http://news.google.com/news?q=us+economic+recession

this is apparently what tax cuts for the wealthy combined with spending $12 Billion per Month in Iraq will get you after a few years.

3/15/2008 11:45:13 PM

you could say that all day to rightwingers and they will STILL vote mccain

3/15/2008 11:48:18 PM

actually, the "tax cuts for the wealthy" probably increased revenues. But you don't want to hear how oppressively high taxes make people more likely to evade taxes...

Even without the cuts, though, the $12B dollar bux a month doesn't help.

Oh, and this recession has much more to do w/ our fucked up monetary system than anything dubya ever did. Namely, keeping interest rates artificially low and inflating the money supply lead to rising housing prices, which lead to speculation, which lead to shady mortgages, which lead to some people defaulting, which lead to consumers getting scared, which lead to...

3/16/2008 1:17:26 AM

what do you mean by evading taxes? i'm willing to bet the rich ass people that i want to tax will pay a CPA to figure out ways for them to save money regardless

3/16/2008 1:23:59 AM

I tried making a google search that would return optimistic results but I couldn't do it: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=us+economy+strong&btnG=Search

3/16/2008 1:25:46 AM

^^ sure, they will do that. But, what do you think will make them do it more? A 12% tax, or a 50% tax? Please, stick to Chit Chat, drunkntarded

3/16/2008 2:11:11 AM

ps- IBTL

3/16/2008 2:34:07 AM

Quote :

"actually, the "tax cuts for the wealthy" probably increased revenues."

you been drankin that purple drank?

3/16/2008 3:45:48 AM

Quote :

"tax cuts for the wealthy"

give me a fucking break.

[Edited on March 16, 2008 at 8:11 AM. Reason : seriously, sometimes you're just as retarded as hooksaw. ]

3/16/2008 8:11:18 AM

Trying to blame a recession today on tax cuts passed nearly 7 years ago doesn't make sense. How could tax cuts, which boost aggregate spending and improve work incentives, cause aggregate spending to fall and unemployment to rise (how we define a recession). Ditto with Iraq. It is a horrible mess, but from a business cycle stand point the Iraq War is stimulating the US economy.

Think about it this way. Proximate effect means proximate cause. If your wife hits you in the head with a frying pan, did she do it because you havn't complemented her cooking in 7 years or was it because she found your girlfriend's panties underneath the couch? (I lifted that from House )

Budget deficits and Iraq have been trudging on for years. They're not what's causing this recession. If you want to understand what's going on, you need to look at the credit crunch, the burst of the housing bubble, and the rising price of oil.

[Edited on March 16, 2008 at 10:08 AM. Reason : ``]

3/16/2008 9:58:27 AM

Don't you hate it when people don't understand the dismal science?

3/16/2008 10:02:38 AM

GoldenViper,

Yes. JoeSchmoe is trying to read the economy as a morality play, where the sins of the wicked are punished by the hand of an all-mighty market.

Yet when you try to read the economy that way you get mixed signals about how we should fix things. Schmoe's apparent solution to the comming recession would be to raise taxes and to cut spending by pulling out of Iraq. And John Maynard Keynes will tell you, that's just bat shit crazy.

[Edited on March 16, 2008 at 10:18 AM. Reason : ``]

3/16/2008 10:18:02 AM

i think this is the economys way of telling us to vote in a dem

3/16/2008 1:02:36 PM

GO
THE
FUCK
BACK
TO
CHIT
CHAT
DRUNK
N
FUCKING
TARDED

3/16/2008 6:29:57 PM

Quote :

"Oh, and this recession has much more to do w/ our fucked up monetary system than anything dubya ever did."

Recessions are cyclic and President's don't have much control over them. However, this administrations overspending on foreign wars has changed the way the nation can respond. For instance, running successive deficits forcing increased government borrowing has adverse effects on our currency, mainly, creating high inflationary pressures. Those same pressures are magnified in the current economic situation because as the fed reduces interest rates, then the greenback looses even more value.

Had Dubya been a true fiscal conservative and balanced the budget then perhaps he could have timed the 'economic stimulus package (lol)' with a broad range middle class tax cut, which actually would have had an effect.

3/16/2008 6:45:19 PM

^ Wait a minute. So Bush cut taxes and spent a lot money, which resulted in aggregate demand growing too quickly, which resulted in rising inflation, which...what? I'm kinda lost on this either leads to a recession or compromises our ability to respond to a recession.

Though I will take this opportunity to point out that Obama's fiscal stimulus plan was essentially the same as the one Bush passed in 2001 and passed this year--flat tax rebates. Just one more policy where Obama screwed up and revealed himself to be far less progressive than his supporters pretend him to be. Just throwing it out there. You know. FYI.

[Edited on March 16, 2008 at 7:48 PM. Reason : ``]

3/16/2008 7:40:07 PM

The tax cuts were temporary -- which suggest that we will not spend the entirety of the cut on consumption. Consumption is smoothed and rarely moves as much as a cut. If you assume Ricardian Equivalence, we know that lower taxes today mean there will be higher taxes or less spending in the future, so we adjust according and keep our spending constant.

The democrats have some economic issues. The NAFTA sensationalism, the earmarks, their support of ethanol, etc

I agree with SandSanta previous post (two back) EXCEPT for his little middle class tax cut. If you look at all the federal taxes that the middle class pays, theyre considerably lower now than they have been in the past 20 years. They are down about 5% from the Clinton years and the previous administrations. So dont give me that shit about the middle class getting shafted. Their tax savings are less in dollar terms, which does not reflect a percentage drop from the original. When you cut taxes for the wealthy, it creates an incentive for them to invest in business, what makes the economy grow. Its their pockets that creates jobs, does business investment, and saves money for the rest of us to borrow.

3/16/2008 8:32:54 PM

^ Which is why direct government spending would be a much better alternative to tax cuts. Maybe investing in new infrastrucutre. Re-pave roads, refurbish schools, etc.

We also need to provide money to state governments that are prevented from running budget deficits. Without that money they are left with cutting spending or raising taxes to close the gap, both are very big No-Nos during a recession.

3/16/2008 9:22:19 PM

I don't agree with the wealthy tax cuts leading to investment comment.

Mainly because taxes collected on the wealthy isn't as big of a percentage of their collected wealth as it is for every other class.

Tax incentives directly awarded for investments might help, but a broad tax cut I would argue wouldn't.

3/16/2008 10:43:09 PM

^ wat?

3/16/2008 10:52:39 PM

I can deal with that. The most recent Stimulus package has two parts though:
1)tax rebates (i look forward to my check but its a poor solution)
2)2008 and 2008 only will carry a lower cost of capital for business (*i forget if this is through taxes or how its done)

This will give incentive for business to invest. Which is fantastic for the economy as a whole but doesnt really provide any quick fix. Im not saying that is good or bad though.

[Edited on March 17, 2008 at 12:38 AM. Reason : ~)]

3/17/2008 12:37:38 AM

Most of your tax rebate will actually leave the country. You can go ahead and strike that as null as far as stimulating anything.

3/17/2008 12:44:03 AM

shhhhh. Remember, we are borrowing money from china. to spend it on Chinese goods.

That's like paying for goods at the company store using company script, only it's not enough to pay for all the items. So you still owe the company your soul at the end of the day

3/17/2008 12:45:24 AM

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/11/2006-gdp-ppp-eu-vs-us-smackdown.html

still doing better than most of the world.... rather the EU and Euro

3/17/2008 9:06:14 AM

Quote :

"Recessions are cyclic "

... because of

Quote :

"our fucked up monetary system"

3/17/2008 9:10:52 AM

Sounds like a good time to switch over to technocracy.

3/17/2008 9:43:22 AM

Greenspan warns of worst crisis since 1945
http://www.france24.com/en/20080317-current-crisis-most-wrenching-1945-greenspan-financial-global-economy&navi=ECONOMIE

Apparently we must be on a cycle that stretches back to WWII, if Greenspan is right.

3/17/2008 12:02:51 PM

If we had adopted technocracy in the 1930s this wouldn't be a problem.

3/17/2008 12:19:42 PM

wouldn't a technocracy be the opposite of egalitarianism?

3/17/2008 2:26:26 PM

3/17/2008 2:30:36 PM

Quote :

"wouldn't a technocracy be the opposite of egalitarianism?"

Equal energy credits for all.

But I would like extra anarchism with my technocracy.

3/17/2008 2:48:30 PM

now you're just babbling

3/17/2008 2:50:00 PM

Quote :

"now you're just babbling"

Perhaps you're not familiar with movement.

Equal energy credits for all is one of technocracy's cornerstones.

3/17/2008 3:02:30 PM

As I understood it, technocracy invovles the elevation of those deemed to retain superior skills to positions of responsibility via tests instead of political elections. This is where my feeling that egalitarianism is incompatable with technocracy.

3/17/2008 3:22:48 PM

That's true, though I don't think it necessarily incompatible with egalitarianism. People do what they're best suited for. Everyone consumes as much as they want.

Note that I mean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement

not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_%28bureaucratic%29

There is some overlap.

3/17/2008 3:28:14 PM

The economy isn't great, and while I don't think the Bush administration has helped it at all, I'm still not worried about it overall. I still took a decent vacation this year and don't plan to drastically alter my spending habits.

3/17/2008 7:39:44 PM

While it doesnt mean much. People tend to forget that the economy still has been growing. Not near the level we aim for (~3%) but we havent seen a decline in GDP. The news does a great job of televising this economic apocalypse.

Speaking of the TV media making things worse than they sound. The whole bear stearns fiasco. Should the govt pay ibanks, probably not. They didnt have much of a choice though. Had they let it tank, people would have bounced and the aftershocks would have made things worse. The management and owners are not getting off the hook. Their value was tied to the companies value. So while the company stay afloat (somewhat), the bigwigs get screwed due to devaluation. So I do support how they went about it

3/18/2008 12:44:46 AM