Look at this great economy! Look at that 5% growth!

[kentuck]

Re-elect the Repubs if you want that to continue. Unfortunately the 5% growth is in areas and in the pockets of people that are most likely not like yourself? With the price of gasoline, I would guess a large proportion of that 5% growth might be in the oil industry? Just a guess?

There was an interesting call-in to C-SPAN a few days ago - some economist said he had George Bush Jr in a couple of his classes. Also, he said you could get a pretty fair estimate of the inflation rate by taking the first number in the price of oil and multiplyng by 1.5%. That means the present inflation rate would be about 11%. Sounds about right to me. But we've got 5% growth. OK?

[Sammy Pepys]

1. Did you get the name of that economist?

That honestly doesn't sound like a very reliable way of calculating inflation.

[kentuck]

2. He said he taught at the "B" School...

Whatever that is?? However, it does make sense because the price of oil affects the price of almost everything else we might buy.

[MADem]

4. Harvard Business School, where Munkee went?? NT

[Sammy Pepys]

7. So...

If the price of oil is $30 per X, then the inflation rate is 4.5%?

[kentuck]

16. That was his theory...

He said he had studied it for many years.. I thought it was interesting.

[Hugin]

18. I for one think it's pretty accurate...

Heuristics are usually a good start and with all of the doctored
data we've been given lately it's the only data available.

[Sammy Pepys]

21. I just don't buy it...

If his idea is legitimate, then you should be able to look at an historical inflation chart and figure the price of oil during any recorded time period relatively accurately using that formula. I don't think the results would bear out. I would imagine he would have had to have found some significant historic validation to come to the 1.5 conclusion, but I can't think of any place where he would have found it. Without any name or further information about this guy, I think he's probably just pulling numbers out of the air.

[kentuck]

24. "...just pulling numbers out of the air."?

unlike most economists? :)

[Hugin]

25. Not that far back into history...

It wasn't until fairly recently that gasoline/energy prices became a large
factor in any individual family.

How far back does that go? 10 years? 20? I'd say at the outside the late '70s.

[kentuck]

33. The inflation under Gerald Ford was directly tied to oil prices...

Remember his WIN buttons? Whip Inflation Now? Then the inflation under Carter was also tied directly to the oil prices. As I recall, under Ford, gas prices went up to about .65 or .70 cents a gallon. that was almost a doubling in prices. Then under Carter, as I recall, they almost doubled again? Perhaps someone has those actual numbers?

[Hugin]

37. I seem to remember that scenario as well...

I know about the "WIN" buttons.

[underpants]

3. 5% growth, Bob is one happy guy

[Hugin]

13. .

LOL! Cut that out! :7

[texasleo]

46. lol

[NYC]

5. Bush was in Chicago this a.m., and said jobs had increased there.

He also said, if I heard correctly:

"We can't provide the jobs for the 21st century. They're gonna go somewhere else."

And I think I heard this correctly:

"I'm a realisticker."

I can't remember in response to what. He had complained that people had asked him hypothetical questions. That may be when he said he was a "realisticker." I don't swear, but I think that's what he said.

[jeff30997]

6. "I'm a realisticker."

Yeah he's a blood sucking leech alright!

[NYC]

8. Did you hear about the Lone Star ticks?

I'm not kidding. Announced on the radio this morning that Lone Star ticks have arrived in Long Island from the southeast.

They are more aggressive than regular ticks. They actively seek the person, and do not wait for someone to brush up against grass, branches, etc.

Lone Star tick = realisticker = GWB.

[rman]

9. "We're going to provide the jobs for the 21st century. Just not over here"

That's what i hear him say.

[NYC]

11. Same concept. No jobs here.

I wrote it down shortly after I heard it, but I was working, so may have gotten it wrong.

[rman]

14. Sorry, my bad

It's just an interpretation of what you posted.

[NYC]

23. But the words may have been slightly different.

I find it difficult to sustain attention while he is speaking. I drift in and out.

Did you hear him say he was a realisticker? I could swear he said that.

[rman]

45. i didn't hear him speak, but i think the interesting thing is

(assuming that you're accurate enough)
...the interesting thing is that he first tells a positive message, one of hope (more jobs now) - followed by a negative message, one of despair (not enough jobs in the future). Two conflicting messages both in the same breath, no explanation as to how both can be true.

It's like giving a child a piece of candy, follow by a sudden threatening gesture as though you're going to hit the child. It's similar to "be very afraid of the terrorists, now continue shopping".
Kind of sociopathic behavior.

[NYC]

48. Sociopathic.

That's precisely what he seems to be.

I think the part about jobs for the 21st century being somewhere else was one of his truthful slips.

[kenny blankenship]

10. Under the paradigm endorsed and promoted by BOTH parties he's correct

providing jobs in the usual sense of manufacturing/low skilled sector work is over. We threw out the conditions that allowed for that as a policy objective of government when we pushed for globalization--that's to say, when we destroyed the sovereignty of nation states in favor of corporations and made borders transparent to the movement of capital and goods. At that threshhold, which covered the eighties and nineties, the political elite jettisoned anyone in America who was not also a practicing capitalist, or content to be their salaried middlemanagement vassal. The American worker who won two world wars for his masters, and even a third cold war against an ideology which purportedly threatened the private property rights of factory owners, was fed to the sharks as soon as the danger from world communism had passed.
To turn the clock back on this change would require literal revolutions.

[NYC]

12. That saddens me.

"To turn the clock back on this change would require literal revolutions."

People in the U.S. are placid and complacent. Will they slide into poverty quietly and acceptingly?

[Nimrod2005]

15. Did you see the report about population is the US exploding and in Japan

and I think Europe it is decreasing?


Few years from now, we will look more like Mexico!

[NYC]

19. Did they say why the population is exploding in the U.S?

Was it immigration or the birth rate?

[Nimrod2005]

20. Both --- Immigration and births to people who are first generation

Americans...Recent immigrants, mostly hispanics.

[Alcibiades]

17. A strange kind of poverty

They (we) will still make enough to buy food and lots of it, pay $50-$75/month for cable, rent DVDs and sit on the couch. More important than material poverty is the poverty of the soul this engenders.

Americans invented the TV remote. we're too lazy to get up to change the channel--why would anyone think we can organize for real change? The cable will have to be out first.

[Nimrod2005]

22. We are not about to change anything --- The fattest people/country

in the world and the happiest, happy as in we can buy whatever we like, cars, toys, TVs, IPods...etc.


May never ever change!!!

[Hugin]

26. The party will last until Daddy takes the Credit Card away...

Then there'll be some serious belt tightening.

[Nimrod2005]

36. Daddy is China....Being China, they don't just take the CC away, they

will put a bullet in your head and sell your organs to the highest bidder!!!

I recently saw a documentary/story about how they kill prisoners and sell their organs to "Organ Tourists," including many Americans who go there for transplants.

[Hugin]

38. If that eventuality doesn't wake people up...

I don't know what will.

:scared:

[kenny blankenship]

27. I don't know what they'll do

but I'd say the apearance of a complacent surface is misleading. Aside from the Bush coup d'etat itself, which was perhaps its crowning achievement, (or a denoument to the acting out of regicide against Clinton) the most important political development of the last 15 or 20 years has been the emergence of a Republican party that is unabashedly rural, proudly backwards looking, anti-cosmopolitan, anti-urban, anti-minority, and so militant in its rhetoric that the only next level possible for it is open bloodshed. Red state anger is, one could argue, largely a displaced anger at stagnation and decline in their own economic well-being. They see the more affluent blue state way of life as beamed into their homes by television year after year and it pisses them off. Then demogogues in the pulpit and hate radio provide a direction for that anger. It's not world economic trends that are passing them by, it's not that their gov't doesn't have a policy of promoting job growth domestically, it's not their own lack of good schools or the barabarous state of healthcare in our nation that puts them behind the 8ball economically, it's ALL the fault of those bluestaters--those immigrants, those feminazis, those coloreds, those homosexuals and Jews. Those Democrat groups and foreigners and deviants are the cause of our economic woes, because they're weakening the country on purpose. They're why we can't get ahead!
Ironically of course, the real beneficiaries of redstate rage are not the redstate voting base of the GOP but rather the economic elites of the bi-coastal blue states. Redstaters chasing Republican phantoms vehemently lower their income and estate taxes so they (the already-rich of the bluestates) can buy more Mercedes, bigger yachts, vacation homes in the Caribbean and the Rockies.

[NYC]

28. Is that really the way they see it?

...They see the more affluent blue state way of life as beamed into their homes by television year after year and it pisses them off. Then demogogues in the pulpit and hate radio provide a direction for that anger. It's not world economic trends that are passing them by, it's not their own lack of good schools or the barabarous state of healthcare in our nation that puts them behind the 8ball economically, it's ALL the fault of those bluestaters--those immigrants, those feminazis, those coloreds, those homosexuals and Jews. Those Democrat groups and foreigners and deviants are the cause of our economic woes, because they're weakening the country on purpose. They're why we can't get ahead!...

Firstly, I have always thought that television causes jealousy. It looks as though everyone else has luxurious things. Those who can't keep up with that feel that they are deprived, or at least living far below the norm. I suspect this may even contribute to theft.

I don't have much contact with red staters. Do they truly feel the blue states are the cause of their poverty, etc?

P.S. As a New Yorker, I am often amused by the luxurious and spacious NYC apartments depicted in movies. Very few of us live like that.

[Hugin]

31. I as a fly-over will answer that question...

>Do they truly feel the blue states are the cause of their poverty, etc?
Not the blue-states per se... But, the 'values' portrayed as being part of
the blue states by those who are taking advantage of the situation.

It is an unspoken 'truth' among those I've conversed with.

[NYC]

32. Thanks.

I'm not sure I understand it, but I suppose there is quite a disparity that I don't understand.

I suppose the red staters primarily don't like our social values, such as gay marriage. Gay marriage does not in any way impoverish red staters. Is their anger regarding our soical values so intense that they would blame us for their woes (poverty, etc.) simply because they are angry?

Edit:

To summarize, is there cause and effect? Or is there just misdirected anger?

[Hugin]

40. I'll try to clarify my answer...

They are angry and because they're angry everyone must be angry.

So, I'd say it's misdirected anger... But, it's misdirection is being directed
by those who have something to gain by misdirecting it.

They know they're working harder and harder for less and less... They don't know
why so they look around for a reason. Lo' and Behold there's this guy out there
who they are led to believe is "just like them". This guy is pointing out things
and saying... "There! That Homosexual Marriage/Illegal Immigrant/Other is the
cause of your pain. Put me where I can fix it for you."

[NYC]

41. Thanks, so I guess

misdirected anger sums it up.

I know their misdirected anger is being "directed" by Rush Limbaugh, etc.

Thanks for your answer.

P.S. The same things that affect them affect us. The economy is going downhill here, as well. I suppose the difference is we don't blame the red staters; we blame the politicians for outsourcing, shifting costs, etc.

[Hugin]

42. In your P.S...

You say... "The same things that affect them affect us".

Very true... That's why who controls the message delivered by the mass media
is so important. The red state people are hearing "It's the politicians." But,
they're also hearing it's the Democratic Politicians.

[NYC]

43. Do they just accept that at face value?

Do they not check how politicians vote, etc? For instance, Newt Gingrich was saying all sorts of horrible things about NY, but when you looked at the figures, Georgia took in 3 times as many federal dollars as they paid in federal tax, whereas NY pays more than we get, effectively subsidizing states like Georgia. Do they just listen to someone like Gingrich, and not bother with facts and figures?

[Hugin]

29. Good assessment of the situation.

Pretty much sums it up.

[Tactical Progressive]

44. Very well said

The capitalist reality, the history, and the broken social contract in context - "The American worker who won ... a cold war against an ideology which purportedly threatened the private property rights of factory owners, was fed to the sharks as soon as the danger from world communism had passed."

You are probably, unfortunately right about revolution. Let's hope it's a political revolution.

[LSK]

30. i heard that caller

I was wondering when they were going to cut him off but they let him finish.

[kentuck]

34. I think when he said he had taught Jr in a couple of classes....?

they assumed he had enough credibility to listen to for a bit?

[LSK]

35. maybe they wanted to hear his formula

They usually cut off callers, I was waiting for them to cut him off but they didnt.

[Ksec]

39. Repubs trying to convince us its a good economy

They spend 90% of their time trying to tell Americans that they arent smart enough to know how great things are. Like we cant see the bills pilin up and our wages gone stagnant. We arent smart enough to see our own realities.

[Ravy]

47. Here is what I don't understand.

It seems to me that the government has incurred MASSIVE DEFICITS during the Bush term. This is essentially borrowed money (from the Chinese) that we spend predominately in the United States - paying salaries for new government workers (TSA), defense contractors, etc.

You can live really well for a while if you max out your credit cards. How much of this economic "bump" is a direct result of spending money we didn't have?

That is the figure I would like to see.

[kentuck]

49. I would think it would have the same Keynesian effect as...

any other government spending.

Coupled with the taxcuts, it gives the appearance that the taxcuts are spurring the economy, when in fact it is the huge deficit spending that is spurring the economy. The taxcuts by themselves would probably have a negative impact, thus discrediting the entire conservative philosophy. That is why they always manage to spend like drunken sailors whenever they cut taxes. The more taxes are cut, the more deficit spending is needed...