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What If We Paid Off The Debt? The Secret Government Report

considering the run away corporatism is calling the shots, I'm guessing stocks, probably green energy stocks based on our current masters in charge.

when the other guys are in charge, we would invest heavily in weapons stocks, and oil (which would probably be as good a bet as anything)

:shrug: I forsee us moving to a individually-owned SS system long before we have to worry about what the US should do with all it's extra money.



but hey, if we ever do get out of debt:

1. build a rainy day fund
2. make up for the actual shortfalls in infrastructure
3. send the rest of whatever surplus you ran back to the people on a per capita basis to each tax filer.
 
Imagine what the Social Security Trust fund would use as an accumulation vehicle instead of U.S. Treasury securities?

Anyone?

Yeah - what ARealconservative said about it: stocks. . .current administration would favor 'green stocks'

But per the link in the OP Clinton's administration was eying stocks in Fannie/Freddie as well as investing in Triple-A plus bonds and Mortgaged backed securities: all the things that crashed and failed amid the recession.
 
Imagine what the Social Security Trust fund would use as an accumulation vehicle instead of U.S. Treasury securities?

Anyone?

It does appear that accumulation of "renminbi", precious metals, and OIL would be a sound policy.
 
Sorry boys and girls but we are too close to being bankrupt to think about now paying off our debt any time soon.
What we need to do is cut taxes ans reduce the crazy regulations and restrictions that inhibit business growth and hope that recovery will will grow enough to recover within a reasonable time frame.
 
considering the run away corporatism is calling the shots, I'm guessing stocks, probably green energy stocks based on our current masters in charge.

when the other guys are in charge, we would invest heavily in weapons stocks, and oil (which would probably be as good a bet as anything)

It is naive to believe you can invest trillions of dollars in public liabilities/obligations into the private markets. Conflict of interests and return uncertainty make it impossible to implement. Anyone familiar with risk management understands why fixed theoretical risk free investments are the superior vehicles to hedge public funds from inflation while providing a safe accumulation factor.
 
Yeah - what ARealconservative said about it: stocks. . .current administration would favor 'green stocks'

But per the link in the OP Clinton's administration was eying stocks in Fannie/Freddie as well as investing in Triple-A plus bonds and Mortgaged backed securities: all the things that crashed and failed amid the recession.

Which is why equity positions are an unacceptable way to invest public funds.Trust Fund FAQs

By law, income to the trust funds must be invested, on a daily basis, in securities guaranteed as to both principal and interest by the Federal government. All securities held by the trust funds are "special issues" of the United States Treasury. Such securities are available only to the trust funds.
 
It does appear that accumulation of "renminbi", precious metals, and OIL would be a sound policy.

The values of these assets are not guaranteed. Do you understand why such a requirement is entirely necessary?
 
that's funny.


looking at the chart it doesn't look that terribly similar - except somewhat in length, as the original 2001 Bush response was to depend heavily on tax credits which operate economically like a transfer payment; didn't work for him then, didn't work for him in 2008, didn't work for Obama in 2009, and doesn't seem to have worked for him in 2010 or 2011.

It's funny how you think posting graphs that aren't actually relevant to my point disprove me.

Care to look at the job increases coming out of Bush's recession? Or you going to be your standard partisan dishonest hack?

looks like revenue did alright after that. though you are correct that the man spent way too much money.

which according to Keynesian economic theory should have been a massive boost, so hey, what are you complaining about? :)

Still unable to figure out what I was talking about eh Cpwill?
 
Paying off the national debt would not be a good idea. It would mean that we were consistently running a surplus. That's fine during economic booms, but it's the last thing you want to do when the economy is in the doldrums. If you want to stimulate the economy, run a deficit (e.g. raise spending and/or cut taxes). If you want to put the brakes on the economy, run a surplus (e.g. cut spending and/or raise taxes).

Ultimately we need to be running a surplus during good times and running a deficit during bad times, and over the full course of the economic cycle our national debt should not be growing faster than inflation.
 
Paying off the national debt would not be a good idea. It would mean that we were consistently running a surplus. That's fine during economic booms, but it's the last thing you want to do when the economy is in the doldrums. If you want to stimulate the economy, run a deficit (e.g. raise spending and/or cut taxes). If you want to put the brakes on the economy, run a surplus (e.g. cut spending and/or raise taxes).

Ultimately we need to be running a surplus during good times and running a deficit during bad times, and over the full course of the economic cycle our national debt should not be growing faster than inflation.

Well - to make sure things don't wander away: this link in the OP isn't about *right now possibilities* it's about *what might have happened with Clinton's "surplus" possibilities*
 
It's funny how you think posting graphs that aren't actually relevant to my point disprove me.

it's funny how you rely on just-so statements.

Care to look at the job increases coming out of Bush's recession?

already posted the relevant information - you discounted it because it didn't say what you wanted, remember? Bush's job creation for the first couple of years sucked because his response in 2001 was seriously flawed, just as his response in 2008 was, and just as Obama's response was in 2009, 2010, and 2011. Bush got it right in 2003; making him 1 for 3. which still leaves him superior to Obama's score of 0 for 3.

Or you going to be your standard partisan dishonest hack?

I spent about 10 minutes trying to find an "Irony" poster that really captured the entertainment of you tossing around this charge, but man, even in the world of teh internets, nothing quite matched up.



Still unable to figure out what I was talking about eh Cpwill?[/QUOTE]
 
It's funny how you think posting graphs that aren't actually relevant to my point disprove me.

it's funny how you rely on just-so statements.

Care to look at the job increases coming out of Bush's recession?

already posted the relevant information - you discounted it because it didn't say what you wanted, remember? Bush's job creation for the first couple of years sucked because his response in 2001 was seriously flawed, just as his response in 2008 was, and just as Obama's response was in 2009, 2010, and 2011. Bush got it right in 2003; making him 1 for 3. which still leaves him superior to Obama's score of 0 for 3.

Or you going to be your standard partisan dishonest hack?

I spent about 10 minutes trying to find an "Irony" poster that really captured the entertainment of you tossing around this charge, but man, even in the world of teh internets, nothing quite matched up.



Still unable to figure out what I was talking about eh Cpwill?[/QUOTE]
 
Paying off the national debt would not be a good idea. It would mean that we were consistently running a surplus. That's fine during economic booms, but it's the last thing you want to do when the economy is in the doldrums. If you want to stimulate the economy, run a deficit (e.g. raise spending and/or cut taxes). If you want to put the brakes on the economy, run a surplus (e.g. cut spending and/or raise taxes).

that's an interesting. theory. seems rather easily testable too; falsifiability, they say, is key to the scientific process. Okay, over the past 4 years we have run a series of historically massive, outlier deficits. have the past four years been marked by significant economic boom times? are we rolling in the dough?

Here's a list of nations by their deficit as a % of GDP. Shall we (say) go through and compare this list with a list of nations by growth in GDP, to put your hypothesis more thoroughly to the test? hey! look who is better than us when it comes to getting that good ole deficit spending out there! Greece! man, those guys must be sitting on top of the world! (checks second list) huh....that's odd....
 
You cant pay of a national debt.. it is impossible. A country, like a company and people in general, need debt to do the day to day funding. People use credit cards, companies use credit lines and countries also need to have a certain amount of debt to function. This debt is both internally but also externally.
 
it's funny how you rely on just-so statements.

it is worth noting that it is also funny how, after thousands of posts, cpwill retains the computer illiteracy necessary to double post, and then fail in his attempts to delete and edit :D
 
You cant pay of a national debt.. it is impossible. A country, like a company and people in general, need debt to do the day to day funding. People use credit cards, companies use credit lines and countries also need to have a certain amount of debt to function. This debt is both internally but also externally.

while I agree it's implausible, I certainly see no reason why a debt free government is impossible. Indiana, for example, is currently enjoying a big fat emergency fund, rather than the debt-struggle we see in the other states.
 
our total debt went up every year. I've been over the proof many times, I've come to understand zombies are all around me and want to believe what they want to believe.

I think this guy explains it in a manner everyone should get if they actually cared to see the truth.

The Myth of the Clinton Surplus

Excellent link that was very informative, thank you. It should have ended any debate about the Clinton surplus but it appears many didn't read it or chose to ignore what they read.
 
while I agree it's implausible, I certainly see no reason why a debt free government is impossible. Indiana, for example, is currently enjoying a big fat emergency fund, rather than the debt-struggle we see in the other states.

I agree. A debt-free country would be probably improbable, but not impossible. I think there are some countries that are actually debt-free, but I'm not quite sure
 
Paying off the national debt would not be a good idea. It would mean that we were consistently running a surplus. That's fine during economic booms, but it's the last thing you want to do when the economy is in the doldrums. If you want to stimulate the economy, run a deficit (e.g. raise spending and/or cut taxes). If you want to put the brakes on the economy, run a surplus (e.g. cut spending and/or raise taxes).

Ultimately we need to be running a surplus during good times and running a deficit during bad times, and over the full course of the economic cycle our national debt should not be growing faster than inflation.

I can't believe some people are still repeating this after seeing what spending trillions of dollars have gave us. Virtually nothing.
 
that's an interesting. theory. seems rather easily testable too; falsifiability, they say, is key to the scientific process. Okay, over the past 4 years we have run a series of historically massive, outlier deficits. have the past four years been marked by significant economic boom times? are we rolling in the dough?

You are confusing the cause and effect. What I said was that we should run deficits when the economy is bad in order to stimulate the economy. Therefore you should EXPECT to see bad economies coincide with periods of high deficits. Your test does not work, because there is no control group (i.e. what would happen in the absence of those massive deficits). This reasoning reminds me of the old myth about the Russian czar who found out that the province with the most doctors had the sickest people...so he ordered all the doctors executed. ;)

Here's a list of nations by their deficit as a % of GDP. Shall we (say) go through and compare this list with a list of nations by growth in GDP, to put your hypothesis more thoroughly to the test? hey! look who is better than us when it comes to getting that good ole deficit spending out there! Greece! man, those guys must be sitting on top of the world! (checks second list) huh....that's odd....

See above.
 
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I can't believe some people are still repeating this after seeing what spending trillions of dollars have gave us. Virtually nothing.

If you are referring to the various economic stimuli, you need to bear in mind that they were largely offset by budget cuts at the state/local level. So the overall effect of the stimulus was much smaller than the price tag might suggest.

I'd also like to add that the merit of economic stimuli isn't exactly a controversial topic between liberal and conservative economists. It enjoys support from prominent economists from all across the political spectrum, from liberals like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, to conservatives like N. Gregory Mankiw and Douglas Holtz-Eakin. The opposition to economic stimulus comes mostly from politicians, not economists.
 
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It never ceases to amaze me that people think so simplistically that their thought process is literally just "Stimulus passed, economy continued to get worse, therefore stimulus didn't work."

Did you happen to notice the rate of job losses went from "holy **** nose dive" to "sluggish up and down?"

Calculating the effect of the stimulus package is a lot more complicated than this.
 
You are confusing the cause and effect. What I said was that we should run deficits when the economy is bad in order to stimulate the economy

well, we've had about what - 3.5 bad years now, and we've run massive deficits in each one. at what point, precisely, are our historically massive deficits supposed to - you know - actually stimulate the economy?

Therefore you should EXPECT to see bad economies coincide with periods of high deficits

yes, but then you would expect to see recovery.

Your test does not work, because there is no control group (i.e. what would happen in the absence of those massive deficits).

huh. interesting you should say that.

how about this, if we were to look at the attempts at fiscal stimulus over the past few decades in each of the OECD countries, and it could be consistently demonstrated that the ones who had attempted to "stimulate" their economy through an increase in transfer payments had just as consistently failed to do so, while countries who had instead cut their business taxes had consistently succeeded in doing so... would you accept that as evidence? If it could be historically demonstrated what repeatedly does or does not work?
 
If you are referring to the various economic stimuli, you need to bear in mind that they were largely offset by budget cuts at the state/local level. So the overall effect of the stimulus was much smaller than the price tag might suggest.

I'd also like to add that the merit of economic stimuli isn't exactly a controversial topic between liberal and conservative economists. ]It enjoys support from prominent economists from all across the political spectrum, from liberals like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, to conservatives like N. Gregory Mankiw and Douglas Holtz-Eakin. The opposition to economic stimulus comes mostly from politicians, not economists.

Huh, Would You Look At That...

But It's Interesting That You Should Mention Mankiw.


...Perhaps the most compelling research on this subject is a very recent study by my colleagues Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna at Harvard. They used data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to identify every major fiscal stimulus adopted by the 30 OECD countries between 1970 and 2007. Alesina and Ardagna then separated those plans that were in fact followed by robust economic growth from those that were not, and compared their characteristics. They found that the stimulus packages that appeared to be successful had cut business and income taxes, while those that evidently did not succeed had increased government spending and transfer payments...
 
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