Reality check on economic policies

[ShackledNation]

Really? Where? And how many from 2000 to 2008? And the tax breaks were to give them the means to CREATE jobs, NOT as a permanent situation...which is why the tax cuts were initially signed on with a sunset clause...because eventually it would be detrimental to trying to balance the economy.

Oh, I see. You think that the private sector is deliberately not creating jobs to blackmail the politicians into making the tax cuts permanent. Correct?

If so, that's pretty silly.

The private sector is sitting on cash and not creating jobs because it's easier. If jobs is the goal, cash must be put in the hands of consumers, not producers. It's not rocket science.

Don't get your panties in a right-wing twist - I don't mean take from the rich and give to the poor, just make the tax code simple and fair and see what happens.

I agree the tax code must be drastically--and I mean drastically--restructured. But spending does not grow the economy. Savings does. That is another error both parties have been making and why neither ever seem to get it right. It was perpetuated by the delusion of Keynesian economics. The structure of production is more like a triangle. On one side you have capital intensive goods (like research, machinery, the very earliest stages of production) and on the other side you have production closer to final consumption (the actual product consumers buy). Increasing consumer spending will shift the structure so resources are piled on to consumer goods. But capital goods, new technologies, innovations--those are what really grow the economy and can make products cheaper and more affordable for all. What we need is more saving in this economy. The reason we have recessions is because the Federal Reserve and our monetary policy allowing for the creation of money creates the illusion of savings, which increases investment in the capital intensive side of the triangle. But because rising prices is always the consequence of money supply expansion, people will not be able to afford the projects. They will collapse and fail, and the production structure will have to change to reflect actual savings vs. spending. People tend to save more and spend less, which would actually increase the recovery of a recession. Notice that the depressions that take the longest to heal often are accompanied by massive spending. Our current situation is a perfect example.

More spending will only make matters worse, especially if it is perpetuated by government. If we save more, the distortion caused by expansion of the money supply will become less sharp because the savings will begin to actually exist.

 

[taichiliberal]

Well, first, the private sector has been creating jobs.

But why wouldn't they create jobs to hold onto their tax breaks? That makes no sense.

Really? Where? And how many from 2000 to 2008? And the tax breaks were to give them the means to CREATE jobs, NOT as a permanent situation...which is why the tax cuts were initially signed on with a sunset clause...because eventually it would be detrimental to trying to balance the economy.

Oh, I see. You think that the private sector is deliberately not creating jobs to blackmail the politicians into making the tax cuts permanent. Correct?

If so, that's pretty silly.

Again, where are the jobs? The Shrub's job creation record in 8 years paled before what his father and Clinton did in 4. And the shit storm of the Shrub's reaganomics-on-steroids hit on 2008 and fully in 2009. Now, after stimulus, bale outs and tax cut extensions, where are the jobs? If not an irrational "Obama must fail" attitude joined at the hip to maintain this disasterous (for the regular working folks, anyway) fiscal policy, what is the reason for no jobs?

Unless you have a rational, logical and fact based answer to my question, you can spare us all the silly bluff and bluster and stalling.

 

[taichiliberal]

Am I the only who sees this statement as, uhm, disingenuous.

No, there's a whole lot of people just as willfully ignorant and insipidly stubborn as you Trajan...they call themselves new conservatives, tea party members, oathers, birthers, threepers, etc. You know...morons!

you could address what I said...has it occurred to you that the tax rate for corps world wide ala the top 20 are all significantly lower than ours?

You said it seems disingenuous....so I addressed your opinion. Stop pretending there's somehting else you wrote that I didn't address. Has it occured to you that the rest of the world's corps don't enjoy ALL of the tax breaks, cuts, loopholes, welfare that our corps do?

how about those free trade agreements? talk about losing market share, which = jobs here for exports?

Does that address outsourcing? Nope. Does that address tax cuts for the rich? Nope. Does that address tax breaks for corporate outsourcing? Nope. Does that address corporate welfare? Nope.

drop the rate drop the deductions and loopholes. pass the free trade agreements AND; get the dept of energy to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. that alone ala the pipeline would create 30K jobs in less than 3-4 months right off the bat.

For starters, read the most recent EPA report as to why the Keystone XL pipeline isn't happening. Then you could pass the Pelosi proposal that would give corporations incentives to create jobs on the home front. Then you can look at creating a WPA type system to rebuild our infrastructure and augment our industry, utilities, services and products for a more green efficiency. Then you can let the Bush tax cuts sunset, and stop subsidizing multi-billion dollar oil industry by making them pay their fair share of taxes. All that would do a hell of a lot more than 30k jobs in a year.

Co's spend when they see a reasons too, ala customers and long term outlook, ala 5 years. they don't know what to expect next right now.

Essentially, you're making my point.....corp execs are about the bottom line, and NOT about American workers....that is why you have so much outsourcing and downsizing. They're not going to do ANYTHING until they get their way....which as recent history has shown wasn't doing a hell of a lot for the multitudes of American workers and the middle class.

 

[taichiliberal]

No. I simply don't have time to deal with nonsense like this today.

Translation: This mentally Shackled libertarian clown isn't wise enough to logically or factually fault the information presented in the link I provided, nor can he logically or factually defend the neocon mantras of imbeciles like Trajan....so the shackled one just bluffs and blusters.

No, honestly, I really just don't feel like it.

If that's the case, why waste time to post that? Honestly, no one cares if you're bored or disinterested or whatever. If you want to discuss something, do it. If you want to just throw stones and blow smoke, then expect people to respond accordingly.

And why would I defend neoconservatism if I am a libertarian?

Because libertarians are just a bunch of neocons with delusions of moral superiorty to the latter. Yet when one analyzes the platform, the conclusions of their ideology are extremely similar.

That doesn't even make sense. Libertarians seldom do, when taken to task.
I am simply agreeing that saying Republicans are holding the nation hostage to get lower corporate tax rates is more or less demagoguery and dramatic rhetoric.

No, you said you don't have time to deal with this "nonsense".....and given the content of the article I linked, to call it "nonsense" without explanation or elaboration coincides with the idiocy our resident neocon numbskulls have been spewing on this thread.

What is holding this nation hostage is the size and expansion of government.

As the article shows, that is NOT the case....but facts to the contrary are ususally ignored by neocon and libertarian ideology.

And neither major party is close to doing anything meaningful about it. It appears you are a victim of the whole process, under the illusion that the parties are really that much different. The underlying philosophy in the mainstream of both is still big government, judging by actions.

And after that waste of space, what of the article do you fault that is wrong? Because the neocon driven GOP in this instance is proposing the SAME nonsense that you are.....the private sector shall solve all problems. Well, 30 years of Reaganomics has shown that to be a fallacy. But as a Libertarian, you won't be satisfied until we have a situation akin to the gov't of the Sudan....were the private sector is all and the gov't does little beyond maintain a military. Good luck with that.

 

[taichiliberal]

Dems had a veto proof majority, passed almost their entire agenda driving the economy into the dirt in the process...so they blame Reagan.

How do these people get elected to any political office at all?

The Dems NEVER had a lock on the Senate under Reagan. The same was true under the Shrub.....even without Lieberman or Kennedy's death. If they did, I'd like to see the proof.

 

[taichiliberal]

And yet Republicans are still pushing the same old song and dance, passionately holding the entire creditworthiness of the United States hostage in return for even lower taxes on corporations,

Am I the only who sees this statement as, uhm, disingenuous.

No.

One wonders why the left are so clueless that they just blindly accept partisan hackery as 'fact'. Scary.

And once again California Girl can't logically or factually disprove or refute the content of an article....so she just mouths neocon radio talk show platitudes.

 

[taichiliberal]

Dems had a veto proof majority, passed almost their entire agenda driving the economy into the dirt in the process...so they blame Reagan.

How do these people get elected to any political office at all?

When the FUCK are people going to see that the republicans and the democrats are BOTH feeding on the table scraps from the same rich-mans table?

ObamaCare: Written by the lobbyists, for the corporations.

Energy Policy: Written by the lobbyists, for the corporations.

Tax Code: Written by the lobbyists, for the corporations.

"Stimulus" Package: Written by the lobbyists, for the corporations.

Are you seeing a pattern? Why DO we bother electing congresscritters? Representation?

Well, if we had more folk like Bernie Saunders (I-VT) we'd have a fighting chance. The problem is that Americans literally have to have their backs up against a wall before the draw the line against the real problems....but as long as the supermarkets keep magically filling up with food, so long as the ILLUSION of a vacation is dangled in front of people, so long as there is class, religion, race and ethnic adversity constantly stoked, Americans will sit back and take elections being stolen in Florida and Ohio, or watch Dems/GOP conspire to cheat a third party candidate out of his right to a national debate.

It can change, but people have to be willing to do it. Until then, addressing the lies and deceptions must be eternal vigilance.

 

[kiwiman127]

And yet Republicans are still pushing the same old song and dance, passionately holding the entire creditworthiness of the United States hostage in return for even lower taxes on corporations,

Am I the only who sees this statement as, uhm, disingenuous.

No.

One wonders why the left are so clueless that they just blindly accept partisan hackery as 'fact'. Scary.

Actually a more a honest statement would be,,,,,"One wonders why the far left and far right are so clueless that they just blindly accept partisan hackery as 'fact'. Scary."

 

[taichiliberal]

Indeed and well-said.

Of course the fact that ‘trickle-down/supply-side’ – whatever – is a failure won’t have an impact on rightist dogma.

This is really quite astonishing.

The Liberal Elite are charging that policies endorsed by reagan are hurting the eocnomy 2 and a half years after the policies of the Liberal Elite have been working continuously to crush the economy.

Are the Liberal Elite really this stupid or do they just think that everybody else is?

That is itself, is a stupid question. We all know the answer.

You're confusing 'Democratic Politicians' with 'Liberal Elite' - It's the SAME fucking policy, no matter which team is the campaign financed whipping boy of the corporate and upper-crust lobby machine.

There hasn't been any truly liberal thinking in American politics since the Joe McCarthy witch-hunt in the 1950's.

Essentially, we've witnessed in the last 10 years that the Dem party is more interested in being re-elected than actually challenging the opposition....and by the time they get off their butts and organized, it's too late. What's interesting is the "bluedog" Dem, who epitomizes what Ralph Nader has been saying for decades regarding both parties.

But right now, if the American people would wake the fuck up about Reaganomics, that would be a significant victory. Hope springs eternal.

 

[taichiliberal]

"Reality check on economic policies" = We're fucked, now there's a reality check.

For sa Wiseacre who says they don't have the time to waste on nonsense, you sure seem to make time to post such.

 

[taichiliberal]

...the tax rate for corps world wide ala the top 20 are all significantly lower than ours...

Not everyone says US corp taxes are low. Here are some other viewpoints:

(from here) "At 39.2 percent, the United States has the second highest combined federal and state statutory corporate tax rate in the industrialized world."

(from here) "U.S. States Lead the World in High Corporate Taxes"

Before deductions.

Between 2000 and 2005, U.S. corporate taxes amounted to 2.2% of the GDP. The average for the 30 mostly rich member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was 3.4%.

Why the disparity given the high federal rate, which rises to 39% counting state taxes? Part of the answer is that big U.S. companies have become expert at hiding profits in tax havens overseas. And many of the smaller ones simply pass through their income to owners who then report it on their personal returns.

High Corporate Tax Rate Is Misleading - SmartMoney.com

The time has come to demand fair and simple taxes.

Hear, hear! But the willfully ignorant will just turn a blind eye to these facts and continue to parrot the mantras of those who would treat them as a "commodity".

 

[taichiliberal]

"We own the economy" -- Debbie Wasserman Schultz

we own the fallout of a economy .....

That's not what the head of the DNC said, Dear.

Too bad about losing that media monopoly.

Why don't you stop playing this childish games, Frankie......taking what the woman said out of context is a typical cheap tactic that Limbaugh, Newsmax and the rest of those assholes have been using for years...and failed! STOP being a fucking tool, Frankie! Here, for your education:

SCHULTZ: Oh, I mean, I think that we are clearly responsible for the -- I'm going to take ownership right now, because we began to turn the economy around. We have a long way to go. President Obama has said, we -- Democrats in Congress have stressed, we want the pace of recovery to pick up. But just look at the year, I mean, you've only to look at the year before President Obama. The last year of the Bush presidency, the economy lost 3.7 million jobs, just that year. We're bleeding about 750,000 jobs a month leading up to when President Obama took office. And now, even though we have a ways to go, we need to keep pushing to quicken the pace of reform, the economy has begun to turn around. We created a million jobs in the private sector in just the last six months -- 2.1 million in the last 15 months.

We have really been able to provide opportunities where there weren't before, and the manufacturing sector has had 15 straight months of growth. We rescued the American automobile industry and made sure that Americans can continue to have the choice about the kind of car that they want to drive. If it were up to the Republicans -- particularly the Republican candidates for president -- they would have pushed the American automobile industry off a cliff and said good luck, see you later. That's 1.4 million jobs right there. I was just in Indiana on Friday, and I had an opportunity to hear about the success in Cocomo, Indiana -- the jobs that came back and now that they're operating in those auto plants three shifts a day, where I think they were at one, if not none, just a little over a year ago. So, to reach the point in the auto industry in America where, since 2004, all three are operating at a profit -- Chrysler, a couple of weeks ago, paid back their loan six years early. Those are all signs.

Yeah, we own the economy. We own the beginning of the turnaround and we want to make sure that we continue that pace of recovery, not go back to the policies of the past under the Bush administration that put us in the ditch in the first place.

Media Matters for America

 

[taichiliberal]

...The time has come to demand fair and simple taxes.

OK, so nobody likes complicated and unfair taxes, including the folks that wrote the tax code, so we're going to have to be a bit more specific about what the facts are, what it is that we want, and what works.

It's a fact that Obama's BEA admits that since the '08 election corp taxes paid has soared from $203 Billion to $410 Billion, and Obama's BLS admits that unemployment has gone from 6.6% to 9.2%. We need to agree that corp. taxes are way higher and they haven't done any good. Then we can talk about how to make things like they were with lower taxes and more jobs.

I'd like to see the source of your assertions here.....because the full brunt of the unemployment mess left by the Shrub didn't hit until 2009....so to try and lay that on Obama is not accurate to say the least. As for corp taxes paid, you give a generalization as that does NOT include how many corps are paying now as opposed to then.

 

[taichiliberal]

Oh, I see. You think that the private sector is deliberately not creating jobs to blackmail the politicians into making the tax cuts permanent. Correct?

If so, that's pretty silly.

The private sector is sitting on cash and not creating jobs because it's easier. If jobs is the goal, cash must be put in the hands of consumers, not producers. It's not rocket science.

Don't get your panties in a right-wing twist - I don't mean take from the rich and give to the poor, just make the tax code simple and fair and see what happens.

I agree the tax code must be drastically--and I mean drastically--restructured. But spending does not grow the economy. Savings does. That is another error both parties have been making and why neither ever seem to get it right. It was perpetuated by the delusion of Keynesian economics. The structure of production is more like a triangle. On one side you have capital intensive goods (like research, machinery, the very earliest stages of production) and on the other side you have production closer to final consumption (the actual product consumers buy). Increasing consumer spending will shift the structure so resources are piled on to consumer goods. But capital goods, new technologies, innovations--those are what really grow the economy and can make products cheaper and more affordable for all. What we need is more saving in this economy. The reason we have recessions is because the Federal Reserve and our monetary policy allowing for the creation of money creates the illusion of savings, which increases investment in the capital intensive side of the triangle. But because rising prices is always the consequence of money supply expansion, people will not be able to afford the projects. They will collapse and fail, and the production structure will have to change to reflect actual savings vs. spending. People tend to save more and spend less, which would actually increase the recovery of a recession. Notice that the depressions that take the longest to heal often are accompanied by massive spending. Our current situation is a perfect example.

More spending will only make matters worse, especially if it is perpetuated by government. If we save more, the distortion caused by expansion of the money supply will become less sharp because the savings will begin to actually exist.

Bottom line: let the Bush tax cuts sunset and stop outsourcing and you put back billions into the economy. That's a start.

 

[taichiliberal]

Am I the only who sees this statement as, uhm, disingenuous.

No.

One wonders why the left are so clueless that they just blindly accept partisan hackery as 'fact'. Scary.

Actually a more a honest statement would be,,,,,"One wonders why the far left and far right are so clueless that they just blindly accept partisan hackery as 'fact'. Scary."

Ahhh, but is the information in the article linked at the beginning of this thread accurate? That is point by which hacks like California Girl just want to ignore because they can't disprove it logically or factually.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

There are the Democrats economic policies.

Republicans have one. Cut taxes. We cut taxes early in the Bush Administration. We extended those tax cuts when Obama was blackmailed into going along with it. Nearly half the stimulus package was tax cuts. We are paying the lowest taxes in decades. The 12 largest companies in the US didn't pay any taxes. In fact, Republicans made sure they got billions for nothing, just like the oil subsidies. After all that, it's obvious their ONE economic policy doesn't work. Their answer? "Give it time". 13 years hasn't been enough time.

Obama wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts, the Republicans just refused to let him play class warfare with them.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Wages are moribund, unemployment is stuck at 9 percent, and the corporate bottom line is doing just fine. You could be excused for thinking that if ever there was time to put the stake through supply-side economics, it would be now. Wall Street and big corporations are doing just fine, but absolutely nothing is trickling down. And yet Republicans are still pushing the same old song and dance, passionately holding the entire creditworthiness of the United States hostage in return for even lower taxes on corporations, adamantly refusing to countenance even the slightest revenue increase to help cushion the hard times for the Americans who are getting a raw deal out of the current recovery.

Indeed and well-said.

Of course the fact that ‘trickle-down/supply-side’ – whatever – is a failure won’t have an impact on rightist dogma.

Does the fact that everyone is richer than they were before Reagan started talking about supply side economics make a difference on progressive dogma?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

And yet Republicans are still pushing the same old song and dance, passionately holding the entire creditworthiness of the United States hostage in return for even lower taxes on corporations,

Am I the only who sees this statement as, uhm, disingenuous.

It sounds a bit like Obama.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGxiFgR8wv0]YouTube - ‪Obama's Political Rhetoric Rings the Doorbell, Gets Let In‬‏[/ame]

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Am I the only who sees this statement as, uhm, disingenuous.

No, there's a whole lot of people just as willfully ignorant and insipidly stubborn as you Trajan...they call themselves new conservatives, tea party members, oathers, birthers, threepers, etc. You know...morons!

Trajan is one of the best posters here.

And taichi generally makes rdean look like a Rhode's Scholar.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Am I the only who sees this statement as, uhm, disingenuous.

No, there's a whole lot of people just as willfully ignorant and insipidly stubborn as you Trajan...they call themselves new conservatives, tea party members, oathers, birthers, threepers, etc. You know...morons!

you could address what I said...has it occurred to you that the tax rate for corps world wide ala the top 20 are all significantly lower than ours?

how about those free trade agreements? talk about losing market share, which = jobs here for exports?

drop the rate drop the deductions and loopholes. pass the free trade agreements AND; get the dept of energy to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. that alone ala the pipeline would create 30K jobs in less than 3-4 months right off the bat.

Co's spend when they see a reasons too, ala customers and long term outlook, ala 5 years. they don't know what to expect next right now.

I think that State is the biggest hurdle the pipeline faces right now.

State Department halts tar sands pipeline -- for now - KYTX CBS 19 Tyler Longview News Weather Sports