On Nov 18, 4:11*am, "Robert Green" wrote:
"BobR" wrote in message

...
On Nov 13, 2:47 am, "Robert Green" wrote:





"HeyBub" wrote in message

om...

Robert Green wrote:

We can only hope. Unemployment at 4%, DOW-Jones above 12,000, 23
consecutive quarters of economic growth, low interest rates,
virtually no inflation, dead Mohammadens piled up like cordwood.

It was just an illusion, Bub. The magical numbers sprouted from all
of that from the Feds spending trillions on post 9/11 security, wars,
TSA, etc. It's amazing how a little government deficit spending can
falsely goose the economic numbers. Now we're experiencing the crash
of the speculative bubble and runaway defense spending that made
those high-flying numbers possible - but not real. We also destroyed
Iraq, the country that had the most to gain from keeping Iran nuke
free because they'd be one of the first victims of Iranian nuclear
aggression.

Boy, you sure don't understand economics. Government spending drives
DOWN
the GDP and destroys wealth.

Oy. So how did all the Bush government spending on the TSA, Homeland
Security, two different wars and the Medicare Drug plan create all those
wonderful numbers you continually crow about? You can't have it both ways,
as much as you seem to want it. Your own previous examples put the lie to
your current contentions.

According to your latest wild theory, those glowing (yet false) numbers
you
keep touting should have been impossible. If government spending destroys
wealth, the trillions of dollars we owe or have deficit spent should have
driven us to extinction by now. Only you could posit a theory that
immediately trashes your previous theories. You've gone and HeyBubbed
yourself! (-: In trying to figure out how you can came by the unusual and
"new for you" concepts you have about creating and destroying wealth, I
started out with a simple Google query:

http://www.google.com/search?q=gover...estroys+wealth

That lead to Ron Paul and Rush Limbaugh sites, so I knew I was getting
ready
for a visit to the Economic Twilight Zone. At least I know how this
bizarre
idea gained enough traction to be adopted by you.

http://logisticsmonster.com/2010/10/...ent-destroys-w...

"Maintaining a high level of employment is one of the main objectives of
The
Federal Reserve, which is just one reason it is ill conceived at its very
core. "

Cue Twilight Zone theme song. High UN-employment is a good thing, it
seems, according to Paul. No wonder why he's got the "destruction of
wealth" idea as ass-backwards as you do.

http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/tag/budget/

Mr. Johnston has quite a bit to say about the issue and debunks the
assertion that you and others (mostly Republicans) make concerning the
"destruction" of wealth. He makes a lot of the same points I have that
don't seem to get through to you, the most important being that you're
calling wealth transfers "wealth destruction" and that's just not correct.

Giving a guy a job to help rebuild a highway or bridge *transfers* the
wealth from money collected from taxes to that person. It's not lost. He
doesn't burn the money. He spends it. At the local grocer. At the gas
pump. On insurance. Car payments. Rent. Spending it "primes the pump" and
helps get stalled economies rolling again. It's remarkably similar to the
Republican "trickle down" theory except that unlike the "trickle down"
theory, this "wealth transfer" actually works and gets money into the
economy.

Explain to me again how this "transfer" destroys wealth? Maybe you can
find
someone on the web with a degree or credentials in economics to support
your
rather whimsical theory. I certainly couldn't. But maybe I didn't look
hard enough. All I found were politicians like Paul and pundits like
Limbaugh, all with a very obvious political axe to grind.

Johnston says: In general the market does a better job of allocating
capital for investment than government does. But when the market fails, as
with the unregulated insurance and bad loans that destroyed so much value
in
the last decade, then the only way to stop the vicious cycle of decline is
for government to temporarily make up the difference through more
spending.
Saying otherwise is the economic equivalent of arguing that water and
flour
make steak. . .

He furthers his argument with examples of the quite idiotic statements of
our Republican politicians:
"We need to cut spending now in order to create jobs in America" - House
Speaker John Boehner on the floor of the House of Representatives in July
2010. "If government spending would stimulate the economy, we'd be in the
middle of a boom" - Senator Mitch McConnell in March 2011. "Government
doesn
't create jobs, you do" - Representative Nan Hayworth, M.D., speaking in
January to business leaders in her New York district.

None of the comments makes sense. The first violates the accounting
identity
that spending equals income. The second assumes that the stimulus was big
enough to make up for the fall in private sector jobs, when it was less
than
half what accounting identity algebra showed was needed. The third is just
plain nonsense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cay_Johnston

(Johnston received the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting "for his
penetrating and enterprising reporting that exposed loopholes and
inequities
in the U.S. tax code, which was instrumental in bringing about reforms."
He
was a Pulitzer finalist in 2003 "for his stories that displayed exquisite
command of complicated U.S. tax laws and of how corporations and
individuals
twist them to their advantage." He was also a finalist in 2000 "for his
lucid coverage of problems resulting from the reorganization of the
Internal
Revenue Service.")

We saw that when Roosevelt implemented all manner of government jobs
programs back in the 30's and we see it now with stimulus and government
subsidy money.

Sweet Jesus Monroe! You don't have one ounce of shame, do you, comparing
the GDP of the worst period in American economic history with normal
growth
periods? That dog won't hunt. GDP, aside from being an imperfect measure
of the economic health of a nation, always tends to fall during periods of
extreme economic distress. Especially a collapse caused by an imprudent
financial industry, leveraged to the max.

To blame that on FDR's programs is more than dubious, it's dishonest. In
fact, it's the remaining social net programs like the FDIC and Social
Security that kept this last recession from collapsing the economy. Of the
many economists I've read who have commented on that period and the
current,
nearly all of them say the same thing.

They believe the problem, then AND now, was that the opposition party was
determined to keep the government stimulus packages well below the level
that would match the damage business had done. They do that primarily, it
seems, to keep the party in power from getting credit for ending the
recession/depression. They're also motivated to starve the stimulus to try
to recapture the leadership position no matter what harm it does to the
citizens.

Bombs destroy wealth. Hurricanes destroy wealth. Fires destroy wealth.
Governments *transfer* wealth.

You are right and wrong at the same time. *Right, government transfers
weath but in order to do so must confiscate the wealth from those who
earn it in order to give it to those who do nothing in return. *That
process destroys the incentive of those who create wealth and thus
eventually results in the destruction of wealth or at the very least
the removal of the wealth from the governments rule. *In any case. the
end result is the destruction of wealth.

I don't suggest anyone get a government check for doing nothing. *In fact, I
am adamantly opposed to it for practical and moral reasons. *Studies clearly
show the longer someone is on unemployment, the less likely they are to ever
return to the workforce. *I'll agree there's great "moral hazard" in doing
that at least as bad as bailing out "too big to fail" banks.

But that is exactly where most of the govt transfer payments that
transfer wealth go. The govt takes it from the most productive
people
in our society and give it to those that want to live off the system.
What do you think happened with all that money spent on welfare
from Johnson's war on poverty until today? And the poverty rate
is still the same. All it did was create generations of people
living
on welfare and all the problems that go with it. How much more
wealth would there be had that money stayed with the responsible
folks who earned it?




But if the jobless are paid for scraping rust off bridges, cleaning up
highways and streets or some other project that has an instrinsic social
value, they can very easily prevent the destruction of wealth.

The problem with that argument is that the money for those projects
is small compared with the social programs that hand out money.
And even that money isn't going where you think it is. The govt
money handed out for those projects isn't going mostly to the poor
and unemployed. It's going to overpaid union workers who are
screwing the taxpayers by sweetheart deals with the politicians
that prevent the use of non-union workers.



The system we have now pays people to do nothing, and I agree, that has
moral hazards and all sorts of other problems. *Still, I have a hard time
following how you get from destroying the "incentive to create wealth" to
the destruction of wealth.

Very easy. Take money in the form of taxes from the hard working
couple that
makes $200K a year running a small business and give it to the welfare
mother
on drugs who has 3 kids with different fathers at 19. The wealth
that could
have been creating jobs is now going down a rat hole, supporting and
encouraging an irresponsible lifestyle that produces nothing.




*They are still two quite different things and
that's why I have been needling HeyBub. *His examples, labeled as
"destruction of wealth" have mostly been "transfers of wealth." *That's the
main job of governments - take taxes from lots of people to spend in ways
the governments think will add value. *I'll agree they get that dead wrong,
as in ...



Show us where in the constitution it says that the main job of govt
is to transfer wealth. Or even a job of govt period.