In recent years we have seen Republicans actively subvert the economy on several occasions in order to advance their political agendas. We have seen 2 attempts to cause a debt default one of which damn nearly succeeded. We have seen a government shutdown which cost the nation and economy billions and we have seen silly and wasteful spending cuts when more spending was warranted. And in the previous administration we saw reckless and profligate fiscal policy from these same Republicans. So what to expect next year, can we expect another government shutdown? Can we expect another Republican induced debt default crisis? Will Republicans actually go over the brink with a debt default next year? McConnell and Boehner said they wouldn’t shut down government or create another default crisis next year. But they said that three times before. So I don’t think we can rely on what either Boehner or McConnell say. The government runs out of money in a few weeks so Congress will need to pass a spending extension before within the next few weeks. What Republicans do before year end may give some clue as to how they will act going forward. I think it is a virtual certitude Republicans attempt to repeal Obamacare for the 40th or 50th time now. The activist Republican controlled Supreme Court in a rare action has taken up Obamacare again. Normally, the Supreme Court only takes cases where the appellate court is in disagreement. But in this case, the appellate court is unanimous in upholding the law. So Supreme Court intervention is more than a bit odd. One could logically conclude the Republican Supreme Court wants an opportunity to gut the law as they have other laws like campaign finance. I think we know how 8 of the 9 justices will rule even before the case has been heard. Wither the law remains intact or gutted depends on the moral integrity of one Republican justice. If Republicans on the Supreme Court gut Obamacare, we may well be looking at a constitutional crisis developing next year and that would be very unsettling for the markets and the repercussions would extend well beyond just the healthcare industry. Some analysts think we will see a more responsible Republican Party next year as now they must govern. So they expect more spending, which would be good for the economy, and they are buying McConnell’s and Boehner’s promises of a more responsible Republican Party. I hope they are correct in that assessment. But, given recent history, I remain skeptical…very skeptical. China continues to nurse its economy along and has faced democracy movements but so far is holding power and managing its economy, keeping potential demons at bay. The European central bank has announced it will begin more simulative measures. But they have made similar statements in the past. And they have not done enough. Japan seems to be embarking on a more normal pathway to growth. So there are some reasons for optimism on the international front. The only sure bet, or virtually sure bet, on the horizon is to bet against Russia. Hell will freeze over before Putin changes course. So Russia’s economy will continue to fall into chaos until someone takes out Putin or Putin succumbs to disease. So what do you think? What is your economic outlook for 2015?
The main problem the Republican led congress had, which undermined their reputation, was Harry Reid and the Democrats. The Republican congress sent 300 bills to the Senate, where Harry Reid let them die without a vote. The head of the Senate controls which bills are discussed and voted on by the Senate. If Harry wanted to make congress look lazy he throws all their bills in the trash; do nothing congress. Nothing happened in American government unless the democratic held senate and Harry Reid, allowed it to reach the president. Harry cherry picked only democrat bills, which led to disaster. Harry Reid was the plug of crap in the pipes of government. The media and propaganda machine hid this fact, since they knew their base will not do research or fact check to make sure this was not a lie. What happened over the past 6 years, happened only with the blessing of Harry Reid, President Obama and the Democrats, due to the Senate blockage tactic. Blame those bone heads. Now that the Senate is controlled by the Republicans, and the crap blockage in the pipe (Harry Reid) has been unplugged, the flow of bills will be huge, since less will be blocked for democratic political reasons. The Congress will looked transformed and become more popular. The President will have to work more hours and will need to play less and fund raise less. His dance ticket will be less open. What will also happen are the crimes committed, like IRS, will lack the same blockage leverage and heads will begin to roll. Hilary Clinton should have taken her knocks on Benghazi earlier so it was forgotten before the next election cycle. She did not anticipate losing the Senate blockage so she may get flushed too, once the pipes begin a normal flow again.
There are a few economic outlooks, one for the world,local governments, then states, then Federal, then mine for myself. So it depends upon which type of economic outlook that you choose to talk about. I'll just talk about mine since I really can't prevent what the others do with the taxes they spend because no matter who is in office they always spend more than they take in for the most part. I'm retired and living meagerly with a small pension and SS. Since I save up enough to go on trips once a year that's one thing I'll be doing next year. As far as everything else I must be frugal and a spendthrift so that I can enjoy my retirement without worry or stress. I live with my needs furnished and sometimes I get what I want but that's getting harder every day.
Actually, the main problem Republicans in congress have had since their takeover of the House has been their utter devotion to destroying this president regardless s of the cost to the nation as evidence by their repeated attempts to cause a debt default, a government shutdown, and their inability to agree upon common ground issues, and failure to compromise. Republicans like you are fond of pointing the finger at Harry Reid, but tend to become forgetful when it comes to Republican Speaker Boehner who has tabled several bills just as Leader Reid has done including the Senate passed immigration bill. About one in three bills passed by the Republican House were the same bill repeated over and over again to repeal Obamacare. Funny how that works, when Republicans do the same thing, all of a sudden amnesia sets in. The head of the House, Speaker Boehner also has same powers Leader Reid has and Boehner has exercised those powers just as Reid has done. Unfortunately for Republicans we are not yet a dictatorship and they are not yet dictators. Harry Reid didn’t try to send the nation into default on multiple occasions. Harry Reid didn’t pursue reckless and profligate fiscal policies. Harry Reid didn’t shut down the government. Republicans did and that is the issue. The issue here isn’t passing laws. The issue here is passing responsible law. Had Republicans put the welfare of the nation before their silly and costly attempts to gain political power, we would have recovered much faster from the liquidity trap we found ourselves in when Obama was elected POTUS. The question I posed in the OP was not about the tyranny of one party rule – the idealized Republican state. It was about the economic outlook for 2015. Will Republicans abandoned their reckless and flagrant past and become responsible actors in 2015 now that they control both houses of congress? If so, then next year could be a good year for the economy. If not, then Republican control of Congress presents significant danger to the economy. And the danger isn’t with Republicans in Congress but Republicans in the Supreme Court as well. The unusual decision by the activist Republican US Supreme Court to take up the Obamacare law suit when there is no disagreement in the appellate court is most disconcerting especially when the suit is so groundless and so very political in nature. But then this activist Republican controlled Supreme Court has never failed to illegally intervene into political matters for partisan gain. As I previously noted this political adventurism by Republican partisans on the court could lead to a constitutional crisis next year which could easily develop into an economic crisis. PS There is no evidence of criminal activity on the part of the IRS and their is not evidence any wrong doing by Hillary Clinton in the Benghazi affair. Millions of dollars and relentless Republican witch hunts have produced nothing. And neither of those two issues have anything to do with this thread or the health and wellbeing of the nation. They have everything to do with how politicized and how polarized the Republican Party has become under the leadership of the Republican entertainment industry.
Trying to put aside something from what I make is difficult because much of what I earn goes for living expenses which don't ever decrease for me.
Well you have Social Security which is indexed to inflation. Your pension may or may not be indexed to inflation. If you have a fixed pension you may be screwed on that end, and your degree of hurt will depend on what percentage of your income that pension represents. It also depends on where you live. Your Social Security annual cost of living adjustment is based on national averages. So if you live in an area with higher inflation, yes you will get hurt. Because your Social Security increases will not match your actual cost increases. You are fortunate that inflation has been less than 2% per year since 2009. The unfortunate fact for you is if your pension is fixed (i.e. no cost of living adjustments) even very modest and low inflation will slowly eat away the value of your pension over time.
The government is fat, wasteful, redundant and inefficient. If it was a business, in the private sector, it would go bankrupt. Borrowing and printing money artificially keeps it alive. The idea was to get the government into shape, by trimming the fat and consolidating wasteful redundancy in programs so you don't have to borrow or make fake wealth. What the Republican did was say no more credit cards to the high maintenance wife; democrats (maintain the debt ceiling as is). The idea was to live within your means, since the tax payer was sacrificing in the bad economy, so government should also. Why should the middle class sacrifice while Washington becomes the one of the riches cities in the country, at the tax payers expense? The cuts in the government requested by the Republicans were not even cuts, but rather were only cuts in the rate of automatic increases within the government. If a program was scheduled to increase by 12% , the cut meant now the increase would only be 8%. The net amount of dollars was not cut but still went up. Democratic are masters of deception and spin so you need to do your research if truth is important to you. That bonehead and lying Senator from Massachusetts, Granny Warren, came up with this blind liberal chant, "you (business) did not build this", implying business owes its logistics needed to do business to the government. The question becomes, where did government get the money to build the roads and other logistics? The answer is the tax payer. So, the government did not build it either, since it could do nothing without the tax payer. Liberals don't reason, but chant songs out of context. Who pays taxes and therefore who does the government owe its existence to? Most of the tax revenue comes from those evil businesses and rich people. It also comes from the middle and lower class workers whom the evil businesses employ. These tax payers combined, are at the top of the food chain, with government a middleman and not the master. It was time for the servant/middleman to remember it place in the food chain and not be allowed it to steal from the master, when the master has to sacrifice. Republicans are better at logic and realized a servant should not eat better than the master. The up coming Congress and Senate will try to put the servant back into their servant quarters and out of the main house. But crooks will stand in the way. I would adjust the Government budget to reflect the state of the middle class sot these are at par. The middle class has loss buying power, while government has gotten too much. The idea would be to shift those excesses back as tax cut until there is a balance, again. That means getting rid of the thieves.
[ Yes we all know that is what you and all of the devotees of Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Levin believe. But is that belief grounded in reality? Do you have any evidence to support your religious like belief that government is always bad and business is always good? No you don’t. Further, by your own admission you are not a businessman. So you have no idea how businesses actually operate. Additionally, you are throwing in a bit of historical revisionism there. It is well known Republican leaders met on the eve of Obama’s inauguration and schemed to oppose and obstruct Obama at every opportunity. That had nothing to do with making government more efficient. That had everything to do with trying to gain political power regardless of the cost to the nation. Contrary to your fantasies, Democrats have been more fiscally prudent and the economy has prospered more under Democratic administrations than under Republican administrations. Government and businesses are not the same and the expectations of similarity are another Republicans fantasy. Governments serve a very broad constituency. Businesses serve a very narrow constituency. Another fascinating – fascinating for its illogical beauty – is this notion which you have demonstrated that some things like wealth are faked. All the many unpleasant facts which plague your ideology are just “faked”. I mean, it is a beautiful piece of manipulation, an impressive manipulative tactic which is all too common with Republicans and it probably explains why Republicans are so intent on irrational behaviors and policies. Except they were not requests, they were demands for which Republicans threatened the nation with a debt default not once but twice. And they indeed were cuts. Walmart servers 245 million people each week. What you are trying to explain away as a “not cut” is analogous to Walmart’s CEO telling his staff that next week and every week thereafter they must serve 300 million customers but they cannot spend any more money on produce or on goods or on staff. That is a cut everywhere but in Republican fantasy land. The United States is a growing country and with each passing year there are more veterans to care for, there are more elderly to care for, there are more children to educate, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_sequestration_in_2013 Further, in a time of slack demand, the last thing government should do is exacerbated that slack with contractionary fiscal policies as Republicans have advocated since 2008. Those are the same policies that have placed Japan in the tank and kept Europe on the cusp of recession since the liquidity crisis began in 2007. Except she didn’t and the only one chanting it are folks like you. Obama used words to that effect in a speech to note that we are all interdependent on each other and those who have gone before. We are indebted to the founding fathers and all those who have gone before and to all those who build our roads and maintain our infrastructure. Let’s take Elon Musk, a multibillionaire as an example. Elon didn’t create the US legal structure which allows his businesses to flourish. Elon didn’t educate all the many talented folks who work for him. Elon didn’t put together the security infrastructure which keeps his businesses safe and protects his property rights. Nor did Elon build the commercial infrastructure like roads and bridges or the communications infrastructure which allow commerce and ideas to flow freely. That is what Obama was talking about when he made similar comments. Almost all of that existed before Elon was even born. Who creates the money? Businesses don’t create money, they accumulate money. There is a difference. And actually and not surprisingly you are wrong again about who pays taxes. Forty percent of federal revenues come from payroll taxes which are paid mostly by your average working stiffs. Forty two percent of federal revenues come from income taxes of which a good chunk is paid for by working stiffs. Businesses only account for 9% of federal revenues. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm I could not have asked for a better proof of what I have been saying about Republicans. You seem to be sending contradictory messages here. On one hand you want to enhance the wealth of the wealthy and make sure the peasants have less. But then in the next paragraph you want to enhance the wealth of the middle class. So which is it? What we have seen on steroids since the Reagan administration is the increasing regressively of the US tax code. The middle classes have shouldered more and more of the tax burden while wealthy folks, the ones you want to pander too, have shouldered less and less of the tax burden. And actually for all the right wing fanatical hoopla, the overall tax burden as a percent of GDP has been for many decades fairly stable at around 17% of GDP. Facts don’t matter in Republican fantasy land, but they do in the real world. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205 If you advocating making the tax code less regressive, I am all for it, but you need to tell your fellow Republicans that. But I don’t think it will go over very well with them as Republicans have consistently opposed Obama’s efforts to make the tax code more progressive and less regressive. What the upcoming congress will likely do in my opinion is more of the same. There will be more attempts to repeal Obamacare. There will be more attempts to disenfranchise Americans. There may be another attempt to shut down government and send the nation into default. And Republican activists on the Supreme Court appear to be gearing up for another attempt to gut Obamacare…which has been working. It is a sad truth. If Republicans had placed the welfare and wellbeing of the nation of before their own political and personal ambitions and if the Republican entertainment industry cared more about the wellbeing of the nation than their Nielsen ratings our nation would be much stronger, our economy would be much stronger. So I would reiterate the outlook for next year is mixed. It has potential, but it depends on what we get out of this Republican controlled congress and Republican controlled Supreme Court. I think given the circumstances and our history with Republican extremism and propensity for dangerous and irresponsible fiscal policies, I think caution is in order for 2015.
The economic impact for everyone outside the US is great. The US people just agreed to drop all the standards on their labor, so everyone else should feel free to abuse them as much as possible.
Where does this "no matter who is in office" stuff come from? The list of politicians whose policies and legislation have doubled the national debt is a short one, the list of politicians who have advocated privatizing your Social Security or defaulting on the trust fund loans is likewise fairly short (and overlapping). From your perspective, you obviously have been working and voting for left and liberal politicians, and cast no votes for any Republican politician since WWII. Is that the case?
Yes, Republicans want to weaken labor laws. But I am not familiar with any laws that have been reduced or weakened under the Obama administration. What the US has done in recent decades was to export work to developing countries like China, Mexico, Brazil, India, etc. in order to dodge US labor and environmental law. I have real problems with that, but it is what it is and given the political climate, I doubt it will change any time soon. What has benefited US labor recently is the oil boom. It has made production in the US much more attractive to manufacturers. Cheap energy trumps costly labor.