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Azeron wrote:

Of course they haven't The govenment does not need profits. The point of it is not profit

Thats a real good reason for keeping the government out of as much as possible....


hmmm maybe we should try to be like rome, and pillage weak countries for fun and profit...

Thats what you do already isn't it. Wasn't the Alamo an attempted grab?

The alamo had nothing to do with the USA, that was an internal war between mexican citzens and not so equal mexican citizens.

Wasn't there unlawful american combatants involved?

Azeron wrote:. I don't think there was any real subsidies involved

And you are wrong.For the construction of the first coast to coast railroad
the central pacific and the union pacific were given government bonds
from 16000$ to 48000$ for each mile of track laid.This,mind you,in ADDITION to the land grants.

Military spending has and always will be not a majority of the budget. Most the military spending increases were cut back, and many of the taxes cut back. Most of the gains we made were from deregulation.

Tax cuts don't cost anything, spending costs money. whne the military was really hurting in 92, adn had been severly cut from 80's levels, the deficeits didn;t go down. But social spending went up. Most of our budget by far is wasted on counter productive social spending, that would better be served in the hands of the people who made the money in the first place.

sounds like they did somethng similiar to the lockes on hudson river.

The debt was still market debt, just gaurenteed by the government.

Azeron wrote:

Not quite he's using it to demosrate what happens when idiots make desicisons

*applauds*
well you got it most right. I notice that 3rd wayists assume that as soon as a baffoon becomes a brussels beaurocrat that it is assumed that he is dammed near infallable.

Um, you couldn't be more wrong you moron. If you asked people on the streets of Britain you would find that they didn't trust anyone in Brussels and wish they would leave us alone. It is the lying bastard politicians who want to be in the EU because they can get cushy jobs (eg Neil Kinnock). Brussels is a mass of inefficient and useless pus, like a blemish on the face of Europe, and popular opinion supports this.

Azeron wrote:Military spending has and always will be not a majority of the budget. Most the military spending increases were cut back, and many of the taxes cut back. Most of the gains we made were from deregulation.

Tax cuts don't cost anything, spending costs money. whne the military was really hurting in 92, adn had been severly cut from 80's levels, the deficeits didn;t go down. But social spending went up. Most of our budget by far is wasted on counter productive social spending, that would better be served in the hands of the people who made the money in the first place.

Military spending was cutbacked only after the fallen of the Soviet Union.
During the Reagan era it was massively increased from the Carter administration era levels.Reagan theory was cutting taxation in order to stimulate the economy,the increased prosperity would have led to an increased tax revenue even with the lower taxation levels.In practice the increase of the revenue was not enough to compensate for the lower taxation level.
Now the proponent of this theory on which Reagan tax policy was based ,Laffer,is the economists preferred joke.

By the way.
Have you ever heard about the Dramatic line?
It was an american steam shipping company founded by a certain Collins around 1850.The hope was to beat the Cunard.For this purpose no expense was spared and the Congress allocated subsides for more than 850000$ per year,which was considerable sum for the time.
Despite the generous help they went to bottom,quite literally .

Military spending was cutbacked only after the fallen of the Soviet Union.
During the Reagan era it was massively increased from the Carter administration era levels.Reagan theory was cutting taxation in order to stimulate the economy,the increased prosperity would have led to an increased tax revenue even with the lower taxation levels.In practice the increase of the revenue was not enough to compensate for the lower taxation level.
Now the proponent of this theory on which Reagan tax policy was based ,Laffer,is the economists preferred joke.

Thats a load of bullshit you can't back up, where is your documentation?

Basic economics course,Mankiw textbook (based on laissez faire theories, by the way).If you want an online explanation for the failure of Reagan tax policy try this.
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/eco ... rcurve.htm

That author is a joke, whose understanding of economics is tenious at best.

I find it funny that he pushes forth the understanding that the US economy was in some sort upward stroke when reagan came into office. Its wasn't, it was a piece of kenesyian shit.

Inflation running amock, the whittling out of industires. Monaterist policy cuppled with the tax cuts saved this country.

the author contiues to make unsubstaniated claims, adn outright lies. The revenue generated by the government didn;t go down 1 penny during reagans tenure but averaged 8% growth outstripping inflation by a factor of 4x.

That is some jackass trolling for the left, who doesn;t even seem to understand the dynamics of why supply side ecnomics work.

Actually on this one point I will agree with Azeron. Certainly military spending increased, but as a percentage of GDP it has been on a steady* drop since the 50s in the US. (Whence it was between 10% and 15% if I remember.)

Social security spending, however, has been on a steady increase over the same half century, quickly and thoroughly overtaking military spending.



*Disregarding the occasional blip, of course.

victorhadin wrote:Oh how tempting it is to write:

USA screws up steel market. Europe passes them by the wayside.

::sigh::

It looks like that it'll happen, since US Steel doesn't have to upgrade all their equipment.

Admiral Piett wrote:Uncontrolled social spending during the Reagan years? are you joking?

Azeron is partially correct. Congress passed a wide measure of social spending programs during the 1980s, in addition to Reagan's military buildup.

Azeron wrote:That author is a joke, whose understanding of economics is tenious at best.

I find it funny that he pushes forth the understanding that the US economy was in some sort upward stroke when reagan came into office. Its wasn't, it was a piece of kenesyian shit.

Inflation running amock, the whittling out of industires. Monaterist policy cuppled with the tax cuts saved this country.

the author contiues to make unsubstaniated claims, adn outright lies. The revenue generated by the government didn;t go down 1 penny during reagans tenure but averaged 8% growth outstripping inflation by a factor of 4x.

That is some jackass trolling for the left, who doesn;t even seem to understand the dynamics of why supply side ecnomics work.

Well,can you bother to explain me where does the explosion the public debt comes from?
If taxes revenue increased so much the debt should not have passed from
34% of GDP in 1980 to the 54% of GDP in 1988,unless someone screwed up horribly.
Answer,yes there was an increase in tax revenue but it is a far cry from your "average 8%"

Year Tax revenue in billions Percentage change
1982 738
1983 684 -7.3%
1984 730 6.7%
1985 777 6.4%
1986 790 1.7%
1987 854 8.1%
1988 877 2.7%
1989 916 4.4%

Source:Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government

As you see the 8% figure is far from being the average.It would be nice to
see what we gets once we take in consideration the inflation.
Are you sure that it was only 2% "4x" per year?
Again the answer is no.

Year Inflation rate
1982 6.2%
1983 3.2%
1984 4.3%
1985 3.6%
1986 1.9%
1987 3.6%
1988 4.1%
1989 4.8%

Source: Table 739, American Almanac, p 469 (1993 ed)

As you can see the real tax revenue figure is lower than what you claim.

phongn wrote:Azeron is partially correct. Congress passed a wide measure of social spending programs during the 1980s, in addition to Reagan's military buildup.

Not exactly.Reagan cut welfare spending for 45 billions:25 billions in 1981
and additional 20 billions in 1982-1983.While the total amount of spending
for welfare increased in absolute terms in the 1980-1988 timeframe the rate of increase was far lower than that of all the previous administrations of the post war period.

This is a comparison of the annual increase rate of non military domestic spending (welfare and the other "useless" stuff) during the various administrations.

President Annual increase percentage
Truman 5.5%
Eisenhower 7.5%
Kennedy/Johnson 8.0%
Nixon/Ford 8.5%
Carter 3.5%
Reagan 1.0%
Bush 4.5%
Clinton 3.0*

Source: Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1996.

victorhadin wrote:Actually on this one point I will agree with Azeron. Certainly military spending increased, but as a percentage of GDP it has been on a steady* drop since the 50s in the US. (Whence it was between 10% and 15% if I remember.)
*Disregarding the occasional blip, of course.

Sorry but it is wrong.
Defense spending was 5.9% of GDP in 1979.It was 7.1% of GDP in 1983.
In absolute terms it was 158 billions in 1981 and 304 billions in 1989.I would not describe it exactly as a "constant decline"...

Admittely the effects of tax policy on the increase of public debt have been overestimated. But the effects of the military build up certainly are not.Reagan could not cut tax rates,increase military expenditure and keep
the budget balanced all at the same time.The result was that the the national debt expressed in 1987 dollars doubled from $1,004 billion in 1981 to $2,028 billion in 1989.
Bottom line:if tax rates are really obscenely high you may well get a substantial increase in tax revenue simply by cutting taxation(see Russian case).But if they are not enough high you will get instead a reduction in tax revenue that must be balanced with cuts of the expenditure.And since cutting taxation is much easier from a political point of view than cutting expenditure the result is usually an increased public debt.
Cutting taxation of course stimulates the economy but it is not necessarily enough to give in return the same amount of tax revenues that you got previously with an higher tax rate.Otherwise every time a government raises the taxation rate it should get a lower tax revenue,which clearly is not the case.

Admiral Piett wrote:

victorhadin wrote:Actually on this one point I will agree with Azeron. Certainly military spending increased, but as a percentage of GDP it has been on a steady* drop since the 50s in the US. (Whence it was between 10% and 15% if I remember.)
*Disregarding the occasional blip, of course.

Sorry but it is wrong.
Defense spending was 5.9% of GDP in 1979.It was 7.1% of GDP in 1983.
In absolute terms it was 158 billions in 1981 and 304 billions in 1989.I would not describe it exactly as a "constant decline"...

Well I did concede the existance of a couple of 'blips', such as for example.... that decade.

victorhadin wrote:Well I did concede the existance of a couple of 'blips', such as for example.... that decade.

The problem,mr Hadin,is that what you call "blips" in economy are often the difference between the life and the death.You would be surprised by the effects that apparently trivial differences in the percentage of economic
growth have in the long term...

True enough. I was generalising over about 50 years whereas it seems you are talking about Reagan's term in office, which to be honest my knowledge of is limited to nonexistant.

Honestly I should find statistics encompassing all the postwar period.
But I am under the impression that the pattern is not linear.