Still not quite right. Search for "jefferson" on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Plan Then get back to me. Trial by jury was a British design in the magna carta (early 1200s). The French had jury trials starting with Napolean (late 1700s). And "Jeffersonian Democracy" refers to the time when Jefferson was president - that'd be in the 1800s, at least 11 years after the constitution was written and ratified. (He wasn't even in America during the constitutional convention).
Why would I bother doing that? I never said he was part of the Virginia Plan. I've read that the US judicial system was heavily influenced by Napoleonic courts. Yes, he was in France. The very nature of US republicanism was largely from Jefferson. From Wikipedia: You're basically changing the subject. I never said that Jefferson created the entirety of the government. I said he modeled a great deal of it on ideas from France (and yes, I should have included Britain, though that further makes my point). A great deal of the thought underlying the formation of the US comes from Jefferson and he was heavily influenced by French and British ideas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson Jefferson's republican political principles were heavily influenced by the Country Party of 18th century British opposition writers. He was influenced by John Locke (particularly relating to the principle of inalienable rights). Historians find few traces of any influence by his French contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[51]
And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_legal_systems United States: Federal courts and 49 states use legal system originally based on English common law but which diverged greatly in 19th century with substantial indigenous innovations and borrowing of some civil law practices such as codification; State law in the U.S. state of Louisiana is based upon French and Spanish civil law (see below) Common law and equity are systems of law whose sources are the decisions in cases by judges. Alongside, every system will have a legislature that passes new laws and statutes. The relationships between statutes and judicial decisions can be complex. In some jurisdictions such statutes may overrule judicial decisions or codify the topic covered by several contradictory or ambiguous decisions. In some jurisdictions judicial decisions may decide whether the jurisdiction's constitution allowed a particular statute or statutory provision to be made or what meaning is contained within the statutory provisions. Statutes were allowed to be made by the government. Common law developed in England, influenced by the Norman conquest of England which introduced legal concepts from Norman law, which in turn was influenced by aspects of Islamic law.[2] Common law was later inherited by the Commonwealth of Nations, and almost every former colony of the British Empire has adopted it (Malta being an exception). The doctrine of stare decisis or precedent by courts is the major difference to codified civil law systems. Common law is currently in practice in Ireland, most of the United Kingdom (England and Wales and Northern Ireland), Australia, India (excluding Goa), Pakistan, South Africa, Canada (excluding Quebec), Hong Kong, the United States (excluding Louisiana) and many other places. In addition to these countries, several others have adapted the common law system into a mixed system. For example, Nigeria operates largely on a common law system, but incorporates religious law.
Yes, it appears my mistake was underestimating how many Western European nations Jefferson was influenced by. As Wikipedia notes, he was a man of the Enlightenment, which was an intellectual movement through Germany, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Getting back to my point, in answer to your question, it is apparently very American to be influenced by such nations.
And where exactly were these clinical trial sites? Most of the time, public schools. And once the vaccine was finally developed, how was it distributed to the general public? Through the government. I don't even get the point of this discussion. Are you saying that if the government didn't exist, we'd be perfectly fine just letting the free market develop, manufacture, self-regulate, distribute and protect the intellectual property of all forms of medication always, because that's what happened with the Polio vaccine? So massive inflation and a wipeout of the middle class that will continue on forever. Plus China owning large swatches of the United States. *shrug* You may be right. I'll admit I'm no economist, just a layman who reads a little and has to trust some experts over other experts. I look at the skyrocketing levels of total debt taken on in the past few years, and I have to admit it's scary: But at the end of Bush 1 I remember being equally scared that the debts we were running up were going to wipe us out and bring along an apocalypse. Things actually wound up pretty nice for the latter half of the Clinton years. Why? Because several things nobody predicted happened (the internet maybe being the biggest) and our economy took off. Call it optimism or naivete or whatever, but when I hear 10 or 20 year forecasts about how we're now all doomed, I can't help but wish the current me could go back to 1992 and tell the "then me" to take a chill pill. Like Churchill once said, America always does the right thing, after they've tried everything else.
While that plot is interesting, the more important plot, IMO, would be to see the debt-to-GDP ratio of debt due to structural costs and entitlement program costs. For example, that spending in the 40's looks bad on the plot, but that was war time spending, which would come to an end. The debt we are racking up now is much more structural and long-lasting. That is what makes this more scary.
Well, the sharp spike at the end of Bush II (and continuing in Obama) has little to do with structural and long-lasting, and instead has to do with stimulus and bailouts and lower tax revenues. The rate of increase under Bush pre-crash is at least partly due to the wars. Subtract off those two effects and the graph probably doesn't look too bad. barfo
Agreed. While I didn't like the stimulus spending, it was (hopefully) a one-time thing. I'm concerned that the projections for Obama's 10 year budget are even close to correct, because those debts appear to be more structural and long-lasting.
Here you go, ABM....I hope this helps. # 10. You should vote Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it. # 9. You should vote Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq you trust that the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people. # 8. You should vote Democrat because you believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday CAN tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if we all don't start driving a Prius. # 7. You should vote Democrat because you're not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive. # 6. You should vote Democrat because you believe that businesses should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as THEY see fit. # 5. You should vote Democrat because you believe three or four pointy headed elitist liberals need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would NEVER get their agendas past the voters. # 4. You should vote Democrat because you believe that when the terrorists don't have to hide from us over there, they can come over here and when they do, you don't want anyone to have any guns in the house to fight them off with. # 3. You should vote Democrat because you love the fact that you will be able to marry whatever you want. you've decided to marry your horse. # 2. You should vote Democrat because you believe the government will do a better job of spending the money you earn than you would. And the NUMBER 1 Reason to Vote Democrat is.... # 1. You should vote Democrat because you believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't
For starters, the govt. is spending 2x what it was when Clinton left office and running deficits 8x what it was when Bush I left office. Yet the national income (GDP) isn't 8x what it was when Bush I left office, nor 2x what it was when Clinton left office. The deficits are 4x what Bush II had his last year in office. I'll try and use an analogy and layman's terms to make my case again. Though the govt. isn't exactly like a person since it can print money. GDP is the national income. It is the sum of the value of all goods and services produced in a year. You can think of it as the nation's paychecks all added together for a year. Govt's actual paycheck is some % of the national income. They obviously can't tax 110% of it, or people would be selling assets (their homes, cars, coin collections, whatever) to pay the tax, and they wouldn't have $.01 left over after taxes to pay rent or buy food or other necessities. With me so far? Govt. can't really tax 100% of the goods part of GDP either. That isn't money, it's things like automobiles and tv sets and whatever other "things" we manufacture here. Currently, the govt. taxes about 28% of GDP. The govt.'s tax collections are its paycheck. With its paycheck the govt., pretty much like you or I, prioritizes things it will spend money on. Debt isn't such a bad thing, in general. If you could borrow $100 at 1% and invest it in something that pays 2%, you can pay that 1% and pocket the remaining 1% and you're ahead. Unfortunately, that's not what the govt. does (very little is invested with an actual return). When the govt. borrows money, it signs up for the equivalent of a credit card (called T-Bills). The terms on these credit cards vary - they MUST be paid off after a certain time, and the interest rates on two different cards the govt. charges on are not fixed in stone. For example, the govt. needs to borrow $5K (an amount you or I might have on a credit card). They get a card from the bank of China at 1% interest. They charge it up to the max. When that credit card comes due, they get a new credit card from the bank of Switzerland at 1% interest. They charge up the new card immediately to $5K by taking a cash withdrawal and they use that $5K to pay off the credit card from the bank of China. The problem is that once the bank of China has issued you 50 credit cards and you've charged them up. They see that Britain is willing to pay 1.1% so they issue new cards to Britain instead of the USA. They also figure that 50 credit cards is enough risk, so they won't issue that 51st. But we can entice the bank of China to give us that 51st card if we offer to pay them 1.2%. The credit card analogy is a terrific one for a few reasons. Imagine you make $24,000 a year and you have $96,000 charged up on your credit cards. What kind of financial shape are you in? If those cards are at 10% interest-only, you're spending $800/month out of your $2000/month income just paying that. If your rent is $500, think of what kind of nicer place you could have for $1300 if only you didn't have those credit card bills. This brings us to the chart you produced. GDP is the national income. The credit card balances are approaching 100% of GDP. The govt.'s paycheck is 25% of that (25% is easier math than 28%), so it's basically in that same position I just described ($96K balance, $24K income). In fact, this is the very reason economists make graphs like yours - it gives you an idea of what the govt. owes in proportion to its current and potential (raise taxes!) income. So I talked about the entitlement programs - social security and medicare. Social Security ran a surplus for years. Technically, there's a Trust Fund that's supposed to watch over the money SS brings in and pays out. What is it supposed to do with the surplus money? It can't put it in a mattress. There's no such thing as a lock box (sorry, Al Gore, you're full of shit). The sums are so huge that if it were invested in the stock market, the first year they'd have bought Microsoft in its entirety (every last share of its stock) and then a few other similar sized companies (GE, WalMart, etc.). Very quickly the govt. would own all of our corporations - I don't think anyone really wants that except for barfo maybe (commie pinko!). What SS did was become a bank like the bank of China. They issued credit cards to the federal government, which then charged those up to the max (and then some). Even the interest the govt. pays on those charge cards get turned into more charge cards with bigger limits. Simply put, the govt. T-Bills have been considered THE safest investment because nobody thought all along the govt. would go belly up. And if it did go belly up, paying back those T-Bills would be the least of our problems! The issue with the trust fund is that it takes in, say, $100 and pays out $90 in SS benefits. This year. Next year it takes in $100 and pays out $91. And so on. We're on the verge of it taking in $100 and paying out $101 and so on (baby boomers retiring en mass). Where does that extra $1 it doesn't take in come from? The fund must demand $1 in capital paid back on one of the credit cards it issued the feds. The feds take that $1 from the taxes we all "contribute" (from that 28% of GDP). $1 doesn't seem like a big deal in the early years of the situation, but it's $1 less the feds can use to build new roads or maintain bridges, or whatever your favorite govt. program is. So what happens when it becomes $100 in and $200 out? And on top of that, the govt. has taken on so much credit card debt that the interest payments on that is also keeping it from having that nice place that rents for $1300 (the rent being an analogy for spending on cool things like the space program). $100 in cuts on whatever else the govt. spends on, or $100 in new taxes. Now for some perspective on these $100/$200 type figures. $100 is what SS takes in and costs. $250 is the govt.'s share of GDP. $400 is what the govt. is spending. $150 is the amount it is adding to its accumulated credit card balances. GDP is $1400. For more perspective, the military costs $60, the two wars cost $12 at their peak, foreign aid is about $15, the VA $8, etc. INTEREST PAYMENTS ON THE CURRENT DEBT is $22 and will be $100+ in 10 years. Now for the scary parts. There's only so much cash in the banks to go around. The govt. is borrowing it at such a high rate that there's little left for Ford to borrow to build new auto plants. It stunts the growth of GDP, hence the govt's future paychecks. The govt. is taking in $250 and spending $400. The responsible thing to do is to cut spending to $250, but boy are you (and barfo) going to howl at cutting govt. nearly in half. For comparison, govt. took in $250 and spent $300 under Bush II his final year. Even more responsible thing to do is what Clinton did, which was to limit growth of govt. to the point the 28% of GDP became more than what govt. spent on EVERYTHING. So instead of rolling over the old credit cards onto newer ones, it simply paid off the balances one card at a time. Scary part is we have people in charge who insist on doing the opposite of either of those things, and they're doing it hell bent to max out all the cards we can ever get. Scary part is that even if we did cut spending to $250, the interest payments on those cards simply isn't fixed at the ridiculously low rates they are today. If the new cards we get to max out to pay off the old ones are at 2%, the interest payments double without the balance growing by $.01. 1% is the going rate for a 2 year credit card these days. The rates ARE going up and the big deficits guarantee it. See: Interest rates rise on improved economic signals Obama and CBO have projected the interest payments will balloon from $20 to ~$100 by 2020. Yeah, you don't believe in 10 year projections, but I think they're understating what they really will be. Why? Because of simple supply and demand. The supply of money to loan is limited, yet the demand is increasing. Eventually all those credit cards we have charging us 1% will be replaced with ones charging us 2%. Or 10%. See this graph, it's econ 101. Supply being the amount of dollars to loan, demand being what the govt. needs, and price being the interest rates we'll be paying. As I mentioned earlier, the feds aren't exactly like you and I. They can print money. What happens when they do? If they print 10 new dollars for every 1 dollar, thinking they can use those new 10 one dollar bills to pay off old credit card debt, it won't work. The bank of China isn't a fool, they're going to want 10 new dollars for every 1 we owe them. And when there's too many dollars chasing too few goods, you get inflation. Inflation means higher interest rates (as I just mentioned), and will seriously affect our standard of living - we still make our $20K salary, but rent now costs $5,000/month on that $500 place we rent, so we have to move into something even cheaper. I'll offer some commentary on your graph. We went a bit over 100% of GDP in debt to fund WW II. Some argue we shouldn't have gotten involved, whatever. We had the run of the world all to ourselves, since all the manufacturing capacity in europe and japan were decimated by all the bombing that went on during the war. It only took us 15 years to pay off nearly all that debt, because we didn't have WW II demanding our spending and we had the market all to ourselves in terms of selling things we made. Moderate deficits are OK in my book. If you make $100K and have $1K on your credit cards, no biggie. If you get a pay raise to $110K the next year (let's call that growth in GDP -> govt. paycheck), then charging that card to $1100 isn't a big deal. The problem is we have $1.5T deficits. GDP has to grow by $6T to balance the budget. But only if we freeze spending at current levels until GDP does grow by that amount. That's not going to happen. See the graph at the end of my post. GDP was $6T when Bush I left office, to give you an idea of what that task really is. It took stock market bubbles and housing market bubbles and fiscal restraint on the part of govt. to get that kind of growth. A $6T growth in GDP would be a 50% increase, which will happen over a period of years. Historically, GDP grows at 3%-5% per year. At 5%, GDP will double in 14.4 years, so we might see $6T in growth over 6-7 years. See the following chart. Do you think govt. will hold spending at current levels?
Sheesh, what a long post. The short of it is that we're like a person who makes $24K in salary and will have $96K in credit card debt. Yeah, it's bad to have $96K in credit card debt at that salary, but it's also bad to have $48K at that salary as well, which is the W Bush legacy. The thing about credit cards is that if you charge up that $96K in a short time, you don't feel the downside (interest payments) while you're spending it. But when the credit card statements start coming in, you wonder what you're going to have to cut back on (rent, food, entertainment, whatever) to be able to make the credit card payments. If those credit card payments are $400 and your salary is $10K, you probably don't care so much about having a little debt. If those credit card payments are $2500 and your salary is $10K, you notice it. It's even worse if you are making $10K and spending $15K, the excess on additional credit cards. Tell me if you see the piper coming.
