The Goat Pen

Red Bird wrote:

Make the argument you just made in any political debate and the side that wouldn't vote for you would laugh at you and the side that wanted to vote for you, would beg you to get off the stage.

That would only prove how little people understand the situation we're in.

So what you are saying is that you don't think I understand the situation we're in?

IB's but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. His is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...

Yea? Did Shakespeare Analyze you as well?

So what you are saying is that you don't think I understand the situation we're in?

I can only assume your level of understanding based on what you say.

We have a demand based economy.

The only way we will reduce our deficit is if people go back to work,and have money to spend.

American corporations are fat and profitable, interest rates are low as dirt. Cutting corporate or business taxes will not cause them to hire more workers because there is no demand for more products.

Working Americans are struggling to deal with higher prices and declining values of homes, which for most people is their primary asset. They are not going to go on a spending binge.

The only way we can increase demand is to put more money in the hands of people who currently do not have any.

How the money reaches these people is a secondary consideration. Sure, it would be better if they were working providing products that people need, but the key thing is creating demand.

Red Bird wrote:

So what you are saying is that you don't think I understand the situation we're in?

I can only assume your level of understanding based on what you say.

We have a demand based economy.

The only way we will reduce our deficit is if people go back to work,and have money to spend.

....How the money reaches these people is a secondary consideration. Sure, it would be better if they were working providing products that people need, but the key thing is creating demand.

This is what FDR said in 1932. You are using his logic to justify bullshit like the WPA.

The Great Depression (started by a 1929 Stock Market crash) didn't effectively end until the US got involved in World War II. The WPA and the New Deal didn't help. It only helped to needlessly exacerbate and prolong the Great Depression for nine fucking years. Is that what you want?

FDR was wrong about (well...) pretty much everything. I have 3 other very recent recessions to back up my claim.

You know Bird, in 1982 during that recession, Reagan de-regulated and we had the miracle of prosperity that was 1984.

The 1990 Savings & Loan Recession lasted until 1992 (until unemployed/unemployable plumbers and carpenters re-educated themselves into becoming Novell Netware Engineers.)

The 2001 9-11/Dot-Bomb recession ended by 2002 when all the laid off Dot.Com people started doing real work in real IT departments.

This 2008 housing crisis recession shit isn't ending. Our fearless leader is acting like FDR and not like Reagan, Bush Sr, or Dubya. Our President needs to take an economics class. It appears, you need to audit Econ101 at Mizzou.

Red Bird wrote:

So what you are saying is that you don't think I understand the situation we're in?

I can only assume your level of understanding based on what you say.

We have a demand based economy.

The only way we will reduce our deficit is if people go back to work,and have money to spend.

American corporations are fat and profitable, interest rates are low as dirt. Cutting corporate or business taxes will not cause them to hire more workers because there is no demand for more products.

Working Americans are struggling to deal with higher prices and declining values of homes, which for most people is their primary asset. They are not going to go on a spending binge.

The only way we can increase demand is to put more money in the hands of people who currently do not have any.

How the money reaches these people is a secondary consideration. Sure, it would be better if they were working providing products that people need, but the key thing is creating demand.

Holy hell in a handbasket. Something we agree on.

It is a simple formula. If people are working, they are spending. Remember about a year or so ago when everyone was claiming the the recession was coming to a close and outlooks were good. Care to check gas prices then? They were around the 2.50 - 2.75 range if I recall. People had more income to spend and go on vacation and such.

Look at it now. Unemployment almost 10% and that doesn't count the people who lost their jobs at the factory or office and took jobs at Wal-Mart, Macdonalds, and such. Just because those people have minimum paying jobs, doesn't mean they are better off. Gas prices hovering around 4.00. It is simple math. When you dont' have the extra to money to spend on NON-essential stuff, you don't spend it. You do your best to keep food in the fridge, electricity on, gas on, and enough in the gas tank to get back and forth to work and pray to Jeebus, Allah, or your choice of god figure that nothing else happens.

Get people working, get gas prices down. You can do these two things, the economy will roar back into action.

Dora wrote:The U.S. regulations, known as the Foreign Account Compliance Tax Act, were signed into law by President Barack Obama last year and are scheduled to come into effect in 18 months.

The IRS estimates that it will collect more than $165 billion in additional taxes from overseas Americans over the next decade through the act.

Holy crap Dora. 165 billion over 10 years???? While people should definitely comply with the law 165 over 10 years? 16.5 billion a year?

You made it sound like trillions were at stake. And considering that its probably those in the top 0.1% (little over 800k AGI in 2008) who can even set this stuff up its a pretty small number of people involved (only 139k returns were in top 0.1% in 2008).

Our current budget for 2011 is about 3.729 trillion dollars. That amounts 10.2 billion dollars a day or enough to run THIS years budget for about 16.16 days of off 10 years of revenue. Not quite the windfall 'eh? Hell take the 16.5 billion each year and divide it up by the 70 million tax returns that qualify as the bottom 50% and you just gave everyone $235. And that $235 is per return. If each return avg's to 2 people its $117.50 per person.

You don't tax your way out of problems. You grow your way out. More people working and EARNING money and paying taxes is a good thing.

BigRedMan wrote:

Red Bird wrote:I can only assume your level of understanding based on what you say.

We have a demand based economy.

The only way we will reduce our deficit is if people go back to work,and have money to spend.

American corporations are fat and profitable, interest rates are low as dirt. Cutting corporate or business taxes will not cause them to hire more workers because there is no demand for more products.

Working Americans are struggling to deal with higher prices and declining values of homes, which for most people is their primary asset. They are not going to go on a spending binge.

The only way we can increase demand is to put more money in the hands of people who currently do not have any.

How the money reaches these people is a secondary consideration. Sure, it would be better if they were working providing products that people need, but the key thing is creating demand.

Holy hell in a handbasket. Something we agree on.

It is a simple formula. If people are working, they are spending. Remember about a year or so ago when everyone was claiming the the recession was coming to a close and outlooks were good. Care to check gas prices then? They were around the 2.50 - 2.75 range if I recall. People had more income to spend and go on vacation and such.

Look at it now. Unemployment almost 10% and that doesn't count the people who lost their jobs at the factory or office and took jobs at Wal-Mart, Macdonalds, and such. Just because those people have minimum paying jobs, doesn't mean they are better off.

They wont be "better off" until they are "better educated." This is the only chart that matters.



I'll bet the unemployment rate for Computer Science grads hovers around 1%. Red Bird's "....just give them money...." horseshit FDR philosophy to solve this economics crisis, only prevents our unemployed from doing what they must to find real employment.

Like I said earlier, a high school drop-out carpenter learned (the hardway) back in 1990 that his days of making $28/hour to do something that a 14 year old girl can be trained to do with a Time-Life book, have come to an end. So he had to pay $7000 to get Netware certified. That got him a $45,000/year job sitting in a cube, not Bush Sr creating a 1990 WPA project.

The Great Depression (started by a 1929 Stock Market crash) didn't effectively end until the US got involved in World War II.

I agree, but how did WWII end the depression? The government started building munitions such as tanks, planes, army helmets, rifles and hand grenades. People working in those war plants had to have food and clothes etc. and because of the war manufacturing they had money to spend. The products these workers made were, outside of war, about as useful as paper rain coats. You could argue that these workers were even less productive in terms of an efficient economy than workers building Obama's fast trains.

In addition, during WWII,our national debt soared to the highest levels ever, but people had jobs, they spent money and the economy boomed, even though many of those workers were involved in building products that no one would ever use after 1945.

Red Bird wrote:

The Great Depression (started by a 1929 Stock Market crash) didn't effectively end until the US got involved in World War II.

I agree, but how did WWII end the depression? The government started building munitions such as tanks, planes, army helmets, rifles and hand grenades.

No, men (and even more women, because 10,000,000 men were in or about to be in a uniform) built all that. The government just printed the money to pay for it all.

Red Bird wrote:People working in those war plants had to have food and clothes etc. and because of the war manufacturing they had money to spend. The products these workers made were, outside of war, about as useful as paper rain coats. You could argue that these workers were even less productive in terms of an efficient economy than workers building Obama's fast trains.

In addition, during WWII,our national debt soared to the highest levels ever, but people had jobs, they spent money and the economy boomed, even though many of those workers were involved in building products that no one would ever use after 1945.

After 1945, the United States was the only country in the world that didn't have all its plants and factories obliterated. Subsequently, by 1948 the US had over 50% of the world's GDP. That gave us the glorious decade of the 1950s where high school drop-out dad, working a bullshit union factory job, made enough real money to pay the teeny-tiny mortgage on the 3-bedroom-1-bath house and put food on the table for a family of 6. (The factory had to pay more since those Malaysian sweatshop factories with the 13 year old girls working in them, weren't built yet.) The entire world bought American made, or it didn't buy anything! There was no third way.

No recessions or depression. Honeymooners and I Love Lucy!

Red Bird, please, don't be ignorant of our history. Learn from our successes and our mistakes. Think and reason. Look back, ask how and why things happened, and why things didn't. The sooner you do this, the sooner you will join us in the world of reality.

"We have a demand based economy."

That's not entirely true. I mean, everybody is demanding your immediate assassination, but it hasn't happened yet. Ergo, this is not an entirely demand based economy...

hedge wrote:"We have a demand based economy."

That's not entirely true. I mean, everybody is demanding your immediate assassination, but it hasn't happened yet. Ergo, this is not an entirely demand based economy...

Hedge, why are you even here? Seriously, get a life.

So people actually think that it's a good thing to "just give people money to spend" as opposed to them earning it?

Despite the fact that it costs about 100 dollars to "give" 1 dollar by the time it goes from the local to the feds then back to the local then to the individual person that gets the "aide" due to the costs of the beuracracy.

Just wow.

I scarcely imagined it was possible, but this place has turned into even more of a shithole than it was at Worldcrossing...

I think it's a great idea to give people money to spend, as long as it's me getting it. I'm sure everyone feels the same about that, unless they're a goodamn fool or a liar. Which includes most of the posters in here...

Hedge is one dumb mutha fuckah.

THE_WIZARD_ wrote:Hedge is one dumb mutha fuckah.

I can't believe that he was actually accepted and graduated from UNC. I think he's full of shit.

Red Bird wrote:

American corporations are fat and profitable, interest rates are low as dirt. Cutting corporate or business taxes will not cause them to hire more workers because there is no demand for more products.

Working Americans are struggling to deal with higher prices and declining values of homes, which for most people is their primary asset. They are not going to go on a spending binge.

The only way we can increase demand is to put more money in the hands of people who currently do not have any.

Business large and small isn't hiring because they don't know wth costs of new employees are going to be and how Opramacare and all the regs associated with it will affect their own businesses. Throw in trillion plus deficits and high energy prices and what the heck do you expect biz to do?

Nobody knows what its going to cost to have an employee two years from now let alone 5 years when Opramacare is in full affect. But what people do expect is its going to cost a helluva lot more and they aren't going to expand/hire until there is some certainty involved. Its not the law its the regulations that are TBD by all the damn boards that were created with Opramacare.

Businesses exist for one reason: To MAKE A PROFIT. If they don't make a profit they eventually go out of business. They don't exist to hire people. They hire people who help them MAKE A PROFIT.

Red Bird wrote:

How the money reaches these people is a secondary consideration. Sure, it would be better if they were working providing products that people need, but the key thing is creating demand.

Yeah like the tax rebates really helped demand. $600 bucks one year and $1800 a few years later. How much did that stimulate demand and for how long? A blip that immediately went away. It was not sustained. Nobody is expanding production and hiring new workers to meet a very short temporary increase in demand. I think I used one of those to buy the generator for tailgating. ONCE. I didn't buy $1800 multiple times.

But if someone had a new job that they didn't have before or paid even 0.28 cents more an hour than an old job and you have more than equaled the one time payment to a single person. AND you didn't have to take it from someone else to get it. So yes it DOES matter where it comes from. A transient blip in demand doesn't create jobs.

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Tax Rebates Will Not Stimulate The Economy

Published on January 10, 2008 by Brian Riedl

With slower economic growth raising fears of a recession, Washington is abuzz with talk of economic stimulus plans. President Bush may offer a stimulus package, and congressional leaders are discussing a proposal centered around tax rebates.
Tax rebates, however, don't stimulate the economy. Cutting tax rates does.

To explain, let's take a step back. By definition, an economy grows when it produces more goods and services than it did the year before. In 2007, Americans produced $13 trillion worth of goods and services, up 3 percent over 2006.

Economic growth requires four main factors: 1) a motivated, educated and trained workforce; 2) sufficient levels of capital equipment and technology; 3) a solid infrastructure and 4) a legal system and rule of law sufficient to enforce contracts.
High tax rates reduce economic growth because they make it less profitable to work, save and invest. This translates into less work, saving, investment and capital -- and that results in fewer goods and services. Reducing marginal income tax rates has been shown to motivate workers to work more. Lower corporate and investment taxes encourage the savings and investment vital to producing more plants and equipment, as well as better technology.

By contrast, tax rebates fail because they don't encourage productivity or wealth creation. No one has to work, save, invest or create any new wealth to receive a rebate.

Critics contend that rebates "inject" new money into the economy, increasing demand and therefore production. But every dollar that government rebates "inject" into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy (and even money borrowed from foreigners brings a reduction in net exports). No new spending power is created. It is merely redistributed from one group of people to another.
The same critics respond that redistributing money from "savers" to "spenders" will lead to additional spending. That assumes that savers store their savings in their mattresses, thereby removing it from the economy. In reality, nearly all Americans either invest their savings (where it finances business investment) or deposit it in banks (which quickly lend it to others to spend). Therefore, the money is spent whether it is initially consumed or saved. Given that reality, isn't it more responsible for the saver to keep that money and save for a new home or their children's education, rather than have Washington redistribute it to someone else to spend at Best Buy?

Simply put, low tax rates encourage new wealth creation. Tax rebates merely redistribute existing wealth.
Take the 2001 tax rebates. Washington borrowed billions from the capital markets, and then mailed it to families in the form of $600 checks. Predictably, consumer spending temporarily rose, and capital/investment spending temporarily fell by a corresponding amount. This simple transfer of existing wealth did not encourage productive behavior. The economy remained stagnant through 2001 and much of 2002.

It was not until the 2003 tax cuts -- which instead cut tax rates for workers and investors -- that the economy finally and immediately recovered. In the previous 18 months, businesses investment had plummeted, the stock market had dropped 18 percent, and the economy had lost 616,000 jobs. In the 18 months following the 2003 tax rate reductions, business investment surged, the stock market leaped 32 percent, and the economy created 5.3 million new jobs. Overall economic growth doubled.
Thus, both economic theory and practice show the superiority of tax rate reductions over tax rebates.

On the spending side, the same economics apply. Programs aimed at injecting money into the economy will fail because that money first must be removed from the economy. And proposals to have Washington subsidize state governments would not change the amount of total government taxing and borrowing. Such policies are based on redistribution, not productivity.

True, education, training and highway spending could theoretically increase productivity and therefore promote long-term economic growth. However, that assumes Washington won't divert highway money into worthless pork projects and bridges to nowhere, and that more education and training money are directly correlated with better performance. (Previous large budget increases had almost no effect.) There is little reason to trust Washington politicians to make the right public investments.
Instead, the 2003 tax cuts showed that proper tax policy can encourage the working, saving and investment that fuel productivity and economic growth. Combined with proposals to reduce bureaucratic red tape and support free trade, tax rate reductions are the best way for Washington to remove barriers to economic growth.

I was also accepted at Dook and Davidson, but I turned them down, b/c I didn't want to end up a fucking geek like you. Wiz, he's just a corn-fed loser from the biggest loser region of the country, raising his loser ass fambly to eat dust (and like it), so I give him a pass...