This is a lot of money, I wonder where it's at Options

[darksecret]

Toward the end of Clinton's first year in office: 09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38

8 years later: 09/29/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86

Toward the end of Bush's first year in office: 09/28/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06

Current: 08/19/2005 $7,926,125,407,102.74

From the Bureau of the Public Debt.

This post has been edited by darksecret: Aug 23, 2005 - 11:05 AM

[celicaST]

numbers speak for themselves

bodget overview

nasa's budget by the way is hardly a factor

by the way, a national deficit is not necessarily a unfortunate thing. deficit spending can and has been used to stimulate economic growth in the past.

taken from wikipedia:

"Following John Maynard Keynes, many economists recommend deficit spending in order to moderate or end a recession, especially a severe one. When the economy has high unemployment, an increase in government purchases create a market for business output, creating income and encouraging increases in consumer spending, which creates further increases in the demand for business output. (This is the multiplier effect). This raises the real gross domestic product (GDP) and the employment of labor, all else constant lowering the unemployment rate. (The connection between demand for GDP and unemployment is called Okun's Law.) Cutting personal taxes and/or raising transfer payments can have similar expansionary effects, though most economists would say that such policies have weaker effects on aggregate demand. On the other hand, if supply-side (non-Keynesian) effects are brought into consideration, which method has a better stimulative economic effect is a matter of debate."

[BlackSTX]

numbers speak for themselves

bodget overview

nasa's budget by the way is hardly a factor

by the way, a national deficit is not necessarily a unfortunate thing. deficit spending can and has been used to stimulate economic growth in the past.

taken from wikipedia:

"Following John Maynard Keynes, many economists recommend deficit spending in order to moderate or end a recession, especially a severe one. When the economy has high unemployment, an increase in government purchases create a market for business output, creating income and encouraging increases in consumer spending, which creates further increases in the demand for business output. (This is the multiplier effect). This raises the real gross domestic product (GDP) and the employment of labor, all else constant lowering the unemployment rate. (The connection between demand for GDP and unemployment is called Okun's Law.) Cutting personal taxes and/or raising transfer payments can have similar expansionary effects, though most economists would say that such policies have weaker effects on aggregate demand. On the other hand, if supply-side (non-Keynesian) effects are brought into consideration, which method has a better stimulative economic effect is a matter of debate."
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You should read "The Commanding Heights." Countries tried Keynes approach for about forty years after World War II and pretty much drove their economies into the ground. This includes the U.S. and U.K. Keynes theories are pretty much refuted and a guy called Hayek is accepted today. Curbing government spending was one of the best things Ronald Reagan did, and he served during the Cold War. It's also the approach Thatcher took in the U.K. That was one of the Republican ideals I agreed with. Reagan is probably turning in his grave watching the poor job Bush is doing today managing the budget. We spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense, so if it's not working, we need to change some policies or strategies, not spend more. I'd rather pay high taxes than have the government run up debt. Government overspending causes inflation, i.e. higher gas prices, even though ExxonMobile makes a $25 billion profit, and higher prices on everything else, too.

This post has been edited by BlackSTX: Aug 24, 2005 - 8:55 AM