Mitt Romney's candidacy

Jack21222

Santorum swept Romney in todays primaries/caucuses. Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri all went to Santorum. Romney is only at 16.9% in Minnesota, behind Ron Paul at 27.1 and Santorum at 45.0 (with 88% of the precincts reporting).

In Missouri, Santorum won every county in the state, scoring 55% to Romney's 23%.

Colorado was closer; Santorum scored 40% while Romney scored 35%.

Looks like the "anybody but Romney" vote is strong.

ThomasT

This makes no sense to me. The government doesn't spend more than it has. It's just that revenues from taxes, etc. don't cover the budget, so it has to borrow. The money that it borrows is money that it has.

The cost of living is continually increasing. Artificially so. This is called inflation. The wages and salaries of the mass of American workers increase at a slower rate than inflation. Therefore, the buying power of the mass of Americans, the aggregated demand wrt the general economy, continually decreases.

WhoWee

Let's re-cap then - if local people spend their money locally - the buying power of the local economy is eroded - is that correct?

Jasongreat

So the answer to governmental monetary inflation, is governmental wage inflation?

Why dont we kill two birds with one stone, and keep our government in check? I would like to see a law that prohibits inflation, then the minimum wage could disappear as well. Inflation is nothing more than theft, If I have 10,000 dollars in the bank, and the government inflates the dollar by 1%, I have been robbed of 100 dollars. Granted I still have the same 10,000 dollars, but I can only purchase 9,900 dollars worth of product. We can keep this misery-go-round going, government makes our money worth less, then turns around and increases our wage by the same amount, are we not in the same situation as before?

ThomasT

Wow, that's sort of surprising.

Jack21222

Even more surprising than Santorum's victories is the margin of those victories. Romney at 17%? Those are the numbers you'd expect from some fringe candidate.

WhoWee

It seems to me that if the Government has to borrow money - it's because they spent more than they had at the time the took out a loan - correct?

ThomasT

Raising the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation wouldn't be inflation.

Wage and price controls have been tried before. The federal government simply doesn't have enough power to make it work. It isn't the government that causes inflation. It's the greed of business owners.

ThomasT

No. It's that they anticipate having to spend more money than they currently have to spend. So, they take out a loan.

Jack21222

A law that prevents prices from rising? Are you high? What kind of iron-fisted dictatorship do you think we're living in.

I haven't payed attention to this little side conversation you guys have been having, but a law to "prohibit inflation" sounds batcrap crazy to me.

ThomasT

The essential point of the discussion is whether the federal government can do anything to reduce healthcare costs. Ie., how that might be done.

Jasongreat

Really? So if I go borrow a million dollars, I have a million dollars? Doesnt liability enter in the calculations at some point?

When the government borrows money, it steals from future taxpayers, or it prints money and inflates the dollar, which steals from current tax payers. A dollar doesnt have to be inflated, but the argument that because government inflates the dollar, government also has to inflate the cost of labor is ridiculous.

ThomasT

Well ... yeah.

Yes, but you'd still have the million dollars. Wouldn't you?

Inflation refers to increases in the cost of goods and services. The government doesn't control this (for the most part). It's a function of players in any market charging prices that they think the market will sustain.

Jasongreat

It would not neccessarily keep prices from rising, it would keep prices from rising without added value though. Do we get more, from a house that costs 5000 dollars, like they cost in the twenties, or the same house which now costs 500,000 dollars? sure it makes us feel better having big values in the bank, although once we start spending it disappears just as quick. I dont understand our love affair with inflation, does it help having a million dollars that will only buy 10,000 dollars worth of goods? Or could we accomplish the same thing by keeping the 10000 dollars buying 10,000 dollars worth of goods?

Jasongreat

Not once I paid off the loan, and interest, I would have a loss of the interest, which would cause me to end up worse off than when I started. If I could invest the money into the market and get a high enough return to pay the interest and to make up for the amount government inflated my dollars during the same time, I could make a profit. The problem comes when it is government borrowing the money, since there is no hope of a return on our investment, governments are liabilities, not assets. In fact arent those things we place under the umbrella of government, there because in the free market a return on investment is warranted, therefore if we have things which cannot profit, they become governments duty to provide those services?

ThomasT

Apparently you've never owned a business. Suppose you're charging, say, $5 for a certain thing and you think that you can raise the price to, say, $5.49 and maintain the same sales volume. So, you try it and find that you can maintain the same sales volume at the increased price. That's inflation. Now, if you've cornered the market on some essential commodity, then you can pretty much charge whatever you want for it. That's where a certain sort of government regulation comes in -- to prevent the charging of exorbitant prices for things. Unfortunately, the government is sometimes part of the mechanism that maintains artificially (ie., not market driven) high prices on things.

WhoWee

I have owned businesses - most of the time I raise prices because my operating expenses increase - usually labor, utilities, and cost of goods sold.