Obama's Candidacy

HowardVAgnew

It should not be news to anyone who has followed Obama and Biden since the campaign days:

Faith Based Initiatives, a carryover from the Bush era, seeks to "theocratize" social services by replacing, say, government-run non-religious homeless shelters with church-run mission shelters funded by taxpayers. It replaces a genuine social safety network with subsidized religious organizations ... I lived in a mission shelter for a few months and while I was grateful for a shower and a bed to sleep on, I was effectively barred from getting work by rules which required attendance of 2-hour religious services three times per day and was required to work in exchange for the room and board, bundling magazines for recycling. While that seems fair, consider the shelter, being religious, pays no taxes, the operators of the shelter had no other source of funds yet were able to maintain expensive clothes and a late-model expensive car from the money they personally pocketted from a combination of donations to the shelter and the recycling operation they ran with essentially free labor. I had been promised that I did not actually need to be Christian myself, but I was very loudly and verbally chastized when I answered a question yelled loudly at me whether I am Christian.

As for Biden: He voted to support the "Defense of Marriage Act" in 1996, and several times throughout the presidential campaign of 2008 said he would support a federal-level ban on gay marriage.

Do you need more clarification?

HowardVAgnew

Spending on social safety network programs is at among its lowest in decades, and the results are devastating. The Lasseiz-faire economic doctrine (the notion that everyone is better off if the market is free of taxes and regulation; by some interpretations by also prohibiting organized labor and not providing any social safety network and nothing owned by 'the public') has been tried many times. Child labor laws, ending company stores, breaking up monopolies like Standard Oil and AT&T, raising and implementing taxes, Roosevelt's New Deal and Kennedy's Medicare and Medicaid all chipped away at the "anything for profit is allowed" lasseiz-faire doctrine pushed by conservatives like Ron Paul. Another popular name for it is "trickle-down" economic theory ... under Reagan and W. Bush, taxes were cut and promised to equate to more jobs and more tax revenue because businesses would have more money to hire people and thus would hire more people and magically create new tax revenue at the same time, but both times (and previous attempts in previous administrations) it failed. Further, despite raising taxes several times, the economy actually improved under Clinton; if the lasseiz-faire/trickle down theory were correct, that should be impossible. The reality of economics is whatever is allowed to generate wealth will be exploited and in the end, the highest profit for the lowest expense will defeat any differing way (such as responsibility in avoiding negative externalities) without some sort of watch dog, and the overall well-being of a society is not so much weather it has a few very wealthy people, but whether the needs of the many are met.

WhoWee

Your clarification is fine - now - can you support?

WhoWee

Please support - my bold.

DrClapeyron

I would vote for Obama if it weren't for a coworker's constant political talk. Is it me or do people who claim to be apolitical bring up politics more than anyone else? That and Obama never made the bank executives take a drug test when he gave them their welfare checks.

WhoWee

It seems that every business owner (over the past 2-3 years) I talk with wants to discuss Obamacare and politics in general. Further, my industry is (currently) absolutely obsessed with politics.

Gokul43201

From what I've seen, welfare spending has been roughly flat (say a 5-10 yr moving average) since the Nixon/Ford era, and tracks well with unemployment rate (Fig 2). So spending spikes during recessions and drops during better times. And this has happened through Dem and Rep administrations as well as Dem and Rep Congresses. If Fig 1 is close to correct for 2011 spending (it may not be), welfare spending is near a local maximum, not terribly unusual, given the depth of the recent recession and financial crisis.

Fig 1: Federal welfare spending as a fraction of GDP (numbers beyond 2010 are projections)


Fig 2: US unemployment rate

mheslep

I think welfare spending in constant dollars, per head (not pct GDP), tells me more of the picture.



Welfare spending per person is at an all time high, at the federal level double what it was back in 2000. I agree spending does tend to spike with recessions ('79-80, '90-91, '01, and '08), though nothing like now, even though unemployment in '80 was just as bad/worse.

State

Gokul43201

I guess the difference is because GDP has generally been growing much faster than the population. I think both figures are useful to look at. The spending vs GDP plot tells you something about government frugality (or lack thereof) in the context of welfare spending, while the per capita plot tells you about the benefits to recipients. So it's possible for the government to actually spend less (over time) as a fraction of GDP, and still have more money available for individuals to make the best of bad times. That sounds to me like the way to go, at least for the next few years.

WhoWee

I have to wonder if someone forgot to brief the President? On March 1, 2012 President Obama assured union supporters:
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/...esidency-ends/

"Obama: I’ll Buy A Chevy Volt After My Presidency Ends"

But, over the weekend there was a different type of announcement:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/bu...volt.html?_r=1

"General Motors said on Friday that it planned to halt production of the Chevrolet Volt for five weeks beginning later this month because dealers had more than they needed.

The suspension, which will result in temporary layoffs for 1,300 workers at the Detroit plant that builds the Volt, is another troubling sign for the plug-in hybrid, whose sales fell short of G.M.’s targets in 2011. G.M. officials had already backed away from projections that they could sell 45,000 Volts in the United States this year, instead saying that production would match demand. "

Congressman Darrell Issa said this about the announcement.:
"“Even as gas prices continue to climb, President Obama’s attempt to manipulate the free market and force consumers into purchasing electric vehicles like the G.M. Volt has failed,” Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, said in a statement. “Now some 1,300 workers will pay the price for this misguided experiment.”"

IMO - certainly hope the plant is operational in November 2012.

mheslep

Those seem to be extraordinarily dumb comments by both the President and Rep Issa. Obama in one sentence ties all of his political opposition to the Volt. And for Issa he needs to consider that there might well have been no plant jobs at all without that Volt plant, and not just a five week outage.

daveb

Agreed. Not only that, how excactly is Obama "forcing" people to buy a Volt?

Office_Shredder

I'm confused. What's wrong with Obama's comment exactly? He's going to buy a Volt, but apparently it isn't super popular so his credibility as a President is dinged?

skeptic2

Did unemployment really reach 11% under Reagan?

WhoWee

The President has (IMO) funded the Volt with taxpayer funds - including the GM bailout and tax credits for EV's. I think a few stimulus dollars were also spent developing charging stations - not certain? The failure (to meet sales expectations) of the $41,000 EV that travels 25 (?) miles on a charge - absolutely "dings" him.

Office_Shredder

Yes.

mheslep

I meant the other way around: it won't impact Obama it will impact the car sales (IMO). Assuming for the moment the country is 50:50 split on liking/disliking Obama, I posit that the like-half won't be moved at all on decision to buy the car. Not true for the dislike-half. The Chevy Volt is early yet and still in the definition stage of American iconography, unlike (say) an F150 or a Prius. That is, now that he's said he'll buy the car, it's fair game to be called the ObamaCar just like the AHCA is ObamaCare. If he was an immensely popular president, a Reagan, an FDR, maybe this would be to the good for Chevy. As it is, I imagine Chevy sales managers are pulling their hair out.

I guess that most politicians, who are as a lot somewhat arrogant, nonetheless get this kind of thing: not to hang their political fortunes around the neck of some nascent private enterprise or product. That Obama doesn't is yet another comment on the man's immense self regard that has been so evident in his me-myself-and-I laden speeches.