Rising oil prices definitely contributed to rising prices around the world. In the US there was also the impact of protectionism, but all that impact is small compared to the massive glut of spending during the pandemic combined with the massive drop in production. A textbook case: more money chasing fewer goodsâinflation.
Serious sanctions against Russia began in 2022. Inflation (in the US) peaked in 2022, then began declining. This isn't about oil & gas.
Curves that spike revert to the mean. Inflation is returning to the baseline of the last 20 years. OK, it's been creeping up the last few years, but it's basically returning to the unacceptably high level the Fed's policies and federal spending have been causing for decades.
The debt caused by all that borrowing has to be serviced, and that expense is now 16% of the federal budget. The deficit is 43% of the budgetâthat is, of every dollar spent, $.43 is borrowed. This is a death spiral.
You can make this year's numbers look good this way, like eating speed to stay awake, but the toll adds up. And it's going to impoverish us.
By your very odd metric Obama did a great job on the deficit. Please.
This graph shows national debt. The deficit is the slope of the curve. This shows a pattern of rising deficits over time, regardless of which of the two major parties holds the presidency. In this light they all sucked, but no, Democratic presidents don't look comparatively goodâespecially lately.Makes me nostalgic for Jimmy Carter.
It gets mighty tiresome pointing this out, and the conventional wisdom (that tax rates drive tax revenue) is a very durable myth, but it's a myth. And a very toxic one.
This is revenue as a fraction of GDP from 1929 to date:
This range spans top marginal rates from 90% to 33%. Makes no difference in the long run: set rates at whatever you like, you're going to get maybe 18% of GDP as revenue.
The reason is simple: high tax rates are an incentive for people to shift their income to less-taxable forms, find tax avoidance schemes, or hide their incomeâand people follow incentives. Especially when they have the means to do so.
There is no action without a reaction.
Oh, you misunderstand me (again). I do understand that high national debt is a massive burden on the economy and that there is a case to be made for fiscal prudence, both privately and, to a lesser extent, publicly. However, as the 20C has shown, fiscal prudence is not the sole goal of public financing by any means. As a policy maker you have to navigate your way through a slew of shocks, keep people in work, avoid recession and hardship, tax in good times, spend in bad, and basically hold the whole ship together, and this in sea swept by wild political swings and roundabouts.
To reduce this mammoth task to the one single goal of minimising the deficit is way too simplistic. Likewise, it is dishonest to present a graph showing the national debt in absolute terms, when debt relative to GDP makes much more sense. I know you hate the public sector, not without some justification, for being bloated, inefficient and I presume you'd say "stealing" from the people in the form of tax. But its very inertia can help economies remain steady in a storm. All those public servants have guaranteed income and keep spending when the private sector is busy laying off staff. This alone does help to keep things running. And despite all the criticism to the contrary, it was the government that bailed out the financial sector a couple of years back and kept the economy running. I for one am very glad we didn't get a run on the banks and mass panic, which would certainly have been the result, because, well, people are people. They are rarely that rational, if ever.
btw.. one thing I don't understand is how you interpret me measuring Obama as doing a good job on the deficit when I said precisely the opposite? Didn't get that one.
PS. I take your point that the spike in inflation was primarily fuelled by easy money during the pandemic combined with a sharp drop in production.. that makes good sense.
PPS: before you start thinking I am all in favour of a complete lack of fiscal prudence, no I am not. I just caught this twitter thread comparing Germany to Francethat pretty clearly illustrates how to do monetary policy wrong.
a point seemingly ignored by most on the right. I'd agree that the inflation spike was exogenous and caused by Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the western response to it (sanctions). I also agree that the biggest factor in it falling in the meantime is the global resolution of gas & oil supplies by other means and not the Inflation Act.
Not so fast there.
Rising oil prices definitely contributed to rising prices around the world. In the US there was also the impact of protectionism, but all that impact is small compared to the massive glut of spending during the pandemic combined with the massive drop in production. A textbook case: more money chasing fewer goodsâinflation.
Serious sanctions against Russia began in 2022. Inflation (in the US) peaked in 2022, then began declining. This isn't about oil & gas.
Curves that spike revert to the mean. Inflation is returning to the baseline of the last 20 years. OK, it's been creeping up the last few years, but it's basically returning to the unacceptably high level the Fed's policies and federal spending have been causing for decades.
But you'd be hard pressed to convince me that the Inflation Act was a bad thing. It has stimulated a huge wave of public spending on the very things that have been neglected for too long in the States (ie. public infrastructure). Ok, this was done by borrowing. But that is a pretty common Democratic strategy. Spend big in the first term to create jobs and get the economy up and running then rein in the deficit over the second term. Of all the Democrat presidents since WWII the only president to fail at closing his term as president with a lower deficit than when he started was Obama IIRC.
The debt caused by all that borrowing has to be serviced, and that expense is now 16% of the federal budget. The deficit is 43% of the budgetâthat is, of every dollar spent, $.43 is borrowed. This is a death spiral.
You can make this year's numbers look good this way, like eating speed to stay awake, but the toll adds up. And it's going to impoverish us.
By your very odd metric Obama did a great job on the deficit. Please.
This graph shows national debt. The deficit is the slope of the curve. This shows a pattern of rising deficits over time, regardless of which of the two major parties holds the presidency. In this light they all sucked, but no, Democratic presidents don't look comparatively goodâespecially lately.Makes me nostalgic for Jimmy Carter.
If you look at the rest of the economic data, Biden has done a fantastic job. True, it was deficit spending in real Keynesian fashion. But when Republicans (not you) start moaning about the deficit I can't help but smile wryly at the charge, for it is Republican presidents who display the most reckless fiscal policies as a rule, usually by cutting taxes when the government can't afford it.
It gets mighty tiresome pointing this out, and the conventional wisdom (that tax rates drive tax revenue) is a very durable myth, but it's a myth. And a very toxic one.
This is revenue as a fraction of GDP from 1929 to date:
This range spans top marginal rates from 90% to 33%. Makes no difference in the long run: set rates at whatever you like, you're going to get maybe 18% of GDP as revenue.
The reason is simple: high tax rates are an incentive for people to shift their income to less-taxable forms, find tax avoidance schemes, or hide their incomeâand people follow incentives. Especially when they have the means to do so.
Democrats (rightly) get the label of 'tax and spend'. Somehow Republicans have claimed the mantra of fiscal conservatism, but the only time they displayed anything other than 'spend and spend w/o any taxes' was Bush1. He even tried the 'read my lips, no new taxes' thing, but in the end his true conservatism made him raised taxes. And his base abandoned him for it. The rest of the conference seems to have taken the learning to heart.
Exactly. The debt ceiling commentary from the right under Obama was "Cut the deficit!!!"... then Trump came in and gave away money under the "Field of Dreams", "trickle-down" promises of the greatest economy in the history of humans... and the focus turned to "reduce spending".
Appreciating the hypocrisy, conservatives often now just ignore the conversation. They want as much as possible for themselves, without any sense of responsibility for the system that allowed them to create their wealth. It's not personal brilliance, as much as a system that supports trying (and often failing). Now, the boomers want to grab every nickel they can before they die, instead of fixing the very things that made them feel so good about themselves.
I'd agree that the inflation spike was exogenous and caused by Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the western response to it (sanctions). I also agree that the biggest factor in it falling in the meantime is the global resolution of gas & oil supplies by other means and not the Inflation Act.
But you'd be hard pressed to convince me that the Inflation Act was a bad thing. It has stimulated a huge wave of public spending on the very things that have been neglected for too long in the States (ie. public infrastructure). Ok, this was done by borrowing. But that is a pretty common Democratic strategy. Spend big in the first term to create jobs and get the economy up and running then rein in the deficit over the second term. Of all the Democrat presidents since WWII the only president to fail at closing his term as president with a lower deficit than when he started was Obama IIRC.
If you look at the rest of the economic data, Biden has done a fantastic job. True, it was deficit spending in real Keynesian fashion. But when Republicans (not you) start moaning about the deficit I can't help but smile wryly at the charge, for it is Republican presidents who display the most reckless fiscal policies as a rule, usually by cutting taxes when the government can't afford it.
Democrats (rightly) get the label of 'tax and spend'. Somehow Republicans have claimed the mantra of fiscal conservatism, but the only time they displayed anything other than 'spend and spend w/o any taxes' was Bush1. He even tried the 'read my lips, no new taxes' thing, but in the end his true conservatism made him raised taxes. And his base abandoned him for it. The rest of the conference seems to have taken the learning to heart.
Most of what he did in office was borrow and spend money, building on the beyond-reckless spending of the Trump administration.
a point seemingly ignored by most on the right.
I'd agree that the inflation spike was exogenous and caused by Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the western response to it (sanctions). I also agree that the biggest factor in it falling in the meantime is the global resolution of gas & oil supplies by other means and not the Inflation Act.
But you'd be hard pressed to convince me that the Inflation Act was a bad thing. It has stimulated a huge wave of public spending on the very things that have been neglected for too long in the States (ie. public infrastructure). Ok, this was done by borrowing. But that is a pretty common Democratic strategy. Spend big in the first term to create jobs and get the economy up and running then rein in the deficit over the second term. Of all the Democrat presidents since WWII the only president to fail at closing his term as president with a lower deficit than when he started was Obama IIRC.
If you look at the rest of the economic data, Biden has done a fantastic job. True, it was deficit spending in real Keynesian fashion. But when Republicans (not you) start moaning about the deficit I can't help but smile wryly at the charge, for it is Republican presidents who display the most reckless fiscal policies as a rule, usually by cutting taxes when the government can't afford it.
Biden's signature piece of legislation (the Orwellianly-named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022) took effect in August of 2022â2 months after the inflation spike caused by the orgy of pandemic spending had peaked. Granted there is a significant lag associated between government actions and measurable impact on the economy, but inflation is still 3X higher than when he took office.
The unemployment rate shows a reversion to the mean after an enormous spike in 2020. It has been on a slow rise since January of 2023, where it briefly hit 3.4%âa touch better than the previous low in February of 2020 of 3.5%. You can see it all in great detail in a graphic I can't embed here https://www.bls.gov/charts/emp...
Biden did not save the US economy. Most of what he did in office was borrow and spend money, building on the beyond-reckless spending of the Trump administration. Our grandchildren will be paying for this amphetamine rush for their whole lives even if spending were to level off.
And I bet when it's the eleventh time you'll have to take off your shoes to keep count and when it is the 21st time you'll have to lower your zipper ...
OBTW ... the flu kills many more than does pancreatic cancer. They are both deadly.
It's surprising how analytical you can be... to avoid discussing Project 2025. You just keep dodging that one...
Yeah, well your side's plan for us is the Green New Deal, most recently disguised as the (cough) Inflation Reduction Act. How's that working out ?
This is the second time you've compared the Green New Deal and Project 2025. It's like comparing Pancreatic cancer and the flu.
And I bet when it's the eleventh time you'll have to take off your shoes to keep count and when it is the 21st time you'll have to lower your zipper ...
OBTW ... the flu kills many more than does pancreatic cancer. They are both deadly.