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Title: We're All Greeks Now
Source:
Pat Buchanan
URL Source: http://buchanan.org/blog/were-all-greeks-now-4802
Published: Jul 18, 2011
Author: Pat Buchanan
Post Date: 2011-07-18 15:47:55 by jwpegler
Keywords: None
Views: 32149
Comments: 63
Departing for New Hampshire in November 2010, Sen. Judd Gregg, the fiscal conservative President Obama wanted in his Cabinet, blurted an inconvenient truth: “This nation is on a course where if we don’t do something about it, get … fiscal policy (under control), we’re Greece.” The remark was regarded as hyperbole. But Gregg had a point. For though Greece, measured by the size of her economy, is only 2 to 3 percent of the EU or the U.S. economy, she is a microcosm of the West. Consider the demography. According to the most recent revision of the U.N.’s “World Population Prospects,” Greece in 2010 had 11.2 million people. More than 24 percent were 60 or above, more than 18 percent 65 or older. Three percent were 80 or above. And, every year, for every nine Greeks who are born, 10 Greeks die. Greece is slowly passing away. Fast forward to 2050. Greece’s population will have fallen by 300,000 to 10.8 million. The median age will have risen by eight years to 49.5. Half the population will be 50 or older. More critically, the share of Greece’s population 60 or older will be 37.4 percent, with 31.3 percent over 65. One in nine Greeks will be over 80. If Athens is breaking under the weight of early retirement and pensions for seniors today, her situation will be horrendous by mid-century. Where, in 2010, there were four Greeks under 60 for every Greek over 60, by 2050, there will only be 1.7 Greeks under 60 for every Greek over 60. Conclusion: The retirement age must rise, and pension benefits fall, or Greece collapses. What of the possibility of a new baby boom? Not likely, given that the fertility rate in Greece has been below replacement levels for three decades and is today only two-thirds of that needed to replace the present population. Indeed, by 2050, the fertility rate of Greek women will have been below zero population growth for 80 years. One wonders: How can the U.N. estimate that Greece’s population will fall only 3 percent by then? Is the U.N. assuming mass immigration from the Muslim world? But what does Greece have to do with the rest of Europe, or with us? Only this. The median age of all of Europe is rising, and the demographic numbers for Greece look positively rosy alongside those of the east, where population declines in the tens of millions are projected for Russia and Ukraine. And outside Iceland and Albania, not one nation of Europe has a fertility rate sufficient to maintain its population. Those that are projected to grow, like Britain, have to be relying on Third World immigrants and their higher birth rate. But while this may maintain an existing population size, immigrants from the Maghreb, Middle East, Caribbean, Latin America and South Asia, on average, lack the language, technical skills and educational levels of native-born Europeans. The same is true in the U.S., where peoples of European descent are expected to drop to half the population by 2041. Hispanics will grow from 15 percent to near 30 percent of the U.S. population, and their absolute numbers from 50 million to 135 million by 2050. Yet, again, Hispanics and children of Hispanic immigrants have not, as of yet, reached close to parity in educational achievement with Americans of East Asian or European ancestry. People equate today’s immigration with the immigration of 1890-1920. But another major difference is this: We erected a Great Society over 50 years that did not exist in 1920. In Washington in the 1950s, a city of 800,000, half black and half white, food stamps had not been invented. Families fed themselves. Today, in a District of Columbia of 600,000, one in five are on food stamps. Nationally, a program that did not exist in 1964 feeds one in seven Americans, 44 million people, at a cost of $77 billion a year. And that is but a small fraction of our new Great Society. We are entering a new “age of austerity,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2009. The halcyon days are over. Government payrolls, as is happening from California to New York to Washington, D.C., will have to be slashed. Pension and health care benefits, not only for seniors, will have to be reduced. Retirement ages will have to be raised. From food stamps to foreign aid, programs are going to be capped and cut. The left believes it can get the money from the wealthy. But the top 1 percent of Americans in income already carry 40 percent of the federal income tax load, while the bottom 50 percent of wage-earners ride free. This, too, will have to end. We are either going to man up and radically reduce government at all levels in the United States, or the bond markets are going to do it for us, as they are doing it today for Greece, Ireland and Portugal. We’re all Greeks now.
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#1. To: jwpegler (#0)
That's one of the stupidest things i've ever read. Greece isn't selling its debt for next to nothing. Our debt/deficit to GDP ratios are nowhere near Greece's. Greece can't devalue its currency. Greece's economy isn't growing unlike ours. And we could balance the budget over the next ten years simply by having Congress do nothing, thus allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, and ending both the annual AMT and Medicare patches. Folks want to continue to manufacture a debt crisis in the U.S. when there is none, simply because they want to dismantle New Deal and Great Society programs that they've hated for years.
"Thats because your basically and idiot." Buchanan is an idiot. Greeks have been migrating out of Greece since the the of Homer. 50% of all Greeks live outside of Greece and always will. The demographic trends thus can't apply like Buchanan is doing. Greece's problems regarding debt are nothing like the USA's problem since Greece can't control her own money supply as part of the EU. Buchanan must have nightmares about white people under breeding or something - probably because he is a Catholic who has no children.
"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
Of course it is. According to the IMF, total public debt: Greece -- 130% of GDP U.S. -- 93% of GDP (including both Federal and State levels) Greece is clamping down. The U.S. is still spending. The U.S. will surpass Greece's GDP to debt ratio in a few years if nothing isn't done.
Cutting spending in a recession further reduces revenues - see U.S. 1937, Ireland/UK, for examples. Heck, you can even look at the present-day U.S. where massive cuts in state/local government spending over the last year coupled with record low tax rates have resulted in a 9.2% unemployment rate and a slowing economy. And not only is our spending relative to GDP is falling, as is our deficit., but we have far more flexibility to deal with our debt/deficit issues than Greece - we could for example restore tax revenues to historical norms, or as I noted above, simply do nothing and watch our deficit go away in 10 years. These are all facts you wish to ignore.
"Thats because your basically and idiot." Nope... your chart ends in 2009. Remember just yesterday I showed you data showing that spending relative to GDP had fallen from 25% to 24.1% this year? Again - record low tax rates, massive cuts to state/local spending, and falling federal spending relative to GDP = 9.2% unemployment.
"Thats because your basically and idiot." The year is not over. The only reason that it might be slightly less than 25% in 2011 is that the GOP Congress has put the breaks on Obama's big spending plans. Government spending as a percentage of GDP has escalated from 19% of GDP to 25% today. As the chart I posted demonstrates, the long-term trend has been for increased government spending, regardless of what happens in any given single year. That's what we have to stop, now.
Greece, can't print euros but the USA can print dollars. America is credit worthy (unless the Republicans downgrade us by not raiding the debt limit) and everyone wants to loan money to the USA at cheap rates. Greece has to borrow at a premium. So any more comparisons to Greece and the USA is stupid - it is just not the same.
"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
actually the fall is mostly due to the end of the stimulus. Even with the end of it, Obama's "big spending plans" pail when compared to the big spending Republicans did from 2001-2007. Again, facts which you ignore. Thank your beloved Republicans, notice how your chart shot up "before" Obama became President?
"Thats because your basically and idiot." No, you are confusing tax rates and tax revenues as you always do. You have some kind of mental block about this. The lowest tax rates we've had in the post WWII era were in 1986, when the top rate was 28%. The top rate is 36% today. Insofar as tax revenues are concerned, federal tax revenues are about the same today as they were when Harry Truman was in office. Harry Truman had a balanced budget. All we have to do is cut spending (like Truman did after WWII) and we can have a balanced budget too. Right. And if the GOP wasn't there the Democrats would be cranking up another do- nothing stimulus.
What's the problem? The elite aren't interested in creating enough jobs to go around and don't think employees are worth the money it takes to keep them alive, housed, and healthy anyway.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
Obama is part of the elite.....correct?
Not in her little one-dimensional mind. Dems = always good; Reps = always evil. Didn't you attend the Party Hack 101 class? democrats can NEVER be part of the elite. No matter how many billions they get from Bill Gates or Warren Buffet; how many traffic jams they cause in NYC so they can "go out on the town"; and no matter how much Streisand and Speilberg ass they kiss. Geez, pay attention.
The stimulus created or saved 3 million jobs. Meanwhile, cap, cut and balance will eliminate 700k jobs this year alone. Why does the GOP hate jobs?
"Thats because your basically and idiot." Meanwhile, cap, cut and balance will eliminate 700k jobs this year alone. Why does the GOP hate jobs? I hate to say this. But you sound like a dumb ass.
your chart shows a hell of a fall off in Obama's presidency. meanwhile most Republicans think Obama actually raised taxes. Again - falling taxes, massive cutting of state/local government jobs, and falling federal spending relative to GDP have given us 9.2% unemployment. Highest since January. You keep ignoring this.
"Thats because your basically and idiot." i feel the same way about you when you post conspiracy theories. Hope you don't mind.
"Thats because your basically and idiot." The stimulus actually made us lose jobs. At least 1 million. http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2011/05/17/stimulus_killed_1_million_jobs
Being President of the United States does make him pretty elite. If Ron Paul were President, he'd be elite too.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
Oh darn! I went to the trouble of answering Stone's question myself before discovering you'd taken care of it for me. Carry on.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
They don't hate jobs; they hate the little people who do them.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
You keep ignoring this. The best they can do is ignore the fact that following the conservative prescription for economic growth results in high unemployment and lackluster economic growth.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
Weren't you alive when Reagan was president?
Already debunked: here; http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/stupid-stimulus-tricks/ Another: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-stimulus-did-not-create-jobs-the-35496th- try And another: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-stimulus-really-destroy-million.html Here's the real story: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2010-08-30-stimulus30_CV_N.htm
"Thats because your basically and idiot." Obama's stimulus propped up state government jobs and we still had around 9% unemployment. ALL of Obama's programs in housing, employment, autos, etc. have done one thing - they've postponed needed corrections in distorted markets. This is why the economy is still in the toilet.
All Obama has created in debt. You can't borrow your way to prosperity. Every so called job that was created destroyed even more jobs.
Reagan signed eleven tax hikes as President, and he increased government spending (even non-defense- related). You guys keep ignoring that.
"Thats because your basically and idiot." True, and you can't massively cut your way to it either. Your approach is that when you get sick, the best recourse to reducing medical bills is to cut off your arm so there's less of you to treat. What we do know is that if Congress simply does nothing over the next 3 years, the budget will be balanced in less than a decade.
"Thats because your basically and idiot." Obama hates kids. That is why he like it when they are murdered in the womb. The ones who escape the womb are saddled with 300 thousand dollars in debt or more by the time they are 18. Obama is lower then a piece of monkey shit. He should be made to pay back every penny he spent plus interest. If he can't pay HIS debt he should be enslaved and passed around to different families he has destroyed to work for them FOR FREE!
The Reagan who was president then is not the same Reagan who is idolized now.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
I've long argued that tbe biggest failure of Obama's stimulus was that 1/3rd of it went to tax cuts in an effort to win Republican votes. As we have seen, tax cuts have little stimulative effect stimulate the economy - otherwise we would have seen stronger performance under Bush than we did under Clinton or Reagan. Again, you keep ignoring the FACTS that taxes are at record lows and governments everywhere are shedding jobs and cutting spending. Where's the boom that you keep arguing will result from these policies?
"Thats because your basically and idiot." Your analogy is horse shit. Here is a better one. When you keep going out to eat and buying new cars and houses on credit. If you don't pay you end up bankrupt and homeless.
Businesses do it all the time.
Von Mises associates any Government involvement in markets as "Socialism" , to mislead people into thinking Government is the enemy , when infact empire is the enemy and empire is Privatized.
So you never see increasing your wages as an achievable goal?
"Thats because your basically and idiot." I don't give a shit if the government gets less or more money if they raise or lower taxes. It is theft you fucking moron.
I work for myself. I don't get wages.
Reagan lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28%. Marginal tax rates are what counts for economic growth. Ask Bill Bradley or Erskin Bowells.
They borrow money to make a product, pay back the loan and make profits. Not stealing from working people to give to some lazy ass deadbeat sitting in his section 8 housing playing his xbox eating ice cream cones paid for with food stamps and going to get his toothache paid for by medicaid. You liberals have really screwed up this country.
Snotty leftist elitists view most Americans with contempt, not just kids.
Comments (41 - 63) not displayed.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest“This nation is on a course where if we don’t do something about it, get … fiscal policy (under control), we’re Greece.”
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#2. To: jwpegler, lucysmom (#0)
#3. To: go65 (#1)
(Edited)
Our debt/deficit to GDP ratios are nowhere near Greece's.
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#4. To: jwpegler (#3)
(Edited)
Greece is clamping down. The U.S. is still spending.
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#5. To: go65 (#4)
And not only is our spending relative to GDP is falling...
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#6. To: jwpegler (#5)
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#7. To: go65 (#6)
(Edited)
Remember just yesterday I showed you data showing that spending relative to GDP had fallen from 25% to 24.1% this year?
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#8. To: jwpegler, go65 (#7)
#9. To: jwpegler (#7)
The only reason that it might be slightly less than 25% in 2011 is that the GOP Congress has put the breaks on Obama's big spending plans.
Government spending as a percentage of GDP has escalated from 19% of GDP to 25% today.
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#10. To: go65 (#6)
record low tax rates
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#11. To: go65 (#9)
actually the fall is mostly due to the end of the stimulus
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#12. To: Godwinson (#2)
Buchanan must have nightmares about white people under breeding or something - probably because he is a Catholic who has no children.
#13. To: lucysmom (#12)
The elite aren't interested in creating enough jobs to go around and don't think employees are worth the money it takes to keep them alive, housed, and healthy anyway.
#14. To: A K A Stone, lucysmom (#13)
Obama is part of the elite.....correct?
#15. To: jwpegler (#11)
And if the GOP wasn't there the Democrats would be cranking up another do- nothing stimulus.
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#16. To: go65 (#15)
The stimulus created or saved 3 million jobs.
#17. To: jwpegler (#10)
federal tax revenues are about the same today as they were when Harry Truman was in office
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#18. To: A K A Stone (#16)
I hate to say this. But you sound like a dumb ass.
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#19. To: go65 (#15)
#20. To: A K A Stone (#13)
Obama is part of the elite.....correct?
#21. To: Get Outta Dodge! (#14)
Not in her little one-dimensional mind. Dems = always good; Reps = always evil.
#22. To: go65 (#15)
Why does the GOP hate jobs?
#23. To: go65 (#17)
Again - falling taxes, massive cutting of state/local government jobs, and falling federal spending relative to GDP have given us 9.2% unemployment. Highest since January.
#24. To: lucysmom (#23)
The best they can do is ignore the fact that following the conservative prescription for economic growth results in high unemployment and lackluster economic growth.
#25. To: A K A Stone (#19)
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2011/05/17/stimulus_killed_1_million_jobs
To tease any effect of the stimulus out of these interstate differences, if it's possible at all, would require very careful and scrupulous statistical work -- and we'd like to see some elaborate robustness checks before buying into any results thereby found.
The latest anti-stimulus paper shows no sign of that kind of care. It makes no effort to control for the differential effects of bubble and bust. It uses odd variables on both the left and the right side of its equations. The instruments -- variables used to correct for possible two-way causation -- are weak and dubious. Dean Baker suspects data-mining, with reason; the best interpretation is that the authors tried something that happened to give the results they wanted, then stopped looking.
Really, this isn't the sort of thing worth wasting time over
With an exercise like this, you always have to worry about the problem of cherry picking. It is very easy to run 1000 regressions in an hour. Inevitably, you find 4 or 5 of these 1000 that show you almost anything. (Our standard of significance is a result that you would not get by random chance more than 10 times in a hundred. This means that if you ran 1000 regressions of things that had nothing to do with each other, you would expect 100 of them to have statistically significant results.)
For this reason, you usually want to run your regressions a variety of different ways to show that the results do not depend on some arbitrary specification. It doesn't look like they have done this, or at least they did not show much evidence of such robustness tests in their paper.
Their results depend on pulling out four private sector industry groups (lumped together) and measuring the stimulus against trend job growth in these industries. Even for these four industry groups , most of the results are only marginally significant. It is clear from their tables that if they took all private sector jobs, their results would be insignificant. So, how did they decide on lumping these four industry groups together? It certainly is not a standard break out. It does raise a suspicion that they ran many different regressions and then discovered that they got the results they wanted with these four industries lumped together.
There are many other peculiar items here.
But, given the lack of any statistically significant findings, this paper does not deliver the results that it advertised. Conley and Dupor's abstract should read "We find no evidence for a significant effect of the ARRA on job creation." That would be scientifically honest, but would not turn a lot of heads. Instead, the abstract makes the more politically incendiary claim that the ARRA destroyed jobs, which the authors actually did not find
But to estimate the answers to such questions, economists rely on models based on historical relationships between various policies and real-world results. Earlier this month, Zandi and co-author Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, released the most detailed assessment of the government's efforts to combat the so-called Great Recession. Neither economist is regarded as a partisan firebrand. Zandi, for example, backed John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign and has advised members of both parties.
Their conclusion: The fiscal stimulus created 2.7 million jobs and added $460 billion to gross domestic product. Unemployment would be 11% today if the stimulus hadn't been passed and 16.5% if neither the fiscal stimulus nor the banks' rescue had been enacted, according to Zandi and Blinder. "It's pretty hard to deny that it had a measurable impact," Zandi said.
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#26. To: go65 (#17)
(Edited)
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#27. To: go65 (#25)
#28. To: A K A Stone (#24)
Weren't you alive when Reagan was president?
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#29. To: A K A Stone (#27)
You can't borrow your way to prosperity.
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#30. To: jwpegler (#26)
#31. To: A K A Stone (#24)
Weren't you alive when Reagan was president?
#32. To: jwpegler (#26)
(Edited)
Obama's stimulus propped up state government jobs and we still had around 9% unemployment.
ALL of Obama's programs in housing, employment, autos, etc. have done one thing - they've postponed needed corrections in distorted markets. This is why the economy is still in the toilet.
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#33. To: go65 (#29)
True, and you can't massively cut your way to it either. Your approach is that when you get sick, the best recourse to reducing medical bills is to cut off your arm so there's less of you to treat.
#34. To: A K A Stone (#27)
You can't borrow your way to prosperity.
#35. To: A K A Stone (#33)
Here is a better one. When you keep going out to eat and buying new cars and houses on credit. If you don't pay you end up bankrupt and homeless.
Badeye posted on 2011-04-29 10:30:22 ET
#36. To: go65 (#32)
#37. To: go65 (#35)
So you never see increasing your wages as an achievable goal?
#38. To: go65 (#28)
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
#39. To: lucysmom (#34)
Businesses do it all the time. T
#40. To: A K A Stone (#30)
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. — Thomas Jefferson
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