The Economy

[Jester]

Again, the view from 100,000 feet is not all that accurate. To describe the causality of Republican excess by the correlation to GDP is wrong headed.

Well, I apologise for making the obvious argument with numbers you yourself quoted. I'll refrain from trying to examine the evidence when you've declared, apparently on first principles, that it's fruitless.

Or, wait. No I won't. :rolleyes:

The devil is in the details.Again, Demagogues and Publicans. I can't differentiate the two parties anymore, except one contains the "religious" wing nuts, and the other contain the neo-Luddites.

I once thought that. Then Dubya happened. Not likely to make that mistake again. The choice might be between bad and worse, but it is definitely between bad and *worse*.

I can believe that for the money spent on the Iraq war, but still more than 70 to 80% of the budget went to domestic spending (namely SSI, Defense, & Medicare).

Okay. But Bush didn't particularily raise spending on anything except things related to the war. So, there would be little to no extra stimulus from the status quo. The extra cash that bumped a surplus into a deficit was, by and large, money spent on Iraq.

-Jester

Afterthought: This just showed up on the Freakonomics blog, seemed apropos. (Always keep taxes in mind, though. That's a big part 'o the chart.) Data from here.