SEGAbits Official Politics Thread 2011

[SOUP]

@TaroYamada: Sorry about that one :D.

I probably won't be volunteering quite as much as I did in the federal election (ie: booking off a work day to put in 13 hours of non-stop working for free).

[SOUP]

The provincial election was yesterday.
The Liberals are one seat shy of a majority government. Not really a bad thing, as I don't see any of the parties pushing for another election any time soon.
I see some Liberal-NDP teamwork in the future, which is good as far as I'm concerned.

[max_cady]

So guys any thoughts on the "Ocupy Wall Street" movement?

Not sure if the message of the movement is all that clear, feeling good over the possibility of rich people getting taxed more is not really going to help their situation.

They are arguing against misuse of public funds especially with bailouts which is a legitimate complaint that touches both sides, this is puzzling, however, because both stimulus (Bush and Obama's) involved "saving" or investing wads of cash on many companies that went bankrupt anyway or had absolutely no effect, shouldn't they also direct their rage towards the administration or Congress that fowarded these handouts in the first place? If so, they are 3 years late.

[jonboy101]

Stimulus added or saved millions of jobs, the bailouts prevented financial armeggedon. Had it not been for TARP, America would look like a mad max film. Occupy Wall Street are a bunch of uninformed, but well meaning, people who are too dumb to realize America is getting exactly what it voted for for the last decade.

[max_cady]

Solyndra laid off about a thousand workers, so how exactly does that work in terms of saving or creating jobs?

[jonboy101]

You don't honestly think seven hundred billion went to solyndra do you? There's bound to be a bum ticker when you're prime pumping a quarter of the worlds economy.

Stimulus saved jobs by giving state government the resources to prevent mass layoffs, by providing tax cuts for middle and low income families to stimulate demand and by funding or incentivizing companies to create jobs by giving them stuff to do.

When the public stops buying stuff, the government should to keep up aggregate demand. Standard economics.

Problem was the stimulus wasn't large enough by any stretch of the imagination. Funds have worn out, so now state governments are having to choose between tax hikes or spending cuts. State governments have to have balanced budgets, as per their local constitutions. It's foolishness, and it's suppressing employment. Private sector job growth has recovered a year ago. Now the public sector is throwing up jobs left and right thanks to this retarded idea that austerity is a good idea during an economic crisis.