Are Women Ready for Real Portfolios?
- Thread starter Spade
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Hey, you are talking about result, I'm talking about intent. Hindsight is not ALWAYS 20/20, maybe some of the past lies were "changes of conditions", a little different from knowing the statement you are making is not going to materialize.
I think that anybody who thinks politics is anything more than entertainment is delusional. It is a movie they play to entertain us while those in control go about doing whatever they please. Politicians are just scape goats, someone to blame for us not having any control over the situation.
Doesn’t matter JLM, a lie is still a lie. And a lie is due to ‘change of conditions’? Who decides that? Supporters or a particular politician will always contend that any lie told by him was due to ‘change of conditions’, while his opponents will maintain that every lie by him was a malicious, deliberate attempt to fool the public.
Consider the current budget deficit for instance. Harper acolytes claim that he is totally blameless in the matter, that it is all the fault of USA that we are running deficit (they usually look at USA with adoring, worshipful eyes, but they don’t mind criticizing USA this one time to defend their Messiah).
On the other hand, somebody like me (and I consider myself opponent of Harper) will say that the deficit is largely Harper’s fault. He was running the economy into the ground even before the current economic meltdown hit us. He had already frittered away most of the Liberal surplus in tax cuts benefiting mostly the rich. Just before the meltdown, he had very little surplus left. If he had continued running the healthy surplus that Liberals did, the deficit today would be a lot smaller than it is.
So ‘change of conditions’ means nothing, a lie is still a lie. And every politician lies, to some extent.
Obviously, My Dear Boy, you don't quite grasp the concept.
When the Liberals lie, it is not a lie, because it is "within reason" as defined by Himself.
When the Conservatives lie, it is a sin against nature......
No that is wrong a lie involves deceit. You are wrong on another also, Liberals under Chretien/Martin never had a surplus, they had a greatly reduced debt, sure on a yearly basis they spent less than they took in but that money was owed. If I owe anybody money I do not have a surplus.
No they didn’t, JLM. You seem to be foggy about the concepts of debt and deficit, so let me explain.
Debt is what a nation (or a family) accumulates over the years, deficit is if government spends more than what is coming in. If government spends less than what is coming in, that means government has a surplus. Surplus or deficit has nothing to do with debt.
And Liberals did not have reduced debt, debt actually increased under Liberals in the initial years. Liberals did not have a surplus overnight; they had decreasing deficits for a few years. In each of those years, the debt increased.
When liberals started running a surplus, the debt then started to reduce, but it was not really substantially lower when liberals left office than when they came in, mainly because there was just such a huge amount of it.
So yes, Liberals definitely ran a surplus, more than 10 billion $ every year, they spent less than what was coming in. As to reduced debt, they had perhaps slightly reduced debt, no more. Liberals had set Canada on the right path, economically, Harper, when he came to power, frittered away all the surplus, and now is running huge deficits.
We have to run surplus like Liberals did for several decades before we can pay off the debt. So don’t confuse debt with deficit.
Sure you can have a surplus, as I said; you seem to be foggy about the concept. Let me illustrate.
Suppose you are earning 60,000 $ per year and you have 200,000 $ debt (mortgage). The mortgage payments are 1000 $ per month. After paying off all your bills (including mortgage), let us say you manage to put away 1000 $ per month.
Then your financial situation is very sound. While you have a debt (200,000 $), you are running a health surplus to the tune of 12,000 $ every year.
So again, don’t’ confuse debt with deficit.
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."
- Polonius in WS's Hamlet
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."
- Polonius in WS's Hamlet
... and aren't liars when they only live up to part of their promises. So Harpy didn't lie when he promised the income trust thing, and Martin didn't lie when they only lived up to 75% of the Red Book.No lies as long as they live up to at least 50% of their promises. Sounds like highly dynamic morals and ethics to me. "If I liked it, then it wasn't a lie. If I didn't like it, it was a lie." lmao
It's amazing Anna- my eight year old grand daughter knows what a lie is and yet there are people on here who don't know what it is and yet they profess to tell the truth............:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:
Yeah, not fulfilling a promise due to unforeseen circumstances is not lying. If one deliberately has no intention on living up to a promise, as Martin did concerning the Red Book, then it definitely was a lie. "Screw the Red Book! Don't tell me what's in the Red Book! I wrote the goddamned thing and I know that it's a lot of crap."- Paul Martin, 1994
So if the government has spent x and received y, then y-x = deficit. Since MacDonald, the different between y and x = $-501.333 billion but it hasn't spent more than than its collected. I see. Or are you just saying that deficit only applies to a year and debt to the age in years? Sounds like doubletalk to me.
That's almost it;: deficit (or surplus) is the difference between what you make and what you spend in a year.
Debt is the amount that you owe already.
If you run a surplus one year, you can pay off some of the debt. If you run a deficit, the debt will grow.
And the prize goes to...
The debt we have now is result of the deficits of preceeding years. Of course paying interest on the debt also has an impact on the bottom line.
Well yes, but debt is not really a big problem, deficit is. Let me illustrate again by taking the example of a family.
Let us say a family has an income of 50,000 $ per year. That family has no debt, but it spends 60,000 $ per year. It is clear that the family will be soon in big trouble, they will probably have to declare bankruptcy, and seriously curb their spending, alter their spending habits to stay within their means. That is what deficit does.
Now, suppose the same family, earning 50,000 $ per year, has a debt of 100,000 $ (may be mortgage, debt for educational expenses, medical emergency etc.). That is a large debt. But suppose the family is living within its means, it is making payments for the interest every month and that is it. That family can stay out of trouble indefinitely, provided they don’t spend more than what they earn.
Now let us further suppose that the family has the same amount of debt for 20 years. In the meantime, the wife goes out to work, does very well in her job, perhaps better than the husband and in 20 years’ time, family income jumps to 150,000 $ per year. Now, the same 100,000 $ debt does not feel so burdensome any more. The interest payment, which constituted significant portion of expense 20 years ago, are a negligible part of the expenditure now.
So it is possible to grow your way out of debt. It is the deficit that is the killer.
You're dreaming S.J. (and I've known the difference between gov't. deficits and debt for decades) gov't debt is just the accumulation of gov't deficits- you know as well as I do that those deficits get tacked onto the debt.