Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Whatever Happened to “Boomergeddon?”

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by

Peter Galuszka
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rush_limbaugh5By Peter Galuszka

Attention ditto-heads!

Before President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last night, there was an interesting piece on CNN of hard-line conservatives claiming two years ago that the U.S. economy would collapse if Obama were re-elected.

They claimed that the U.S. faced uncontrollable government spending and ever-growing budget deficits. Obama’s efforts to kick-start the economy were just one missfire after another. Don’t believe me? Look up a zillion posts in Bacon’s Rebellion written by the usual suspects.

My favorite segment on the CNN report was radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh making his usual dire predictions about our plunge to Boomergeddon:

“How long does this country have if Obama wins? We’re headed toward an economic collapse and we are the leader of the world. ….If Obama’s re-elected, it will happen. There’s no IF about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be gut-wrenching, but it will happen. The country’s economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected. I don’t know how long: a year and a half, two years, three years.”

Well we’re almost there and guess what? Obama felt comfortable enough strong economy last night to rebrand himself as a liberal and push programs to finally help out the middle class. They include a more fair tax system and helping make community college study free. In a University of Richmond poll in last year’s fourth quarter, most of the 62 chief executive officers of Central Virginia companies said they had “strong optimism” about the country’s brightening economic picture.

What about deficits? Well, not to raise any names associated with this blog, but last October, the budget deficit had dropped to its lowest level since the Great Recession. It had fallen to $483 billion in f/y 2014. That’s only 2.8 percent of GDP and less than the average of the previous 40 years, the U.S. Treasury Department reported.

Hmm. Does anyone have a copy of the book “Boomergeddon?” I can’t find mine and want one as a keepsake.

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12 responses to “Whatever Happened to “Boomergeddon?””

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    Thank you Peter. We can always count on you to bring some semblance of sanity to the right parables being spun on BR these days!

    😉

    of course, NOW, the disaster de-jure for he right is a “stagnant wage” for workers and the cure to that? cut taxes more of course!

    oh.. and build Keystone so we can get the 45 jobs.. and allow a foreign country to use eminent domain on U.S. citizens

    and kill ObamaCare but that ain’t got the “Replace” figured out just yet.

    oh.. and get rid of the EPA and regulation and go to a more free market but don’t ask for details – they’re still a work in progress.

    oh.. and immigration.. Obama screwed the pooch by “usurping power” so now the GOP says they are honor-bound to do nothing at all.. not even send an immigration bill to the POTUS that would be right next to the build Keystone and Kill Obamcare bills they apparently can send …

    so if I understand correctly – “the weakest POTUS in US History – is breaking the law and taking illegal actions”.

    kinda makes your head spin from the whiplash..!!!

    free community college for kids that maintain a C+ average. No.. we can’t do that but we can have big time Sports perverting higher education and higher and higher tuition and fees.. but we can’t provide a viable alternative with community colleges especially for the youth whose parents cannot afford 4 year college.

    I should stop before I get carried away here, eh?

    😉

  2. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Thanks for the support, Larry.

  3. Tysons Engineer Avatar
    Tysons Engineer

    My favorite part of the GOP retort (I’m so glad they sent out an intellectual with substance btw *eye roll*) was how they said corporations are doing well but real americans in the middle class aren’t feeling it.

    Thats their policy, the bunch of nut jobs. That is trickle down working to its inevitable and logical conclusion. When you make tax policies that favor giant corporations who can work the system, capital gains cuts, and other upper class tax policies because “they are job makers” then you see those people making a bunch of money, not creating new jobs (job creation is demand based not profit based), and normal middle class americans left behind.

    Quick solution would be if they stopped placating big business and pass a long overdue minimum wage bill. If they passed a daycare bill (daycare for children is now more expensive than health care in this country, forcing many to actually quit the job force to take care of a kid because the economics of working and paying a child care provider is a net loser for some). In otherwords, republicans are promoting a policy that makes people not want to work… ironic huh?

    What a joke. 2 years of treading water await in the McConnell senate. Don’t forget though, he saved the economy just from the thought that he would take over the Senate a full 9months before he did.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      the problem with the GOP these days is not only that they don’t have real solutions beyond their reliance on their ideology..

      but they cannot accept the fact that Obama is the POTUS..

      they think they have a mandate – but don’t have a veto-proof majority and when they say they want to “work with” the POTUS – their attitude is that he’s not “cooperating” if he doesn’t roll over on the vetoes.

      they’ve been living in an alternative reality now for 6 years with 2 more to go and their answer to their inability to find compromise with not only the POTUS but within their own ranks on things like immigration and health care is – to do nothing. To gridlock. To threaten the POTUS with poison pill legislation if he won’t roll over on the vetoes.

      the whole party has swung so far to the right – that virtually everyone else in the political spectrum is to their left – i.e. “liberals” and that INCLUDES folks like Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, etc!

  4. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    Peter, next time I see you, I’ll give you a copy of Boomergeddon. My hope is that you will actually read it so you can actually understand the claims made in it. And then (maybe this is hoping too much), you would actually stop misrepresenting it!

    Believe it or not, Jim Bacon and Rush Limbaugh are not the same person. We don’t believe all the same things. Furthermore, I never made a prediction anything like Limbaugh’s. I wrote Boomergeddon in 2010. Limbaugh made his statement before the 2012 election, presumably in 2011.

    Further, I predicted that the United States was heading toward a Boomergeddon-style collapse within 15 to 17 years — not during Obama’s term. I was worried about the *long-term* damage caused by Obama’s policies. And, by the way, I also noted that Republicans deserved a fair share of the blame for the nation’s budgetary dilemma. Perhaps those nuances are too subtle for you to have remembered. I’ll blog an update on the subject in an upcoming post.

    I’m never sure whether you’re just tweaking me to get a rise out of me or whether you really believe what you write. I hope you’re just tweaking me. Because if you’re not, your misrepresentation of my argument is profoundly disturbing.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      well I HAVE read at least parts of Boomergeddon and it’s wrong in my view.

      and Peter has it right.

      Social Security is not going to “go broke”.. as long as FICA taxes are collected, it will be funded and the irony is that it’s funding is about 3/4 of what the govt brings in – in other taxes – income taxes = 1.5 Trillion but those who do the gloom and doom song and dance don’t even bother to distinguish the two.

      Medicare WILL KILL US if we don’t fix it but the fix is straight forward. You cannot give people who have 85K annual incomes – 80% coverage health insurance for $100.00 a month and you cannot give them 100% coverage for not much more than that by having the govt subsidize Medicare Advantage.

      Beyond that – we spend more than a trillion dollars a year on National Defense but we only take in 1.5T

      and Finally – you cannot deny people access to primary care but say you’ll pay in full – the hospital tab later when they get advanced diseases not detected at the primary care level.

  5. DonR Avatar
    DonR

    Economic life in America looked pretty good in 2007 as well. Then along came the housing meltdown. The global policy of stimulating economies by artificially holding interest rates to near zero is a lit fuse on an economic time bomb. When (not if) it goes “boom” it will go “boom” in a very big way.

    I told you Virginia’s economy was tanking long before that became conventional wisdom. Now I am telling you the global economy is a ticking time bomb. You cannot artificially suppress the price of capital without creating bubbles which ultimately must burst.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      My understanding is that we have one of the most robust and healthy economies in the world these days.. despite all the kvetching.

      how can that be? You’d think – if you believe the rhetoric – that the 3rd world countries would have the least fettered, most free-market .. economies.. and just beat the crap out of us… and Europe..

      how come the least regulated – most free capital systems don’t win against the countries with regulations and govt tinkering with capital?

      1. TooManyTaxes Avatar
        TooManyTaxes

        GMU has released data that average per capita income in Fairfax County has fallen for three straight years (through 2013, I believe). I believe they expect 2014 to be the same. Whose going to be able to subsidize the rest of you?

        There is a place for regulation in a market-based economy. And reasonable people can disagree over the appropriateness of any particular regulation. But having dealt with state and federal regulations for more than 35 years, a lot of them don’t really provide much benefit. Businesses can often use regulations to knee-cap competitors. AT&T, Verizon and Comcast do it all the time.

        Technology often leapfrogs regulations. Despite the national Do-Not-Call list and bans on the use of autodialing equipment, the FCC has just revealed that 21% of all the phone calls in the United States are robocalls. Last year, I spoke with an FTC lawyer in Seattle, who said her agency just doesn’t know what to do. Meanwhile a federal statute Congress intended to give consumers a way to get $500 per call from unwanted telemarketers in small claims court has mushroomed into a huge class action industry. This regulation is not working.

        Despite having fire, building, and occupancy ordinances, Fairfax County has countless illegal boarding houses (the owners of which are probably not reporting income to either the IRS or Virginia) and situations where the landlord padlocks his tenants into a basement or a bedroom overnight. (I have seen photos taken by Fairfax County.) Large two and three-alarm fires are on the increase due to a lower grade of building materials being used. Despite our large county staff, have we progressed beyond the tenement days in New York? Supervisor Penny Gross (D Mason District) has called people asking for enforcement of these codes “racist,” even though they are her constituents. So why have a regulation if its not going to be enforced?

        The American regulatory system has lots of problems. We should not eliminate regulation, but it sure needs a lot of fixing.

        1. larryg Avatar
          larryg

          totally agree with TMT. ONe of the problems with regulation is the folks who feel aggrieved want it and the folks on the other side consider it restricting them from conducting their business.

          but I still do distinguish between “nuisance” and real harm done and the fact that torts don’t fix problems .. for instance someone is damaged several thousand dollars worth but it will cost almost that much to just get into court with no guarantees of outcome.

          here’s an example of something really terrible happened and the hospital sent out a legal team to squash the aggrieved .. it’s a movie but it shows what the aggrieved are often up again.

          http://youtu.be/7je8_a7chkg

  6. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    JIm,

    Tweak, tweak.

    Don the Ripper — yep the rest of the world is a mess.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      The thing to understand about the biggest threat to the budget – Medicare – is WHY it is mandatory spending rather than discretionary spending – like DOD is.

      and that is – by law – the govt is required to pay 75% of the cost of health care to seniors (with them paying the 25%) and the govt is required to do that even if:

      1. – the cost of health care goes up (so you’ll see annual adjustments in the premiums that seniors pay – but it’s usually in the one or two dollar range out of 100.00 not big jumps).

      2. – this is the part that kills the budget –

      the govt will pay 75% of the health care costs – no matter how many retire and go onto Medicare.

      Neither the GOP nor the Dems will deal with the issue even though there are some common sense things that can be done – like requiring seniors who make 85K in income – to pay more than 105.00 a month for their insurance and the 600 lb gorilla is Medicare Advantage – which has essentially destroyed the original intent of Medicare – which was for the govt to pay 80% and the subscriber 20% .. so when you got your hip replaced – you had some skin in the game. Now.. it’s covered 100% and people have procedures like this done – at a far higher rate than if they had to pay 20% of it.

      As the person, most often called a liberal here by Jim and Don and others – I will say up front – that we have to fix Medicare and no – we do not have to go to a voucher system to do it but I’m not violently opposed to the idea – depending. But I totally believe we should not be selling guaranteed insurance to people making 85K a year for $500.00 a month.

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