The Fiscal cliff

[BraveUlysses]

In all seriousness, how many people do you think are on EBT and NOT using drugs....honestly.

This says more about you and your assumptions about others than anything else.

[The Volta]

Here is a great presentation about unsustainability of the the current system that is set in place. There is also sources in the youtube link if you want to do some of your own research of where the numbers come from.

[nando]

the economy shrank .1% last quarter. Gee, I wonder why?

Fuck you congress.

[BraveUlysses]

It's mostly due to defense spending being cut.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freee...icas-economy-1

First, it is important to note that this is the government's advance report, which will subsequently be revised several times. Growth in the third quarter was initially reported at just 2.0% before being revised up more than a percentage point. Second, the bad number is driven by a few one-off peculiarities in the data. Federal defence spending shrank at a striking 22% annual pace in the fourth quarter, knocking 1.28 percentage points off of growth. That was mostly (though not entirely) due to typical shifting of spending into the third quarter ahead of the end of the fiscal year in September. (Correspondingly, the 0.64 percentage-point defence contribution to growth in the third quarter was somewhat overstated.) A big change in private inventories also knocked 1.27 percentage points off of growth. Real final sales grew at more than a 1% annual pace for the quarter, suggesting that underlying demand continues to grow, albeit weakly.