any way as you do this. Please launch your favorite spreadsheet and do a little work to understand the financial mess we are in. It really doesn't take that much work to speak from a very different reference frame, one armed with facts.

You can take the imaginary high road and post as many walls of text as you want, every reply you've gotten thinks you're just an Obama hater regurgitating tired talk radio talking points. Good day.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#217

Post by jarek »

robomartin wrote: post #201
jarek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a president who isn't even qualified to run a cookie baking operation Obama's at 811,417,118.8 Cps in Cookie Clicker - what have you done that's so great?

Read my prior post on this for support of my assertion. As to what I have done vs. Obama. Well, first of all, neither you or I should be the scale by which a President is measured. A President ought to be better than most of us in areas relevant to running a country, an economy. You are an educated man. I presume you studied logic and know full well that shooting the messenger does not refute what the messenger might…

I- I- I mean- what? I apologize for writing short, pithy posts about a topic you clearly care a lot about, but what? Let's ignore the part where I referred to a current fad game to make a clearly joking reference. Your country has always loved its learned men, its gentry-without-titles, and sometimes its celebrities, for politicians. Lincoln and FDR were lawyers, Reagan was an actor for chrissakes. You think they had a better understanding of The Economy than you or Obama? Who was the most recent self-made businessman/CEO to be your president? Who was the most recent president to have declared bankruptcy as a result of business risk-taking in his career? You wrote about Obama's failings specifically in your first post - now they're turned into the last fifty years? And you think the partisan showdown going on now is an improvement over that?

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#218

Post by tptacek »

asabjorn wrote: post #89
hellcow wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the state and local governments gave sufficient notice, private businesses would snap up the new market opportunities. Everything worthwhile would continue as usual, albeit with less waste.

This needs serious backing as evidence seems to show the opposite. For instance, if we pick firefighting as an example what is there evidence that private firefighting is a good idea? In recent history this kind of thinking have led to disasters like in Tennessee: - http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-firefighters-let-home-burn/#.UkpUgGSidTp and during the 1800s private firefighting w…

The Tennessee firefighter story has come up on HN before, probably because it was used as an allegory in discussions about the Democratic PPACA health care plan (which I support, ftr).

Some addition fun facts you want to know before making up your mind about what happened in this "disaster":

* The structure that burned down was on unincorporated land outside the tiny town of South Fulton, which is about as far as you can get in Tennessee away from any major metro area (it's approximately equidistant from Memphis and Nashville, near the equally rural southern tip of Illinois and Indiana).

* The owner of the structure deliberately chose to live in an area that had no fire coverage, unlike people who live in incorporated South Fulton and thus contribute directly to the South Fulton FD.

* The owner had no fire coverage because they refused to pay a $75 annual fee to extend coverage to their property.

* The structure that burned down was a doublewide trailer whose value might not have been that much higher than the assessable cost of firefighting service (when this discussion last came up I found numbers ranging from 20k to 50k). You can find estimates on the internet of fire department costs for one incident hovering in the mid-thousands, assuming no complications, and that's the FD's cost basis, not the chargeable cost.

Ultimately I don't think there's much to learn from what happened in Obion County. It will always be possible to situate your home far from the reasonable service area of a fire department, and it seems unreasonable to suggest that merely by doing so, the nearest municipality should be on the hook for providing coverage.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#219

Post by twoodfin »

nknighthb wrote: post #188
twoodfin wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know how to respond to this. No one in this discussion said "Keep the government out of Medicare". In fact, as far as I know, no one in the leadership of the Republican party has said it, either, so it would be an odd sort of "motto". But of course you know this. In contrast, you did ascribe vile racist motives to more or less half the country. Indeed, so racist they'd be willing to destroy the country…

We've heard all their professed arguments every time the minimum wage has gone up, or emissions standards have been tightened, or safety regulations have been increased. Same talking points every time the government does anything, always wrong. It's not even a smokescreen, it's transparent reflex. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart bumps 35,000 to full-time, and another 35,000 temps to permanent part-time. This besides the 55k seas…

We've heard all their professed arguments every time the minimum wage has gone up, or emissions standards have been tightened, or safety regulations have been increased. Same talking points every time the government does anything, always wrong. It's not even a smokescreen, it's transparent reflex.

And it was always racism? I don't think you're being consistent.

Re: Federal Government Begins First Shutdown In 17 Years

#220

Post by quanticle »

ars wrote: post #205
quanticle wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the roles of the federal government is to redistribute funds from states that have populations to tax to states that don't. It's difficult to "tax more", if there's no one to tax (e.g. Montana). It's no coincidence that the most rural, most Republican states are massive consumers of federal funds (via farm subsidies and transportation subsidies, mainly) and the most urban, most Democratic states are net produc…

> via farm subsidies and transportation subsidies, mainly A transportation subsidy might be local (maybe - interstates are national, not local), but farm subsidies end up being distributed nationally since they basically just mean that certain types of food are cheaper than they otherwise might be. So you can't count farm subsidies as "consumers of federal funds". (It's definitely an artificial distortion of the mark…

A transportation subsidy might be local (maybe - interstates are national, not local), but farm subsidies end up being distributed nationally since they basically just mean that certain types of food are cheaper than they otherwise might be. So you can't count farm subsidies as "consumers of federal funds".

I'm not sure how the conclusion follows from the premises. Farm subsidies do consume federal funds. Where do you think the funding for the massive pork-barrel farm bills comes from? Moreover, those dollars aren't necessarily passed on to consumers. In theory, the market for farm products is a perfectly competitive market and any subsidy to the market would result in cheaper prices for everyone. In practice, well, Cargill exists. Large agribusinesses are quite capable of taking subsidy rents and stashing them away as profit rather than using them to compete on prices if their market is more like a cartel and less like a perfectly competitive free market.

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