Blaming politicians

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That. Right There. That is the fatal flaw of Democracy. As soon as a majority of voters get their hands on the public treasury it is simply a matter of time before ruination comes.

ruveyn

The bankers are at the top of the blame pile, followed by politicians, then the media, then the electorate.

If you really want to place blame for our current mess then you need to go back to the 1980s and look at Thatchers and Reagens policies in relation to sale of debt, and the lifting of financial regulations.

From that point on you can bring the media in to blame for telling the electorate that everything is getting better now. When really people were losing their jobs because jobs were going to developing countries and our economies were being inflated by the illusion of wealth generation by coke snorting bankers.

The electorate are the last to blame because the vast majority of them know nothing about what is really going on and are constantly sent conflicting messages from the media and the politicians.

If you ask me demoncracy is not working because our 2 party systems are actually working together for the same people (who we never hear about)

Honestly it's a two way street the voter and politian are to blame.

The problem is these "entitlements" are mostly very basic things that keep people alive and off the streets. I suppose it is selfish to want treatment if you have a chronic medical condition and don't wish to languish on the street if you cannot make ends meat. It's a lot easier to criticize others when you have your own needs met.

I don't have all the answers, but I think ditching the most vulnerable onto the street should be the absolute last on the list. If pay for higher paid government employees has to be cut that should be done first. People who think we can balance the budget while cutting taxes on the wealthy are not in touch with reality. That is anything but fiscal responsibility. It's a recipe for flushing our society down the toilet.

well to a certain extent entitlements are the issue,

i read it as distinct from basic neccesities for life though.

in some countries politicians can change their own rewards so to speak and that can create immense issues and a huge vested interest in remaining in office.

It takes at least two to f*ck and two to dance.

ruveyn

Yeah that is why their is two people to blame the politicain and the voter.

Politicians should be criticized.

It seems most people are saying everyone is to blame. So where does that leave us? Shall we just give up the argument and say it is enevitable that humans will f**k things up.

What do we learn from this?

marshall said earlier that politicians waste much time on nonsense issues and I must agree 110%. Another aspect is the fact the congressional debate is almost always inversely proportional to the amount of money involved.

Well, one thing that I will say is that the impact of global warming has been considerably worse under the Obama administration. Although I do not consider Romney to be a much better prospect, I hope that we will have a president soon who has a better policy on the climate. Other environmental problems we have had under the Obama presidency include some very bad tornadoes we had last year.

Romney has exactly one advantage. He is not Barak Obama.

ruveyn

The media is a part of it. The MSM is strangely passive. An actor needs to generate the drama and then they'll report on the scene. If a Perot, or a tea party, or a Clinton-GOP cat fight takes the story to debts and deficits, they'll follow it for a time. But without the drama they won't show up. Without an actor to drive the story they won't stay.

And when it's too policitized the truth is obscured by the rhetoric of retail politics. People are used to hearing that buzz and can only stomach it for so long. They know the world isnt that simple.

I also think that since the US did turn things around for a year (well over a decade ago), we are under the illusion that it's not difficult. The years 1999 and 2000 were filled with breathless stories of surplus out to infinity and beyond. Happy days forever. The debt itself was actually going to be slain. And then suddenly that was bs again. We have childish long term planning skills. We think a good day lasts forever. That we can set up house on the top of a bell curve and just stop planning. The truth is that we live in the valley and only visit the mountain on christmas.

Last edited by simon_says on 05 Jul 2012, 11:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 09 Jul 2012, 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Obama has been one of the strongest chief executives we have had since FDR.

I know people like you. You gobble up every bit of campaign trash talk you hear about Barack Obama, and you never question it or investigate it. To me, that makes you look really ignorant.

Obama's economic record is pretty good. He managed to bring the recession under control, and most people can't seem to comprehend that it would have gotten a lot worse without intervention. We were looking at fiscal apocalypse. Thanks to Barack Obama, the disaster has been somewhat mitigated. Many people were never even directly affected by the meltdown.

Furthermore, Obama has slowed down spending considerably. Although I am skeptical of the campaign talk about it being the "slowest rate of growth in spending since Eisenhower," Barack Obama has nevertheless been very strong in the area of bringing government waste under control.

Also, "Obamacare" is actually the brainchild of an MIT economist, named Jonathan Gruber, among others. Obamacare isn't something that a politician came up with at all. The brains behind it are those of some of the best economists our country has. There are a lot of deceptive attacks on it out there, but it's really going to do a lot to help the deficit.

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~cromer/HealthCareDeficit.pdf

Here is a paper that gives you a fairly detailed picture of how and why it's going to work.

If you would just read the facts, Ruveyn, you would realize just how much you have been used and deceived. The lies about this and many others are everywhere, and obviously a lot of money and a lot of energy has been pumped into spreading many falsehoods. The reality is that, if you look at the facts, Obama's presidency has been extremely successful.

I get really annoyed with ignorant people who are intent on trashing the Obama presidency, when they do nothing but repeat thoroughly bogus campaign year trash talk.

FDR was better QFT.