| jbar |
| (journeyman) |
| 05/03/08 12:22 AM |
Re: If I Were President
|
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..if anything, Iraq as seriously helped the economy. Why do you think we are even there? Bush Jr. was trapped in a horrible recession. Nothing stimulates an economy like a good war, until the go bad, hence we have Bush Recession II.
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That's just it, Relay. Financing a war, which doesn't ultimately produce any economic benefits for the country doing the financing, is just as bad as printing money-- unless you can compensate for it by creating real wealth somewhere else. The only alternative to runaway inflation under these circumstances is to have deflationary forces at work, such as high unemployment and high oil prices, which is exactly what we have. What can be good about these things?
The real disgrace is that this very unemployment and high oil prices are also caused by the deficit financing which the administration has had to use to finance the war in the first place. Since they can't raise taxes, they have to keep borrowing more money and, as we've recently seen, even engage in "direct" inflation and monetary stimulus to try to eliminate the unemployment problem. This deficit financing is the reason that our dollar has gone from forty cents to a Euro to $1.60. Since there is really no "U.S. economy" any longer, but only the international economy, this to me represents a huge loss of money, in itself, to every American.
They say that they are against illegal immigration, while refusing to really do anything about it. This is because they desparately need the cheap labor, and Social Security taxes which the immigrants pay (and which will never be paid out, in turn, in benefits), to keep a lid on inflation and restrain the need for more deficit financing. Granted, these immigrants are a drain on local welfare funds, but Washington takes the view that this is the problem of the states.
IMHO no presently viable candidate for President will be able to do anything about these problems, particularly after the Israeli lobby goes to work on them, and they may even have to borrow additional billions to finance their big health care promises.