Santorum - Droopy in a Sweater Vest?

[_Jason Bourne]

And whose fault is that? The Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy have to be rejected if we're ever going to dig our way out of this hole. This is from the USA Today article on the budget proposal:

By the way while the Bush Tax cuts did benefit the wealthy there were also significant cuts across the board. ALL levels of income tax brackets received cuts. Some of the cuts dropped many lower income earners off the income tax roles. Child tax credits were doubles and the earned income credit increased. College credits increased as well and many of these benefits phased out at lower middle class income levels.

So really to say Bush just gave tax cuts to the wealthy is just incorrect. Sure, their rates were cut to and the got a larger benefit. A 5% reduction on income above $300K usually give more dollars back then a 5% reduction for someone at $100k. But the cuts were across the board.

[_Kevin Graham]

Since we are 3 plus years past Bush, I would say it is now on the lap of our current president and congress.

Jason, surely you understand that the President isn't a dictator. He cannot force legislation past a stonewalling Republican congress. Name me a single thing Obama has managed to do during his presidency? They reject everything he proposes. So how in teh world can you blame Obama? I blame the wealthy idiots who funded the astro-turf Tea Party movement, which led to the biggest wave of elected backwoods-hick politicians the country has ever seen. I mean we're talking about some true idiots here, who go on record from the start and say that their primary purpose is to make sure Obama never gets reelected. They've claimed to support something until Obama supports it, and then they suddenly reverse to make sure Obama doesn't get anything passed. This is like a kicker saying he will make sure no one ever returns a kickoff for a touchdown, because he is going to kick the ball out of bounds every time.

President Obama did say if he did not improve things in three years he would be a one term president.

No one, Obama included, could have predicted how Congress was going to be transformed into a Rush Limbaugh fan club.

But you won't get and argument from me. I am for reasonable modest tax increases along with reasonable cutting and I would cut defense first. Also I have preached for years that we should have had a war time tax to fund the Iraq an Afghanistan conflicts.

OK, so why the hell are you supporting Romney who opposes all of that? Do you really think for a second that Romney would support tax increases on anyone besides the poor and middle-class? In his worldview, everyone else is a potential "job creator" and taxes only stand in the way of job creation. I've heard him repeat this mantra several times, a standard talking point from the Right Wing propaganda machine. I see no original thought or enlightened perspective from this guy who is supposed to be a step ahead of everyone else because of his background in business.

Kev it would not be a political thread worth reading without your slamming Fox News. Sorry but I don't buy it that all our woes are due to George Bush and the republicans. It is the fault of all our weak political leaders.

Dude, you want to bash the deficit but you do not want to understand why we have a deficit. Obama walked into the White House in January 2009, months after the deficit reached $1.4 trillion. There is no mystery why it was that high. Bush spent a trillion on two stupid wars, gave another trillion away to the wealthy and corporations, and then gave nearly another trillion to Big PHARMA. That's roughly three trillion right there which went down teh drain thanks to Bush and his deregulation policiy. Remember, hid Daddy is the one who, in a Monsato video, said, "we're in the deregulation business." It has been a bedrock principle of the conservative movement, from Reagan on down to GWB.

[_EAllusion]

Unemployment isn't high right now due to a low effective corporate tax rate. What kind of facile confusing correlation with causation stuff is that? That's brackite level posting.

Presidents aren't nor should they be puppeteers of the economy guys. Executive policy can influence the state of the economy, but I think there's a lot of falling into the trap of overstating it going on here. Political campaigns that play a blame/credit game with the economy have really messed up people's understanding of economic cycles.

It's true that economic trends influence the outcome of presidential elections, but that's not necessarily because of a causal relationship between presidential policy and where the economy is trending. It's because a large % of voters who can be persuaded to vote one way or another vote based in large part on an intuitive sense of how the country is doing. Economic trends play a large role in determining how that shakes out in the aggregate.

[_Kevin Graham]

By the way while the Bush Tax cuts did benefit the wealthy there were also significant cuts across the board. ALL levels of income tax brackets received cuts.

This is true, but the Lion's share went to the wealthy and it was unnecessary and even irresponsible given the massive increase in government spending thanks to the Iraq war and the Drug Prescription bill Bush passed. But the point here is that tax cuts lead to deficits, and thus, our current deficit problem. National debt first skyrocketed under Reagan and it has been going out of control ever since. These guys don't understand basic economics. You have to have income to cover your expenditures. Government spending has been steadily increasing for decades because the country is growing. You can't just cut income and then act surprised when there is a deficit. This is what Reagan did and he got away with it. His predecessors have followed suit, rewarding their wealthy constinuents who put them in office in the first place. Just look at the numbers. Only 9% of Romney's donations come from small donors. The bulk of it comes from a handful of billionaires who know he is going to keep rewarding them with more tax cuts. Paying off politicians is becoming the greatest investment for the wealthy and more and more are figuring this out. It is why the number of corporate lobbyists has skyrockets over the past decade.

So really to say Bush just gave tax cuts to the wealthy is just incorrect.

I never said ONLY the wealthy received tax cuts, but the fact is the current lot of Republicans have only entertained tax increases for the poor and middle-class. To even think about increases on those beloved "job creators" is anathema. Even Reagan knew that he had to increase taxes to compensate for the massive deficits he created, and he increased taxes no less than six times. But the current wave of Republicans scare the crap out of me. It is as if they don't give a damn what economists say. They're only interested in what corporate funded astro-turf movements, blogs and "think tanks" suggest. It is why attacking education and demonizing it as "liberal-controlled" is so important to them. It is their justification for remaining ignorant.

[_Kevin Graham]

Unemployment isn't high right now due to a low effective corporate tax rate. What kind of facile confusing correlation with causation stuff is that? That's brackite level posting.

Who said that was the cause for high unemployment? I hope you're not suggesting I said this. I'm saying low corporate tax rates have done nothing to improve unemployment rates. The Right Wing theory goes like this.

Give corporations more tax cuts and then they'll use that extra money to hire other Americans. They like to go back to Reagan and use "facile confusing correlation with causation" to suggest Reagan's tax cuts led to a rise in employment. Then they treat this theory as an infallible sacrosanct edict from God himself.

But we know this doesn't pan out the way they predict. More and more corporations are outsourcing overseas, and thanks to the technological boom, more and more jobs are becoming obsolete as everything is becoming automated with computers. Hell, even grocery stores are moving to "self-checkout" technology, allowing customers to scan their own food and pay for it themselves. This is just one of an endless list of examples, where technology has caused a huge decrease in employment. Relying on robots to build cars is another.

[_Kevin Graham]

Here is Romney's plan if he becomes President.

Tell me what you agree with Jason:

http://www.mittromney.com/news/press/20 ... nd-economy

Notice how corporate tax cuts are crucial to his policy, along with this nonsense about free trade with poor countries like Panama! This is where Clinton went wrong, thinking that opening up free trade with China would somehow help OUR economy. In reality the reverse was true. Why? Well, obviously Chinese people do not have the incomes to buy imported American products, but Americans have the incomes to buy cheap Chinese products. It was a great benefit to China, but a devastating blow to the US economy. Romney wants to repeat the same mistakes of the past, thinking poorer third world countries are going to help our economy!

[_Jason Bourne]

Will try to get back to this tomorrow. Gotta run now.

[_Kevin Graham]

The fact is businesses do not, nor have they ever, hired people simply because they got a tax cut. The idea itself is stupid. Businesses hire for one reason only; because demand has risen and they need to compensate with more employment. When the country is suffering the way it has been, more and more people are not spending like they used to. When consumer demand is down, employment will be down (think of the rapid increase in temporary employment during the holiday season). When business can be reliably predicted, businesses will react preemptively by hiring.

The best way to turn this around is with increased consumer confidence, which is difficult given the gloom and doom propaganda coming from the Right. But no one can spend unless they have extra money to spend, which was the whole idea behind the stimulus. Put more money into the hands of the consumers, (not the producers) and then the economic engine will start churning again. Hence, "kick starting" the economy. We know that the consumers are more likely to spend if they have extra money. The producers will just sit on that money and reward their executives/shareholders.

[_Kevin Graham]

As a business owner in Brazil, I can state with absolute confidence that a tax break would not encourage me to hire more English teachers for our school. Not one.

What would make me hire more teachers?

An increase in students, obviously.

That is where stimulus comes into play. By putting more money into the pockets of the general public, people are more likely to pay for extra services like English lessons. In fact, we pretty much know that when the lower classes have money, they spend it.

Consumer spending is the lifeline of any economy.

[_honorentheos]

Something occured to me today while reading this thread and having listened to something by John Dehlin. That being, I wonder if having liberal or conservative political views impacts whether or not a person becomes a NOM or leaves the church when they finally reject the "one true church" claims of the LDS faith? Not a judgement against anyone, but now I'm curious and want to know more.

New thread time.