nice dodge

I was also the king at dodge-ball in grade school, the other guys feared me and the girls loved me.:thumbsup:

Ace,

Generally, the point is "moot" in both directions. To suggest that a government which willingly overspends $1.4T would suddenly have some fiscal restaint that implies "let the poor people starve because we have to finance a war" is absurd. To create an argument that war money is being taken out of the hands of social programs doesn't jive with the trends of our federal government. They don't care how much they spend, no stone goes unleased.

Any of us can only speculate to our wildest dreams what would have happened had WWII or TWOT not been waged. To attempt a price tag to justify it having been fought (or having not been fought) is impossible. The argument will always land with those who supported the war justifying the cost and those who didn't justifying the waste.

WWII cost us millions of lives but established us as an economic superpower and created a very successful generation of Americans. The War on Terruh has cost thousands of lives and has not (and will not) push this country forward in any positive way

the end of world war 2 marked the beginning of the american empire.
the war on "terror" marks the end of the american empire.
the damage the gwot et al did to the position of the united states in the name of defending the position of the united states is pretty astonishing. it bespeaks a fundamental ideological problem, the kind of ideological problem that seems almost characteristic of fading empires, as if there was some kind of over-arching plotline that empires repeat.

Sometimes I really really worry that my posts this far into a thread will never be read.
And if mine aren't being read ... the person in front of me, or behind me ... theirs aren't being read ... and I think they make more sense then me.

Your posts were read by me, if that means anything. :)

Me too.:)

---------- Post added at 08:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:20 PM ----------

My point was not clear. How do you know we overspent? You don't, I don't, all we can do is speculate. But to only focus on the costs and base an argument on that is dishonest in my opinion. To use a personal example, if I spend $600 on a motorcycle helmet and that helmet saves my life it is clear the money spent was worth it. If I never have an accident, did I overspend? Or, how about this, if a person threatens to kill me and I spend $10,000 to prevent an attack that could cost my life, did I overspend? We may never know the answer with certainty, all we can do is base our judgment on speculation and assumption. Regarding the war on terror our views most likely differ, but as a nation more people agreed with taking proactive military action than disagreed.

---------- Post added at 08:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:32 PM ----------

How do you define "empire"?

How do you respond to my charge of being dishonest regarding presenting "costs" without the value of comment on the value or the benefits of the "costs"? Do you actually believe the dollars spent on the war on terror, both domestic and military, were all wasted dollars?

If you spend $1,400,000,000,000 more than you earn - you have overspent. Period.

Again, I think the point is missed. If I take a loan of $1.4T,(and even if I have no current income) but I use that money wisely with a return on the money greater than the cost I would argue that I have not overspent. I look at both sides of the question, why wouldn't you?

I'm really not getting drawn into a hypothetical which can neither be proven or disproven. My point is simple:

Some in this thread have contended that, because of the money being spent on the GWOT, much needed money is being diverted from social programs and to the war machine. My point is that any government who will overspend $1.4T is not robbing from Peter to pay Paul. They are spending as much as they want on whatever they want.

The issue is not hypothetical. Real judgments are getting made everyday regarding how money is to be spent. If people including the current administration believed that money is being wasted on the war on terror, I would think they would want it to stop - like right now. But the spending has not stopped, why? In my opinion, the money being spent is perceived to be worth it.

The second part of your post regarding "robbing Peter...", I don't understand. We are not robbing ourselves when we set spending priorities. I actually thought Obama was going to go into office with new priorities, but he did not, he is pretty much in step with Bush. Why are the people who supported and voted for Obama/Democratic Party Controlled Congress letting him/them get away with that?

So we agree. We are not robbing Peter (social programs) to pay Paul (the war on terror). See, that wasn't hard.:thumbsup:

If we want to spend more on social programs all we have to do is collect more money (taxes) or use debt. When Congress is making spending decisions they typically don't say if we spend money on X we can not spend money on Y. They spend money on both. The truth is that most Americans don't want to spend more on "social programs", perhaps that is what we agree on.:thumbsup:

Yes, because social security, medicaid and medicare are sooooo unpopular, right?:rolleyes:

this is his point.

emphasis mine.

There is also the possibility that we borrowed 1.4 trillion so we wouldn't lose 2,3,4+ trillion. Either through lost tax revenue, more unemployment checks, failed banks, lower property values, etc...

And the value of our money might have been shot if we had gone into a real depression.

(But I do think that we need to have a better fiscal policy put into place that will start paying down the debt and allow the government to make money)

Getting back to the original question posed in the OP, (with the exception of military endevors) I believe George W Bush is more Hoover-ish regarding economics.

Since we're drawing comparisons from past presidents, President Obama would like to be compared more as a new FDR. His efforts to date resemble closer to Woodrow Wilson trending toward Chavez.

Give people the option to opt out and you will see how popular they are.

---------- Post added at 09:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:33 AM ----------

Dude! We are saying the exact same fucking thing!!!!

so wait. this "logic" about state spending decisions happening based on no constraints whatsoever--what fantasy space is that part of?

o wait, i know: the state doesn't work on explicitly conservative lines, so there are no lines. the logic isn't conservative-centric so there isn't one. unless the state totally submits to a logic that is somewhere between monetarism-lite and libertarian, anything goes. this way you don't have to think real hard about the basis for objecting to program x as over against program y: its all unfettered anyway, but if you like a program or sector, then it's "responsible" (grotesque levels of expenditure on the military, say) but that "responsible" verdict relies on other fantasies ("the war on terror")...if you don't like program y, then it's a "problem" (o i dunno...taxation, say) and this verdict also relies on other fantasies (taking away my shit, giving it to people less deserving than me)...

so its a space of self-reinforcing, self-confirming delusion. you don't need to look at messy things like reality. why bother? the world is SO simple this way.

and this is what i was talking about with an ideology that's symmetrical with the collapse of empire.
and empire is in this case the whole of the post-world war 2 capitalist order.
it's all finished now.

=====

otto: that'd be the logical parallel.
sadly, obama is way more centrist than was fdr and way more willing to play the bipartisan game. the political context is way more reactionary as well.
but at least in your version, things follow logically.

removed by author

I believe the U.S. has been steadily trending away from true capitalism since as far back as WWI (for variety of reasons). If you consider all the federal institutions, laws and regulatory measures implemented prior to the 50's, "free-market" capitalism has been non-existent for nearly a century. So in some respect, this may validate your assertion of the death of capitalism. However, I do not necessarily agree with ideological victories or failures claimed as one superior to the other. The economic game is global and is ultimately played outside of national or political ideology. We have been nudged carefully along the way with mindful attention to our thirst for controversy. Unfortunately, we've grown accustomed to reacting to the pot that's been stirred for us. I'm afraid our future is well on it's way down some road beyond our ability to react with approval or not... yeah, true capitalism is long dead.

otto---interesting.
i wasn't arguing that capitalism is over with. it's mutated again, this time i think beyond the nation-state so quite beyond the whole range of political and legal institutions that arose by degrees across the "long 19th century"
(so from say the french revolution through the early 1920s, the modern state trending toward the nation-state, which was dominant after world war 1 as the political form symmetrical with captialism as a mode of production, so as more than a system of ownership and way of organizing how stuff gets made)...

the american empire rested on the lattice of transnational structures set up after world war 2 in order to stabilize states at the level of currency and military action. the process of leaving nation-states behind didn't really get started until the 1970s though, and unfolded like most such processes do incrementally, incoherently, in fits and starts with things like the internet playing a considerable role.

this outstripping of nation-states poses some very basic political questions most of which are not easy and most of which will probably have to be addressed sooner or later (what legal framework can regulate capital flows that move across national boundaries in an instant, for example....what legal structures can regulate TNCs? on and on....how are these structures to be made politically responsive to people? what would it mean for them not to be responsive? these are pretty basic questions, dont you think?)

but right now, they're not being touched. better to pretend nation-states still matter and that market capitalism is still a useful metaphor for thinking about the complex socio-economic system of systems that we live under.