Folks: It really is this simple. The federal government taxes and spends about 20% of the GDP. Of that 20%, 18%+ is locked up in mandatory programs, defense, interest, and a thousand other things that there is no significant debate about. The remaining 1-2% is the difference between mainstream left and right.

WE COULD FLUSH THIS MONEY DOWN THE TOILET, AND THE ONLY IMPACT IT WOULD HAVE ON THE ECONOMY IS A SHORT-TERM BOOST IN THE PLUMBING MARKET.

The president and congress do not control the economy in the short or median term, nor is there any statistically significant relationship between which party holds which offices. While our political choices DO effect the economy, they do so over the scale of decades and several administrations. Today's woes go all the way back to monetary policies from the Nixon era, and the biggest strains on our budget are FDR's social programs! Today's economy is the result of the sum of countless decisions running back centuries, not any differences between Bush and Kerry/Gore.

No, it really is not that simple.

Decisions about war/peace, energy, health care, taxes and so on effect the economy significantly! You are referring just to discretionary budgets. There is a lot more to it than that.

All those differences add up to a couple % of GDP.....it's just the math, which I just showed you. The federal government is about 20%, and at least 90% of that is in programs which there is general agreement about. That leaves less than 2% which is being argued about. No, it does NOT have a short term impact, and the long term impacts get spread out over the next several administrations, so any effects get washed below statistical significance.

Fine. Can we still elect a president who'll get us out of Iraq then?

I'm sorry, Sakura, but you are not talking about the economy as a whole, you are just referring to a tiny sliver of it. You are talking about government spending, not policy. It is also a mistake to measure the health of the economy by using just GDP. If the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, as they are now, that is not a sign of a healthy and sustainable economy -- even if the GDP is rising.

Do you really mean to tell me that whether a country is at war or not has virtually no impact on the economy?

The "poor getting poorer" is a myth.

www.census.gov

While obviously the last few months have been bad, as is any economic slowdown, the truthful long-term trend is that the poor are getting richer and the rich are getting richer faster.

In the future, I expect economic growth in industrialized nations to slow, due to higher energy costs, declining population growth and working-aged adults, and increased competition from industrializing nations.

The war spending is a fraction of 1% of the GDP. We are currently spending it on tanks and soldiers. If we didn't have the war, we would be spending it on something else. Maybe bridges and teachers or cheap Chinese crap via tax cuts. It really wouldn't make much of a difference what we spent it on, as the amount of economic activity generatd would be roughly the same.

Sakura:

The "poor getting poorer" is a myth.

www.census.gov

While obviously the last few months have been bad, as is any economic slowdown, the truthful long-term trend is that the poor are getting richer and the rich are getting richer faster.

In the future, I expect economic growth in industrialized nations to slow, due to higher energy costs, declining population growth and working-aged adults, and increased competition from industrializing nations.

Sakura: I've read some of your other posts and respect your financial/economic knowledge.....but after this post, I'm not so sure anymore.

In particular, this little gem:

"...the truthful long-term trend is that the poor are getting richer and the rich are getting richer faster. "

Does it matter what end of the bar slides with a concept such as poor? I always thought of "poor" as being relative....

How about we ascribe the status of "poor" today as that of the dollar incomes of people in 1910 and just forget about inflation. Then no one is "poor."

Sakura:

The "poor getting poorer" is a myth.

www.census.gov

While obviously the last few months have been bad, as is any economic slowdown, the truthful long-term trend is that the poor are getting richer and the rich are getting richer faster.

In the future, I expect economic growth in industrialized nations to slow, due to higher energy costs, declining population growth and working-aged adults, and increased competition from industrializing nations.

Sakura: I've read some of your other posts and respect your financial/economic knowledge.....but after this post, I'm not so sure anymore.

In particular, this little gem:

"...the truthful long-term trend is that the poor are getting richer and the rich are getting richer faster. "

Does it matter what end of the bar slides with a concept such as poor? I always thought of "poor" as being relative....

How about we ascribe the status of "poor" today as that of the dollar incomes of people in 1910 and just forget about inflation. Then no one is "poor."

Sakura:

The "poor getting poorer" is a myth.

www.census.gov

While obviously the last few months have been bad, as is any economic slowdown, the truthful long-term trend is that the poor are getting richer and the rich are getting richer faster.

In the future, I expect economic growth in industrialized nations to slow, due to higher energy costs, declining population growth and working-aged adults, and increased competition from industrializing nations.

Do you actually read what you quote?? Or just get your info from Rush and then spout off?

Speaking of quotes, from the source YOU made reference to:

"Generally, the long-term trend has been toward increasing income inequality. "

Go back to drinking your faith-based capitalist Kool-aid.

"Income inequality" is meaningless, unless you are jealous person. If a poor person's income doubles, while the rich man's triples, "income inequality" has grown....and both are a lot better off. This is more or less what has happened.

If you think being poor is "relative" there is no reason to even try to fight it. The bottom fifteen percent will always exist, by definition.

I define being poor by absolutes...poor people struggle to obtain basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter. Given the big fat butts on most poor people today, they sure ain't having an issue with the first one. Indeed, numerous studies hsave shown how poor people have far more junk (TVs, cars, washing machines, etc) than they did in the past. Poor Americans by today's standards are quite rich by the standards of much of the world and most of the American past...and they are getting richer in general every year.