You never seemed like one who would call tax cuts wasted money. Always thought you were for smaller government, less taxes.

CBO: Stimulus bill created up to 2.1 million jobs - Yahoo! News

wait what - the stimulus bill actually helped? omg...imagine that!

*waiting for the spin about how job growth is bad*

We have job growth?

well...jobs created.

Anybody got the various figures handy to turn those percentages into actual (projected) dollars?

Looking for the ROI on the $862b basically.

I'll skip the question about "what economic recovery" since that's probably a separate issue for their projections instead of the more directly measurable stuff.

Jon - you're smart enough to know that you can't break it down to "$x per new job." frankly i'd expect more from you than that pathetic strawman argument

That is a good question, as those 2.1 million jobs generate tax revenue. But are you talking a strict ROI? Like if those jobs gave people money to spend on goods and other items, do you count the tax revenue for the city/county/state? The companies that make money will also be paying more taxes too. Sounds like a job for some fuzzy-math people. I've taken a lot of math and stats, but that sort of thing sounds really hard to quantify.

I don't think anyone could reasonably question that borrowing $800 billion would improve a country's short-term financial picture. Anybody can buy a bunch of stuff on a credit card. The real test of this thing will be whether we have a double-dip recession when the money dries up (or if we have to borrow another trillion or so just to stay afloat)

It's kind of silly to brag about your financial success when everything you own was bought on credit, and your future income potential is questionable at best.

[quote=DaddyTorgo;2229926]Jon - you're smart enough to know that you can't break it down to "$x per new job." frankly i'd expect more from you than that pathetic strawman argument[/QUOTE

You weren't getting an argument from me (yet). I was simply wondering, straightforward as can be, what the estimated 1.whatever million jobs paid out. I mean, if we know how many then we almost certainly know how much those paid in estimated salaries. And there are almost equally certainly standard multipliers that can be applied to them for spending, respending, tax affects, etc.

I just spent the last 6 working days watching a client spend $24k in a desperate attempt to generate (if they're lucky) an additional $12k in sales for the month of March. If I'm a little ROI-centric after that clusterfuck then you'll either have to forgive me or deal with it, but I'm hyper-aware right this moment of how some spending simply doesn't make a damned bit of sense.

Whether that's the case - in ballparky numbers - with this segment of the stimulus is beyond my willingness to go round up the figures on tonight (I'm pretty f'n numbered out atm), which is why I asked whether someone might have them. Truth is, I'm fairly sure somehow has already done them & they're linked online somewhere I just haven't seen them.

Well except seemingly the entire GOP Congressional delegation.

You can't use 862bn. About 40% of that was tax cuts and a significant portion of the spending will be allocated in 2010. I can't give you exact figures for what has already been spent, but starting at 862bn isn't at all accurate.

Well, just doing the back of the napkin figures, if the $862B and 2.1M jobs are accurate, that gives $410K per job.

SI

That didn't take long.

You didn't understand my post.

The stimulus "worked" in the sense of providing short-term benefits to the economy, no doubt. That has nothing to do with the critisism/fears associated with it.

Printing money out of thin air and buying shit allows you have more shit than you otherwise would have. No fucking shit. Seeing people brag about THAT part really puts a spotlight on how doomed we are.

If the economy recovers steadily, we don't need to print another trillion in funny money to keep it going, and we don't have a double-dip recession within the next few years, than absolutely, the stimulus was a great thing.

Just like if I borrow money to get through a tough time, then in the long term I improve my position to where I'm more financially stable - the loans were a good idea. Or if I borrow a lot of money to get my business going, and those investments help my business get it's feet on the ground and be successful, it was great to get that loan. But just getting the loan and buying shit is not the "success" part. That's how financial deadbeats think.

I remember Democrats at least pretended they thought this was true when we had these debates back then - there were a ton of posts (both about the stimulus and the TARP) that "we just need to bide time to fix things". Now everyone's trumpting just spending the money AS the success, so apparently we don't need to worry about the underlining problems anymore. Again, just like a financial deadbeat - the black sheep uncle that gets his brother to loan him money, and then the uncle thinks all his problems are solved! (until the next time).

The stimulus certainly gives this country a CHANCE for success (just like a business loan), but the fact that we already apparently consider it a success (just because we got to spend the money), doesn't make me very optimistic that we'll take advantage of the opportunity.

It will be interesting, from an economic point of view (not interesting in the sense of the human suffering this will cause), to see what exactly happens when we just utterly disregard financial discipline long-term, to these ridiculous extremes. I really don't think we've seen anything yet.

Or in other words - is it worth doing something that decreases unemployment from 11% to 10% now, if those actions contribute to increasing it to 15%-20% in the not-to-distant future? I mean, maybe it will, maybe it won't, but THAT'S where success needs to be measured.

As expected (by any realist anyway). It's why my enthusiasm was tempered, he was a temporary solution to a more persistent problem at best.

Wow.

Independent thought not welcome he-ya!

Yep, what were they expecting, the second coming of Trent Lott?

This is part of why he won, he definitely didn't seem obsessed with team politics. Very refreshing. I think he's already taken more anti-republican views than most posters here have taken anti-Democrat views.

I don't think it should be terribly surprising that the conservative talking heads are up in arms. They're always grumpy about something. It keeps them in a job.

The Republicans should be well aware how this works. They're going to have to handle Brown much like the Dems handle Liebermann. He's not going to always vote with you, but he still votes with you far more often than he votes against you.

is this where we do the list thing again and show where we disagree with the democratic policies again?

I would LOVE to see your list again, I remember it made me laugh last time.

Not a lot of these types in the conservative punditocracy or tea party group, clearly.

You mean he doesn't want Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh telling him what to do? Sounds like a good plan to me. :D


You say that as if the stated views of either party really mean anything these days.

Are there many other Lieberman-like Democrats? I know the Republicans have Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

Russ Feingold takes some heat from liberals here and there for not towing the company line despite his reputation as being fairly left-wing. FWIW, I'm a big fan of Feingold and just donated to his reelection campaign. I loved it when he was asked why he voted against the Patriot Act and his response was "I read it."

Yes.

really? I dont think your reaction at that time was an LOL.

FWIW, I suck at searching the forums. I just looked for it and cant find it. I hate that.

Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, the House Blue Dog coalition spring to mind.

It certainly was a nice thousand dollar band-aid on a knife wound, but there are still major issues to overcome (perhaps spending that money on stitches would have been better). Hiring a bunch of people to build bridges and fix roads is a temporary fix, but those jobs aren't sustainable. The focus needs to be on creating long term jobs (esp with small businesses).

But, as Judge Smails says, "The world needs ditch-diggers too".

Agreed. I like the guy more after seeing his reasoning for supporting the jobs bill. Even if I don't agree with his policies, the idea of thinking through a problem and working on a solution independent of party is refreshing.

It's educational to note that when she started her career in the U.S. House, Olympia Snowe was generally considered a mainstream Republican. In today's GOP, she's a serious outlier.

It's educational to note that when JFK was president, he was considered a mainstream democrat. In today's world, he would be considered right of George W Bush.

Hooray for consistency! The final Senate vote on the jobs bill was 70-28. How do you justify voting against cloture but for the final bill?

IMO this is a terrible bill. 15bn is too small to do any good.

Not on economics. Sure he passed tax cuts, but his view of proper progressive tax rates and his desire to spend on anti-poverty programs would put him far to the left of almost any elected Dem.

I talking more on his war policies and tax theory - which is about 80+% of what democrats didn't like about Bush. He also was very conservative socially (although that's probably more based on the time than anything).

The guy who founded the Peace Corps, signed the first nuclear test ban treaty, promised federal funds for education and medical care for the elderly, used federal law enforcement power to end racial segregation, believed in government intervention in the economy to ease recessions, banned the death penalty in D.C., and used the government to set the price of steel would be considered to the right of George W. Bush?

In what way?

Depends on what you mean by conservative socially. He stood pretty clearly for civil rights.

On taxes, sure he cut them, but only after he tried to push through spending increases that Congress didn't agree to. I also don't think too many people would say Kennedy's 70% top marginal rate puts him to the right of Bush.

Also consider that Nixon would be considered a left wing Democrat these days. The guy, after all, started the EPA, OSHA, the Clean Air Act, SSI, and indexed Social Security for inflation.

Reagan moved the country rightward, remember.

Then maybe you should have said that. Regardless, you're still wrong, even on Vietnam. There's a gulf of difference between Kennedy's Realpolitick approach to Vietnam and Bush's Neocon approach to Iraq. Not to mention that Kennedy kept troop commitments under 20,000 and, according to McNamara before he died, was seriously considering ending the endeavor by 1964.

And if you think he'd be on the same page with Bush vis-a-vis taxes given the current context, you're out of your mind. His views on taxation need to take what taxation under Eisenhower was like.

And those are the only two points where Kennedy even begins to approach Bush on policy.

But, you know, one-liners FTW.

LOL, you take what was a positive post about a moderate Republican and turned it into a jab at the liberals on this board. Just couldn't help yourself? But I forget, you're "in the middle".

For the record, I'm pro-life and pro-gun. Is that enough of a divergence for you or am I still a sheep?

Fair point, I was just taken aback by the "independent thought" comment, that what I was responding to. It wasn't a positive post at all, it was a post mocking people who labled Brown a "turncoat", which I found funny.

I'm not anywhere close to the middle, in the sense I definitely hate the Democratic party way, way, more than the Republican party. But that doesn't even really have to do with the issues.

I don't think George W Bush was against the Peace Corps (he certainly did his fair share of nation building), federal funds for education (he spent a ton there - remember no child left behind?) and he certainly wasn't for racial segregation. So, it comes down to him banning the death penalty in DC (something Bush never tried to overturn) and spending government money to prop up the economy (Bush competed with Obama in that area of massive spending). Throw in both wanting to massively cut income taxes during a recessions and being very hawkish when it came to world foe (Al Quada for Bush and Soviet Union for JFK) and I'm struggling to find much of a difference between the two on anything substantive.

Here's some landmark quotes from JFK - do they sound like something that would come from Obama or Bush?

Certainly more of a conservative view given the health care/welfare/unemployment/social spending angle in both parties. I would say more Bush than Obama - esp taking a shot at the world's reliance on the US.

Bush, without question. Obama certainly seems a lot more focused on domestic issues.

Sounds like a line from the W playbook right there.

Again, much more W than Obama. Obama tries to walk a more neutral line in that conflict.

Sensing a pattern?


Yep, that's the current democrat mantra.

About as anti-Obama as you can get. JFK was extremely practical with his stance on numerous policies.

Now, there are certainly other quotes that are more platitude-based and up Obama's alley - but if you look at the comments that shaped his policies on personal responsibility/welfare, foreign policy, fiscal policy and the brashness with which he attacked the US enemies of the world seemed a lot more like W than Obama.

I wish we still had Democrats (or Republicans) like that-

"And so, my fellow americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

It's just an entirely different mindset of America. Nobody thinks like this anymore. They blurt out the quote, but nobody really thinks like this. It's like the exact opposite of the rhetoric of the Obama campaign.

And I don't hear any politician talk like this either:

"Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government. "

Today, taxes are like a moral issue. They're either compassionate or evil, depending on your side.

Why should they not be mocked? Anybody who expected Brown to be a staunch, reliable conservative absolutely deserves it. I'd wager a guess that even JiMGA would agree with that.

He still made the choice to enter a country pro-actively that posed no threat to the US. And, his rhetoric on Cuba/Russia was almost 100% that of W.

This is an unprovable assertion - no different than me saying Kennedy would cut taxes a lot more than Obama in today's climate. Atleast I would have Kennedy's own words in support of that action (as stated above).

OK, outside of determining when to attack a country without the ability to retaliate against the US, federal income tax policy, overall fiscal policy, investment in the US military, commitment to federal education spending, foreign policy regarding US foes and rhetoric to US enemies - W and JFK may not be all that alike.

Don't let JFK's own comments and policies impact a good story.

Actually I'd consider that a very liberal, communitarian mindset. Far different from the hyperindividualism ("free market") of today's conservative movement.

As for the tax quotes, are you fucking out of your mind?!! The highest tax rates in 1960 were 70%!! In 2000 it was 37%! Jeez louise, learn some context!!

They should be mocked, I just found it ironic considering the poster, and Lieberman's general status as some kind of super-villain.

Uhh, what politician in this day and age would be openly for racial segregation? Besides Tom Tancredo, I mean. (I kid)

You talking about me or Larry? If you're talking about me, Lieberman not winning the (D) primary in 2004 is the primary reason I did not vote (D) in 2004.

The politicians who piss off the D and R bases are my favorite kind.

Oh yeah, go up the thread however far & you'll find me cautioning against anything more than a temporary celebration on the morning after.

Yep...

FWIW, I'd love to see your complete list of RINOs in the Senate :)

It warms my heart whenever I see any variation/mix of Ds/Rs in the Yes/No congressional votes (until I get all cynical and realize that even those votes are likely just "swapped" for some other political favor).

I try not to keep a list ... could be used as evidence against me someday ;)

The Peace Corps were already in place in 2000. Did Bush support or oppose similar types of activities? Not to mention there's a world of difference between the type of nation building envisioned by the Peace Corps (bottom-up) and Bush's neocon foreign policy (top-down re-creation of government structures enabling the spread of free market democracy).


NCLB? You mean Unfunded Mandates R Us?


That civil rights bus had left the station by 2000. The best comparison would be gay rights. Tell me, was Bush as active on these as Kennedy was on civil rights for blacks?


Kennedy took an active step to ban the death penalty where he could. Bush's record as Governor of Texas should speak for itself on this topic.


Kennedy specifically believed in government intervention to stimulate the economy. Bush had to be convinced to consider spending specifically for this purpose, and only agreed when he was in the last throes of his presidency.


New spending on Afghanistan, Iraq and Medicare Part D still dwarf the total of new spending initiatives introduced under Obama.


Context. Kennedy brought the top rate from something like 90% to 70%, while Bush brought it from the high to mid-30s. There's a world of difference here that you're not seeing.


First of all, there's a huge difference between a state actor like the Soviet Union and a non-state actor like Al Qaeda. Secondly, Kennedy actively engaged his foe with diplomacy, while maintaining a hawkish stance. The Bush administration actively avoided diplomacy, even with state actors at one or two removes from Al Qaeda itself. A completely different approach.



Oh, so now Kennedy was more like W than Obama, and not:


Keep shifting those goalposts. Eventually you'll have a defensible argument.

Just doing my duty as asked by the current admin by keeping an eye on folks like you!

The taxpayers who've been footing the bill for glorified daycare for the past few decades would be interested to know that their contributions amount to "unfunded".

The states were given tremendous (an excessive amount) of leeway to determine their own so-called standards.

I love it when liberals claim their platform, and what distinguishes them, is that they're basically "for good things".

I'm for everything you said there - which is why I can never be a Democrat, because they have no clue how to get those things. Just being in favor of good things is enough for some.

I have a bunch of hard-core Democrat friends who really, literally believe that if you're against their method of achieving good things, then you're necessarily against those things (and hate poor people, I guess).

If I have concerns/fears about the stimulus, its not I hate people having jobs, and I love poverty. It's because I worry that the stimulus will eventually cause more poverty and job loss.

There's a world of difference between the escalation of military assistance from 800 "advisers" in Vietnam under Eisenhower to the 16,000 troops under Kennedy and dropping 300,000 troops on Iraq.

Regardless of that, however, explain to me how Kennedy's approach is "to the right" of Bush.


You have his words in the context of a 90% top rate. For a more realistic context, consider Ted Kennedy's views on taxation in the past decade.

And anyway, to prove that Kennedy would be "to the right" of Bush, you'd have to argue he'd cut taxes even more than Bush. Good luck with that.


Don't let logic impact yours.

Edit: Nevermind Jon, I just got what you were trying to say.

The lack of accountability for decades was a significant impetus behind NCLBA. I can't fathom anyone actually believing it was an entirely lofty ideal without some element of "finally gotcha" involved as well.

Nope. But I can definitely understand why you feel so right about everything if this is what you think of people who disagree with you.

Edit: There's more than two ways to think about things (or in your world, "good v. evil"). I'd be all in favor of a simple, efficient, transparent, single-payer health care system. My objections to most of the crap that's been actually proposed is not that it's "big government", but that they just promote more inefficiency, more corruption, and will ultimately cost the government and taxpayers more money per person than they're spending now, but with worse quality of care. And I've never even been to Aruba!

Agree or disagree with that, but don't tell me any of your opinions are morally superior to anyone else's when we want the same good stuff. We'll get a compromise on the health care stuff, and it will be a plan that mostly benefits those that make their living leeching off the government in some way. That's common ground for politicans, D and R, and the entities that keep them in office.

Yeah, I get that, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make. Arles wants to make the point that Bush believed in federal spending for education as much as Kennedy, but at best Bush's greatest education initiative is more about the restriction of funds (and accountability, and targeting) than any new expenditures.


According to wiki, federal funding for education increased by $12 billion from 2001 to 2007. While $12 billion is certainly a lot of money, when it's adjusted for cost increases and compared to the expansion of other spending during the Bush Administration, I'm not sure if it's accurately depicted as "spending a ton".

how do you know this though? what causes you to believe that this would be the case? where's the evidence, or examples of other countries where this is the case, as opposed to the opposite?

(honest question, not trying to be an ass)

I'm going to chime in here from a personal perspective. I've worked for two government agencies. One is the USDA and the other was the IT department that supports software that controls Medicare reimbursement. I can tell you with absolute certainty that molson is spot on in his assessment of what will happen. Seeing what I've seen would push the average taxpayer to tears for all the wrong reasons.

The typical solution to problems in the U.S. seems to be more layers, more complicated interactions of different entities. I remembered the flow charts of the original health care plan and I couldn't understand how people were so confident these things would interact in the way it was sold.

I see other countries with far superior health care systems spending a fraction per person (and as % of GDP) that we do. Sounds good to me. But those aren't the systems that being proposed here. We're going to spend MORE, and give people tax breaks and benefits to more easily participate in our shitty system.

When I see the more complex solutions to problems in the U.S., I know why this happens - the more entities that are involved, the more complicated the regulations, the more opportunity for health insurance companies and other corporations to take advantage of the government. The bigger our health care system is, the more the health care industries in this country will be able to steal.

People ask why we can't be like other countries on health care and I wonder the same thing (well I don't wonder, I know why we can't be like that.) But the point is, if someone wants to propose a European-style health care program for the money European countries spend on it - that'd be intruging to me.

I will disclaim that I'm not an expert on any of this. This is just my feeling based on observations of how government works, and America's history in trying to accomplish things like this.

I'm actually with you on this, molson. As much as I'd like single-payer, my confidence that it could be implemented effectively in the U.S. without becoming a pork barrel (and, heck, corruption) boondoggle, is not high.

But we're not even trying to be better, we're just trying to be bigger and more complicated and more beneficial to corporations. (by "we" I mean the politicans, I think the the supporters of health care reform have their heart in the right place)

Germany spends about half per person on health care that the U.S. does. And it spends about 1/3 less as a % of GDP on health care that we do.

Are any of the proposed plans out there "more like Germany" in that sense? (or in any sense?) Of course not. The Insurance companies will have to benefit from any health care reform for it to pass. (which means it has to be bigger, more complicated, cost more) That's how things are here. That's consistent with the plans that have been proposed.

Medicaid fraud in this country is RIDICULOUS. It's so easy for companies to make money off of it. That's not an accident. Any dollar we spend towards preventing medicaid fraud would come back in criminal and civil penalties several times over. But that won't happen, and that's not an accident either.

The BEST we can do, I think, under the current state of things, is to generally have smaller, simpler government. At least that decreases corporate dependence on taxpayer money. So that's why that's what I am generally in favor of.

As an investor (unwillingly, damn taxes) I am pretty interested in the ROI on something like the stimulus bill. I don't buy the bullshit that it is some mystical beast defying all possibility of quantification or reason, and at the same time is supposed to save us.

If they claim it 'created' 1.5 million jobs then they can specify HOW it did it. Otherwise it is just statistical noise and the same old games to dance around the numbers to satisfy whatever partisan agendas exist at the moment.

Say it eventually spends 862 billion in various forms, I think the straight up dollars per supposed job is a valid (if overly simple) metric. The funny thing is, regardless of whether it is tax cuts, unemployment extensions, or what not... it is still valid. The whole point is inject X dollars into an economy and Y jobs pop out the other end. If extending unemployment somehow doesn't have an effect on job creation it would be the economic charity case bill. I argue that unemployment benefits indeed does spur job creation, since it sponsors consumption and reduces push towards substitute occupations of inferior quality... but ya all of these programs are supposed to have an effect, lets guesstimate it.

For 862 billion if we just flat out gave people money, we could give over 4 million people 'jobs' doing absolutely nothing for one year with salary at $200,000. We could be a bit more modest, create 16 million jobs at $50,000.

Obviously, that by itself is not very useful, doesn't really invest all that much, just makes 4 million live a pretty good life for a year, or 16 million a roughly average income for a year.

However, as a benchmark I think it makes sense. If we are seeing much small results than this we have a few mathematical explanations:

- Waste, creating less jobs because parts of the pile are funneled off due to corruption/overhead. I think a large chunk is going right here.

- Extended timeframe investments, can't measure over one year alone since the actual impact is designed to be spent over a period of time. However these should be relatively obvious to find and break down, for instance unemployment extensions can be measured as a pool of payments that will be paid out over the next X months. (As an aside, modeling unemployment benefits has been a pet project lately... I'm trying to measure impact on consumer spending to time market trends, actually very amusing but I'd argue that unemployment extensions are actually responsible for a good deal of job retention in retail and arguably may have the biggest net impact of the entire bill...)

- Cost of materials, which gets tricky... Ya to build a bridge you create a bundle of salaried jobs, but to actually have them doing stuff you need machines, concrete, etc. Most people would outright subtract this as an expense of the bill and say that you need to remove those dollars from the measurement. I disagree however, materials need to be produced, and to do that companies need some sort of labor (hence jobs created/retained). But, in terms of economic impact the value of dollars spent on material towards jobs has a relatively lower effect, since you need to cut out the company's margin on selling the product, inflationary impact on prices (if their is a run on concrete because all these projects start at the same time, I'd hope they'd raise their prices otherwise they are inefficient capitalists!!!), and the fact that rather than creating or retaining employment most materials can be produced by simply ramping up productivity of an existing employment base.

- Tax cuts. Yuck, just yuck. Unless they are carefully designed to actually create jobs I've found tax cuts to be highly inefficient at improving investment. It essentially returns to the giving people $200K deal again. Or worst, backdoor subsidies that tend to get priced in and end up a useless handout to certain businesses.


Anyhoo, i just resent the notion that just because its the government you can't start breaking it down or that it has to be some mysterious beast you need to feed or else the economy will collapse. Why not consider the ROI of a stimulus bill (or gosh damn frickin TARP)? Why must we pour money down a hole when we can just as easily not spend and not tax the money out of people's pockets in the first place?

My point is that it's not even a left/right issue. Nobody wants a plan like Germany's here because powerful corporations would suffer. Even fiscal "conservatives" should be in favor of a plan that is more efficient, costs less, and covers more people, even if it involves a bigger government role. I certainly would be.

Democrats can push a "compromise", which keeps the lifeline of the important corporations, and yet they can still claim that they're compassionate because they got that (and blame the republicans for not geting more). (That's basically why I hate Democrats more - because they get to keep the support of corporations and still convince their supporters that they did some wonderful thing for humanity)

I wouldn't mind a Germany plan... I hates overly powerful corporations. I love small efficient businesses, or large efficient businesses, or basically businesses operating under true competitive conditions and constantly improving quality/quantity/price equation... none of which apply to Big Healthcare, be it hospitals, insurance, or pharmaceuticals.

I certainly don't hate the ones that stand up to this. I assumed most will just go along.

you're right about that it's not a left/right issue. it's a "powerful corporations vs. little people" issue. the corporations don't want a plan like Germany's - I think a vast majority of the supporters of health care reform would embrace such a plan.

It makes sense to me, that kind of sums up the difference between the GOP and DNC.

The GOP knows that they can't (don't want to) pass real healthcare reform, so they don't.

The DNC can't (doesn't want to) pass real reform either, for the exact same reasons, but they actually get people behind them by doing a little bit, and largely by opposing the GOP (they REALLY get their supporters fired up about that, because everyone likes to feel like part of a team), and yes, compared to the GOP, they can actually trick people into believing they're committed to real reform. They don't even really have to change anything to get credit for doing so.

It's pretty much the same net effect though. Where will things be in 5 years? It will either be no different, or it will be a more bloated mess, more easily taken advantage of by corporations. I'm sure it won't be more efficient, it won't be more transparent, because those are never the priorities of either party.

I wish Democrats would win a 100% majority in each house, just to see what excuses they could come up with to largely keep the (beneifical to them) status quo.

And this is where the nutty left comes in. I've never heard the Republicans call themselves "the party of Lincoln". Nope, never.

Stop hating on Lincoln ISiddiqui. FFS.

I've read Zandi's paper... I don't want to give him too much approval, because he's pushing some things I don't agree with, but obviously the numbers speak for themself. The impact of short term spending from unemployment spending is quite significant statistically, and tax cuts are relatively meh (I'd quibble on the exact numbers but he might have a better model than me haha).

Just want to caution that one year impact on GDP does not an economy make. If you wanted to measure economic health in general based on your ideology you could skew the impact of tax cuts or other spending higher or lower... I hate the notion of focusing on a statistic by itself (numbers can be gamed so many ways)... however at least it gives a start to breaking down these mysterious numbers. Now we just need people to actually understand and use these results when designing public policy. For instance, if all these tax cuts don't have such a big one year stimulus effect... why are they included?!

Duh. Because Senate moderates are fiscally responsible.

I was reading recently about the German economic system and how much power workers have at the executive/board level. Fascinating stuff.

Actually, I'd like to see ROI more often for pretty much every piece of government spending. Too many bills are passed to spend money seemingly on the basis of "hey, it's a good idea" while no one is asking why it's a good idea, how you measure that it's a good idea, if it's quantifiably better than that other idea, etc....

If I could pass one law, it would be to require that all new spending bills contain specific and measurable ROI values, and their performance against these measures is reported on clearly and publically.


Correct. Not to sound like a Wall Street Quant or something (and I'm really the furthest from it), but honestly almost everything can be measured, in some way. State your program, define your measures for success, and then execute against that.



More realistically, create an application process for 862,000 grants of $1,000,000 a piece given to the best entrepreneurial ideas. That might stimulate some jobs! :D

If you gave me 862 billion I'm sure I could create quite a few jobs.... and they'd actually last longer than a year, but then we couldn't help the bigwigs slush funds out as much...


German co-determination (I believe that is the term) is a very interesting topic. In a pure ruthless capitalist sense I think executive boards should be fully shareholder run... but the shareholders have been pretty sheep like in general so its pretty much an abysmal failure. Worker participation is better than the stiffs they generally have, besides actually knowing something about the business they might tend to pick (on average) policies that generally boost the health of the company (whereas the executives of say some US companies are typically looking to prey upon the company in many ways).

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However, policy-crafting aside, the practice generally has better worker relations and per-capita productivity (which are worth their weight in gold by themself). Some thinkers try to marginalize its impact, but in general I think thats the influence of the monied interests coming into play, or capitalism purists (like I generally am) pushing an agenda.

Overall I think its better than what we do here on average, but just about anything is better than what we do here. On the other hand, there is nothing preventing an American company from implementing any of these tactics themself as a way of improving their shareholder value overall, the freedom is one pleasant aspect of our economy (rather than government mandate) unfortunately the way that freedom is just poorly exercised is disheartening.

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I agree fully with you flere, every bit of public policy that deals with funds allocations should have measurement criteria built into it by default. Even if it is only for tracking purposes. Government transparency is probably the single biggest thing I think we could do to reduce spending (and if I were running hte stimulus, would be where I invest to create short and long term jobs).

When the state is taking up a large percentage of the workforce in a supposedly free market economy, we have issues. Both from an economic standpoint and from a government power standpoint (the more necessary the government becomes to the survival of a populace the easier it becomes for the government to control and oppress that populace, even if its relatively benign oppression at first).

A good part of why is because their doctors get paid much less than US doctors. This article sums out how office-based doctors get paid.

Keeping German Doctors On A Budget Lowers Costs : NPR

But what you said flies in the face of the point I was making. Maybe it was unintentionally unfair to go after a sentence you said in a different context but you did put it out there (and it was what jumped off the page at me as I was scrolling down, which is the only reason I commented on it in the firstplace)




Okay, I'm going out on a limb here & say that spending $12B should always be accurately depicted as "spending a ton". That's whether it's to eliminate enemies that desperately need to be eliminated, cure cancer, or to put down synthetic turf on the back lawn of the WH. Damn the relativity, a billion here & a billion there sooner or later does add up to real money.

Yet the doctors still sign up for work and do their job, and apparently they even do a good job. If they close up shop early because the money has run out, it hasn't seemed to cause a massive outcry from the public (who are still rating the quality of service very high).

Its really simple economics. If its broke, people bitch, they spend more money. If its not broke, people tend not to bitch, the job still tends to pay more than anything else they could be doing, so the doctors show up for work, and if they cut off service to optimize their money... THATS A GOOD THING! We want optimization and restraint... keeps price inflation down, saves doctor work hours, prevents money going to waste instead of fixing people.

You could say it increases the probability of undetected problems since there was restraint in performing the potential procedure that would have detected it... but that becomes a probability game that the Germans are winning.... they generally have lower health problem rates than us. A common sense gamble that is paying off.

So what exactly is the problem in paying doctors less? We pay every profession what we need to, anything more than we need to is simply a market inefficiency. Most of ours in the US are created not by the market, but the government interference itself (or government sponsored interference).

I'll just let that quote stand on its own.



For the past 2+ years, there hasn't been an increase of 0%, much less 0.5% increase. At this point, having that extra 0.5% is something that's starting to fade from memory.

If you make $1000/week, getting a $5/week raise isn't really going to affect you now is it?

It's one trip through the drivethru that couldn't be taken otherwise. And at this point, that's an improvement in my quality of life.

Was this directed at me? Because I'm the one who brought up doctor's pay in Germany but I don't remember mentioning any of the things you are seemingly responding to (like where did I say it was a problem to pay doctors less?)

Well an interesting example is that for many people wages have been pretty flat this decade (oh those recessions, if nothing else a good excuse to prevent giving your workers a raise).

Even the horrible CPI (a terrible statistic that has been mangled beyond recognition) says from 2000 to present inflation is about 30%. So I'd just argue that those percentages tend to add up pretty quickly. 7% since 2007.

I'd argue I'd rather have the government keep its hands off my 0.5% if I had a choice....

Just a general question, how many people here actually make 30% then they did in 2000? If you don't on average you have been getting poorer this decade even if you haven't taken a pay cut, congratulations!

yeah, getting 2 more mcdoubles in a week is a huge boost in your quality of life...

I'm mostly stressing the point it is a good thing, but you are right I do come off as posturing it towards you. My bad, still just emphasizing the points I considered important is the bulk of the post. I'm sure someone in this thread will bring up the counter argument anyway, so we'll just assume I was throwing it at them!

EDIT:
I should mention in these posts I'm rarely attacking anyone particular on the board, I much prefer attacking the faceless hordes using terms like 'the rich' or 'fascists' or 'damn dirty liberals'. I do tend to use bombastic and somewhat combative phrasing though, so just ignore that... I've disagreed with everyone on this board at some point I think.

Given there were about half the people in the US in 1960 as there are now and South Vietnam is a much smaller country than Iraq, I'm not really sure there is much of a difference.

He was much more aggressive in actions and rhetoric towards the Soviet Union, Cuba and Vietnam than Bush was towards Iraq/North Korea/Iran (his axis of evil). He was more fiscally conservative in his actions and rhetoric on tax cuts combined with holding a line on spending (something Bush never did). Bush spent almost 40% more (as a % of spending) on education (2.3%) as JFK did (1.6%). Kennedy was much more pro-Israel that Bush was (esp at the start of W's term). Kennedy was more on personal responsibility and less on government spending to solve problems than Bush. He cut taxes and held spending better than Bush - Kennedy took the debt from 55% of GDP to 45% in his 3 years. Bush took it from 60% to 68% in his 8.

So, maybe "to the right" isn't the right semantics. I would say more fiscally conservative and hawkish than Bush. Either way, his policies were certainly nowhere near the strategy of the current democratic party (and, to be fair, certainly not what the current republicans are doing now as well).


Saying Ted Kennedy and JFK were similar on tax policy is a bit of a stretch. Just because they had the same last name doesn't mean they had the same ideas on fiscal spending and tax policy. I'm pretty sure Teddy would be outraged if a president came up with a budget spending less than 2% of the federal budget on education.

Not at all, you could argue that he would cut taxes similar to Bush AND hold the line on spending - something he did much better from 1960 to 1963 than Bush did from 2000 to 2008.

There are two parts to a budget - revenue and spending. You seem to only be focused on the first. A true conservative tries to increase revenue through tax cuts while holding spending. JFK did a much better job at that than W.

That's why I asked. It seemed out of character for you to jump on me, especially for things I didn't say. :)

I don't know a whole lot about the history of U.S. taxation but I'm trying to understand the context of this. Were there other kinds of tax liabilities that are more present today than there were then? Or was the federal government simply taking billions more from people back then (relative to income/wealth)? Or in other words, how has the overall revenue of the government changed over time - relative to different kinds of taxation and overall income/wealth of individuals in the U.S.?

I'm sure those numbers are out there, I'll look if I get the chance.

Yeah motherfucker, considering I eat one meal a day more often than not for the past couple of years, and the dominant motivation for that is cost-related, it would be. And since between a third & half my meals every week for the past six months have involved store brand peanut butter or baloney, yeah it would be.

Sorry if that bursts your bubble somehow but welcome to the state of the economy in the late 2000's.

Well, payroll taxes have expanded ever since Medicare and Medicaid started in 1965. But that doesn't necessarily account for all of the difference in the resulting income tax drops from 90% in the 1950s to 38% in the late 1980s (and hovering around there since)

Arles: You need to look at your timeline. The Kennedy tax cuts were signed into law by Johnson and took effect well after Kennedy died. He also wasn't about less government spending, as his initial plan was to use deficit spending to jumpstart the economy, but conservatives in Congress balked. In fact he would have likely tried to boost spending if he hadn't been killed. He told his chief economist:

Even though I argue against the stimulus impact of top bracket tax cuts, I do have to say that a 90% bracket is pretty much insanity. Not that anyone paid quite that much, the history of tax dodging started pretty much as soon as it was passed (and indeed it was only passed after the monied interests made sure they could dodge into the forseeable future).

Ideally our taxes even on the very rich would fall below 38% (in my opinion much lower), the main reason I object is because of the assumption that revenues must be fixed or growing, and that a 1% cut in the top bracket would be equivalent to a multi-point bump to pretty much the middle class (because the extremely poor are exempted from everything). It would literally kill the economy to fix revenues, give the rich a 1% cut to 'stimulate' the economy, and watch consumer spending equivalently drop by say 2-5%.

We have a economy where a tenth of a percent in consumer spending is enough to send the DOW into a fit (dumb sheep investors, but I digress).

The unpleasant realization for the Republicans (which I wish they would embrace) is that they need to cut that top tax rate by cutting the pool from the bottom up. Instead of a 'fair' cut of 1% across the board (or a more progressive proportional cut across the brackets), they need to insist on nothing at the top, large cuts in the bottom and middle. A little delayed gratification, but I think they could get their cut if they schemed it right...

Spending is stimulated, circulation of money in the economy increases (this is the multiplier effect you see in one year GDP calculations for instance), the revenues of the rich actually go up in proportion to dollars of tax reduction multiplied by circulation (a billion in spending is more than a billion in revenue, short term), causing tax receipts from the fixed high tax bracket rate to increase.

If the loop generates a net positive cash flow you feed it back into tax cuts, extending the range you apply it to until you get to top bracket cuts. There also are a few fringe benefits:

- decreasing demand for social services from the lower/middle classes over time which can be rolled into spending cuts (and therefore more tax cuts)
- increased job creation to produce the goods that are being bought
- reduced default rate in the middle class loan sector helps stop depletion of reserves (the much mentioned 'deflation' of the money supply, despite general inflation in PRICES)

It is not a wonder cure and it can easily be sunk by our spend/tax happy and ill-disciplined politicians and businesses, but if we were smart it would give us a feedback loop that could get us closer to some reasonable level of efficiency (instead of our expensive bloatocracy). Unfortunately no leader of the common day thinks about systems, they are all about bullet point statements of 'I will reduce taxes' or 'We must save social security... by spending on it', and so on. They are too narrowly focused to look at incremental processes as a solution, they want the headlining giant bill to make them famous, or they want to 'leave it to the market' which is too short-sighted to invest these days.

Anyhoo, I just felt like babbling about tax systems and maybe bring up something in a light others haven't seen before.

Here's a chart of the history of the bottom and top tax brackets.

National Taxpayers Union - History of Federal Individual Income Bottom and Top Bracket Rates

From 1950-1963, the top bracket was 91-92% for income over $400,000 (not adjusted for inflation).

I still think there's a context there missing - I don't believe for a second that people making more than $400k were shelling out 90% of that (or the amount above $400k) to the government every year. That's about as restrictive as NBA max salaries.

What was a person's "real" total tax liability in the 50s v. today, relative to various levels of income/wealth? I don't know if that can be measured.

Or a couple electricity bills over the course of a year.

It's $260 for the year which to many, is a nice chunk of change. We forget the hoopla over a $600 rebate check many received a few years ago. With a family, every bit helps.