Tax Cuts Didn’t Lead to Faster Growth

"Bush had one of the lowest rates of unemployment in history, you are not going to add jobs when the market is already full of jobs"



LOL, UNTIL HIS PONZI SCHEME HE CHEERED ON POPPED, CORRECT, THEN WHAT HAPPENED??


YOUR entire premise crediting Dubya's "when the job market is full" for Dubya YET THE NET GAIN 0F 7+ MILLION PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS UNDER OBAMA (AFTER DUBYA LOST 1+ MILLION IN 8 YEARS) IS BS

 

" I just pointed out the fallacy of jobs added as something Presidents do. "



THEN TRYING TO NOT GIVE OBAMA CREDIT FOR JOBS GAINED UNDER HIM:

" Obama adding jobs is not hard after loosing more than 9 million of them to begin with. Net job gain has been relatively flat under Obama considering what needs to be added due to population growth. "


SINCE OBAMA CAME INTO OFFICE THERE HAS BEEN A NET GAIN OF 7+ MILLION PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS, 11+ MILLION SINCE HITTING DUBYA'S BOTTOM FEB 2010

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000001

 

His ponzi scheme? You guys can't think rationally, can you?

 

Q When did the Bush Mortgage Bubble start?

A The general timeframe is it started late 2004.

From Bush's President's Working Group on Financial Markets March 2008

"The Presidents Working Group’s March policy statement acknowledged that turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into 2007."



Bush's documented policies and statements in timeframe leading up to the start of the Bush Mortgage Bubble include (but not limited to)

Wanting 5.5 million more minority homeowners
Tells congress there is nothing wrong with GSEs
Pledging to use federal policy to increase home ownership
Routinely taking credit for the housing market
Forcing GSEs to buy more low income home loans by raising their Housing Goals (2004)
Lowering Investment bank's capital requirements, Net Capital rule (2004)
Reversing the Clinton rule that restricted GSEs purchases of subprime loans (2004)
Lowering down payment requirements to 0% (2004)
Forcing GSEs to spend an additional $440 billion in the secondary markets (2003)
Giving away 40,000 free down payments (2004)
PREEMPTING ALL STATE LAWS AGAINST PREDATORY LENDING (2003)


But the biggest policy was regulators not enforcing lending standards.

http://www.politicalforum.com/political-opinions-beliefs/394878-facts-dubyas-great-recession.html


DUBYA FOUGHT ALL 50 STATE AG'S IN 2003, INVOKING A CIVIL WAR ERA RULE SAYING FEDS RULE ON "PREDATORY" LENDERS!


Dubya was warned by the FBI of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud in 2004. He gave them less resources. Later in 2004 Dubya allowed the leverage rules to go from 12-1 to 33-1 which flooded the market with cheap money!




Thanks again to the Bush administrations allowing the greedy & unethical brokers to operate at their will.

 

Ah yes, hindsight is always so clear, yet I hear nothing from the likes of you how Clinton fought and won to block any regulation of directives, the underlying foundation for the bank crashes.

 

From Bush's President's Working Group on Financial Markets March 2008

"The Presidents Working Group’s March policy statement acknowledged that turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into 2007."


YES, BECAUSE DUBYA WOULD'VE REGULATED THEM RIGHT? CARE TO POINT TO THE GOP BILL UNDER CLINTON THAT CLINTON FOUGHT THAT WOULD'VE REGULATED THEM??? Oops

 

On July 6, 2007, the day the uptick rule was repealed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 13,611, just three months away from its all-time high of 14,198. The timing of the repeal was absolutely perfect. Repeal of the uptick rule sent a clear signal to anyone paying attention that the party was now over and it was time to establish a short position to be sure of benefiting from the market's coming drop.

Repeal of the uptick rule helps engineer the financial crisis

The decision of the SEC to repeal the uptick rule exposed the markets to the very same "bear raids" and "runs on banks" that prompted the original enactment of the rule following the huge market declines of the early 1930's. The repeal has left the markets wide open to predatory trading abuses such as naked short selling, the equivalent of financial terrorism.

Since the goal of these terrorists was to create utter and complete financial instability, a financial institution was chosen as the example of how to completely destroy a company in short order. Bear Stearns was the first to go down, dropping from $61.58 to $2.84 in just five trading days (March 14 to March 20) on jaw dropping volume that equaled 4.2 times its total share float. We can only guess who placed the initial short sales that got the ball rolling. Then came Fannie Mae whose shares were selling for 49 dollars one year ago and now sell for 49 cents. Freddie Mac had a similar price decline.

http://www.naturalnews.com/025003.html


The uptick rule made it hard for speculators to push the price of a stock down after betting it would fall. The demise of the uptick rule took effect in July 2007, just as the U.S. housing crisis began to grip global financial markets. The SEC thought less supervision of short selling would help U.S. financial markets. Since then, legions of short sellers have progressively hammered Wall Street, contributing greatly to the current stock market crisis.

Why did the SEC end the uptick rule? And why can’t it ban what it already considers illegal? Well, under the Bush Administration the SEC has been pushed to implement a governing conservative philosophy that argues fervently for less supervision of our financial system. We can see today how well that’s turned out.

Conservatives running our financial regulatory institutions have so effectively peddled this shockingly imprudent deregulatory fervor that the SEC is a revolving door. Three largely ineffective SEC chairman and a total of 13 different commissioners have graced the agency during the Bush years. Not since FDR – a four-term president – have there been more than ten commissioners and three chairmen appointed to the SEC. Experienced staff have also been fleeing the agency. Why stay when your supervisory mandate is to do less?

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2008/09/18/172357/sec-short-selling/

 

The Perino Challenge: ‘What Specific Regulation Did We Eliminate?’


The Wonk Room gladly took up the Perino challenge. Here are some of the specific regulations of the financial system that the Bush administration has eliminated:

- The Uptick Rule: In July 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) eliminated the “uptick rule,” which “made it hard for speculators to push the price of a stock down after betting it would fall.” As the Wonk Room noted yesterday, “since then, legions of short sellers have progressively hammered Wall Street, contributing greatly to the current stock market crisis.”

- The Net Capital Rule: In 2004, the SEC loosened the “net capital” rule, which required “that broker dealers limit their debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1.” The five investment banks that qualified for an alternative rule – Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley – were allowed “to increase their debt-to-net capital ratios, sometimes, as in the case of Merrill Lynch, to as high as 40-to-1.”

- State Laws Against Predatory Lending: In 2003, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued regulations that exempted national banks from state laws against predatory lending. As Slate reported, “with the state laws nullified, national banks were free to engage in the sharp practices the states were hoping to stamp out.”

The Bush administration eliminated these “specific regulations,” contributing to the specific mess that the financial system is in today.


http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2008/09/19/172361/perino-challenge/

 

Precisely. It's all about timing. When Bush enacted his tax cuts and a big chunk of that cash went into the markets, consumers already had just about everything they wanted in terms of houses, cars and refrigerators. There was very little room for more supply, so the markets became hugely speculative and risky. Unfortunately, conservatives remain stuck on the 'all tax cuts are good' paradigm. Their thinking doesn't extend beyond that point.

 

I find fault in your question. You can't arbitrarily 'bolster domestic productivity'? Only business owners decide how they will manage their companies. IMO there is no combat towards foreign workers because Americans are not willing to do this work. Industry MUST be profitable and they will achieve this any way they can or they close the doors! If US labor and materials in some cases are too expensive for the business model then they must be sourced off-shore or wherever...or...move the business off-shore or close the doors. What happened to the electronics manufacturing inside the USA? Americans are competing for jobs with other Americans and they are competing for jobs with other nations in the global marketplace. Where you see a loss of US jobs in those areas it means Americans failed to compete. But I do believe we should greatly increase exports and the government needs to help in this area...

 

Millions of kids succeed in the current education system so this is just an excuse. I do agree the education system needs an overhaul.

Home is what people make of it...the occupants control everything.

Low intelligence is not a problem? All this does is limit one's potential.

Disability is subjective...but again each person has a potential and all they can expect and work for is to reach their potential.

BTW: there is no cure for physical disability, mental disability, and learning disabilities. All of them can be managed and again each person will have their own potential to achieve...some limited more than others.

So you didn't provide any good reasons for people not achieving their potential?

I chose the correct word...finite...because you or I do not possess infinite wisdom...

 

IF only there were SOME way to to make the WORLDS LARGEST ECONOMY behave the way that benefits the US over "owners" of capital???


Alexander Hamilton was protectionism's first major advocate. George Washington, in his first Address to Congress, said 'A free people . . should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military supplies.' Thomas Jefferson made a similar statement in 1816, as did also James Madison in 1815, and James Monroe in 1822. Southern states objected after the 1820s, seeing its slave-labor workforce unsuitable for industrial work.


http://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Case-Against-Free-Trade-ebook/dp/B007BYRZQK



Why Thomas Jefferson Favored Profit Sharing
By David Cay Johnston

The founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and businesses.

George Washington, nine months before his inauguration as the first president, predicted that America "will be the most favorable country of any kind in the world for persons of industry and frugality, possessed of moderate capital, to inhabit." And, he continued, "it will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the lowest class of people, because of the equal distribution of property."

The second president, John Adams, feared "monopolies of land" would destroy the nation and that a business aristocracy born of inequality would manipulate voters, creating "a system of subordination to all... The capricious will of one or a very few" dominating the rest. Unless constrained, Adams wrote, "the rich and the proud" would wield economic and political power that "will destroy all the equality and liberty, with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves."

James Madison, the Constitution's main author, described inequality as an evil, saying government should prevent "an immoderate, and especially unmerited, accumulation of riches." He favored "the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigents towards a state of comfort."



Alexander Hamilton, who championed manufacturing and banking as the first Treasury secretary, also argued for widespread ownership of assets, warning in 1782 that, "whenever a discretionary power is lodged in any set of men over the property of their neighbors, they will abuse it."

Late in life, Adams, pessimistic about whether the republic would endure, wrote that the goal of the democratic government was not to help the wealthy and powerful but to achieve "the greatest happiness for the greatest number."



http://www.newsweek.com/2014/02/07/why-thomas-jefferson-favored-profit-sharing-245454.html



The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains (1/10th of 1%)


http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertl...of-the-nation-earn-half-of-all-capital-gains/


Andrew Mellon had a few distinctly progressive ideas. Of particular note, he suggested taxing "earned" income from wages and salaries more lightly that "unearned" income from investments. As he argued:



The fairness of taxing more lightly income from wages, salaries or from investments is beyond question....




Surely we can afford to make a distinction between the people whose only capital is their mental and physical energy and the people whose income is derived from investments. Such a distinction would mean much to millions of American workers and would be an added inspiration to the man who must provide a competence during his few productive years to care for himself and his family when his earnings capacity is at an end.



http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/DC6A3F1BAA03052A85256DFE005981FB?OpenDocument

 

Every word in that last sentence is English language...

 

The US economy provides something for everyone...what determines their achievements is the effort and decisions they make in life...when someone does not like their situation it is 100% their responsibility to take personal actions to change their course...

 

MORE right wing nonsense about boot straps huh?

I know you already don't "believe" but again


Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”

Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new.

“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that.”


One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.

At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/u...ise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0



Social Immobility: Climbing The Economic Ladder Is Harder In The U.S. Than In Most European Countries

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/17/social-immobility-climbin_n_501788.html

 

One huge pity party!!!

Life must just be so awful for people in which they are simply incapable of making any decisions to change the course of their lives...the only thing missing is violin music...

 

Yeah IF Gov't policy ONLY had some influence on things right???

Non-Partisan Congressional Tax Report Debunks Core Conservative Economic Theory


The conclusion?

Lowering the tax rates on the wealthy and top earners in America do not appear to have any impact on the nation’s economic growth.

This paragraph from the report says it all—

“The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.”

These three sentences do nothing less than blow apart the central tenet of modern conservative economic theory, confirming that lowering tax rates on the wealthy does nothing to grow the economy while doing a great deal to concentrate more wealth in the pockets of those at the very top of the income chain.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickung...rvative-economic-theory-gop-suppresses-study/

 

Look up Brooksley Born.

 

AGAIN:


YES, BECAUSE DUBYA WOULD'VE REGULATED THEM RIGHT? CARE TO POINT TO THE GOP BILL UNDER CLINTON THAT CLINTON FOUGHT THAT WOULD'VE REGULATED THEM??? Oops

 

Sorry, I guess it takes too much intelligence for some to Google Brooksley Born.

 

What you fail to accept is that all these moves were an extension of the era of free markets, deregulation, low taxes, global trade and the mythology of choice, perfect information and the rational investor which were all championed by the darling of the right, Milton Friedman. Milton destroyed the old Keynesian models by arguing quite effectively that they were ineffective and no longer needed. His first acolyte was Nixon and then bit by bit, he managed to convince successive administrations that he had captured the very essence of what it meant to be a free market capitalist. Ronnie jumped on it and filled his team with economists who bought this clap trap. By the end of the 80s, even Democrats started to believe this tripe. Clinton was a product of this transition but the rank and file of the left still smelled a scam. Perot got a huge following rebutting this stuff but Clinton was convinced and along with the right wing and a complacent left, he kept it up albeit without the large tax decreases. He did not buy into all of it unlike the right wing. The GOP has made this economic fantasy their platform calling it Reaganomics and anything different, socialism or communism. They were very effective in the face of weak Democratic opposition. Then came Bush 2 who went for it again, Reagan style. The collapse of the middle class and the financial institutions along with massive deficits has put this to bed, even Greenspan admitted his Randian love affair might be over. Obama could have destroyed it forever had he not put Summers in charge but Obama did go left, way left in comparison to anyone since Nixon. The GOP still hangs on to these fantasies with socalled economists like Kudrow, Moore and others still harping on the same tune. Watch for Bernie Sanders and Stephanie Kelton and of course, we still have Krugman to rebut these ideas every week.

 

Ah yes, Keynes comes along and all of a sudden, it is the only way to run the economy. What a hoot. The fastest growth this country has ever seen was pre-keynesian and before income taxes. Since then we now have a generation that only knows what government tells them is best for them and they buy into it, hook, line, and sinker.

 

NOTHING to do with Dubya's regulator failure though....

 

Oh you mean the INDUSTRIAL AGE with HUGE Gov't subsidies like RR's????


(Re-)Introducing: The American School of Economics

When the United States became independent from Britain it also rebelled against the British System of economics, characterized by Adam Smith, in favor of the American School based on protectionism and infrastructure and prospered under this system for almost 200 years to become the wealthiest nation in the world. Unrestrained free trade resurfaced in the early 1900s culminating in the Great Depression and again in the 1970s culminating in the current Economic Meltdown.


Closely related to mercantilism, it can be seen as contrary to classical economics. It consisted of these three core policies:

protecting industry through selective high tariffs (especially 1861–1932) and through subsidies (especially 1932–70)
government investments in infrastructure creating targeted internal improvements (especially in transportation)
a national bank with policies that promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation.


It is a capitalist economic school based on the Hamiltonian economic program. The American School of capitalism was intended to allow the United States to become economically independent and nationally self-sufficient.


Frank Bourgin's 1989 study of the Constitutional Convention shows that direct government involvement in the economy was intended by the Founders.


The goal, most forcefully articulated by Hamilton, was to ensure that dearly won political independence was not lost by being economically and financially dependent on the powers and princes of Europe. The creation of a strong central government able to promote science, invention, industry and commerce, was seen as an essential means of promoting the general welfare and making the economy of the United States strong enough for them to determine their own destiny.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)#Origins

 

You have a better way to explain it?