Continuing the discussion from Unsafe at Any Speed - Vehicle and Driver Safety Discussion:
To make it as clear as possible to those who believe the myth that Clinton had a budget surplus (@DanielHooper and @slinkygn ) , here are the monthly National Public Debt numbers graphed to illustrate just how clearly they played accounting games to achieve that claimâŚ
Again the numbers are obtained directly from the Treasury Department, the folks tasked with administering the debt.
Bush sent me $300 in 2000⌠does that mean he agreed there was a surplus? If not, I guess he intentionally piled on the debt to buy leverage in the election.
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Sorry, but we were limiting to the belief that the Clintonâs claim to having a budget surplus. This was in fact a politically created myth.
In terms of National Debt, there is only one certainty. The Next President will always have a greater National Debt then their predecessor⌠That has been the case at least to the 1970âs but quite likely all the way back to Hoover. It isnât a question of party, but of underlying motivation. All federal politcians derive their power from spending moneyâŚ
Curiously, the slow growth of the National Debt during the Clinton era can be attributed to the First Great Period Of GRIDLOCK⌠With the Republicans controlling congress for the first time in forty years and a President at diametric opposites, we had blessed little spending that wasnât on automaticâŚ
Aright Iâm really tired of arguing about this, and even more tired of the fact that itâs a two month old thread getting dredged up.
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Down at the bottom, click the little box that says âWatchingâ and select âMutedâ.
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I donât feel thatâs necessary, and I donât think that keeps you from getting directly @tagged.
I am just making it clear that I have made my argument and am no longer participating.
I believe it will keep you from getting tagged. At least it has for me in the past.
Rephrase, it keeps you from getting notifications if you get tagged.
âYou will never be notified of anything in this topicâ
Iâm down with that.
Itâs never too late
Wow, that guy sucked it on the landing.
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I guess that depends on what stopped working as he was landing. Could very well have been a highly skilled landing.
Good enough for government work, though.
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Budget surplus <> national debt increase/decrease
snooooooze Didnât we already cover this in the last thread? Really, it just took a couple of posts to figure out whether your issue was that you were bad at math or bad at government. Thanks for clarifying that itâs the latter.
National debt <> âdebt the nation owesâ
cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/term_of_art
Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intragovernmental_holdings
Thatâs pretty much the only thing â well, that and a little common sense â that you need to unravel the âmysteryâ of the âfraudâ of Clintonâs âbudget surplusâ that the âlamestream mediaâ keeps strangely repeating as true and EVERYBODY BELIEVES THEM because theyâre âsheepleâ and only you and your clever friends that make up 3% of America but are the Real Americans can actually see the WOOL PULLED OVER AMERICAâS EYES #makeamericagreatagain
It seems clear that you are creating straw men for most of your argument. At least in terms of your argument with me. I challenge you to provide support for ME stating the above and a good deal of what you are arguing against below.
No one has claimed a conspiracy theory. Again your creating straw men. The data, is quite clear. The budget surplus was a artifact of the timing of the reporting schedule. The government DEMONSTRABLY makes use of accounting practices that they put private citizens and company representatives in JAIL if we try the same practices. That like, the continual increase in our National Debt is a simple FACT.
The above is incredibly naive. Other then at the local level where politicians are capable of hiding direct money transfers to themselves or their cronies, such fraud is fairly uncommon. What I have been describing is how the use of the tax revenues that federal politicians have control over allows them to pedal influence. Mostly with the purpose of getting themselves re-elected. Now many of these politicians do get wealthy while their only âjobâ is public service. The Clintonâs are just one example. Both the Clintonâs have spent their entire careers in Public Service, which frankly doesnât pay very well, yet have accumululated millions.
A career politician shouldnât be more then moderately well off (and then only if they are particularly good at saving/investing) if their only source of lifetime income was government salaries. A great example is Sam Rayburn. Despite a career in politics, in extremely powerful positions, including Speaker of the House for seven years, he died with a net worth of about $30,000 (A decent sum at the time, but decidedly middle class). He is also one of the few federal politicians to have a reputation of being stridently honest.
Again, your being naive. A politicians goal is not the salary, but the power. And that power is directly proportional to the money they get to direct the spending on. It doesnât matter which party/affiliation is involved since all direct the spending to their constiuents. A constituency that has become fat and happy living on the government teat. Whether it is the Democrats and their constituent base or the Republicans and theirs (wealthy and corporate) both use the tax base to feed their constinuencies.
Now nearly all politicians at the federal level leave office considerably wealthier then they were when they entered office. Few go to jail over it, but given the low salaries and the way they mismanage their own salaries (like the vast majority of Americans), something shady must be happening⌠And a quick review of the headlines can give an indication with kick backs, sweat heart deals, etcâŚ
This view of regulations seems to be coming from someone who has never run a business, nor does it have ANYTHING to do with the TRAFFIC regulations we were discussing.
TRAFFIC regulations are created with the INTENT that they will be violated. The speed limit is a perfect example. Studies showed thatnon-compliance with the speed limit rose to as much as 90% when the 55 mpg limit was imposed. Safety was one of the reasons cited for that legislation, yet as it has been progressively repealed (and was never really observed in the first place) no corresponding increase in injuries/death have occurred.
I come back to the laws across this country that require you to allow faster traffic to pass, EVEN IF YOU ARE TRAVELING AT THE SPEED LIMIT. It is simply not possible for that law to have any explanation other then revenue generation.
Then we have the regulations that are designed to protect people from themselves, after all they are too stupid to make their own decisions. A perfect example is seat belt laws⌠Again, the primary purpose of this law is to allow the generation of revenue.
Finally, when the government creates a new regulation, there will be winners and loosers in industry⌠Which is why we have lobbyists in DC advocating/fighting these regulations. The same lobbyists involved in funding the campaigns of the politicians they are trying to influenceâŚ
Sorry, but this principal is simple enough that even the math challenged among us can understand. If your debt increases it is ONLY because you spent more then you took in; hence no surplus.
Ad hominum is not worthy of a teacher⌠At least not one who is good at their jobâŚ
Again, your attempting to create straw men and using ad hominums. If your incapable or unwilling to debate an issue with integrity, perhaps you should just ignore the post?
The FACT is that the debt has continually increasedâDATA DOESNâT lie (that is the purvue of politicians). That people believe the myth is because they are generally too lazy to look at the data. The few that do, never look beyond the reported values I mentioned above based upon the fiscal year. WHY the growth of the debt slowed is a subject of much debate and little fact; however, that the growth of the debt never stopped is not a claim that can be disputed.
âEveryone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.â
I understand youâre not claiming that what you explicitly said right there is a conspiracy theory â to be clear: I am. The budget surplus was not âan artifact of timingâ manipulated in some intentional fashion, which is what youâd stated previously, and I demonstrated that already in the previous thread â totally unrefuted, may I add. And nobody goes to jail for using the accounting practices the government, or anyone else uses. Also conspiratorial, also false. There is only one way you can go to jail for pretty much anything involving your finances: fraud. The end. If you screw up on your taxes, you donât go to jail â you get fined. That includes âscrewing upâ by using accounting practices âthe government uses.â Though, in this particular case, you seem to be saying that setting when the fiscal year begins and ends is one of those supposedly shady accounting practices? Interesting, because every corporation Iâve seen incorporates that particular practice, and not one person has gone to jail for it.
Now nearly all politicians at the federal level leave office considerably wealthier then they were when they entered office. Few go to jail over it, but given the low salaries and the way they mismanage their own salaries (like the vast majority of Americans), something shady must be happening⌠And a quick review of the headlines can give an indication with kick backs, sweat heart deals, etcâŚ
Conspiracy theory #2. âSomething shady must be happeningâŚâ You do know that your âquick review of the headlinesâ doesnât really lead to enough headlines to indict the few hundred public officials on the federal level, right?
Actually, your dogmatic ânearly all politicians leave office wealthier than when they enteredâ is typically demonstrably false. They are certainly wealthier 5 years after leaving office than they were when they entered office â but not immediately after leaving it, no. The Clintons are certainly very wealthy â in part, from the hundreds of millions Bill has made in speaking fees since he left the presidency and the tens of millions Hillary has made the same way after leaving the Secretary of Stateâs office â both of which, as has been fact-checked by plenty of folks, were receiving speaking fees which were within the reasonable range for the positions theyâd held.
Why is your tangential straw man relevant? Easy â because your basic argument that regulation exists to increase revenue implies that politicians have some reason to want to increase revenue. (Which should be easily seen as ludicrous, considering how many very, very wealthy politicians there are from the 1980âs Republican party.) That is where your argument rises to the level of â well, we can be more precise than âconspiracy theoryâ and call it âdesperately creating presumptions of complex patterns of interconnection to justify a worldview that grows increasingly impossible to justify.â But âconspiracy theoryâ is much shorter.
This view of regulations seems to be coming from someone who has never run a business, nor does it have ANYTHING to do with the TRAFFIC regulations we were discussing.
Well, the one I currently own, as well as the ones that Iâve run for others in the past, have seemed to do fairly well with my conception and understanding of âregulation.â I guess youâre saying youâve run more businesses than I have, though?
And while the argument I made certainly has to do with traffic regulations just like any other â in that, when you violate them, you are costing me money (in the public cost of health due to people getting into accidents, which does statistically increase at higher traffic speeds) â you seem to forget that it actually wasnât TRAFFIC regulations we were discussing (love the caps you used â I may have to stick with that!). What made the book famous â the Corvair tuck-under issue â was a MANUFACTURING issue, addressed by the FMVSS automotive design regulations. Traffic was your red herring, not mine.
Your followup list of kinds of regulation, where you practically state what the purpose of the regulation is and then follow with, âso obviously itâs for revenue generation,â just makes no sense. âDesigned to protect people for themselves,â followed by âprimary purpose is to allow the generation of revenueâ â I can only imagine you are so used to cobbling those contradictions together you no longer hear how obvious they are.
Budget surplus <> national debt increase/decrease
Sorry, but this principal is simple enough that even the math challenged among us can understand. If your debt increases it is ONLY because you spent more then you took in; hence no surplus.
âIf your debt increasesâŚâ
See, youâre not actually math challenged â youâre macroeconomics challenged. As I said: my only question was whether âyour issue was that you were bad at math or bad at government. Thanks for clarifying that itâs the latter.â Telling a student heâs doing poorly at science and he should study more isnât normally considered ânot worthy of a teacherâ â though thanks for trying to share your expertise on another subject you clearly know little about â so I see little problem with my pointing out that âdebtâ and ânational debtâ are not the same thing.
Excuse me â I mean pointing it out AGAIN. Since I gave you the link to read to at least get a basic understanding of why the terms youâre using donât actually work the way you think they work, and instead of actually reading, you accused me of making straw men â and then went back to your factually incorrect claim, which was again disproved at length in the prior thread, with the very data you claimed to be following, and used some more CAPS to state that your mistake was FACT and that DATA DOESNâT lie â well, at least we agree on that; it certainly didnât lie when I used it to disprove your point.
The irony of your pointing out that people arenât entitled to their own facts seems to be lost on a person that is trying to counter what every reputable econometrician in America states about this subject by misrepresenting data and misdefining terms⌠par for the course these days, I guess.
Your completely wrong. The SEC will (and has) put executives in jail for violation of accounting standards. However, I donât have any interest in continuing this and trying to explain reality to you. Continue to see consipiracy theories in a simple presentation of data and facts.
They have â when those violations constitute fraud. As I stated. Screwups just get big fines. Hell, even fraud often just gets big fines â or did you miss what everyoneâs been pissed off at the SEC over ever since the '08 financial meltdown?
And no, your conspiracy theories werenât in your simple presentation of data â that was where your errors in macroeconomics were. Your conspiracy theories were your attempts at explaining those errors. Two different issues. I can see how that would be confusing. The data errors, again, were explained in the other thread â at length. In this thread Iâm just addressing the false explanations. (Your âsimple facts,â I suppose, as opposed to the âsimple data.â Turns out that just because supposed âfactsâ are simple doesnât mean theyâre true. And macroeconomic theory is anything but âsimple.â About the only topic less fitting to armchair discussion than national economics is foreign policy â which I hear enough misguided drivel on in our âquiet spaceâ while Iâm trying to work; thank goodness weâve managed to avoid that here for nowâŚ)
Executives that have attempted to use the accounting procedures used by the Federal Government HAVE been convicted of FRAUD. Attempting to take your defined benefit pension plan of your liability (debt) sheet to make your companies expense/income ration look better⌠EXACTLY what the government does by defining our DEBT as different from the UNFUNDED LIABILITIES⌠Those unfunded liability are almost exactly the same as a companies defined benefit retirement (medical and retire programs = MEDICARE and SOCIAL SECURITY)âŚ
US National Debt ~ 20 Trillion
+
US Unfunded LIabilities ~200 TrillionâŚ
For instance the US currently has about 15.4 Trillion in social security funds that are owed people that IS NOT included in the US NAtional Debt calculations. No company is allowed to file an annual report with that kind of fudging of their debt balance or they GO TO JAIL FOR FRAUD!