The Conservative Man

[Joe Guy]

[rubato]

If we’re going to get out of this mess we need to get over the cheap jokes and Tit for tat” reasoning.

Dividing everything up into liberal/conservative is stupid and wrong. It’s not about sides or teams except for the most morally and mentally crippled; MTG on one side and AOC on the other.

Issues cannot always be devolved into right and left without suffering fatal distortions. Just stop it.

Yrs,
Rubato

[Joe Guy]

[liberty]

It would help if the left gave up the belief in magic. They believed that somehow by pumping more money into the economy in the form of stimulus checks would make everything better. Republicans warned it was a dangerous thing to do, but they didn't listen. After they Started the inflation fire Bidens Treasury secretary kept saying It's just transitory inflation, it's not a problem, don't worry about it, but they should have worried about it. They should have jumped on the inflation with both feet and stumped to the death before it got to be out of control. Now we have high prices that are not going to come down and if you raise the minimum wage significantly you can create more inflation. Liberals believe in magic, or they want the economy to fail so people will be dependent on government.

[Joe Guy]

It would help if the left gave up the belief in magic. They believed that somehow by pumping more money into the economy in the form of stimulus checks would make everything better. Republicans warned it was a dangerous thing to do, but they didn't listen. After they Started the inflation fire Bidens Treasury secretary kept saying It's just transitory inflation, it's not a problem, don't worry about it, but they should have worried about it. They should have jumped on the inflation with both feet and stumped to the death before it got to be out of control. Now we have high prices that are not going to come down and if you raise the minimum wage significantly you can create more inflation. Liberals believe in magic, or they want the economy to fail so people will be dependent on government.

Inflation was worldwide when it began in 2021 after the pandemic hit. It wasn't caused by "liberals". It rose even further after Russia invaded the Ukraine. The US economy has recovered relatively well with the current rate being 2.9%.

If you were paying attention to the inflation rate in the 1970s and 80s, who were you blaming for the high inflation rates then?

Communists?

[Sue U]

It would help if the left gave up the belief in magic. They believed that somehow by pumping more money into the economy in the form of stimulus checks would make everything better. Republicans warned it was a dangerous thing to do, but they didn't listen.

First, as usual, you are an idiot and have the facts wrong. Of the three rounds of "economic stimulus" relief payments, the first two (3/2020 and 12/2020) were under Trump (he made a big deal about having his "signature" on the checks, because that was the most important thing, obviously) and were supported by Republicans.

Second, because your damaged brain obviously cannot remember, in March 2020 the world had shut down and the U.S. economy was in free-fall, heading toward a complete collapse. Consumer spending is the primary driver of the economy and nobody could or would spend money; deflation (not inflation) was the most significant economic concern. The stimulus payments kept the U.S. economy from grinding to a halt and plunging the nation into another Great Depression.

Third, regulating the money supply ("pumping more money into the economy ") is literally how governments and their central banks run the economy. Inflation in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing; the trick is to balance the inflation rate with economic growth. The COVID pandemic threw a monkeywrench into every aspect of commerce and provided excuses for corporate greed and price gouging that resulted in higher prices in the short term, with the inflation rate now having evened out in the 2.8% range, most of that coming from higher energy and housing costs. For comparison, under Ronald Reagan inflation was at times well over 14% and averaged about 5.5% over his 8-year term; at the height of the 2008 economic crisis brought on by the CDO/CDS market failure, the inflation rate was 5.6%. Maybe you shouldn't automatically believe the political propaganda telling you that "Joe Biden's inflation" is killing you.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I came here to say that: my first stimulus check had Trump's signature.

I did make the suggestion at the time that the stimulus checks should be sent only to those whose personal economy (job, loss of salary, additional medical expenses etc) had suffered. Along with everyone else I had to wait in line at the supermarket and so on; but in straightforward economic terms the pandemic was good for me: far fewer meals out, movie tickets and so on, meant that at the end of it all I was $$$ better off. I ended up giving the Trump check to a charity that could make better use of it than I could.

For better or worse, we have a consumption driven economy. Clearly this is because those Democratic factory bosses are shipping all the jobs off to China and Vietnam and Mexico (/s for those who need it). I think the stimulus payments had a tiny effect, if any, on inflation. Other OECD countries also suffered from Covid-19 at similar rates; did not have stimulus payments; and have or had similar or worse inflation rates. Eggs prices are very much due to the bird 'flu. And USAID is about 1% of GDP. All those who said that they were pro-Trump because he would get inflation under control will find that he does not have a clue. Of course most of them, when they find out, will not say 'sorry, I was wrong' but will retreat to the real reason they voted for him: to stop those commie drug-pushers who come over the border and steal our jobs, our women and our pets. I remember that the first Monty Python book was published by the Holiday Home for Pets Pie Company Ltd.

John Prine doing a non-Prine song:


And Marianne Faithfull did a good job too:

[MajGenl.Meade]

lib . . . read Sue's post. Then apologize.

[Big RR]

Meade--don't cont on it.

And so as not to stretch Lib's time too thin and give him time to do what MEade said, a response he would give to Joe Guy:

70s--the failed [or insert your own negative adjective here] policies of Lyndon Johnson.
80s--the failed [or insert your own negative adjective here] policies of Jimmy Carter, which were also responsible for the S&L crisis, not Neil Bush (I figured I'd save him some more time).

[liberty]

Cheap energy is what makes for a prosperous economy, but Biden didn't want cheap energy; he wanted expensive oil so that we would magically convert to alternative energy sources. If he had encouraged accelerated oil production the economy would be in a lot better shape.

https://nypost.com/2022/03/09/why-biden ... il-prices/

If President Joe Biden came out forcefully on the side of increasing US oil production, the price of a barrel could fall quickly, experts told The Post — even if it takes a while to bring that new energy online.

Just look at what happened Wednesday in the wake of the United Arab Emirates and Iraq saying they’d up production by an estimated 800,000 barrels a day: The global price of oil dropped by $22 a barrel within minutes.

If Biden signaled full-throated support for US drillers to get to work — and perhaps allowed the re-starting of the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada — global oil prices could similarly fall sharply, the industry experts told The Post.

“Biden could go to the oil and gas industry and say, ‘OK, I’ve said we’re going to get off oil and gas and that you guys are yesterday’s industry, but I’m going to drop that,'” surmised Myron Ebell, the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment. “Part of the run up in oil prices is the psychology of it,” he said.

[Joe Guy]

Don’t worry, libster.

Trump is going to drill baby drill. Eggs are going to be so cheap, you’ll be throwing them at your liberal neighbors like you did before Biden was elected.

[ex-khobar Andy]

You do talk some ballocks, lib.

I have no idea what date you are talking about: "Just look at what happened Wednesday in the wake of the United Arab Emirates and Iraq saying they’d up production by an estimated 800,000 barrels a day: The global price of oil dropped by $22 a barrel within minutes."

Global oil price has not shown that sort of instant variation in years. If UAE and Iraq did increase production by 800,000 bbl/day that would be less than 1% of current usage which runs around 100 million bbl/day, of which the US - with 5% of the world's population - consumes about 20%. Oil usage is not so inelastic that a 1% increase in production would give a 25% price drop. (Currently around $80/bbl.). Besides, the Saudis would not want the price of oil to drop that much, they would rather keep it in the ground. They would probably announce a 800,000 bbl/day drop in production just to stabilize the price.

[Sue U]

Cheap energy is what makes for a prosperous economy, but Biden didn't want cheap energy; he wanted expensive oil so that we would magically convert to alternative energy sources. If he had encouraged accelerated oil production the economy would be in a lot better shape.

OK , liberty, so now it's NOT the COVID economic stimulus program that's responsible for your "economic anxiety," but it's oil prices! And for that you cite a March 2022 (!!!) article from the respected and peer-reviewed energy/economics journal the NY Post, which as a Rupert Murdoch product brings only the straightest of news and has no interest at all in slagging a Democratic president.

And BTW the U.S. has been a net exporter of oil and petroleum products since 2020 (you know, the year Biden was elected). The price of crude oil today (I just checked) is in the low to mid USD 70s/bbl (price has been decreasing over the last month). Which is pretty damn cheap compared to the $145/bbl price it hit back when GW Bush was president in 2008. But "cheap" oil ain't cheap if it includes the environmental costs of extracting and burning fossil fuels. Oil companies have been off-loading those costs onto the rest of us for over 100 years. Conversion to alternative energy sources would actually lessen the cost and perhaps allow for a liveable planet in the future rather than the self-extinction we're hurtling towards now.