If there are no limits on US gov't debt...

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Nope. Good conservatives think that taxes are bad, and that public debt is good.

Otherwise, why would conservative Presidents Reagan and Bush cut taxes and increase debt incessantly?

You're either a flaming liberal or a very bad conservative.

No-one has mentioned the Laffer Curve since Ronald Reagan was running for president the first time around.

Otherwise, if the Laffer Curve were to be invoked, the President Bush would say: "Gee. I've cut taxes, but revenue is falling and the economy is tanking. So, unless I either raise taxes or cut spending (or both), then the national debt is going to become deeper."

When President Bush was running for president the first time, he said "the economy is strong, and the US government is running surpluses. We need to cut taxes, so that people can keep more of what they earn."

After that, it was "Gee. We're running big deficits. We need to cut taxes."

The conservative solution to everything is to cut taxes. If taxes were eliminated completely, then conservatives would no longer have anything to talk about. Conservatives would cease to exist. Everyone would become liberal.

Look, maybe it is less explicit, but the entire line of reasoning "tax cuts lead to revenue increases" and occasional defenders of that logic, have emerged during the Bush presidency. In fact, the latest similar notion of it is found in dynamic scoring, which is a laudable idea, but one that the Bush presidency tried to use to promote a higher growth rate hypothesis, and failed to come to great conclusions upon. There were even cases of questionable accounting in the Wall Street Journal promoting this flawed idea. Heck, I even was tested on the Laffer Curve in one of my AP tests, so it isn't as if it has entirely disappeared.


You are dealing with politicians. To suggest that any one of them will accept blame for a bad policy is on the level of ridiculous. George Bush, if he started talking about this, would obviously start manipulating the logic such that he would be right based upon his new premises. Any politician would do the same, even if the reasoning seemed very obviously flawed. I mean, I think Reagan supporters tend to claim that Reagan tax cuts lead to Clinton's strong economy.


Now you are faulting him for being a politician. It is a well-noted fact that most politicians try to bribe us with our own money. Bush is one of the most obvious people to do this, but I would not blame an ideology for having stupid politicians.

I tend to doubt that. For one, there would be a call to maintain the status quo, which would need conservatives. For another, conservatives also talk about family values and gay marriage, which are other issues they occasionally attempt to promote, as well as an aggressive foreign policy. I mean, look, it is alright to hate conservatives, but I'd draw the line at attacking the ridiculousness of politicians as the actions and efforts of politicians seem too close to a strawman for the actual nature of the views.

That depends on how we define "good conservative", the modern conservative president follows the self-serving lie that tax cuts lead to revenue increases. Traditional conservatives have usually disliked public debt though.

Bush 2 has been repeatedly attacked for not being a proper conservative, this claim has even been taken seriously by some liberals. Reagan could probably take a dump and have adherents say he laid eggs of gold. In either case, I would bet you are trying to make a joke or "smart" comment, but the idiocy of the modern conservative movement is already notable, but the term "conservative" has deep-enough roots to survive past that, and the ideology has not explicitly favored deficits, but rather is just engaged in massive self-deception, that will hopefully disappear in the long run.

No, you are trying to spin it to promote another brand of ignorance. The UK and parts of Europe have housing bubbles and asset bubbles that are on par with the US, and those too are popping. Japan went through a major housing bubble that made their economy sick. The driving forces behind these bubbles is not some obscure law and the poor minorities - it is herd behavior and greed. Did the CRA cause the dot-com bubble? Did CRA cause the Enron debacle? What about tulip-mania?? No student of history can deny that economies get drunk and stupid. Welcome to the hangover!!

Wrong, moron. YOU ARE NOTHING BUT AN IDIOT. Reagan and Bush were RINOS--fake "conservatives".

Which means the last thing we need to do is give the drunk more of the hooch. Bailouts amount to simply feeding an addict more drugs to stave off the inevitable crash.

Well, it depends on whether you think that a lock-up or collapse of the financial system is possible, and whether financial practices have changed in the last few months.

I know for a fact that getting a mortgage today is challenging - they check every detail related to income and debt, and they enforce their own rules for a change. Some of my co-workers have been rejected - not enough income to debt, asking for too large a loan, etc. Increasing liquidity in the mortgage market would not necessarily lead to more of what we have seen over the past few years.

It's this sort of mentality that really convinces me that the Western Era is over, and the future really does belong to Asia, where people do these really passé things like saving for a rainy day, actually making things, learning how to make things, etc.



Exactly, it's like mortgaging the house to buy groceries - next month you will still need to eat and pay debts on top of that. Keep it up long enough and you'll end bankrupt.



The Bush Doctrine on Economics can be summarised in one phrase: après moi, le déluge.



US debt is rising as a percentage of GDP, and will rise even faster with entitlements, recession, the increasingly urgent need to repair infrastructure, etc. For a country aspiring to remain the world's financial and monetary centre, this is flatly unsustainable, and will empower fiscally responsible creditor countries like China.


I sometimes think that the 20th century history of Argentina should be mandatory in First World schools. Argentina was once as rich and developed as Western Europe, with successful agricultural and industrial sectors, a quality educational system, and along with the US the destination of choice for European migrants looking for a better life. In fact, Argentina was so attractive to immigrants that at one point over half the population was foreign-born (overwhelmingly European) - making it far more a country of immigrants than the US (the days of 'God is Argentine'). By the 1990s, the country was destitute and had defaulted on her debts, GDP per capita lower than what it was a century before, people were looting shops and freight trains for food, several currencies were in circulation simultaneously, the banking system was in shambles, unemployment was out of control, people were leaving not just for the US and Europe, but even for Mexico, etc. What brought Argentina to her knees? Bad governance - corruption, mismanagement, complacency and, not least, inept and irresponsible fiscal and monetary policy. In the West there seems to be a mentality of 'We're the legitimate and natural masters of the world; by the will of God, we'll always be rich.'

The West sometimes reminds me of the following:

Abuelo mercader,
padre caballero,
hijo garitero,
nieto pordiosero.

Translation:

The grandfather is a merchant,
the father is a knight/gentleman,
the son is a gambler,
the grandson is a beggar.

With one party at least; wealth redistribution and socialism-in-steps.

Actually, the "talk" about family values on the conservative side has resulted in an ironic twist--in order to have any chance of victory, the Democratic candidate has to present himself as being squeeky clean when it comes to being a family man and a good father. On the Republican side--Ronald Reagan was divorced, and his second wife was several months pregnant when they married. John McCain is divorced. His running mate's family life as a complete mess. A prominent Republican senator is caught getting involved in annonymous homosexual relationships in public toilets. But, as long as they are on the "family values" side, it can all be overlooked. If anyone on the Democratic side had done anything similar, then the Republicans would be all over it like so many pit bulls.

To be a good Conservative also means to bask in corruption, mismanagement, complacency and, inept and irresponsible fiscal and monetary policy. Not only to subscribe to the mentality of 'We're the legitimate and natural masters of the world; by the will of God, we'll always be rich,' but also, well, here is a brief retrospective:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h27HRNm_r4U&feature=related[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h27HRNm_ ... re=related

But, anyway, have good Conservatives damned us to economic armaggedon? Is there any chance of turning things around? How much more debt can our government accumulate, before real trouble begins?

The Chinese are acting like flaming Liberals and ret*ds, by loaning our government money, while our interest rates are kept artificially low, which drives down the vale of their investments.

If it weren't for these flaming Liberals overseas, we would be in an aweful fix.

I’m not that well read on economic theory but I can deduce some things from simple logic. That said, this is my best guess as to the probable chain of events.

In order to spend on a deficit budget the government needs to borrow currency. It can either borrow from private entities by issuing bonds or from the Federal Reserve through securities. If the government decides to cover the deficit by issuing bonds then it will be required to pay them back at a certain time. The government isn’t allowed to default on bonds. If it can’t pay them then it has to borrow from the Fed.

The problem with issuing unlimited securities is that eventually the Fed will have to start printing money at a rate that exceeds the GDP growth rate. Once this happens the currency begins to devalue. Now the banks will have to increase interest rates to counteract inflation. Otherwise they all go broke. But increasing the interest rates slows GDP growth even more by discouraging private borrowing. Having negative GDP growth while simultaneously printing money means even faster currency devaluation. Eventually inflation gets so bad that the standard of living goes down and there is a major recession.

Many of us remember George Bush the Elder giving his nomination-acceptance speech: "READ MY LIPS!! !! There will be NO NEW TAXES!! !!"

We read his lips, and took him at his word that he was a good conservative.

What did he do? He later showed himself to be a flaming liberal by raising taxes. The good people of this country were so outraged that many were moved to vote either for Ross Perot or Bill Clinton at the next election.

There are no circumstances under which a good conservative would EVER advocate raising taxes. On that note, John McCain is demonstrating himself to be more liberal than Barack Obama, in that he wants to tax employer-provided health insurance benefits for the first time. On the other hand, John McCain is demonstrating less liberalism than Barack Obama by not wanting to raise taxes on the rich. If a good conservative ever does raise taxes, then it is ABSOLUTELY NEVER ON THE RICH!! !! !

Why do you think that? In WWII, government spending was well over 50% of GDP. Not only were there major pushes for people to buy war bonds, but there were also tax increases to pay for war spending. Everyone agreed on the need for increasing taxes, although there were some fights over who gets charged how much extra.

Well, then that is just a part of our history when everyone was a flaming liberal.

Remember: my new definition of a flaming liberal is anyone who thinks that we need taxes at all, and that we cannot fund everything through government debt.