On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 21:01:03 -0500, "tooly" <rdh11@bellsouth.net> wrote:
"Keynes" <Keynes@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:ju31uvok2higpk5ufbm050qi6egbq91iqt@4ax.com...
On Tue, 16 Dec 2003 23:27:18 -0500, "tooly" <rdh11@bellsouth.net
wrote:
"BretCahill" <bretcahill@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20031213114357.15210.00000891@mb-m04.aol.com...
nijof@aol.com (NiJof) in
Message-id: <20031213015014.29482.00000045@mb-m02.aol.com> writes:
. . .
Then came Reagan and Thatcher and the conservative movement, with
their
claims of rationality
Reagan and Thatcher never even claimed
to be rational, just that God was on their
side.
The supply side economists claimed to be
rational but they were so discredited by
the high tax Clinton boom they'll never
show their faces in public around Clinton.
Bret Cahill
All conservatism is based on censorship of
economic information.
-- Bret Cahill
The boom of the 90's can be traced back to Reagan's cuts in the 80's
and
LOL.
more appropriately, the Feds commitment to control inflation under
Volcker
in early 80's.
Why did Volker have to screw down inflation in the first place?
Nixon's war spending and wage-price controls were the cause of that
disaster.
(Command economies are communist-socialist, right? Nixon was a commie.
He did it because he didn't want to raise taxes. It was the act of a
Stalin.)
"Whip Inflation Now." = WIN button Ford couldn't save us, and
stag-flation
ran on into Carter's term. The Oil embargo didn't help us either.
After those 'bad times' --
we were ready for 'morning in America' from an actor who had
already spent California onto the rocks as it's governor. Who knew?
Under Reagan's happy face facade, the piracy was astonishing.
The most corrupt, indicted and convicted administration in history.
(Bush senior pardoned a slew of them when he took office
Many of them (not all convicts) are now in the GW Bush government.
Cheney, Rumsfeldt, Poindexter, Pearle, Armitage, etc. Who knew?.)
Naturally the Reagan admin's financial policies were no better.
Essentially, GDP started the unprecedented period of growth
then, and slowed down temporarily only due to a pipeline disturbance
in
late
1991 under Daddy Bush (that more or less cost him the election). Of
course,
we had the deficit increase under Reagan, arguably from a
non-cooperative
Democratic congress.
The dems under Reagan spent too much, but less than Reagan wanted.
Reagan should have put the screws to the dems and vice versa.
Reagan's budgets were insane, then called DOA "dead on arrival".
But not near as bad as GW's, which the GOP congress approves.
That's the trouble with a single party controlling all three
branches of government. No checks and balances.
Both parties love pork, but only their own pork,
and not the pork of the opposition. It's how they
serve their voters and get elected. This is not a
bad thing in a democracy, providing the spending
is balanced by the income.
In this case, the GOP constituency is BIG money,
the guys who financed the election, Enron, Halliburton, et al.
They are getting what they paid for. Any little guys who voted
GOP haven't a clue. The GOP is not your friend, suckers.
This one party government finally puts to rest the
myth of republican fiscal responsibility. Look at it.
Can't blame anybody but the GOP for this mess.
Unfortunately the economy has to Really stink
before voters begin to pay any attention.
Actually, supply side [stimulation of production]
proved successful beyond expectations.
Reagan-Bush tripled the national debt. Not good.
It was the beginning of the USA living on the 'never, never' as the
brits call living on credit with no intention of ever paying off.
Expansion of the economy was supposed to pay off the debt.
Did that happen? Read D Stockman's book about the
Reagan economic policy. (Stockman was the man.)
The failure of supply side to ever balance spending and
revenues should have been a clue that it was a fraud.
( JM Keynes gets blamed for the idea, but he didn't suggest
permanent deficit spending. It's an emergency measure and
not a way of life. He recommended balancing the books
after the emergency passes. )
The Laffer curve is laughable. At what point do decreased
taxes = increased revenues? That has not been theoretically
established, nor has it been seen in practical government taxing,
borrowing and spending. It's a fraud, folks. Since Reagan,
the only observable effects of tax reduction have been ghastly
increasing deficits. The piper must be paid some day.
A permanent and geometrically increasing debt sucks tax
dollars into fruitless interest payments until the government
can no longer support itself. This is the explicitly stated goal
of some folks who want US government to fail, so we can
shrink it down to the glory days of the 1800's robber barons.
No regulation. Monopoly powers. Legalized financial crime.
No social safety nets, and cheap cheap labor.
It's a 'liberty' that few will enjoy, count on that.
Look where the current tax cuts went. This is stimulus?
(Although the cuts were originally 'sold' as giving back 'our'
money. News folks. It wasn't a cut. It was a loan at interest.
And the loan will not be paid off by the recipients of the cuts.
That will be left for the rest of us to pay off. They have a
"get out of jail free" card on us with no taxes on dividends,
or inheritance of empires, and reduced or no capital gains taxes.)
So who the hell is going to pay off the debt?
Theoretically cuts might have increased investment, meaning
stock prices. But that hasn't happened. It might have caused
small business to expand and hire more. That hasn't happened either.
The tax cuts have accomplished exactly what? (Besides debt.)
The US dollar has dropped from $0.89 to the euro,
to $1.23 to the euro. Low interest on US govt bonds
as well as a visibly shrinking economic base is driving
foreign (and domestic) investors away from financing our
supply-side deficit economy through bonds OR stocks.
(The fall of the dollar may increase exports to Europe,
but China's currency is tied to the dollar so our trade
deficit with China will do nothing but increase as it has.
US imports from Mexico and Canada will become more
expensive. Mexico and Canada are where they make the
stuff we used to make ourselves. Generally, globalization
has been a loser for Americans. Lost jobs will never return. )
Soon the fed will be forced to raise interest rates to
lure back foreign financing, at the same time cutting
off local US investment and expansion, not to mention
the consumer spending on the cards that supports
2/3 of the national economy. We're in a bad spot.
Greenspan is paralyzed.
The trick is always how to stimulate
new investment. IMO of course.
Certainly. But you have it backwards.
There is supply side -and- demand side.
The supply side is in fair shape. It is the demand side
that is too weak to spur more sales, production, and jobs.
Any tax cuts should have gone to the lower brackets
rather than the higher. More mad money in the hands
of investors has not produced any benefit in the USA.
Likely that tax relief $ is going to foreign investments
that pay better rates. Particularly as dollars lose value.
Those whose income exceeds their expenses can choose
where to put their surplus. But those on the low end don't have
that discretion. They must invest in commodities and real estate --
food and rent. If they had a few extra dollars they'd really have to
spend them. Increase in min wage or decrease in FICA
(through restructuring to remove caps or to make it progressive
rather than flat, or both) would give the economy a quick shot in the
arm.
Min wage (and those affected by it through competition)
has decreased due to inflation. If it were at the levels
of 30 years ago it would be near $9/hour and not $5.15.
$9 is a living wage. $5.15 is not. Imagine the effect
if the bottom 20% of the people virtually doubled their
spending. This would increase prices by a small amount
but boost the economy by a great amount. Besides that,
it would be fair. Right now we are All exploiting minimum
wage (and low wage) workers for our own benefit.
They work as long and hard as anyone and can't make a living.
They get no holidays, vacations, health insurance or 401K's either,
those untaxed benefits that the 'better' folks receive.
Supply side is bogus. The remaining US industries are
running at a fraction of capacity, not flat out. They
don't need more plant. They need more sales.
That can only come from the demand side.
There shouldn't have been a tax cut at all.
We were paying down the debt before the cuts
by running nearly a $300 billion surplus. The
economy was doing well in everyone's estimation.
(And who in the hell was hurting over that?)
Now we're increasing the debt at the rate of
1/2 trillion $ a year. And worse to come.
All that without any visible benefit to the economy.
Madness.
The stock market bubble was an effect and not a cause
of the good economy. In good times folks have the extra
money to bid up stocks beyond their value (on the principle
that a greater fool will pay even more for them, since they
appear to be money trees, creating wealth from nothing).
There was too much money chasing too few stocks.
(Why? Because of the increasing inequity of incomes.
Some folks just had way too much more than they could spend.
And some had not enough. Economic poison.)
The collapse of the market was inevitable as in any
speculative ponzi-pyramid. It was not the cause of the poor
Bush economy. The money lost was 'excess' mad money in
the hands of investors. They weren't going to spend it anyway.
Supply side economics is theoretically and historically
shown to be a failure and a fraud. It is simply a transfer
of wealth from the poor to the rich, and at the expense
of the total US economy. Stockman admits it. Give it up.
Lot of rhetoric here. Obviously your view is emotionally slanted; you
despise certain elements and probably would find only flaw in those
elements
no matter what. I simply repeat, Stimulating production has been shown
to
be the more direct means of stimulating the economy, especially new
investment which is what counts in growing REAL GDP (or, if stimulating
demand side, somehow to induce people to 'save' the darn stuff (money);
which then becomes monies available for new loans, and new investment
etc].
Stimulating consumption, which is what demand side stimulus does, only
increases the price level [nominal gain in the short term that is
meaningless to real GDP in the long run]. This I believe is standard
fare...am I wrong?
Supply side stimulation DOES indeed work. The boom times of the last two
decades are vital proof of this.
There is a simple concept that anyone can understand.
Ask yourself, if you are the policy maker, to whom do you want to give
that
next government sponsored tax cut dollar to...a man with a tool, or a man
without? The man with a tool (capital) can convert that dollar into many
more dollars and jobs for other men, while the man without a tool is
probably just going to spend it [consume].
Stimulating consumption has always been a 'nominal' stimulant, reason for
inflation and little else in the long run. Also, Stagflation of the late
1970's disproved many of Keynes ideas.
Oh BTW...ha we are like a ping pong ball going back and forth, but it was
LBJ's Great Society spending that started the 1970's in motion. Nixon
(erroneously) installed wage and price controls to slow down inflation
that
LBJ started [again, high consumption produced inflationary pressures, not
'real' growth] only making things worse. Carter was elected on pledges
of
combating the great 'human misery' of inflation but left office with
double
digit inflation plagueing the nation (again, rooted to LBJ's spending
spree
and Nixon's attempt at controls, but only worsening under Carter's
reign).
By 1980, the land was demoralized in many ways.
That's when Volcker stepped in...and the Reagan's tax cuts which started
the
economy on an upswing as explained in the original post I made.
But I don't defend economic policy for sake of political stances, but
only
what works and what doesn't. These are not just my opinion but what it
takes
to pass college coursework these days.
Supply side stimulation (or more specifically, to induce new investment)
is
the way to go...for it creates ''REAL" growth and not 'makeshift' welfare
or
spending sprees that just speed up the velocity of money.
Just to show you how 'non-aligned' I am, I was highly dubious about GW's
tax
cuts. They looked too 'political' to me...and as you allude to, would
only
be functional if the economy was still existing on the upward slope of
the
laffer curve. But he fooled us all I think as the economy does indeed
appear to be moving ahead now. What is worrisome now is 'new job'
creation
seems to be heading overseas (while USA unemployment is not mirroring the
growth in GDP we are seeing)...but that is another developing story, one
we
ALL should pay more heed to I think (globalism). The middle class in the
industrialized world is being sold out.
BTW, much of today's economic scene was created by 9-11...and the war on
Iraq; a curous ommit in your comments.
But...all the best anyway. Bush will probably be re-elected though.
There's at least half the country that would disagree with your
assessments...and if you look at the demographics, well, it might be
enlightening who supports the left's views [as groups]. Issues
themselves
are getting to be less significant under balkanization and 'group' bloc
dynamics. Which make debates almost meaningless [on issues] because we
all
have our minds made up, but not because of the issues, but because of
'group' struggle. Culture war is afoot I believe. And I believe we have
the liberal cause to thank for that (whomever espoused multiculturism to
begin with). I know I'm just going to vote to support my group. How
about
yourself?
My brother would agree with you. So me and my brother
don't talk religion or politics. I like you, but disagree on many
points. It would have been helpful if you addressed the points
rather than giving me the same old party line. It doesn't show
much thought, and in these matters we ought to apply what
intelligence we can muster, because it is important.
My language may have been polemic, but the facts are the facts.
You dismiss, but don't dispute them. Right wing methods again.
Reagan's "Well... there you go again." was taken as an intellectual
refutation of Carter's social security policy. What a travesty!
"Fuzzy math" was supposed to be an outline of Bush's economic
policy. Nutso! Voters deserve what they get for damn sure.
(Why is the right not offended by Rush and Coulter, yet offended
by any arguments in any form from the left? It looks mindless.)
Both parties used to have liberals and conservatives, but the Reagan
revolution and NCPAC changed all that by purging the GOP of traitors and
commies, liberals and moderates, like Nelson Rockefeller and Jeffords.
The dems still have conservatives like Zell Miller, Breaux, Lieberman,
etc.
Party afiliation is no guarantee of quality. It was better when a voter
could find a home in either party. That prevents stagnation and
machine control of government. We have lost that freedom.
Our choices have been reduced to the evil of two lessers.
The right has been putting out their message unopposed since Rush
and the clowns - clones... clones hit the air. Clinton and Gore were
crucified on the networks. Not fair at all. But all's fair in love and
politics they say. The 'liberal' media (a 'fact' that even Rush admits
is a lie) is decidedly conservative. The press is only in it for the
money.
Bush has been getting a free ride on 9/11, and only lately has the
press pressed him on Iraq, (because of actual americans dying
every day there -- public interest sells papers.) Before that
the whole Bush admin was on the news daily warning of
"Mushrooms over manhattan", and the daily color of fear.
The 2002 election was all about who hates 'evil' the most.
Comedy and tragedy in the same performance.
I despise not only the actions of the right, but their uncivilized and
hateful tone in all cases. No compromise. "We are the Godly and
we rule by Divine Will, and force or chicanery if necessary."
There is no uncertainty, no self-doubt. Absolutism on every issue.
"With us or against us.", "Axis of evil" That's theology, not politics.
Saddam kills people and thats evil. We kill even more and that's good.
That kind of moral clarity is not clear at all.
The GOP is uncivil, insulting, and coercive, playing on our hates and
fears.
That's no way to run a democracy. If you want to find true believers
who take no prisoners and give no quarter, then that's the GOP.
They aren't even consistent on policy. First they condemn an
action, and then they do it, saying it is the only right course,
then they change their minds again. Every time they are infallible,
and their partisans can tell you all about it -- in the same words too.
Is it wise to suppose that all virtue is in one political position or
other,
and all vice is in the other one? The constant equation of liberal = evil
and all evil = liberal is utterly childish, and not fit for adults. The
fools
who promote such an idea are counting on an unthinking audience.
That's not politics, it's religion. Do we need a pope-commisar to
deliver to us divine truth today, and the opposite divine truth tomorrow?
I opposed Clinton on NAFTA and GATT, and a number of other
things. I opposed the GOP and Starr for obvious reasons.
Politics is messy and brutal. I can't stand to listen to ANY politician.
Policy is the only thing I really care about. Any party that will do
what I think is right would get my support, even the GOP.
Politics isn't just an idle partisan sport. We have to live with
the outcome of the game. All pols lie. We have to watch
them like a hawk or they will crap all over us. We mustn't
let them cover up their crimes as 'priviledged' or top secret
'national security'. They work for us, and not the other way
round. We must have accountability or we are slaves,
not free men. This admiiinistration hides everything.
What are we to think? (Where is the Plame leaker?)
Blind loyalty, no matter what, and the cult of personality
are soviet and fascist methods. Unamerican for usre.
Both parties are in hock to the big money of special interests,
and not the public interest. Their vision runs only two years
to the next election so they create and exacerbate problems
for the next administration to solve. They are panders and
hypnotists who manipulate us shamelessly. Nevertheless,
one party or the other occasionally does the right thing
and throws us a bone.
Gotta go now. Back in a week, if Allah wills it. ;-)
]. But, it's conservative bias once again is