Tag: Economy

The Fundamental Flaw in Republican Economic Cliches

Trish
Cozumel
Belt-tightening, Republican-style

When Republicans aren’t telling us how they want to run government like a business, they bluster on about handling government finances like Americans do around their kitchen table. If they can’t afford something, they don’t buy it. If their credit card is at its limit, they quit charging on it. Blah-blah.

Except this isn’t how either businesses or family finances work. At least, not in my world.

I happen to have a business. And while I do all I can to cut costs, I recognize that if I am to stay in business I simply must spend money. There are minimum levels of expenses that I have to meet: computers and software must be maintained, bills for internet access and domain names have to be paid, and on and on. And when I come up short for these costs, I do what I can to increase revenue.

Any successful business owner knows there is a point beyond which cost-cutting alone solves problems

Any successful business owner knows there is a point beyond which cost-cutting alone solves problems. In fact, to cut beyond those levels can put you out of business. If you cut your staffing or hours or locations so customers are dissatisfied, they will leave you. If you slash spending to the point you’re offering inferior products or services, they will leave you over that. And if you stop paying your staff or overhead, you might as well put out the “Closed” sign and walk away.

The same is true of the fabled kitchen table financials. Sure, you can get by without cable TV and you can cut your auto insurance coverage and you can even start shopping at the Scratch and Dent Food Store. But if all this fails to help you meet your remaining monthly bills, you will probably look at cleaning out the garage onto eBay or Craig’s List, getting a second job, cashing in a low performing retirement account, and whatever else you can think of to bring in more money.

Why do Republicans not know this? Why do they think we can lower the deficit (the urgency of which is in dispute) by cutting spending alone?

I can’t help but summon a picture of Chad telling Chloe they’re going to have to tighten their belts by spending a month this year in Cozumel instead of Capri. Cash flow problem solved!

But here in reality world, we know that if you’re going to stay on track, with your business or your life, when you fall short you find ways to increase the money coming in. Cash flow problem really solved.

Come on Republicans, start solving the problem.

Raising Taxes on the Rich Would In Fact Fuel Job Growth

Trish

We’ve all heard the Republican argument that if we continue to keep personal income taxes low for Scrooge McDuck, he will take this personal money he would otherwise pay in taxes and which he could spend on any number of things – a newer car, travel, really, really expensive and delicious june bugs – and invest it in enterprises that produce jobs.

Republicans tells us, as did former Gov. Mitt Romney, “With over 20 million people who are unemployed or who have stopped looking for work, the last thing we should be doing is raising taxes on job-creators, entrepreneurs, and small business owners across America.”

Except they’re dead wrong. Michael Linden, at the Center for American Progress, crunched the numbers.

In the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now.

For instance, in years when the top marginal rate was more than 90 percent, the average annual growth in total payroll employment was 2 percent. In years when the top marginal rate was 35 percent or less—which it is now—employment grew by an average of just 0.4 percent.

And there’s no cherry-picking here. Pick any threshold. When the marginal tax rate was 50 percent or above, annual employment growth averaged 2.3 percent, and when the rate was under 50, growth was half that.

In fact, if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher. The top 10 years would share marginal tax rates at 50 percent or higher. The two worst years, on the other hand, were 2008 and 2009, when the top marginal tax rate was 35 percent. In the 13 years that the top marginal tax rate has been at its current level or lower, only one year even cracks the top 20 in overall job creation.

This Week Marks 10 Years Under the Bush Tax Cuts

Trish
BushTaxCuts
Please, somebody grab that pen! (June 7, 2001)

In addition to being the day that the word “weiner” stopped being naughty and started being tiresome, June 7 was another milestone. According to self-proclaimed “Corporate Person American” William Rice, it deserves commemoration as the 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts.

Rice: ‘The Bush tax cuts created the deficit now being cited as a reason to pretty much scrap Medicare and once again make a college education a pleasant, impossible dream among the lower classes’

It was on June 7, 2001, that President Bush signed into law the high-end tax cuts that added $2.6 trillion to the national debt. It was these tax cuts, along with two wars and a recession, that created the deficit now being cited as a reason to pretty much scrap Medicare and once again make a college education a pleasant, impossible dream among the lower classes.

Rice’s modest proposal says that government is for pansies, unless you’re a corporation and in that case, government is here for you.

We expect the government to continue providing certain vital services, of course, such as huge, no-bid defense contracts; and 24-hour, drive-through patent courts for us to fight over the profits of questionably-useful and semi-dangerous but very well-promoted new drugs. But all the peripheral activities of government — such as ensuring adequate childhood nutrition and repairing drawbridges — merely create a strain on the natural ecosystem of corporations and Corporate-Person Americans.

If Republicans continue to run the economy into the ground by refusing to look at the revenue side of the budget equation, Obama will have to borrow Pres. Reagan’s line when he ran for re-election in 1984, but with a slight adjustment: Are you better off now than you were ten years ago?

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Republican Path to Victory in 2012: Take Down the Economy

Trish

Boehner-ObamaWe get that Republicans don’t care about folks like us. We know they are willing to stop Social Security payments, and payroll for the members of America’s armed services rather than raise the debt ceiling. We get it, we really do.

But to tank the American, and likely the global, economy just to give their lame candidate (whoever it might be) a chance at taking down Obama in 2012? Exactly that is starting to look to like their best strategy.

The Economist: ‘America is undermining its economy for no good reason’

It’s not just Americans drawing a line between a House vote not to extend the debt ceiling and economic setbacks. Our friends across the pond are making the same observation.

Blogger “R.A.” at Britain’s The Economist predicted with exact accuracy on June 1 that such moves would mire economic growth, and decried these self-inflicted wounds. Our stock markets dropped that same day.

R.A. begins with the big picture, the one tea partiers and FOX News miss.

[…]

Hey Paul Ryan, How’s That Ax-y Medicare-y Thing Workin’ Out for Ya?

Trish

Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s constituents showed they are much smarter than he thinks they are. They aren’t buying the latest iteration of trickle-down, voodoo economics. And when he persisted in trying to get them to see it his way, they booed him. Let this be a warning to other tea bag Republicans who underestimate us. You need to throw out new red meat. We aren’t swallowing the old stuff.

Sorry, Haters – Stock Market Surging Under ‘Socialist’ Obama, Recovering from Decline under ‘Free Market’ Bush

Jon Ponder

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

According to Rachel Maddow in the clip above — and according to the chart from Jed Lewison at DailyKos below — the stock market certainly is doing well under the socialist jackboot of Pres. Obama’s anti-capitalist policies.

Corporate profits grew 36.8 percent in 2010, the biggest gain since 1950.

As Maddow said, referring to the chart on her MSNBC show last week, if you focus on the line going up after the inauguration of Pres. Obama, “Regardless of how you personally are doing, this part of our nation is living large. Despite what you hear about the economy at home, the stock market is in tall cotton.”

Maddow pointed to this article from McClatchy to explain why middle-class families and small businesses find themselves relegated to the short cotton while mega-corporations and the stock marketeers are availing themselves of the tall rows:

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Worst Ex-President Ever Still Clueless

Trish

bushtapsbrainSpeaking in Republican-dominated Jacksonville, Florida had to be better than former Pres. George W. Bush’s last attempt to address crowds. That appearance, planned recently in Switzerland, was canceled after human rights advocates threatened to arrest Bush when his plane touched down.

By contrast, Jacksonvillians gave standing ovations to the former chief executive, whose rein included two invasions, economic collapse, the worst handling of the worst natural disaster in our country’s history, and other low points too numerous and painful to recall. But Bush showed in the speech, in which reporter Karen Brune Mathis noted he “referred frequently to his recently published autobiography, ‘Decision Points,'” that he still doesn’t get it.

Bush, who was known as the most incurious person to ever hold the office now says, “I’m a content guy”

Bush said that his core principles include the belief that freedom should be universal and is the “gift of almighty God.”

“Freedom will lead to the peace that we want,” he said. “Freedom was the cornerstone of my policy agenda.”

Reality check: Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, presided over passage of the Patriot Act, an omnibus piece of legislation that allowed formerly illegal searches and seizures, secret wiretapping of American citizens, and – showing no intrusion was too minor – called for libraries to turn over records of people reading about Islam.

Bush showed his puffed up ego has grown since leaving office.

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Verbatim

Trish

Anybody giving you anything different than that, you want to walk out the door, stick your finger down your throat and give them the green weenie.

— Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, declaring that people who claim they will cut the deficit without attacking entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) or defense aren’t serious. Simpson added, “If you have a career politician get up and say, ‘I know we can get this done; we’re going to get rid of all earmarks, all waste, fraud, and abuse, all foreign aid, Air Force one, all congressional pensions,’ that’s a sparrow’s belch in the midst of a typhoon.”