The Pudd'nHead President

[PoliticalChic]

1. "In the YouTube moment of the debate, comoderator Charlie Gibson of ABC News asked Obama twice why he wanted to raise capital-gains taxes since such a move would both 1) hit the middle class and 2) produce less government revenue. Obama—who didn't seem to know that middle-class people pay capital-gains taxes, since he had just moments earlier promised not to raise taxes on people making under the $200,000-to-$250,000 range—gave this answer: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital-gains tax for purposes of fairness...."
Obama-Clinton Debate in Philadelphia Spawns Weird Economics - Capital Commerce (usnews.com)

Appearance more important than substance? Pudd'nHead.




2. "In his State of the Union speech tonight, Mr. Obama unveiled a number of initiatives, including a new national minimum wage rate of $9.00 an hour, raised from the previous minimum of $7.25."
Obama Proposes $9.00 Minimum Wage | Politicker

When he was hired, the Right yelled that he was inexperienced, never ran anything...and would require 'on the job training.'
Well....here's proof that he has no ability to learn.
Pudd'nHead President to the end.





The Davis-Bacon Act is the classic imposition of politics into the free market, with the usual terrible, and "unexpected" results.


3. In 1891, Kansas was the first state to establish what are today called prevailing wage laws: "That not less than the current rate of per diem wages in the locality where the work is performed shall be paid to laborers, workmen, mechanics and other persons so employed by or on behalf of the state of Kansas."
Northwest Fair Contracting Association | Providing educational publications, training programs and researching legal questions regarding public works requirements

a. New York was second, in 1894.

b. Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, began a campaign for a federal prevailing wage law.

c. In 1931, the passage of the Davis-Bacon Act federally mandated super-minimum wages in the construction industry.


4. It should be noted that in 1930 blacks represented over 80 % of the unskilled labor force, but were excluded from unions. The fact is that Davis-Bacon was collusion between labor and contractors, as the Secretary of Labor determines the prevailing wage, and almost always the calculation was the same as union wages…no matter large percentages of the work was by non-union workers.

a. Davis-Bacon wages add 4% to commercial construction, and 9% to residential. Hammermesh and Rees, “The Economics of Work and Pay,” p. 247


5. To be clear, the Davis-Bacon requirements make it unfeasible for non-union shops to hire and train unskilled workers, as they would have to pay wages that exceed the workers’ productivity.

a. After the enactment of Davis-Bacon, black unemployment rose relative to that of whites.
Vedder and Galloway, “Racial Dimensions of the Davis-Bacon Act.”




6. In 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established a federal minimum wage law for all employees engaged in interstate commerce.($7.25 as of 2009) When Social Security and medial benefits are included, the wage must be considered to be over $10/ hour. This governmental intervention in the labor market makes it impossible to argue that there is a free market in this respect.

a. While legislative bodies have the power to order wage increases, they have not as of yet found a way to order commensurate increases in worker productivity that make the worker’s output worth the higher wage.

b. Further, while Congress can legislate the wage at which labor transactions occur, it cannot require that the transaction actually be made, and the worker hired.
See "Race & Economics," Williams, chapter three.



Of course, there are no greater pudd'nheads than the dolts who put this guy in office.

 

[Mad Scientist]

"For the purposes of Fairness". People eat that shit up but they fail to realize that all those Taxes go to a Gigantic Gov't Bureaucracy FIRST!

 

[Truthmatters]

when in history has austerity cured an economic downturn?

 

[Mad Scientist]

when in history has austerity cured an economic downturn?

Amazing that TM would even know the definition of Austerity, but I give her points for it. But then I have to subtract those same points for not understanding that it's her own "Dear Reader" that also want's to foist Greek and Italian style "austerity" upon the US Populace:
From the HuffinGlue (Hat tip to OddBall):

William K. Black: The Great Betrayal -- and the Cynicism of Calling It a Grand Bargain

Obama spells out austerity agenda for second term - World Socialist Web Site

 

[PoliticalChic]

when in history has austerity cured an economic downturn?

I'm thrilled to learn how happy you'll be when I assure you that "austerity cured an economic downturn"?

You, a seeker of knowledge, are about to be rewarded.


"America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding. An Ohio senator when he was elected president in 1920, he followed the much praised Woodrow Wilson— who had brought America into World War I, built up huge federal bureaucracies, imprisoned dissenters, and incurred $25 billion of debt.

Harding inherited Wilson's mess— in particular, a post–World War I depression that was almost as severe, from peak to trough, as the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 that FDR would later inherit. The estimated gross national product plunged 24 percent from $91.5 billion in 1920 to $69.6 billion in 1921. The number of unemployed people jumped from 2.1 million to 4.9 million.


One of Harding's campaign slogans was "less government in business," and it served him well. Harding embraced the advice of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and called for tax cuts in his first message to Congress on April 12, 1921. The highest taxes, on corporate revenues and "excess" profits, were to be cut. Personal income taxes were to be left as is, with a top rate of 8 percent of incomes above $4,000. Harding recognized the crucial importance of encouraging the investment that is essential for growth and jobs, something that FDR never did.

Powerful senators, however, favored giving bonuses to veterans, as 38 states had done. But such spending increases would have put upward pressure on taxes. On July 12, 1921, Harding went to the Senate and urged tax and spending cuts. He noted that a half-billion dollars in compensation and insurance claims were already being paid to 813,442 veterans, and 107,824 veterans were enrolled in government-sponsored vocational training programs.

President-Elect Obama ought to consider the model of Warren G. Harding, whose policies raised Americans’ standard of living, and lifted the nation itself out of a depression…


Harding's Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover wanted government intervention in the economy— which as president he was to pursue when he faced the Great Depression a decade later— but Harding would have none of it. He insisted that relief measures were a local responsibility."
Not-So-Great Depression - Jim Powell - National Review Online


See....tried....and it worked.

Now...why is this pudd'nhead going in the opposite direction?

Think he's stupid?

 

[Oldstyle]

when in history has austerity cured an economic downturn?

Austerity doesn't cure an economic downturn, you idiot...it cures huge deficits which ultimately lead to fiscal collapse.

Nobody ever said that stopping the runaway spending that we're doing is going to boost the economy. What we've pointed out is that if we DON'T get the deficit spending under control that the resulting debt load is going to be so huge that it will bankrupt us.

Seriously, TM...why do you even bother to come on here and "attempt" to argue economics? You might as well be trying to argue the proper technique to use in brain surgery with as little as you know about economics.

 

[PoliticalChic]

If the far too over-used term 'racist' is restricted to those whose behavior reduces the opportunity
for minority group members to be successful...

...and minimum wage laws have been shown to increase unemployment within said
group.....

should not this Pudd'nHead President be identified, correctly, as a racist?

 

[Joe Steel]

when in history has austerity cured an economic downturn?

I'm thrilled to learn how happy you'll be when I assure you that "austerity cured an economic downturn"?

You, a seeker of knowledge, are about to be rewarded.


"America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding.
...

You do realize Harding/Coolidge created the conditions which led the to the Great Depression, don't you?

 

[PoliticalChic]

when in history has austerity cured an economic downturn?

I'm thrilled to learn how happy you'll be when I assure you that "austerity cured an economic downturn"?

You, a seeker of knowledge, are about to be rewarded.


"America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding.
...

You do realize Harding/Coolidge created the conditions which led the to the Great Depression, don't you?

By what....producing the Roaring Twenties?


You do realize that FDR turned a recession into the Great Depression, don't you?

You do realize that FDR extended the Depression by some 7 years, don't you?

 

[Joe Steel]

I'm thrilled to learn how happy you'll be when I assure you that "austerity cured an economic downturn"?

You, a seeker of knowledge, are about to be rewarded.


"America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding.
...

You do realize Harding/Coolidge created the conditions which led the to the Great Depression, don't you?

By what....producing the Roaring Twenties?


You do realize that FDR turned a recession into the Great Depression, don't you?

You do realize that FDR extended the Depression by some 7 years, don't you?

Utter nonsense. Harding/Coolidge's tax cutting encouraged the speculation which eventually caused the market crash of 1929 and triggered the Great Depression. Their failure to anticipate the effect of increasing farm productivity created the long-term employment which plagued FDR. Whatever you think FDR did wrong or didn't do at all really was the Republicans' fault.

 

[william the wie]

PC, You do know that Pelosi, Reid and Obama set up Obamacare to take effect 1/1/14 so that with the teething problems of any new program a massive GOP victory would be assured in the off year election aren't you biting the hand that is giving you a rehab of the GOP? Is that nice and polite?

 

[Mr. H.]

Of course, there are no greater pudd'nheads than the dolts who put this guy in office.

The ultimate... punchline.

Not once, mind you - but twice put into office.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice... shame on America.

 

[PoliticalChic]

You do realize Harding/Coolidge created the conditions which led the to the Great Depression, don't you?

By what....producing the Roaring Twenties?


You do realize that FDR turned a recession into the Great Depression, don't you?

You do realize that FDR extended the Depression by some 7 years, don't you?

Utter nonsense. Harding/Coolidge's tax cutting encouraged the speculation which eventually caused the market crash of 1929 and triggered the Great Depression. Their failure to anticipate the effect of increasing farm productivity created the long-term employment which plagued FDR. Whatever you think FDR did wrong or didn't do at all really was the Republicans' fault.

Only a know-nothing like you could support this dim-wit in the White House.
Read and learn:

1. In 1931, in some of the darkest days of the Great Depression and the middle of the Hoover administration, unemployment rate stood at 17.4 %. Seven years later, after five years of FDR, and literally hundred s of wildly ambitious new government programs, more than doubling of federal spending, the national unemployment rate stood at – 17.4 %. At no point during the 1930’s did unemployment go below 14 %. Even in 1941, in the midst of the military buildup, 9.9 % of American workers were unemployed.


2. March 4, 1933, in his first Inaugural Address, FDR said “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” This meant that the New Deal was a wretched, ill-conceived failure.


3. After the stock market crash,, the Dow hit 250 in 1930 under Hoover (it had been 343 before the crash). January 1940, after seven years of the New Deal, the market had collapsed to 151, and remained in the low 100’s through most of FDR’s terms.


4. Federal spending went from 2.5 % in 1929 to 9 % in 1936: Washington’s portion of the economy increased by 360 % in just seven years- with no benefit to the economy.


5. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., liberal New Deal historian wrote in The National Experience, in 1963, “Though the policies of the Hundred Days had ended despair, they had not produce recovery…” He also wrote honestly about the devastating crash of 1937- in the midst of the “second New Deal” and Roosevelt’s second term. “The collapse in the months after September 1937 was actually more severe than it had been in the first nine months of the depression: national income fell 13 %, payrolls 35 %, durable goods production 50 %, profits 78% .



6. In 1935, the Brookings Institution (left-leaning) delivered a 900-page report on the New Deal and the National Recovery Administration, concluding that “ on the whole it retarded recovery.”
The Real Deal - Society and Culture - AEI


7. Economist Jim Powell, in “FDR’s Folly,” notes that a disproportionate amount of FDR’s relief and public works spending “went not to the poorest states such as the South, but to western states were people were better off , apparently because there were ‘swing’ states which could yield FDR more votes in the next election.”


8. John Maynard Keynes, in a letter published in the NYTimes, December 31, 1933, warned “ even wise and necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action.” Even Keynes say the danger in treating the nation’s capitalists as an enemy, as “the unscrupulous money changers,” as FDR called them in his first Inaugural.



And this:

9. Warren Harding inherited one of the sharpest recessions in American history in 1921. By July it was over. Harding and Treasury Sec’y Mellon cut government expenditures by 40 %, allowing wages to fall, in a natural recovery to full employment. The cuts, and even sharper tax cuts under Coolidge, produced the long period of growth and rising living standards associated with the Roaring Twenties.

 

[PoliticalChic]

PC, You do know that Pelosi, Reid and Obama set up Obamacare to take effect 1/1/14 so that with the teething problems of any new program a massive GOP victory would be assured in the off year election aren't you biting the hand that is giving you a rehab of the GOP? Is that nice and polite?

It all depends on which GOP you speak of.......the 'go along to get along' GOP, or the principled one that would put US back on firm footing.


And....which electorate comes our to vote. If ObamaCare had been the fulcrum that turns the election, the GOP would have one this time.


I don't see as bright a future as you do, Willie.