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Sure, that's what they would do, but it's not going to come to that.
Trying to monetize the SS&M hole screws absolutely everyone. Sticking it to SS&M beneficiares has far less damage.
Nah, corporations will just jack their prices to keep pace with inflation.
Sure, that's what they would do, but it's not going to come to that.
Trying to monetize the SS&M hole screws absolutely everyone. Sticking it to SS&M beneficiares has far less damage.
, they are doing it right now...monetizing debt without addressing any significant cost cuts.
True, but they're not worrying about SS&M right now.
Red and blue team both know SS&M are broke and the only way they will be able to pay those promised benefits will be to significantly increase revenue (taxes on everybody) or print money.
like Nixon did in the early seventies, for example
Price controls have become politically unpossible. I have a hard time seeing any combination of events that would make such a thing possible.
Just curious...how old are you? I'm old enough to remember 18% inflation and wage and price controls. It wasn't that long ago.
prediction isn't a particularly strong point for CC, but that never discouraged him.
(Benghazi, Solyndra, Keystone XL, ACORN . . .)
42
They were bad ideas then, and bad ideas now.
Modern GOP ain't gonna impose any, and Democrats, having been the party that ended them in the 70's won't impose them either. Economists would simply point out to either party how dumb they are, and that would be the end of it.
As much as many buy the myth that Democrats don't understand free markets and economics, that isn't fully the case, and policy makers most certainly would get quite a bit of expert advice why such controls would be a bad idea.
GOP counteroffer http://m.politico.com/iphone/story/1212/84522.html
i'm not sure what you think I predicted in those cases...maybe have me confused with someone else?
And you honestly think we can continue to run trillion dollar deficits year after year and keep monetizing debt without eventually stimulating a nasty round of inflation?
you said they'd be big hairy scandals that could sink Obama. you weren't even close.
as for inflation, I have no idea. I don't pretend to be an expert on macroeconomics like you.
Please find a quote where I said that.
Republicans Revert To Pre-Election Tax Plan: Promise To Raise Revenue By Magic
The $2.2 trillion blueprint extends Bush tax cuts for all Americans, including the wealthiest two percent, but finds $800 billion in revenue from “tax reform” by limiting or closing unspecified tax loopholes and deductions. Significantly, the higher revenues will be identified by the relevant House committees next year, and will not be included in the immediate down payment. The plan also enacts an array of mandatory and discretionary spending cuts:
– $600 billion in health savings, including raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67.
– $300 billion from savings in other mandatory programs.
– $200 billion by applying a less generous measure of inflation to Social Security and Medicare benefits.
– $300 billion in cuts to agency budgets.
The White House rejects the plan:
“The Republican letter released today does not meet the test of balance. In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill. Their plan includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve. Independent analysts who have looked at plans like this one have concluded that middle class taxes will have to go up to pay for lower rates for millionaires and billionaires. “
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...enue-by-magic/
Krugman rampaging and trashing Repugs, as usual, and as justified
The Big Budget Mumble
In the ongoing battle of the budget, President Obama has done something very cruel. Declaring that this time he won’t negotiate with himself, he has refused to lay out a proposal reflecting what he thinks Republicans want. Instead, he has demanded that Republicans themselves say, explicitly, what they want. And guess what: They can’t or won’t do it.
No, really. While there has been a lot of bluster from the G.O.P. about how we should reduce the deficit with spending cuts, not tax increases, no leading figures on the Republican side have been able or willing to specify what, exactly, they want to cut.
And there’s a reason for this reticence. The fact is that Republican posturing on the deficit has always been a con game, a play on the innumeracy of voters and reporters. Now Mr. Obama has demanded that the G.O.P. put up or shut up — and the response is an aggrieved mumble.
Here’s where we are right now: As his opening bid in negotiations, Mr. Obama has proposed raising about $1.6 trillion in additional revenue over the next decade, with the majority coming from letting the high-end Bush tax cuts expire and the rest from measures to limit tax deductions. He would also cut spending by about $400 billion, through such measures as giving Medicare the ability to bargain for lower drug prices.
Republicans have howled in outrage. Senator Orrin Hatch, delivering the G.O.P. reply to the president’s weekly address, denounced the offer as a case of “bait and switch,” bearing no relationship to what Mr. Obama ran on in the election. In fact, however, the offer is more or less the same as Mr. Obama’s original 2013 budget proposal and also closely tracks his campaign literature.
So what are Republicans offering as an alternative? They say they want to rely mainly on spending cuts instead. Which spending cuts? Ah, that’s a mystery. In fact, until late last week, as far as I can tell, no leading Republican had been willing to say anything specific at all about how spending should be cut.
The veil lifted a bit when Senator Mitch McConnell, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, finally mentioned a few things — raising the Medicare eligibility age, increasing Medicare premiums for high-income beneficiaries and changing the inflation adjustment for Social Security. But it’s not clear whether these represent an official negotiating position — and in any case, the arithmetic just doesn’t work.
Start with raising the Medicare age. This is, as I’ve argued in the past, a terrible policy idea. But even aside from that, it’s just not a big money saver, largely because 65- and 66-year-olds have much lower health costs than the average Medicare recipient. When the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the likely fiscal effects of a rise in the eligibility age, it found that it would save only $113 billion over the next decade and have little effect on the longer-run trajectory of Medicare costs.
Increasing premiums for the affluent would yield even less; a 2010 study by the budget office put the 10-year savings at only about $20 billion.
Changing the inflation adjustment for Social Security would save a bit more — by my estimate, about $185 billion over the next decade. But put it all together, and the things Mr. McConnell was talking about would amount to only a bit over $300 billion in budget savings — a fifth of what Mr. Obama proposes in revenue gains.
The point is that when you put Republicans on the spot and demand specifics about how they’re going to make good on their posturing about spending and deficits, they come up empty. There’s no there there.
And there never was. Republicans claim to be for much smaller government, but as a political matter they have always attacked government spending in the abstract, never coming clean with voters about the reality that big cuts in government spending can happen only if we sharply curtail very popular programs. In fact, less than a month ago the Romney/Ryan campaign was attacking Mr. Obama for, yes, cutting Medicare.
Now Republicans find themselves boxed in. With taxes scheduled to rise on Jan. 1 in the absence of an agreement, they can’t play their usual game of just saying no to tax increases and pretending that they have a deficit reduction plan. And the president, by refusing to help them out by proposing G.O.P.-friendly spending cuts, has deprived them of political cover. If Republicans really want to slash popular programs, they will have to propose those cuts themselves.
So while the fiscal cliff — still a bad name for the looming austerity bomb, but I guess we’re stuck with it — is a bad thing from an economic point of view, it has had at least one salutary political effect. For it has finally laid bare the con that has always been at the core of the G.O.P.’s political strategy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/op...ml?ref=opinion
you make so many predictions you can't possibly recall them all. that's ok with me.
Chill with the attacks dude. I am being quite civil with you and would appreciate the same. I never predicted any of those items would sink Obama. On the contrary I consistently predicted that Obama would win the election and even bet a friend $100 on Obama winning.
Chill out, dude, repeating what you've said before isn't an attack.
Count me unsurprised you deny it.
Show me a quote where I said any of those things would sink Obama. I may have found the way Benghazi was handled personally reprehensible but I never underestimate the stupidity of the general electorate.
Seriously, why the attacks? Had a bad day? Sorry.
It sounds like you're saying that Benghazi should've sunk Obama, if only Americans weren't so dumb. Is tha the message you were going for?
No, I'm saying that I believe the white house lied their ass off. I never made any predictions that Benghazi would affect the outcome of the election. I even felt so strongly that Obama would win the election that I bet $100 on Obama.
That might be true, but tying stupidity to the electorate (implying those who voted for Obama) right after mentioning Benghazi could certainly lead to that conclusion. For example...
"I thought starting a war in Iraq, and the way the evidence was presented, was reprehensible, but stupid electorate..."
No need to try to put words in my mouth that weren't there. I realize that WC isn't in here and even though I'm a moderate I'm still the closest thing to a red teamer in here at the moment. That doesn't give you and winehole the right to paint me with all the red teams alleged sins and claim I said things I didn't say.
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