how has your life been these last few years?

[Speaker]

The American Dream Shrinks: Avg. Net Worth Falls 40% From 2007-2010 | Daily Ticker - Yahoo! Finance

 

[buckeye45_73]

yeah it's been tough. I'm not a big fan of what a President does for you personally, but I do think Obama's policies suck for buisness and private sector growth, which makes it harder to get a good job.

 

[Lakhota]

Many continue to suffer from the Bush nightmare, but things are slowly getting better.

 

[buckeye45_73]

Many continue to suffer from the Bush nightmare, but things are slowly getting better.

Oh please, Reagan had a worse recession and we were out of this in 82 by the midterms, Obama's policies have sucked. The only thing helping is the buisness cycle is starting to pull up. You do realized buisness goes un and down, up and down. It never stays up and it never stays down, but Obama's policies are making it suck, longer than it has to.

 

[Zander]

Mitt's gonna have his work cut out for him......

 

[Speaker]

yeah, i would agree that the Bush tax cuts and entering in this war has been a large part of this rough time (all bush's fault). But who can blame him, all he wanted was to get he and his friends companies rich. and Obama hasn't been better at all. if i would have to pick, i would be a democrat, because i believe in a strong government, but i think that any president now a days is full of it.

 

[Staidhup]

Funny how it's still Bush's fault, I guess when you have nothing left your choices are limited. Getting better, interesting observation, please share the economic data that supports your contention.

 

[buckeye45_73]

They all get their friends jobs, it's good to be the Prez. Atleast Bush got us out of one rather quickly when we had the dot com bubble burst and a major terrorist attack.
Obama doesnt care about the average guy.
He doesnt want cheap energy, because of some bogus global warming crap. I'll take coal and lower prices for my electricity for $100 Alex! Or gas below $2/gallon Alex! Instead we get a guy that tells us to take a pain pill if someone is old and needs help, deal with that high gas/energy because environmental nazis want us to use fairly land technology.

 

[tererun]

Actually better. After sept. 11 2001 and the subsequent wars and bullshit i was always wondering what dumbass was going to **** up next. I have been disappointed in Obama's failures, but that is the case of every president. I was never like holy crap what the **** is that crazy asshole thinking like I was with Bush Jr.. Plus things have actually turned around. There are more jobs out there than there were. People are recovering from their disasters. It also seems like people are pulling away from oppressive social conservatism to more economic conservatism, except for the republicans who seem to be going for spend a lot on war and **** personal liberties.

It would be nice if there was a fiscally conservative and socially liberal party that got big instead of the tea party tyrants. But hey, life is not perfect, and it never will be despite what many politicians claim they can do.

 

[Lakhota]

CHART: Economy Has Recovered All Private Sector Jobs Lost Since Obama Took Office | ThinkProgress

 

[Speaker]

Funny how it's still Bush's fault, I guess when you have nothing left your choices are limited. Getting better, interesting observation, please share the economic data that supports your contention.

WHILE FEW QUESTION the fact that income inequality has risen in the United States over the past three decades, there is plenty of dispute about why. Some argue that the upward shift in after-tax income reflects a high-tech society’s increasing rewards to highly skilled workers, or the rise of super-paid “superstars” in everything from finance to sports, or the decline of labor unions and the minimum wage.

Another concern is that the lighter federal taxation of capital gains and other investment income relative to ordinary income has skewed income distribution upward. This is related to the so-called “Buffett Rule,” whereby the Omaha billionaire (and former Washington Post Co. board member) Warren Buffett pays income tax at a lower effective rate than his secretary does, largely because so much of his income comes from investments.




Now comes evidence that this is, indeed, at least part of the story. A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service shows that, between 1996 and 2006, the share of total after-tax income attributable to dividends and capital gains grew by 40 percent, faster than any other category. Earned mostly by the well-to-do, investment income was the largest contributor to the increase in income inequality between 1996 and 2006, according to CRS.

The tax cuts enacted at the urging of President George W. Bush magnified what CRS calls the “disequalizing” impact of this shift. The 1986 tax reform eliminated the gap between the ordinary and capital gains rates. The gap began to widen again during President Bill Clinton’s second term, but the Bush tax cuts of 2003 blew it wide open by slicing the top rate on dividends and long-term capital gains from 28 percent to 15 percent. The tax code as of 2006 was still progressive, in that top earners paid a greater share of their income to Washington than everyone else. But thanks largely to the more favorable treatment of investment income, the code was significantly less progressive in 2006 than it was in 1996, CRS found.

True, the study does not account for the impact of the Great Recession, which hit top earners hard. The top 1 percent’s share of total income (before taxes) dropped from 23 percent in 2007 to 17 percent in 2009. That group’s average income fell to $957,000 in 2009 from $1.4 million in 2007. A plunging stock market is probably the cause.

Yet it remains true that the top ordinary income rate of 35 percent is 20 points higher than the 15 percent rate on dividends and capital gains. Not only does this foster inequality, it also creates an incentive to seek investment income rather than the ordinary kind, either through productive investment that creates jobs or through tax shelters and other gimmicks.

There is a case to be made that capital gains and dividend taxes are a second tax on earnings that have been subject to the 35 percent corporate income tax; the report acknowledges that this argument has merit.

But it shouldn’t be impossible to resolve this dilemma. One approach would be to lower corporate rates to compensate for increasing rates on individual filers’ dividends and capital gains. A 2007 CRS report suggested that Congress could cut four percentage points from the corporate rate if it eliminated the Bush tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, and that the code’s overall efficiency would improve in the process. When Congress turns to tax reform, it will have to keep equality as well as efficiency in mind. -washington post




WASHINGTON -- Defense spending has boomed in the post-9/11 era, creating new jobs and programs to support American military operations around the world. But a new report released last week by the Institute for Economics and Peace says that war expenditures create as much of a bubble as the housing or stock markets, providing short-term gains while creating massive long-term problems.

The report compared the economic conditions for every major U.S. war since World War II. In each case, it said, "the positive effects of increased military spending were outweighed by longer term unintended negative macroeconomic consequences."

While the authors, including the institute's vice president, Michael Shank, stressed that they were not were attempting to "place value judgments" on American wars, they noted that the consequences -- higher debt, higher inflation, lower consumption and lower investment -- have harmed the long-term health of the economy even in the case of necessary conflicts.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have "contributed to the U.S. having severe unsustainable structural imbalances in its government finances," the report said. While some of the financial trouble has resulted from other factors, such as rising energy prices, the current conflicts have been financed entirely by debt unlike other wars they studied, the authors noted.

Because the first wartime tax cuts in American history were imposed, the debt that resulted has created "major constraints on the economy and limited the scope of options that were available to policymakers" to address the flagging economy, the report said.-huffington post

(Iraq War And Afghan Conflict Harmed The Economy, Study Says)

 

[salem.hills]

Bush Jr had class and leadership you leftists think your suppose to hate repubs you treat us worse then this countries enemie. no problem you don't realize everything went south after 06 and Bush COMPROMISED and spent to much but pennies compared to Scumbama. Lol Obama's February was bigger then Bush's entire last year for debt go to cbo and see I'll post after tomorrow if Obama doesn't find me lol.......freedom of speech scares me for first time

 

[Douger]

Fantabulous.
Everything has been smooth sailing since 2005.

 

[tererun]

CHART: Economy Has Recovered All Private Sector Jobs Lost Since Obama Took Office | ThinkProgress

Hey hey, no fair looking at the big picture like that. If you do that it might actually seem like something good happened under Obama considering the nose dive we were in when he took office.

 

[Luissa]

My life is actually better than it was four years ago, much better. I make quite a bit more money than I did four years ago, and I am in a much better place in my life.

 

[Flopper]

Many continue to suffer from the Bush nightmare, but things are slowly getting better.

Oh please, Reagan had a worse recession and we were out of this in 82 by the midterms, Obama's policies have sucked. The only thing helping is the buisness cycle is starting to pull up. You do realized buisness goes un and down, up and down. It never stays up and it never stays down, but Obama's policies are making it suck, longer than it has to.

The Bush recession was definitely worse than the Reagan recession which is why it's taking the Obama administration so long to cleanup the Bush mess.

We've had 4 recession in the last 30 years, all started under Republican presidents.

July 1981 – Nov 1982, Reagan Recession
July 1990 – Mar 1991, H.W. Bush Recession
March 2001–Nov 2001, G.W. Bush Recession
Dec 2007 – June 2009, G.W. Bush Recession

List of recessions in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

Many continue to suffer from the Bush nightmare, but things are slowly getting better.

Bush failed because he promised to be conservative and he wasn't. Obama failed even worse because he promised to be moderate to liberal and he was very liberal. Now that we got that riddle solved, I trust we can count on you to cast your vote for Mit. Thanks in advance.

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

Many continue to suffer from the Bush nightmare, but things are slowly getting better.

Oh please, Reagan had a worse recession and we were out of this in 82 by the midterms, Obama's policies have sucked. The only thing helping is the buisness cycle is starting to pull up. You do realized buisness goes un and down, up and down. It never stays up and it never stays down, but Obama's policies are making it suck, longer than it has to.

The Bush recession was definitely worse than the Reagan recession which is why it's taking the Obama administration so long to cleanup the Bush mess.

We've had 4 recession in the last 30 years, all started under Republican presidents.

July 1981 – Nov 1982, Reagan Recession
July 1990 – Mar 1991, H.W. Bush Recession
March 2001–Nov 2001, G.W. Bush Recession
Dec 2007 – June 2009[, G.W. Bush Recession

List of recessions in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I looked at that list. Before Reagan Bush there was never more than 5 years w/o a recession (going all the way back to 1796). During Reagan/Bush they crushed that mark, going 10 years in between recessions. And after the Bush recession there was another 10 years of no recessions thanks to Republicans making Clinton balance the budget, the tech boom and defeating Hillary Care (later called Obamacare). I'm glad I could school ya dude. Keep trying though.

 

[Lakhota]

Many continue to suffer from the Bush nightmare, but things are slowly getting better.

Bush failed because he promised to be conservative and he wasn't. Obama failed even worse because he promised to be moderate to liberal and he was very liberal. Now that we got that riddle solved, I trust we can count on you to cast your vote for Mit. Thanks in advance.

Yes, and you don't know shit from Shinola.

 

[Darkwind]

Many suffer from the Obama economy and long for the prosperity of the Bush years.....but it is unhealthy to desire that which can no longer happen.