OT: Some really bad news for the local economy | Page 3 | Syracusefan.com

OT: Some really bad news for the local economy

Hmm - looks like they received plenty of incentives and pledged to stay 30 years in 1996 to stay. They are talking about moving jobs to Owego which is NYS.

From the P-S article below on Lockheed. Guess in addition to those incentives I guess the $1 leased proved too much. :)

"But Lockheed has steadily reduced its workforce at Electronics Park in Salina since 2011 as the federal government began making deep spending cuts on defense programs.

Employment remained steady at about 2,300 people from 1996 through 2011, but several rounds of layoffs since then reduced the workforce in Salina to about 1,700 this summer.

Lockheed Martin agreed with New York state in 1996 to maintain employment at a minimum of 1,500 for 30 years at Electronics Park, in return for a series of economic incentives.

The incentives included a 30-year lease for $1 on the state-owned Electronics Park property. The sprawling campus was originally built in 1942 by General Electric Co., which also developed radar and other electronic products at the site. "

Statement was general, not specific.
 
That is correct...Note the word after the ampersand...NY State is a very tough and expensive place to do business.

Combine the two and it is lethal.

And the exodus of both jobs and people supports that line of thought.

It must be cost and regs. I was rather surprised at the income tax rates though. My only upstate reference point is my hometown in Utica where the property taxes are just brutal. They are about 75% less here in NC.
 
That all makes sense. The millennials ability to consume should continue to increase since the youngest are just now entering college or the workforce. I think a bigger problem is what we're seeing with regards to the availability of jobs. The baby boomers could graduate high school and immediately enter the workforce with a good job that many were able to keep for 30+ years. That type of stability no longer exists, even for people with college degrees that are often necessary to match the income of the baby boomers, and people losing jobs are often replacing them with lower paying alternatives. I was forced into a career change when my employer closed. I went back to school, and with my new degree make approximately 25% less than I was making before. That is common story now.

You just raised a most important point. Post war we had the best of everything in the world. The best education, healthcare, technology and futures. Unfortunately, those factors lulled us all to sleep and boomers didn't save nearly enough, didn't pay attention to public schools and allowed a terrible healthcare system to develop. It happened on our watch and we share a lot of the blame.

Well, now all those advantages are long gone and we are faced with tremendous challenges. We really need to think much longer term but that is difficult with current politics.

I guess you get the kind of government you deserve. Sound bites and celebrity politicians.
 
Your POV on Hispanics being more Republican than Democrat is not close to being accurate. They pretty much overwhelmingly supported Obama in the last election until they reached the ages of 45.After that is was a toss up. Don't let facts stand in the way of trying to make a point.

Forest for the trees man. That sort of near-term short sightedness is what is wrong with the political process and specifically the republican party at this juncture.

Yes hispanics overwhelmingly supported Obama in the last election. But that is largely due to republican opposition to immigration reform. If you look at surveys of what matters to hispanics, they are culturally slightly to the right of center. If republican stopped demonizing them, in a couple of election cycles they could get more than 50% of that vote.

I'm saying this as a moderate and someone who voted for Obama but also would support a moderate republican after 8 years of moving to the left I think we need a rebalance. But alienating hispanics by using immigration to scare working class white people who work in dying indusries is not a good long term political plan. They cannot win doing that given the demographic shift in this country, not to mention the fact that it is despicable and playing to the lowest common denominator
 
It must be cost and regs. I was rather surprised at the income tax rates though. My only upstate reference point is my hometown in Utica where the property taxes are just brutal. They are about 75% less here in NC.

Yeah I don't think it's the taxes that make doing business in NYS tough. It's the permits and the fees and all the bureaucracy involved that make it tough.
 
Liberals hate America so much. I always find that ironic.

You do know that Americans work MORE hours, with LESS vacation than every other industrialized nation? Oh, and the country's productivity is always near the top of the world.

But you're right... Americans should start working harder.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This has nothing to do with hating America, it has to do with wanting it to survive. The trends at play don't bode well for our continued excellence. I don't think we will become the next Japan with 20+ years of deflationary misery, our economy is too dynamic for that and our higher eduction system too good...investment and entrepreneurship are still rewarding here. But we are looking more and more like a run of the mill developed world economy, middle of the pack at best. The lack of investment in or reform of grade school / high school education and in infrastructure (physical and digital) is stark. Over time you can't compete if that doesn't change. We have lost our sense of common purpose that made this country strong from WW II to the fall of the berlin wall. Now as we start to see the effects of years of underinvestment, and the reversal of financial excess in the post cold-war world (too much leverage, real estate bubbles etc), we are turning on ourselves and being polarized by silly issues because people like to take power in times of uncertainty by making people angry about something - immigration, taxes, abortion restrictions, what have you - the politics of fear rule the day and this rips the country apart and leads us to continued gradual decline on a relative basis in this world.

I don't hate America, and I'm actually not really a liberal, I want to see this country leading the world again - I'm not sure how focusing on keeping out Mexican apple pickers gets us towards that goal.
 
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This has nothing to do with hating America, it has to do with wanting it to survive. The trends at play don't bode well for our continued excellence. I don't think we will become the next Japan with 20+ years of deflationary misery, our economy is too dynamic for that and our higher eduction system too good...investment and entrepreneurship are still rewarding here. But we are looking more and more like a run of the mill developed world economy, middle of the pack at best. The lack of investment in or reform of grade school / high school education and in infrastructure (physical and digital) is stark. Over time you can't compete if that doesn't change. We have lost our sense of common purpose that made this country strong from WW II to the fall of the berlin wall. Now as we start to see the effects of years of underinvestment, and the reversal of financial excess in the post cold-war world (too much leverage, real estate bubbles etc), we are turning on ourselves and being polarized by silly issues because people like to take power in times of uncertainty by making people angry about something - immigration, taxes, abortion restrictions, what have you - the politics of fear rule the day and this rips the country apart and leads us to continued gradual decline on a relative basis in this world.

I don't hate America, and I'm actually not really a liberal, I want to see this country leading the world again - I'm not sure how focusing on keeping out Mexican apple pickers gets us towards that goal.

You do realize there are a bevy of illegals using our public assistance don't you?

Here is a nice start for you ... 49% ... that is the number of households in this country that are receiving some form of public assistance. Throw on top of that the illegals that are now leveraging this system and you get one giant mess. You want reform or investment in our schools yet did you know the Superintendent at BVille is making $250K a year? This is the fundamental problem ... no one wants to look at where the money is currently going ... they just want to keep printing it from a damn printing press which is why the value of the dollar is plummeting at a rate unlike that people have seen ... at least in quite some time.
 
This has nothing to do with hating America, it has to do with wanting it to survive. The trends at play don't bode well for our continued excellence. I don't think we will become the next Japan with 20+ years of deflationary misery, our economy is too dynamic for that and our higher eduction system too good...investment and entrepreneurship are still rewarding here. But we are looking more and more like a run of the mill developed world economy, middle of the pack at best. The lack of investment in or reform of grade school / high school education and in infrastructure (physical and digital) is stark. Over time you can't compete if that doesn't change. We have lost our sense of common purpose that made this country strong from WW II to the fall of the berlin wall. Now as we start to see the effects of years of underinvestment, and the reversal of financial excess in the post cold-war world (too much leverage, real estate bubbles etc), we are turning on ourselves and being polarized by silly issues because people like to take power in times of uncertainty by making people angry about something - immigration, taxes, abortion restrictions, what have you - the politics of fear rule the day and this rips the country apart and leads us to continued gradual decline on a relative basis in this world.

I don't hate America, and I'm actually not really a liberal, I want to see this country leading the world again - I'm not sure how focusing on keeping out Mexican apple pickers gets us towards that goal.
GREAT post dude.
 
The nail in the coffin? Cripes, some of you drama queens need to calm down.

You do realize that when a company like that lays someone off that another 3 jobs are impacted. That study was conducted by the NYS labor board after the last LM layoff ... I know several who were impacted and were given this tidbit of information ... Plus if each family on average has 2.3 kids, you are now talking about a lot more people being impacted. You would be staring at an actual percentage of people in the Syracuse metro area being affected, not something like .2% which is what 1700 people would be if that were the only impact.
 
You do realize there are a bevy of illegals using our public assistance don't you?

Here is a nice start for you ... 49% ... that is the number of households in this country that are receiving some form of public assistance. Throw on top of that the illegals that are now leveraging this system and you get one giant mess. You want reform or investment in our schools yet did you know the Superintendent at BVille is making $250K a year? This is the fundamental problem ... no one wants to look at where the money is currently going ... they just want to keep printing it from a damn printing press which is why the value of the dollar is plummeting at a rate unlike that people have seen ... at least in quite some time.

Illegal immigrants cannot collect welfare or foodstamps. They can get emergency ER treatment and public education. 75% of undocumented workers pay federal, state, and local tax (per the social security administration). Almost all contribute tax on the state and local level through property tax paid by their landlord on whatever housing they rent, and sales tax on everything they buy. Immigrants start small businesses that produce job in disproportionate numbers to their share of the population. The facts on this stuff just get in the way of the nasty hateful narrative - this stuff is out there to distract from the real issues facing the country because they are difficult - better to point fingers and get re-elected and worry about fixing stuff next time around. We are being duped.

Maybe this fox news article will help convince you (wow can't believe I posted something from that site)... http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/entrepreneurs/2013/07/24/business-owner-in-support-immigration/
 
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I'm fine with immigration. I'm socially liberal and fiscally/militarily conservative.

The hating America and Americans comment was in response to your line about how you believe Americans just have to adopt the work ethic of Mexicans. It was insulting and ill informed.

There are still GREAT things about America. We need to focus on those and utilize them to overcome our weaknesses. Work ethic happens to be one of those strengths.

This has nothing to do with hating America, it has to do with wanting it to survive. The trends at play don't bode well for our continued excellence. I don't think we will become the next Japan with 20+ years of deflationary misery, our economy is too dynamic for that and our higher eduction system too good...investment and entrepreneurship are still rewarding here. But we are looking more and more like a run of the mill developed world economy, middle of the pack at best. The lack of investment in or reform of grade school / high school education and in infrastructure (physical and digital) is stark. Over time you can't compete if that doesn't change. We have lost our sense of common purpose that made this country strong from WW II to the fall of the berlin wall. Now as we start to see the effects of years of underinvestment, and the reversal of financial excess in the post cold-war world (too much leverage, real estate bubbles etc), we are turning on ourselves and being polarized by silly issues because people like to take power in times of uncertainty by making people angry about something - immigration, taxes, abortion restrictions, what have you - the politics of fear rule the day and this rips the country apart and leads us to continued gradual decline on a relative basis in this world.

I don't hate America, and I'm actually not really a liberal, I want to see this country leading the world again - I'm not sure how focusing on keeping out Mexican apple pickers gets us towards that goal.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
You do realize there are a bevy of illegals using our public assistance don't you?

Here is a nice start for you ... 49% ... that is the number of households in this country that are receiving some form of public assistance. Throw on top of that the illegals that are now leveraging this system and you get one giant mess. You want reform or investment in our schools yet did you know the Superintendent at BVille is making $250K a year? This is the fundamental problem ... no one wants to look at where the money is currently going ... they just want to keep printing it from a damn printing press which is why the value of the dollar is plummeting at a rate unlike that people have seen ... at least in quite some time.

There is a great deal of truth in your post especially the give aways to public employee unions and many public officals. I would say, however, that the "some form of public assistance" number includes everything from Cash Assistance, Pell Grants, food stamps, and Medicaid (the largest component). The expiration of long-term unemployment benefits is now starting to hit the welfare budgets. I suppose this is what happens in a great recession. We will probably see this for a few more years.
 
I'm fine with immigration. I'm socially liberal and fiscally/militarily conservative.

The hating America and Americans comment was in response to your line about how you believe Americans just have to adopt the work ethic of Mexicans. It was insulting and ill informed.

There are still GREAT things about America. We need to focus on those and utilize them to overcome our weaknesses. Work ethic happens to be one of those strengths.

We may work hard in terms of hours put in but we definitely don't work smart. The economy is so consolidated that provider of labor have lost their collective ability to share gains with providers of capital. In other words too few people own and control too many industries ensuring that the spoils of our record breaking profits (despite the still lousy economic backdrop) are going to owners and investors rather than to employees outside of those who make it beyond the ranks of middle manager. Historically there has been some sharing of the gains with employees...but the structure of our economy has shifted and that is no longer the case. So sitting there and slogging along in a menial corporate/industrial job may show good work ethic but it's not going to do anything to make this country better. Immigrants on the other hand, largely shut out from those jobs, start businesses - they take control of their lives and create jobs where employees have a stake in the outcome.

One promising sign is that coming out of the great recession there is an uptick in home grown entrepreneurs who either couldn't get a corporate job or who have had a values shift and want to create something.

Another good thing is that as the recovery continues eventually every efficiency will have been squeezed out of the corporate systems and they will have to add workers and invest to generate future growth. But until something structurally changes, every time we have a recession the workers will fall further behind. I say this as someone who has worked in very large corporations and also small private businesses - I was always on the winning end of the stick but it was very clear who wasn't and that is the vast majority of lower level employees.
 
In other words too few people own and control too many industries ensuring that the spoils of our record breaking profits (despite the still lousy economic backdrop) are going to owners and investors rather than to employees outside of those who make it beyond the ranks of middle manager. Historically there has been some sharing of the gains with employees...but the structure of our economy has shifted and that is no longer the case.
This is too true. Labor unions used to help with this in large corporations. The combination of their own corruption and short sightedness along with propaganda convincing too many people that they are all evil has eroded that influence.
 
There is a great deal of truth in your post especially the give aways to public employee unions and many public officals. I would say, however, that the "some form of public assistance" number includes everything from Cash Assistance, Pell Grants, food stamps, and Medicaid (the largest component). The expiration of long-term unemployment benefits is now starting to hit the welfare budgets. I suppose this is what happens in a great recession. We will probably see this for a few more years.

Honestly public assistance is still public assistance no matter that source ... that means 49% of American households can't cut it on their own which is really disturbing in its own right. But hey here are some nice facts to chew on:

"Since Barack Obama took his first oath of office on January 20, 2009, our national debt has gone up 58%. The U.S. dollar has depreciated 6%.

Unemployment is now at 7.6%—higher than it was before Obama took office more than five years ago. And that's just the official rate. The real unemployment rate, the one economists call "U6," that counts those who have given up looking for work, is 13.8%.

When you add in all those people, 21.5 million Americans have no job. Millions more are reduced to working part-time in menial tasks.

With such a large slice of the population out of work and broke, 47 million Americans are now living on food stamps. That's 1/7th of our country!

Meanwhile, the U.S. government lost its triple-A credit rating for the first time in history.

We're turning into a welfare state at exactly the time the government is going broke.

49% of American households get government handouts—even more than the 47% Mitt Romney so infamously cited. Never before in history have so many people depended on Uncle Sam for housing, food and health care. Many of these millions are truly needy and deserving. But half the country pays no federal taxes—that's a problem!

Obama has run up more debt than all other presidents combined, from George Washington to George W. Bush. The U.S. has now accumulated the biggest debt in world history and it is growing by $45,000 per second."

This is what our nation wanted ... a welfare state ... that big eared clown in the white house is ruining our economy and does nothing but blame everyone around him ... but hey why stop there consider this:

"On Inauguration Day in 2009, Obama appeared blessed by the economic gods. His timing was perfect.

As he took the oath of office, he inherited a recession that was already over a year old. In every other recession since the Great Depression, things have looked dramatically better within a year and a half.

That means we should have recovered from the recession a few months after Obama took office—just in time for him to get the credit.

So even though I thought Obama's "recovery plan" was ludicrous, I expected him to ride a wave of praise as the economy roared back in a matter of months.

After all, that's what it should have done just on its own.

What actually happened was shocking. Obama's economic decisions as president have been so bad that even now—five-and-a-half years after the recession began—a decent recovery can't get off the ground.

The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989. The stock market more than tripled between 1980 and 1990.

Now look at what we have today. Obamanomics is the anti-Reaganomics in every way. It's almost as if Obama studied every move Reagan made to jump start the stalled economy in 1981 and did the opposite.

Obama has (1) raised a variety of excise taxes, (2) spent over a trillion dollars on his failed stimulus, (3) increased regulations and (4) printed money out of thin air in a frenzy of "quantitative easing."

Obama's crown jewel was his "stimulus" package—a move based on dubious Keynesian economics.

This sort of central planning is a proven historical failure. Just ask the USSR how well it works out when you make government spending the prime engine of an economy.

A month after he got into office, Obama signed his trillion-dollar stimulus plan—a group of infrastructure projects designed to save the economy.

Obama's experiment didn't work because borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy and putting it back into the same economy has a zero net effect.

It makes as much sense as taking a bucket of water from one end of a swimming pool and dumping it into the other end. You achieve nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, because the water you spill along the way leaves everybody worse off.
The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989. The stock market more than tripled between 1980 and 1990.

How far into debt can a country go before it collapses? That's an interesting question because total United States debt has just hit 105% of GDP.

We're fast approaching the debt-to-GDP ratio that pushed Greece into bankruptcy.

us_gdp_total_debt_graph400px.jpg
In 2009 Greece's national debt reached 115% of GDP. Within a year, banks refused to lend Greece any more funds. The Greek crisis was on.

Look at how the world panicked over a tiny country with an economy half the size of Ohio's. Can you imagine the carnage we'll see when the world realizes that the biggest economy in the world is in the same sorry shape?

The EU is trying to put Greece back on its feet with a trillion-dollar bailout. But we already borrow $1.2 trillion per year just to keep the wheels turning. When our next recession hits, who will bail us out? Who is big enough to even try?

What's worse, we won't be alone. Many other overextended countries will be looking to borrow trillions, too. All these debt hogs will be crowding around the same trough trying to outbid each other for the available funds with higher and higher interest rates.

Higher rates will sink bonds, hurt stocks, raise mortgage payments and depress home sales even more. Obamanomics could play out in a bloody endgame that will throw millions into poverty."

But hey lets keep voting clowns like Obama into office ... he has been doing such a great job so far!
 
Illegal immigrants cannot collect welfare or foodstamps. They can get emergency ER treatment and public education. 75% of undocumented workers pay federal, state, and local tax (per the social security administration). Almost all contribute tax on the state and local level through property tax paid by their landlord on whatever housing they rent, and sales tax on everything they buy. Immigrants start small businesses that produce job in disproportionate numbers to their share of the population. The facts on this stuff just get in the way of the nasty hateful narrative - this stuff is out there to distract from the real issues facing the country because they are difficult - better to point fingers and get re-elected and worry about fixing stuff next time around. We are being duped.

Maybe this fox news article will help convince you (wow can't believe I posted something from that site)... http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/entrepreneurs/2013/07/24/business-owner-in-support-immigration/

Come down to San Antonio...a ton of folks who can't (or won't) speak English are swiping Welfare Debit Cards at the Supermarket...it is sickening to see how wasteful their spending is. I'm cutting coupons, calculating unit costs, etc...and their buying habits infuriate me. Just the other day a family of 5 was shopping...they grabbed Tropicana OJ in package of 8 small single serve drink cups. They proceeded to open them up and drink them while shopping. They did pay for the carton but really...buy a friggin frozen concentrate and mix it up to save a few bucks...but no worries Uncle Sam pays for it. As for taxes sure they pay sales tax but in TX property tax is a major source of revenue as there is no state income tax.
 
Honestly public assistance is still public assistance no matter that source ... that means 49% of American households can't cut it on their own which is really disturbing in its own right. But hey here are some nice facts to chew on:

"Since Barack Obama took his first oath of office on January 20, 2009, our national debt has gone up 58%. The U.S. dollar has depreciated 6%.

Unemployment is now at 7.6%—higher than it was before Obama took office more than five years ago. And that's just the official rate. The real unemployment rate, the one economists call "U6," that counts those who have given up looking for work, is 13.8%.

When you add in all those people, 21.5 million Americans have no job. Millions more are reduced to working part-time in menial tasks.

With such a large slice of the population out of work and broke, 47 million Americans are now living on food stamps. That's 1/7th of our country!

Meanwhile, the U.S. government lost its triple-A credit rating for the first time in history.

We're turning into a welfare state at exactly the time the government is going broke.

49% of American households get government handouts—even more than the 47% Mitt Romney so infamously cited. Never before in history have so many people depended on Uncle Sam for housing, food and health care. Many of these millions are truly needy and deserving. But half the country pays no federal taxes—that's a problem!

Obama has run up more debt than all other presidents combined, from George Washington to George W. Bush. The U.S. has now accumulated the biggest debt in world history and it is growing by $45,000 per second."

This is what our nation wanted ... a welfare state ... that big eared clown in the white house is ruining our economy and does nothing but blame everyone around him ... but hey why stop there consider this:

"On Inauguration Day in 2009, Obama appeared blessed by the economic gods. His timing was perfect.

As he took the oath of office, he inherited a recession that was already over a year old. In every other recession since the Great Depression, things have looked dramatically better within a year and a half.

That means we should have recovered from the recession a few months after Obama took office—just in time for him to get the credit.

So even though I thought Obama's "recovery plan" was ludicrous, I expected him to ride a wave of praise as the economy roared back in a matter of months.

After all, that's what it should have done just on its own.

What actually happened was shocking. Obama's economic decisions as president have been so bad that even now—five-and-a-half years after the recession began—a decent recovery can't get off the ground.

The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989. The stock market more than tripled between 1980 and 1990.

Now look at what we have today. Obamanomics is the anti-Reaganomics in every way. It's almost as if Obama studied every move Reagan made to jump start the stalled economy in 1981 and did the opposite.

Obama has (1) raised a variety of excise taxes, (2) spent over a trillion dollars on his failed stimulus, (3) increased regulations and (4) printed money out of thin air in a frenzy of "quantitative easing."

Obama's crown jewel was his "stimulus" package—a move based on dubious Keynesian economics.

This sort of central planning is a proven historical failure. Just ask the USSR how well it works out when you make government spending the prime engine of an economy.

A month after he got into office, Obama signed his trillion-dollar stimulus plan—a group of infrastructure projects designed to save the economy.

Obama's experiment didn't work because borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy and putting it back into the same economy has a zero net effect.

It makes as much sense as taking a bucket of water from one end of a swimming pool and dumping it into the other end. You achieve nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, because the water you spill along the way leaves everybody worse off.
The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989. The stock market more than tripled between 1980 and 1990.

How far into debt can a country go before it collapses? That's an interesting question because total United States debt has just hit 105% of GDP.

We're fast approaching the debt-to-GDP ratio that pushed Greece into bankruptcy.

us_gdp_total_debt_graph400px.jpg
In 2009 Greece's national debt reached 115% of GDP. Within a year, banks refused to lend Greece any more funds. The Greek crisis was on.

Look at how the world panicked over a tiny country with an economy half the size of Ohio's. Can you imagine the carnage we'll see when the world realizes that the biggest economy in the world is in the same sorry shape?

The EU is trying to put Greece back on its feet with a trillion-dollar bailout. But we already borrow $1.2 trillion per year just to keep the wheels turning. When our next recession hits, who will bail us out? Who is big enough to even try?

What's worse, we won't be alone. Many other overextended countries will be looking to borrow trillions, too. All these debt hogs will be crowding around the same trough trying to outbid each other for the available funds with higher and higher interest rates.

Higher rates will sink bonds, hurt stocks, raise mortgage payments and depress home sales even more. Obamanomics could play out in a bloody endgame that will throw millions into poverty."

But hey lets keep voting clowns like Obama into office ... he has been doing such a great job so far!

That is a lot of ground to cover. Since you used quotes it appears that this comes from some partisan publication. (I notice you did not reference the author – will you share it?) As you now, these types of rants (on both sides) are full of random facts laced with hyperbole. Nevertheless, let’s examine it.

First, let’s get the context correct. The recession is clearly on Bush/Greenspan, not Obama. If we can’t agree on that then it is hardly worth wasting each other’s breath. Most will concede this fact but they ignore the magnitude. It becomes. “Oh yeah, but the recovery is weak.” This recession was far worse than any other in the last 100 years save the Great Depression. It destroyed enormous amounts of household wealth and devastated the housing industry, one of the largest employers in the country. Let’s move on/


1. “Since Barack Obama took his first oath of office on January 20, 2009, our national debt has gone up 58%. The U.S. dollar has depreciated 6%.”

Yes, debt has gone up –so what? That is what happens in recessions and this one was far worse than all others except one. Under Bush the national debt outstanding rose 105%. Under Reagan it increased 128%. Surprising the author did not mention that.

The dollar is essentially unchanged. On December 31, 2008 it was at .7331 Euros and yesterday 7.273.

2. “With such a large slice of the population out of work and broke, 47 million Americans are now living on food stamps. That's 1/7th of our country!”

1/7th of the country equals 14%. The actual poverty rate is closer to 15%. The poverty rate was over 20% in the 1950’s and has dropped to the 11% to 15% range from then until today. During Reagan’s recession the poverty rate was almost exactly the same as today. This is the kind of disingenuous argument that is clearly meant to create controversy with absolutely no informational value and adding nothing to the national debate. It is pure nonsense.

3. “Meanwhile, the U.S. government lost its triple-A credit rating for the first time in history.”

Again, so what? Did the market care? No. There has been no effect on prices of US Treasuries due to the S&P downgrade. Why? Because it was a political judgment not an economic one.

4. “We're turning into a welfare state at exactly the time the government is going broke.”

We are not broke and the nature of our welfare programs has not changed since Bush’s drug prescription program.

5. “49% of American households get government handouts—even more than the 47% Mitt Romney so infamously cited. Never before in history have so many people depended on Uncle Sam for housing, food and health care. Many of these millions are truly needy and deserving. But half the country pays no federal taxes—that's a problem!”

I have no way of knowing how this calculation was made. What is a government handout? With respect to federal taxes the statement is, of course, grossly inaccurate – actually completely false. The author counts Medicare and SS on the one hand (spending) and then totally ignores payroll taxes on the other (taxes). How can anyone listen to this stuff?

6. “Obama has run up more debt than all other presidents combined, from George Washington to George W. Bush. The U.S. has now accumulated the biggest debt in world history and it is growing by $45,000 per second."

This one is a doozy. First of all, the same statements can be said for Bush and Reagan and many other presidents. These are just silly numbers. They do not take into account inflation and or the growth in population, war and peace, recessions etc. This is just ignorant.

7. “As he [Obama] took the oath of office, he inherited a recession that was already over a year old. In every other recession since the Great Depression, things have looked dramatically better within a year and a half.

All recessions are not created equal. This one was far worse – in fact, more double the average of all post war recessions. Every previous recovery has had a healthy recovery of the housing market with big employment gains. This recession had had none of that. In addition, 2 million government jobs were lost due to austerity measures. That has never happened in any previous recession. Is it any wonder the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high?


8. “A month after he got into office, Obama signed his trillion-dollar stimulus plan—a group of infrastructure projects designed to save the economy.

Obama's experiment didn't work because borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy and putting it back into the same economy has a zero net effect.”

This is such an ignorant statement it is hard to know where to begin. Milton Friedman must be rolling over in his grave. I will just say that every study has shown that the stimulus was successful and screaming that it wasn’t does not make it so. It is reasonable to debate the degree to which the stimulus helped but not whether or not it did.

Reagan increased the national debt by 128%, arguably borrowing and spending his way to prosperity. Why is it that it is OK for Reagan but not Obama?


9. “How far into debt can a country go before it collapses? That's an interesting question because total United States debt has just hit 105% of GDP.

We're fast approaching the debt-to-GDP ratio that pushed Greece into bankruptcy.”

While I don’t want to do a Dick Cheney and say deficits don’t matter, degree, direction, trends and causes do matter greatly. Perhaps, the most important number to watch is the direction of the deficit-to-GDP ratio, which is falling sharply. This simply means the problem is starting to get under control.

We are not Greece. By the way, Japan has 2 ½ times the debt to GDP ratio as the US and has had for some time. No one is worrying about a Japanese default.

My question is what would the author have done? Apparently, he would have repeated the policy mistakes of the Great Depression. I will say that one thing I never hear is, "What would Bush do?"
 
Come down to San Antonio...a ton of folks who can't (or won't) speak English are swiping Welfare Debit Cards at the Supermarket...it is sickening to see how wasteful their spending is. I'm cutting coupons, calculating unit costs, etc...and their buying habits infuriate me. Just the other day a family of 5 was shopping...they grabbed Tropicana OJ in package of 8 small single serve drink cups. They proceeded to open them up and drink them while shopping. They did pay for the carton but really...buy a friggin frozen concentrate and mix it up to save a few bucks...but no worries Uncle Sam pays for it. As for taxes sure they pay sales tax but in TX property tax is a major source of revenue as there is no state income tax.

So you are saying some people are lazy, stupid, and that some of those on the dole enjoy it and don't use the funds wisely. You will get no argument on that from me. The difference is you live in a place where the lower class speaks Spanish. I spend my summers and most weekends in rural Maine and I see many fat white slobs who are perhaps speaking english but vant string a sentence together who take the foid stamp card to their buddy at the local store and bring home coffee brandy, cigarettes, and cheese puffs to the wife and kids. They then watch Pron or NASCAR on their 60" samsungs and get drunk planning the next days outings on their multiple $10k four wheelers, dirt bikes, or snowmobiles. Now most lower income people in Maine are some of the nicest hardest working people you will ever meet. They work three jobs, most of them seasonal to make enough to get their kids some decent clothes and to allow them to grow up in a place that is still beautiful and fundamentally good. They work on lobster boats, dig clams, house sit for the rich people from out of state, work in boat yards etc. they are poor but they are proud and happy. And you can dam well bet they feel shame and frustration when February comes and the heating bill was higher than they expected and they need to turn to food stamps for a couple months to feed their family before work picks up again. For every one of the first type there are ten of the second. We notice the first because they are conspicuous on their itresponsibility. So if we aren't careful and don't look a little deeper we can get the whole group wrong based on a few bad but blatant examples.

since immigration is a large net positive for the country hands down across the board, and since illegals cant get food stamps anyway, I think really what you want to do is improve the welfare system to make sure people are being responsible and putting in a good faith effort to do the right things. I am fine with that, so long as you treat these people with the respect and understanding that so many of them deserve. But someone has made you angry about immigration and your anger is misplaced.
 
So you are saying some people are lazy, stupid, and that some of those on the dole enjoy it and don't use the funds wisely. You will get no argument on that from me. The difference is you live in a place where the lower class speaks Spanish. I spend my summers and most weekends in rural Maine and I see many fat white slobs who are perhaps speaking english but vant string a sentence together who take the foid stamp card to their buddy at the local store and bring home coffee brandy, cigarettes, and cheese puffs to the wife and kids. They then watch or NASCAR on their 60" samsungs and get drunk planning the next days outings on their multiple $10k four wheelers, dirt bikes, or snowmobiles. Now most lower income people in Maine are some of the nicest hardest working people you will ever meet. They work three jobs, most of them seasonal to make enough to get their kids some decent clothes and to allow them to grow up in a place that is still beautiful and fundamentally good. They work on lobster boats, dig clams, house sit for the rich people from out of state, work in boat yards etc. they are poor but they are proud and happy. And you can dam well bet they feel shame and frustration when February comes and the heating bill was higher than they expected and they need to turn to food stamps for a couple months to feed their family before work picks up again. For every one of the first type there are ten of the second. We notice the first because they are conspicuous on their itresponsibility. So if we aren't careful and don't look a little deeper we can get the whole group wrong based on a few bad but blatant examples.

since immigration is a large net positive for the country hands down across the board, and since illegals cant get food stamps anyway, I think really what you want to do is improve the welfare system to make sure people are being responsible and putting in a good faith effort to do the right things. I am fine with that, so long as you treat these people with the respect and understanding that so many of them deserve. But someone has made you angry about immigration and your anger is misplaced.

Most people I know have no problem with immigration - very few Americans do - it is illegal immigration that bothers them. Many know someone waiting in line to get in or have had first hand experience with legal immigrants stories.

This is also not our first rodeo. We have heard all of this before. We passed Simpson Mazzoli in 1986 and thought we had addressed the issue with common sense and compassion only to witness millions of illegal immigrants swarm across our Southern border.

This is not an easy issue.
 
That is a lot of ground to cover. Since you used quotes it appears that this comes from some partisan publication. (I notice you did not reference the author – will you share it?) As you now, these types of rants (on both sides) are full of random facts laced with hyperbole. Nevertheless, let’s examine it.

First, let’s get the context correct. The recession is clearly on Bush/Greenspan, not Obama. If we can’t agree on that then it is hardly worth wasting each other’s breath. Most will concede this fact but they ignore the magnitude. It becomes. “Oh yeah, but the recovery is weak.” This recession was far worse than any other in the last 100 years save the Great Depression. It destroyed enormous amounts of household wealth and devastated the housing industry, one of the largest employers in the country. Let’s move on/


1. “Since Barack Obama took his first oath of office on January 20, 2009, our national debt has gone up 58%. The U.S. dollar has depreciated 6%.”

Yes, debt has gone up –so what? That is what happens in recessions and this one was far worse than all others except one. Under Bush the national debt outstanding rose 105%. Under Reagan it increased 128%. Surprising the author did not mention that.

The dollar is essentially unchanged. On December 31, 2008 it was at .7331 Euros and yesterday 7.273.

2. “With such a large slice of the population out of work and broke, 47 million Americans are now living on food stamps. That's 1/7th of our country!”

1/7th of the country equals 14%. The actual poverty rate is closer to 15%. The poverty rate was over 20% in the 1950’s and has dropped to the 11% to 15% range from then until today. During Reagan’s recession the poverty rate was almost exactly the same as today. This is the kind of disingenuous argument that is clearly meant to create controversy with absolutely no informational value and adding nothing to the national debate. It is pure nonsense.

3. “Meanwhile, the U.S. government lost its triple-A credit rating for the first time in history.”

Again, so what? Did the market care? No. There has been no effect on prices of US Treasuries due to the S&P downgrade. Why? Because it was a political judgment not an economic one.

4. “We're turning into a welfare state at exactly the time the government is going broke.”

We are not broke and the nature of our welfare programs has not changed since Bush’s drug prescription program.

5. “49% of American households get government handouts—even more than the 47% Mitt Romney so infamously cited. Never before in history have so many people depended on Uncle Sam for housing, food and health care. Many of these millions are truly needy and deserving. But half the country pays no federal taxes—that's a problem!”

I have no way of knowing how this calculation was made. What is a government handout? With respect to federal taxes the statement is, of course, grossly inaccurate – actually completely false. The author counts Medicare and SS on the one hand (spending) and then totally ignores payroll taxes on the other (taxes). How can anyone listen to this stuff?

6. “Obama has run up more debt than all other presidents combined, from George Washington to George W. Bush. The U.S. has now accumulated the biggest debt in world history and it is growing by $45,000 per second."

This one is a doozy. First of all, the same statements can be said for Bush and Reagan and many other presidents. These are just silly numbers. They do not take into account inflation and or the growth in population, war and peace, recessions etc. This is just ignorant.

7. “As he [Obama] took the oath of office, he inherited a recession that was already over a year old. In every other recession since the Great Depression, things have looked dramatically better within a year and a half.

All recessions are not created equal. This one was far worse – in fact, more double the average of all post war recessions. Every previous recovery has had a healthy recovery of the housing market with big employment gains. This recession had had none of that. In addition, 2 million government jobs were lost due to austerity measures. That has never happened in any previous recession. Is it any wonder the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high?

8. “A month after he got into office, Obama signed his trillion-dollar stimulus plan—a group of infrastructure projects designed to save the economy.

Obama's experiment didn't work because borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy and putting it back into the same economy has a zero net effect.”

This is such an ignorant statement it is hard to know where to begin. Milton Friedman must be rolling over in his grave. I will just say that every study has shown that the stimulus was successful and screaming that it wasn’t does not make it so. It is reasonable to debate the degree to which the stimulus helped but not whether or not it did.

Reagan increased the national debt by 128%, arguably borrowing and spending his way to prosperity. Why is it that it is OK for Reagan but not Obama?


9. “How far into debt can a country go before it collapses? That's an interesting question because total United States debt has just hit 105% of GDP.

We're fast approaching the debt-to-GDP ratio that pushed Greece into bankruptcy.”

While I don’t want to do a Dick Cheney and say deficits don’t matter, degree, direction, trends and causes do matter greatly. Perhaps, the most important number to watch is the direction of the deficit-to-GDP ratio, which is falling sharply. This simply means the problem is starting to get under control.

We are not Greece. By the way, Japan has 2 ½ times the debt to GDP ratio as the US and has had for some time. No one is worrying about a Japanese default.

My question is what would the author have done? Apparently, he would have repeated the policy mistakes of the Great Depression. I will say that one thing I never hear is, "What would Bush do?"

Thanks for taking that mess on, don't think I would have had the energy.

A couple of other things - the increase in debt came from the stimulus and more so the bailouts, there impact was magnified because tax revenues olummetted at tge same time given the depth of the recession. these were one off necessities to save us from economic collapse - I work very close to this stuff and make no mistake we were on the brink - whoever was in office these actions would have happened. Because it was Obama the republicans use it as political buckshot, but bush or Romney or Paul Ryan would have done the same kind of things of this I have zero doubt having spoken with republican legislators during the crisis.
Second - excluding the bailouts/stimulus of his first year, Obama has grown the spending at a slower rate than anyone since Kennedy. The debt is and has been for several years growing at slower than gdp growth rate - in other words debt to gdp is coming down based on Obamas trajectory.

Third - bernanke controls monetary policy not the president, bush appointed Bernanke. Without him we likely would have slopped back into recession by now given how bad the political situation is.

People want to believe this garbage because it provides any easy answer, someone to blame, and ignores the structural issues that we really face. This is the far right making hay while the sun shines...it's cyclical and ten years from now democrats will do the same thing. But it's nonsense made up to distract while the politicians take turns running the country into the ground with neglect .
 
Most people I know have no problem with immigration - very few Americans do - it is illegal immigration that bothers them. Many know someone waiting in line to get in or have had first hand experience with legal immigrants stories.

This is also not our first rodeo. We have heard all of this before. We passed Simpson Mazzoli in 1986 and thought we had addressed the issue with common sense and compassion only to witness millions of illegal immigrants swarm across our Southern border.

This is not an easy issue.
Most legal immigrants I know, all of whom are doing very well and work their behinds off, got here through exploiting loopholes in the system and started out by overstaying their visas. Legal immigration needs to be made far easier given the economic benefits. See I think many people would strongly object to that unfortunately
 
Anheuser Busch/InBev might be on the way out of Syracuse too. They are down to only around 400 employees these days but InBev is known for buying companies, waiting out the contracts and then shutting places down and consolidating with other factories they have world-wide. Sort of what Magna did when they bought New Venture Gear a few years back.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index....talks_could_fate_of_syracuse-area_brewer.html
 
Very provocative thread. Thanks to the various participants. I live in ground zero of the immigration debate. And am frustrated our local political failures relating to Mexico and the immigration question. SB 1070 and Sheriff Joe and his posse have done nothing other than cauterize and frankly embarrass Arizona in terms of attracting and driving interstate commerce.

Happily, sentiment seems to be slowly shifting and I am now seeing political leadership beginning to embrace economic development with our huge southerly neighbor - in many instances with support from Canadian investors doing business in Arizona.

Back to CNY. Someone earlier talked about the stately $250k homes and avoiding the scattered Walmart, Waffle House societies which litter the sound - and I admit, the Southwest. There remains a lot to be said for CNY. Not the least of which are the many, many exceptional universities within a 200 mile radius. Not to mention, natural gas, proximity to Canada. And don't laugh, it's northern location. Sometime read about what expectations are in Arizona in 2050, in terms of climate change. I'd argue that components of the CNY economy - and possibly real estate are a contrarian investors dream - from a long term, macro perspective.

Just some loose thoughts early in he morning out west.

LGO!
 

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