Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

“Fair and Balanced” Deficit Blame

—

by

James A. Bacon
in


S

ince bashing deficit spending is now de rigueur for some on this blog, especially the Baconator himself, I thought it might be interesting to note what the Huffington Post and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have to offer on the topic.

True, they are from the left side of the aisle, but I am asked to take seriously lots of stuff put out by Commentary or the American Enterprise Institute, so, like Fox News, I am trying to be “fair and balanced.”
Sam Stein of the Huffington Post notes that a new study by the Center shows that the current $1.4 trillion annual deficit run by the government doesn’t really have all that much to do with Barack Obama. Au contraire it is the fast-forgotten “W” (remember him?).
A few of George W. Bush’s deficit culprits:
  • Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 (which aided mostly the rich), cut revenues.
  • The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are major factors. The other day at a Richmond speech, Sen. Jim Webb but the price tag at $2 trillion. Noted economist Joseph. E. Stiglitz has put it at $3 trillion.
  • The nasty recession has cut tax revenues as sales diminish and property values tank.
  • The TARP financial services bailout and the rescues of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac added mightily to the expense list and these were Bush programs. In fact, while government spending did rise noticeably in 2009, about 41 percent or $245 billion of it were the result of Bush bailouts.
To be fair, TARP now seems to have worked and banks are repaying their rescue funds. Obama is thinking about flipping some of the money over to create jobs, which is a fine idea. But Obama’s troop hikes in Afghanistan are going to be costly. So will health reform, but that is pretty much in the hands of the House and Senate leadership, not Obama’s.
Anyway, read it and weep. Where were all those grave deficit concerns among you Republicans during the Bush years of 2001 to 2009?
Peter Galuszka

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31 responses to ““Fair and Balanced” Deficit Blame”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Well, they were not concerned about deficits because cutting taxes would generate more jobs, new business, and revenue than it costs, so revenues would be up as a result of the tax cuts, not down.

    And it would create more jobs.

    That went well, didn;t it?

    RH

  2. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Was there ever a time when the people supporting Jimmy Carter stopped blaming Jerry Ford and Richard Nixon? Or, did they go the whole 4 years claiming that Carter couldn't be held accountable for his own presidency?

    The Huffington Post has no more credibility than Rush Limbaugh. In fact, because they pretend to be legitimate journalists I'd say they have less credibility.

    The "benefit the rich" crap is pure pablum. The wealthiest few percent of Americans pay a bigger share of the total tax burden than ever before. Go re-read Supercapitalism. The issue has nothing to do with tax cuts and everything to do with a structural change in the economy brought about by technology. If you want to blame somebody for the increasing wealth gap you should look to Gordon Moore before George Bush. Of course, Robert Reich is actually a smart guy who can think through the real issues rather than a teleprompter tinhorn who has no earthly idea what's actually going on. Obama's 47% approval rating is scary after less than one year. But I guess his plummeting ratings are Bush's fault too … somehow.

    Time for Obama and his lib friends to "man up". Time for Obama, his cronies and is supporters to start taking responsibility for the condition of the country instead of living in the past.

    If this is change we can believe in I'd rather go back to the status quo we couldn't stand.

    Barack Obama is failing as president of the United States and everybody has to confront that freightening reality. especially Obama himself.

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Nothing you do today is going to affect the economy today. Nothing the president does today is going to affect the economy today.

    The Market, maybe, but not the whole economy. My guess is that the lag time is at least three years before any real results are seen. If you want to see the effects of what Carter did, then look at the beginning of the next administration.

    For a religious sort of guy, Carter was certainly short on inspiration. As an actor, Reagan could "sell" inspiration whether he had anything to back it up or not.

    ——————————

    "The "benefit the rich" crap is pure pablum. The wealthiest few percent of Americans pay a bigger share of the total tax burden than ever before."

    Agreed, but they still hold a greater percentage of the income and wealth than ever before. If you need money, then you have to take it from those that have at and not those that don't, especially if there just isn't any.

    If the wealthy want more taxes to come from the middle class, they are going to have to share the wealth by ensuring that there IS a middle class to tax. That means not sending jobs overseas and not taking such huge bonuses and other compensation that there is little left for th eordinary wage earners and stockholders.

    The middle class, on the other hand is going to hae to give up on the idea that they can somehow get free money by taxing businesses and capitalists. Otherwise the middle class will be responsible for sending their own jobs overseas.

    The wealthy and the superwealthy have a lot more to protect, and they should pay more to have it protected. I think there is an argument to be made that the wealthy benefit far more from government than the poor, and they ought to pay more for it. After all, they are rich and others are not: how can they claim they don't benefit?

    Obviously there is a point where taxation becomes so onerous that it isn't worthwhile to earn that next dollar, but you are not going to get much sympathy when the take home of the very rich, after taxes, is still several multiples of the gross before taxes of so many others.

    There is no doubt that they earned that money, and they are entitled to keep as much as possible, but let's not give them too much credit. I know several people that are fabulously wealthy who did not one thing to earn it except for being born to the right parents.

    ——————————–

    Wealth gap: the rich get the money and they keep it.

    How do you shift the blame for that?

    I'd argue that technology is responsible. Our society gets richer and more complex and fewer and fewer people are able to master the complexities of cell phones and Ipods, let alone health insurance policies.

    When a farmhand got a cottage to live in, $400 a year and a pig, he wasn't so much worse off than the patron in the big house: they7 both kept warm by a wood stove and neither had a TV.

    One reason the wealth gap is so much greater today is simply that there is a lot more wealth: the poor still have zero and every one else has more. Presto, bigger wealth gap.

    The rich are not to blame for that, but at the end of the day they still have more money, and the poor are even farther behind.

    ——————————-

    And its a good thing, too, as EMR is fond of pointing out: when we are all rich we are really going to be screwed.

    RH

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    It is only a year. Obama started from a big, big hole. I'll be willing to start slapping him around soon enough, but I can't see that he is to blame for much of anything — yet.

    Here is a guy trying to steer an ocean liner with an oar. That would be hard enough if you could put the rudder hard over, but he can't because he has the dems on one side and the Pubs on the other side: he's got a few degrees of ruder authority and 350 million tons of ship to steer.

    This guy is not a master of his own destiny, let alone ours. It wouldn't be any different no matter who you put in his chair.

    —————————-

    Ratings? Who gives a crap? we hired the guy to do a job and we ought to let him do it. Give him enough rope to hang himself. If we really think he is doing a rotten job, then let him prove it. If we fight him tooth and nail all along the way, we just spoil the experiment, and we get blamed for being obstructionists.

    If you insist on ratings, how does Obama rate compared to Nixon? Or Bush for that matter. Obama at least hasn't been voted out of office —-yet.

    RH

  5. Darrell -- Chesapeake Avatar
    Darrell — Chesapeake

    'Give him enough rope to hang
    himself.'

    Oh goody, a lynch mob. Let's see, how do we do that again? Oh yeah, we throw the rope thingy over that big branch. Then we gotta anchor the loose end uhhh… Joe Sixpack, get over here and tie this around your neck.

  6. RBV Avatar
    RBV

    "Obama's 47% approval rating is scary after less than one year. But I guess his plummeting ratings are Bush's fault too … somehow."

    That it is. But, in a lot of ways his approval rating is simply a reflection of the way we feel about government in general. All the polls do is confirm our faith in government.

    As far as rich vs. poor……There is only so much wealth to go around. You can print all the money you want, charge as much interest on that money to borrowers as you want, and put people in debt all you want….it doesn't matter, particularly if your poor and can't pay it back.

    The "rich" (at least most of them) can't get any richer (or maintain their wealth) if the poor don't have the ability to pay them back in some capacity.

    The "problem" we have now is that poor people can no longer play the game.

    "The wealthiest few percent of Americans pay a bigger share of the total tax burden than ever before."

    So what?

    The "wealthiest" also use our (broken) system of government to their advantage which, in turn, makes them more wealthy!

  7. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    To the list of Bush's fiscal sins, I would add the SCHIP program (expanding access of medical care to children) and the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit without offsetting cost cuts anywhere else.

    Fiscal conservatives always had grave reservations about the Bush administration and the philosophy, as articulated by Dick Cheney, that "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

    Bush was bad. Obama is worse. The U.S. is 20 years away from having the fiscal solvency of a banana republic. Democrats and Republicans still will be pointing fingers of blame at each other when the roof falls in.

  8. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Geez Peter, are you EVER going to drop the 'It's Bush's fault' cry? It is OLD and very tired, and it shows that you are clinging to the past. What happened to the 'hope-and-change' thingie? So far the change hasn't raised any hope in me.

    Give the Bush line a rest and look at Obama for what he is.

    Accurate

  9. Gooze Views Avatar
    Gooze Views

    My Dear Mr. Groveton,
    But you don't address the Bush role in the deficit!

    Peter Galuszka

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    " The U.S. is 20 years away from having the fiscal solvency of a banana republic. "

    Yep. Just look at what happened to Bahrain.

    Now, what are the alternatives?

    In twenty years, if we follow the path of "fiscal conservancy" more than half of our GDP will be swallowed up in health care. Medical bankruptcies will be rampant, and every individual will be their own death committee.

    In one day this year I racked up $21,000 in health care bills, mostly paid for by insurance. But since I (and my employers) have been paying premiums for forty years, I don't feel sorry for the insurance company.

    I've now circulated around and I'm back to the same insurance company I paid premiums to years ago, which I never collected on. When I lost my job, they cut me loose. Yet, by their accounting they probably only look at my current policy, and by that reckoning I appear to be a bad risk.

    But, I was lucky. How many people can afford that kind of expenditure without insurance or with bad insurance?

    Your choice: blame health care for national insolvency, or blame health care for a nation of insolvents.

    RH

  11. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I'm sorry, I don;t see the sense in this argument. Anyone qant to try to compare just the first year of the last ten presidents?

    Would that make the slightest bit of sense?

    Of course not. You would want to comapare the totality of the results of policies that each president managed to pass during his entire term, and many of those results would not occur until afer he left office.

    That's why they leave pardons until the last day.

    RH

  12. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    "Democrats and Republicans still will be pointing fingers of blame at each other when the roof falls in."

    Precisely.

    The Republicans are still in deep disfavor right now. If they really believe OBAMA is that bad they should not fight or denigrate him but maintain a circumspect and low key hands off policy, with a low level of Polite and non-histrionic criticism.

    Then when the roof falls in it will be unarguably his fault and the Dems will be in what is now the Bush doghouse.

    Then the Republicans can have their own campaign for "change you can believe in"

    The way we are headed now whatever happens will be both parties fault, and both sides will be right in their perception of the blame game.

    RH

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Corporate manufactured epidemics of illness and death:

    Corporate tobacco

    Ozone depletion

    Sugar, salt, fat contaminated foods

    Global climate destabilisation

    Peak oil production

    Corporate manufactured debt slaves

    That is what wrecked the US

    In corporations we trust
    all other need regulation
    you can trust us because big government is bad
    and big corporations are good
    Who sold america those lies?

    Gordon Chamberlain

  14. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Last year the Redskins had a lousy team. This year the Redskins have a lousy team.

    The last president was lousy with the deficits. This president is lousy with the deficits. However, the last president can't do anything about it now while the current president can.

    So I don't see much of a point in complaining about the last president. Kind of like there's no point in complaining about last year's Redskins.

    Health care has never been a right of American citizens. It is not now a right of American citizens. The only places where your rights are defined are the US Constitution and constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia. If Obama and his supporters want to make health care a right they should do what's required and amend the Constitution. As it now stands, Obama's health care legislation is a flawed law that will create even more special interest shenanigans. The new health care plan has been rushed forward without adequate thinking. The laws in force 10 years from now will be nothing like the legislation being debated today.

    The allocation of stimulus funds is riddled with graft and outright fraud. A recent report by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office stated that one out of every 10 jobs created by the stimulus fake and that it’s high time for Congress to act. The National Commission on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will create a bipartisan commission to investigate the effects of this “stimulus” bill.

    Obama himself is neither corrupt nor immoral. He is just inept. But he still has time to get his head on straight and start doing things the right way. I probably should write that I want Obama to be successful because I'm a patriotic American or some crap like that. In fact, I want Obama to succeed because bad presidents are bad for business. Bush was bad for business but he's gone so what's the use in rehashing his failures? The Obama Administration is lost in the ozone. Obama needs to take a deep breadth and step back from the day-to-day politics. He needs to reconsider the logic of all his major initiatives. Some of them need serious revision. He should show the courage to make those revisions.

    Obama proved he could change his mind with his decision on Afghanistan. That's a very hopeful sign. Next, he needs to think about where he's going to get the money for his health care plan. Then, he needs to dramatically improve the process for allocating and measuring the effectiveness of the stimulus funds.

    Great leaders aren't perfect but they are intellectually honest with themselves. They make course corrections when their initial plans need to be changed. Hopefully, Obama will realize this before we're in a hopeless hole and he's back in Illinois (starting in January 2013).

    Carter or Kennedy? Only Obama himself can control that.

  15. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Health care has never been a right of American citizens.

    Agreed.

    Now we have to ask what is best for America.

    I (along with my employers) paid health insurance premiums for thirty five years. The first time I needed health insurance I lost my job for health reasons and had no insurance, nor could I obtain any. I could not obtain any today, not at any price, IF I was not employed.

    You tell me, where is the insurance in that plan?

    The insurance companies have had decades to devise a system that works, but instead they devised an endless stream of delay, obfuscation, excuses, and avoidance.

    When the railroads turned into robber barons the government stepped in. This is no different.

    If the government is so all-fired inefficient,then the private companies should have little problem finding a way to compete.

    When I could not obtain insurance, I bought a policy for my wife. After being approved and paying premiums on that policy for 18 months the insurance company recinded her policy, retroactively, for completely unsubstantiated and phony reasons.

    I have no sympathy for those SOB's: if they are out of business, so much the better.

    And I was lucky. I could just as well have been bankrupt, and then on the dole for the rest of my (short) life. It was a close run as it was.

    But, with good health care, I was eventually able to return to a productive life, and I have since paid more than enough in premiums to have paid for the care I got.

    My disability insurance, on the other hand, canceled my premiums, once I became eligible, and they made good on their promises. They allowed me to go back to work gradually, without reducing my payments.

    You cannot convince me that there is any reason helalth insurance cannot work as well as my disability insurance did.

    What we have is a market failure, aided and abetted by current government regulation. That system is broken and it needs to be fixed.

    Rather than contributing any meaningful suggestions to the conversation, Republicans are sitting on their hands, wishing they had done something when they had the white house and the congress.

    What was their big idea? The Contract With America.

    Hah!

    Sorry, nomatter how bad this turns out, the end result will be better than what we had before, which was health insurance for the healthy and employed and a big fat middle finger or everyone else.

    RH

  16. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    "The new health care plan has been rushed forward without adequate thinking."

    And how many presidents hav tried to fix this previously? Over how many decades? Including even Nixon?

    How much thinking does it take to see that we are facing ever escalating costs which no one can afford. If we do nothing the system will collapse and all we will have is cash doctors and the emergency room.

    We will have publicly funded health care by default.

    Which might not be such a bad thing, the British seem to love their system, for all the false advertizing promulgated about it over here.

    ——————————-

    "The laws in force 10 years from now will be nothing like the legislation being debated today."

    Let's hope so.

    Let's also hope they are nothing like the laws in force today.

    But meanwhile, lets get off the dime and do SOMETHING.

    RH

  17. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    "In fact, I want Obama to succeed because bad presidents are bad for business."

    What could possibly be worse for business than saddling them with health care responibility?

    Let's remember the history of this. Health care was originally offered as an enticement to get laborers after the war. But. just like government programs, it soon became viewed as an entitlement.

    But only for those with jobs. And now, only for those with (permanent) jobs with major corporations.

    I really don't understand why Republicans haven't figured out that (some kind of) national health care insurance may be the best single thing they can do for business.

    I know I would have my own business – if I could get health insurance.

    RH

  18. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    "Then, he needs to dramatically improve the process for allocating and measuring the effectiveness of the stimulus funds."

    First he got criticized beecause stimulus funds went to major financial corporations.

    Now that he wants to spend what has been returned on main street businesses he is being criticized for not using it to pay down the deficit.

    There is no way this guy can do anything right.

    —————————–

    I'm no Obama fan or supporter, but I'm willing to wait until I have some real evidence, before I make a decision. Nixon, I've made a decision on: his trip to China was a stroke of genius, no doubt a chance aberration of an otherwise twisted mind.

    —————————–

    Obama is not a great leader. He cannot possibly be one unless we let him do so. Great leaders need to have willing and energetic followers, but Obama is saddled with having roughly half the population fundamentally opposed to anything he tries to do.

    Even if he managed to thread the needle right down the middle between the extemists on both ends, he would still be criticized for being a centrist.

    Under those conditions he can't win, cannot lead, and most likely cannot even modestly succeed.

    We are setting him up for failure at our own expense. No matter how bad his policies are, it is hard to believe that he could get anything throughany kind of rational or moderate congress that is worse than nothing.

    Frankly, I'm sick of it. I'd rather take a gamble on a fully supported random walk. Let's do SOMETHING, and if it turnsout really wrong it will be obvious and we can change direction.

    What we are doing now is paying tug of war with balanced teams: expending trmendous energy, going nowhere, and blaming the other side for every inch we give up.

    Conservative radio is basically nothing but hate mail, and liberal radio is nothing but fantasy.

    It is not much of a choice.

    RH

  19. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Let's assume he is back in Illinois.

    What next? Palin?

    Will she be a better leader, better able to bring congress in line?

    RH

  20. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Off topic, but going back to EMR’s blatant promotion of Green Metropolis:… by David Owen, I think it is worth comparing to Green Hell…, by Steven Milloy and Robertson Dean.

    Green Hell rates around # 17,000 in Amazon sales and Green Metropolis around #12,000. Green Hell was published slightly earlier, March of 2009 vs Sept.

    From Reviews of Green Metropolis:

    The environmental movement's disdain for cities and fetishization of open space, backyard compost heaps, locavorism and high-tech gadgetry like solar panels and triple-paned windows is, he warns, a formula for wasteful sprawl and green-washed consumerism.

    David Owen has done a lot of looking into it, pointing out that at the end of the day, a lot of "green" purchases and behaviors are attempts to rationalize consumption without actually reducing it. Along the way, he steps on the toes of the great pastoral myth of environmentalism by showing how anti-city bias in conservation thinking has often served to promote the very urban sprawl it's supposed to be fighting.

    From Reviews of Green Hell:

    It was not that long ago that the main complaint of left wing critics of the American economy was that it produced poverty and appalling social conditions. "Capitalism" was simply a code word for the rich getting richer and everyone else getting poorer……Today, the political left is "green" and their main complaint is not that capitalism produces poverty. They know capitalism produces affluence. And they oppose it. Americans, they complain, consume "too much" and need to make do with less,

    RH

  21. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Mor on Green Hell:

    "what this book does, and does very well, is to outline what "Greens" want for the rest of us, their proposals and what they will cost in terms of freedom and even basic necessities, how they "sell" their ideas, and their hypocrisy. It is a frightening book in many respects, and very well documented with 36 pages of small print end notes.

    Before describing some of the Green proposals, one should ask who the "Greens" are. Simply put, they are the leaders of a variety of organizations such as the National Resource Defense Fund, Rainforest Action Network, the US Climate Action Partnership, and a variety of similar groups with non-profit status but which nonetheless bring in millions of dollars from companies with "green products" that they cannot sell on a free market."

    Sounds a lot like health insurance to me.

    RH

  22. Larry G Avatar
    Larry G

    Let's assume that Obama is now and will prove to be after 3 more years.

    Maybe ya'll do but I don't and I'm not sure much of the country know of one or more Republican leaders who know what needs to be done.

    Where were these guys when the wheels came off the 8-year Bush/Republicanmobile?

    How many of the Republicans were NOT …ASLEEP at the Switch when the economy went so sour it went over the cliff?

    Who among the current crop of Republicans who want to lead was warning us for the 8 years of the Bush Presidency that we had a credit-default swap fuze burning that needed to be snuffed out?

    So we've got this current crop of wannabe Republican leaders who say that Obama is dead wrong about virtually everything that want to take over – and do what – different than what they did during the 8 years of the Bush Presidency?

    Let's say the Dems get wiped out in the 2010 elections.

    What is the Republican Agenda?

    Sorry guys.. I'm no defender of Obama but even less so of the Republicans that I've known for the last 8 years.

    As far as I'm concerned they are a bunch of mouthy bubbling bums who stood by and watched the economy tank.. and now.. talk about what a terrible job the pick-up team is doing.

    looks like to me that the anti-Obama/pro-Republican folks – their most potent argument is that they'll not do what Bush did and not do what Obama is doing but beyond that I don't see any semblance of an action agenda.

    In fact, it feel a LOT like what they'd do if/when they get back in – is pretty much what they did when Bush was in.

    no?

    Here's the money question.

    How many Republicans can you name right now that said we were screwing up for 8 years + Obama's 1 year and NOW…

    " We told you so " ?

    How many Republicans are saying " we told you what you needed to be doing and you did not do it and now we've got this mess because you did not do what should have been done"?

    I count ZERO. NADA. ZIP!

    What exactly would the Republicans do differently than they have for the last 9 years?

  23. Darrell -- Chesapeake Avatar
    Darrell — Chesapeake

    What happens when the Constitution doesn't apply. Wonder if Michael Moore had this problem?

    Health care is a drop in the bucket compared to what is coming down the road. Our 'rich' country will be on the hook for at least 1/3 of climate treaty costs of up to 400 billion a year, including reparation payments to developing countries.

    Remember, the next time the Fed sells their worthless paper and your children's souls to China, the Reparation Clause of the treaty forced on post-WWI Germany led directly to the geo-political conflicts that exist today.

    Then read this.
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091212/wl_asia_afp/unclimatewarminguschina_20091212031712

  24. Larry G Avatar
    Larry G

    It's easy to do gloom and doom.

    tell me what we need to be doing instead – and give me the names of potential leaders that people will support.

    If we ourselves cannot do that – then who exactly are we blaming for failure – ourselves ?

    Is the problem REALLY that citizens themselves cannot agree on and coalesce around ideas about how to move forward and then be able to identify and select leaders who carry out that agenda?

    What we agree on best right now – to be honest – are the things that we cannot agree on.

    everything else is a food fight – and we blame the folks who run the cafeteria for the food fight.

  25. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Darrel is right, health care is a drop in the ucket compared to what's coming down the road.

  26. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    RH stated:

    “And it is a good thing, too, as EMR is fond of pointing out: when we are all rich we are really going to be screwed.”

    Just to be sure, I checked with EMR and as far as he can recall he has never said “when we are all rich, we are really going to be screwed.”

    Further he has no idea what that might mean.

    My best guest is that it means: “If everyone in the USA were to consume as much at the top five percent of the economic food chain do disaster would come even quicker.”

    Can you imagine what would happen if all 6.7 billion humans wanted to consume as much at US citizens?

    Guess what? They do.

    That said, RH’s statements about the Wealth Gap in this string are frighteningly correct and I hear no one contesting them.

    His points (and Larry G’s from prior posts) concerning health care and the right to, and intelligence of health care, are also right on.

    It is just a shame neither RH or Larry G can understand human settlement patterns.

    RKF

  27. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Good points Ron.

    If RH could understand human settlement patterns, he would know that Green Metro and Green Hell reinforce each other.

    DNG

  28. Larry G Avatar
    Larry G

    " It is just a shame neither RH or Larry G can understand human settlement patterns."

    you guys are rich.

    The Global Warming folks are closer to the truth than youse guys.

    They say that Global Warming is essentially a sign of overpopulation.

    so when one talks about "sustainable" – it becomes a discussion about how much total resource is available verses per capita use which then equals your total population that is sustainable.

    so .. yeah.. if everyone used 1/10 the energy they use now – we could have twice as many people (but not 3 times as many) but why?

    If you want to talk about a paradigm that advocates a certain resource allotment per being… then you are acknowledging that a finite population on earth IS relevant to sustainability.

    but then you fall back to how much resource per person is "correct" an on that note – we can cut to the chase – and ask what the "right" number of human critters are for earth.

    Is it one billion, 10 billion or 100 billion?

    If 5 billion can live well using twice as much resource per individual as 10 billion, what would be the argument in favor of agreeing to a population of 10 billion and not 5?

    I don't pretend to know the answers but I think those questions are far more relevant that the EMR secret supporters blather about someone making the really audacious claim that a certain kind of settlement pattern is best for the world – without one shred of real evidence to support – only the assertion.

    Everything past that point – is blather lite.

  29. Les Avatar
    Les

    I'd be very concerned about the financing tricks the current administration is using to make the deficit appear smaller.

    They're financing much of the new and maturing debt with short-term T-bills which yield nearly zero percent. It's not realistic to expect that interest payments will remain at 200 billion dollars/yr with a federal debt of 12 trillion dollars and growing.

    Health care reform was a major plank in Obama's platform. I wouldn't push off the blame on that one to Congress so easily.

    Second, you left out the massive borrowing for the Obama's economic stimulus which includes 175 billion dollars annually in tax cuts.

    As for stimulus, did we ever end the stimulus programs under the Bush administration?

    It seems to me that in ten years we've yet to find out the normal state of the US economy absent any stimulus from Washington or the Federal Reserve…

  30. Larry G Avatar
    Larry G

    re: financing tricks

    what tricks did Bush and his 8-year rubber-stamp Congress perform on the economy prior to them dropping it in Obama's lap?

    Again – don't mistake my words about Obama as any kind of a defense but where was all the concern and outrage when the economy got run into the ground before this guy?

    Who was it in the Bush Administration that said "Deficits don't matter"? and let me see.. how many of the folks now wringing their hands stood up back then and said "yes they do"? I'm trying to remember. Who stood up and said – "we're doing this wrong?".

  31. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    It is just a shame neither RH or Larry G can understand human settlement patterns.

    I understand that 100 billion people living on five percent of the land will still need all of the worlds resources to support them.

    It is too bad EMR doesn't understand that.

    The optimum settlement pattern is the one that produces the optimum economic results. The market will determine that and not the central planners.

    RH

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