How's your family voting?

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Man, reaganfan, you've got a complicated family.

Myself - Romney (neutral in 2008)
Father - Romney (supported Obama in 2008)
Mother - Romney (supported Obama in 2008)
Brother - Romney (? in 2008, but voted Democrat in 2006, so probably Obama)

Yeah...

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Also, Obama's foreign policy still suits me, and some of his domestic agenda does.

I've yet to meet anyone who can seriously tell me that Obama and Romney would have different foreign policies.

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Precisely the tax policy that Obama has pursued in order to remain popular. 

I would agree that you either need to decrease spending or increase revenues.  (There's some argument that lower taxes increase revenues indirectly, of course, since lowering the tax rates spurs investment, etc.  I guess that's supply-side economics.)  Either way, this bill will only have the affect of increasing both the percent of GDP that we spend on health care, and the number of dollars spent, so it seems less like an amelioration than an exacerbation of the problem. 

You know, there are other ways to increase revenue besides raising tax rates. Like for one, having the economy recover faster. And when the majority of businesses list "regulatory uncertainty" as the reason they're not hiring more people and expanding, I perhaps think Obamacare had an influence on our revenues as much as it had on our spending.

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Debt making up over 100% of GDP is going to hamper growth more than you can imagine. Granted I do think raising taxes on the upper incomes to the 1990s levels would help, I fear that doing it now in a recession/gentle period like right now would really hurt revenues, as people would look for loopholes and decrease investment spending.

As it stands though, we are looking at a structural deficit even if the economy recovers to its full capacity, so spending much be reeled in or taxes raised significantly. With the government making up 30% of the economy now, cutting spending will lead to a decrease in GDP, so we are screwed either way, but we will have to make hard choices to avoid bankruptcy in the future.

I can agree with most of this. Though I am very skeptical of the effect of raising income taxes rates (for the rich) to the 1990's levels. For one, that would generate about $49 billion in tax revenues every year. Or roughly 1/18th of what we need to pay for the ARRA.

Also, nit picking point, government spending actually makes about 41% or so of the GDP. It was 42.5% in 2010 (according to the OECD). We've probably dropped a little from 2010, but we're still probably still around 41%. Of course, only a little over half of that is federal spending, but we know many programs are both partially state and federal. And how large parts of the ARRA were primarily used to shore up state budgets. And that's not counting tax expenditures, which are about another 7% of GDP.

Though I do agree with on that point. Reducing government spending will hurt the economy in the short-term. And deficits also hurt. And raising taxes hurt. Every possible option will hurt. And considering how weak the economy is, I'd oppose both raising tax rates and seriously cutting current spending. At the same time, there are steps we can take to reduce the future debt without harming the current recovery - like tackling future obligations by reforming the entitlements that are really going to send us careening off the fiscal edge. Since that's not money we're spending right now, but rather money that we will spend in the future. So cutting that wouldn't decimate aggregate demand the same way cutting current spending would.

Which is why I find the Democrat/leftist opposition to entitlement reform and frothing hatred of Ryan so astounding. There are tons of things I want the government to do - from providing public education, some degree of public healthcare, a strong social safety net, nutritional aid, building infrastructure, subsidizing childcare, promoting new energy resources, development aid abroad, and others. All expenditures that entitlements will crowd out and expedintures that I used to think Democrats wanted to preserve.

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Well, for one, we have seen that centrally planned institutions are often quite bad at instituting stimulus. Yes, in a perfect world, we would have perfectly counter-cyclical spending. And more often than perfectly calibrated stimuli, we see overreactions to not-so-serious problems (see: how stimulus worked out in China) that tend to create problems down the road. And it's fairly obvious why. Imperfect information, the fatal conceit, etc. etc. etc.

The reason why short-term stimulus is acceptable in this case, or at least why short-term spending cuts would not be desirable, is because we took such an awful dip, it's quite obvious that we're in a situation that can responded to without going over the top. I don't believe that we can plan for economic dips deep enough so that they cannot be handled by automatic stabilizers. They don't happen very often. We're probably looking at the Great Depression and Now.

And at least if we have a good, detailed timetable for how we're going to reform entitlements, people are acting with the knowledge of how much we're greasing the wheels. Those should already be priced in. We wouldn't spark a downward animal-spirits spiral.

Obama promised entitlement reform. He had a debt commission - which he frankly ignored. Half of his campaign is predicated around attacking entitlement reform. Every powerful interest group in the Democratic Party is lined up against entitlement reform. The base has rallied against it. It's ludicrous to suggest that either Obama or the Democratic Party would be capable of seriously pushing any kind of entitlement reform. As opposed to the GOP, which has actually voted on the Ryan Plan (in the House). The Democrats aren't in favor of short-term stimulus and long-term entitlement reform. They're in favor of short-term stimulus and long-term "lol we have no clue what we're doing". And If anything else, we're much more likely to flal off the fiscal cliff with Obama. The only candidate who any investor believes could deliver short-term stimulus and long-term entitlement reform is Mitt Romney.

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You're contradicting yourself, sir.  You're saying it's great to have timetables and then attacking Obama because timetables like the debt ceiling, debt commission, etc., etc., etc. were ultimately worthless.

The Ryan plan was voted on because they knew it would be defeated.  I absolutely guarantee that Romney would not sign that bill nor would it get passed nor even make it out of committee in a 2 GOP Congress.  It was pure politics.  Ryan himself has spoken against many of the proposals within it earlier in this century. 

The Republicans plan for America is to win the election and then go from there. 

That's hardly a contradiction. A budget plan that changes how medicare/social security works sets a pretty accurate timetable for how future expenses will look. Which is what the Ryan Plan does. Obama's debt commission did nothing because there was no binding timetable. It was just, "I'll get some people to make a plan, then I'll ignore it." No actual policy.

Yes, in politics, sometimes bills are changed before they are passed, largely because other people get to have input. Will the Ryan plan pass in its current form? Of course not. That's not how politics works. After all, we saw Obamacare change many times before it actually passed. But will Mitt Romney try to sign some kind of entitlement reform based on the Ryan plan? Absolutely.

It's again this double-standard. The sausage factory of politics is only wrong when Mitt Romney engages in it. Personal animus again.

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Which is mostly silly election year politicking. The fact is, Obama released a $3.6 trillion deficit reduction plan last September, and he agreed to a $4 trillion plan including entitlement reform last summer. This is all public knowledge. $4 trillion long term deficit reduction is in his 2013 budget.

At the end of the day, I'm skeptical of all of these plans. In 1995, the goal of balancing the budget by 2002 was considered a reach. And indeed, the 2002 budget failed to be balanced-- but the 1998-2000 budgets were. In 2001, it was thought that the debt would be paid off by 2010. And so on. These things aren't as predictable as fiscal planners think.

But to say Obama hasn't put something on the table is false. Yes, Democrats want to protect the social safety net relative to Republicans, so they're willing to go slightly higher taxes for the rich and would vote slightly smaller entitlement cuts. Yes, they're making a lot out of these differences in the campaign. But despite all the partisan bickering the actual differences in what the parties are willing to vote for at the end of the day, in terms of numbers, are not all that great.

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It seems as if you're trying to convince yourself of this just be repeating it.

That abortion of a deficit plan? The plan that included $1 trillion in savings for not being in Iraq (aka something not entitlement reform that already happened) and then $1.2 trillion that the "super committee" would naturally create. And then $1.5 trillion in tax hikes (a non-starter). And then almost no changes at all to how Medicare/Social Security work? Oh yeah, that "entitlement reform" plan? I can't believe you're even trying to spin that as a real plan.

I have also literally never met a nonpartisan investor or businessman who could say with a straight face that Obama would be better for the economy. Of course, Obama winning wouldn't be an excuse to instantly flee from the stock market, but it'll certainly be disappointing.

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It's wrong when both sides participate it.  I don't understand how that gives Romney the right to win.

Because one person should not be immediately disqualified on the basis for participating in politics (just like the other guy), especially when we have much more pertinent things to consider - such as who would be better for the country. I mean, you're free to disagree with neoclassical economic theory and back Obama, because naturally he'd be the better candidate in that case. But this? This is not reasonable.

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Romney's vague proposals are either nonsense that don't subscribe to any theory or so similar to Obama they are pointless.  Beet has given you plenty of examples where Romney's beliefs are not different from Obama yet you dismiss Barack as political theater.  You've got it wrong.  Romney is the panderer here.

Except they aren't at all the same. On important issues like the fiscal cliff and entitlement reform, the two candidates take very different approaches. The only major approach on which they both claim to share the same stance was corporate tax reform, an issue where Obama declined to lead.

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Not to interrupt, but how does everyone know who their family voted for so well?

No one in my family ever says who they vote for. Ever. Apparently its 'private'.

I don't know if it's a British thing or not..

No, no, I think that's pretty normal. America is different. Our partisan politics have distinctively lined up with social and cultural cleavages. So you can pretty accurately predict someone's voting pattern without actually talking to them about politics.

There's a very good book out there called The Big Sort (by Bill Bishop), which the Economist gives a one-page summary of here, describing this phenomenon.

That being said, it's probably responsible for why the rhetoric from some of the leftists here can be very shrill. Because the some of them probably don't actually interact with anyone right-of-center in their daily lives. Of course, that can go both ways (as the book shows), but the user demographics of the internet differ from the demographics of the rest of the world.

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My wife, on the other hand, although neither a registered voter nor a US citizen, is very sympathetic to the communist party, and generally is greatful to the communist party of the PRC for putting her family in a position that one day would enable her to study in the USA and find a nice job in the USA.  So my son will have one parent who is a Republican, more or less, and one parent who is a communist, more or less.

That's actually uh...pretty weird. The CPC doesn't really have an ideology besides self-enrichment. The only Chinese person I know who legitimately believes in Marxism-Leninism despises the CPC for "betraying the proletariat". And is strangely pro-American because America helped fight the "revisionist Muscovite Empire".

Also, it is strange that she is married to a US citizen and retains PRC citizenship. From what I've seen, almost all Chinese in America try to shed their PRC citizenship ASAP. It's actually both a relevant and visible trend, because citizenship matters when applying for patents.
ROC citizens usually maintain dual-citizenship, but the PRC has no provisions for such, so most people try to adopt US citizenship ASAP.

It's also consistent with polling: like that Weibo poll where 90% of respondents answered that if they lived on those disputed isles in the news now, they'd rather be ROC, Hong Kong, or Japanese citizens than PRC citizens. I know a naturalized immigrant from China who actually firmly opposes open borders, because she reasons that "All of us in China would move to America" and thought that it'd be a disaster.

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The CPC doesn't really have an ideology besides self-enrichment.

And how does that differ from the GOP?  Or the Democrats?  Or the SPD of Germany?  Or the PAN of Mexico?

Because the top 50 members of the CPC made more money in 2012 than the entire combined networth of all 535 members of Congress, President Obama, Vice President Biden, and all nine members of the Supreme Court. In a country where the average person makes 1/20th of what the average American makes.

That's your god damned difference.