I think both parties are primarily interested in demagoguery. Originally Posted by WTFTrue that! The problem is that anyone who tells you the cold, hard truth renders himself instantly unelectable, given the obvious metastasization of our nation's entitlement mentality. We've been told for years that we can travel a long way down the path toward becoming a European-style social democracy, while big-spending politicians insinuate that we can finance it by raising taxes only on those making over $250K annually. The Europeans impose far higher income taxes on the middle class, plus a VAT. And even with all that, they can't even come close to financing their welfare states.
Did you watch the GOP primary? Brutal. Originally Posted by WTFIf you're asking whether I watched any of the debates, no. I did happen to see a few clips here and there. Painful to watch.
Obama over promised, no doubt about it. My contention is that no matter who had been in office, the housing bubble was not going to call for a norvmal recovery. Originally Posted by WTFYou are correct with respect to the fact that recoveries following debt deflations are generally more difficult than those of the more typical business cycle variety. But it doesn't help if you exacerbate the fiscal picture by spending hundreds of billions of dollars on political payoffs that have nothing to do with "stimulating" the economy.
But as bad as Obama obviously is, I think we're in for just about the same set of long-term problems no matter who gets elected. Does anyone seriously think Romney is going to pursue anything other than a politically-focused agenda, or that he's going to be more likely to make any tough decisions than Obama has been?
The recent Stockman article to which I linked makes that point:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/op...=1&ref=opinion
Partisans on both sides need to realize that neither party is even remotely serious about real fiscal responsibilty.