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United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

reuters.com

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Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#501

Post by palish »

cookiecaper wrote: post #374
pyre wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not enough people would though. They would flock to the other candidate that would inevitably reassure them that everything was going to be ok. Heaven forbid that people should vote by thinking about the issues rather than just digestion a handful of sound-bites.

This is really a symptom of control and hypnosis by media sources and a lack of capacity to reason independently than a direct "If you don't flatter me I'll kill you!" response. Though obviously, flattery has a long and successful history.

This has been true since the beginning of humans.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#502

Post by encoderer »

stcredzero wrote: post #410
encoderer wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think the money goes ? Military spending is still government spending. It's going to contractors, vendors and soldiers. They are, respectively: making jobs and selling to everybody (not just the gov't), and buying cars and houses.

Sounds like something straight out of Orwell's 1984? The economy is based on ridiculous spending my the military, which enables companies to write paychecks to facilitate consumer spending at home. So basically, our way of life depends on finding excuses to go off and kill people, which in turn justifies our military-industrial complex.

No, of course not, and that's the most extreme possible way to take my comments.

But remember that what did more than anything to cure this county of the great depression was the massive Keynesian capital injection that we called WWII.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#503

Post by encoderer »

natnat wrote: post #397
encoderer wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think the money goes ? Military spending is still government spending. It's going to contractors, vendors and soldiers. They are, respectively: making jobs and selling to everybody (not just the gov't), and buying cars and houses.

When the government spends a million dollars building a bridge, it creates a bunch of jobs because people need to design the bridge, extract the raw materials for the bridge, and build the bridge. When the government spends a million dollars building a bomb, it also creates a bunch of jobs for the same reason. The thing is, a bridge gets you a useful public resource that makes lost of people's lives better and encour…

Absolutely, no question. It's the same argument that econonmists make against acceptance of a so-called "service based economy" -- if I pay you $200,000 to build me a house, you've got $200,000 and I've got a house worth $200,000.

If I pay you $100 to clean my house, you've got $100, and all I've got is a clean house. Nice, but there's no market value. There's no multiplier effect.

But there is SOME utility to the gov't injecting capital in the form of military spending. As I mentioned in the comment below yours, the most extreme example of that is WWII, which finally and permanently ended the Great Depression, in a way that the WPA/etc building bridges just did not.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#504

Post by bubbleRefuge »

zg wrote: post #439
bubbleRefuge wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually retirement accounts are demand leakages. For example quantity theory of money gives us MV=PY money * velocity = prices * quantity of goods/services produced. So if money is squirreled away in retirement accounts it is no longer circulating in the economy and in order to maintain the same level of economic activity we have to 'make up' for the lost M. So retirement accounts are a drag on the economy.

Retirement accounts aren't usually held entirely in cash except very near the end. For younger people the bulk would be invested in equity i.e. funding businesses and thus being fed back into the economy.

Its money taken out of circulation that could have otherwise been spend on consumption. Buying IBM stock in my IRA doesn't do much for the economy compared to taking the same funds and buying an IPAD or 100 happy meals.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#505

Post by Rariel »

Rariel wrote: post #429

THere is a simple solution to the Social Security "crisis". Right now only income up to 100,000 is subject to social security taxes. Anything over 100,000 is not taxed for social security. If we raised taxable income to 150,000 or 200,000 even we'd have plenty of money.

I'd love if some of the downvoters could explain 1) why I'm wrong or 2) what an alternative would look like?

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#506

Post by sapphirecat »

cookiecaper wrote: post #378
hermannj314 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't the voters, the problem is the process. There is no way that basing a representative democracy on geographical cohorts can be optimal. I assume it is based originally on logistical constraints, but today is something we just accept because it is how it has always been done. Wouldn't it make more sense to divide the political arena based on the scope of the issues allowed to be legislated and not on…

As above, the problem is corruption. We have a structure that is supposed to effectively keep the federal government almost completely incapable of doing anything besides maintaining international borders, treaties, and other boring matters like import taxes. Because the people in power like power, and because the populace is complacent enough to allow it, they ignore any structural inconveniences like the fact that…

Also, the Senate was once elected by the States, which may have been intended by the founding fathers as an important check on the expansion of Federal power. State-elected senators would serve their state governments, who would probably not want to see the massive appropriation of state power to the federal government.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#507

Post by digikata »

rmrm wrote: post #437
digikata wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what do we do with people at the end of their working years, who, through bad luck or bad design, ended up with nothing. Do we stand by and let them suffer and die?

You could devise a means tested welfare for elderly people. There are a lot of perfectly wealthy, perfectly capable people who retire at 60 whatever for no apparent reason other than ss and tax advantaged accounts make it seem like its time. I am a big fan of retirement, and I think safety nets for the disadvantaged are a good idea. I don't think we need a retirement safety net, however, or to make a retirement an en…

I agree with means testing, but think it would have to be something that slowly phased in over a long period, and proportionally to smooth discontinuities so that people could shift their behavior to match expectations.

Re: United States loses AAA credit rating from S&P

#508

Post by jad »

cookiecaper wrote: post #378
hermannj314 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't the voters, the problem is the process. There is no way that basing a representative democracy on geographical cohorts can be optimal. I assume it is based originally on logistical constraints, but today is something we just accept because it is how it has always been done. Wouldn't it make more sense to divide the political arena based on the scope of the issues allowed to be legislated and not on…

As above, the problem is corruption. We have a structure that is supposed to effectively keep the federal government almost completely incapable of doing anything besides maintaining international borders, treaties, and other boring matters like import taxes. Because the people in power like power, and because the populace is complacent enough to allow it, they ignore any structural inconveniences like the fact that…

> As above, the problem is corruption. We have a structure that is supposed to effectively keep the federal government almost completely incapable of doing anything besides maintaining international borders, treaties, and other boring matters like import taxes.

This isn't true at all. There was a group of founders led intellectually by Alexander Hamilton who believed in a strong central government and who saw the federal Constitution as giving that government very broad powers.

This is in opposition to the Jeffersonian view of limited government, the primacy of the states, the ideal of the yeoman farmer, etc.

> Because the people in power like power, and because the populace is complacent enough to allow it, they ignore any structural inconveniences like the fact that a strict reading of the Constitution forbids almost all federal programs and activities that exist today.

This also isn't true. Setting aside whether the Constitution forbids, say, the Department of Education or whatever, we have the government we have because that's what people have voted for. FDR was elected president 4 times. The New Deal was popular at the time. He wasn't cramming it down the throats of a credulous population.

It's a good thing that the Constitution is malleable enough to continue to support the wishes of a majority of Americans. If it isn't, we can either amended it so that it does (which we have done when needed), or, in an extreme case, replace it completely.

The Constitution exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

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