Scarborough and Republicans getting economic religion?

[meazza]

 

 

 

And yes your reply will be "how do you do this without increasing taxes on the wealthy?" First step in my opinion is to cut government waste through the massive amount of redundancy that even you can admit is there. You can admit that can't you?? Before they go to the citizens and asking them to rearrange their financial house they have to first get theirs in order/

 

Never happens. Eliminating "waste" simply generates animosity from those who are considered "waste". As a result, the government becomes incredibly unpopular and is elected out at the next cycle. The next government re-implements all the cuts. Look what happened to Stephen Harper.

 

Just try and make as much money as possible and enjoy your life. We as a species are too short sighted to many any actual progress.

[Chef Jim]

 

Never happens. Eliminating "waste" simply generates animosity from those who are considered "waste". As a result, the government becomes incredibly unpopular and is elected out at the next cycle. The next government re-implements all the cuts. Look what happened to Stephen Harper.

 

Just try and make as much money as possible and enjoy your life. We as a species are too short sighted to many any actual progress.

No you're right. But it frustrates the hell out of me when I see how much of my money goes to the government with federal, state and local taxes and fees. Most people don't have a clue. Every year at this time I say this. Everyone should take home 100% of their income for a year and write a single check for all their taxes. It would be very eye opening.

[DC Tom]

 

Never happens. Eliminating "waste" simply generates animosity from those who are considered "waste". As a result, the government becomes incredibly unpopular and is elected out at the next cycle. The next government re-implements all the cuts. Look what happened to Stephen Harper.

 

Just try and make as much money as possible and enjoy your life. We as a species are too short sighted to many any actual progress.

 

Even attempting to "eliminate waste" causes more spending. The government could save quite a bit of money if they just accepted a minor level of loss.

[meazza]

 

Even attempting to "eliminate waste" causes more spending. The government could save quite a bit of money if they just accepted a minor level of loss.

 

Exactly. The current government here is trying to reduce pensions on municipal workers and the workers responded by protesting and destroying property. The cost of that alone probably offsets most of the savings.

[Chef Jim]

 

Exactly. The current government here is trying to reduce pensions on municipal workers and the workers responded by protesting and destroying property. The cost of that alone probably offsets most of the savings.

Not much you can do about the existing pensions on the books but any future employees need to be responsible for their own retirement. I have a client who worked for IBM and was livid when they stopped contributing to his defined benefit plan until I pointed out that the deal he has with his defined contribution plan was better.

[meazza]

Not much you can do about the existing pensions on the books but any future employees need to be responsible for their own retirement. I have a client who worked for IBM and was livid when they stopped contributing to his defined benefit plan until I pointed out that the deal he has with his defined contribution plan was better.

 

I work for a government pension plan and I have a defined contribution plan lol

[Nanker]

Pretty sure someone posted this about three years ago here. It still holds true, but the numbers are probably a lot higher by now.

 

“Fiscal Cliff” put in a much better perspective.

Lesson # 1:

* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
* Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000

Let's now remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:

* Annual family income: $21,700
* Money the family spent: $38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts so far: $385.00

Got It ?

OK now,

Lesson # 2:

Here's another way to look at the Debt Ceiling:

Let's say, You come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood....

and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.

What do you think you should do ...

Raise the ceilings, or remove the ****?

[Tiberius]

http://www.wltz.com/story/31470985/alabamas-january-2016-unemployment-rate-is-62

[3rdnlng]

http://www.wltz.com/story/31470985/alabamas-january-2016-unemployment-rate-is-62

I rarely open a link that you have posted, for good reason. It is now good news that Alabama has matched 2008 employment numbers? You're a phucking joke. I think this board needs to really reconsider the premise that you have some entertainment value here.

[Tiberius]

I rarely open a link that you have posted, for good reason. It is now good news that Alabama has matched 2008 employment numbers? You're a phucking joke. I think this board needs to really reconsider the premise that you have some entertainment value here.

Horse crap. You opened my link and you liked it. Loser

[Chef Jim]

Horse crap. You opened my link and you liked it. Loser

 

Yay Alabama!!

 

What do you attribute this to?

[Tiberius]

 

Yay Alabama!!

 

What do you attribute this to?

Gump, Forest Gump

[Chef Jim]

Gump, Forest Gump

 

Ahhhhh the teenage hypocrite rears his ugly head again.

[....lybob]

Pretty sure someone posted this about three years ago here. It still holds true, but the numbers are probably a lot higher by now.

 

“Fiscal Cliff” put in a much better perspective.

 

Lesson # 1:

 

* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000

* Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000

* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000

* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000

 

Let's now remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:

 

* Annual family income: $21,700

* Money the family spent: $38,200

* New debt on the credit card: $16,500

* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

* Total budget cuts so far: $385.00

* Family has dollar printing press in basement all debt the family owes is denominated in dollars

 

Got It ?

 

OK now,

 

Lesson # 2:

 

Here's another way to look at the Debt Ceiling:

 

Let's say, You come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood....

 

and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.

 

What do you think you should do ...

 

Raise the ceilings, or remove the ****?

 

 

Some basic realities

Until people understand the basic realities of monetary economics we cannot have a meaningful discussion of government finances. Rather than worrying about deficits and surpluses we should be asking whether the economy would benefit from greater or lesser government expenditure or taxation. This calculation balances unemployment, spare capacity, and the need for infrastructure and services against inflation risk. It’s a complex calculation but the underlying principles are pretty straightforward.

Let me just restate for emphasis: the need for balanced federal budgets is a myth. Like many myths, it does have some factual historical origins. Back when currencies were backed by gold it was possible for governments to go broke. Because modern currencies are not backed by anything material, sovereign governments cannot run out of money and can never be insolvent in their own currency. Somehow, mainstream political thinking hasn’t kept up with the dramatic changes in the monetary system that occurred more than 40 years ago.

The first of our politicians to really understand this and to communicate it effectively to the public will have at their disposal the tools to completely reshape our economy for the better. I know politicians can be slow off the mark but 40 years is long enough. It’s time they caught up.

http://theconversation.com/why-the-federal-budget-is-not-like-a-household-budget-35498

[Greg F]

A lesson in redistribution:

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and... everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

 

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

 

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.

[Greg F]

To increase prosperity wealth has to be distributed created.

 

There ... fixed it for you.

 

Oh ... one other thing. Currency is not wealth. Currency is a useful tool to make the exchange of wealth more efficient. We create wealth by being more efficient in producing stuff, by working smarter. An early 80's CRAY super computer cost over $5 million, it had less computing power than the smart phone in your pocket. That is wealth creation.

 

If you could take everything you own and go back 30 years in time you would be a very wealthy man. You have stuff that people 30 years ago could not even imagine owning. Even a modest car made today would be a luxury item 30 years ago with some features that were not available to even the richest people of that time. People 30 years ago who couldn't afford anything more than a simple calculator now have computers with more computing power that a CRAY super computer.

 

Wealth isn't created by shuffling currency around. It's created by people working to produce stuff and provide services with increasing efficiency.

[Azalin]

 

Reduced taxation (state and federal)

 

Reduced bureaucratic red tape in starting a business. Make it easier to start a business not harder

 

Tax incentives to start a business

 

Make it easier instead of harder for people to get assistance with investing. Teach investing to every student in school.

 

Provide more tax breaks for people wanting to open an IRA. Either eliminate the sliding scale for deductibility for IRA's or sliding scale for qualifications for Roths

 

Offer incentives to business to hire people that are currently on government assistance. And punish those that continue to hire illegals

 

Offer incentives to have domestic companies move offshore jobs back to the US

 

These are just a few off the top of my head. Your list is one idea. Raise taxes on the wealthy!!!

 

 

And yes your reply will be "how do you do this without increasing taxes on the wealthy?" First step in my opinion is to cut government waste through the massive amount of redundancy that even you can admit is there. You can admit that can't you?? Before they go to the citizens and asking them to rearrange their financial house they have to first get theirs in order/

 

Now that's what I call obfuscating with facts and detail. It makes way too much sense to use in an argument with the gatorbot. He's probably bleeding from the ears after trying to absorb all that.

[OCinBuffalo]

Working with the model that is in place and has been for over 100 years. There needs to be a change in how we pump up consumer spending. This trickle down method probably isn't the best.

And automation. Making steel, operating a warehouse and many factories are not labor intensive anymore. People want to blame someone, but the world and economy just keep changing

More like pressure to live up to his mandate to work on providing full employment

http://www.demos.org/publication/federal-reserve-mandate-full-employment

You know what else has been in place for almost 100 years? Keynesian Economics. I have already lost my mind, ages ago, because all I ever hear from the left is "consumer spending".

 

Do you realize that Keynes said, himself, that "In the long run we are all dead"? Do you understand what that means? No. You don't. It means: "Hey, it's the 1940s and who cares about what happens in the 1970s"? Not our problem. Let's spend like children, create government jobs, compete with private industry, and that will pump up "CONSUMER SPENDING"

 

Do you realize that we are now living that long run? He is dead, we are alive, and we had to clean up his mess, that LBJ/Nixon/Ford/Carter fully bought into, because "well, this Keynesian Harvard professor says we can't run the modern economy without wage and price controls. He also said we need to tax the rich at 70-90%". This in turn created stagflation. Double digits of both. Hello 1978.

 

Do you know what cleaned up that mess? Supply side economics. Ronald Reagan. The Laffer Curve.

 

Do you understand that BOTH Keynesian AND Supply Side are short term solutions to fix immediate problems, and not approaches to be adhered to throughout the ages? No. You don't. Which is why we never hear the end of "we need to pump up Consumer F'ing Spending"...which created/creates the entire mess in the first place.

 

How much consumer spending did The Scamulus create? How come all of Obama's Keynesian economic advisors have since returned to the colleges with their tails between their legs?

 

When are we going to be done with pretending that Keynesian Economic multipliers are long term solutions? They are tenous things that MUST be highly targeted and limited to short term actions....otherwise you destroy more than you create, and, you start picking winners and losers, which in turn destroys:

 

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE. How likely am I to buy a car if I know the administration may put them out of business, and make my new car illegal, due to, I don't know, something stupid like: Carbon Emission regulations? How likely am I to buy a house if I know that your idiotic fiscal and/or monetary policy...to get more Consumer Spending...is going to put my mortgage underwarter due to inflation? I won't because I have no cofidence in making those life-altering purchases.

 

Consumer confidence, not spending is the answer. IF consumer's have confidence, they will spend. Growth and consumer confidence, not spending, are the ONLY long term economic factors/goals worthy of consideration. Everything else is F'ing about pretending that economics == physics.

 

But once again, you've demonstrated that you don't even know what you don't know. And, like most of the rest of the unmitigated morons on the left, Consumer Spending has become an autonomic response that you parrot, because you literally don't have anything else to contribute.

Edited March 16, 2016 by OCinBuffalo

[Chef Jim]

 

Now that's what I call obfuscating with facts and detail. It makes way too much sense to use in an argument with the gatorbot. He's probably bleeding from the ears after trying to absorb all that.

That's probably why when I answered his question "compared to what" with that he had no reply. There needs to be incentive to create one's own prosperity it shouldn't be given from someone else's. Why that is even discussed as an option is beyond me.