A visualisation maybe even Jr. can understand.

[TheBeast]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWt8hTayupE"]YouTube - Obama Budget Cuts Visualization[/ame]

And oh yeah here is the visualisation of the new 17 billion cuts.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miIBp7ufxjk&NR=1"]YouTube - Obama's $17 Billion Budget Cuts In Context[/ame]

[burton2019]

you get a hard on for this **** dont you?

[TheBeast]

Facts are facts no matter how much you don't want them to be.

[CoeburnCane]

The visualization that gets me is two-fold: that Republicans want to see all the pennies to the right of the white line in the 1st video and most of the water out of that garbage can in the 2nd video cut in taxes and the money borrowed some other way to pay for whatever they want.

If you cut taxes, you cut the amount of "revenue" (loosely using the word in place of pennies/water) that the government can take in to afford to pay for the things that you and I both enjoy as Americans. If the American people kept all the tax money they paid out, are they going to be smart enough/compassionate enough to spend it on things to make America better? Or is the more likely scenario going to be greed & frivilousness amongst the masses?

Or--to visualize it, are people going to pool their water together in a giant blue garbage can and use it that way to make it work to quench all of our thirsts at a steady clip...or are they going to drink their own water whenever they want, and then wonder why they're thirsty when it's gone? Oh, and if you expect your water source to be more abundant towards you IF the government takes less from them, then you're going to be sorely mistaken. Your water source will use much more for them before they give you one solitary drop extra to maximize their thirst-quenching potential. (Read: Tax cuts for businesses don't trickle down like water...they simply stay with those businesses as extra profits to pad corporate's bottom line.)

If you want to want to disagree with taxes or spending, then unhook your house from the government's water/septic systems, don't drive on roads, don't send your children to schools, find a way to generate your own electricity, and when you become elderly/have children--don't expect help with medical care. Lots of other things I could list, but those are just examples of things that the real hardcore anti-tax people need to keep in mind.

It's like those who oppose coal mining but love having on-demand electricity in their home. You can't have one without the other. It sucks having to pay, but it does pay to keep the wheels turning. I see zero problems economically with putting into practice the idea of if you're gonna spend a dollar, then you have to save one elsewhere before you can. That's the idea. It's not perfect, but it's better than spending until we're so far in debt that we have to go to extreme measures to dig back out.

I don't care who the president is, economic "visualizations" like these are dumb w/o showing what the other side wants to do with those pennies/water.

[TheBeast]

What exactly are you trying to defend? This was describing meaningless BUDGET cuts and made no mention of tax cuts. He keeps coming out and say hey look at me I cut 100 million off the budget, I cut 17 billion of the budget. Don't pay any attention to the part where I increased the budget by 15,000 times that much wihout telling how I am gonna generate the extra revenue to cover it (psst. tax increases across the board not just the richest 5% and borrowing from China).

Like my cousin that recently graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in construction engineering said the other day. "I believe the construction market will get a boost with all the new government jobs." I asked him with all the other job losses where would the revenue come from to pay for all those new government jobs. I guess that will be part of the 3.5 million jobs he is going to create/save. But these will only take place AFTER 7 million jobs are lost. Like one of his latest self proclaimed feats, my stimulus package has created/saved 150,000 jobs. "Here's the reality. Those 150,000 jobs are a guess, based on a 16-page White House document, which uses what's called "macroeconomic methodology" to give the president a formula for the jobs that should be created, not a tally of jobs actually created." cbsnew.com
Let's say those numbers are accurate and there were 150,000 jobs created/save, what about the millions of jobs lost in the same time period and how unemployment far surpassed by 1.4% the worst estimates they made when they were promoting the stimulus package. Oh yeah these are the job losses they said would happen if they didn't get the stimulus approved.

[CoeburnCane]

All I know is that if we want to talk jobs/economy, then the people (and I think you've been one of them) who defended Bush by using the rationale of that he was cleaning up the mess Clinton created on those fronts, then what's the problem now? Obama should be messing up all the good stuff Bush did, not having to cut spending in an effort to balance the budget and figure out a strategy to create jobs. It takes more than 5 months' time to mess up an economy, so I don't think we can blame Obama at all.

As for cutting budget vs. tax, that goes hand in hand. The sole source of revenue for government is taxes (basic governmental economics right there), and if you're going to cut the budget but still have a deficit, taxes will have to go up. No question. Obama and his advisors decided to cut the budget as much as they could w/o making everyone and their cousin mad b/c they're neglecting different vital budget items. It's not a thing of being a "tax & spend Democrat" (which, these videos set the baseline for), it's about inheriting a multi-trillion dollar deficit and having to raise the funds to get out of debt. You do two things--you cut spending, and taxes will have to increase--it's simple math. If a Republican was in office instead, he'd HAVE to do the same thing. We're in too deep, and times are going to be tough. Instead of making him the martyr for our economic problems, realize how bad the mess is before posting YouTube videos that are 3rd grade show & tell "visualizations" that paint him as the bad guy.

And don't think for a second that Bush and his crew were some kind of macroeconomic masterminds and knew exact numbers and exactly what to expect. When you deal with any markets (job/economy/etc) it's all about modeling & numbers. You're gonna use a model to give you an estimate. My guess is that if it's an economist that gave Obama the 150K jobs number, and he's anything worth his salt as an economist, that the 150K is a conservative estimate. When you estimate, you estimate conservatively to allow for pleasant surprises...not ambitiously to make yourself look like you're solving a problem. I don't tell my boss we're gonna mine coal at $40/ton when it's closer to $60/ton, because when the number comes back around $55/ton, I lose my job b/c you can't plan for an increase in cost that far out of whack from an estimate. Every number you see put out there (150K jobs, 100 million/1.7 billion budget cut, etc) are all estimates. Unless you get elected and are smart enough to read through & analyze a US Fiscal Year Budget, you'll never know the real numbers.