The Trump Economy

[BillStime]

The Trump economy is on a roll!!!

 

Another 1.42 million Americans lost their jobs this week, the 19th straight week of more than 1 million job losses.

[RochesterRob]

3 minutes ago, BillStime said:

The Trump economy is on a roll!!!

 

Another 1.42 million Americans lost their jobs this week, the 19th straight week of more than 1 million job losses.

  So, are you here because of a paycheck or are you here pro bono?

[BillStime]

22 minutes ago, RochesterRob said:

  So, are you here because of a paycheck or are you here pro bono?

I’m here to piss you off

[Buffalo_Gal]

 

 

 

[Joe Miner]

1 hour ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

 

 

 

In my opinion a payroll tax cut makes more sense than a stimulus check.  That would benefit both businesses and employees. It would help incentivize hiring and rejoining the workforce.  Another check does none of those things.

[Hedge]

 

 

 

[IDBillzFan]

13 minutes ago, Joe Miner said:

In my opinion a payroll tax cut makes more sense than a stimulus check.  That would benefit both businesses and employees. It would help incentivize hiring and rejoining the workforce.  Another check does none of those things.

 

None of it matters if they don't open up and let people get back to work. Small businesses are being destroyed faster than your brain cells listening to AOC try to speak. It won't be long before people will be standing around saying "Well, we made it through the virus. I mean, we're all unemployed and bankrupt, but we made it."

[ALF]

There are four basic types of payroll taxes: federal income, Social Security, Medicare, and federal unemployment.

 

Unlike federal income tax that goes to the government’s general fund, FICA taxes fund only Social Security and Medicare program. The employee pays a 6.2 percent tax for Social Security expenses and 1.45 percent for Medicare. The employer must match the deduction and send the total amount to the IRS. Self-employed individuals pay 15.3 percent of their wages, which includes both the employer and employee portion of the tax.

https://www.bankrate.com/glossary/p/payroll-taxes/

 

If they cut funding for SS and medicare it will hurt future beneficiaries .
 

[GG]

1 minute ago, ALF said:

There are four basic types of payroll taxes: federal income, Social Security, Medicare, and federal unemployment.

 

Unlike federal income tax that goes to the government’s general fund, FICA taxes fund only Social Security and Medicare program. The employee pays a 6.2 percent tax for Social Security expenses and 1.45 percent for Medicare. The employer must match the deduction and send the total amount to the IRS. Self-employed individuals pay 15.3 percent of their wages, which includes both the employer and employee portion of the tax.

https://www.bankrate.com/glossary/p/payroll-taxes/

 

If they cut funding for SS and medicare it will hurt future beneficiaries .
 

 

That's only if you believe that those receipts are specifically set aside for those programs.    They're not. 

[ALF]

2 minutes ago, GG said:

 

That's only if you believe that those receipts are specifically set aside for those programs.    They're not. 

 

From what I read the gov borrows from SS and replaces it with gov bonds  ?  

[GG]

23 minutes ago, ALF said:

 

From what I read the gov borrows from SS and replaces it with gov bonds  ?  

 

All government programs are accounting entries.  There are no specific SS bonds.  The government raids all tax generating programs to pay current expenditures, and issues new bonds to cover the annual funding deficit (in addition to issuing new bonds to replace maturing bonds from the accumulated deficits).

[ComradeKayAdams]

4 hours ago, BillStime said:

The Trump economy is on a roll!!!

 

Another 1.42 million Americans lost their jobs this week, the 19th straight week of more than 1 million job losses.

 

I believe it’s only 18 straight weeks of 1 million+ new unemployment claims, not 19…so…yay? The old weekly record before the pandemic began, by the way, was 700,000 in 1982. The total of first-time unemployment claims that have been made since March is now over 52 million. Some of that number have returned to work, of course, but the total US working population is about 155 million if that helps put things in perspective.

 

These next 30 days are absolutely critical to the US economy. Unemployment benefits are running out, eviction/foreclosure deadlines are approaching, and school reopening/closing plans are being finalized. I hope Congress and Trump realize the historic gravity of the situation.

 

2 hours ago, Joe Miner said:

In my opinion a payroll tax cut makes more sense than a stimulus check.  That would benefit both businesses and employees. It would help incentivize hiring and rejoining the workforce.  Another check does none of those things.

 

A payroll tax is a viable supply-side booster, but our economy is driven mostly by consumer spending. Payroll taxes don’t immediately help the people who are not on payrolls. And who’s to say the tax cuts will equate to increased rehiring at the rate we want? Especially given the fact that the pandemic is still a thing?

 

This is a totally unprecedented economic downturn, so I’d just play it safe and do both a payroll tax cut and another round of stimulus checks.

 

1 hour ago, IDBillzFan said:

 

None of it matters if they don't open up and let people get back to work. Small businesses are being destroyed faster than your brain cells listening to AOC try to speak. It won't be long before people will be standing around saying "Well, we made it through the virus. I mean, we're all unemployed and bankrupt, but we made it."

 

Even if all businesses everywhere were allowed to resume fully normal operations, the economic demand is not going to return to pre-pandemic levels any time soon. Financial confidence issues aside, a majority of Americans are still worried about catching the virus out in public.

 

While reopening businesses wherever possible and whenever possible and however possible is important, government economic stimulus throughout the fall is a necessary reality.

Edited July 23, 2020 by RealKayAdams

[RochesterRob]

1 hour ago, RealKayAdams said:

 

I believe it’s only 18 straight weeks of 1 million+ new unemployment claims, not 19…so…yay? The old weekly record before the pandemic began, by the way, was 700,000 in 1982. The total of first-time unemployment claims that have been made since March is now over 52 million. Some of that number have returned to work, of course, but the total US working population is about 155 million if that helps put things in perspective.

 

These next 30 days are absolutely critical to the US economy. Unemployment benefits are running out, eviction/foreclosure deadlines are approaching, and school reopening/closing plans are being finalized. I hope Congress and Trump realize the historic gravity of the situation.

 

 

A payroll tax is a viable supply-side booster, but our economy is driven mostly by consumer spending. Payroll taxes don’t immediately help the people who are not on payrolls. And who’s to say the tax cuts will equate to increased rehiring at the rate we want? Especially given the fact that the pandemic is still a thing?

 

This is a totally unprecedented economic downturn, so I’d just play it safe and do both a payroll tax cut and another round of stimulus checks.

 

 

Even if all businesses everywhere were allowed to resume fully normal operations, the economic demand is not going to return to pre-pandemic levels any time soon. Financial confidence issues aside, a majority of Americans are still worried about catching the virus out in public.

 

While reopening businesses wherever possible and whenever possible and however possible is important, government economic stimulus throughout the fall is a necessary reality.

  I'm concerned that in some industries such as food service the return will only be temporary.  Other than elite eateries restaurants need full occupancy at key hours to survive.  This is not happening in many cities.  Allied industries such as dairy farming have been hurt badly and the future looks bleak once their bailout money ceases to come.  At some point the 52 million along with the give and take on employment will need to have their feet firmly planted under them financially to purchase automobiles and pay their credit cards.  If this fails to happen the auto mobile industry will be seriously hurt and credit card companies will push many to usury rates to maintain their profits.

 

  As far as govt stimulus' go we may be at a fork in the road.  Some will be concerned that we will soon reach a point where debt may not be paid off in full in our lifetimes.  Which will get some thinking if we will never pay off the debt entirely and yet take on more does debt really matter?  Do we reach a point where in order to stave off social collapse we keep adding debt by the tens of trillions?  Do the people who are around at that point really care and do we uncouple from the notion of having incentive to work or pay taxes because the govt will make up the difference.  Will people continue to lead and produce if everybody at the end of the day gets the same.  Is like some say in that we have been playing a real life Monopoly game and it is time to start over as it is obvious as to who the winners and losers were from the last game.

Edited July 23, 2020 by RochesterRob

[RochesterRob]

6 hours ago, BillStime said:

I’m here to embarrass myself

FIFY.

[BillStime]

1 hour ago, RochesterRob said:

FIFY.

How old are you?

[RochesterRob]

18 minutes ago, BillStime said:

How old are you?

  How old are you?

[KRC]

17 hours ago, RealKayAdams said:

These next 30 days are absolutely critical to the US economy. Unemployment benefits are running out, eviction/foreclosure deadlines are approaching, and school reopening/closing plans are being finalized. I hope Congress and Trump realize the historic gravity of the situation.

 

 

A payroll tax is a viable supply-side booster, but our economy is driven mostly by consumer spending. Payroll taxes don’t immediately help the people who are not on payrolls. And who’s to say the tax cuts will equate to increased rehiring at the rate we want? Especially given the fact that the pandemic is still a thing?

 

This is a totally unprecedented economic downturn, so I’d just play it safe and do both a payroll tax cut and another round of stimulus checks.

 

 

Even if all businesses everywhere were allowed to resume fully normal operations, the economic demand is not going to return to pre-pandemic levels any time soon. Financial confidence issues aside, a majority of Americans are still worried about catching the virus out in public.

 

While reopening businesses wherever possible and whenever possible and however possible is important, government economic stimulus throughout the fall is a necessary reality.

 

We agree an having both a payroll tax cut and another round of stimulus. There are far too many people still unemployed for a payroll tax cut to have the desired impact. As you mentioned, we need to increase consumer confidence to get people spending again. People who are unemployed are not confident in spending money if they are relying on unemployment to pay the bills.

 

However, relying on Congress to do the right thing in an election year is highly improbable.

[ComradeKayAdams]

23 hours ago, RochesterRob said:

As far as govt stimulus' go we may be at a fork in the road.  Some will be concerned that we will soon reach a point where debt may not be paid off in full in our lifetimes.  Which will get some thinking if we will never pay off the debt entirely and yet take on more does debt really matter?  Do we reach a point where in order to stave off social collapse we keep adding debt by the tens of trillions?  Do the people who are around at that point really care and do we uncouple from the notion of having incentive to work or pay taxes because the govt will make up the difference.  Will people continue to lead and produce if everybody at the end of the day gets the same.  Is like some say in that we have been playing a real life Monopoly game and it is time to start over as it is obvious as to who the winners and losers were from the last game.

 

Hi RochesterRob, I’ll try to address every debt-related concern in your second paragraph.

 

When it comes to government stimulus and federal debt, I don’t think the fork in the road is in the year 2020. Nor SHOULD a fork be presented in 2020. Because we are now in an obvious period of very high unemployment and disturbingly low inflation, the potential benefits of directly injecting capital into the weak market FAR outweigh any economic anxieties caused by an absence of a sound federal austerity policy.

 

Let’s examine the situation with some numbers! Yay! The current ratio of total national debt to annual federal tax revenue is about 11 to 1, or about 1.3 if you substitute US GDP into the denominator. Adding an aggressive and very major stimulus package like, say, $2 trillion of strictly bottom-up economic stimulus through the remainder of 2020 (so that would be 5 more monthly $1200 stimulus checks to every living American…even children) would push the ratio higher to something like 12 to 1, or 1.4 when using a GDP measure. Now a rule of thumb for a typical country is to not exceed a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 0.8 so to prevent stalling of economic growth. The US, though, is nothing like most countries because our fiat currency enjoys a privileged status as an international reserve standard. Our government is in no imminent danger of defaulting (if ever, technically, if you’re willing to ignore inflationary effects from printing money out of thin air in order to make payments). The ratio was 1.1 early this year without issue. We once had a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 1.2 around WW2 without issue, and our underlying national economic standing during this Covid-19 apocalypse is way more secure now than it was back then (besides…the rest of the world’s governments are all currently in the same boat, so who’s in danger of defaulting on whom anyway??). Our economy is simply too massive and too comparably stable on the international arena for these 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 ratios to trigger an economic meltdown. We’ve seen no signs of panic in the collective psychology of global investors and speculators as we’ve advanced from 1.1 through 1.3. Now a rapid jump to 2.0+? MAYBE… But not from these relatively incremental and perfectly justified increases toward 1.4 during a universally understood health crisis.

 

The size (and duration) of the national debt really only matters to the extent that people begin to lose confidence in our government’s ability to pay back that debt or lose confidence in the strength of the US dollar. That COULD very well happen, however, at some unknown theoretical debt limit in the abstractly near future. So yes, federal debt DOES ultimately still matter. The signs and consequences of runaway national debt would be unreasonably high interest rates, hyperinflation spirals, mass hysteria, human sacrifice, dogs living together with cats, etc. So by all means, let’s try to force our Congress and our President to propose a long-term plan for debt reduction as soon as Covid-19 dwindles. The mere existence of a well-articulated proposal would be enough to allay market fears and keep interest rates low and stable. And for the unconvinced deficit hawks still worried about the debt right this very minute…then let’s begin cutting the budget immediately and start with national defense!! Or begin raising annual revenue by eliminating tax loopholes for the top 1%, accompanied with thorough IRS oversight!! Finally! Hurray!

 

If continued government stimulus at the level of tens of trillions of dollars becomes necessary to stave off societal collapse, then we’ll know that something else is terribly and fundamentally wrong with our economy…either that or the pandemic has morphed into something beyond the 1918 Spanish Flu and toward fourteenth century Black Death territory.

 

As long as we’re still using capitalist economic systems in the future, people will still have to care about work incentivization and paying taxes, regardless of the particular federal budgetary policy employed (Austrian, cyclical Keynesian, MMT, etc.). The basic laws of economics won’t go away.

 

No, people definitely won’t lead and produce at nearly ideal levels if everyone gets the same. But I also don’t think the end game to running large federal budget deficits is going to be communism!

 

The true problem with this Monopoly game we’ve been playing is that the players who took the early lead began changing the game’s rules to amplify their financial power. These same players also surreptitiously stole from the bank whenever the elected banker took her bathroom breaks. Some of the badly losing players now want to flip the board over and play Hungry Hungry Hippos instead. I denounce such temper tantrums, but I can’t blame ‘em for feeling that way either. Just keeping it real! That’s how REALKayAdams rolls.

[RochesterRob]

2 hours ago, RealKayAdams said:

 

Hi RochesterRob, I’ll try to address every debt-related concern in your second paragraph.

 

When it comes to government stimulus and federal debt, I don’t think the fork in the road is in the year 2020. Nor SHOULD a fork be presented in 2020. Because we are now in an obvious period of very high unemployment and disturbingly low inflation, the potential benefits of directly injecting capital into the weak market FAR outweigh any economic anxieties caused by an absence of a sound federal austerity policy.

 

Let’s examine the situation with some numbers! Yay! The current ratio of total national debt to annual federal tax revenue is about 11 to 1, or about 1.3 if you substitute US GDP into the denominator. Adding an aggressive and very major stimulus package like, say, $2 trillion of strictly bottom-up economic stimulus through the remainder of 2020 (so that would be 5 more monthly $1200 stimulus checks to every living American…even children) would push the ratio higher to something like 12 to 1, or 1.4 when using a GDP measure. Now a rule of thumb for a typical country is to not exceed a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 0.8 so to prevent stalling of economic growth. The US, though, is nothing like most countries because our fiat currency enjoys a privileged status as an international reserve standard. Our government is in no imminent danger of defaulting (if ever, technically, if you’re willing to ignore inflationary effects from printing money out of thin air in order to make payments). The ratio was 1.1 early this year without issue. We once had a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 1.2 around WW2 without issue, and our underlying national economic standing during this Covid-19 apocalypse is way more secure now than it was back then (besides…the rest of the world’s governments are all currently in the same boat, so who’s in danger of defaulting on whom anyway??). Our economy is simply too massive and too comparably stable on the international arena for these 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 ratios to trigger an economic meltdown. We’ve seen no signs of panic in the collective psychology of global investors and speculators as we’ve advanced from 1.1 through 1.3. Now a rapid jump to 2.0+? MAYBE… But not from these relatively incremental and perfectly justified increases toward 1.4 during a universally understood health crisis.

 

The size (and duration) of the national debt really only matters to the extent that people begin to lose confidence in our government’s ability to pay back that debt or lose confidence in the strength of the US dollar. That COULD very well happen, however, at some unknown theoretical debt limit in the abstractly near future. So yes, federal debt DOES ultimately still matter. The signs and consequences of runaway national debt would be unreasonably high interest rates, hyperinflation spirals, mass hysteria, human sacrifice, dogs living together with cats, etc. So by all means, let’s try to force our Congress and our President to propose a long-term plan for debt reduction as soon as Covid-19 dwindles. The mere existence of a well-articulated proposal would be enough to allay market fears and keep interest rates low and stable. And for the unconvinced deficit hawks still worried about the debt right this very minute…then let’s begin cutting the budget immediately and start with national defense!! Or begin raising annual revenue by eliminating tax loopholes for the top 1%, accompanied with thorough IRS oversight!! Finally! Hurray!

 

If continued government stimulus at the level of tens of trillions of dollars becomes necessary to stave off societal collapse, then we’ll know that something else is terribly and fundamentally wrong with our economy…either that or the pandemic has morphed into something beyond the 1918 Spanish Flu and toward fourteenth century Black Death territory.

 

As long as we’re still using capitalist economic systems in the future, people will still have to care about work incentivization and paying taxes, regardless of the particular federal budgetary policy employed (Austrian, cyclical Keynesian, MMT, etc.). The basic laws of economics won’t go away.

 

No, people definitely won’t lead and produce at nearly ideal levels if everyone gets the same. But I also don’t think the end game to running large federal budget deficits is going to be communism!

 

The true problem with this Monopoly game we’ve been playing is that the players who took the early lead began changing the game’s rules to amplify their financial power. These same players also surreptitiously stole from the bank whenever the elected banker took her bathroom breaks. Some of the badly losing players now want to flip the board over and play Hungry Hungry Hippos instead. I denounce such temper tantrums, but I can’t blame ‘em for feeling that way either. Just keeping it real! That’s how REALKayAdams rolls.

  I guess that I would counter that the US economy was perhaps at its strongest for a few decades after WWII providing a potent taxable income base to repay debt.  Nearly all sectors were undergoing growth never seen in the history of the world.  Predatory lending was limited to the back alleys of the cities.  Today many millions could see financial devastation over a short time period if certain sectors of the economy stall out.  Rather odd that the conservative namely me is making pretty much a non-data connected argument but here I am.  I would prefer that we keep using capitalism even with its imperfections but we have a very motivated group of people trying to push it aside in a Presidential Election Year.  And yes the fallout from the pandemic might prove to be key if many businesses see AI as the hedge they need against future potential losses due to employees not being available for work.  I honestly think that the world is in greater flux than a lot of people tend to think.

[3rdnlng]

3 hours ago, RealKayAdams said:

 

Hi RochesterRob, I’ll try to address every debt-related concern in your second paragraph.

 

When it comes to government stimulus and federal debt, I don’t think the fork in the road is in the year 2020. Nor SHOULD a fork be presented in 2020. Because we are now in an obvious period of very high unemployment and disturbingly low inflation, the potential benefits of directly injecting capital into the weak market FAR outweigh any economic anxieties caused by an absence of a sound federal austerity policy.

 

Let’s examine the situation with some numbers! Yay! The current ratio of total national debt to annual federal tax revenue is about 11 to 1, or about 1.3 if you substitute US GDP into the denominator. Adding an aggressive and very major stimulus package like, say, $2 trillion of strictly bottom-up economic stimulus through the remainder of 2020 (so that would be 5 more monthly $1200 stimulus checks to every living American…even children) would push the ratio higher to something like 12 to 1, or 1.4 when using a GDP measure. Now a rule of thumb for a typical country is to not exceed a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 0.8 so to prevent stalling of economic growth. The US, though, is nothing like most countries because our fiat currency enjoys a privileged status as an international reserve standard. Our government is in no imminent danger of defaulting (if ever, technically, if you’re willing to ignore inflationary effects from printing money out of thin air in order to make payments). The ratio was 1.1 early this year without issue. We once had a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 1.2 around WW2 without issue, and our underlying national economic standing during this Covid-19 apocalypse is way more secure now than it was back then (besides…the rest of the world’s governments are all currently in the same boat, so who’s in danger of defaulting on whom anyway??). Our economy is simply too massive and too comparably stable on the international arena for these 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 ratios to trigger an economic meltdown. We’ve seen no signs of panic in the collective psychology of global investors and speculators as we’ve advanced from 1.1 through 1.3. Now a rapid jump to 2.0+? MAYBE… But not from these relatively incremental and perfectly justified increases toward 1.4 during a universally understood health crisis.

 

The size (and duration) of the national debt really only matters to the extent that people begin to lose confidence in our government’s ability to pay back that debt or lose confidence in the strength of the US dollar. That COULD very well happen, however, at some unknown theoretical debt limit in the abstractly near future. So yes, federal debt DOES ultimately still matter. The signs and consequences of runaway national debt would be unreasonably high interest rates, hyperinflation spirals, mass hysteria, human sacrifice, dogs living together with cats, etc. So by all means, let’s try to force our Congress and our President to propose a long-term plan for debt reduction as soon as Covid-19 dwindles. The mere existence of a well-articulated proposal would be enough to allay market fears and keep interest rates low and stable. And for the unconvinced deficit hawks still worried about the debt right this very minute…then let’s begin cutting the budget immediately and start with national defense!! Or begin raising annual revenue by eliminating tax loopholes for the top 1%, accompanied with thorough IRS oversight!! Finally! Hurray!

 

If continued government stimulus at the level of tens of trillions of dollars becomes necessary to stave off societal collapse, then we’ll know that something else is terribly and fundamentally wrong with our economy…either that or the pandemic has morphed into something beyond the 1918 Spanish Flu and toward fourteenth century Black Death territory.

 

As long as we’re still using capitalist economic systems in the future, people will still have to care about work incentivization and paying taxes, regardless of the particular federal budgetary policy employed (Austrian, cyclical Keynesian, MMT, etc.). The basic laws of economics won’t go away.

 

No, people definitely won’t lead and produce at nearly ideal levels if everyone gets the same. But I also don’t think the end game to running large federal budget deficits is going to be communism!

 

The true problem with this Monopoly game we’ve been playing is that the players who took the early lead began changing the game’s rules to amplify their financial power. These same players also surreptitiously stole from the bank whenever the elected banker took her bathroom breaks. Some of the badly losing players now want to flip the board over and play Hungry Hungry Hippos instead. I denounce such temper tantrums, but I can’t blame ‘em for feeling that way either. Just keeping it real! That’s how REALKayAdams rolls.

You make a somewhat reasoned argument but the call to chop our defense budget is shortsighted. China has proven lately that they will do most anything to take over our leadership and make us their bitchh. Not only do we need to stay strong but we need to get stronger. It may be the only thing that keeps us out of war with China. 

Edited July 25, 2020 by 3rdnlng