Has Obama really helped to improve the economy?

[ShaklesOfBigGov]

With unemployment numbers still increasingly higher since he first took office, many Americans are finding themselves struggling to now earn the incomes they once had (see our nation's UNDERemployment figures). The cost of energy also is going up, while the push for a new GREEN policy has yet to find a place and take off among many of the nation's consumers. This has only furthered Obama's stubborn resolve to invest more taxpayer dollars into alternative energy corporations, while pushing regulations to cripple those companies that choose to maintain the course of using fossile fuels.

With the economy stagnant and still struggling to recover, as well as facing a huge government spending debt to try and pass the blame on, the real question emerges: Is Obama really concerned about jobs, or with the attempt to steer his Titanic to change the face of America to a radically new direction, where left-wing ideology rules with an iron fist?



Wtih regard to coal:

What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a (sic) ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It's just that it will bankrupt them.


Read more: Audio: Obama Tells SF Chronicle He Will Bankrupt Coal Industry | NewsBusters.org

As of 2008, coal fuels about 50 percent of US electricity production and provides about a quarter of the country’s total energy.

Then there's the rejection by Obama and the left of the Keystone pipeline, siting unemployment extensions creates more jobs. Has the administration really fought to put Americans back to work, or is he using his Presidency as a bully platform to dictate what Americans must be willing to accept dispite the effect it may have to a crippling economy?

 

[Flaylo]

A thread that uses begging the question, a sure sign of trolling.

 

[editec]

Has Obama really helped to improve the economy?

Has the economy improved in the last 4 years?

There's your answer, kid.

 

[SniperFire]

 

[billyerock1991]

to pay down the debt you don't cut taxes

 

[SniperFire]

to pay down the debt you don't cut taxes

Economics is clearly not your long suit.

How's that hopey changey thingy workin out for ya?

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Has Obama really helped to improve the economy?

"Financial journalists, Occupy Wall Street activists and even a senior economic adviser to President Obama all took to the internet to talk about last night’s broadcast of the first half of Money, Power and Wall Street, FRONTLINE’s four-hour investigation into the global financial crisis.

Last night’s film began with a sober look at derivatives and credit default swaps – some of the financial instruments tied to mortgage loans that helped lead to the financial meltdown in 2008 — through the eyes of some of those who invented them. A review in The Atlantic Wire today praises FRONTLINE’s explanation.

Austan Goolsbee, a former economic adviser to President Obama who was interviewed for the film, added insights into some of the challenges the economic team confronted."

Throughout the broadcast, journalists and financial reporters tweeted their insights and reactions, including Clara Jeffrey, the co-editor of Mother Jones:​

"Too much to summarize in 140, but #frontline worth watching JUST for story of how Obama bigfooted McCain's ER meeting with DC bigwigs."

Barack Hussein Obama vs. WALL $TREET​

​

 

[Rocko]

to pay down the debt you don't cut taxes

Do you really think Obama's going to pay down the debt with all that so-called extra tax revenue??

Every idea he has, from his jobs bill, to competing with China for green energy-lmao, he's all about raising taxes and spending more.

 

[billyerock1991]

to pay down the debt you don't cut taxes

Economics is clearly not your long suit.

How's that hopey changey thingy workin out for ya?

its working fine ...
and economics is clearly not your forte ... explain to us rocker scientist how do you pay for something by taking money away from it ... we all need a good chuckle, chuckles the repub-lie-clown

 

[SniperFire]

to pay down the debt you don't cut taxes

Economics is clearly not your long suit.

How's that hopey changey thingy workin out for ya?

its working fine ...
and economics is clearly not your forte ... explain to us rocker scientist how to you pay for someth by taking money away from it ... we all need a good chuckle, chuckles the repub-lie-clown

I'll try to dumb it down for you. Wish me luck.

We can only extract about 16.5% of GDP in taxes from the economy on an ongoing basis.

Attempt to extract more than this in higher tax rates, and the economy shrinks
to where your new tax rates net .... 16.5% of GDP, on average.

This is known as Hauser's Law.

So what is a government to do if it needs and wants more tax dollars?

You grow GDP. This is the only way, as Hauser's Law, Laffer curve, etc. prove.

And you grow GDP by unleashing private sector economic activity, which is why pols - even often recalcitrant Democrats - look to tax cuts.

See, dumbfuck, we can grow our way out of debt by growing GDP, but this can only be done if SPENDING increases do not outpace growth in the tax base.

 

[Sallow]

Depends on what benchmarks you are using. IE The Bush economy vs. the Clinton economy. Compared to the out come of the Clinton economy..this is not improvement. But compared to the outcome of the Bush economy, it is.

 

[Mac1958]

Depends on what benchmarks you are using. IE The Bush economy vs. the Clinton economy. Compared to the out come of the Clinton economy..this is not improvement. But compared to the outcome of the Bush economy, it is.

Yup. Also depends on what one means by "helped". Short term back in 2009, all the "quantitative easing" (love that euphemism for "printing money") was almost certainly needed and provided a desperately needed foundation. Short term, yeah, I think they did the right thing. The subsequent spending, not so sure. And I can't imagine anyone (who is actually honest) is really going to know its long term effects for at least five to ten years, maybe twenty. We'll see.


.

 

[billyerock1991]

Economics is clearly not your long suit.

How's that hopey changey thingy workin out for ya?

its working fine ...
and economics is clearly not your forte ... explain to us rocker scientist how to you pay for someth by taking money away from it ... we all need a good chuckle, chuckles the repub-lie-clown

I'll try to dumb it down for you. Wish me luck.

We can only extract about 16.5% of GDP in taxes from the economy on an ongoing basis.

Attempt to extract more than this in higher tax rates, and the economy shrinks
to where your new tax rates net .... 16.5% of GDP, on average.

This is known as Hauser's Law.

So what is a government to do if it needs and wants more tax dollars?

You grow GDP. This is the only way, as Hauser's Law, Laffer curve, etc. prove.

And you grow GDP by unleashing private sector economic activity, which is why pols - even often recalcitrant Democrats - look to tax cuts.

See, dumbfuck, we can grow our way out of debt by growing GDP, but this can only be done if SPENDING increases do not outpace growth in the tax base.

BUll !!!! totally bull !!!! if you raise taxes you have money to pay for the national budget ... you also have money to pay for teachers, cops firemen, the extras by hiring more people you have more money coming in ... when you have more money coming in to the coffer you then work with in the national budget, by doing so you create a surplus ... that surplus goes to pay down on the national debt unless you get republicans in power to give it to the rich 1% .. is that dumb down enough for you ??? hence you don't pay the national debt bt cutting taxes ... it has never work and you can't show us anywhere it has worked ... but I can show you by raising taxes,where we did balance the budgett, where we had money to pay for the national debt.

 

[SniperFire]

Well, I DID attempt to educate you, billy.

LOL

 

[billyerock1991]

Well, I DID attempt to educate you, billy.

LOL

first you have to be educated ... its apparent you're not

 

[billyerock1991]

P.S.
thats Billye

 

[Seawytch]

Lets see...losing 700,000 jobs a month when he took office...now we have had 20+ months of job gains. That sounds like an improvement.

Dow doubled since he took office...yup that's improvmenty.

Corporations are raking in record profits. Their economy is certainly improving.

 

[Sallow]

Hauser's law:

Hauser's law is the proposition that, in the United States, federal tax revenues since World War II have always been approximately equal to 19.5% of GDP, regardless of wide fluctuations in the marginal tax rate.[1]
The proposition was first put forward in 1993 by William Kurt Hauser, a San Francisco investment economist, who wrote, "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP."[3]

Hauser cited Arthur Laffer's concept of the Laffer curve in his original article. While the two concepts are similar, Hauser's law was put forward as an empirical observation whereas the Laffer curve was thought of theoretically.[4]

In a May 20, 2008 editorial by David Ranson, the Wall St. Journal published a graph showing that even though the top marginal tax rate of federal income tax had varied between a low of 28% to a high of 91%, between 1950 and 2007, federal tax revenues had remained close to 19.5% of GDP.[4] The editorial went on to say, "The economics of taxation will be moribund until economists accept and explain Hauser's law. For progress to be made, they will have to face up to it, reconcile it with other facts, and incorporate it within the body of accepted knowledge."[4]

However, 2009 tax collections, at 15% of GDP, were the lowest level of the past 50 years and 4.5 percentage points lower than Hauser's law suggests.[5] The Heritage Foundation has stated that the recent world economic recession pushed receipts to a level significantly below the historical average.[6]

Economist Mike Kimel, writing for the Angry Bear website, writes that Hauser's Law is misleading as it sweeps large differences under the table. He states that tax revenue is higher in the years following a tax increase and lower in the years following a tax cut. He defines the time periods 1951-1953, 1967-1968, and 1991-2001 as "tax hike eras", and 1953-1967, 1969-1991, 2001-2010 as "tax cut eras", and argues that tax revenues increase in "tax hike eras" and that tax cuts do not lead to higher revenue.[9]

Journalist Jonathan Chait has written in The New Republic that "swings are fairly dramatic" through U.S. history for tax receipts as a percent of GDP. He stated that the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations received "massive" extra revenues as the result of tax increases while the George W. Bush administration tax cuts lead to a "massive" drop in revenues. He labeled the idea of static, flat revenues as a "scam".[10]
Hauser's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[NYcarbineer]

to pay down the debt you don't cut taxes

Economics is clearly not your long suit.

How's that hopey changey thingy workin out for ya?

Then explain to us in detail how you think cutting taxes at this point will pay down the debt.

 

[SniperFire]

The economy wants DESPERATELY to improve. This is the worst recovery in modern history.

Trillions in private venture money is sitting on the sidelines, waiting to pounce.

But Obammie and his Commies scare the begeebers out of those who normally step in at this point to explode economic growth at the 5-6% rate we should have seen over a year ago.

The Romney win will be an INSTANT economic boom.