when the automatic budget cuts hit, is the metro DC economy going to go to hell in a handbasket?
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Anonymous
| AU Park will be fine. It's the outer reaches of fairfax 66 country that will be torched. |
Anonymous
We are three years into this crisis. Input costs aren't going up, demand is low, and interest rates are low. Exactly what's going to cause inflation? |
Anonymous
Because why, AU Park is less dependent on government jobs, because it produces its own food, or because residents have guns to defend themselves? I'm having trouble keeping up with your conspiracy yarn. |
Anonymous
I didn't mean literally you dingbat. |
Anonymous
| Flyover country: net importers of taxes dollars...farmers and the farm bill, less population, but still 2 senators to bring home the tax bacon. flyover country will get hit hard, less money. |
Anonymous
Not sure what you mean at all. The area most reliant on fed spending is DC proper. The farther out you get, the less they depend on federal jobs or contracts. Business income is more diversified the farther out from the center of DC, so they will do better. |
Anonymous
Wrong again. The people that live in close in nice areas of DC tend not to be Fed workers unlike those who live in far out Fairfax etc who are govt worker bees (oxymoron when talking about the Feds). |
Anonymous
You carry some funny stereotypes about the region. DC is now Clarendon and Georgetown, and Fairfax is a land of drones with lanyards around their necks. You need to get out more. |
Anonymous
Sure, except those "folks in flyover country" don't produce any wealth. The wealth is produced by the folks in the bicoastal elites. The regulatory regimes (and global projection of force) that allow that wealth production to continue are managed out of Washington, DC. Everyone else is pretty much doing what can be done more cheaply in our neighboring third-world countries (e.g. agriculture) and getting massive welfare payments in the form of subsidies and infrastructure transfer payments. |
Anonymous
Exactly: the military-industrial complex will get paid. The military elites will get paid. Both of those groups will remain largely in the capital area. The losers will be the entry-level grunts, and the towns where far-flung military bases are sited as de facto pork-barrel spending. Half of America's rural economy is based on redundant military bases in the home district of politically connected politicians; the other half is based on ag-welfare. The future doesn't look so bright for the largely rural teabaggers. |
Anonymous
Not sure how you think a global empire is run without a bureaucracy. The further "out" you get, the more societies are propped up by Federal welfare spending in the form of ag subsidies, military largess, and actual welfare payments to the rural poor. The curtailment of Federal spending will result in the South returning to the quasi-medieval status it held before the New Deal, with the GOP's most staunch supporters reverting back to the status of serfs. The irony is staggering. Certainly far greater than some right-wing retiree holding a sign saying, "Gov't Hands off My Medicare!" as they do everything in their power to eliminate the social safety net. You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but in 21st century America, you can fool a majority of the people often enough that nothing else matters. 
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Anonymous
Wow. DC and NY City, not just cities but becons of hope for the entire world. Don't you just love compasionate liberals? They are so modest as well! What is with this elite terminology though? I thought that liberals did not engage in class warfare. You make it sound like all the poor rubes in fly-over country are peasants or something. I am sorry sir but you are going to have to move out of the elite status line. That line is reverved for our passengers from the wealth producing biocostal cities. |
Anonymous
You're a bit confused. This has nothing to do with "class-warfare"; in fact, the issue is orthogonal to class. Of course there are quite poor people in flyover country. There are middle-class people who live there. And there are rich people who live in flyover country. By and large, the wealthy who live in flyover country are recipients of welfare largess to an extent the poor can only dream about. Also, there's still a fair amount of socio-economic mobility in the US, so you're seeing more and more young people graduate from high school, get an education, and move to states where they can actually be a net contributor to the nation's wealth, rather than a net drain. I find it interesting that you focused, laser-like, on the phrase "bi-coastal elites" which is actually a term used largely by conservatives. You've ignored the larger point--probably because it's largely uncontroversial to the point of banality--that a significant reduction in the federal government, leading to the curtailment of the "welfare state" will result in the virtual devastation of rural (red-state) America. And that will be to the benefit of "blue-state" America. |
Anonymous
Funny, I can't tell if you're being ironic, or on the square. Either way, yes, you're right, they are beacons of hope for the entire world. I'd be interested to see the comparative numbers of foreign visitors who dream of visiting NYC versus, say, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Conservative politicians have got one thing right. There is a "real America". But it's not in some suburban cul-de-sac outside of Reno, Nevada. If you want a further clue to the mystery, just ask anyone anywhere in the entire world who's not an American politician trying to curry favor with his constituents. |
Anonymous
By input costs, do you mean manufacturing costs? There has been an increase in some raw materials between last year and this year. There's lots of reasons we're not seeing an increase in the CPI. Housing for one. It's a big part of the cpi and its decrease kind of hides increases in other areas. Another hidden increase is that manufacturers are giving people less bang for their buck by decreasing either the quantity or quality of items while selling them at the same price. It's a kind of inflation because it means the consumer will have to purchase more of the item this year than they would have last year. A recent report (can't remember if I saw it on Bloomberg or another channel like cnbc) showed a slight increase in prirces that's going to be difficult to camoflage if the trend continues. Prices/inflation is not all about demand, especially when raw materials come from overseas. |