"You Can't Soak the Rich" - Dems take note. - Page 8 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Tully Mars · 08-11-2010, 08:21 AM

Actually that's not quite accurate. Bush did not take office a recession things may have been trending that way but it was not a recession.

One of many claims the neo-cons have used to defend Bush and his policies that are either false or mostly False.

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 08:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

Actually that's not quite accurate. Bush did not take office a recession things may have been trending that way but it was not a recession.

One of many claims the neo-cons have used to defend Bush and his policies that are either false or mostly False.

I am never sure how to discuss these issues here, because normal business cycles occur normally and Presidential policy often takes years if not decades before they start to have an impact on the economy. So, to me, I see Reagan's policies impacting most of the 90's, not Clinton. And I see the housing bubble being born during Clinton's term. Most of Bush's policy was consumed by war and nation building in Iraq.

True, the recession became official after Bush took office. I think most agree the excess of the dot com bubble laid the foundation for the recession, this build up occurred before Bush took office and the peak occurred shortly after he was sworn in.

Here is a quot and a link to an interesting recap of some of the data during the period:

Quote:

Recessions are defined in terms of declines in real GDP. By this definition the U.S. entered a recession in the third quarter of 2001 but statistics other than real GDP indicate that the problems for the economy developed in the summer of 2000. The current dollar and constant dollar (1996) GDP for the past sixteen quarters are shown in the table below.

The U.S. Recession of 2001-2002

Tully Mars · 08-11-2010, 08:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I am never sure how to discuss these issues here, because normal business cycles occur normally and Presidential policy often takes years if not decades before they start to have an impact on the economy. So, to me, I see Reagan's policies impacting most of the 90's, not Clinton. And I see the housing bubble being born during Clinton's term. Most of Bush's policy was consumed by war and nation building in Iraq.

True, the recession became official after Bush took office. I think most agree the excess of the dot com bubble laid the foundation for the recession, this build up occurred before Bush took office and the peak occurred shortly after he was sworn in.

Here is a quot and a link to an interesting recap of some of the data during the period:

The U.S. Recession of 2001-2002

So then I assume by that account Bush and the neo-con policies are completely responsible for the mess we're currently in, right?

The_Dunedan · 08-11-2010, 09:40 AM

Always take "Enron Paul" Krugman with a large grain of salt. The number of times the Wall Street Journal has caught him in outright lies is an embarrassment...or it would be, to anyone but a former Enron shill.

Tully Mars · 08-11-2010, 09:58 AM

Yes when all else fails blame the messenger. Or in this case discredit the messenger, The whole Enron connection has been repeatedly been touted as proof that no one should listen to Krugman.

From Wiki-

Quote:

In early 1999, Krugman served on an advisory panel (including Larry Lindsey and Robert Zoellick) that offered Enron executives briefings on economic and political issues. He resigned from the panel in the fall of 1999 to comply with New York Times rules regarding conflicts of interest, when he accepted the Times's offer to become an op-ed columnist. Krugman later stated that he was paid $37,500 (not $50,000 as often reported - his early resignation cost him part of his fee), and that, for consulting that required him to spend four days in Houston, the fee was "rather low compared with my usual rates", which were around $20,000 for a one-hour speech. He also stated that the advisory panel "had no function that I was aware of", and that he later interpreted his role as being "just another brick in the wall" Enron used to build an image.

When the story of Enron's corporate scandals broke two years later, Krugman was accused of unethical journalism, specifically of having a conflict of interest. Some of his critics claimed that "The Ascent of E-man," an article Krugman wrote for Fortune Magazine about the rise of the market as illustrated by Enron's energy trading, was biased by Krugman's earlier consulting work for them. Krugman later argued that "The Ascent of E-Man" was in character, writing "I have always been a free-market Keynesian: I like free markets, but I want some government supervision to correct market failures and ensure stability. "Krugman noted his previous relationship with Enron in that article and in other articles he wrote on the company. Krugman was one of the first to argue that deregulation of the California energy market had led to illegal market-manipulation by Enron and other energy companies

So how about debating the facts of the article instead of trying to tar and feather the author?

Derwood · 08-11-2010, 11:31 AM

The irony about the current debate about allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is that the party who is currently demanding that everything be "paid for" has yet to explain how keeping the tax cuts will be paid for (when they are projected to add $800 billion to the deficit)

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 12:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

So then I assume by that account Bush and the neo-con policies are completely responsible for the mess we're currently in, right?

The financial deregulation everyone was up in arms about (not me) was signed into law under Clinton.

Bush's legacy is going to be defined by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. If Iraq (primary) turns out to be a worthy cause, Bush's administration should be looked at favorably. The investment of life and treasury in that war far exceeds anything else he did. If the effort proves to have been a waste, he should be measured accordingly. Bush, mostly had a singular focus, and it was the "war on terror". Only time will tell what the impact will be.

---------- Post added at 08:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:54 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

The irony about the current debate about allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is that the party who is currently demanding that everything be "paid for" has yet to explain how keeping the tax cuts will be paid for (when they are projected to add $800 billion to the deficit)

Look at it this way - taxes are like a price. Just like we pay a price for a computer or a cell phone, reducing the price doesn't mean a company makes less money - it doesn't mean a company will go into debt. When the price is cut, the desire is that more volume will off-set the price cut - increasing revenues. Debt has nothing to do with price, and everything to do with spending or finding the proper balance between price and volume.

---------- Post added at 08:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:03 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

So how about debating the facts of the article instead of trying to tar and feather the author?

I can not find the fortune article written by Krugman on Enron, do you have a link to it?

roachboy · 08-11-2010, 12:10 PM

it's stunning to me that anything like this sort of debate is still happening. because it's stunning to me that anyone takes conservative economic theory or the way it organizes data and defines what is and is not important seriously. maybe this 2008 piece from psychology today speaks to it:

Quote:

Is Political Conservatism a Mild Form of Insanity?
By William Todd Schultz
Created Sep 6 2008 - 9:53am

A few years ago I was standing on the deck of a beach house on the 4th of July and a person who had obviously drunk too much told me, “The secret of my life is that I always need someone to hate.”

I was reminded of this exchange while watching the stupendously ruthless Republican National Convention over the last several days. Is there anything that conservatives do not hate? Maybe drilling. In fact, they appear utterly phallically obsessed with drilling (a practice that, in about 10 years or so, might reduce gas prices by 2 or 3 cents per gallon). But otherwise, what we learned from the recent hatefest is that Republicans hate community organizers, liberals (surprise!), Madonna, the “east coast elite,” the “angry left” media, trial lawyers, people who are too smart, people who are “cosmopolitan”—the list goes on into eternity.

Listening to this litany on Wednesday night in particular reminded me of a research article that came out roughly 5 years ago on political conservatism and motivated social cognition (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin). In a nutshell, the article—by Stanford and UC Berkeley researchers—seems to suggest that conservatism is a mild form of insanity.

Here are the facts. A meta-analysis culled from 88 samples in 12 countries, and with an N of 22,818, revealed that “several psychological variables predicted political conservatism.” Which variables exactly? In order of predictive power: Death anxiety, system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, closed-mindedness, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order, structure, and closure, low integrative complexity, fear of threat and loss, and low self-esteem. The researchers conclude, a little chillingly, that “the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and a justification of inequality.”

The above list of variables is more than a little unsavory. We are talking about someone full of fear, with a poor sense of self, and a lack of mental dexterity. I always tell my students that tolerance of ambiguity is one especially excellent mark of psychological maturity. It isn’t a black and white world. According to the research, conservatives possess precisely the opposite: an intolerance of ambiguity and an inability to deal with complexity. Maybe that’s one reason why Obama seems so distasteful to them: he is a nuanced, multi-faceted thinker who can see things from several different perspectives simultaneously. And he isn’t preaching fear, either.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/1733

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

it's stunning to me that anything like this sort of debate is still happening. because it's stunning to me that anyone takes conservative economic theory or the way it organizes data and defines what is and is not important seriously. maybe this 2008 piece from psychology today speaks to it:

Demagoguery has been an effective strategy, but it is beginning to fail. At some point logic prevails, for example:

Isn't it a given that at an excessively high marginal tax rate, taxes collected are negatively impacted and that lowering those rates will result in greater taxes collected?

Perhaps you don't take such a question seriously, but many do, conservative or not.

Serious thinkers also know that on the other extreme - an increase in taxes collected can also occur - hence the search for equilibrium.

Given that at an excessive low marginal tax rate, taxes collected are negatively impacted and that increasing those rates will result in greater taxes collected.

Supply sider's understand the challenge in these kinds of questions, even if others do not or want to play pretend game and use demagoguery.

roachboy · 08-11-2010, 01:00 PM

ace, look the hell around you. supply side was never a coherent body of thinking. it excludes more than it includes. it's predictive value has proven to be rubbish. the regulatory actions that were implemented based on it have proven to open pathways to fiasco unheard of since before world war 2.

it is a hodge-podge of antiquated simplistic notions patched together for the purposes of allowing vast transfers of money away from the state and into the hands of...well who?...a patronage system that pulls the strings of the republican party.

you and people like you have fuck all to say about job creation--except let's give more money to the patronage system that supports the republican party by way of dismantling the redistributive state---while making sure to keep the repressive state expanding and armed to the teeth---because---well why? so that patronage network can count on a well-armed police force to keep people away from their gated communities when they figure out they've been had? the bush tax cuts did NOTHING to expand employment. neither did the reagan tax cuts. NOTHING that supply side has advocated has helped. because it's not about that. it's about increasingly class stratification. taking the money and hiding out.

and you have fuck all to say about the actual structure of the actual economy. you're obsessed with the hydraulics of taxes as if that were a fundamental problem. that you can devise hydraulic relations around a variable says nothing--at all--about why that variable should be central. you can't argue the case because for you it's all just part of some rigid system the operating logic of which is basically that of shampoo directions:

lather repeat, lather repeat.

you won't even address the self-evident problems of unemployment (for example) presumably because you think the people who are out of work deserve their lot or they'd get all bootstrappy and pick themselves up. because, in your world, nothing is actually wrong, it's all normal, part of ordinary bidness cycles.

but today when, for example, the uk market freaks out because the carefully worded statement from the exchequer indicates that there's a good likelihood of a depression that we haven't even fucking gotten to yet, and the fed releases yesterday a statement on actual activity rates within the economy that are tending toward zero and new trade data shows that the export/import gap has done the opposite of what the conservative economic pundit class has been saying it will.....unemployment continues to go up and the only reason it's not a Crisis on its own is that feature of the rates, that self-adjusting feature which is that people out of work more than 6 months aren't counted.

and people who think the way you do are opposing extensions of unemployment benefits.
people who think like you you oppose attempts to divert money into supporting or enabling the growing of new businesses.
people who think like you oppose all attempts to actually address real problems.

people who think like you do imagine that giving more money to the social class that controls approximately, what, 70% of capital, will do something.

it hasn't worked. it's not supposed to. working people don't support the republican order. so fuck em, right ace? worse than that, they have in the past organized themselves into unions--GASP---and tried to take power from holders of capital---the Horror!

it's pretty clearly time to try something else.

Derwood · 08-11-2010, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Demagoguery has been an effective strategy, but it is beginning to fail. At some point logic prevails, for example:

Isn't it a given that at an excessively high marginal tax rate, taxes collected are negatively impacted and that lowering those rates will result in greater taxes collected?

Perhaps you don't take such a question seriously, but many do, conservative or not.

Serious thinkers also know that on the other extreme - an increase in taxes collected can also occur - hence the search for equilibrium.

Given that at an excessive low marginal tax rate, taxes collected are negatively impacted and that increasing those rates will result in greater taxes collected.

Supply sider's understand the challenge in these kinds of questions, even if others do not or want to play pretend game and use demagoguery.

The problem is that you describe as "excessively high" a tax rate that is historically low (much lower than during the Reagan years), as well as low as compared to most other Western countries (countries who don't go around in circles with issues like health care and alarming poverty, for example)

Tully Mars · 08-11-2010, 02:08 PM

Ace- I think you're looking for this... The Ascent of E-Man

Of course I'm really not sure, you said you couldn't find it. All I did was google the title and this was the first hit.

Right now I don't have time to research more, have things to do.

filtherton · 08-11-2010, 02:16 PM

If supply siders really thought seriously about marginal tax rates and their effect on tax receipts one would expect them to occasionally favor tax increases. Seems odd that they're always calling for tax cuts.

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

The problem is that you describe as "excessively high" a tax rate that is historically low (much lower than during the Reagan years), as well as low as compared to most other Western countries (countries who don't go around in circles with issues like health care and alarming poverty, for example)

I don't know what the equilibrium tax rate is, it is illusive given the complexity of our economy and all of the variables going into the "marginal tax rate". What I do find interesting is how marginal tax rates on the poor and middle class can be obviously excessively high and many pretend that those rates have no impact. Like I have said, the "rich" can manage their taxes, they have options everyone else does not have. The people seeking to improve their economic status in life take the brunt of our tax system. That is wrong.

Tully Mars · 08-11-2010, 02:32 PM

There's plenty of blame to go around. Yes, Clinton was waist deep in the deregulation game just as bush was waist deep in the stimulus. Saying otherwise is simply rewriting history. Her's a story that discusses who did what and when- Link

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 02:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

Ace- I think you're looking for this... The Ascent of E-Man

Of course I'm really not sure, you said you couldn't find it. All I did was google the title and this was the first hit.

Right now I don't have time to research more, have things to do.

I didn't Google the full title, it happens.

But, Krugman's defense focusing on journalistic ethics is honorable, but misses the bigger question of how wrong he was in his views either then or now. It is not clear how he reconciles the conflicts in his writings since the E-man article.

Tully Mars · 08-11-2010, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I don't know what the equilibrium tax rate is, it is illusive given the complexity of our economy and all of the variables going into the "marginal tax rate". What I do find interesting is how marginal tax rates on the poor and middle class can be obviously excessively high and many pretend that those rates have no impact. Like I have said, the "rich" can manage their taxes, they have options everyone else does not have. The people seeking to improve their economic status in life take the brunt of our tax system. That is wrong.

How can you claim they are "obviously excessively high" when tax rates are at levels not seen since the Truman Administration? Obvious to who?

---------- Post added at 05:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:34 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I didn't Google the full title, it happens.

But, Krugman's defense focusing on journalistic ethics is honorable, but misses the bigger question of how wrong he was in his views either then or now. It is not clear how he reconciles the conflicts in his writings since the E-man article.

What articles? What writings since E-Man are in conflict with it?

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by filtherton

If supply siders really thought seriously about marginal tax rates and their effect on tax receipts one would expect them to occasionally favor tax increases. Seems odd that they're always calling for tax cuts.

Different people have different definitions of "supply-sider". In it's purest form, from my point of view, a supply sider would favor increases in local taxes to pay for local services as compared to the federal government taxing everyone and then re-distributing those taxes based on political considerations. For example in the latest, bail-out bill to save teaching jobs - why is the federal government involved? States should manage and prioritize based on their own needs and tax accordingly. It is clear the federal government is going to take from states who showed discipline and give to those states that lacked it. This encourages inefficiency and rewords irresponsible behavior.

roachboy · 08-11-2010, 02:47 PM

here's a nice list:

Quote:

U.S. MILITARY SPENDING VS. THE WORLD
(EXPENDITURES IN BILLIONS OF U.S. DOLLARS)
Country Military Spending (Billions of $) World Ranking
United States 711.0 1
China 121.9 2
Russia 70.0 3
United Kingdom 55.4 4
France 54.0 5
Japan 41.1 6
Germany 37.8 7
Italy 30.6 8
Saudi Arabia 29.5 9
South Korea 24.6 10
India 22.4 11
Australia 17.2 12
Brazil 16.2 13
Canada 15.0 14
Spain 14.4 15
Turkey 11.6 16
Israel 11.0 17
Netherlands 9.9 18
United Arab Emirates 9.5 19
Taiwan 7.7 20
Greece 7.3 21
Iran 7.2 22
Myanmar 6.9 23
Singapore 6.3 24
Poland 6.2 25
Sweden 5.8 26
Colombia 5.4 27
Norway 5.0 28
Chile 4.7 29
Belgium 4.4 30
Egypt 4.3 31
Pakistan 4.2 32
Denmark 3.9 33
Indonesia 3.6 34
Switzerland 3.5 35
Kuwait 3.5 36
South Africa 3.5 37
Oman 3.3 38
Malaysia 3.2 39
Mexico 3.2 40
Portugal 3.1 41
Algeria 3.1 42
Finland 2.8 43
Austria 2.6 44
Venezuela 2.6 45
Czech Republic 2.5 46
Romania 2.3 47
Qatar 2.3 48
Thailand 2.3 49
Morocco 2.2 50
Argentina 1.9 51
Ukraine 1.7 52
Cuba 1.7 53
Angola 1.6 54
New Zealand 1.5 55
Hungary 1.3 56
Ireland 1.1 57
Jordan 1.1 58
Peru 1.1 59
North Korea n/a n/a
Global Total (not all countries shown) 1,472.7 n/a

source page with a neat-o graphic that shows the united states alone accounting for 48% of global spending on the military. how many countries total outlays have to be added together, starting with number 2 on the list, to reach that of the united states?

wait, here's another little chart that does the work for you:

right. so it's obvious that there's no rational basis for present levels of military spending. it's obvious that there's no rational basis for maintaining the national security state. except that the national security state is an institutional structure that seems to have real power. plus they benefit from the conservative preference to govern from panic-to-state-of-emergency.

military expenditures account for about a quarter of federal government spending. it is the largest single sector (conservatives like to add together social security and medicaid and call them a single thing so that it looks bigger than the military).

fact is that all this supply-side focus on taxation as in itself the problem is hooey. the problem is in allocation. it's in priorities. and the biggest problem is the continuance of the national security state.

but it's also obvious to anyone who looks at actual history as opposed to econ 101 cliff-note versions of it that since the reagan administration its been supply side bullshit when the political target is the redistributive functions of the state but keynesian all the way when it comes to military spending.

why is that?

Willravel · 08-11-2010, 02:51 PM

And people wonder why we go to war for seemingly no reason whatsoever and try to make enemies. If we didn't, how could we possibly excuse that obscene expenditure?

dogzilla · 08-11-2010, 02:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

The irony about the current debate about allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is that the party who is currently demanding that everything be "paid for" has yet to explain how keeping the tax cuts will be paid for (when they are projected to add $800 billion to the deficit)

If the economy is in such dire straits, then Obama should be lopping hundreds of billions of dollars per year off his deficit spending too. With the news in the last few days about how the housing market is once again in the toilet after Obama's housing giveaway ended and poor unemployment figures, it's even more clear Obama's stimulus spending is a failure.

And instead of taxing the rich extra, how about everyone with an income pay federal income tax since everyone is supposedly benefiting from federal services.

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

How can you claim they are "obviously excessively high" when tax rates are at levels not seen since the Truman Administration? Obvious to who?[COLOR="DarkSlateGray"]

For example, if you incorporated a business in the state of California, before your business made a dime you would have to pay or be obligated to pay thousands of dollars in state/local/federal taxes and fees. Your marginal tax rate is going to be over 100% until you get those costs covered. Then if you are self-employed, you pay a federal income tax, state income tax, FICA (both sides, about 15%), any local taxes, possibly unemployment taxes, SDI, etc., this has to be covered and could be well over $.50 on every dollar up to a certain point. Then when you do your taxes, you could be subject to deduction phase out, like for child-care, education, mortgage interest, etc., which can have a marginal impact of 100% in certain income ranges. And let's not forget the sales taxes on everything you buy, gas taxes, property taxes, phone taxes, utility taxes, etc., etc. So, inorder to make a comfortable living as a small business owner you are going to need sales in the income ranges that will put you in the classification of being "rich" even if your net after taxes is small.

Quote:

What articles? What writings since E-Man are in conflict with it?

Krugman, in the Eman article points to the new economy involving the independence and speed used by a company like Enron as opposed to the old monopolistic companies like an At&T. He points to those companies being centralized command and control not different than Eastern European centralized command and control economies run by governments. As of late, he has written a lot about the need for government control and management of the economy.

roachboy · 08-11-2010, 03:04 PM

this is an awful lot of shucking and jiving and empty conservative blah blah blah to avoid he simple facts of the matter. supply side/monetarist policies are what got the economy into this wreck of a situation. they have nothing to offer as a way out.
supply siders cannot even bring themselves to talk about allocation of resources because they'd run into the military problem. it's not an exaggeration to think that all this conservative economic hooey is really just a smoke screen the function of which is to keep political pressure away from cutting defense spending. this is only possible if conservatives control conversations about the economy.

i see no reason to take conservative economic ideology seriously so there's no reason to cede control of the discussion to them.

i see nothing from ace, nothing from dogzilla that even remotely begins to address unemployment. ace obssesses about fantasy tax questions; dogzilla is focused only on repeating the conservative meme-of-the-moment about obama's stimulus package, as if the economic disaster we're still moving through originated on obama's watch when ANYONE who is not lying to themselves knows that this turd is a conservative turd which began forming in earnest around 2002 and which squeezed out onto all of us in 2007.

ever since, conservatives have been running away from their own record.
it's a pretty patronizing thing, assuming people are too stupid to remember what actually happened.
but apparently there are some for whom conservative counter-reality is compelling.
which brings us back to the psychology today piece.

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

ace, look the hell around you. supply side was never a coherent body of thinking. it excludes more than it includes. it's predictive value has proven to be rubbish. the regulatory actions that were implemented based on it have proven to open pathways to fiasco unheard of since before world war 2.

it is a hodge-podge of antiquated simplistic notions patched together for the purposes of allowing vast transfers of money away from the state and into the hands of...well who?...a patronage system that pulls the strings of the republican party.

I think the best example of its application was under Reagan. I think Reagan's tax policy laid the foundation for exceptional economic growth and innovation.

I think strong economic growth allows for more entitlement spending. It is ironic that those in favor of entitlement spending don't support policies that allow for the strongest economic growth.

Quote:

you and people like you have fuck all to say about job creation--except let's give more money to the patronage system that supports the republican party by way of dismantling the redistributive state---while making sure to keep the repressive state expanding and armed to the teeth---because---well why? so that patronage network can count on a well-armed police force to keep people away from their gated communities when they figure out they've been had? the bush tax cuts did NOTHING to expand employment. neither did the reagan tax cuts. NOTHING that supply side has advocated has helped. because it's not about that. it's about increasingly class stratification. taking the money and hiding out.

I started and I run a small business. I have first hand experience in what happens and how taxes effect my business. When my business was in California, competing against none California based companies, I was at a price disadvantage. I moved out of the state. I took my tax base, and jobs with me. This is real stuff, sometimes it gets lost in theory. I study the theory and I live the reality.

Quote:

and you have fuck all to say about the actual structure of the actual economy. you're obsessed with the hydraulics of taxes as if that were a fundamental problem. that you can devise hydraulic relations around a variable says nothing--at all--about why that variable should be central. you can't argue the case because for you it's all just part of some rigid system the operating logic of which is basically that of shampoo directions:

lather repeat, lather repeat.

you won't even address the self-evident problems of unemployment (for example) presumably because you think the people who are out of work deserve their lot or they'd get all bootstrappy and pick themselves up. because, in your world, nothing is actually wrong, it's all normal, part of ordinary bidness cycles.

Why not focus on what is actually written here, rather than strawman arguments. If you want to know my views on a subject, ask.

Tully Mars · 08-11-2010, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

For example, if you incorporated a business in the state of California, before your business made a dime you would have to pay or be obligated to pay thousands of dollars in state/local/federal taxes and fees. Your marginal tax rate is going to be over 100% until you get those costs covered. Then if you are self-employed, you pay a federal income tax, state income tax, FICA (both sides, about 15%), any local taxes, possibly unemployment taxes, SDI, etc., this has to be covered and could be well over $.50 on every dollar up to a certain point. Then when you do your taxes, you could be subject to deduction phase out, like for child-care, education, mortgage interest, etc., which can have a marginal impact of 100% in certain income ranges. And let's not forget the sales taxes on everything you buy, gas taxes, property taxes, phone taxes, utility taxes, etc., etc. So, inorder to make a comfortable living as a small business owner you are going to need sales in the income ranges that will put you in the classification of being "rich" even if your net after taxes is small.

Krugman, in the Eman article points to the new economy involving the independence and speed used by a company like Enron as opposed to the old monopolistic companies like an At&T. He points to those companies being centralized command and control not different than Eastern European centralized command and control economies run by governments. As of late, he has written a lot about the need for government control and management of the economy.

The first part of your post has no sources to site nor facts to check, it's like reading Rush Limbaugh instead of listening to him.

As to the point about PK and E-Man... did you read the article. What has he written since that conflicts with it and how? You do see it was written in May of 1999, right?

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

this is an awful lot of shucking and jiving and empty conservative blah blah blah to avoid he simple facts of the matter. supply side/monetarist policies are what got the economy into this wreck of a situation. they have nothing to offer as a way out.
supply siders cannot even bring themselves to talk about allocation of resources because they'd run into the military problem.

For the record, I support bringing troops home from Afghanistan. I had mixed feeling about nation building in Iraq, and I was initially 100% against it. I do not support our troops being placed all over the world. I think our military should only be used when we have clearly defined goals and objectives. I have no problem cutting waste in military budgets.

Quote:

i see nothing from ace, nothing from dogzilla that even remotely begins to address unemployment.

Tax policy should not be punitive to those who create jobs, our current system is. Changing the focus to taxing consumption as opposed to work, savings and investment will have a positive affect on innovation, economic growth and employment. That is my approach. Let innovators, innovate. Let business owners grow their businesses. Let the efficient rise to the top - and everyone wins.

---------- Post added at 11:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:20 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

The first part of your post has no sources to site nor facts to check, it's like reading Rush Limbaugh instead of listening to him.

As to the point about PK and E-Man... did you read the article. What has he written since that conflicts with it and how? You do see it was written in May of 1999, right?

I am sorry that I am not going to take you through a bunch of business 101 citations to show the impact of taxation on small business owners. If you don't think what I describe is real - go out and talk to some business owners or start a business and report back to us in a year or two.

Also, I am not interested in Krugman - he is consistently wrong or misleading in my view. He has a political agenda that is not related to presenting truth. We will have to agree to disagree, on what you think he writes compared to what I think. Even the article cited today shows conflict with his Eman point of view.

Tully Mars · 08-11-2010, 03:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

For the record, I support bringing troops home from Afghanistan. I had mixed feeling about nation building in Iraq, and I was initially 100% against it. I do not support our troops being placed all over the world. I think our military should only be used when we have clearly defined goals and objectives. I have no problem cutting waste in military budgets.

Tax policy should not be punitive to those who create jobs, our current system is. Changing the focus to taxing consumption as opposed to work, savings and investment will have a positive affect on innovation, economic growth and employment. That is my approach. Let innovators, innovate. Let business owners grow their businesses. Let the efficient rise to the top - and everyone wins.

---------- Post added at 11:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:20 PM ----------

I am sorry that I am not going to take you through a bunch of business 101 citations to show the impact of taxation on small business owners. If you don't think what I describe is real - go out and talk to some business owners or start a business and report back to us in a year or two.

Also, I am not interested in Krugman - he is consistently wrong or misleading in my view. He has a political agenda that is not related to presenting truth. We will have to agree to disagree, on what you think he writes compared to what I think. Even the article cited today shows conflict with his Eman point of view.

For the record I owned a small business for roughly 15yrs. I ran it the same time I work for the State of Oregon, often I made more running it then I did working for the State. It is one of the reasons I'm 47 and living on a white sandy beach in Mexico. I sold it when I moved here. So lecture away about Bus. 101 all you want... I still think you're wrong.

And yes we'll just have to agree to disagree on PK. Call me crazy but I'm going to go ahead and listen to the Nobel Prize winning economists over you.

dogzilla · 08-11-2010, 03:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

this is an awful lot of shucking and jiving and empty conservative blah blah blah to avoid he simple facts of the matter. supply side/monetarist policies are what got the economy into this wreck of a situation. they have nothing to offer as a way out.

I look at my own personal financial situation because at the end of the day that's what really matters. Comparing my financial state of affairs in Jan 2001 and Jan 1 2009, I was still substantially better off even with the market crash. For a few years, my tax rates went down across the board. My position's somewhat improved since Obama's moved in, but not much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

supply siders cannot even bring themselves to talk about allocation of resources because they'd run into the military problem.

I've posted a couple times previously that we need to finance the military to support a proper defense, as mandated by the Constitution. I further stated that foreign bases need to be reconsidered. Any base which is not important to US strategic defense interests and where we are not getting as much value in support from the country it is located in should be closed. Along with that we aggressively cut subsidies and entitlements.

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i see nothing from ace, nothing from dogzilla that even remotely begins to address unemployment. ace obssesses about fantasy tax questions;

There are several problems with unemployment. I live in New York state which has one of the higher tax burdens in the country. There is continual commentary about the high tax rates in this state being unfavorable to business. New York state population is declining in part because of excessive taxes. Make tax rates high enough and businesses and investment capital will go elsewhere. Beyond that, the regulatory burden here is excessive. I have a nephew who lived in China for 10 years who commented about how things just get done there. Dlish made a comment on another thread about how things just got done in Dubai. Things don't 'just get done' here. Then there's the salary and benefits cost of a US employee that just doesn't justify work that can be done just as well elsewhere for less money. I deal with that on a daily basis since I have a team split between here and India. The new work is going to India even with all the skill problems we have.

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

dogzilla is focused only on repeating the conservative meme-of-the-moment about obama's stimulus package, as if the economic disaster we're still moving through originated on obama's watch when ANYONE who is not lying to themselves knows that this turd is a conservative turd which began forming in earnest around 2002 and which squeezed out onto all of us in 2007.

Regardless what Bush did, it was Obama who funded the cash for clunkers program and the home credit programs that did nothing more than borrow billions more dollars from China and borrow against future car and home sales. Now that Obama's giveaways are over, so are the increased sales. Some stimulus.

All this liberal screaming about how taxes should be raised reminds me of how money fled the UK in the 60's timeframe.

YouTube - ‪The Beatles - Taxman‬&lrm;

roachboy · 08-11-2010, 04:00 PM

i think the line about krugman sums up the problem with this and almost every other "discussion"...you--and you are hardly alone in this---cannot cross out of your own frame of reference on socio-economic questions---and you've only got one. so when it comes down to it and you're confronted with viewpoints outside your terms, all you can do is try to find an excuse to dismiss it on the one hand, and repeat your starting point on the other. so there's really only one discussion that you want, and that is a discussion in which everyone agrees politically and conceptually, so that the discussion is really a matter of local adjustments.

it's not a particularly democratic approach. but whatever.

i've actually bothered to work out the basic tenants of supply-side hoodoo. i didn't do it voluntarily, but i did it. if i thought that theoretically it made sense, we could have a different kind of conversation--but it doesn't make sense logically and even if it was logically consistent the gap between predicted and actual outcomes in those instances where its been implemented are self-evident.

for example, the "innovation" you grovel at the feet of innovated the american-based manufacturing base out of the united states. that "innovation" benefitted shareholders. in conservative-land, that is ethical. in the actual world, it is an act of class warfare.i do not think class war an effective way to address unemployment. apparently you do.

this is a structural problem in the american economy produced, enabled and screened by supply-side monetarist hoodoo. if you know anything about the overall history of western capitalism since the early 1970s, there's no avoiding this.

for the record, i orient myself as someone who's spent way too long studying the history of the capitalist form of production since world war 2.

i think there's something wrong, something profoundly wrong, with an ideological context in which people look around them and see real problems, deep problems and connect them empirically and logically to a particular worldview--neoliberalism, the washington consensus, supply side, whatever---and not bring that worldview into fundamental question. but that's our situation in the states. i think it's perhaps an educational issue. i hope it's not. i hope it's something else. laziness maybe. something i haven't thought of. who knows.

====

edit:

dogzilla---so you know, the position i am arguing from is not merely the opposite of yours.
i don't think taxes are the central problem.

Willravel · 08-11-2010, 04:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I think the best example of its application was under Reagan. I think Reagan's tax policy laid the foundation for exceptional economic growth and innovation.

Let's say there's a little boy named Ronald running a lemonade stand. He inherited the stand from Jimmy, who did alright but was never really all that popular with the rest of the neighborhood and ended up a little in the hole, just like the stand was when he got it. Ronald figured that a great way to boost business would be to lower prices and stock up on better, more expensive lemonade ingredients, to really entice buyers. He spent money he didn't have on organic lemons and cane sugar, and dropped the prices significantly. He did end up selling a bit more lemonade, but he'd gone way overboard on lowering prices and investing in ingredients and found himself in serious debt. He'd gone from a debt of 2.7% of the stand's total product to 6%. He started raising prices to compensate, but the debt kept rising as the days turned to weeks. By the time Ronald gave the stand over to George, the growth he had expected from reducing the cost of the lemonade and increasing spending on ingredients had meant very little overall income increase (2.5%). That might sound commendable, but when Bill was running the stand for the same amount of time and having to deal with a much bigger deficit, he managed to grow the stand's revenues 4.1% with a more pragmatic policy of keeping the cost of lemonade in line with costs.

The Reagan administration raised taxes twice in 1982, and in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1987 and even with all those tax increases, they still couldn't possibly hope to tackle the insane Federal budget deficit created as a direct result of the their poor tax policies. The Reagan administration's stupid spending increases forced Bush1 AND Clinton to continue raising taxes until the budget was finally balanced to a point in the 90s, only to have supply side voodoo jump right back in under Bush2 with tax cuts for the rich and spending increases again. Why is it you can't see lowering taxes and increasing spending is poor fiscal policy? Seriously, there's no doubt at all that under Reagan and Bush2, spending increased significantly and taxes decreased and there's absolutely no doubt the deficit grew under Reagan and Bush2 at levels unprecedented outside of having a world-wide war.

This isn't a matter up to opinion. Reagan's tax policies did not create as much growth as Clinton's. There was a 2.5% increase in tax revenues from 1979 to 1989 and a 4.1% increase from 1989 to 2000. Economic growth comes from sound fiscal policy, where taxation and spending are at least in the same general area. It provides natural confidence in the markets (as opposed to artificial confidence created by deregulation). Reaganomics, lowering taxes, increasing spending, deregulating banking and investment, and supply side voodoo, doesn't work. It just doesn't.

aceventura3 · 08-11-2010, 04:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

For the record I owned a small business for roughly 15yrs. I ran it the same time I work for the State of Oregon, often I made more running it then I did working for the State. It is one of the reasons I'm 47 and living on a white sandy beach in Mexico. I sold it when I moved here. So lecture away about Bus. 101 all you want... I still think you're wrong.

Wrong about what?

Quote:

And yes we'll just have to agree to disagree on PK. Call me crazy but I'm going to go ahead and listen to the Nobel Prize winning economists over you.

I gave some specific regarding my problems with his article, including the primary problem regarding the argument against Bush tax cuts - that taxes collected started to rise after the cuts. The deficits were due to spending rising at a faster rate than taxes collected. Krugman's presentation was misleading at best or simply dishonest given his credentials. Sure we can argue taxes collected should inherently go up with economic growth returns, but there taxes collected are currently declining in spite of GDP growth.

Here is a link to a chart showing the trend:

Federal Government Revenues Have More Than Tripled Since 1965

Tully Mars · 08-11-2010, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Wrong about what?

I gave some specific regarding my problems with his article, including the primary problem regarding the argument against Bush tax cuts - that taxes collected started to rise after the cuts. The deficits were due to spending rising at a faster rate than taxes collected. Krugman's presentation was misleading at best or simply dishonest given his credentials. Sure we can argue taxes collected should inherently go up with economic growth returns, but there taxes collected are currently declining in spite of GDP growth.

Here is a link to a chart showing the trend:

Federal Government Revenues Have More Than Tripled Since 1965

First- I see no point in restating what RB has posted above.

Second- We're really at end game with your position on PK and mine. I see no point to continue disagreeing. I've already agreed to disagree. I mean honestly I have better things to do then read through something put out by the Heritage Foundation.

dogzilla · 08-12-2010, 02:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

for example, the "innovation" you grovel at the feet of innovated the american-based manufacturing base out of the united states. that "innovation" benefitted shareholders. in conservative-land, that is ethical. in the actual world, it is an act of class warfare.i do not think class war an effective way to address unemployment. apparently you do.

Shareholders put their money at risk investing in something there may or may not be a market for. If their venture fails, it is the shareholders who lose, not the employees. If their venture succeeds then they get the rewards. The employees hire on for a mutually agreeable salary and benefits. If the employees are dissatisfied, they can go elsewhere. If they want to take the risk, they can also innovate and hopefully succeed. This is the way it should be and was for quite a few years. This is not socialist Europe or communist Cuba.

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

dogzilla---so you know, the position i am arguing from is not merely the opposite of yours.
i don't think taxes are the central problem.

So what is the problem? From my point of view the government is taking way too much money that rightfully belongs to those that earned it. Secondly the government is reaching into way to many aspects of life in this country. Cut the taxes to force the government to cut spending. That leaves the feds unable to meddle in quite so much.

filtherton · 08-12-2010, 02:34 AM

Neither the current financial crisis nor the recent oil spills have high taxes or government interference as their proximate causes. Not to mention that you're asking for more government interference with respect to immigration - one would expect a proponent of the free market to encourage immigration and the cheap labor it provides. In this regard one could view illegal immigration as a form of probusiness civil disobedience.

roachboy · 08-12-2010, 02:57 AM

right. ok so you aren't thinking in terms of the social world at all, dogzilla---you're just repeating reagan era metaphysics, the sort of thing that the republican-dominated state told working people when their jobs started to disappear--

for example in steel into the magic of holding companies run by bankruptcy specialists who moved in to take advantage of the space created by a decision taken during world war 2 to export continuous casting as part of the marshall plan and take short-term profits knowing that in the longer run it would put them out of business---which it did----for you no problem, the manly forward march of the Captains of Industry requires it and besides this is a utilitarian good because it's better for everyone that workers from the steel industry become workers in the walmart industry.

economic activity is a social activity. the closest capitalism got to actual functionality as a system and not one predicated entirely upon exploitation and held together by violence (the american way) was during the fordist period---strong unions, collective bargaining were fundamental to the revolution in consumer credit, the extension of the suburban model---it was also a period of intensive innovation---but it followed from the arrangements put into place under the new deal and the right couldn't countenance it. it is a mystery to me why that is, why the hooverites whose history is of nothing but failure were rehabbed in the post-vietnam era---what made jingoism, simple-mindedness and brutality so appealing.

the changes started under nixon---by the clinton period, it was pretty clear that operationally the only americans were shareholder americans because theirs were the only interests that were being served. it maybe woulda been different if republican blah blah blah about the linkage between tax cuts and business investments turned out to yield the new sectors that were talked about. but it didn't. it didn't because it's not about that. republican blah blah blah is about creating a circular situation which creates increasingly polarized class relations which justifies endlessly expanding repressive state. weapons manufacturers win. defense contractors win. police and prison industries win.

shareholders don't during those period when the political and economic incoherence of conservative rule become evident. we're in one of those periods now. but that's an obvious story and i'm tired of telling it.

dogzilla · 08-12-2010, 04:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by filtherton

Neither the current financial crisis nor the recent oil spills have high taxes or government interference as their proximate causes.

Part of the reason for the financial crisis was the government's insistence on lowering requirements for loans so that people who had no business taking out a mortgage could do so. Frank's fingerprints are all over the financial fiasco - The Boston Globe

Quote:

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.

That, and people taking out home equity loans to finance a lifestyle they really couldn't afford were contributors to the problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by filtherton

Not to mention that you're asking for more government interference with respect to immigration - one would expect a proponent of the free market to encourage immigration and the cheap labor it provides. In this regard one could view illegal immigration as a form of probusiness civil disobedience.

The government has the right to enforce its borders. You should note that Mexico. among others is far less tolerant of illegal immigrants.

If people in other countries want to provide cheap labor, let them do it from their home countries.

Any candidate that proposes any form of amnesty for illegal immigration has lost my vote.

filtherton · 08-12-2010, 04:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dogzilla

Part of the reason for the financial crisis was the government's insistence on lowering requirements for loans so that people who had no business taking out a mortgage could do so. Frank's fingerprints are all over the financial fiasco - The Boston Globe

That, and people taking out home equity loans to finance a lifestyle they really couldn't afford were contributors to the problem.

Despite what the editorial board of the Boston globe says, those loans played a small role. They wouldn't have had any effect if the finance industry wasn't so creatively irresponsible.

Quote:

The government has the right to enforce its borders. You should note that Mexico. among others is far less tolerant of illegal immigrants.

If people in other countries want to provide cheap labor, let them do it from their home countries.

Any candidate that proposes any form of amnesty for illegal immigration has lost my vote.

This is boilerplate conservative immigration rhetoric that has nothing to do with what I wrote.

roachboy · 08-12-2010, 04:55 AM

you know nothing about immigration/labor policies in other places, dgozilla, so i don't know why you'd pretend otherwise. i can tell you for sure that you know nothing whatsoever about the politics of undocumented workers in france. or any of western europe. what you do, of course, is unwittingly or not replicate the neo-fascist position on the question.

the consistencies are remarkable.

as for the financial crisis---if we're going to smear historical reality back antecedent to antecedent so that we can find an origin point that's politically advantageous-seeming (carter explains the 2002 housing bubble? are you fucking serious? why not charlemagne?) it'd make sense to connect it to more empirical connections, like the linkage between the fordist social model and post-fordist modes of using credit to buy social solidarity. which is what happened. which is a far more cogent larger-scale narrative against which to set the specific sequence of terrible choices enabled by republican regulation-phobia. greenspans decisions from around 2002 forward about interest rates and about not requiring derivatives be routed through a market, so the republican-specific total devaluation of transparency, one that goes exactly contrary to the hayek-y notion of why markets can plausibly be seen as useful for capitalism (the history of prices presupposes transparency)...

but whatever. you aren't interested in what actually happened. you're interested in maitaining continuity in your economic ideology. this is a psychological exercise for you, then, not a historical one.

Tully Mars · 08-12-2010, 05:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dogzilla

Part of the reason for the financial crisis was the government's insistence on lowering requirements for loans so that people who had no business taking out a mortgage could do so. Frank's fingerprints are all over the financial fiasco - The Boston Globe

That, and people taking out home equity loans to finance a lifestyle they really couldn't afford were contributors to the problem.

That's true, but Bush and the GOP could have and as it turns out he should have put an end to it. If I remember Bush talked about it being a problem. So it not like he didn't know, he just failed to act. I really don't know why, they had control of both houses and the Oval office, they didn't act. They managed to push through a bunch of other stuff they wanted. I have a feeling making SOTU speeches with a line of "home ownership is at an all time high" might have influenced his motivation to act.

At any rate both sides of the aisle have a had a hand in this and own this problem. Most people I talk to want to blame the "other" side, whichever is "other" to them This type of thing has been going on for years. I think Bush I and Clinton (and I honestly think Clinton had it shoved down his throat by a GOP controlled congress) tried to turn it around in some ways but really it's just been spend, spend, spend... often money they (we) don't have. Currently spending is really out of control. I'd like to see a lot of that slashed. There's also a lot of talk about extending Bush's tax cuts, that just adds to the problem as it would not be paid for. So in my mind both sides have no problem increasing the debt and deficit spending as long as it goes to the things they want.

I agree people using their homes as freaking cash machines was crazy. I know just around my house in rural Oregon I was always amazed when I'd see families, that I knew made considerably less per year then I, purchase RV's, boats and other "toys" that I never felt I could have afforded. I never asked but many told me things like "You like it? Damn near costs me what I spent on my house. But the bank offered us a second and it's only costing us "X" per month, so we just had to have it." I always ended up thinking "you spent 1/2 of what you spent on your house on something you're going to use two weeks a year? That sounds nutty to me."

But really if you think about it you had a POTUS out their repeatedly telling people to spend, spend and spend some more. And that's what the Fed. government was doing too. Want to go to war and don't have the cash... freaking borrow it! Want to cut taxes and don't have the cash? Freaking borrow some more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dogzilla

The government has the right to enforce its borders. You should note that Mexico. among others is far less tolerant of illegal immigrants.

If people in other countries want to provide cheap labor, let them do it from their home countries.

Any candidate that proposes any form of amnesty for illegal immigration has lost my vote.

The problem with that thinking in my mind is it's much like trying to deal with the current economic problems. It doesn't take into account the moneys already been spent. It doesn't take into account there is already something like 11 million people here illegally. Just saying send them home won't work. It sounds good, it's sounds simple... too simple. It's a complex problem and a simple solution will not solve it. We let these folks come here for decades, Reagan tried to deal with it, but his efforts really didn't close the border. So what we ended up doing was creating a bunch of citizens without stopping the flow of new illegals. Half a solution to a problem will not solve that problem.

This, like the economy, has been left alone so long it's become a monster.

Baraka_Guru · 08-12-2010, 05:24 AM

Amnesty makes more sense than shipping them out en masse. Getting rid of that many cheap workers all at once would have such a negative impact on the American economy it's not even funny. We're talking many jobs here that most Americans probably don't even want, and certainly not for the pay.

Undocumented workers have been a boon to the rich. What better way to build wealth than to find those desperate for work?

08-11-2010, 08:21 AM	#281 (permalink)
Tully Mars Living in a Warmer Insanity Super Moderator Location: Yucatan, Mexico	Actually that's not quite accurate. Bush did not take office a recession things may have been trending that way but it was not a recession. One of many claims the neo-cons have used to defend Bush and his policies that are either false or mostly False. __________________ I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

08-11-2010, 09:40 AM	#284 (permalink)
The_Dunedan Junkie	Always take "Enron Paul" Krugman with a large grain of salt. The number of times the Wall Street Journal has caught him in outright lies is an embarrassment...or it would be, to anyone but a former Enron shill. Last edited by The_Dunedan; 08-11-2010 at 09:44 AM..

08-11-2010, 11:31 AM	#286 (permalink)
Derwood Who You Crappin? Location: Everywhere and Nowhere	The irony about the current debate about allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is that the party who is currently demanding that everything be "paid for" has yet to explain how keeping the tax cuts will be paid for (when they are projected to add $800 billion to the deficit) __________________ "You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

08-11-2010, 01:00 PM	#290 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	ace, look the hell around you. supply side was never a coherent body of thinking. it excludes more than it includes. it's predictive value has proven to be rubbish. the regulatory actions that were implemented based on it have proven to open pathways to fiasco unheard of since before world war 2. it is a hodge-podge of antiquated simplistic notions patched together for the purposes of allowing vast transfers of money away from the state and into the hands of...well who?...a patronage system that pulls the strings of the republican party. you and people like you have fuck all to say about job creation--except let's give more money to the patronage system that supports the republican party by way of dismantling the redistributive state---while making sure to keep the repressive state expanding and armed to the teeth---because---well why? so that patronage network can count on a well-armed police force to keep people away from their gated communities when they figure out they've been had? the bush tax cuts did NOTHING to expand employment. neither did the reagan tax cuts. NOTHING that supply side has advocated has helped. because it's not about that. it's about increasingly class stratification. taking the money and hiding out. and you have fuck all to say about the actual structure of the actual economy. you're obsessed with the hydraulics of taxes as if that were a fundamental problem. that you can devise hydraulic relations around a variable says nothing--at all--about why that variable should be central. you can't argue the case because for you it's all just part of some rigid system the operating logic of which is basically that of shampoo directions: lather repeat, lather repeat. you won't even address the self-evident problems of unemployment (for example) presumably because you think the people who are out of work deserve their lot or they'd get all bootstrappy and pick themselves up. because, in your world, nothing is actually wrong, it's all normal, part of ordinary bidness cycles. but today when, for example, the uk market freaks out because the carefully worded statement from the exchequer indicates that there's a good likelihood of a depression that we haven't even fucking gotten to yet, and the fed releases yesterday a statement on actual activity rates within the economy that are tending toward zero and new trade data shows that the export/import gap has done the opposite of what the conservative economic pundit class has been saying it will.....unemployment continues to go up and the only reason it's not a Crisis on its own is that feature of the rates, that self-adjusting feature which is that people out of work more than 6 months aren't counted. and people who think the way you do are opposing extensions of unemployment benefits. people who think like you you oppose attempts to divert money into supporting or enabling the growing of new businesses. people who think like you oppose all attempts to actually address real problems. people who think like you do imagine that giving more money to the social class that controls approximately, what, 70% of capital, will do something. it hasn't worked. it's not supposed to. working people don't support the republican order. so fuck em, right ace? worse than that, they have in the past organized themselves into unions--GASP---and tried to take power from holders of capital---the Horror! it's pretty clearly time to try something else. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

08-11-2010, 02:08 PM	#292 (permalink)
Tully Mars Living in a Warmer Insanity Super Moderator Location: Yucatan, Mexico	Ace- I think you're looking for this... The Ascent of E-Man Of course I'm really not sure, you said you couldn't find it. All I did was google the title and this was the first hit. Right now I don't have time to research more, have things to do. __________________ I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

08-11-2010, 02:16 PM	#293 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	If supply siders really thought seriously about marginal tax rates and their effect on tax receipts one would expect them to occasionally favor tax increases. Seems odd that they're always calling for tax cuts.

08-11-2010, 02:32 PM	#295 (permalink)
Tully Mars Living in a Warmer Insanity Super Moderator Location: Yucatan, Mexico	There's plenty of blame to go around. Yes, Clinton was waist deep in the deregulation game just as bush was waist deep in the stimulus. Saying otherwise is simply rewriting history. Her's a story that discusses who did what and when- Link __________________ I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

08-11-2010, 02:51 PM	#300 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	And people wonder why we go to war for seemingly no reason whatsoever and try to make enemies. If we didn't, how could we possibly excuse that obscene expenditure?

08-11-2010, 03:04 PM	#303 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	this is an awful lot of shucking and jiving and empty conservative blah blah blah to avoid he simple facts of the matter. supply side/monetarist policies are what got the economy into this wreck of a situation. they have nothing to offer as a way out. supply siders cannot even bring themselves to talk about allocation of resources because they'd run into the military problem. it's not an exaggeration to think that all this conservative economic hooey is really just a smoke screen the function of which is to keep political pressure away from cutting defense spending. this is only possible if conservatives control conversations about the economy. i see no reason to take conservative economic ideology seriously so there's no reason to cede control of the discussion to them. i see nothing from ace, nothing from dogzilla that even remotely begins to address unemployment. ace obssesses about fantasy tax questions; dogzilla is focused only on repeating the conservative meme-of-the-moment about obama's stimulus package, as if the economic disaster we're still moving through originated on obama's watch when ANYONE who is not lying to themselves knows that this turd is a conservative turd which began forming in earnest around 2002 and which squeezed out onto all of us in 2007. ever since, conservatives have been running away from their own record. it's a pretty patronizing thing, assuming people are too stupid to remember what actually happened. but apparently there are some for whom conservative counter-reality is compelling. which brings us back to the psychology today piece. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

08-11-2010, 04:00 PM	#309 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i think the line about krugman sums up the problem with this and almost every other "discussion"...you--and you are hardly alone in this---cannot cross out of your own frame of reference on socio-economic questions---and you've only got one. so when it comes down to it and you're confronted with viewpoints outside your terms, all you can do is try to find an excuse to dismiss it on the one hand, and repeat your starting point on the other. so there's really only one discussion that you want, and that is a discussion in which everyone agrees politically and conceptually, so that the discussion is really a matter of local adjustments. it's not a particularly democratic approach. but whatever. i've actually bothered to work out the basic tenants of supply-side hoodoo. i didn't do it voluntarily, but i did it. if i thought that theoretically it made sense, we could have a different kind of conversation--but it doesn't make sense logically and even if it was logically consistent the gap between predicted and actual outcomes in those instances where its been implemented are self-evident. for example, the "innovation" you grovel at the feet of innovated the american-based manufacturing base out of the united states. that "innovation" benefitted shareholders. in conservative-land, that is ethical. in the actual world, it is an act of class warfare.i do not think class war an effective way to address unemployment. apparently you do. this is a structural problem in the american economy produced, enabled and screened by supply-side monetarist hoodoo. if you know anything about the overall history of western capitalism since the early 1970s, there's no avoiding this. for the record, i orient myself as someone who's spent way too long studying the history of the capitalist form of production since world war 2. i think there's something wrong, something profoundly wrong, with an ideological context in which people look around them and see real problems, deep problems and connect them empirically and logically to a particular worldview--neoliberalism, the washington consensus, supply side, whatever---and not bring that worldview into fundamental question. but that's our situation in the states. i think it's perhaps an educational issue. i hope it's not. i hope it's something else. laziness maybe. something i haven't thought of. who knows. ==== edit: dogzilla---so you know, the position i am arguing from is not merely the opposite of yours. i don't think taxes are the central problem. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 08-11-2010 at 04:15 PM..

08-12-2010, 02:34 AM	#314 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	Neither the current financial crisis nor the recent oil spills have high taxes or government interference as their proximate causes. Not to mention that you're asking for more government interference with respect to immigration - one would expect a proponent of the free market to encourage immigration and the cheap labor it provides. In this regard one could view illegal immigration as a form of probusiness civil disobedience.

08-12-2010, 02:57 AM	#315 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	right. ok so you aren't thinking in terms of the social world at all, dogzilla---you're just repeating reagan era metaphysics, the sort of thing that the republican-dominated state told working people when their jobs started to disappear-- for example in steel into the magic of holding companies run by bankruptcy specialists who moved in to take advantage of the space created by a decision taken during world war 2 to export continuous casting as part of the marshall plan and take short-term profits knowing that in the longer run it would put them out of business---which it did----for you no problem, the manly forward march of the Captains of Industry requires it and besides this is a utilitarian good because it's better for everyone that workers from the steel industry become workers in the walmart industry. economic activity is a social activity. the closest capitalism got to actual functionality as a system and not one predicated entirely upon exploitation and held together by violence (the american way) was during the fordist period---strong unions, collective bargaining were fundamental to the revolution in consumer credit, the extension of the suburban model---it was also a period of intensive innovation---but it followed from the arrangements put into place under the new deal and the right couldn't countenance it. it is a mystery to me why that is, why the hooverites whose history is of nothing but failure were rehabbed in the post-vietnam era---what made jingoism, simple-mindedness and brutality so appealing. the changes started under nixon---by the clinton period, it was pretty clear that operationally the only americans were shareholder americans because theirs were the only interests that were being served. it maybe woulda been different if republican blah blah blah about the linkage between tax cuts and business investments turned out to yield the new sectors that were talked about. but it didn't. it didn't because it's not about that. republican blah blah blah is about creating a circular situation which creates increasingly polarized class relations which justifies endlessly expanding repressive state. weapons manufacturers win. defense contractors win. police and prison industries win. shareholders don't during those period when the political and economic incoherence of conservative rule become evident. we're in one of those periods now. but that's an obvious story and i'm tired of telling it. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

08-12-2010, 04:55 AM	#318 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	you know nothing about immigration/labor policies in other places, dgozilla, so i don't know why you'd pretend otherwise. i can tell you for sure that you know nothing whatsoever about the politics of undocumented workers in france. or any of western europe. what you do, of course, is unwittingly or not replicate the neo-fascist position on the question. the consistencies are remarkable. as for the financial crisis---if we're going to smear historical reality back antecedent to antecedent so that we can find an origin point that's politically advantageous-seeming (carter explains the 2002 housing bubble? are you fucking serious? why not charlemagne?) it'd make sense to connect it to more empirical connections, like the linkage between the fordist social model and post-fordist modes of using credit to buy social solidarity. which is what happened. which is a far more cogent larger-scale narrative against which to set the specific sequence of terrible choices enabled by republican regulation-phobia. greenspans decisions from around 2002 forward about interest rates and about not requiring derivatives be routed through a market, so the republican-specific total devaluation of transparency, one that goes exactly contrary to the hayek-y notion of why markets can plausibly be seen as useful for capitalism (the history of prices presupposes transparency)... but whatever. you aren't interested in what actually happened. you're interested in maitaining continuity in your economic ideology. this is a psychological exercise for you, then, not a historical one. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

08-12-2010, 05:24 AM	#320 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	Amnesty makes more sense than shipping them out en masse. Getting rid of that many cheap workers all at once would have such a negative impact on the American economy it's not even funny. We're talking many jobs here that most Americans probably don't even want, and certainly not for the pay. Undocumented workers have been a boon to the rich. What better way to build wealth than to find those desperate for work? __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot