Mystery Economic Theater 2010

[cheesehead]

First, two corrections:

Originally Posted by cheesehead

which are plain facts you can look up in the World Almanac and Book of Facts,

... or other suitable reference work.

- - - - -

Because it can't refer to any core

belief

of mine about politics or economics, since your insult challenged neither of those.

- - - - -

Now, an appeal:

DarJones,

You may have thought, and want to continue to think, that you were challenging one of my core beliefs by issuing that insult, but you were and are mistaken about that. Instead, your misunderstanding of my admittedly-misunderstandable use of "result" led to your coming to a faulty conclusion. Had your conclusion been correct, your use of "deliberate misattribution" would have been correct. But neither actually was correct.

We all make such mistakes. Now that I've admitted my own mistake in using that word without further elaboration, and posted a clearer expression of my intent, it's time for you to admit the mistakes you made in reacting to my original posting, such as not asking for clarification before you proceeded to insult me on the assumption that you'd made no mistake in interpretation.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

As I have already patiently explained,

1) they are attributable to Clinton in the senses that (a) only Clinton proposed balanced budgets to Congress, and (b) the fiscal years that turned out to have higher revenues than expenditures were all fiscal years for which Clinton was the president who proposed the budget to Congress

...which is true and laudable, but should be qualified with the following:

[1] The "balanced budgets" submitted by Clinton included the same accounting-gimmick of "borrowing" several hundred billion $ from the Social Security "trust fund" [I use quotes here because as Mish Shedlock likes to say, "there is no trust, and there is no fund - only a giant stack of IOUs from Treasury"] as has sadly become standard operating procedure over the past decades. Thus, absent this bogus accounting, the budget was not in fact balanced.

[2] The dotcom bust would have occurred irrespective of who succeeded Clinton, even had they done exactly as he would have done. Thus, while nominally balanced, the "legendary" Clinton budgets did not reflect sustainable levels of government spending.

Of course Bush the younger went out of his way to unbalance the budget even further by way of reckless tax-cutting and warmongering. For that,he deserves eternal ignominy ... but when we talks about "budget facts",let's talk about all the salient facts rather than weasel-word concepts like "nominally balanced", shall we?

------------------------------

Continuing a recent discussion sub-thread, today`s WSJ has a piece on the possible "negative incentivization" effects of continuing jobless benefits without attaching any real strings:

Long Recession Ignites Debate on Jobless Benefits

Management Recruiters of Sacramento, Calif., says it recently had a tough time filling six engineering positions at an Oregon manufacturer paying $60,000 a year—and suspects long-term jobless benefits were part of the hitch.

"We called several engineers that were unemployed," says Karl Dinse, a managing partner at the recruiting firm. "They said, nah, you know, if it were paying $80,000 I'd think about it." Some candidates suggested he call them back when their benefits were scheduled to run out, he says.

Rick Jewell has a different take on extended jobless benefits: He didn't want to be on the dole, but had no alternative. He has been out of work since he lost his $12-an-hour job driving a forklift for a cosmetics company in Greenwood, Ind., in December 2008. He collected $315 a week in benefits until early June—when Congress declined to renew the law that gave workers in Indiana and some other states up to 99 weeks of assistance.

"I am tired of sitting at home. I am tired of not being the breadwinner," says Mr. Jewell, who says he looks for work every day. He and his wife now rely on her $480 a week job as a distribution supervisor at the same cosmetics company.

In the long recession and the lackluster recovery, the government expanded unemployment payments more than at any time since the benefits were rolled out in the 1930s. And workers have gone jobless for longer than any time since official tallies began in 1967.

Politicians and economists are now in a fierce debate that could have big consequences for the jobless: Did more-generous unemployment benefits prompt jobless workers to be pickier in their searches? Or was the program a prudent response to the worst recession in generations?

The debate remains pressing as Congress wrestles with whether to extend the expired benefit program. The House passed an extension renewal backed by President Barack Obama as part of a broader bill that died in the Senate, after skirmishes about the wisdom of enlarging the deficit. The House passed a scaled-down version last week, but the Senate won't revisit this issue until after its week-long recess.

Economists have argued for years about the extent to which government benefits prolong unemployment—and possibly augment the overall jobless rate. Most believe that expanding benefits does discourage some unemployed people from looking for work or taking available jobs. But they disagree on how acute that effect is, particularly at a time when jobs are scarce.

"Given the current economic situation I doubt that effect is very large," says Harvard University economist Raj Chetty. "I think people will take whatever job they can get"

Economists on the right see a danger to prolonging benefits. "I don't think anybody's getting rich off of unemployment, and I'm not saying people are lazy," says Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. "The fact is, when you have a check coming in, even if it's a fairly low check, you're less motivated to either look for work or accept less optimal jobs."

The recent recession was unusual in almost every respect. Compared to other post-World War II recessions, it was deeper, longer and put more people out of work. A year after the economy began growing, unemployment is still a very high 9.5%. Nearly half the jobless—6.8 million total—have been out of work for more than six months, and 4.3 million of those have been without work for more than a year. The typical unemployed person has been out of the job market for a median of 25.5 weeks.

The government response was also unusual, and not just in the big bank bailout. In normal times, the unemployed are offered up to 26 weeks of benefits, largely financed by a tax on employers. In recessions, state and federal governments often jointly finance up to an additional 20 weeks in hard-hit states. In this recession, Congress added up to another 53 weeks of federally funded benefits; in the deep crisis of the 1980s, the maximum total never exceeded 55 weeks.

The unemployment compensation system, created in 1935, was designed to tide workers over during periods of temporary unemployment. Benefits are based on a worker's prior wages; the average is $310 a week. Only workers who have lost a job through no fault of their own are eligible. Those who quit or who are new to the work force don't qualify. They must reapply weekly or biweekly, depending on the state, and indicate that they are looking for work.

My Comment: It would appear that being offered $60K and holding out for $80K instead of leaping at the chance qualifies as "looking for work".

Most workers, economists say, wouldn't risk holding out for an ideal job in this economy. But individual attitudes and circumstances vary widely.

Paul A. Johnson's $65,000-a-year job evaporated when the digital entertainment company for which he worked folded in May of 2009. The 31-year-old went on unemployment benefits, collecting $475 a week.

A few offers surfaced, but Mr. Johnson says the pay wasn't tempting enough to give up his government check. "The jobs I was being offered were less than I was making when I got out of college," he says. "I didn't see a point."

After two months of unemployment, he took a $72,000-a-year job with an advertising agency, but quit after a week. Mr. Johnson says he became depressed as he realized he was miserable in his career. No longer eligible for benefits, Mr. Johnson moved in with his mother in East Hampton, N.Y. He says he plans to launch his own company selling baked goods online.

My Comment: So while this loser-with-a-capital-L is too proud to consider taking a job "beneath him", he's not too proud to mooch off his aging Ma - lemme guess, he`s probably too busy "getting his cookie-based internet startup online" to do his own laundry now that he`s moved back in with Ma.

Some economists argue that benefits can help the jobless perceive themselves as still part of the labor force. If benefits end, these workers may be more likely to apply for disability or similar benefits.

My Comment: Sorry, "most economists" - sitting at home collecting a government check has ZERO to do with still feeling oneself "part of the labor force". If the government required unemployment-check recipients to do [say] community service work to earn their check, that would accomplish that end. With all the news about cash-strapped municipalities having to slash library hours, parks maintenance and such, it is ridiculous that none of the unemployment-benefits-extensions bills have been accompanied by any serious attempt to get aid recipients to do some at least semi-useful for society in exchange for the government - that is taxpayer-funded - money.

The full article details a nice flip-flop by the administration’s Larry Summers on this issue, too.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

...which is true and laudable, but should be qualified with the following:

I'm sorry to say, Ernst, that your own commentary should have been qualified, in this case, with:

"Warning - I did not bother to check the factual accuracy of my comments before I posted them."

[1] The "balanced budgets" submitted by Clinton included the same accounting-gimmick of "borrowing" several hundred billion $ from the Social Security "trust fund" [I use quotes here because as Mish Shedlock likes to say, "there is no trust, and there is no fund - only a giant stack of IOUs from Treasury"] as has sadly become standard operating procedure over the past decades. Thus, absent this bogus accounting, the budget was not in fact balanced.

It would have been one thing if you had merely chided me for not mentioning (a) the distinction between on-budget and off-budget accounting, or (b) the deplored recent habit of habitually presenting budget totals as the sum of on-budget and off-budget figures.

But it's another set of things for you:

(a) to have assumed something that's not true, as I did not do,

(b) to have failed to double-check your assumption by actually going to a source such as the web site of the Office of Management and Budget, as I did, and

(c) to have not looked up the figures in some factual publication such as "Historical Tables - Budget of the U.S. Government - Fiscal Year 2011" at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...ssets/hist.pdf, as I did, and

(c) to have posted false statements of your own in an attempt to (wrongly) portray my statements as deceptive.

Facts: According to that ("Historical ... 2011") publication's "Table 1.1—SUMMARY OF RECEIPTS, OUTLAYS, AND SURPLUSES OR DEFICITS (–): 1789–2015", fiscal years 1999 and 2000 had on-budget surpluses ($1.920 billion and $86.422 billion, respectively). Furthermore, no other fiscal years since 1980 had on-budget surpluses, and the only other fiscal years since 1980 which had total (on-budget plus off-budget) surpluses were 1998 and 2001.

[2] The dotcom bust would have occurred irrespective of who succeeded Clinton, even had they done exactly as he would have done.

But I was talking about the actual black-and-white budget figures, not other factors (about which I made no claim one way or the other).

You can't really falsify my statements without bringing in such external factors and attempting to falsely portray them as an essential part of the basic budget facts, can you, Ernst?

Thus, while nominally balanced, the "legendary" Clinton budgets

(Note: Others may have used the word "legendary" to describe Clinton budgets, but I never have.)

did not reflect sustainable levels of government spending.

Hmm... The "dotcom bust" was related to unsustainable levels of government spending?

Don't you mean "government revenues" or "government surpluses" there instead of "government spending"?

Of course Bush the younger went out of his way to unbalance the budget even further by way of reckless tax-cutting and warmongering. For that,he deserves eternal ignominy ... but when we talks about "budget facts",let's talk about all the salient facts rather than weasel-word concepts like "nominally balanced", shall we?

Translation for all you other folks:

Ernst can't refute the statements I actually posted, so he, like DarJones, pretends that what I wrote has no meaning unless other factors, factors I never mentioned or assumed or denied, are thrown in.

He, like DarJones, needs to first acknowledge that what I wrote was factually correct. Then we can go on to discuss those other factors.

Without a common agreement between participants to at least acknowledge established facts as facts, it will be difficult to have a reasonable discussion of opinions, speculations and theories.

BTW, I never used the phrase "nominally balanced". Ernst has not demonstrated that any of my concepts were "weasel-word concepts". Instead, he, like DarJones, has used other words in a weaselly way to try to spin my factual statements.

[ewmayer]

Cheesehead/Richard, please spare us the all-too-predictable grandstanding about "so-and-so can't respond to the actual question/assertion/etc, so is doing-something-or-other-annoying" polemics ... it's tiresome, you should try to hear yourself speak sometime.

Back to the myth of the Clinton surpluses...

You bandy about terms like "black and white budget figures" [what, because the government file you downloaded prints them that way?] and on-budget versus off-budget, then plunk down a massive PDF, as though that equates to "the truth" ... let's cut to the chase.

I claim the Clinton "surpluses" included papering over significant amounts of real deficit via "borrowing" from social security - you don't actually seem to know where to find those data in your blizzard of "facts". I'll make it simple - show us the year-over-year "intragovernmental holdings" data during the Clinton years [No 300-plus-page PDF needed ... just a simple single table]. And instead of looking at "Debt held by the public," (or "Public Debt", depending on the source), show us the "Total National Debt" during the same years, then please explain why it goes up year after year, even in alleged-surplus years.


Regarding my comment that the "Clinton budgets did not reflect sustainable levels of government spending", you can look at either the receipt or expenditure part of the equation ... if expenditures (ignoring Washington accounting trickery for now) only balance outlays for a few years which saw unsustainable income from a one-time windfall (the dotcom stock market bubble), then because the income is unsustainable, then by definition so are the expenditures.

[Did that really need a multi-paragraph polemical reply from you? And please spare me your silly "translation of what Ernst said" ... you think silly gibes like that impress anyone?

And I swear, if any of your next few posts looks like the above clusterf*ck of whining-in-your-inimitably-obsessive-fashion, you're going on my perma-ignore list. I'm trying to have a reasonable adult discussion here, not win the Junior Debate Club Stump-Hogging Award.]

I repeat my assertion: Without the bogus "revenue" resulting from raiding the social security trust fund, there would not have been and balanced/surplus budgets during the Clinton years. Yes, things were made much worse by Bushie - but both of them used accounting sleight-of-hand to make the budgets look more-balanced than they actually were.

[ewmayer]

Addendum: Wikipedia does a much better job than your mega-PDF at explaining things:

"These on-budget and off-budget items essentially amount to accounting gimmicks and schemes. In reality, what really matters is how much money comes in and how much money goes out. The federal government publishes the total debt owed (public and intragovernmental holdings) at the end of each fiscal year [50] and since FY1957, the amount of debt held by the federal government has increased every single year."

[apocalypse]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

You can do better than this Ewmayer(sic). Don't even begin to make a blanket statement like that without at least looking for alternate explanations. You are supposed to be a decent mathematician! And you think I am intellectually lazy? :)

Yes I do. I have looked at alternative explanations and I have found them wanting. I have provided evidence to support my position and you have provided naught but bullshit (which I use in its strictly technical sense). Please provide any data to support your contentions. Do you honestly believe that everyone puts as little effort into formulating and researching their opinions as you appear to?

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Note that you attribute the increase in tax revenue to greater taxation. I attribute it to the additional revenue directly resulting from the internet bubble. Note that your trend line precisely matches the peak of the internet bubble from 1995 to 2001. The bubble collapsed in early 2000 and final revenues from that event were received in 2001. The internet bubble was unique in generating tax revenue. By comparison, the recently deflated housing bubble was much less effective in generating additional taxes at the federal level. You can see that on your trendline if you look closely enough. I have a significant quibble about using the GDP trendline, but if you look at it closely, you can see the internet bubble even though it is attenuated by the scale.

Are you aware of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 whose key provisions were repealed in 2001 (by the "Bush tax cuts")? Do you have any justification for the assertion that the dot com bubble was unique in generating tax revenue (that is independent of the tax policy of the Clinton administration)? How does it compare to the stock market rallies in 1982-1987 and 2003-2007? How much of the 700B in tax revenue growth between 1994 and 2000 is attributable to growth in capital gains taxes during the dot com bubble? (Hint: about 90B)

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

There is one very telling event that the line shows clearly. The Bush tax cuts reduced the tax revenue significantly below the spending trendline. Would anyone care to engage in a good argument about all the reasons those tax cuts should never have happened?

You'll have to do a better job than just to claim the balanced budget years were solely a result of democrat policies. Some more time could be well spent in looking to see if the tax laws could have been sustained at the levels they were set during those years. In other words, did the Bush tax cuts avert a recession event.

Strictly speaking, no. We were in a recession in 2001 and employment, income, and industrial output remained low until 2003. I don't even understand your sustainability argument here: The economy grew too fast with higher taxes so we needed to cut taxes to rein in bubbles? I'll assume you meant that your time could well be spent investigating the Clinton and Bush tax policies, and I encourage you to do so.

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

One more telling question. If the democrats have a method to balance the budget, why are they currently spending like there is no tomorrow?

Firstly, I reject the premise of your question because it presumes that none of the current spending is an investment in future economic strength (i.e. for "tomorrow"). Secondly, do you even understand the difference between the state of the economy in 2009 vs. 1994? Can you appreciate why the same policy that seeks to pay down the debt during a booming economy would run deficits to stimulate the economy during a deep recession? (c.f. countercyclical)

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

One thing I thoroughly enjoy is a polarized discussion. I often play devils advocate even if it does not exactly align with my personal position. Instead of spending endless time taking this as a personal attack or making a vendetta of it, look at it as a chance to put forth your position in the best light possible.

You are not playing Devil's Advocate. An advocate (Devil's or otherwise) presents evidence and argues for (i.e. advocates) a position. You have claimed that the balanced budget under Clinton was the result of (in no particular order) a) loggerheads, b) Greenspan, c) the stock market, d) Republicans, and e) a general economic boom. You have not substantiated any of your claims. You have provided no evidence to either support your (shifting) positions or to contradict any positions with which you purport to disagree. You have added nothing to the conversation. You are being willfully uninformed and deliberately stupid.

Unless you choose to take the effort to justify paying further attention to you, this will be my last response to you on this thread.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Addendum: Wikipedia does a much better job than your mega-PDF at explaining things:

So, are you claiming that the Wikipedia article is a better reference than the PDF even though the Wikipedia article references it (the section headed "President's Budget-Historical Tables"), apparently favorably?

Are you proposing that the Wikipedia data are facts over which we will not argue as to their validity unless we can cite specific official sources that differ with Wikipedia? That is, any accurate citation of Wikipedia data over which there is no validity dispute will be considered a correct attribution?

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Additionally, Table 1.1 provides data on receipts, outlays, and surpluses or deficits for 1901–1939 and for earlier multi-year periods.

(Table 1.1 is the same table from which I quoted -- it also includes years after 1939, though one might not get that impression from the Wikipedia sentence, which happens not to mention those years. The Wikipedia sentence doesn't say "only".)

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by apocalypse

Unless you choose to take the effort to justify paying further attention to you, this will be my last response to you on this thread.

apocalypse, you might have wanted to leave off that part. Fusion_power might consider your withdrawal to be a desirable outcome rather than a threat. :-)

You do, of course, remain free to withdraw from the discussion at any time.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Cheesehead/Richard, please spare us the all-too-predictable grandstanding about "so-and-so can't respond to the actual question/assertion/etc, so is doing-something-or-other-annoying" polemics ... it's tiresome, you should try to hear yourself speak sometime.

You're right. I'll try to restrain myself in that regard.

then plunk down a massive PDF, as though that equates to "the truth"

Can you present a better source that is more truthful by your standards? There's actually a lot of good stuff in it, such as the explanation of intragovernmental income and collections on page 18.

I'll make it simple - show us the year-over-year "intragovernmental holdings" data during the Clinton years [No 300-plus-page PDF needed ... just a simple single table].

The PDF's Table 13.1. "CASH INCOME, OUTGO, AND BALANCES OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE TRUST FUNDS: 1936–2015", which starts on page 317 (oddly enough), seems to contain that very data. Is that the table you meant?

And instead of looking at "Debt held by the public," (or "Public Debt", depending on the source), show us the "Total National Debt"

"Gross Federal debt" is the term used in the PDF. It's defined on page 14:

Originally Posted by the PDF

Gross Federal debt is composed both of Federal debt held (owned) by the public and Federal debt
held by Federal Government accounts, which is mostly held by trust funds.

The PDF's Table 7.1, starting on page 133 (comfortably before page 300), has columns for "Gross Federal Debt" by year.

Did that really need a multi-paragraph polemical reply from you? And please spare me your silly "translation of what Ernst said" ... you think silly gibes like that impress anyone?

They'll be all I have left if you remove yourself from my audience by putting me on your ignore list.

However, as I already pledged, I'll try to restrain myself in that regard.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

I repeat my assertion: Without the bogus "revenue" resulting from raiding the social security trust fund, there would not have been and balanced/surplus budgets during the Clinton years. Yes, things were made much worse by Bushie - but both of them used accounting sleight-of-hand to make the budgets look more-balanced than they actually were.

Yes, but you may have forgotten (perhaps because I hadn't emphasized it lately) that my main fiscal point has been, for quite some time, to expose the new fiscal hypocrisy that conservatives adopted in the late 1970s, wherein they claim to continue to be better fiscal stewards than liberals (which may have been true before then), but actually act the other way around since 1980.

It's not whether Clinton budgets had a real surplus or not -- it's that the Clinton budgets were collectively far more fiscally responsible than the collective budgets of any of our last three Republican presidents, but conservatives will go to great rhetorical lengths (even so far as to characterize a simple factual statement as a "deliberate misattribution", as we've seen) to deny or obscure that, because they're marching in step with the new fiscal hypocrisy that came out of conservative think tanks in the late 1970s.

Let's look at the Gross Federal Debt (from Table 7.1) and annual changes since fiscal year 1981 (the last Carter budget):

(Note: the annual change and annual change percentage increases in the following three tables are from my own computations, not quoted from the PDF. There may be errors -- please call such to my attention.)

        Gross
Fiscal  Federal     annual
 Year   Debt        change

1981    994,828
1982  1,137,315  + 142,487
1983  1,371,660  + 234,345
1984  1,564,586  + 192,926
1985  1,817,423  + 252,837
1986  2,120,501  + 303,078
1987  2,345,956  + 225,455
1988  2,601,104  + 255,148
1989  2,867,800  + 266,696
1990  3,206,290  + 338,490
1991  3,598,178  + 391,888
1992  4,001,787  + 403,609
1993  4,351,044  + 349,257
1994  4,643,307  + 292,263
1995  4,920,586  + 277,279
1996  5,181,465  + 260,879
1997  5,369,206  + 187,741
1998  5,478,189  + 108,983
1999  5,605,523  + 127,334
2000  5,628,700  +  23,177
2001  5,769,881  + 141,181
2002  6,198,401  + 428,520
2003  6,760,014  + 561,613
2004  7,354,657  + 594,643
2005  7,905,300  + 550,643
2006  8,451,350  + 546,050
2007  8,950,744  + 499,394
2008  9,986,082  +1,035,338
2009 11,875,851  +1,889,769

Now, let's sort the lines by annual change:

        Gross
Fiscal  Federal     annual
 Year   Debt        change

2000  5,628,700  +  23,177
1998  5,478,189  + 108,983
1999  5,605,523  + 127,334
2001  5,769,881  + 141,181
1982  1,137,315  + 142,487
1997  5,369,206  + 187,741
1984  1,564,586  + 192,926
1987  2,345,956  + 225,455
1983  1,371,660  + 234,345
1985  1,817,423  + 252,837
1988  2,601,104  + 255,148
1996  5,181,465  + 260,879
1989  2,867,800  + 266,696
1995  4,920,586  + 277,279
1994  4,643,307  + 292,263
1986  2,120,501  + 303,078
1990  3,206,290  + 338,490
1993  4,351,044  + 349,257
1991  3,598,178  + 391,888
1992  4,001,787  + 403,609
2002  6,198,401  + 428,520
2007  8,950,744  + 499,394
2006  8,451,350  + 546,050
2005  7,905,300  + 550,643
2003  6,760,014  + 561,613
2004  7,354,657  + 594,643
2008  9,986,082  +1,035,338
2009 11,875,851  +1,889,769

Why, look at that! The four smallest annual increases in Gross Federal Debt since fiscal year 1981 were in years 1998-2001, all during the Clinton administration, not during any of the three most recent Republican administrations.

Let's sort them another way -- by annual percentage increase (after all, a 261B increase from 4.9T the previous year (5.30%) was a relatively lighter increase than a 255B increase from 2.3T the previous year (10.88%), wasn't it?):

         Gross    annual
Fiscal  Federal   change as
 Year   Debt      percentage

2000  5,628,700  +  0.41 %
1998  5,478,189  +  2.03 %
1999  5,605,523  +  2.32 %
2001  5,769,881  +  2.51 %
1997  5,369,206  +  3.62 %
1996  5,181,465  +  5.30 %
2007  8,950,744  +  5.91 %
1995  4,920,586  +  5.97 %
1994  4,643,307  +  6.72 %
2006  8,451,350  +  6.91 %
2002  6,198,401  +  7.43 %
2005  7,905,300  +  7.49 %
1993  4,351,044  +  8.73 %
2004  7,354,657  +  8.80 %
2003  6,760,014  +  9.06 %
1989  2,867,800  + 10.25 %
1987  2,345,956  + 10.63 %
1988  2,601,104  + 10.88 %
1992  4,001,787  + 11.22 %
2008  9,986,082  + 11.57 %
1990  3,206,290  + 11.80 %
1991  3,598,178  + 12.22 %
1984  1,564,586  + 14.07 %
1982  1,137,315  + 14.32 %
1985  1,817,423  + 16.16 %
1986  2,120,501  + 16.68 %
2009 11,875,851  + 18.92 %
1983  1,371,660  + 20.61 %

The Clinton fiscal years 1994-2001 had 8 of the 9 smallest annual percentage increases since 1981.

It's true that a decrease in Gross Federal Debt would be better than any increase at all, but Republicans keep claiming that they're better at controlling the debt than Democrats, whereas the figures show just the reverse.

Conservatives have been preying on the general public's economic ignorance for political purposes for 30 years.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Cheesehead, I challenged one of your core beliefs, i.e. that the balanced budget years were attributable to Clinton.

Let me try to explain your mistake in another way:

As you may notice in my preceding post, I am quite comfortable with the idea that all of the Clinton fiscal years had deficits, according to the accounting methods used in Table 7.1 (Not that I'm comfortable with ever-increasing debt, but that whether a particular method shows a positive or negative figure for a particular year is unimportant by itself in isolation from context.) What's important is to make fiscal comparisons on an even scale, with the same method used for all figures being compared.

So, it's not that I had a core belief that only certain accounting methods were correct, or that only the methods showing surpluses for some Clinton years were acceptable.

I suggest that you examine the reasons why you came to that mistaken assumption. Perhaps the following analysis will help.

When discussing figures from Table 13.1, which are figured according to the accounting methods usually assumed when deficits and surpluses are discussed in everyday conversation, and many online forums, they are all to be taken in the context of the accounting methods used for Table 13.1. But you failed to do that.

When I was quoting from the context of Table 13.1, you were criticizing me, as far as I can tell (because you haven't fully answered my questions), on the basis of assumed use of a different set of accounting methods. That didn't challenge any core belief of mine! It just showed your ignorance of the context in which the figures were calculated. Your insult was based on ignorance of accounting context, apparently. (You're free to offer some other explanation, if you wish.)

Most of us human beings respond very aggressively to challenges to our core beliefs.

... or, as you show, sometimes stubbornly when we refuse to acknowledge that there's more than one way to look at things, and our assumptions about another's point of view may be mistaken.

Your response is a bit more erratic than most.

If you mean "more erratic than the responses of most people responding to a challenge of their core beliefs", might that be because you were mistaken about my core beliefs, and thus about what I was responding to, so that my response wasn't quite so congruent to your mistakenly-assumed model of those responding to challenges of core beliefs?

The reason I cannot and will not apologize is that I do not accept your core belief.

Should you ever deign to admit that you might have made an incorrect assumption about my core belief, would you consider taking time to re-check your assumptions the next time you think you're challenging someone's core belief?

In other words, I do NOT attribute the balanced budget to Clinton,

"In other words" implies that you're simply restating something -- that you don't agree with my "core belief", in this case.

But you were mistaken -- that ("attribute the balanced budget to Clinton") is not any restatement of my core belief, because you didn't bother taking any time to determine whether your assumption about my core belief was correct.

rather I point out events that he did not control as having a far greater impact on the balanced budget.

Fine, but those events were outside the context of the accounting methods used to produce the surplus figures I quoted. You seem to have been so intent on pushing your interpretation that you failed to consider that we could have been, at least temporarily, operating from two different contexts, so that my statement about "result" was not any misattribution at all because it was never intended to apply to the context you were assuming.

That failure was one thing; your arrogance in posting an insult based on the supposition that you hadn't made any mistake was quite another.

To take a side trip on this thread, consider that Clinton tried hard to get a health care bill passed. His health care proposals, if they had been passed, would have totally wiped out the budget surplus.

Did you even notice that when you made that statement, you switched contexts, to one that matched the context of my statement that you termed a "deliberate misattribution"?

In your first context, there were no Clinton surpluses. But in this second context of yours, there are Clinton surpluses which can be wiped out!

First, you're insisting that there were no surpluses (and my statement to the contrary was a "deliberate misattribution"!!), then you're talking about existing surpluses that could be wiped out.

Did you deliberately misattribute yourself when you said the same thing I did? No. The insult applied only to me, because you didn't like what I was saying.

But that contradiction didn't alert you to the fact that you had just switched between your first context (in which my "result" statement was a "deliberate misattribution"), which didn't match mine, and a different context that did match mine (in which my "result" statement was simply factual and true), did it?

My position is and will continue to be that Clinton was effectively countered by a republican congress. Clinton had no choice but to submit a balanced budget

Look at that!

You're continuing to speak from a context in which Clinton did submit balanced budgets, only a short time after you accused me of a "deliberate misattribution" because I posted a statement that Clinton submitted balanced budgets!

You accuse me of "deliberate misattribution" when I speak of Clinton balanced budgets, then you speak of them yourself only a short while later!!!

Are you beginning, just beginning, to see why you owe me some big apologies? (Not just for the insult -- both words, please -- but also for your multiple subsequent refusals to acknowledge your mistakes even though I tried several different ways of explaining myself to you)

Or are you now going to post some further explanation to try to deny your responsibility for your own words?

As any politician can tell you, spin is all important to public perception.

... and now that you've spun my reputation with the slander that I'm someone who deliberately misattributes, and offered excuse after excuse for not admitting your mistake, what do you think is an appropriate set of actions for you to take, DarSpinner?

I'm waiting.