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matrix
Phoenix
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 Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 3:30 pm Post subject: Side-by-side economics: McCain/Palin vs. Obama/Biden |
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I hope to get a good side-by-side discussion. All I know is:
McCain:NeoCon--runaway war spending/foreign intervention programs.
Obama:Socalist--wasteful domestic programs/subsidies
That may be a little vague, but that is what i have gotten from these members so far.
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Orwell
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 4:42 pm Post subject: |
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McCain's economic policies are unclear- he has switched multiple times during his campaign even on the question of whether he is competent on economics (see videos on http://therealmccain.com/ for clips of this) but generally I would distrust him economically because he is temperamental, seemingly impulsive, and senile. He probably has a slight protectionist streak (oh, I lost my job, I think I'll blame China  ) and would probably change taxes. No telling whether taxes would be raised, lowered, or just shifted around, but he would change it.
Obama, as you said, is a socialist. On economic matters, he has made mutually exclusive promises so we can't be sure what will happen when he gets in office. He largely plans to punish large, wealthy corporations for being successful, with the justification being that their product costs more than people would like to pay for it. The money he steals from them (and yes, in this specific instance of "windfall profit tax" it is unequivocally theft) will be used to fund transfer payments and sending checks to people. However, Obama is fairly young and will certainly have strong advisors to keep him in check and help guide economic policy.
In either case, I say we are better off than under Bush, and probably better under Obama unless you are extremely fanatical about big government spending- though McCain will also engage in big government spending, difference being that his spending would only result in getting more people killed, rather than sending poor kids to college and such.
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ed
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| Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2008 8:44 am Post subject: |
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McCain subscribes to the Reagan-era theory of "trickle-down" economics... he wants to make Bush's tax cuts for the very-wealthy permanent, figuring that some of this money will trickle down to the rest of society. He feels this is best for the country.
Obama doesn't believe this works... he thinks the best way to help the non-rich is to help them directly. He wants to increase taxes on the very-wealthy, and give tax breaks to everyone else. He feels this is best for the country.
That is about as objective as this Obama supporter can get. 
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Orwell
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| Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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@ed: You give McCain too much credit. He's flip-flopped repeatedly on the issue of the Bush tax cuts.
And Obama doesn't only wish to increase taxes on the super-rich... he also wants to punish oil corporations with retroactive taxes, which seems to me to be of dubious legality.
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matrix
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| Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Orwell wrote: | @ed: You give McCain too much credit. He's flip-flopped repeatedly on the issue of the Bush tax cuts.
And Obama doesn't only wish to increase taxes on the super-rich... he also wants to punish oil corporations with retroactive taxes, which seems to me to be of dubious legality. |
I have a microeconomics professor who says that those that own the corp. are thousands of individuals with mutual funds, etc. So it would be those planning for retirement b/c the gov. simply can't do it good enough. And now they can LOSE money if this continues.
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Orwell
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| Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 6:40 pm Post subject: |
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| matrix wrote: | | I have a microeconomics professor who says that those that own the corp. are thousands of individuals with mutual funds, etc. So it would be those planning for retirement b/c the gov. simply can't do it good enough. And now they can LOSE money if this continues. |
Right, but to most people a corporation is still impersonal enough that they don't mind stealing from it.
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ToadOfSteel
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| Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 7:55 pm Post subject: |
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On the economy, I'd rather go with Obama, since we've given the current incarnation of Reaganomics 8 years to work, and they have done nothing but destroyed the nation's economy, putting the US behind both China and the European Union in terms of economics.
People give Reaganomics too much credit since Reagan linked such practices to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the public has largely believed it. However, now that people who were born around the time of the Soviet collapse are reaching voter age, Reaganomics may finally begin to truly die out...
Over the last 25 years, Bill Clinton was the only president that had an overall sustained economic growth over a period of more than 3 years... and he was the only president since the development of Reaganomics that did not utilize some form thereof.... |
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Awesomelyglorious
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| Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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Right, a major reason for that is because Reaganomics as we see it isn't a coherent economic policy but rather a bunch of politically convenient policies slapped together.
Right, well, people don't know that Reaganomics is a bunch of incoherent crap. I mean, I had a textbook with a conservative economist, Greg Mankiw, basically calling it a load of crap by showing how it REDUCED investment in one of the problems in the book. Also giving graphs on how it increased the national deficit.
Bill Clinton, interestingly enough, is considered a better president than Reagan by supply side guru Arthur Laffer. It is no joke either, and the reasoning given is pretty solid. I mean, Bill Clinton, while not a Republican tax cutter, really was a better pro-market guy in many ways.
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matrix
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| Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 11:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Awesomelyglorious wrote: | Right, a major reason for that is because Reaganomics as we see it isn't a coherent economic policy but rather a bunch of politically convenient policies slapped together.
Right, well, people don't know that Reaganomics is a bunch of incoherent crap. I mean, I had a textbook with a conservative economist, Greg Mankiw, basically calling it a load of crap by showing how it REDUCED investment in one of the problems in the book. Also giving graphs on how it increased the national deficit.
Bill Clinton, interestingly enough, is considered a better president than Reagan by supply side guru Arthur Laffer. It is no joke either, and the reasoning given is pretty solid. I mean, Bill Clinton, while not a Republican tax cutter, really was a better pro-market guy in many ways. |
Funny I hear many people bash Clinton's signing of NAFTA.
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Orwell
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| Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2008 11:51 pm Post subject: |
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| matrix wrote: | | Funny I hear many people bash Clinton's signing of NAFTA. |
You hear protectionist idiots bashing that. NAFTA and other free-trade arrangements are definitely pro-market.
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Awesomelyglorious
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| Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 12:01 am Post subject: |
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| matrix wrote: |
Funny I hear many people bash Clinton's signing of NAFTA. |
That's one of the things that Laffer cites as one of Clinton's great pro-market decisions.
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matrix
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| Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 12:39 am Post subject: |
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| Orwell wrote: | | matrix wrote: | | Funny I hear many people bash Clinton's signing of NAFTA. |
You hear protectionist idiots bashing that. NAFTA and other free-trade arrangements are definitely pro-market. |
Ok so be it...
GLOBALISM FTW!
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Orwell
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| Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 6:40 am Post subject: |
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| matrix wrote: | | Orwell wrote: | | matrix wrote: | | Funny I hear many people bash Clinton's signing of NAFTA. |
You hear protectionist idiots bashing that. NAFTA and other free-trade arrangements are definitely pro-market. |
Ok so be it...
GLOBALISM FTW! |
Yes. The idea goes all the way back to Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations. Protectionism is stupid, and more gains can be made by expanding the marketplace through international trade than through remaining completely insular.
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ed
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| Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 7:27 am Post subject: |
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| Orwell wrote: | | matrix wrote: | | Funny I hear many people bash Clinton's signing of NAFTA. |
You hear protectionist idiots bashing that. NAFTA and other free-trade arrangements are definitely pro-market. |
Pro-market is not the same thing as pro-people. NAFTA allows corporations to move jobs to Mexico, pay very little in wages, and pollute the Mexican environment at will. thus making more money for their wealthy owners. Of course this is terrible for the American workers who got laid off.
People who oppose NAFTA and other free-trade arrangements are not "protectionist idiots," they are people who are tired of seeing their jobs sent elsewhere, and their money disappear into the hands of the super-rich. It is very easy to understand when you see the working class becoming poorer while the rich become even richer.
The Republicans say "See? The economy is growing," but it is only growing for the wealthy; for everyone else the economy sucks, and these free-trade agreements are one of the biggest reasons.
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Awesomelyglorious
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| Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 9:24 am Post subject: |
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| ed wrote: |
Pro-market is not the same thing as pro-people. NAFTA allows corporations to move jobs to Mexico, pay very little in wages, and pollute the Mexican environment at will. thus making more money for their wealthy owners. Of course this is terrible for the American workers who got laid off. |
Well, and a boon for the Mexican workers who get the jobs. Especially given that Mexican workers get very little in wages already, so it isn't as if that really is a massive problem for them. Not only that, but given that the number of jobs is not a fixed number, it really does not end up being as terrible as we seem to see suggested. Especially given that in this case "pro-people" is the same as "pro-market" as Mexican workers would have to be worse-off without the trade agreement, unless you hold to the idea that more employers competing for laborers means lower wages, which makes neither logical nor economic sense.
| Quote: | | People who oppose NAFTA and other free-trade arrangements are not "protectionist idiots," they are people who are tired of seeing their jobs sent elsewhere, and their money disappear into the hands of the super-rich. It is very easy to understand when you see the working class becoming poorer while the rich become even richer. |
Well, for the most part, I would say that they are, because they also are drawing an arbitrary distinction between technological change and economic changes, as the economic effects of something like NAFTA are essentially the same as if we developed a new technology, except with the benefit of helping Mexicans, and unless the NAFTA haters would oppose a new technology or hate Mexicans, we have an internal inconsistency.
| Quote: |
The Republicans say "See? The economy is growing," but it is only growing for the wealthy; for everyone else the economy sucks, and these free-trade agreements are one of the biggest reasons. |
Changes in technology are another reason as they make certain workers more expendable as well. Not only that, but in terms of the world economy, free-trade agreements are probably the best international economic welfare things that the US does. Not only that, but even if the US gave the poor welfare payments to completely compensate for losses from their job competition, the US would still come out ahead in the economics anyway.
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