ITW:
Don’t get me started about farm subsidies!! It brings out the worst hypocrisy in all it touches. Nor the AMT. I agree 100%.

As for varying state ROIs from the fed- What’s the point of a state giving the fed a dollar only to have the fed give it back- with all the strings attached to boot? Of course, that’s the point- the strings: Washington has the power of the purse, not the individual state. And it’s all about power.

As for Arizona getting a 16% premium, it’s probably necessary to help pay the costs of supporting all the illegals! Just kidding, I hope.

It just pisses me off that I have to support the likes of commune115 and Big B.
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You have NO idea—I include Michelle Bachmann in that category—she gets farm subsidies. I include most of the Red states that pay less in taxes to DC than DC spends there, but bitch about government interference—like Arizona, which gets a 19% return on its “investment” in Washington. $1.19 is spent in Arizona for ever $1 Arizona sends to DC.

It took a MAJOR effort by the Democrats to keep the Republicans from instituting a stealth tax increase on the middle class—dropping the Alternative Minimum Tax floor from $100,000 to $90,000 per family.  The ATM was instituted when an income of $100,000 put you in the top 1%—it was something like a $500,000 or more today.  But here, in NJ, semi-skilled office workers will make $45K easily.  Put that in a 2-income family and you are over $90,000 and into ATM.  Now, at least, they still both must make $50K which is a super-junior professional or VERY experienced office worker.

ATM means you lose ALL tax breaks and get hit for about 30-35% of your income. Add in state and local taxes and a mid-income family is giving 50% to the state.  No way in HELL those making 8 figures (10 million or more) aren’t finding ways to pay far, FAR less.  It’s a whole industry that only they can afford.

ITW:
“He thinks you should NEVER tax the rich.”

That’s not true. I just think that the rich are already paying their fair share. 10% of the wealthiest Americans own 50% of the wealth, yet pay well over 50% of the income taxes.

Many people think taxes are levied on wealth. That’s not true (unless you die with a big estate). They’re levied on income. If I’m worth a billion dollars and make no taxable income, I pay no tax. If I’m worth zero and make $100,000, I pay tax on $100,000. Is that fair? I don’t know.

I had a circumstance a couple of years ago where I had to withdraw a large chunk from my IRA (taxed at normal income rates.) My tax bill was well into six figures. I’m not wealthy.

It just pisses me off that I have to support the likes of commune115 and Big B.

There is nothing as disheartening as feeling useless. Millions are without a job and their number is growing. A quick fix to the problem is hiring them all as community organizers. Their job would be to get out the vote in November and all following elections. A genuine Democracy needs full participation and millions of community organizers will make it a reality.

Great post, big B!

eagle bill, May 19 at 12:17 am #

You are a moron, a walking cliche. Anyone who uses the word “widgets” is an idiot. The conservative economic model espoused by Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan is an abject failure, yet the fidler is still advocating that bullshit.
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Who can argue with such logic?  Not me!
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‘Cux it ain’t logic!

I don’t agree with Rfidler on lots of stuff. He thinks you should NEVER tax the rich. I think you don’t do it in a recession.  But we both realize that raising taxes on ANYONE now is disastrous.

to: R. Fidler

You are a moron, a walking cliche. Anyone who uses the word “widgets” is an idiot. The conservative economic model espoused by Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan is an abject failure, yet the fidler is still advocating that bullshit.

RFIDLER: It is true that in the past corporations would hire workers. Now, they simply take their jobs overseas.

Defending a system that has collapsed seems like wasted effort to me. We haven’t hit the bottom yet.

rfidler

I think the song you are thinking of is from the group ten years after.

When will conservatives give up the ghost? Stop circle jerking your Reagan and Thatcher dolls and realize this..

Reaganomics (trickle down economics) was/is an abject failure. American businesses did exactly what de-regulation and lower corporate taxes, along with free trade agreements were designed to do, move the existing workforce to the third world and greatly increase profits to the board of directors and big time share holders. It worked brilliantly! The american middle class has evaporated. americans are crippled with debt. The political power that was accumulated by the middle and lower class americans in the post WWII era has disappeared. Wealth has been redistributed upward.

But hey, that is how unregulated capitalism works. Many people may start the game, but few finish. Of course the few victors enjoy the spoils. But there is a road of bones behind them. He who dies with the most toys wins. It’s a great way to run a casino, but a rotten way to run a society. Conservatives still believe in the biggest falacy of our system, and that is that everybody can be a millionaire. And of course the other big lie, if you are honest and work hard you will succeed. Our crumbling american landscape is living proof.

Reaganomics is a failed ethos. It depended on the fairy tale story of corporations that would take their tax breaks and de-regulated businesses and hire more people, give them more money, better benefits, good retirement plans, and those people would in turn spend and save and start their own businesses and thus increase tax revenue so that governments could manage infrastructure and vital services. The problem with this conervative utopian idea is simple, it assumes that corporations are interested in something other than profits, like citizenship. As we all know, the idea that unregulated and untaxed corporations will share their wealth with the working man is Bullshit. It has never in the history of mankind worked that way, and it never will.

Ask the English whether they now regret modeling their system after ours. They were hoping to hang around on our heels and wait for us to stumble so that they could step right in to their old role as grand poo-bah. Little did they realize that we would fall backwards and squish them too.

ITW:
“Tax the rich” will also inhibit their ability to invest in projects that create jobs.

I can’t remember the name of the band, but a line in one of their songs says it all: “Tax the rich, feed the poor, til there are no rich no more.”

What the song, and most progressive wealth redistributionists of course don’t address is, What happens when we run out of rich people to punish?

Maggie Thatcher said it best: “Socialism is wonderful til you run out of other peoples’ money.”

People can post feel-good dogma and we all like the way it sounds (“Tax the Rich!”), me included, but it simply doesn’t work and belies a basic understanding of both macro and micro economics. 

“Trickle-down” is not the be-all and end-all, but there is a certain truth to it: Corporations won’t create jobs just to create them.  They create them either because they need them for productivity, or to meet regulations.

Massive public works projects, well thought out, can be a HUGE incentive to growth. Dams make farms and hydro electric possible.  Roads and bridges open up new areas. Power transmission lines can move wind energy from Texas to Nashville.

But all “Tax the Rich” will do is make the rich find even MORE ways to hide their wealth.

mike112:
“Rich people get that way from not spending money. It’s always been the working man’s money that stimulates economic growth.”

Where does the working man get HIS money? I’m only guessing, but I’m pretty sure it’s not from some poor person.

It’s probably likely that some rich guy hired the “working man” and a bunch of other guys like him, and paid him out of his “unspent” funds until the working guys produced some widgets. Then the rich guy sold the widgets for a little more than it cost him to hire the “working guy” and used the filthy profits to hire some more “working guys” to make more widgets, etc, etc.

The good news in this country is that “rich guy” and “working guy” are not fixed groups: One can easily become the other with ambition or lack thereof.

Thank you Miguel. You simply said what needed to be said.

There are too many people on here that seem to be saying that since they have a job, the economy is doing better. These are the same people who belive what they are told on the evening news.

“Trickle-down” economics does not work. Rich people get that way from not spending money. It’s always been the working man’s money that stimulates economic growth. This time, there aren’t as many working people out there to do so.

Instead of “bailing out” AIG and all of their ilk, the TARP money would’ve been better spent if we had given equal shares to every citizen. At least then the money would have gotten back into circulation.

Real change lies with the people, not the business interests that govern this country.

The Unemployment Rate became meaningless under Clinton when it was redefined to not include those who had been unemployed for more than 90 days.  Thus, people like myself are not included.

What is worse is that SEC policies coupled with Big Brokers taking control of FINRA and driving little brokers out of business has eliminated small business access to the capital markets.  Thus, everyone is dependent on Big Businesses, VC’s and Accredited Investors to fund new start-ups, and they want control of the new start-up and a 40% IRR return leaving essentially nothing for the entrepreneur.  (And they fund only 1% of the deals available.)

The government can raise taxes on the wealthy 1% and have no real effect on anything; or the government can socialize profits by issuing Participating govt. guarantees to companies willing to provide jobs in the U.S. and/or develop it mineral/oil properties.  The Govt. would then have a 50% participation in positive cash flow, the same as an entrepreneur is required to relinquish to VCs and Accredited Investors for financing.  It’s no skin off an entrepreneur to give that interest to the govt. rather than a greedy investor!  This has been the formula for years in China; I call it “Chinese Capitalism”.  They use other people’s money willing to rely on a govt. guarantee.  This is the formula just proposed by Stern Brothers to finance the issuance of bonds for commercialization of biofuels announced recently in the BioFuels Digest.

This will effectively allow the govt. to provide an alternative to Wall Street IPOs; it is akin to the junk bonds sponsored by Michael Milken, which created so much wealth.  Right now, Wall Street is still enamoured with low labor rates abroad and it is still shipping U.S. capital abroad to take advantage of low labor rates.  In fact, it will not finance ventures which create jobs in the U.S.

Just as important, Glass-Steagall must be revived to eliminate the monopoly achieved by banks in aggregating capital; and states must be allowed to reinstate usury limits.  The Bush Administration eliminated those usury laws based on an archaic 1864 law enacted under President Lincoln.  This was exposed in The Washington Post by former N.Y. Gov. Spitzer.

They always put a spin on the bad news by minimizing it when announced with some trumped up “good news” or distorted stats.
Because, according to Summers and crew, it is all psychological, necessitating them to break into a renewed refrain of “Happy Days are here again”.

Shift:

Your view is simplistic.  Generally, I would not disagree but hard, empirical evidence shows that in a serious recession the only thing worse than a tax cut to the wealthiest (that then impoverishes government) is a tax INCREASE on ANYONE!  It creates a de-celleration of money through the system which makes it worse.

Actually the BEST thing to do in this kind of crisis is leave taxes alone and increase government spending to create infrastructure, and get more money into the system.  And yes, it means keeping big, badly run corps afloat like GM.  The collapse of GM would BY ITSELF have added a MILLION PEOPLE to the rolls of the unemployed.

Jobs aren’t like apples on a tree that you can pick. For there to be a job there needs to be a task that needs to be done.  Unless there are those tasks, the jobs don’t just re-appear.

Again, empirical evidence tells us that tax cutting or tax increases will EACH add to instability and instability causes people to get more cautious, which means less investment and less consumer spending, and a further contraction of the economy.

It don’t work is the bottom line.

“The solution to the high rate of unemployment is for the government to raise taxes,”

Is this guy INSANE???

Raising taxes on the rich would aid the economy.  Put simply, the economy is out of balance because wealth is greatly skewed toward the rich.  Take the money from the rich who are investing, not spending, and give it to those who need it to live.  That money would be spent.

The greatest nonsense is that a middle class tax cut gets saved.  That is political propaganda.  The government could easily issue notes that had an expiration date on them and therefore require that they be spent, not saved.

People are being attacked by wealthy interests who buy and control the Congress and President.  The media fails to report this information and people who have not been engaged in their citizenship responsibility to stay informed, are confused and fearful. 

Obama is happy to allow people to go hungry and jobless.  He shows no interest in getting his hands dirty in resolving this problem.  Sweet talking suffering people is not a winning strategy.  This is a powder keg looking for a spark.

For once, the Re-thugs are right.  Raising taxes NOW would kill the recovery.

This article is full of bad information and bad assumptions.

It makes no mention of the fact that unemployment is a TRAILING indicator—meaning it’s one of the last things that’s going to recover.

The economy, particularly unemployment, it like one of those gigantic cruise ships.  To stop it when it’s going full speed takes several miles, even with propellers going in full reverse.

We were going at FULL speed down a steep cliff in Sept 2008 and it’s taken that long to FINALLY bring unemployment from growing at an insane rate.  The ship has FINALLY come to a stop, or near stop.  And that IS a positive thing.

Despite our liberal bias, the stimulus has been working. Sure, the big bastards at Goldman kept right on cheating and paying out mega-bonuses, but for most banks it’s worked and they have paid back their TARP money with interest.  All this is good.

Unemployment will take a long time to go down. I’m sorry, I wish it wasn’t so, but it is.  I was a statistic myself a year ago, so it’s not ivory-tower sympathy—It took me almost 5 months to get another job.  And it really stinks. 

But all the author does is ring the usual chimes and provide solutions that won’t work.

When the economy is stable will be the time to raise taxes.  During a slump just makes it worse—check out the history of the Great Depression.  A tax increase at the worst possible time nearly kicked the nation back into a full-scale Depression.

Good article! No new jobs in a decade. What to do?
Here is the real clincher. The billionaires plan to ram through another 1986 Reagan amnesty for illegal aliens. That will officially add millions more to the labor force, drive down wages, and kill more unions. The majority of Americans oppose this. How will they do it?

They already have their ultra right-wing president in place, called “obama” who helps pressure their faux “liberal” or “progressive” leaders to do as he says, even when any MacDonald’s worker knows its BS. Take advantage of the backlash in Arizona and other border states to ram it through! Anyone who stands up for American workers and the poor is labeled a racist! Use corporate sponsored websites like “truthdig” to fool feeble minded readers. Then voters revolt, and elect “Republicans” again. Stupid proles!

The problem lies in the “new logic” that you use and the “new spin” are not compatible and relate to different things. No matter how you use the new logic, the new spin will always come out on top.

Every single day we read in the newspapers quotes from economists that we have never heard of before, many from companies that we have never heard of before. The funny thing is that they never use the same economist at the same company in subsequent postings. Rather odd.

These economists each and every day point out such a rosy evaluation that one really wonders if we reside on the same planet. If unemployment statistics go up, we are told that ‘experts’ predicted that it would go up X amount and the latest figures are below that. Rosy!
Of course, if the numbers reflect that it is larger, they always go to the three month average or say that it is a seasonal adjustment or some other such nonsense. Rosy!

Perhaps these economists should present their findings each month before panels of the unemployed before they publish their results. Continue with the same economists month after month, maybe even lay off a few to join the panels and we can maybe see some real numbers with real people that make real sense.

We need real jobs with at least middle class wages generated by the thousands each month for the years to come. All the pressing problems before the Congress now, pale in comparison to putting America back to work. We have states going into bankruptcy because people are not working. There is quite a bit of anger because the government bailed out all those too big to fail and did nothing for the ones that went on the unemployment lines.