For Those Who Want to REDUCE Unemployment, not win arguments

[flacaltenn]

We definitely know that raising taxes in todays horrible economy will make things worse.

Whenever it's posed, this question is never answered: If what you say is true, then why were the 90's considered the boom years (an employEE's job market, not an employER's job market), when tax rates were 5% higher?

Maggie:

This is the problem with using ONE VARIABLE to try to make a complicated argument.

The "5%" higher was the upper bracket.. But at the same time Capital gains were lowered, (affecting a much larger portion of the economy) and taxes were raised on Soc Sec recipients. (again -- a much larger effect). AND all that happened in a rapidly RISING economy which had (again) a larger effect than that 5%.

Here's the deal about "taxing the rich" Maggie.. Remember when Warren Buffett said that he was paying a lower RATE than his secretary? (((Not less money as some economically challenged leftists have claimed)))

That was because MOST of Warren's massive yearly income is in CAPITAL GAINS!! By raising his BRACKET --- you get ZILCH more out of him!!!!

All it will do is drive money from those brackets into investments like BerkShire Hathaway. Now do you understand why he's in FAVOR of higher tax brackets?????

The class warrior LEFTISTS are TOO STUPID to understand this!! What they are DEMANDING won't even accomplish their goals..

So -- I'm gonna give a glimpse of JUST that one parameter -- what raising the upper brackets did to Treasury income thru ALL KINDS of different scenarios.. And you'll see that that NEVER had an appreciable effect on raising revenues as normalized by GDP..

 

[MaggieMae]

Do away with the minimum wage and all wage and hour laws. Companies would be hiring people at $4 an hour and unemployment would go down.

if true then everyone would now be paying the minimum wage, but on average they are paying 3 times the minimum wage. The perfect beauty of capitalism is that you must pay the highest wage possible or lose your best workers to those who pay more. Its a concept almost impossible for the liberal mind to comprehend.

The concept works only when economic conditions are good. With so many businesses shuttering, translating to millions more added to the unemployment roster, employers can pay anything they want and know they'll get the best workers anyway. That's not political, friend, it's a fact of life.

 

[MaggieMae]

"The first step to winning the future is encouraging American innovation." That was Barack Obama in his State of the Union address last January, when he hit the theme repeatedly, using the word innovation or innovate 11 times. And on this issue, at least, Republicans seem in sync with Obama. Listen to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or Mitch Daniels and the word innovation pops up again and again. Everyone wants innovation and agrees that it is the key to America's future.

Innovation is as American as apple pie. It seems to accord with so many elements of our national character — ingenuity, freedom, flexibility, the willingness to question conventional wisdom and defy authority. But politicians are pinning their hopes on innovation for more urgent reasons. America's future growth will have to come from new industries that create new products and processes. Older industries are under tremendous pressure. Technological change is making factories and offices far more efficient. The rise of low-wage manufacturing in China and low-wage services in India is moving jobs overseas. The only durable strength we have — the only one that can withstand these gale winds — is innovation.

The Future of U.S. Innovation: Can Americans Keep Pace? - TIME

So what is the reason this administration has killed innovation for the past 2.5 years? The only emphasis on job creation from these ijits has been on 'green jobs' of which none have been created, though thousands of oil, gas, natural gas, and nuclear jobs have been lost.

Thank god for Walmart, McD's, and Walgreens I guess.

You're going to have to provide a link for that. I've seen no information about the energy market (oil, gas, etc.) losing job share. As for the energy policy, which party is it that either ignores or smacks down any innovation regarding "green" jobs created by alternative energy projects?

 

[MaggieMae]

Jobs are created when employers decide to pay someone to do work. It's that simple. No company is in the business of providing employment. Companies are in the business of making profits. A company will raise or lower wages consistent with the laws of supply and demand as they apply to filling the jobs the company needs done.

If government wants to encourage job growth in this country, it can do so by spending within its means, reducing its debt, ensuring sound money and providing a tax and regulatory environment that invites business creation in and relocation to the United States.

Great theory. So why didn't that happen when Bush put two tax cuts in place? What did business do with its windfall? Frankly, with those kinds of tax rates and regulatory oversight practically nonexistent, one would have thought that the business environment could have survived quite well the economic downturn that began in 2008. They should have had cash in the bank, not relied so heavily on credit to maintain month-to-month operations.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Here's an idea- let's have the morons who ruined our government stay the hell out of business. Let's give free market capitalism a chance to work. Government is not the answer, government is the problem.

Gov't got out of the way of Enron. What say you about that?

 

[MaggieMae]

Is Today The One That Changes The Political Landscape?

Will people actually realize that Obama has made things much worse?

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive...r-in-chief.php

Our Excuser-In-Chief

We haven’t yet said anything about today’s disastrous employment news. What is to be said? Unemployment is up to 9.2%, with underemployment much higher. A mere 18,000 jobs were added in June, less than one-fifth of what economists expected. Job growth in April and May was revised downward by 44,000. Another 272,000 Americans gave up and dropped out of the labor force. The news was unrelentingly bad.

One wonders whether, when the history of this era is written, today might go down as a turning point. Americans have been steadily giving up on the Obama administration, as evidence accumulates that its policies have failed and it has no solutions to the nation’s economic problems. Not only that, its purported solutions–most of which are really just pretenses for government takeovers–have made the situation worse rather than better.

If today was a turning point, it isn’t only because of the dismal news. Equally important was President Obama’s response to the awful numbers. Once again, after two and a half years in office, he can do nothing except make excuses, deflect blame, and try to turn bad news into political opportunity:


Beset by a weak jobs report, President Barack Obama on Friday called for swift action by Congress to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, saying the uncertainty over the debt ceiling has hindered hiring in the private sector.

This is a ridiculous claim. Many factors deter private hiring, some of them needlessly imposed by the administration–excessive regulation, Obamacare, harassment of businesses like Boeing on behalf of unions, and so on. The only issue with respect to the debt ceiling is whether the Democrats’ wild spending spree will be reined in. If so, that will, indeed, spur growth in the private sector...

IF that wasn't such an opinionated piece, I would agree with a lot of it. Obama should have put jobs as his first priority, not "Obamacare," which was a huge distraction and angered so many on the right that anything he attempted from then on would become subject to opposition, including all the things he DID do right concerning boosting employment that nobody even remembers now.

I fault his political advisors for believing that, in the glow of Obama's election, no one would ever object to anything proposed. He was completely naive concerning the power of lobbyists and other special interest groups who work behind the scenes, the media, and of course the downright revengeful attitude by some of the private citizen groups which have dedicated themselves to bringing Obama, personally, down. I realized early on in the administration, that we would have at least four years of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't. Translation: More polarization, and more gridlock, until some other major catastrophe like 911 takes place as the wakeup call this country needs that history will repeat itself if governments (including state governments) don't pay attention to the big picture by continuing to zero in on only the small pictures in the moment.

 

[MaggieMae]

That is why Keynesian economics worked for FDR

that is an absolutely perfect example of the liberal IQ. He has no idea that FDR presided over the Great Depression.

Do you skip history when it gets to the part where FDR helped end the Great Depression?

 

[flacaltenn]

Here's an idea- let's have the morons who ruined our government stay the hell out of business. Let's give free market capitalism a chance to work. Government is not the answer, government is the problem.

Gov't got out of the way of Enron. What say you about that?

Actually not WryCatcher.. I was in California when it was raped by Enron.. And believe me, the girl was asking for it.. Enron couldn't have done that much damage without the stupidity of the Calif assembly and Governor. They KILLED all long-term contracts for power (walking right into the hands of Enron), demanded PGE sell-off all it's generators, and decided that the whole state was gonna wake up every morning with NO IDEA of where it's power was gonna come from today...

Whatever lack of Fed oversight might have a played a part is secondary to ENRON just NAILING bad legislation for all it was worth...

 

[MaggieMae]

Jobs are created when employers decide to pay someone to do work.

Thats not very helpful it seems to me. It might be better to say we got from the stone age to here because people invented things that workers were given jobs to make.

So, the secret is to get liberals out of the way of invention: Give Green Cards to anyone who graduates with science or engineering degrees, eliminate capital gains taxes so there are more Googles, eetc, eliminate all business taxes so business has lower prices and less time wasted dodging taxes, eliminate unions and minimum wages, illegal workers.

It sounds like you are in favor of slavery.

That really is the Republican ideal.

A caste society isn't what the framers had in mind. Yet Brutus, from past posts, would be one of those strict Constitutionalists. Go figure. Without minimum wage workers, or even illegals, who would clean up the rich man's shit or mow his lawn or wash his Bentley? Yup, slaves.

 

[MaggieMae]

I'm pretty sure as a nation we're fucked.

Just look at threads like this and many others... We have had 1 style of Government for so many years people don't know anything different. It’s just bitching about the “other side” and then people vote for “their side” who just happen to do exactly what the other side did… Yet people fight and defend.

A liberal can sit here and tell us why Reagan sucked. They will tell you how much he spent and how he raised taxes and added to the deficit... Then that same mother fucker will sit here and tell you that the only way to save the country is to spend more than we have, raise taxes and add to the deficit... JAW FUCKING DROPPING… Then, just to sound the stupidest mother fucker ever born they claim Reagan is YOUR messiah. WHHOoooOoooSH over their heads as they don’t see the blatant irony.

We are at a point beyond Republican Bullshit and Democrat Bullshit. It's Big Government doing what Big Government was predicted to do, fail... You are here now watching it before your very eyes. Even if we manage to squeeze past this "Great Recession" do you have any idea how long it will be until we are doing well again? Now apply that length of time compared to how often our country goes through recessions... Before we fully "recover" we'll be in another recession, and that's if we can manage to get out of this one.

So here we are, big Government Reps and Big Government Dems have failed. There is only one choice and that’s to massively shrink Government or I guess end the country… There literally is no other choice. We can’t borrow indefinitely while all our jobs leave the country, we simply can’t compete with third world countries unless we become one, and guess what, Government doesn’t pay for their HC in third world countries, nor welfare or SS.

But no, instead of realizing that raising taxes on the rich will not even cover SHIT of the problem that’s what we get to hear… How about protests in the streets to end the wars you war loving Democrat fucks, huh? Of course 100% taxes on the rich AND ending all the war tomorrow STILL won’t cover the deficit but HEY, YOU NEVER FUCKING CARED ANYWAYS.

So, we’re fucked. There are simple to many stupid fucking people out there that think claiming they care about children and old people more than you is more important than actually doing something to help these people in the long term. It’s a big ugly game and we all get to lose in the end.

Republicans had their turn in office and OHHHH boy did they fuck it up… This post might seem oddly 1 sided considering I’ bitching about people being partisan yet there is one reality you would have to miss… DEMOCRATS HAVE TWO THIRDS OF THE FUCKING POWER, and up until 5 months ago they had 100 fucking % power. Bush and the Rep have been beatin to a pulp for what they did and rightfully so, yet here these fuck wads are defending the ZERO repeals of Bush era policy Democrats (and Obama) just like the crazy ass shit for brains Bush-bots did.

I'm nowhere near as pessimistic. What we need to jolt us back to a good economy is a BIG PROJECT, with both the public and private sector working toward an end goal (or goals) in partnership rather than at odds over who has the most to gain or lose in the short term. It could start with the massive repairs needed for our basic infrastructure. And no, I'm not parroting a talking point du jour. I've said that for years.

 

[MaggieMae]

We have had 16 straight months of job growth.

Don't you read?

There has been no jobs growth since the Democrats took control in 2007 or since Obama took office in 2009. None!!! Most positive numbers have been revised out of existence. Try reading something truthful once in a while idiot instead of propaganda.

So what exactly did the Dems do between 2007 and 2009 to add to those numbers? Which laws were passed during that time that had a damaging effect? Stop looking at JUST THE FUCKING NUMBERS, people. They are MEANINGLESS without knowing WHY.

 

[MaggieMae]

I'm pretty sure as a nation we're fucked.

DEMOCRATS HAVE TWO THIRDS OF THE FUCKING POWER, and up until 5 months ago they had 100 fucking % power. Bush and the Rep have been beatin to a pulp for what they did and rightfully so, yet here these fuck wads are defending the ZERO repeals of Bush era policy Democrats (and Obama) just like the crazy ass shit for brains Bush-bots did.

You do know that just 40% of the Senate can stop any bill from happening right? It used to be the power was only used sparingly and in times of great conscience. Now it is used regularly to bottle up whatever the minority doesn't like.

That is why the Bush tax cuts we never rescinded even though Democrats had 100% of the power. They really only had 2/3rd. Now they have are basically split. House (Rep), Pres. Dems, Senate split since neither side is over 60.

It's actually worse than that. That truly STUPID "rule" still exists that a single senator can place a "hold" on any bill before congress indefinitely.

http://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs-publish.cfm?pid=&*2D4Q\K3

 

[Zander]

Here's an idea- let's have the morons who ruined our government stay the hell out of business. Let's give free market capitalism a chance to work. Government is not the answer, government is the problem.

Gov't got out of the way of Enron. What say you about that?

Non sequitur much? What does Enron have to do with government wage controls?

 

[MaggieMae]

Here's an idea- let's have the morons who ruined our government stay the hell out of business. Let's give free market capitalism a chance to work. Government is not the answer, government is the problem.

Are you admitting free market capitalism has flaws? After all, it's the way this country has conducted business since its inception. The problem is it DOES have flaws, and unless corrected, all hell can break loose.

Greenspan Concedes to `Flaw' in His Market Ideology (Update2) - Bloomberg

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Here's an idea- let's have the morons who ruined our government stay the hell out of business. Let's give free market capitalism a chance to work. Government is not the answer, government is the problem.

Gov't got out of the way of Enron. What say you about that?

Last time I checked, it was against the law to falsify your profits.
Lots of Enron employees went to jail for that.
When is the same going to happen to Franklin Raines for doing it at Fannie Mae?

 

[MaggieMae]

We definitely know that raising taxes in todays horrible economy will make things worse.

Whenever it's posed, this question is never answered: If what you say is true, then why were the 90's considered the boom years (an employEE's job market, not an employER's job market), when tax rates were 5% higher?

Maggie:

This is the problem with using ONE VARIABLE to try to make a complicated argument.

The "5%" higher was the upper bracket.. But at the same time Capital gains were lowered, (affecting a much larger portion of the economy) and taxes were raised on Soc Sec recipients. (again -- a much larger effect). AND all that happened in a rapidly RISING economy which had (again) a larger effect than that 5%.

Here's the deal about "taxing the rich" Maggie.. Remember when Warren Buffett said that he was paying a lower RATE than his secretary? (((Not less money as some economically challenged leftists have claimed)))

That was because MOST of Warren's massive yearly income is in CAPITAL GAINS!! By raising his BRACKET --- you get ZILCH more out of him!!!!

All it will do is drive money from those brackets into investments like BerkShire Hathaway. Now do you understand why he's in FAVOR of higher tax brackets?????

The class warrior LEFTISTS are TOO STUPID to understand this!! What they are DEMANDING won't even accomplish their goals..

So -- I'm gonna give a glimpse of JUST that one parameter -- what raising the upper brackets did to Treasury income thru ALL KINDS of different scenarios.. And you'll see that that NEVER had an appreciable effect on raising revenues as normalized by GDP..

Then what explains the fact that capital gains tax was at 21% in 2000 and it's now dropped to 15% and will probably stay there? Warren Buffet needs to amend his calculations then, because he would be basically paying even LESS than his earlier scenario.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=161

 

[Zander]

Here's an idea- let's have the morons who ruined our government stay the hell out of business. Let's give free market capitalism a chance to work. Government is not the answer, government is the problem.

Are you admitting free market capitalism has flaws? After all, it's the way this country has conducted business since its inception. The problem is it DOES have flaws, and unless corrected, all hell can break loose.

Greenspan Concedes to `Flaw' in His Market Ideology (Update2) - Bloomberg

Of course capitalism has flaws. But it is still better than anything else out there.

I prefer a limited government with as much power in the hands of the individual as possible. The idea that some bureaucrat in DC can "create" jobs is absurd. Government needs to get the hell out of the way.

 

[MaggieMae]

Here's an idea- let's have the morons who ruined our government stay the hell out of business. Let's give free market capitalism a chance to work. Government is not the answer, government is the problem.

Are you admitting free market capitalism has flaws? After all, it's the way this country has conducted business since its inception. The problem is it DOES have flaws, and unless corrected, all hell can break loose.

Greenspan Concedes to `Flaw' in His Market Ideology (Update2) - Bloomberg

Of course capitalism has flaws. But it is still better than anything else out there.

I prefer a limited government with as much power in the hands of the individual as possible. The idea that some bureaucrat in DC can "create" jobs is absurd. Government needs to get the hell out of the way.

As has been pointed out time and again, government CAN and HAS been the ignition for massive private investment, i.e., the space program, the interstate highway, even some of the programs from the depression era, such as the TVA which is almost exclusively operated by private industry now.

 

[MaggieMae]

Good discussion. Too nice a day here to be stuck looking at a computer monitor. I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the weekend as I plan to do!

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Jobs are created when employers decide to pay someone to do work. It's that simple. No company is in the business of providing employment. Companies are in the business of making profits. A company will raise or lower wages consistent with the laws of supply and demand as they apply to filling the jobs the company needs done.

If government wants to encourage job growth in this country, it can do so by spending within its means, reducing its debt, ensuring sound money and providing a tax and regulatory environment that invites business creation in and relocation to the United States.

Great theory. So why didn't that happen when Bush put two tax cuts in place? What did business do with its windfall? Frankly, with those kinds of tax rates and regulatory oversight practically nonexistent, one would have thought that the business environment could have survived quite well the economic downturn that began in 2008. They should have had cash in the bank, not relied so heavily on credit to maintain month-to-month operations.

What did GDP do the quarters before and after his 2003 tax cuts?
You might be surprised.