IF higher taxes will create jobs, why did the stimulus fail?

[Mr. Shaman]

Well, that was shortest trip to ignore on record. Welcome back!

He didn't answer the question.

Libs how can anything cost the government one penny?
I cannot give a better example as to why anyone would elect Obama
The US government is a collection agency that only destroys wealth. It serves no function to create it
It serves many good functions with some of the wealth it collects, but the only thing a tax cut does is allow the very people who fund the government to keep more of the wealth they provide to run it

The only thing that is impacted by a tax cut or a tax hike is the person who pays taxes.
This is the very reason I know people like 8537 does not pay much in tax
They have no idea the impact taxes has on our society

Education doesn't create wealth?

C'mon....c'mon.....where are the short-term-profit$ in EDUCATION??!!!



What kinda 'Merican ARE YOU??!!!

​

 

[The Rabbi]

Well then.
We cut taxes for the poor.

yes! Obama cut taxes for the poor. He cut taxes for the middle class. He cut taxes for the wealthy.

So... what was your point?

To waste your time.
Obama didnt do shit, of course. Congress does these things. The Dums in Congress, after 4 years of pissing and moaning about the "tax cuts for the wealthy" went ahead and extended them. Obama merely signed the legislation.

 

[Truthmatters]

when was the last time the tax rates for the 1% were raised?

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Education doesn't create wealth?

Government education creates stupidity.

If you're talkin' about Civics classes....ya' GOTTA be a TEABAGGER!!!!

 

[8537]

yes! Obama cut taxes for the poor. He cut taxes for the middle class. He cut taxes for the wealthy.

So... what was your point?

To waste your time.
Obama didnt do shit, of course. Congress does these things. The Dums in Congress, after 4 years of pissing and moaning about the "tax cuts for the wealthy" went ahead and extended them. Obama merely signed the legislation.

LOl...

OK, there we have it folks. Obama's not responsible for the stimulus package. He didn' do it.

Rabbi, you know the tax cuts were in the stimulus package...right?

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Absolutely
where does the money come from to support that education?

Well, education CAN create wealth. Engineers have to learn their trade somewhere.
But it doesn't have to. How many gym majors have used their education in their careers?
And whether it is worth it or not is another issue.

I do not dis agree
My point is where does that money come from to pay for that education?

How 'bout.....those that benefit, mo$t, from the end-product????

​

 

[NYcarbineer]

The taxes on the one percent are lower than they ahve been in 60 ish years.

Where are the jobs to prove it created jobs having those lower taxes?

Well, seeing as you wholeheartedly supported the folowing line by President Obama:

"Imagine how bad the unemployment numbers would have been without the stimulus"...

Then I dare you to argue the following answer to your question...

"Imagine how bad the unemployment numbers would be if we raised the taxes on the job creators"

The only good example of us doing that (although your 'job creators' nonsense is just that, nonsense) was in the 1993 Clinton budget,

now...

...what happened to unemployment numbers subsequent to that tax hike?

 

[NYcarbineer]

That is false. The recession ended in July of 2009, which means that positive economic GROWTH in the economy resumed at that point.

You can believe that if it makes you feel better. It's just not true.
The economy continues to sputter. People are not finding work. The numbers of new applicants for unemployment keeps rising. Consumer confidence is still at decades lows. The price of gas has people shortening or cancelling vacations.
I suppose though that on planet liberal, everything is just peachy.

Well, after participating on this board for the last year or so, it seems to me that those that support Mr. Obama have yet to see a single flaw in any move he has made.....so to them, all is peachy. We have a President with a perfect record.

that's because you're an asshole who can't read.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

JRK.

Capital only invests in job creation when there is sufficient demand. Indeed: when the middle class has money to spend, capital does miraculous things to capture that money (including adding jobs and investing in innovative technology).

When the middle class lacks money (because wages, benefits, and entitlements have been cut in order to enable tax cuts), capital must find different investment opportunities for its surplus. This is what we saw in the post-Reagan, low wage, globalized economy: surplus capital, lacking an incentive to add jobs, was increasingly diverted into speculative instruments (hedge funds, derivatives, etc), which builds dangerous risk into financial markets. This is what we saw during the Clinton and Bush years where the over-concentration of surplus capital ("profits") created by the Reagan tax policies so clearly lacked sufficient investment opportunities in the real economy, which is why it took flight into tech IPO's and mortgage derivatives.

[If you lower the compensation of your workers, you are destroying their ability to buy your products. If they can't buy your stuff, you have no incentive to invest in the real economy (because nobody can buy anything), so you end up with a massive surplus with nowhere to go, which surplus inevitably ends up at Wall Street, which lacks sufficient investment opportunities (because there is no demand). Thus, Wall Street, in order to handle the massive capital surplus of Reaganomics, is pressured to create ever-better returns; therefore, it invents phantom speculative instruments which ultimately destroy the very capital which was meant for investment (-please study the Tech IPOs of the Clinton years, or the credit default swaps of the Bush years). The Bush tax cuts didn't go to the creation of American jobs (because there was no demand to capture); Bush had the worst job creation in the last 1/2 century. Those tax cuts went to speculative Wall Street garbage, and the result was catastrophic. Study the "Greenspan Put"]

but it gets worse....

What happens when consumers lack sufficient wages and benefits to buy things? [Remember: all the money they used to get (in the form of wages, benefits, entitlements, public education, etc) was cut then transferred to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts] The middle class consumer, now without sufficient economic security to consume, must increasingly rely on credit cards to drive consumption. When they max out their credit cards, they turn to their homes for money. When their homes crash they finally stop consuming. And what happens when nobody goes into shopping malls and buys garbage? Spiraling job loss. [we built a consumption economy from the surplus middle class wealth enabled by postwar wage/benefit policies. FDR put money inside the pockets of the middle class, and capitalists were forced to innovate like crazy to get that money. Then Reagan got rid of the wage/benefit policies of FDR, and he (along with Clinton) freed capital to go to the 3rd world for sweat shop labor. The solid jobs that once enabled high levels of consumption were destroyed.

So we entered the mid 90s with a consumption economy that required high levels of middle class spending, but we enacted tax, labor, and entitlement reforms which destroyed the needed demand to drive that economy. So we created debt gimmicks to sustain consumption. We used everything from credit cards to our houses to compensate for the fact that the historic surplus on top was not trickling down to middle class demand. And at precisely the moment that we need demand-centered policies, we still have a group of talk radio morons parakeeting economic theories which made sense 30 years ago.

Reaganomics, which was absolutely necessary 30 years ago, has been over-applied. It no longer has the same utility because the problems are different. Capital has nothing solid to invest in (because it lowered the wages a.k.a. buying power of consumers), while the consumer lacks the money to buy even basic staples without unholy amounts of debt. On the investment side we have dangerous speculation, on the consumption side we have dangerous debt.

When surplus capital has nowhere to go but dangerous speculation (because consumers don't earn enough to consume), you need policies which bolster demand so you can attract investment to the real economy. You need another tool besides supply side economics, which assumes sufficient demand

The OP keeps repeating tired talking points about how we cannot tax job creators. His criticisms of Keynesian economics are old. We get it. But, this is no longer 1970 when Labor's advantage over capital created massive efficiency and competition issues for American capital. Today we have a much different problem. American corporations are sitting on more surplus than at any time since the Gilded Age - and they have benefited from 30 years of deregulation. They have captured every regulatory body through the meticulous application of lobbying pressure. Their effective tax rate is lower than any advanced industrial nation (corporations like GE and Exxon don't pay taxes; they are heavily subsidized. They own both parties. The wealthiest Americans don't pay income tax; they make their money in Capital Gains, which means they pay lower taxes than their workers. The OP never mentions any of this stuff because he gets his information from talk radio rather than non-political peer reviewed sources).

Giving corporations more tax breaks won't lead to more jobs or innovation. Why? Because you cannot fix a demand problem with tax breaks any more than you can solve inflation by lowering interest rates. 30 years of lowering middle class wages, benefits, and education/health/retirement programs has left them unable to consume. You can't solve this problem the way Reaganomics has always tried to solve it: credit cards for the serfs and tax breaks for the Lords. This recipe has destroyed America. Unless you find a way to recapitalize demand like you recapitalized the suppliers in the 80s, the current problem will only get worse.

Please don't get your economic theory from talk radio. You are clogging the debate with garbage

One more thing
I ask the question that every liberal keeps saying to me that higher taxes will create jobs
Again we dumped 800 billion in cash in mere months more than we would have and boom
Clogging the debate?

Gee.....what're the chances your lack o' details/specifics making it a rhetorical-question?

​

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

"Imagine how bad the unemployment numbers would be if we raised the taxes on the job creators"

Most net new jobs come from small businesses.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

The stimulus worked.

ignoring the that fact just mkes you look fact adverse

worked..Oh yeah..It put us deeper into debt and temporarily saved a few thousand public sector jobs.
Hey sunshine, what happened to all those "shovel ready projects"?

HERE!!!!

Now, where's the fuckin' ca$h????​

 

[NYcarbineer]

Libs how can anything cost the government one penny?
I cannot give a better example as to why anyone would elect Obama
The US government is a collection agency that only destroys wealth. It serves no function to create it
It serves many good functions with some of the wealth it collects, but the only thing a tax cut does is allow the very people who fund the government to keep more of the wealth they provide to run it

The only thing that is impacted by a tax cut or a tax hike is the person who pays taxes.
This is the very reason I know people like 8537 does not pay much in tax
They have no idea the impact taxes has on our society

Education doesn't create wealth?

no. When the educated find jobs or start businesses at that point they become productive taxpaying citizens.

So high school graduates and college graduates make more money than high school dropouts just by coincidence??

Holy fuck you're mentally handicapped. Don't reproduce please.

BTW, if all you conservatives agree with this moron and don't think he's shit filled imbecile, and you all believe that education doesn't create wealth, doesn't add any value...

...why do you want government vouchers to educate your kids?

EH? How about an answer for that one?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Libs how can anything cost the government one penny?
I cannot give a better example as to why anyone would elect Obama
The US government is a collection agency that only destroys wealth. It serves no function to create it
It serves many good functions with some of the wealth it collects, but the only thing a tax cut does is allow the very people who fund the government to keep more of the wealth they provide to run it

The only thing that is impacted by a tax cut or a tax hike is the person who pays taxes.
This is the very reason I know people like 8537 does not pay much in tax
They have no idea the impact taxes has on our society

Education doesn't create wealth?

Absolutely
where does the money come from to support that education?

It comes from the government which got it from the taxpayers which means YES, the government can create wealth by the operation of an institution such as a public school system.

So you are wrong again.

 

[Mr.Nick]

Education doesn't create wealth?

no. When the educated find jobs or start businesses at that point they become productive taxpaying citizens.

So high school graduates and college graduates make more money than high school dropouts just by coincidence??

Holy fuck you're mentally handicapped. Don't reproduce please.

BTW, if all you conservatives agree with this moron and don't think he's shit filled imbecile, and you all believe that education doesn't create wealth, doesn't add any value...

...why do you want government vouchers to educate your kids?

EH? How about an answer for that one?

That depends on many factors.

In what universe is a philosophy major useful???

Do you have any idea how many dumb shit useless majors there are??

Besides, this economy is a buyers market - not a sellers. College grads would be lucky to be working anywhere..

College is pretty useless these days.

Intelligent people get certified in a field, they don't waste their money on a degree in a field they will probably never work in.

Hell, my cousin just got a degree in physics, yet he writes script for banner ads.

Now, I'm not saying "don't learn" but I am saying college is a waste of money unless you plan on getting a degree that applies to the real world. Something along the lines of engineering. Engineering degrees are great because they apply to so many fields....

 

[Londoner]

JRK

Most people I know on the Left think markets generally allocate resources better than bureaucrats, who lack the necessary information to determine prices, etc. The mainstream left is not calling for socialism; rather, they seek the kind of deftly regulated market system we had in the 50s-60s when our economy grew at its highest rate and was the envy of the world (- things like anti-trust laws and the protection of consumers. An SEC that prevents Enron from rigging the books, but not who picks winners and losers) This theory recognizes that markets are always going to be controlled by somebody, whether it be Eli Lilly who lobbies government to crush foreign competition, or Wall Street who lobbies Clinton to remove oversight from the derivatives market, or a consumer protection agency which prevents too-big-to-fail consolidation of markets that should be kept competitive.

FYI: Keynes was actually a staunch supporter of markets and private property, but he saw a role for government during times of extreme deflationary pressure. He was actually worried that the continual crises of capitalism would destroy what he thought was the most efficient system for allocating resources. Milton Friedman respected Keynes immensely. He said Keynes would never have approved of the way politicians from both parties abused his ideas by stimulating the economy not to avoid deflation but to win elections. Past deflationary emergencies, I only see a role for intervention after a market has been distorted by years of special interest lobbying or in areas where the market underinvests, like public infrastructure. This is to say nothing of the deeper insolvency of the middle class, which does not benefit from supply side solutions as much as in the 70s, when investment and job growth were hurt because capital was over-regulated and Labor too powerful. After 30 years of globalization and deregulation; after 30 years of lowering taxes of the wealthy, and the wages of the worker, we now face demand-centered problems that didn't exist in the 70s, when unemployment was low and consumers had more savings, higher wages, more benefits, cheaper education, and affordable health care.

Rather than asserting talking points, I'm asking you to note the conditions in the 70s that made supply side economics (tax breaks, deregulation) a reasonable solution. And then compare those conditions to today. I'm suggesting that no fiscal policy operates in a sacred, timeless vacuum, whereby economic theories flow like Biblical mandates. When you say "Thou Shalt Not Raise Taxes" or "Government Shalt Not Spend" in the absence of any well defined context, you make it impossible for us to address the complexity of the problem.

If you look at the Hoover Dam, or WWII war manufacturing, or the consumer electronics technology that came out the Cold War Pentagon or Space Program...or the government partnership with great research institutions like MIT and Stanford, you see productive Government spending that your posts don't seem to account for. You have to be careful listening to pundits and blogosphere prophets, is all I'm saying. Things might be more complex than they are letting on.

 

[Mr.Nick]

JRK

Most people I know on the Left think markets generally allocate resources better than bureaucrats, who lack the necessary information to determine prices, etc. The mainstream left is not calling for socialism, but the kind of deftly regulated market system we had in the 50s-60s when our economy grew at its highest rate and was the envy of the world. This theory recognizes that markets are always going to be controlled by somebody, whether it be Eli Lilly who lobbies government to crush foreign competition, or Wall Street who lobbies Clinton to remove oversight from the derivatives market, or a consumer protection agency which prevents too-big-to-fail consolidation of markets that should be kept competitive.

FYI: Keynes was actually a staunch supporter of markets and private property, but he saw a role for government during times of extreme deflationary pressure. He was actually worried that the continual crises of capitalism would destroy what he thought was the most efficient system for allocating resources. Milton Friedman respected Keynes immensely. He said Keynes would never have approved of the way politicians from both parties abused his ideas by stimulating the economy not to avoid deflation but to win elections. Past deflationary emergencies, I only see a role for intervention after a market has been distorted by years of special interest lobbying or in areas where the market underinvests, like public infrastructure. This is to say nothing of the deeper insolvency of the middle class, which does not benefit from supply side solutions as much as in the 70s, when investment and job growth were hurt because capital was over-regulated and Labor too powerful. After 30 years of globalization and deregulation; after 30 years of lowering taxes of the wealthy, and the wages of the worker, we now face demand-centered problems that didn't exist in the 70s, when unemployment was low and consumers had more savings, higher wages, more benefits, cheaper education, and affordable health care.

Rather than asserting talking points, I'm asking you to note the conditions in the 70s that made supply side economics (tax breaks, deregulation) a reasonable solution. And then compare those conditions to today. I'm suggesting that no fiscal policy operates in a sacred, timeless vacuum, whereby economic theories flow like Biblical mandates. When you say "Thou Shalt Not Raise Taxes" or "Government Shalt Not Spend" in the absence of any well defined context, you make it impossible for us to address the complexity of the problem.

If you look at the Hoover Dam, or WWII war manufacturing, or the consumer electronics technology that came out the Cold War Pentagon or Space Program...or the government partnership with great research institutions like MIT and Stanford, you see productive Government spending that your posts don't seem to account for. You have to be careful listening to pundits and blogosphere prophets, is all I'm saying. Things might be more complex than they are letting on.

Only problem is that 2011 is nothing like the 50's and 60's.

There were no credit cards back then, not to mention we didn't have 30 million illegal aliens in this country.. Not to mention social welfare was a burden to an individual..

In reality what modern democrats want is European socialism, which is really nothing more than pseudo capitalism...

That sort of economy may work with countries that have smaller populations, however it wont work in a nation with 300,000,000 (not counting illegals).

 

[Londoner]

Only problem is that 2011 is nothing like the 50's and 60's.

There were no credit cards back then, not to mention we didn't have 30 million illegal aliens in this country.. Not to mention social welfare was a burden to an individual..

In reality what modern democrats want is European socialism, which is really nothing more than pseudo capitalism...

That sort of economy may work with countries that have smaller populations, however it wont work in a nation with 300,000,000 (not counting illegals).

Ironically, in California Reagan passed the largest amnesty bill in this country's history. This was done to break the union monopoly of Labor. There has always been tension between the Libertarian desire for open borders (to give capital increased access to labor and resources) and the Conservative desire for cultural autonomy.

Credit cards were used to enable middle class spending after Reaganomics lowered their wages and benefits. This points to a larger contradiction of capitalism: when you decrease wages in order to boost profits, you are "firing" your customers, who depended on wages and benefits to buy your products.

The only thing I wanted to retain from the postwar years was the more effective regulatory structure, especially in financial markets, which were stabilized for 30+ yrs with things like Glass-Stegall. Reagan started deregulating in the 80's and we had the S&L crisis. Then slick Willie, Greenspan, Phil Grahm, and Richard Rubin finished the deal in the 90's- and we are now lying in that bed.

 

[MarcATL]

no. When the educated find jobs or start businesses at that point they become productive taxpaying citizens.

So high school graduates and college graduates make more money than high school dropouts just by coincidence??

Holy fuck you're mentally handicapped. Don't reproduce please.

BTW, if all you conservatives agree with this moron and don't think he's shit filled imbecile, and you all believe that education doesn't create wealth, doesn't add any value...

...why do you want government vouchers to educate your kids?

EH? How about an answer for that one?

That depends on many factors.

In what universe is a philosophy major useful???

Do you have any idea how many dumb shit useless majors there are??

Besides, this economy is a buyers market - not a sellers. College grads would be lucky to be working anywhere..

College is pretty useless these days.

Intelligent people get certified in a field, they don't waste their money on a degree in a field they will probably never work in.

Hell, my cousin just got a degree in physics, yet he writes script for banner ads.

Now, I'm not saying "don't learn" but I am saying college is a waste of money unless you plan on getting a degree that applies to the real world. Something along the lines of engineering. Engineering degrees are great because they apply to so many fields....

Is your cousin a C student?

Why has he not been able to market his skills which such a degree?

Either he doesn't know how to market himself, or he doesn't want a job.

 

[Spoonman]

Are tax cuts a cost to government?

Depends. Is money borrowed to cover what the tax cuts used to fund or has something been eliminated? The stimulus package wasn't a big tax cut. It was borrowed money used to pay for programs and cover paychecks. That money has to be payed back with interest.

It was a straightforward question, completely independent of expenditures.

Are tax cuts a cost to government?

Depends, do they cut spending as well?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Anyone remember what the Republican alternative stimulus plan was?