You’re a partisan just like me.

I’m a Democrat, but I’m not a partisan. There is a difference.

You think Obama will win easily,I think Romney will win easily.

I think Obama will win. I don’t think he’ll win “easily”. Clinton won reelection easily. Reagan won reelection easily. W did not. I expect Obama to win about as easily as W did.

If I’m a cheerleader, so are you.

Not at all. I’m perfectly willing to criticize Democrats, and to praise Republicans. You haven’t been willing to do the opposite. So, no, you don’t get to drag me down with you.

The big hole in the middle of “supply side” economics is the belief that consumers can buy things if they don’t have jobs.

The whole theory is predicated on a false concept. If a business builds something, it will inevitably sell, and will sell at a profit. Therefore, if a business has excess cash, it will build something, and thus will make profit. Thus, if you give business more money, it will build, and profit will pour in.

The problem is that if no one has money to buy the built-thing with, then that built-thing will not be bought. And business people are not stoopid. They know well that if consumers have no money, then there will be no purchases. Therefore, businesspeople will not spend the money to build things, if there are no potential purchasers.

Only a member of the wealthy gentry can imagine an economic philosophy so absurd. Only someone who always has excess cash can imagine that built things will always be bought. Only someone who doesn’t have to actually work for a living — and hasn’t had to for a few generations — can fail to understand the simple, basic truth.

If there are no consumers, there is no economy.

All economies are demand-driven. Always. There never has been, and never will be, a supply-side economy.

Yes, true fiscally conservative economic policies (of which I am a fan) did indeed lead to increased prosperity for the US, but the recent (in 230 year terms) obsession with trickle-down has brought that prosperity to a grinding halt.

After a thirty-year long experiment there is not one single shred of evidence that it works as a recipe for general prosperity and should now be viewed as what is is — a hit and run moneygrab by the 1%.

There was a time when I was prepared to give trickledown the benefit of the doubt, but to continue doing so now when it has been so thoroughly and comprehensively disproven is not ‘fiscal conservatism’ but ‘sheer lunacy’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism

The faction you labelled “extremists” right above that have a similar view. 

“Although economic liberalism can also be supportive of government regulation to a certain degree, it tends to oppose government intervention in the free market when it inhibits free trade and open competition. However, economic liberalism may accept government intervention in order to remove private monopoly, as this is considered to limit the decision power of some individuals (most often the poor).”

“Theories in support of economic liberalism were developed in the Enlightenment, and believed to be first fully formulated by Adam Smith, which advocates minimal interference of government in a market economy, though it does not necessarily oppose the state’s provision of a few basic public goods with what constitutes public goods originally being seen as very limited in scope.”

“While economic liberalism favors markets unfettered by the government, it maintains that the state has a legitimate role in providing public goods.”

But lumping in Obama and most Democrats in with what I described above feels awfully dubious. 

Thanks for the correction in 251. You’re absolutely correct.

You must’ve been doing laundry when Richard Trumka was speaking yesterday evening.

I’ve heard Trumka before, and I heard much of his speech yesterday. Now, I do sometimes miss nuance, but he seemed to me to be talking about policy, and whether policies favor the rich rather than working people — that is, he seemed to me to be lamenting the class warfare that Republicans have been waging for the last thirty years. The point, from the bits I heard, wasn’t “Rich is Bad!” but “Trickle-down and bashing working people doesn’t improve the economy.” YMMV.

You must’ve been doing laundry when Richard Trumka was speaking yesterday evening. 

“Is it really an either-or binary choice? Is there nothing in the middle?”

Of course there’s a choice.  I was just defining what that one term meant and correcting GROG for conflating politically conservative and economically liberal.  But, yes, there are multitudes of classifications.  What you’re suggesting is someone who supports a “mixed economy.”  Though I don’t know that there’s an actual term for such person, except maybe casually as an “economic centrist.”

“That’s hard to say. There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

Yes, it is, and I’m afraid we’re headed in that direction.…and that it’s going to be a failure of epic proportions. 

Would they have an equal or better standard of living with the same
exact economic system if it had to support 310 million people with a
fairly diverse ethnic background.

That’s hard to say. There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?