2013 Cedar Fair Season pass question

Timber-Rider, you have to remember, we collectively have the attention span of a gnat when we get going. *laugh* It is one reason I love it here.

Lord Gonchar said:

Just wanted to jump in with some Wal-Mart stuff. They've updated the commercial in our area that I mentioned a while back where they compare Wal-Mart pricing to Kroger. This time the lady saves like $5. It's $63-something at Kroger to $58-something at Wal-Mart.

Here in Picksburgh, WalMart and Giant Eagle both do these exact same ads. Shop at one, go buy the same stuff at the competitor and save tons of cash.

Clearly, all it proves is that depending on what specific items you buy, you could save money anywhere. So if I pick half the items from each store's ad, I guess I come out even either way. I'll stick with the store that has more registers open and fewer wackos.

Vater said:

I believe that the progressive movement in government is enormous, which to me indicates it is a widely held state of mind among the public

What amuses me the most every time I hear this, is that the so called "progressive movement" is remarkably identical to the right wing platform of the GOP just 30 years ago. The right wing has moved so far to the right that anything even approaching the center is unacceptable to them. If Reagan came back as president today, the Tea Party would run him out of town for being a communist, Marxist, job-creator hating Muslim sympathizer.

Not sure if there was anyone who did more damage to fiscal conservatism in my lifetime as Ronald Reagan. Ran and won on a platform of balancing the budget. Never proposed a balanced budget much less got one enacted. Debt almost tripled during his 8 years in office. He got repubs and so called conservatives to think that deficits and debt didn't matter. Yet he is revered by those on the right. Amazing really.

Also hilarious is the fact that Bill Clinton is the only president in my lifetime to get a balanced budget passed. You know, a tax and spend tree-hugging liberal. Who likes interns.

Those on the right usually say that Clinton didn't get a balanced budget until Gingrich and the repubs took over Congress. But in reality, neither should really get credit (other than for just being in office at the time). Long economic boom fueled by a stock market/dot com bubble. Boomers in highest earning years pumping record amounts into general treasury and social security (without SS surpluses, a couple of those balanced budgets didn't exist). No major military actions. Those dynamics have now changed with respect to the boomers. They are now retiring en masse.

There is no greater fan of the 22nd Amendment than Bill Clinton.

Having a debt/GDP ratio that is reasonable makes sense. Trying to have purely balanced budgets every year runs strictly counter to the notion that you borrow when money is cheap (like it is now), and lend when money is expensive. It also ignores the business cycle.

In general, I don't like carrying too much debt because it means you can't just pay it down when you feel like it. But what we seem to have also forgotten is that there is such a thing as carrying too little debt - when you get overly-concerned about debt, you're probably failing to borrow for investment in the future (you know, stuff like infrastructure, education, R&D).

The middle path is usually the one to follow, allowing for swings in interest rates, the business cycle, and your expected growth trajectory (which right now is alarmingly flat, IMO). My fiscal/monetary policy is probably considered "Taoist."

Couple of things. Government is not a business. It isn't run like, and shouldn't be run like, a business.

Much of our current debt is being used to finance current consumption which is not a smart use of debt.

The US government isn't borrowing money right now because rates are low. We are borrowing it because we are unable/unwilling to live within our means. And the Fed is helping to keep interest rates artificially low by buying much of the debt itself.

Interest rates will not be low forever. When they rise, larger and larger portions of our budget will go to interest payments. That will mean less money for everything else.

Over the past 40 years, our average public debt to GDP ratio has been about 39%. We are currently over 60%. CBO projections have us at 77% of GDP by 2023 and still climbing. And that assumes the sequester remains in place. http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43907

At this point there is pretty much no danger that the US government will be carrying too little debt any time even remotely soon.

I still think the best thing Bill Clinton did for the US economy was to get himself impeached. Getting Congress totally focused on that for two years got them out of the way while the real world got on with doing its thing for a while...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.