The BUSH Economy in 2012

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GoPackGo

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2003
6,414
468
126
It's not the Bush or Obama Economy, it is the Corporate Greed Economy. Where the rules are:

More with Less -> More work load, Less staff
Cut Headcount til it hurts...see more with less
Reduce Expenses til it hurts

Today's companies haven't not only just shaved all the fat, they have taken some meat with it.

They will keep slicing until there is nothing left and all of the money is in the Executives Pockets.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,699
1,448
126
It's not the Bush or Obama Economy, it is the Corporate Greed Economy. Where the rules are:

More with Less -> More work load, Less staff
Cut Headcount til it hurts...see more with less
Reduce Expenses til it hurts

Today's companies haven't not only just shaved all the fat, they have taken some meat with it.

They will keep slicing until there is nothing left and all of the money is in the Executives Pockets.

I spent much of my career trying to be an efficiency expert. I'd either work myself out of a job or get a job finding ways to do more with less. Consider how my own work-ethic and self-esteem played against jobs that were too easy, or perceptions of over-staffing in my office. You'd be surprised at the forces brought to bear to bring someone down who tries to streamline things, or how such forces may otherwise be locked together in antagonism, but find the serious manager or efficiency expert a common enemy.

Nobody wants "make work" jobs, except in desperation. Even meeting basic needs to put food on the table, Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs is still effective -- just unrealized. So there are demographic and political imperatives. Larger supply of labor means more unemployed and more pressure for more jobs. But even "pure competition" and the replacement of "profitability" with "survivability" doesn't assure full employment. This will be the challenge of the future, with growing world population, changing markets and market demand.

What you say is true, but it is no less true than to consider which President represented which interests, or which one was making a more deliberate effort to deal with the reality.

I'd rather live in a mixed economy and a managed economy -- market socialism -- wherein concentrated industries and plutocrats are limited by government power as to how they can be "Masters of the Universe" in their laissez-faire ambitions.

As for Dagney Taggert -- Rand's heroine in "Atlas Shrugged." A pure fiction, but if you see the character as a view or proxy for Rand the narcissist, Rand the elitist, Rand the delusional and Rand the speed-freak -- then Taggert is no heroine and appears for what she is. Carly Fiorina on steroids.
 
Jan 7, 2012
107
0
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Well, apart from the fact that I don't consider myself a moron, I agree with much of what you posted, though the difference in operational ideologies between the parties are very different in both substance and effect on the folks who are outside of the priviledged class.

This. Look, Dodd-Frank my be a half-baked shitty attempt at banking regulation. No, Obama didn't push for reinstatement of glass-stegall. But again, look at the level of obstruction. Do you really think with 70 democrat senators and 5 more Bernie Sanders types, and maybe an extra 20 liberal house members, that there wouldn't have been talk of reinstatement of GS? I think it is safe to say sometimes Obama pushes only what he thinks has a snowballs chance in hell of passing rather than some pie-in-the-sky liberal dream that he knows will go nowhere. Just like the Bush Tax Cuts. If he insisted the top two brackets went up, and stuck to it, we would ALL be sitting here with a tax increase. Is anyone going to deny that? Obama compromised even when he had his supposed "Mandate".

What kind of F'ed up world do we live in when in a landslide 2008 election Republicans won't even let him raise taxes on the 1% for 4 years? What kind of joke of a "Mandate" are they compelled to follow?

How is Obama going to talk about increased Wall Street regulation when Republicans are insisting on even more repeals?

Bottom line is Obama compromises too much, though. He should have gone big and bold more often, let the fillibusters tear everything down, and hope the voters blamed the right people. He compromised and is in a dead heat. But as I have stated before, would he be in the same position either way? Probably because he is a "Socialist-Kenyan-Hitler-Government-Takeover-Healthcare-Trillion-Dollar-Deficit-Prez".

Most republicans won't even acknowledge that the deficit would have been over a trillion every year even if his family dog was president and barked at legislation for 4 years.
 

tweaker2

Lifer
Aug 5, 2000
14,475
6,896
136
This. Look, Dodd-Frank my be a half-baked shitty attempt at banking regulation. No, Obama didn't push for reinstatement of glass-stegall. But again, look at the level of obstruction. Do you really think with 70 democrat senators and 5 more Bernie Sanders types, and maybe an extra 20 liberal house members, that there wouldn't have been talk of reinstatement of GS? I think it is safe to say sometimes Obama pushes only what he thinks has a snowballs chance in hell of passing rather than some pie-in-the-sky liberal dream that he knows will go nowhere. Just like the Bush Tax Cuts. If he insisted the top two brackets went up, and stuck to it, we would ALL be sitting here with a tax increase. Is anyone going to deny that? Obama compromised even when he had his supposed "Mandate".

What kind of F'ed up world do we live in when in a landslide 2008 election Republicans won't even let him raise taxes on the 1% for 4 years? What kind of joke of a "Mandate" are they compelled to follow?

How is Obama going to talk about increased Wall Street regulation when Republicans are insisting on even more repeals?

Bottom line is Obama compromises too much, though. He should have gone big and bold more often, let the fillibusters tear everything down, and hope the voters blamed the right people. He compromised and is in a dead heat. But as I have stated before, would he be in the same position either way? Probably because he is a "Socialist-Kenyan-Hitler-Government-Takeover-Healthcare-Trillion-Dollar-Deficit-Prez".

Most republicans won't even acknowledge that the deficit would have been over a trillion every year even if his family dog was president and barked at legislation for 4 years.

Excellent post.:thumbsup:

Thanks for your insight.
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
81
You are correct in the steps we have taken. They are all so that we do not have to use our military very quickly. This is good.

But to argue that the purpose of the military is not to ensure the economic survival of a nation is silly.
He said as he conveniently omitted the part of my post that directly rebuts his current statement... You're either completely dense or intentionally obtuse.
Your argument is that Nation X has the moral authority to attack Nation Y simply because Nation Y has some resource that Nation X needs to maintain its standard of living. This is exactly the same ethical "dilemma" (if you can even call it that) as I mentioned previously. While a nation does have moral authority to conduct military affairs under some circumstances, simple schoolyard bullying for lunch money is not one of them.
 

nehalem256

Lifer
Apr 13, 2012
15,669
8
0
This. Look, Dodd-Frank my be a half-baked shitty attempt at banking regulation. No, Obama didn't push for reinstatement of glass-stegall. But again, look at the level of obstruction. Do you really think with 70 democrat senators and 5 more Bernie Sanders types, and maybe an extra 20 liberal house members, that there wouldn't have been talk of reinstatement of GS? I think it is safe to say sometimes Obama pushes only what he thinks has a snowballs chance in hell of passing rather than some pie-in-the-sky liberal dream that he knows will go nowhere. Just like the Bush Tax Cuts. If he insisted the top two brackets went up, and stuck to it, we would ALL be sitting here with a tax increase. Is anyone going to deny that? Obama compromised even when he had his supposed "Mandate".

What kind of F'ed up world do we live in when in a landslide 2008 election Republicans won't even let him raise taxes on the 1% for 4 years? What kind of joke of a "Mandate" are they compelled to follow?

How is Obama going to talk about increased Wall Street regulation when Republicans are insisting on even more repeals?

Bottom line is Obama compromises too much, though. He should have gone big and bold more often, let the fillibusters tear everything down, and hope the voters blamed the right people. He compromised and is in a dead heat. But as I have stated before, would he be in the same position either way? Probably because he is a "Socialist-Kenyan-Hitler-Government-Takeover-Healthcare-Trillion-Dollar-Deficit-Prez".

Most republicans won't even acknowledge that the deficit would have been over a trillion every year even if his family dog was president and barked at legislation for 4 years.

Well it seems like he could have done that when the Democrats had a fillibuster proof senate and House control.

Maybe if he had done that instead of declaring "Mission Accomplished" on the economy and moving onto Obamacare the Democrats would still control congress?
 

Icepick

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2004
3,663
4
81
Nice posts OP and welcome. An injection of original thought is always needed.


Is it even fair to call this a Bush economy? To me it seems like we are still on the long arc of the Reagan economy. Clinton and Bush(s) have pushed the edges around a bit, but the fundamental premise seems to still be built on Reaganomics. W just took all the old dials up to 11.

I'd say Obama has done little to change any of this. What policy changes have been made? What paradigm shifts have happened? Obama can't even get some of the Bush taxcuts repealed, and he'll likely get boxed out again in 2013.

I think you could boil Obama's operating philosophy as a "smarter" Bush economy, with little net action.

Shocking that the recovery is still waiting...

So true. In many ways the economic woes we Americans are enduring have their roots in the failed policies of the Reagan years. And to play into BonzaiDuck's assertion of "momentum," it is absolutely absurd to think that Obama could correct a problem in only four years that was decades in the making.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,699
1,448
126
So true. In many ways the economic woes we Americans are enduring have their roots in the failed policies of the Reagan years. And to play into BonzaiDuck's assertion of "momentum," it is absolutely absurd to think that Obama could correct a problem in only four years that was decades in the making.

I was paying less attention to news in the '80s than I was to micro-economics texts I was reading on multi-product firms and regulation. But the emergence of microwave technology and cell-phones portended to break the back of traditionally local-monopoly phone companies and their regulation.

So again -- ideology always has pitfalls for over-generalizing specific adjustments to a wide policy platform.

Also, pertaining to the technological revolution, I had a theory targeted at the Great Reagan Myth: The collapse of the USSR was partly due to cell-phone and PC technologies, for a couple reasons: the state could not easily control their use and the dissemination of information, and the military would not be able to keep up in a world transitioning away from mainframes. I believe that a lot of the new computer technology was blocked for import to various countries at that time. Former President Medveydev only buttresses my argument, when asked about western worries that free speech was being repressed in his country. He answered specifically that those two technologies made it impossible to control speech.

But throw into the mix their war in Afghanistan. Decades before these other developments, someone suggested to me that their "empire would over-extend itself." [And is history doomed to repeat? Perhaps it already has . . .] Ultimately, I'm inclined to think it was as much human progress of people writing in Cyrillic alphabets.

It just seems tell-tale, that this country would elect an actor to the presidency. Maybe a great communicator, and he made some reasonable decisions (like raising taxes.) But the national debt as percentage of GDP rose from 29% to 51% through the terms of Reagan and Bush, then stayed at 51% until Bush Junior's election.