How's your family voting?

[Beet]

No idea, as I don't talk to my family about politics.

[Beet]

koenkai-

Where do you get the notion that the majority of businesses list regulatory uncertainty as the reason they're not hiring?

Obama doesn't oppose entitlement reform. He was clearly willing to do it in 2011. He's not playing up his willingness to do so now because it's campaign season, but it would be a top item on his agenda along with job creation if he were to win. With Romney I give him credit for picking a VP who has a specific plan. The thing is--Obama has proposed a specific plan too, from 2011.

The Democrats are actually on board with the idea of short-term stimulus and long-term deficit reduction. That's their position.

I actually think it's incomplete. For one thing, government stimulus will always be needed to keep the economy going at an acceptable rate so long as the private sector is in the downswing of the credit cycle. So any budget plan that combines short-term stimulus with long-term deficit reduction needs an estimate of how long the downswing in the private credit cycle will last. Government policy can also be used to perk up the private credit cycle, but there is the question of how much debt the private sector can sustain and at what point goosing up the private credit cycle leaves an economy exhausted. Neither party has, as far as I am concerned, even identified these dynamics, let alone made them clear to the American people. The holy grail, so to speak, would be to return to a pre-1980 dynamic, where a gently increasing private credit cycle in line with (but no faster than) GDP created an acceptable number of jobs.

[Beet]

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.

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.

[Beet]

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.

Just because she's sympathetic to the CPC or what they're doing over there currently, it doesn't mean she's a communist. The 'Communist' part has become name-only. I know a lot of Chinese who are sympathetic to the party, but their 'American' ideology would best be described as 'indifferent' or cynical of all sides.