This might surprise you: Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama? - Forbes

soulcaptain · 2012-05-25T18:48:14.529368+00:00

Looking at actual spending numbers (as % of GDP) makes this seem right:

2009 - 42.63
2010 - 40.75
2011 - 40.09
2012 - 40.27 (projected)
2013 - 39.22 (projected)

Until you take them in greater context:

2004 - 34.86
2005 - 34.83 (-0.03)
2006 - 35.12 (+0.29)
2007 - 35.09 (-0.03)
2008 - 37.14 (+2.05)
2009 - 42.63 (+5.49)
2010 - 40.75 (-1.88)
2011 - 40.09 (-0.66)
2012 - 40.27 (+0.18) (projected)
2013 - 39.22 (-1.05) (projected)

When you look at it in graph form you can see the misleading nature of this. Yes, they skyrocketed spending in 2008-2009 (both Bush and Obama were ~~at fault~~ for that). But then, Obama basically maintains that high level of spending. Add in a slight reduction from the 2009 peak and, statistically, it appears that Obama is downright stingy.

It's interesting that when global warming skeptics were pointing at the % change over the last decade to 15 years by starting with 1998, the warming advocates were chastising them for "playing statistics" because 1998 was a spiked record high year. Now that people do basically the same thing with spending growth by starting with that spiked record year of 2009, it's lauded as "proof" of Obama being responsible.

Even if you look at absolute spending you can see where the spike of 2008-2009 and then the slight reduction after that would statistically make the spending growth seem small even though spending itself matches the 2000-2007 trend almost perfectly.

akorz · 2012-05-25T18:42:42.233487+00:00

If all families in poverty now where able to have their children bring in more income, I think they would.

That's a big assumption. In addition to assuming it would happen at all, it is an assumption to believe that the parents would have them devote the entirety of their time to work instead of become educated.

akorz · 2012-05-25T18:24:40.861791+00:00

Adult miners would no doubt be more productive than a child whose first job was working in a mine.

Seconded. And in addition, what company (in western society) would hire a child to put them in a dangerous occupation? If something did happen to that child, that company would be facing a PR nightmare.

T_reid · 2012-05-25T17:18:21.256017+00:00

Ron Paul is a 76 year old doctor turned Representative. During his ~30 years in Congress, he has established a record of strong and consistent support for the US Constitution which establishes restrictions on what the federal govt can do. In fact, while the rest of Congress has been continuously increasing the scope and power of the Federal govt (as well as its spending), Ron Paul fought against it so consistently that he earned the nickname "Dr No."

He has made a great many actions to reinforce the consistency of his words that the federal govt should be smaller and do less. For example he has opted out of the Congressional pension system, returns a large amount of his office's annual budget to the treasury.

He has friends and enemies on both sides of the aisle (not sure how much you know about US politics and Democrats and Republicans) because while he supports limited govt and free markets in the economy which riles Democrats and encourages Republicans, he also fights against foreign intervention and militarism which endears him to Democrats while frustrating Republicans.

He has also written a number of books to reflect both his philosophical views and his policy prescriptions. Though sometimes this leads to confusion as people mistake his philosophical stance with his policy recommendations. For example, he wrote a book called 'End the Fed' about how the Fed causes the market distortions that lead to recessions and that things would be better with it gone. However, his policy prescription is simply to allow competing currencies.

With govt expanding more and more into the lives of individuals and business whether in the name of national security or in the name of economic stability, Ron Paul is one of the few politicians not talking about tweaking the edges of policy and spending, but making major changes.

Instead of simply slightly modifying military strategy and trying a slightly different tact to pressure Iran and other countries, Ron Paul follows a non-interventionist view. He proposes getting the US military out from around the world, stop trying to control and manipulate foreign nations, allowing free trade with all nations, securing our own nation with an actual defensive approach, and saving hundreds of billions of dollars a year in the process.

On the economy, his views are that govt should allow individuals to keep more of the money they earn as well as eliminating exemptions, loopholes and credits that many of the wealthy get. He believes that govt should stop regulating companies, but also force those companies to fail/succeed without govt bailouts/guarantees. He has also proposed to cut $1 TRILLION from the federal budget ($3.6 Trillion) in the first year.

For many other "social" issues, Ron Paul doesn't wish to have the President, or even Washington, deciding and setting national policy on personal issues. So he recommends following the Constitution and allowing states to decide most of these issues themselves.

For years he has been predicting (another) the problems that we would face if we continued the policies we have. And in general, when looking at the other candidates, Ron Paul is the only one talking about significantly changing a broken system.

PS: Others can supply links where applicable.

Geauxtoguy · 2012-05-25T16:42:07.488117+00:00

Yeah, it was entertaining. And you're right, he does go a bit overboard and a bit conspiratorial, but gets the right idea.

Geauxtoguy · 2012-05-25T16:35:11.947354+00:00

I don't know if I can take seriously the political views of Goat boy and the guy from Half Baked. :)

notquitemiddleaged · 2012-05-25T16:14:56.793106+00:00

"True" in that the statistics aren't inaccurate. But not true in that in reality Obama is frugal or restraining spending in any way.

koolbeans777 · 2012-05-25T16:12:24.803147+00:00

With regard to the hostile responses you've gotten:

There have been a lot of disgruntled Republicans and Democrats that have recently abandoned their parties and find that they agree with large portions of libertarianism. They then claim to be libertarians, but they disagree with significant portions of its views/principles/policies.

A lot of long-time or devoted libertarians are very sensitive to this diluting of "libertarianism". Don't take it personally. Focus on those trying to answer your questions.

PS: And just to avoid the dustup, maybe in the future consider saying "I tend to lean libertarian" instead of "I consider myself a libertarian" until you feel solidly confident in the vast majority of the views/principles/policies.

PPS: Welcome! It's a fun ride if you enjoy learning. :)

koolbeans777 · 2012-05-25T16:09:50.275338+00:00

True. Same here. But it's how I felt when I first went to mises.org. I had to basically disregard the frontpage and find the ~~blog~~ Circle Bastiat and just passively watch it for awhile and pick out articles that seemed like I could grasp it (and I felt I had a decent grasp of economics beforehand).

I was just saying that if someone is very light on economics and is looking for answers now, then just sending them there may be overwhelming.

The part "Perhaps ... " was directed to OP.

TactfulEver · 2012-05-25T16:06:37.673775+00:00

Yeah, didn't seem to take. :)

koolbeans777 · 2012-05-25T15:51:51.516790+00:00

Seriously.

koolbeans777 · 2012-05-25T15:38:50.401743+00:00

Honestly, I'd be a little cautious about sending a newbie to Mises.org itself. Their front page can be intimidating to someone new to economics.

Perhaps start with their Beginners Guide and browse through their Daily section. Just be aware that while many of the Daily articles have really good foundational information, many may be somewhat advanced.

Breeegz · 2012-05-25T15:27:20.592288+00:00

The phrase "Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile" comes to mind. :)

CMAN1995 · 2012-05-25T15:25:35.085385+00:00

I came across this thread and I have a question:

Do you believe that a person that kills someone should be held accountable?

landlover · 2012-05-25T14:49:14.294782+00:00

Add in that he clumps all unemployment areas into states and it makes it even less reasonable. For example, San Antonio, Dallas, and Ft Worth could have 11% unemployment, but Houston, Austin and other areas have 6% and thus the state as a whole only has 7%. Or Sacramento, San Francisco and San Diego might have 6% unemployment, but with LA having 15%, the state as a whole only has 11% unemployment.

I'm not saying those are accurate (in fact probably aren't) but just taking entire state unemployment figures doesn't necessarily prove the "pockets of unemployment" view to be wrong.

TactfulEver · 2012-05-25T14:21:26.008984+00:00

Really need to differentiate between 'abilities' and 'rights'.

I have the ability to kill someone, but not the right to do so. I have the right to jump across the grand canyon, but not the ability.

If you cannot get them to recognize the difference between rights and ability, you'll never get through to them and should just let it go.

Edit: May want to consider asking him/her: Should someone be held accountable if they kill someone or if they smash/break someone else's car?

notquitemiddleaged · 2012-05-25T13:46:49.697389+00:00

I haven't even looked into it and let me throw up some initial thoughts:

2010-2013 is after the 2009 growth in spending and including projected spending reduction.

EDIT: Looking at actual spending numbers (as % of GDP) reinforces this view:

2009 - 42.63
2010 - 40.75
2011 - 40.09
2012 - 40.27 (projected)
2013 - 39.22 (projected)

Looks pretty decent until you take them in greater context:

2004 - 34.86
2005 - 34.83 (-0.03)
2006 - 35.12 (+0.29)
2007 - 35.09 (-0.03)
2008 - 37.14 (+2.05)
2009 - 42.63 (+5.49)
2010 - 40.75 (-1.88)
2011 - 40.09 (-0.66)
2012 - 40.27 (+0.18) (projected)
2013 - 39.22 (-1.05) (projected)

EDIT 2: When you look at it in graph form you can see the misleading nature of this. Yes, they skyrocketed spending in 2008-2009 (both Bush and Obama were ~~at fault~~ for that). But then, Obama basically maintains that high level of spending. Add in a slight reduction from the 2009 peak and, statistically, it appears that Obama is downright stingy.

It's interesting that when global warming skeptics were pointing at the % change over the last decade to 15 years by starting with 1998, the warming advocates were chastising them for "playing statistics" because 1998 was a spiked record high year. Now that people do basically the same thing with spending growth by starting with that spiked record year of 2009, it's lauded as "proof" of Obama being responsible.

EDIT3: Even if you look at absolute spending you can see where the spike of 2008-2009 and then the slight reduction after that would statistically make the spending growth seem small even though spending itself matches the 2000-2007 trend almost perfectly.

colki · 2012-05-25T13:33:05.966445+00:00

I think he's saying:

Friedman/Hayek believe in a fairy tale version of the free market. I believe that the free market has frictions that cause failures and at least Keynesianism is open to that - so I lean with them. However, I disagree with Keynesianism's "altruistic parent" prescription to fix things and wish they'd instead make structural reforms to ease recognized frictions [whatever that means]. But instead of focusing on figuring out how to ease frictions, each side gets into useless debates about trivial details and assumptions that the other side gets wrong.

Either way, pretty much everyone agrees with the Keynesian view more or less nowadays, though many view this consensus as being dangerous.

However, after you mentioned Rothbard/Mises, he referenced Friedman/Hayek and just lumped them all into neo-classical, so it's possible he isn't aware/doesn't actually understand Austrianism and how divergent it is from standard Keynesian economics.

Breeegz · 2012-05-25T13:08:47.611079+00:00

When you are looking at a slide in a microscope, you can see two organisms that look relatively far apart. However, when you step back and look at things from a larger perspective, they're not very far apart at all. That's what we have with Obama and Romney: if you nitpick their rhetoric and plans, they can appear quite different. When you look at their actual policies, they're about 3 inches from each other.

Libertythoughts · 2012-05-24T21:17:41.978105+00:00

Hear, hear.

eblees · 2012-05-24T21:14:06.677526+00:00

when they do they do they commit the same crimes

Like what?

regulations and minimum wage laws NEED to be enforced

What regulations?

What do you think minimum wage laws do for the poor? Anyone not worth the minimum wage doesn't get hired and paid that wage anyway, they simply aren't hired.

Libertythoughts · 2012-05-24T21:11:39.083569+00:00

For that 1/2 vote thing to be even close to true, you would have to be an ardent Republican and Romney supporter who decides to switch and vote for Johnson. If you're really a solid libertarian then that assumption doesn't apply.

Honestly I like Penn's response.

justinamash · 2012-05-24T13:59:08.078789-07:00

That's why I said somewhat misleading instead of completely misleading

Fair enough. I guess I've become jaded to reddit where someone says "somewhat misleading" and means "totally f#@king wrong!" :)

And the point of fiat currency is so that you DO have something you can easily and arbitrarily expand to give you greater flexibility in dealing with financial crises.

Oh I understand the point of it. I simply think that such a power creates negative unintended consequences and that it should not be the ONLY real option.

And if it gets the Ron Paul nuts to shut up for a while, the whole world will be a better place! (I jest, I jest! =D)

Why I oughta

I'll have to ponder more seriously what possible consequences could come of it before I came on board for sure, though.

I appreciate the consideration.

justinamash · 2012-05-24T13:41:50.160370-07:00

The issue is that they handled it all through the 90s

We are not in the 90s. A given tax rate in one era cannot be assumed to have the same impact (or lack thereof) in a different era.

It's not an appeal to authority to point out that the vast majority of professionals and experts in the field disagree with his assessment.

To imply that he's wrong because the CBO, professional economists and OMB disagree is explicitly an appeal to authority.

It sounds like the global warming "debate": thousands of scientists, representing 99% of the community of experts agree but we found three guys who don't so GLOBAL WARMING IS A HOAX!

If you disregard their science simply because it disagrees with the consensus view, then yes, that too is a logical fallacy.

The only consequences will be that we go back to paying Clinton era rates and government revenue goes up.

If you think that raising taxes has no consequences except to increase revenue, then let's just tax everyone 90% and increase welfare checks by 100%. Everyone pays more, poor can still survive, govt has lots of revenue. We'll get that debt paid off in no time!

Where do you get that?

Sorry, I was apparently a year off and went from 1979 - 2009 and got 31.58 -> 42.63 (+11.05) whereas 1980 - 2010 is only a +7. But when you look at average % change over that time period, revenue is actually the more consistent. You only have two significant negatives: 2000-2002 (dotCom recession) and 2007-2009 (housing recession). And remember that the significant Bush tax cuts didn't take affect until 2003.

But again, my point is that govt spending goes up regardless of whether GDP is rising or not. If you look at absolute spending, it goes up every year and has done so every year since WWII (except 2010 when there was such a significant jump in 2009 due to stimulus and other spending).

From 2000 to 20004, we lost 5% points of revenue.

No, from 2000-2002 we lost 5%. By 2003 it had stabilized and by 2004 it was growing again.

I think it's pretty fair to surmise that you consider that somehow immoral and wrong.

Damn you're persistent with the morality strawman. I've never said anything about taxes and morality. My point about "enabling" them is about practicality - that doing everything we can to increase revenue is not going to get govt to be any more responsible about spending and wasting money (and what is wasteful is an entirely different discussion, but I hope we can agree there is a significant amount of it going on). Politicians use money to buy votes. You give them more money, they aren't likely to be responsible with it but will instead simply try to buy more votes.

MonkeyWrench · 1 day

Honestly, I would say since at least 1776. The right to peacefully protest is basically the freedom of assembly and has been mentioned in numerous human rights documents including the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

I agree with this. People should have the right to assemble peacefully and complain.

Though, you start flipping cars, assaulting people, and throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails and that's a different story.

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