Comments on: Can America grow its way out of its debt problems? No

By: tosenton

tosenton — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:09:27 +0000

Your logic is faulty re: averaging GDP growth since 1970. It would be like saying that a baseball player’s average batting average over 20 years was .300 when the reality is that his average was robust in his first 10 years and weak in his second 10 years:

First five years average: .340
Second five years average: .320
Third five years average: .290
Fourth five years average: .260

No major league baseball team would view this player as a .300 hitter in his last 10 years and if his agent was pedaling him as such he would be laughed out of every General Manager’s office in the league. The US economy is no different. The more robust 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s have nothing to do with today’s economy. And that history cannot be pulled forward to make today’s economy look better than it really is.

By: tosenton

tosenton — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:57:16 +0000

Your assumption that Real US GDP growth has averaged 3.0%+ growth since 1970 is a naive and incorrect assumption because the the rate of GDP growth has greatly diminished each decade since the 1960s. You can’t average inflated numbers from forty years ago with smaller numbers over the last 20 years and call that an accurate view of GDP growth. It is not. To prove my point, here are the average Real GDP growth rates by decade since the 1960s:
1960s: 4.44%
1970s: 3.26%
1980s: 3.05%
1990s: 3.20% (warped by two years of +5.0 fabricated and unnatural growth in 1998 and 1999)
2000s: 1.69%

Your view is simplistic and incorrect when an economy’s growth rates are fading.

By: limapie

limapie — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:12:35 +0000

Privatize Social Security? Are you nuts?

You’d let the likes of the Wall Street Hedge Funds get
their corrupt hands on all that money? Hey, you think
the government is bad…OM goodness, OM goodness!

The dipping problem can be solved. Enact a law to halt this nonsense and make
sure Presidents like Obama can’t decide for themselves
if they’ll defend it or not.

By: limapie

limapie — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:50:21 +0000

So, are you alluding to something being done about healthcare prices and drain on society’s fiscal solvency?
I can’t understand….the “elephant has been in the room!” for the past decade.
Healthcare is “killing” us with how this industry greeds so. Yet, nothing, nothing is even coming close to being proposed to stop this hog. Why?

Mitt Romney knows people will start pointing fingers at
HCA, that is why he (and the other privates) got HCA to float bonds last fall, piled the bond money into their own personal pockets, and NOW are having HCA (all laden with debt) sell stock to public investors, so they can cover the bond liability.
Then, let the mammoth corp get pinched. No skin off
this presidential hopeful’s back. Move on to the nation, and milk over there in new grass.

Will there be a place on this earth that this snake and gang will be able to live that isn’t ruined, dashed, milked, and ripped?

By: pduggan

pduggan — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:48:06 +0000

We can-in fact we must-grow our way out of the current debt. But we must implement entitlement reform to deal with the $100 Trillion and growing entitlement liabilities.

Gradual privatization of Social Security, and all other pension schemes, is essential.

Rule number one is you can’t let politicians have access to your retirement funds. They steal it and spend it every time. It is the scandal of our lifetimes and I can’t figure out why they aren’t being prosecuted for it. In the private sector you’d go to jail. They’ve done a very good job of hiding the mess they’ve made and transferring blame.