Deficit
 

Okay, so lets get this straight........im getting from several reliable sources that ive been searching tonight, anywhere from 157 billion to almost 700 billion in the deficit that bush has run up, ((i support him btw, on everything but this))

I do beleive that more than likely this what seems like random spitting out of numbers....even though they may be true, will cost him the re-election campaign unless the economy picks up and fast. Which actually all indicators, lagging, current, and leading, are all showing.

A problem i see though, is allan greenspan.....he has been rather spastic since late clinton days, ((he did his best not only to cap but from his actions speaking for him...maybe even reverse the economic boom))and untill very recently to save his job....has practiced an extremely tight money policy. Now that he is franticly trying to lower interest rates again, the economy is rebounding...funny how that works. Couple that with the almost 100 billion spent in direct relation to 9/11 and increasing military costs as a result of the war on terror...and apparently dictators....and a congress that mindlessly approves of all of it....and you get a real economic situation on your hands, all parts of govt. are which to blame for it.

If you havent guessed, i dont like the FED exsisting.....its stupid to try and control spending........all this worry about inflation, if you really understood what inflation was you would realize its a good thing, all inflation means is that everyone is making so much money, that businesses think its safe to raise prices across the board. And business doesnt take very big risks. I really dislike the feds meddling. What i hate even more is partisian spending, even if it is on my side.

I agree on the deficit thing. I can't say I support Bush (I'm not even of voting age), but I know that the deficit won't help us much...

Inflation is not really as great as you make it out to be. Economy at least in part has to run on the affordability of products. Business will charge what the market will bear. This means that the price is already stretched out. Inflation in prices without any inflation in salary limits consumer spending power, thus hurting the economy as people cut down to make ends meet. Interest rate control is a vital part of a money policy, whether low to encourage investment as in the United States or high to encourage saving as in Britain. The market should be as open as it can be without pricing itself out of the average person's hands. As individual business plays with variations on rates for higher profits, the collective result is economic slowdown, which is completely natural. Current economic indicators are pointing down. Of course they are! There was just a large economic boom time in which a lot of people bought a lot of big-ticket items on credit. The country is beginning to pay down debts. Good money policy (which I am not convinced the Fed is practising now) will prevent huge "stagflation" problems.

Actually the economic indicators are pointing up, earnings are comming back higher than expected through most of the DOW and NASDAQ, unemployment is going down and the stock market is gradually climbing back to 10,000. Ideally you dont want to have inflation or deflation, but im glad that we naturally go to inflation instead of deflation, since companies cant push prices too far unless they want to go out of business and deflation means that people dont earn as much which is why prices have to be lowered. The only reason business lower prices as a whole is because they research what the average person makes and it goes down drasticly, businesses will not raise prices on thier products until either A: They are SURE that people can afford it, or B: supply fails to meet demand, this means that Inflation on the whole is a positive economic indicator....not to be confused with hyper-inflation, where the govt. prints too much money, that is bad. the natural inflation im talking about is a good thing.

Well, at least we don't have the bad kind of deficit. Most of that money we owe to ourselves. It's when a country racks up foreign debt problems arise.

To prevent a defecit, you must spend less than your income. (If you argue with me on this go back to basic arithmatic. If your negative is greater than your positive your end product is a negative.) Most republicans seem to forget this when they decide to lower taxes. I have oftened wonder how bush plans to pay for all his programs after the chunk of money going to keep our interests in Iraq.

Inflation is not a good thing. It inhibits long term savings as the money people have invested is devalued. We all know the story of how in Grampa’s day a coke was half a penny or something, which is sad when you consider that he has to live off of his savings because decades of careful savings for him has become pocket change. For the rest of us to, it is rather annoying to have your earnings devalued because of the macroeconomic events around you.

Granted, it’s better than deflation. I’d find it much more bothersome for the things I own to be devalued rather than my money, especially if we’re talking about houses and the like. Also, you can’t really do anything with the interest rate to help things either. What are you going to do? Try imposing a negative interest rate? It’d be nice if our currency was actually tied to something like gold again. That way, at least in gold, your labor would always be worth the same amount so that it doesn’t feel like your work is being devalued after you do it.

Inflation just means that the value of money is going down. That is ONLY good if wages are rising too. Ever heard of Stagflation, where unemployment rises and prices go up? That's never supposed to happen (but it has), and it's an extremely difficult problem to handle.

Also, Inflation is bad in large doses. Now, I'm not talking about Hyperinflation (That's like 1000% increase a week. Happened in the Soviet Union), I'm talking about a big upswing. When you have a big upswing, it will ALWAYS come back down, sometimes lower than before, sometimes higher.

Inflation is not a good thing or bad thing, neither is deflation. It's just something that happens. Hyperinflation, Depression, THOSE are bad things.

The reason inflation is good is when you understand why money is worth less...sure thats all inflation means, but you have to understand why your money is worth less...it is infact worth the same in all the other countries,...just not here...which is why you can buy so much in other countries with american dollars, its worth less here because prices and wages have both gone up(in ideal circumstances) and prices have to be adjusted to maintain the percentage of profit...and thus a dollar is worth less percentage of what everyone makes so it seems like its worth less ..but actually everywhere else it is worth the same, it only actually decreases in value if the cause of the inflation is a result of over-printing money and unfortunately that happens a lot


. And the way you pay for things when you lower taxes is the fact that you create more businesses to take taxes from. me you and joe bob down the street dont pay taxes, the top 10 percent of wage earners pay 94 percent of all tax revenue. When you lower taxes, you make it easier for the people that do keep this country running to open businesses, additionally it helps that if you owe yourself money....that you LOWER the interest rates ((*growls in the general direction of allan greenspan*)). When you lower the interest rate, you lower the interest we have to pay on the national debt.((with how high the national debt is that is really all we can afford to pay right now))when you lower the interest, you can start chipping away at what you actually owe, and when you do that you also lower interest. But it seems to me that it isnt a case of allan greenspan not knowing this,...its that for some reason he acts like he doesnt WANT us to pay of the national debt. Everytime the economy picks up not only does he not leave interest rates alone...he RAISES them...."to prevent evil inflation" totally defeating any chance for there to be room in the budget to pay off more than just the interest.

the differences in numbers comes from the fact that the Deficit is the amount of revenue subtracted from the amount of spending.

but they are only GUESSING at revenue. they won't really know how much they'll take in this year until sometime after they process all the tax forms sent in after April 15th.


anyway, deficit projections are going down because the expected revenue estimations are going up, with all the new reports of increased economic activity.


Not that the government should be spending that much anyway.