Quote:
Originally posted by Ustwo
Well it was $600 of my money I wouldn't have had, unless the Bush tax cut was passed, so while you could argue it was a refund, it was a refund I would not have had if a Democrat was the president. Democrats think they can spend your money better then you can. We, the people, don't spend it correctly.
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I think Astrocloud raises a good point but where we should cut spending (that is, what services we are willing to pay for) is an ideological point.
Keep in mind, however, that this is an interesting twist of the debate. Very few progressives were opposed to things like the $600 credit--in fact, we wanted it extended to the lower classes, as well, because we argued that demand side spending would boost the economy.
The problem was, however, that your $600 was wrapped by provisions that gave extremely wealthy individuals and corporations money they weren't going to use to invest domestically. If they were intelliegent (and there isn't any reason to believe they weren't) then they invested whatever gains they made in the stock market or other global investment where their capital could seek the highest return for the lowest cost of investment.
Thus, we (progressives) agreed that you should get your $600 back because we believed that once you spent it, our economy would start moving. The opponents, however, argued that the economy would start moving from topside investment--not consumers--and consequently, they should receive the bulk of the tax reimbursment.
One of the issues as I see it then becomes how to effect domestic investment. I believe we could have tied specifics tax refunds to domestic investment and small business ventures. I think we would be hard pressed to find multi-millionaires purchasing $600 desks with their tax credit. They might purchase other high ticket items but, for the most part, their money is going to create jobs--just not in the US.
The other issue, of course, would be to reduce expenditure comensurate with tax refunds, cuts, or whatever you want to label them--normally the stance of the conservative party. Instead, for the first time in our country's history, we had simultaneous tax cuts for the wealthiest portion of our society while increasing expenditures for military endeavors--by far the largest chunk of our national expenditure that outpaces several of the lagging nations combined!
So while the conservative party laments the rise of an activist judicial branch and appropriately points to comments by our nation's framers as evidence of their claims, they ignore the warnings of those same leaders regarding the dangers of the growth of a massive, industrial military complex.