Santelli: "Stop Spending!"
 

This guy has it right:
http://www.therightscoop.com/santell...ng-open-thread

Yes, because that has worked so very well in the past during other recessions :tro:

There are many who believe that Keynesian spending, especially at a high level, actually lengthens recessions rather than shortening them.

So yeah, it may well be that belt tightening is our best option, your sarcasm notwithstanding.

Yes, I've heard economists debate that. Can you give us one example where stopping spending has worked?

Well, it's admittedly tough to measure "what would have happened if we did the opposite" - spending or not spending.

But you would think that macroeconomic theory would at least have a basis in lower scale economics. If you were heavily indebted to the point of going insolvent, would you keep spending, even assuming you could find someone to loan you the money?

At a minimum, the spending to get out of a recession is counterintuitive. It at least has to be examined closely. For example, if the amount to spend is only 3% of GDP, it's probably a low risk. But on our current course, the debt will consume 87% of our GDP by 2020. That is a recipe for disaster.

The debt is unsustainable, and even those spending know it. But is right now the time to freeze all spending?

One of the reasons healthcare reform was pushed through now rather than later is for the economic impact - as it's a sixth of the economy, it's a longterm attempt to save trillions in the future, and to help medicare/medicade too.

In the immediate short term, we need jobs. People have to stay alive - to not be homeless, to eat. People with income spend. Spending grows the economy, ends the recession.

It takes money to create jobs out of nothing in a stagnant economy with no growth and 10% unemployment.

There will be no jobs created, as this week our government - the GOP primarily - wants zero spending, thus is blocking the jobs bill. Further unemployment extended benefits have been fillibustered - by the GOP - so now we have hundreds of thousands of people that haven't had a job for months on end, and still have no job prospects, but now have no money to minimally eat and live. It was literally cut off this week (last week I think) Tax cuts won't help these folks.

So we are not going to spend, and add to the deficit, and these people are literally sitting there this week with no food. In America.

No more spending - not one dime - is the line in the stand the GOP has drawn this past month. It's the hill they have chosen to die upon. You want no spending, Joey, it's happening.

The rest of the G20 agrees (with caveats). We'll see how that works out, for our country and the world. I think it's gonna get very, very ugly.

I know Im a sick biotch but if more people died less would be spent on them, cause they are dead. I think this is the reason S.S. is in the sh itter, back in they day the never thought people would live as long as they do now. In the 30's it was normal to die when you were in your 50's. The rich were the one's who lived the longest because they had food and access to doctors the rest were as Darwin would say survival of the fittest.

There are certainly those in the scientific community that have pointed out that this generation in the US will not live as long as their parents, and that perhaps man's "domination" of the earth - and the results (global warming, food shortages, the Gulf, all of it) is coming home to roost very acutely, in the sense that in the next decades there will be historic die offs of humans until we get back to a lower physical population number that the earth, under our abuse, can sustain.

Then thats good because there will be money to actually pay out to the loan survivors.

after the g20, when obama was the only leader wanting to continue spending and it was shot down, one would have to assume the rest of the world has recognized that altho some spending may have been required, long term a deficit will do a lot more harm to a country's economy. that's a proven issue that we cannot ignore. i still think that tax breaks to businesses would have been better than amping up spending by the govt. the govt cannot have a positive over all affect-they receive their taxes from workers-they can't earn enough in taxes to pay enough workers to continue that vicious cycle.
as for people having their benefits abruptly taken away-they had been extended to a previously unheard of 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. 5 weeks short of two years! that is also unsustainable. i have people coming and applying, who have been off work for months upon months. they readily concede they saw no reason to seriously job search, as they had easy money flowing in-their words, not mine. they worked odd jobs, for cash and gladly accepted the govt handouts. and then many of them bitch about the state of the govt and its debt, while holding themselves free of any blame. hell, it's 'free' money. :rolleyes: i had a guy i hired back last year. he talked the talk about wanting a job-no, he didn't. it was 'too hard', so he went back on unemployment.

So is life without food.

Our government has always extended unemployment benefits during times of historic economic hardship. Except for now. This is the first time in our American history those benefits have been cut off with this level of unemployment.

Thank you GOP.

If it's simply laziness keeping the current unemployment numbers at 10%, then the hundreds of thousands of unemployed who just had their benefits cut off will go out and get jobs immediately. We can expect the unemployment numbers to quickly fall to the usual baseline within a couple of weeks, I guess.

I dont know if its laziness or people just thinking they are to good to do a diffirent job. I get paid scale at my job but to make a little extra money I clean houses on the side for 25 bucks an hour which is more than I make at my "job" job an hour. You can make a job for yourself if you have the want to, I learned that when I moved to Hawaii where jobs are very limited and very scarce you have to be willing to make your own way and believe me there are lots of ways to make money if you just open your mind and dont think you are too good to provide a service or do something you havent done before. People better get used to the idea of a new occupation because most of those jobs that have been lost are not coming back.

Jobs bills are a band-aid. Sustainable, economy growing jobs arent created by Govt spending. They are created by the private sector that the current govt despises and took shots at for a year and a half now.

Govt spending is like huge free agent contracts for over the hill, ex-stars. At first it sounds like a good idea. Yeah we are going to sign Player X/create some jobs. But a couple of years and a whole lot of money later, the luster has worn off, the star is now a bum (stimulus money runs out/govt jobs created become typical drains because most arent really necessary) and you need to gear up for another round of buying over the hill stars/govt spending. You neglected the farm system (private sector and small business)that grows players a lot more cost effectively so you need to spend, spend, and spend. And just like for baseball teams, it doesnt work and eventually becomes unsustainable.

If not now then when?

how about when the private sector is actually creating jobs?

I'm not sure how you avoid a death spiral of job losses followed by reduced consumer spending followed by more job lossess followed by more reduced consumer spending if no one is priming the pump.

we certainly want private sector job creation. and as soon as that's happening, i'm all for ending the stimulus. but this argument reminds me of the great derby trail inflation scare of 2008. you're still worried about the wrong thing.

the primary challange of this economy is getting people to spend money. it's not going to happen without continued government stimulus.

I wasnt aware that the govt was giving people money to spend. Where do I sign up?

Do we really have to rehash the topic that the 1st stimulus contained very little stimulus which has a lot to do why it didnt do the trick?

your local unemployement office for one. those benefits are probably one of the best stimulus programs since virtually all the money provided individual's is spent. you might also want to try construction which continues to benefit from spending on infrastructure.

yeah ok Nancy Pelosi. Unemployment benefits as stimulus. Yeah people buying food and paying rent is a real job creating machine.

it's not still that high, is it? that stimulus should be getting those numbers down any day...after all, it was billed as keeping it from getting to 10 to begin with, so surely once more of that original money is spent, the numbers will come down. obama said so back when he asked for it-it's bound to happen sooner or later.