Unfortunately it’s not on civil liberties, the NDAA, ending the war in Afghanistan, ending the drug war, ending our permanent occupation of the Middle East, or anything else along those lines. However, they do both agree on the idiotic Tea Party family budget metaphor on the Federal budget that they both don’t understand!
President Barack Obama
“For years now, America has been spending more money than we take in. The result is that we have too much debt on our nation's credit card — debt that will ultimately weaken our economy, lead to higher interest rates for all Americans, and leave us unable to invest in things like education, or protect vital programs like Medicare.
Neither party is blameless for the decisions that led to this debt, but both parties have a responsibility to come together and solve the problem. That's what the American people expect of us. Every day, families are figuring out how to stretch their paychecks a little further, sacrifice what they can't afford, and budget only for what's truly important. It's time for Washington to do the same.”
Ron Paul
” [The debt ceiling deal] is akin to a family “saving” $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda.”
Strangely we are “learning” everyday from every hysterical diary that ends up on the rec list that nuance doesn’t matter when accusing others directly or in a more subtle way of being Ron Paul plants on this site. So since that is the case going by this “logic," is this supposed to be how we know the President is some sort of a secret Paulbot or something? I'm just asking.
President Barack Obama
Mr. Obama said he would entertain “every demonstrably good idea” for creating jobs, but he cautioned that “our resources are limited.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare "bargain" with the American people, saying that the nation's long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.
"What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further," he said. "We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else's."
Ron Paul
But I think Speaker Boehner, under the circumstances, is probably honestly trying to solve this problem, but it’s an insolvable problem because we’re bankrupt. Nobody wants to admit the real problem: we’re bankrupt, and we can’t continue spending and even these temporary proposals won’t address the subject, that we will default.
Snip
See, nobody talks about… in the midst of all this, we should be talking about why we can’t be the policeman of the world, and why the entitlement system has to be totally revamped.
One might argue that even though they both do clearly agree on this kind of deficit stupidity, there are still differences and nuances as to why. However, when it comes to the context of this fantasy family budget metaphor there’s very little room to make that argument here. The Tea Party family Budget metaphor is clear and clearly stupid regardless of who makes it. Just like civil liberties are clearly important regardless of who stresses their importance.
Despite the clear direct disclaimers we hear from Glenn Greenwald, Matt Stoller, and kossacks who point out this nuance, there is no common courtesy to accept it given to any of them. And when they're confronted by those screeching about their fake support of Ron Paul, the clear nuance they provide is distorted, and they are libeled. Their tip jars are even HRed. This is just wrong.
It’s very clear here that both Ron Paul and our President suffer from the same some core fantasy budget delusions. These same delusions will be used to hurt this country with austerity. They both agree on the importance of this austerity. They both live in this fantasy budget bubble. These are painful facts despite very low varying degrees of separation.
So first, as a rebuttal to Ron Paul’s budget delusions here’s UT economics Professor James Galbraith schooling Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign manager who still espouses the same gold bug nonsense that Ron Paul does.
And now I'll reference another great economist who doesn't live in a fantasy budget bubble like Ron Paul or our President. This is a Fellow at Economists for Peace and Security and a Research Associate at the Levy Institute named Marshall Auerback to give the rebuttal to President Obama.
Jobs Summit Charade: Is the government out of money, or is Obama completely misguided?
For the millionth time, Mr. President, a government which issues its own sovereign currency cannot go broke. It cannot “run out of dollars”.
Does any other entity in the world issue US dollars? No. The national government does this under monopoly conditions. If you or I tried to do it, we would go to jail for counterfeiting. The government money monopoly was invented to mobilize resources to serve what government perceived to be the public purpose. Of course, it is only in a democracy that the public’s purpose and the government’s purpose have much chance of alignment, but this presupposes at least a working understanding of how a modern monetary system operates.
So here’s how it really works:
Any US dollar government deficit exactly EQUALS the total net increase in the holdings US dollar financial assets of the rest of us — businesses and households, residents and non residents — what’s called the ‘non government’ sector. In other words, government deficits = increased ‘monetary savings’ for the rest of us. It doesn’t matter if the financial assets are owned by American citizens or by Chinese manufacturers. The government spends money by electronically crediting bank accounts and those funds show up in the bank accounts held by the rest of us — the non-government sector.
This is accounting fact, not theory or philosophy. There is no dispute. It is basic national income accounting.
It really isn't in dispute. It's basic national accounting 101. One either knows this or they don't. Therefore, Ron Paul and our President get an F in basic national accounting. Why does this matter? Well, unless the realities Mr. Auerback outlined are taken seriously, we really won't get to the trajectory we need for a real jobs recovery under these conditions until 2019, if ever.
Despite the recent good economic numbers for December, here's economist Heidi Shierholz from the Economic Policy Institute adding nuance to the job growth numbers plus the number of jobs still needed to keep pace with population growth. This outlines the dire importance of Marshall Auerback's point. Deficit/federal budget stupidity kills jobs and our capacity to create enough jobs.
However, it will take many years of reports this strong or stronger to bring the labor market back to health. The jobs deficit of the 2008-09 period, defined as the number of jobs lost since the recession started plus the jobs we should have added to keep up with the normal growth in the working-age population, remains well over 10 million, and at December’s growth rate the United States will not recover its pre-recession unemployment rate until 2019.
Ron Paul and our President obviously have their differences but economically they are both living in the past. That is dangerous, reckless, and it will hurt people. Ron Paul wants to relive the pre-Fed gold standard of the 19th century. President Obama thinks he's living in the 90s and can use the same people and prescriptions from that decade to solve the problems that many of them helped create.
They may not know it themselves, but both Ron Paul and President Obama are thinking as if we are living under a gold standard system when they talk about the United States having limited fiscal resources because of a deficit constraint. There is only an inflation constraint if and only if the US spends past the point of full employment. Obviously we are nowhere near that point.
When you look back in history after 1944 when the Bretton Woods international financial exchange was created we were then on a version of the gold standard. And from then on because of this, there used to be a gold reserve constraint in our banking reserve system. When we ran a trade deficit as we started doing in the 60s, we had to pay the surplus country we ran the deficit with in gold so it was bound to fail. The dollar was pegged to gold until Nixon took us off of it in 1971.
So from 1944 until 1971 deficits and debt mattered up to a point, but not anymore because we don't have those gold reserve constraints anymore. Someone should educate both Ron Paul and our President on this. Deficits only matter when a country is on the gold standard, which is why Abraham Lincoln suspended it to fund the civil war(Greenbacks) and why FDR loosened the gold standard during the New Deal.
Those were two Presidents who understood this dynamic. The gold standard sucks and it's a good thing we are not on it anymore. President Obama sadly believes in bond vigilantes, appeasing the bond markets through "sensible deficit reduction," and a confidence fairy similar to Ron Paul's golden leprechaun.
This flawed view of the bond market from President Obama also comes from the barbarous relic called the Gold Standard.
What Role Does The Bond Market Play In All Of This?
In terms of the bond market, the issuance of bonds does not serve the same purpose it did under the gold standard. We actually issued bonds because we were revenue constrained (not enough gold reserves at all times to fund spending without creating inflation). In the modern monetary system bonds fund nothing. It’s important to note that the bond market is largely a relic of the gold standard. The system did not undergo the overhaul that would have been possible in 1971 when we became a completely autonomous currency issuer. Therefore, the system of old remains largely intact and it remains widely believed that it serves the same function that it did under a revenue constrained monetary system.
Bond issuance is a relic of the gold standard that serves only to help the Fed hit its target interest rate (a pure monetary operation to control the Fed Funds Target Rate). It can also be thought of as another form of government spending because a treasury bond is basically a savings account. Disbursements in the form of interest on US government bonds add to the budget deficit. People think this is government “debt” because Congress mandates the issuance of bonds (this is primarily due to misconception and the need for accountability), but it’s not accurate to think of the government as having “debt” when that liability is essentially issued to itself in a currency that it can willingly create. As I’ve mentioned several times before, there is no such thing as the USA not being able to pay of the liabilities which are denominated in a currency which it can create out of thin air.
President Obama thinks we can use Rubinite Neoliberal solutions from the 90s for the jobs crisis of demand we are in. This doesn't mean I can't pick which parts of his platform I agree with(even if done half-ass which is the case) and which parts I don't, but national accounting reality and a post Bretton Woods Monetary System is what it is. You see how this works? It's called reality and reality has nuance.
This is why the desperate attempt to even paint myself as a Ron Paul supporter(like the attempts to paint david mizner and others as such) "in a subtle way" or directly is laugh out loud hilarious. However, it's also sad because I can only surmise this is some sort of an overemotional reaction triggered by any harsh criticism of this President or Democrats in general. It's illogical.
I know, painful suffering of the unemployed who may not live til 2019 just bothers us way too much. We're funny that way. We are actually not worried as much about President Obama or Nancy Pelosi's image. To us it's ABSOLUTELY NOT clear that we must enter into an era of austerity and I wish the people we elect to represent us were better educated on this. Only the Occupy movement gets this and they are our only hope.
So in summation, those that want to form a guilty by association argument towards anyone who agrees with any point Ron Paul makes in support of civil liberties that gains national attention(where prominent Democrats in the spotlight dropped the ball in this campaign when they used to care about these things) don't know what the hell they are talking about. Not only that, but if they want to remain consistent while on this witch hunt, they have quite a dilemma ahead of them regarding the President.
It's time to calm down and think. It's time to grow up and not hysterically HR kossacks' tip jars. It's time to stop throwing out these ridiculous accusations towards just anyone, because nuance actually matters. This is true even if you HR nuance and context while hoping that it doesn't matter. It does matter. Nuance always matters.