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I Totally Support the Occupy Movement...Follow

#427 Nov 15 2011 at 7:15 PM Rating: Good
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I'm not questioning your argument per se, I'm just questioning your rationale in trying to argue gbaji.
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#428 Nov 15 2011 at 7:47 PM Rating: Decent
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Oh im not arguing with him, he knows it is part of the debt, I know its part of the debt, you know its part of the debt. Im not really sure what he is arguing about. I mean he has used a lot of words to say the same thing I have, and that is the USA debt adds up to 100% and that currently that 100% is 102% of the US GDP.

Im not arguing, why argue when you are right, I am just trolling Gbaji at this point, A page ago I made my argument he tried some half *** rationalization attempt, and divided the debt into to numbers, both of which are reflected in the link i provided, which when added together represent 100% of the american national debt.

What Gbaji is trying to argue i think is that paying one debt with another cancels it out, but since the US public debt has climber 30% since about 2003, and the Inter Gov debt has declined 30% and the US made not a single debt payment in that time, I think he agrees, but his polarization with idiocy won't allow him to say it.
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#429 Nov 15 2011 at 10:05 PM Rating: Decent
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rdmcandie wrote:
Im not really sure what he is arguing about.


That has become apparent.

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I mean he has used a lot of words to say the same thing I have, and that is the USA debt adds up to 100% and that currently that 100% is 102% of the US GDP.


Ok. I'm going to try one more time, just in case it sinks in. That 100%, meaning the entire national debt, is made up of two components. One of those we have to pay back. The other we don't. Not only do we not have to, but the other part varies based on arbitrary legislative actions which have nothing to do with how much money we owe to anyone.

Because of this, if your objective is to measure how much "in debt" we are (meaning money we have to pay back to people), then you want to only use the part of the debt called "public debt". Yes. They're both called "debt". Stop getting caught up on the label. What matters is that one part we have to pay back, and the other we don't. If we care about how much we have to pay people back, then we shouldn't look at the full 100% of the "national debt", but instead look only at the part that we have to pay back.


That part is called "public debt" (or more completely "debt held by public"). It's the figure the CBO uses when collating budget data. It's the figure every reputable economist uses when looking at the US economy. They do this because they know what I've been trying to explain to you for like 8 posts now. The other part of what is called "national debt" is variable, unpredictable, doesn't represent money we have to pay back, and it utterly unusable as an economic indicator.


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What Gbaji is trying to argue i think is that paying one debt with another cancels it out, but since the US public debt has climber 30% since about 2003, and the Inter Gov debt has declined 30% and the US made not a single debt payment in that time, I think he agrees, but his polarization with idiocy won't allow him to say it.



Sigh. The public debt has grown, not because of anything at all having to do with intergovernmental debt, but because we borrowed more money. It had nothing to do with the other type of debt at all. If congress had not passed a series of bills erasing that debt, we'd be sitting at like $20T of "national debt". But guess what? We wouldn't actually owe anyone any more money. That's why looking at the full national debt figure is pointless. If we'd never erased any intergovernmental debt ever, we'd probably have a $100T national debt. But we'd also still only owe anyone about $9T.


That's why national debt is a meaningless figure. It has nothing to do with how much money we actually owe. It's just amazing to me that no matter how many times I explain this to you in clear English, you keep on failing. I get that you claim to be trolling, but that's a cop out. It looks a hell of a lot more like you just don't want to admit you were dead wrong.
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#430 Nov 16 2011 at 7:34 AM Rating: Excellent
If we take money from Social Security, and then later say that Social Security won't be solvent in 30 years, then I'd say the debt to Social Security is pretty fucking real.
#431 Nov 16 2011 at 8:04 AM Rating: Excellent
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That's pretty much it. That "money we don't have to pay back" is largely from Social Security and retirement benefits. Barring some massive sea change in the next decade, that money will have to be paid back. Congress won't "zero it out" and leave Social Security in a hole where payments aren't being made. Hell, even Rick "SS is a Ponzi Scheme!" Perry is promising retirees and near-future retirees that Social Security will be secure for them -- with what money?

Gbaji really, really wants us all to think it "doesn't count" because, frankly, he just doesn't like the numbers and has some bizarre need to lecture people at length about stuff he knows little about. Does anyone here see massive cuts to Social Security coming from Congress on the near horizon? Anyone? Then can we grow up and admit that this isn't "pretend debt" that'll go away with a wave of a pen? Either the money is actually replaced or else we fund SS (and Medicare and the retirement benefits) with public debt; it's the same end result either way.
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#432 Nov 16 2011 at 8:27 AM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
has some bizarre need to lecture people at length about stuff he knows little about.
The best are when he's lecturing people who are actually experienced with whatever the topic is.

Edited, Nov 16th 2011 3:42pm by lolgaxe
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#433 Nov 16 2011 at 8:34 AM Rating: Excellent
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Lemme have him tell you about building permits and zoning some time Smiley: laugh
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#434 Nov 16 2011 at 2:41 PM Rating: Excellent
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Sorry to put this back on topic but I think this is the best paragraph I've read on OWS so far:

Matt Taibbi wrote:
There's no better symbol of the gloom and psychological repression of modern America than the banking system, a huge heartless machine that attaches itself to you at an early age, and from which there is no escape. You fail to receive a few past-due notices about a $19 payment you missed on that TV you bought at Circuit City, and next thing you know a collector has filed a judgment against you for $3,000 in fees and interest. Or maybe you wake up one morning and your car is gone, legally repossessed by Vulture Inc., the debt-buying firm that bought your loan on the Internet from Chase for two cents on the dollar. This is why people hate Wall Street. They hate it because the banks have made life for ordinary people a vicious tightrope act; you slip anywhere along the way, it's 10,000 feet down into a vat of razor blades that you can never climb out of.

That, to me, is what Occupy Wall Street is addressing. People don't know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: F*CK THIS SH*T! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-the-ows-protests-20111110#ixzz1du2tKNEP





Edited, Nov 16th 2011 12:41pm by Olorinus
#435 Nov 16 2011 at 3:05 PM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
Lemme have him tell you about building permits and zoning some time Smiley: laugh


I am more curious as to why Gbaji opposes tax cuts/rebates in favor of increased debt.


Edited, Nov 16th 2011 4:05pm by rdmcandie
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#436 Nov 16 2011 at 3:28 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
That's pretty much it. That "money we don't have to pay back" is largely from Social Security and retirement benefits.


But not all. If someone wants to make a separate argument about SS and Medicare, I'm fine with that. But simply adding up the total national debt and using it as an economic indicator is wrong.

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Barring some massive sea change in the next decade, that money will have to be paid back. Congress won't "zero it out" and leave Social Security in a hole where payments aren't being made.


Um... Joph? You get that that's the yearly surplus/deficit of payroll taxes compared to the cost of the programs, right? It has nothing to do with whether we left some cash in the account from past years. The problem, which that chart clearly illustrates, isn't that we spent the money from past surpluses, but that SS (and Medicare) are projected to cost more than payroll taxes are paying for and will continue to cost more as far as we can project into the future. Unless that is changed, it wont matter in the long run whether we'd taken that money via intergovernmental transfer or not.

It's like realizing that you're spending $500/month more on your household budget than you earn, but instead of identifying that as the problem, you blame your bleak financial outlook on that $5000 you spent on a vacation 5 years ago. If only you hadn't spent that money, you'd be fine! Um... No. You wouldn't. You'd just be broke a little bit later is all.

The problem is with the cost/revenue ratio, not with what we did or didn't do with the funds themselves.

Quote:
Hell, even Rick "SS is a Ponzi Scheme!" Perry is promising retirees and near-future retirees that Social Security will be secure for them -- with what money?


Not with the couple trillion we'd have had if we hadn't "raided" social security and medicare. He's talking about actually reforming the system to fix that cost/revenue ratio. Which is the right thing to do.

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Gbaji really, really wants us all to think it "doesn't count" because, frankly, he just doesn't like the numbers and has some bizarre need to lecture people at length about stuff he knows little about.


Huh? I'd love to blame Obama for a higher debt number Joph. I don't use it because I'm honest and consistent. For 8 years, I made the exact same argument about public debt versus national debt when Bush was president. And I'm still making the same argument now that Obama is in office even though it would certainly benefit my "side" to make the debt seem bigger. WTF? I'm now being blamed for *not* being partisan?


Quote:
Does anyone here see massive cuts to Social Security coming from Congress on the near horizon? Anyone? Then can we grow up and admit that this isn't "pretend debt" that'll go away with a wave of a pen? Either the money is actually replaced or else we fund SS (and Medicare and the retirement benefits) with public debt; it's the same end result either way.


And it's the same result if we'd not used that money along the way as well. I already explained this. It is pretend debt because we aren't actually borrowing money until we actually don't have sufficient revenue to pay for the cost of the program(s) and actually... wait for it... borrow money. If you want to complain about this, go complain about the decision made back in 1969 to change how we managed the funds for those programs. I'm looking at the actual reality of the situation, and you're fantasizing about what might have been if we'd done things differently over the last 40+ years.


Your approach seems somewhat pointless. I'm not even sure what you think we should do about it, or who you think we should blame, or how you think it affects us. We don't have that money. We haven't had that money for 40 years. As I stated earlier, you and I have spent our entire working lives under a system in which the payroll taxes we paid for those retirement benefits were *not* held in any sort of trust for us to receive later, but rather a system where we paid this year for the benefits of retirees this year, and when we retire, we'll be paid for by the people working at that time. And we've known our entire lives that when we retire, the existing payroll tax rates will not be sufficient to pay for our benefits. This is not new. It's not something that just magically appeared in the last few years. You can't blame this on any president sitting now, or that either of us have ever voted for.


I guess I'm not sure what you think we should do? Do you honestly think that counting the money taken from those programs as "debt" actually changes anything going forward? Unless we change that cost/revenue ratio, it really doesn't. It's just political wrangling for the sake of wrangling. It does not change the long term cost reality one penny. It never did. I don't understand what you think you're trying to accomplish here.
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#437 Nov 16 2011 at 3:33 PM Rating: Excellent
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Um... Joph? You get that that's the yearly surplus/deficit of payroll taxes compared to the cost of the programs, right? It has nothing to do with whether we left some cash in the account from past years. The problem, which that chart clearly illustrates, isn't that we spent the money from past surpluses, but that SS (and Medicare) are projected to cost more than payroll taxes are paying for and will continue to cost more as far as we can project into the future. Unless that is changed, it wont matter in the long run whether we'd taken that money via intergovernmental transfer or not.


Sounds like a good reason for why the increasing wealth disparity in this nation is a serious problem.
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#438 Nov 16 2011 at 3:37 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
But not all. If someone wants to make a separate argument about SS and Medicare, I'm fine with that

I posted the breakdown earlier. You seem stuck on saying the 35% number doesn't count but if you want to revise that to 5% doesn't count or something, go for it. Which numbers from that chart do you want to say don't count?

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#439 Nov 16 2011 at 3:39 PM Rating: Excellent
Or remove the cap on Payroll taxes, so the wealthiest earners are actually paying "their fair share" into the system.
#440 Nov 16 2011 at 3:40 PM Rating: Excellent
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The federal debt just rolled past $15T.
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#441 Nov 16 2011 at 3:44 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
But not all. If someone wants to make a separate argument about SS and Medicare, I'm fine with that

I posted the breakdown earlier. You seem stuck on saying the 35% number doesn't count but if you want to revise that to 5% doesn't count or something, go for it. Which numbers from that chart do you want to say don't count?


No. I'm saying that it's wrong to use national debt as an economic indicator. You jumped on the "But we do have to pay for the SS and Medicare money!" bit. We legislatively erased more intergovernmental debt just in the mid 2000s than the totaled "owed" to SS and Medicare. If we use national debt as an economic indicator, we'll get false results when comparing to past years.

If someone wishes to make a separate comparison of SS/Medicare, that's a whole different ball of wax. But that's not what I was responding to. I was responding to someone presenting a chart showing relative levels of national debt over time and attempting to use that number, all by itself, as some sort of economic proof of something. Can we agree that the total figure should not be used that way?

Edited, Nov 16th 2011 1:48pm by gbaji
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#442 Nov 16 2011 at 3:46 PM Rating: Decent
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Technogeek wrote:
Or remove the cap on Payroll taxes, so the wealthiest earners are actually paying "their fair share" into the system.


Why is that a fair share? Fair compared to what? Does someone making $200k/year get a larger social security check when he retires than someone earning $100k? Does he get more medical care provided for by medicare? If not, then how is that "fair"? Paying more for the same thing would seem to be unfair.
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#443 Nov 16 2011 at 3:51 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
No. I'm saying that it's wrong to use national debt as an economic indicator. You jumped on the "But we do have to pay for the SS and Medicare money!" bit.

In particular, I was calling you out on your (probably intentionally) disingenuous answer regarding intergovernmental debt.
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#444 Nov 16 2011 at 4:01 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
No. I'm saying that it's wrong to use national debt as an economic indicator. You jumped on the "But we do have to pay for the SS and Medicare money!" bit.

In particular, I was calling you out on your (probably intentionally) disingenuous answer regarding intergovernmental debt.


And I clearly explained that I was aware of the potential issues with intergovernmental debt as it relates to Social Security and Medicare, but that this doesn't change the broader point that it's incorrect to use the total national debt as an economic measuring stick. Then you proceeded to insist that we argue about SS/Medicare. Once again, you zero in on the least significant and most irrelevant part of an argument and cling to it like a freaking bulldog.


What point are you trying to make? That the part of intergovernmental debt consisting of SS/Medicare may have some deficit generating economic effects down the line and maybe should be counted in some way? Great! Does that change my statement that it's wrong to use the total figure of "national debt" the way it was being used? Not one bit. As I've explained (several freaking times now), it's a bad measurement to use because we can't know how much intergovernmental debt is in the total at any given time, much less how much of that is SS/Medicare or other things. We also can't know by looking at a chart over time how recently congress has administratively adjusted the total intergovernmental debt.


You have a valid point about the future effect of SS/Medicare on our economic outlook, especially as it relates to future debt levels. However, that does not mean that national debt is a legitimate figure to use by itself as a measurement of economic trends over time. You seem to (once again) be under the mistaken assumption that we must apply that classic all-or-nothing approach to debt. It's either all debt, or I'm arguing that none of it counts at all. But that's not the case. I'm arguing that since we can't know from just the full national debt value what kinds of debt make up that total, that it's a bad measurement to use. Always.


Can we look in detail at other things (like SS and Medicare)? Absolutely. But I was specifically responding to a link to a page which charted national debt over time. Which is the wrong way to measure debt over time. I correctly stated that public debt is the proper figure to use for that sort of comparison. Was I wrong? And if not, then wtf are you arguing with me about?
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#445 Nov 16 2011 at 4:43 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
And I clearly explained that I was aware of the potential issues with intergovernmental debt as it relates to Social Security and Medicare, but that this doesn't change the broader point that it's incorrect to use the total national debt as an economic measuring stick.



LOL you keep changing your tune on what you are arguing.

Its not debt
Well its not really debt
Ya we have to pay it back but it isn't debt.
Oh no I only meant that a small fraction of that debt isn't actually debt the rest is debt obviously.

Who you trying to convince champ?
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#446 Nov 16 2011 at 4:53 PM Rating: Decent
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rdmcandie wrote:
Quote:
And I clearly explained that I was aware of the potential issues with intergovernmental debt as it relates to Social Security and Medicare, but that this doesn't change the broader point that it's incorrect to use the total national debt as an economic measuring stick.



LOL you keep changing your tune on what you are arguing.

Its not debt
Well its not really debt
Ya we have to pay it back but it isn't debt.
Oh no I only meant that a small fraction of that debt isn't actually debt the rest is debt obviously.

Who you trying to convince champ?


All of public debt is debt that has to be paid back.

None of intergovernmental debt is debt that has to be paid back, however some intergovernmental debt may have a deficit impact on some future point in time and therefore might ultimately have an effect on future debt (depending on possible changes to our tax code in the future).

The "national debt" figure is calculated by simply adding those two numbers together. If we want to know how much money we actually have to pay back, it's the wrong figure to use.


How much more clearly do I need to say this? You've got two tanks at your cabin in the woods. One of them stores water captured from rainfall, the other stores sewage. Now, there might be some water in the sewage, and depending on conditions you might even want to know how much water there is in the sewage tank. But if you are tracking how much drinking water you have available over the course of a hot summer, you'd take measurements of the water in the first tank, right? You *could* just add up the total volume in both tanks, but that would be stupid and wouldn't tell you at all if you're losing or gaining drinking water over time.


That's what you're doing when you simply track national debt over time and try to use it to measure relative debt. It really honestly is the wrong figure to use. You're being incredibly stubborn about remaining ignorant about this.
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#447 Nov 16 2011 at 6:06 PM Rating: Excellent
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I love it when Gbaji starts screaming that stuff is irrelevant. It's the quickest way to know you caught him in a lie Smiley: laugh
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#448 Nov 16 2011 at 7:51 PM Rating: Decent
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#449 Nov 17 2011 at 7:28 AM Rating: Good
I almost feel sorry for Gbaji. Apparently his whole world revolves around the profit motive. There's no room in his life for a social conscious. You live in a small and petty place there Gbaji.
#450 Nov 17 2011 at 7:39 AM Rating: Good
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Technogeek wrote:
I almost feel sorry for Gbaji. Apparently his whole world revolves around the profit motive. There's no room in his life for a social conscious. You live in a small and petty place there Gbaji.

That's the problem with a capitalist economy - everyone gets thrown under the bus for the almighty dollar.
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we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.
#451 Nov 17 2011 at 10:00 AM Rating: Excellent
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I am always baffled by Gbaji's commitment to argue hardest about things which he knows the least.
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