I'm not excusing the damage conservatives have done to our economy. Nor have I made the point it does. Using logic and reality as a guide, and understanding the economy means knowing that the devastating effects of the recession, and the GOP blocking recovery, will have other consequences in the future. Logic and reality have shown otherwise. When the GOP blocked recovery legislation, they blocked the recovery happening faster. We could have been back on track years sooner, and maybe gained an edge on Europe still mired in their experiment with a virtual gold standard currency. Or, we could have limited losses of jobs to China or other Southeast Asia or South American manufacturers. Which, you just hit on why the GOP effect the economy and the US. They blocked demand being created, which might have stemmed fore closures, wrecked credit, lost businesses, and have set people back several more steps than would have been the case had they enacted job creation in their legislation Nor have I tried to make that case. It's a simple matter of doing what we know works. The conservatives went with stuff we knew did not work. And the price was paid by those who lost jobs, houses, cars, credit and opportunities. As has been proven, the government can provide the push for the private markets to regain their footing during a recession by doing temporary stimulus. It's not like it's any secret that it's something that has been done many times in the past 80 years. Thanks. I'm decades into it. And God willing I'll have decades more to help educate coworkers and voters.
Your guarantee wouldn't be worth the bytes it took for you to make it on this forum. Keynesian policy has absolutely nothing to do with state ownership. It's clearly about the "invisible hand" being the most major force in the economy. Keynes showed how governments can do temporary stimulus to put markets back into growth, then ending the stimulus and paying down deficits and debt by allowing the markets to grow. You truly have no idea of what Keynes wrote if you're going to go off into fallacy to bring up state owned production. Keynesian policy has 80 years of success. No other economic school of thought can say they have had positive outcomes in the economy during that time. Again, not my fault if people are dumb enough to move to the burbs. When you do stuff like that, you take on the costs of being there. You want the government to take all the money and then disburse it? You're not really talking like a capitalist. For those of us who are capitalists (I'm a former owner of two different businesses in two very different sectors of the economy), taxes aren't the problem. Lack of demand is. Taxes don't stop companies from chasing profits. Companies will chase profits no matter the tax structure. If they don't, they die by their own stupidity.
Anyone who believes our problems stem from R's or D's are too biased in politics. From the president on down through Congress when they are incapable of finding compromise, middle ground, win-win scenarios, ALL of them are worthless. The political blame-game is a 100% waste of time. The 'last' recession was over 5 years ago...there are far more things going on than blaming slow economic growth on the R's. Government stimulus does not recover the economy? Government stimulus is a temporary spending program of which all effects of this program are gone when the government spending stops. It is the actual economy which has fluctuations and it seems Americans can't tolerate downturns...only growth. I'm not against government stimulus but I'm against deficit spending as SOP which we have today... - - - Updated - - - Those quotations in this post are not from OldManOnFire????
Simply increasing the circulation of money in our Institution of money based markets can create demand.
I've been involved in dealing with policies and programs with the Federal and my state governments (sometimes it's a part of my job, so to speak). I can say with 100% knowledge that when the GOP is offering up insanity as their position on any issue, and silly people call for compromise with insanity, that they truly are deluding themselves into not caring that the results will suck. Policy based in insanity is insane. That's not even a political bias. It's a bias towards logic and reality. Take Paul Ryan for instance. He touts his budgets over the past several years as "balancing the budget". Yet, when the numbers are crunched, they increase budgets deficits, give more money to billionaires, and smash programs for the poor and national economic health. And to top it off, he attempts to do away with programs like Social Security, that has no effect on discretionary budgets or their deficits or surpluses, and has been a boon to the economy and reducing poverty for oldsters for nearly 80 years. Now, to compromise with his insanity, you get insane results. If the GOP offer up rational opposition and can use math to come to conclusions instead of ideology, then I'd take them seriously as a party. Lets see... Did the GOP block jobs programs the Democrats offered as legislation that would have quickened recovery? Yes. Have they blocked programs that would have spurred demand? Yes. Even blocking unemployment extensions and other help for the long term unemployed, or blocking other help for the poor, has allowed the effects of the recession to linger on. The Democrats don't have that kind of record. Yes, it does. The issue is that the temporary stimulus we did do was far too small. Every economist based in reality has agreed on that. And Americans should not have had to tolerate the downturn for as long as it happened, and see growth return years ago. But again, the things the economists knew, the Democrats were too scared to go big enough(and that is a valid criticism against them) and the Republicans didn't want to do anything necessary to help the economy grow. By blocking larger stimulus, the GOP made the deficits larger, because the economy lagged for five years after the recession ended. You wanted to compromise with the GOP, which meant we'd have had larger deficits today if we had. - - - Updated - - - Yeah... The multi quote function can be a bear with an iPad.
Why should money earned be taxed at all? Seriously. It's one of the worst forms of taxation imaginable.
But we can't be competitive in the global marketplace without lowering our workers' wages and standard of living. Globalisation is equalising us with India, China, Mexico, you name it. I think our massive debt is actually somewhat reflective of our (leaders') efforts to avoid actually being lowered to that kind of level in real terms. There's a weird distortion going on in our economy and monetary system instead to cover for it, but this is bound to break eventually, and then we will probably find ourselves bouncing lower than those countries before we can rebound and land somewhere at or a bit above their living standards.
Social Security has a massive effect on my discretionary budget. The self-employment version of it is absolutely monstrous and seriously reduces my ability to spend the money I've earned on things I need and want. Doing this to enough people, it seriously drags down the consumer, and for what? So that retirees can afford medical care that is too expensive in the first place (and has become so precisely because of insurance and government assistance allowing it to become so), and so that they can afford to retire without having set aside savings of their own, which might easily have cost them less than the social security payments cost employers and employees, or in the case of self-employed persons, solely the employee, who must pay the portion normally covered by an employer as well. In short, (*)(*)(*)(*) government. Leave me alone and let me keep my earnings and spend them as I please. That's how you get a functioning economy.
By the way, you really are steeped in Democrat propaganda. By blocking larger stimulus, the GOP made the deficits larger, because the economy lagged for five years after the recession ended. - how do you know it would have taken off with more stimulus? I call partisan BS on this. It's our economic fundamentals that are ailing (thanks in no small part to government interference in, well, EVERYTHING), and no amount of hair of the dog-stimulus will fix that.
Sure we can. Simply making labor more expensive can have the result of management seeking efficiency gains instead of only cost reductions from labor.
Overall, Social Security is a boon to the economy because it's a stable source of income for millions of American long after private markets have stolen people's investments (which is why defined contribution plans suck, and defined benefit plans need to be encouraged more with protections for those investments). To do away with Social Security would harm the economy, and see larger Federal spending on discretionary spending in welfare payments on oldsters who would not otherwise be able to work. Self employed people most often rely on consumers for profits, or on the clients they contract for who rely on consumers. Social Security helps to keep consumption up for older and disabled Americans, which businesses rely on for profits and their existence. The smart thing to do now would be to raise or eliminate caps on the Social Security payroll tax, to make SS a) funded to current or higher benefits over the 75 year actuarial window the fund is based on and b) more progressive as a tax and benefit to recipients. I'm not buying anecdotal complaints of it hurting you or your business when it's clear that your own earnings are likely dependent on the larger economy.
Not at all. When Republican congressmen and Republican Senators tell you to your face that they want to pursue policies that would leave the economy lagging, you tend to see them as being obstructionists to growing the economy. It's economics, dude. It's not even really arguable, as the history on this has been proven time and again over the past 80 years. And, the history is quite recent on it. the economics part isn't partisan at all. It's empirically proven. Stimulus spending has been proven to work, especially in asset price collapses (the Great Depression and Great Recession are examples of that). The partisanship comes into play when a party actively tries to institute an ideological response, instead of dealing in reality. You're obviously completely immersed in the ideology, instead of the reality. Too bad. We need fewer low information voters on economics, and more people who can spot the bull(*)(*)(*)(*)ters who give lip service to jobs and growth, while blocking both.
If you wish to have government managing our laws and infrastructure, etc. how can it be funded? Government is not free. Obama is currently spending about $3.8 trillion which comes to about $12,063 for every US citizen...men, women and kids...perhaps the government can just send out an invoice for $12,063 to every US citizen? A family of four would be required to pay $48,250 per year. Or perhaps you wish to have industry fund government? Government could have a national sales tax which collects $3.8 trillion per year? You can whine and beat this to death, but the bottom line is if government is spending $3.8 trillion then theoretically government is going to extract $3.8 trillion from society. Of course current presidents and Congress don't pay their way and just use deficit spending as SOP. Bottom line is we're going to pay one way or another...$3.8 trillion is going to be extracted from society no matter if it's on wages or industry or property or consumption, etc. etc. What's worst than your statement above is having only a few US citizens paying the bulk of the taxes...
Yes exporting more is a problem. We have lost so much because we can't compete in all areas. Eventually other nations cost of living will rise but it continues to rise in the USA. We can build smarter, automate, reduce costs to industry, or find new products we can produce. If we cannot export more, then most of our economy will rely on personal consumption. When millions of Americans live pay check to pay check, it is hard for me to imagine significant increases in personal consumption. Perhaps government needs to encourage growth of industries which can be located anywhere in the US and involve most people...like local farming? How about promoting cottage industries which allows people to chase their dreams and ideas from a business perspective? Collectively in the USA we need to consume more, spend more, in order to grow the economy. However, from an individual perspective we should be downsizing so we can live nicely within our means. It's a catch-22 issue...
You think we need this level of spending just to have laws and infrastructure? Face facts - most of that spending is military, warfare and socialist programs..
You want to promote growth, do away with the burdensome taxes and regulations. That's how this nation grew to be as great and powerful as it did in the first place. Only in the twencen was all of this taxation, socialism, etc. heaped on, and already we're in debt up to our eyeballs and facing another stagflation type of situation with our government rubblising parts of the rest of the world to try and maintain this goofy system for as long as it can.
The underlined is absolutely false. We have monetary policy that can reduce the strains on racing for the bottom. The strong dollar approach never worked out well for manufacturing.
For the most part, looking at it like everyone is on the hook for $12k is wrong. Most of our government is spending to protect wealth for those who are wealthy, or to provide wealth for those who are wealthy. So, why aren't we dropping the bill on them, or cutting their billionaire welfare programs?
The military is necessary, though not to anywhere near the expense it is. And the last is also quite necessary to keep the economy humming along by having a safety net and reducing poverty.
Income taxes are at near historic lows. Regulations don't seem to be burdensome to companies in other nations with more, or more stringent, regs, than the US has. So, why is it that businesses and wingers whine that American companies can't compete when starting out on third base, and no outs?
Producing poverty is more like it. I know people who make a point of avoiding income just to keep receiving welfare money. - - - Updated - - - Historic? Do you even know when the damned income tax was introduced, what level it was then and what kind of income was affected?
which means they're trying not to be thrown into worse poverty, because the loss of certain subsidies or or such, might mean not being able to eat or have a place to live. The US is a low tax, developed nation. And comparing results, the US taxes are hitting a point of being too low to reduce deficits long term, or to keep up with infrastructure needs for future decades.
It means they're avoiding work to keep getting easy money instead. It means that they're effectively discouraged from providing for themselves and encouraged to be even less responsible. It's high tax relative to its own past. We shouldn't even have this massive debt to try and pay off, but that's the new model and the bankers (who fought for it for quite a long time) love it to bits.
Do you not believe in the laws of demand and supply. Why not ask employers to create better paying jobs?
