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Re: Quick Quiz and no looking it up

By: micro in POPE IV | Recommend this post (0)
Wed, 20 Jan 16 3:20 AM | 94 view(s)
Boardmark this board | POPES NEW and Improved Real Board 		Msg. 02724 of 47202
(This msg. is a reply to 02723 by Decomposed)
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Hi De!

Continuing with the thought process,

here is another interesting thing to consider.

Jefferson reduced the debt substantially from Adams.

But, we had the Tripoli Pirates doing their thing and Jefferson expanded the navy and sent the Marines after them. Then he had to buy and pay millions of dollars, for the Louisiana purchase in order to expand the land size of the United States. He shrunk the debt tremendously, "balancing or reducing" the overall debt which means he spent LESS than what the treasury took in.

Madison had the war of 1812 to finance and deal with and then we had Andrew Jackson who presided over a relative time of peace.

Very interesting period of our history to say the least!

Good sleuthing as usual sir! Thumbs Up




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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Quick Quiz and no looking it up
By: Decomposed in POPE IV
Wed, 20 Jan 16 1:39 AM 		Msg. 02723 of 47202

micro: 

re: "Good guess but Jefferson was the first President to make sure we had a balanced budget."

There's more to the question than meets the eye.

Look at the chart below. It seems to be saying that JOHN ADAMS reduced the national debt. But if you look closer (the bottom of the graph) you see that the debt isn't being displayed in dollars but in percent of GDP. That's not the same thing at all. In fact, if a person grew the economy, he could also increase the debt and have Adams' result. (I suspect that's what Adams did.)

Notice the 0.0 next to Andrew Jackson. He ELIMINATED the debt - a very impressive feat and not a statistical mirage. To their credit, all of the Presidents after Washington had been moving the country in that direction, at least as a percentage of GDP.

The whole idea of obfuscating the national debt by showing it as a percentage of GDP is a crock. GDP is a ridiculous, easily-manipulated and misunderstood figure that actually includes GOVERNMENT SPENDING as one of its components. Imagine that. If government took huge amounts of its income (taxes), built bombs and blew 'em all up in a field, it could result in a high GDP and most people would think it was good news. I guess it would be. The economy would be "BOOM"ing, after all.
 

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