Obama's Rhetoric is the Real Catastrophe

[UGAalum94]

I'm going to say it: while there's a great deal of truth in the idea that the blame game doesn't help much, it still seems a little rich for people to make this appeal in regard to Obama after everything under the sun that Bush was blamed for.

I've said before and I'll say it again, it's way too early in Obama's Presidency to suggest that any of his policies as President are failures.

However, at some point, it's going to be as appropriate to regard him as being as responsible for whatever happens, good or bad, as it was to hold Bush responsible. I don't remember those of you posting this now ever making the same general argument when it was Bush being blamed.

ETA: personally, I think I'd be inclined to allow that some Presidents just have more than their fair share of crap happening during their terms than others. I think this is going to apply to Obama, but if the economy recovers during his Presidency, he'll largely receive the credit too.

On AGDee's point: I don't think you can just fail to take in taxes and quit providing all public services. That's just crazy talk. Is your ex-husband an anarchist?

On the other hand, I'm not sure that the people who seem to be able to afford to pay more taxes really can if they are also supposed to contribute to an economic recovery partially based on consumption. I think some of us also want some evidence that we're going to get something for the money. And no one can know that. A lot of the initial bailouts have just led to requests for more money. Others apparently involved enough red tape to hamper their effectiveness.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

I'm going to say it: while there's a great deal of truth in the idea that the blame game doesn't help much, it still seems a little rich for people to make this appeal in regard to Obama after everything under the sun that Bush was blamed for.

I've said before and I'll say it again, it's way too early in Obama's Presidency to suggest that any of his policies as President are failures.

However, at some point, it's going to be as appropriate to regard him as being as responsible for whatever happens, good or bad, as it was to hold Bush responsible. I don't remember those of you posting this now ever making the same general argument when it was Bush being blamed.

I agree. Once again, people have conveniently changed the rules.

I read this article today http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/9...re-his-wedding and some of the comments were random as hell because people began debating whether Obama, Bush, or Clinton were to blame for the economy.

[AGDee]

My main complaints about Bush were related to pouring our military resources into Iraq instead of Afghanistan and Pakistan, his trade policies and his stances on social issues (embryonic stem cell research, abortion, etc). Of those, the economy is somewhat related to trade policies and the spending in Iraq (I'm not convinced we would have needed to spend quite as much in Afghanistan/Pakistan seeking out Bin Laden and his cronies as we have spent in Iraq). While I think the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, I'm not convinced that it needed to be the priority it became.

My ex-husband is not an anarchist but he hates paying money for anything, even stuff he tells me he'll pay half for like my daughter's varsity jacket and Spamalot tickets (which he attended with me and the kids!). He just hates paying anybody anything, unless it's golf or big screen tvs. Since he works for the steel industry, he's pretty panicked about his job right now and he was really ticked off with Bush when Bush wouldn't put tariffs on foreign steel. Then again, his once American steel company was bought by a Russian company, which is a strange thing in and of itself. As an American company, they only provided steel for Ford. As a Russian company, they are 50% auto industry and 50% commodities so the part of the stimulus package that addresses infrastructure could actually help them because steel is needed for bridge/road improvements, etc. He also rarely thinks for himself and spouts off stupid things like that. Once I point out the issues with the ideas he spouts off, he will admit that maybe it's not the best idea. He's truly a horrible debater...lol. He even wavered on abortion when my daughter asked him what would happen if she got pregnant before she finished college. In that case, it would be ok if she got an abortion, but not for anybody else or any other reason. In short, he's selfish and just wants to know "What about me?"

I hear a lot of people saying "Where is my bailout?" when they are still employed, can afford to stay in their house, etc. HELLO! You don't need one! You're ok! I do see great benefit in not having too many vacant houses in a neighborhood. There are 4 on my street right now, including the one right next door. It's being auctioned on the 16th. People have been stopping by the house and I have been going out to meet them I want friendly neighbors. I want real people to buy it, not some investment company who will eventually flip it. I don't like having an abandoned house next door. When I bought my house, the house on the other side was abandoned and the grass grew feet before the city would come to mow it. There were rats over there. During the blackout of 2003, there were people around it. The demand for copper is so high that break ins are happening and people are stealing the copper out of the abandoned houses. It's not good to have lots of abandoned houses. I'm ok, I can pay my mortgage (as long as I have a job, which seems pretty secure so far). I don't need a tax cut, I'm living comfortably enough.

I really think that the whole root of this problem is greed. We are a wasteful and frivolous society. We have been irresponsible with credit and with our spending. I'm not exempt from that... I was in that trap too and dug out when my mom passed away because she was a saver and a wise investor. I'm bound and determined to not get into that trap again. Yes, my living room carpet is old. Sure, I'd love to have a big screen TV and to replace the loveseat that the dog ripped up, which is covered with a blanket these days. I'm waiting until I have the cash to do those things now. In the past, I would have charged those things without a thought. Credit cards have become "emergency only" things, like if the furnace were to go this winter and they are the first priority for paying off.

Interestingly, Suze Orman, who always said "pay off the credit cards" is now saying "Pay only the minimum on your credit cards for now and save your cash". The last I heard her speak, she said that as people are paying off credit cards, their credit limits are being reduced or the accounts are being closed by the bank, leaving people without that emergency backup. She has said that all the rules are different this year and you need to make sure you have cash. A friend of mine experienced something similar. She has kept up with her bills, except for a couple months last year when she had major surgery and was late with a few credit card payments. She realized her interest rate was up to something insane like 29% and called to have them lower it because she had paid down a lot, was making more than the minimum payment and her last late payment was about 10 months ago. The response? They said "Oh, you had late payments, we have to close your account"

Ok, this ended up being another novel, sorry for that. I'm quite preoccupied with the economy. I have heard experts saying we are going to become a service economy and all manufacturing in the US will go away. I don't see how we can survive being only consumers and not providers of goods in a global economy.

Did this whole problem start when we got rid of the gold standard? I wish I had studied economics more.

[deepimpact2]

Originally Posted by AGDee

My main complaints about Bush were related to pouring our military resources into Iraq instead of Afghanistan and Pakistan, his trade policies and his stances on social issues (embryonic stem cell research, abortion, etc). Of those, the economy is somewhat related to trade policies and the spending in Iraq (I'm not convinced we would have needed to spend quite as much in Afghanistan/Pakistan seeking out Bin Laden and his cronies as we have spent in Iraq). While I think the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, I'm not convinced that it needed to be the priority it became.

.

I completely agree with you about the military resources issue. The amount of money that was spent was absolutely absurd. They knew it. They didn't care. What really got me was, as you said, when Saddam became the priority. To be honest, I completely disagreed with their decisions concerning him.

[UGAalum94]

This is pretty far from anything related to the topic of the thread, but I occasionally fall into the "where's my bailout" line of thought. Not really sincerely, but simply because I feel like the government is creating incentives for bad or irresponsible behavior and penalties for people who, so far, have demonstrated they're more likely to pull their own weight.

AGDee, I think some of my differences with you on this point have to do with your having a fundamentally more positive view of human nature and human behavior. Most of the time, you seem to assume that people who want or need help honestly tried their best to meet their obligations but through limited fault of their own have now become unable to. That line of thought more supports the idea that it becomes the moral duty of others to try to help them, and the government's job to kind of provide guarantees of this help.

On the other hand I see some evidence that the current mess reflects a lot of behavior by people who approached things very selfishly and incautiously, who sought to get the most they could rather than what they could safely afford (or morally or ethically deserved, in the case of money managers who made a lot of money losing money for investors or CEOs who screwed their companies), government officials who were more than happy to personally profit from a failure to regulate and turned a blind eye when things were good, who all now turn to people who have been plugging away at steady jobs, living in modest houses, paying taxes, basically trying to carry their own weight, and ask for the second group to subsidize the bad outcomes because of the behavior of the people in the first group.

Oh, hell no.

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

AGDee, I think some of my differences with you on this point have to do with your having a fundamentally more positive view of human nature and human behavior. Most of the time, you seem to assume that people who want or need help honestly tried their best to meet their obligations but through limited fault of their own have now become unable to. That line of thought more supports the idea that it becomes the moral duty of others to try to help them, and the government's job to kind of provide guarantees of this help.

On the other hand I see some evidence that the current mess reflects a lot of behavior by people who approached things very selfishly and incautiously, who sought to get the most they could rather than what they could safely afford (or morally or ethically deserved, in the case of money managers who made a lot of money losing money for investors or CEOs who screwed their companies), government officials who were more than happy to personally profit from a failure to regulate and turned a blind eye when things were good, who all now turn to people who have been plugging away at steady jobs, living in modest houses, paying taxes, basically trying to carry their own weight, and ask for the second group to subsidize the bad outcomes because of the behavior of the people in the first group.

Oh, hell no.

I did say that I think the root of the whole problem is greed, so I'm not sure I'm saying that we're basically good and all tried to do the right thing. I see three groups of people in foreclosure. The first group don't have jobs or have had extenuating circumstances (like my neighbor who had breast cancer and then lost her husband) and therefore, can't pay their mortgage. Some of them have paid hundreds of thousands on their mortgages over the years but can't pay it now. So, even if they only owe $20K on their original $150K mortgage, they can't make the payment and the bank gets the house. The second group got into bad mortgages ... interest only or low interest to begin with, with the plan to refinance as the low interest terms of that mortgage came to an end. However, since their housing value has dropped more than 30%, they can't get a new mortgage so they are stuck paying exorbitant interest. I don't know who should "shoulder" the blame for those. I don't think people intentionally said "I'm going to buy a bigger house than I can afford". I think they thought they'd afford it, that property values would continue to rise, etc. The third group are people who have found jobs in other states, have had their homes on the market for over a year and can't sell it. The result of all this is that home values continue to drop at an alarming rate. So even if you had 20% down when you bought your home, you now owe more than it's worth. Whose responsibility was it to predict that home values would drop this much and you should have put at least 50% down on your house 5 years ago if you wanted to have 80% equity today? I don't know. I hear experts say we were in a housing bubble and it was bound to burst, but I don't know how we were supposed to know that. I guess I think some of that stuff should've been regulated.

Do I think we should be bailing out the CEOs of corporations who were making 7 or 8 figures? No. However, shit rolls downhill and it's seriously affecting the people who were paying everything and staying on top of things because they don't have jobs now. The vast majority of these companies that are failing are the middle class working folks, not the CEOs. The actions of the first group are seriously affecting the people in your second group. You think the guys who were making 8 figures are losing their homes? No. They've made more in a couple years than the rest of will make in our lifetimes. I don't see the bailouts as bailing out those individuals. I see it as bailing out society as a whole. I think that's our major difference.

[UGAalum94]

Housing: I think we all just have to live with the consequences of how our decisions pay out without expecting to be somehow delivered from them. I think the word on the housing bubble was out there before the bubble burst; most of us just ignored it and did what we wanted to do. All of us may owe more on our homes than they are worth if you bought in the last five years. There's no government fix for this really. On some level, what a lot of people seem to want is a restoration of the bubble.

The "where's my bailout" thinking comes in when you see that if you quit paying your mortgage you might get something: adjustment of the loan value, new terms, something. At some point, you feel like a sucker for just plugging away at life while people who made dumb decisions or decisions with unfortunate consequences, depending on how gracious you want to be about it, end up doing as well or better in terms of material possessions. I think it was AKAMonet who first mentioned the Grasshopper and the Ant fable.

I have a whole lot less faith that we can bail society out because human nature won't fundamentally have changed a lot with a couple of months of economic downturn, particularly if the ants have to share with the grasshoppers.

(Personally, I think I have some Grasshopper traits too, so I'm not trying to present myself as all dedicated and financially cautious, but I would expect there to be individual consequences and resolutions to my own mistakes, rather than that everyone else was obligated to pitch in.)