Where is the US economy headed?

ican, as usual in most of your discussions, you have the variables wrong. Right and left from the inception of the concepts have differentiated between authoritarian and absolutist regimes, which are on the right, such as monarchies and monarchy-and-nobility states, and those modern day ones where a small group of people control the government and usually most of the economy--i.e states where only a few people control everything and make the decisions, versus the left which are based on citizen control of the state and decision-making. The Nazis, if you actually read their principles in the context they used them, and Hitler's statements (for example that he promised to do away with socialists and labor unions), were absolutists wit everybody subject to the state in essentially every aspect of their lives, and the state totally under control of the Nazi party and Hitler. that is absolutism even beyond the scale of monarchy and Louis XIV's "Le etat c'est moi". Actually the Soviet Union was an absolutist oligrachic state too, despite their rhetoric. Citizens could only rubber stamp what the Premier and his few cronies (if even they had any voice) decided--very much like the abvsolute monarchs who preceeded them by a couple centuries. Which is why dictatorships are always rightist. You have it completely wrong. Nazis and communists, by their very nature, are and will always be of the extreme right.

The Republicans have a decent chance of taking control of congress. So what is their jobs and economic plan?

ECONOMY -- REPUBLICAN JOBS PLAN IS JUST A $10 TRILLION GIVEAWAY TO CORPORATIONS AND THE RICH: Despite their best efforts to avoid discussing any policy agenda whatsoever, some Republicans have recently been touting their ability to come up with "positive solution after positive solution" on job creation and the federal deficit. They point to their "new" House Republican Study Committee approved plan -- the Economic Freedom Act of 2010 -- as proof of that claim. The problem is that the plan is neither new nor a solution: it "is actually a huge doubling down on the Bush agenda of budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that won't effectively create jobs." A new analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the plan would add close to $7 trillion in deficits over the next ten years. By c ompletely eliminating capital gains taxes and reducing the corporate tax rate to 12.5 percent from 35 percent, along with other tax cuts to further enrich the wealthy, 61.5 percent of the tax benefits under the plan would go to the richest one percent of households in 2012. Further, "under the plan, the average middle-class taxpayer receives a tax cut of $467. The average taxpayer in the richest one percent (with an average income of $1.4 million) receives a tax cut of $157,500." Despite Republican claims to the contrary, the evidence is clear: tax cuts for the wealthy "fail to spur economic growth." Instead, their jobs plan leaves the economy in the worst possible position: with both ballooning deficits and extremely inefficient, anemic job growth.

--americanprogressaction.org

Republicans: robbing the poor to support the rich.

When I saw Farhenheit 911 and looked at Flint, Michigan, I knew no one in DC, Repub or Dem, cared.

With thanks to Advocate:

1. Economic recessions and depressions almost always result from insufficient "effective" consumer demand for goods and services produced domestically. In economic terms, merely wanting something does not constitute "effective demand." For a want to become an "effective" demand for goods or services, it must be accompanied by the monetary ability to actually make the purchase.



2. Jobs are not created by just having large pools of investment money available, as most big corporations and banks now do. There must also be the opportunity to invest in a business that will have customers who have the money to buy the goods and services. Then and only then will investment money flow into business opportunities and job creation.

3. Over the last 30 years, the Republican-Right economic theory that economic prosperity and employment automatically "trickle-down from the wealthy" has been proven again and again to be fallacious. Tax cuts for the wealthy create huge investment money pools -- but not jobs.

4. Republicans are seeking to extend the tax cuts for the wealthy by falsely stating that increases in taxes for the upper 2% of income earners would hurt demand and prolong the economic downturn. Experience and history prove otherwise. The large majority of buying is done by the remaining 98% of the population. The top 2% invest much of their income, not spend it on consumer goods.

The top 2% has seen their incomes soar while for 80% of the population, their real income has been stagnant since 1979.

pom, Kinda makes one wonder where the heads of the conservatives are on these forums when they continue to advocate for the rich not to pay more in taxes while our government spends money on wars and while our federal deficit continues to skyrocket - that our children and grandchildren will have to pay.

They must all belong in that 2% of the wealthy.

If they are among the 2%, it explains how they have the time to post as much as they do.

Well, it seems you and I post regularly on these forums, but I surely do not belong in that 2% group of wealth holders.

Ah, true, true! I post in between doing things, running into my home office. Right now, I just stepped out of the tub before going in search of my paycheck (my wallet was stolen last week and in having to shift my direct pay, my check went astray) and then to work. I also am working one job right now, although I am preparing for the other when it resumes in a month.

I am in the lowest quintile.

I'm in the highest.

Economic activity and wealth are not fixed quantities that even a well-intentioned government can reapportion without consequences. Many socialistic systems end up delivering only uniform poverty precisely because they inhibit innovation and investment that might lead to the expansion of net economic activity and wealth. Free Market capatalism is subject to cycles and excesses in economic activity, and can lead to wide variations in the resulting distribution of wealth. However, in most cases it yields much higher mean and median incomes than do heavily regulated or socialistic systems. There are exceptions and variations in the application of these principles, but their validity is clear from the central tendency of historical examples.

The textile and heavy manufacturing industries in this country were wiped out by cheap foreign competition and the actions of organized labor unions to achieve a greater degree of "equity" for their services. The equity they got was the loss of the jobs of all their members. In most cases the stockholders of the companies involved lost their assets as well as foreign competitors grew or took over their businesses.

I'm not suggesting that arguments about promoting greater wealth for the "bottom" 90% of earners through differential taxation or redistribution are necessarily invalid. However, those who advance such arguments should also address the side effects of what they propose on the overall level of beneficial economic activity and wealth creation.

Can you account for the fact that big business and small businesses made more money when Clinton was in power than when GWB reigned in terror? GWB also brought about the ruin of the financial system.

Your idea of free market is a monopoly of the Wall Street leveraged loan that with the excess profits are leading to control of the economy and cut-throat business and inflation.

Whatever point you are trying to make, Bill Clinton is probably not your best example. Just because he was a member of the Democratic Party doesn't mean he was down to the level of Obama in regards to the economy.

georgeob1 was suggesting Democrats are socialist therefore their ideology conflicts with wealth creation while the Republicans 'free market' system (actually destroys wealth) does not.

Yes, GWB tried to reign in terror: that is, tried to destroy terrorism and failed.

Clinton refused to try to reign in terror by trying to reign in al Qaeda after their attacks on our embassies and our destroyer Cole., and left GWB to cope with the consequences of the subsequent 9/11 terrorist attack.

Clinton was fortunate that he did not have to cope with the Democrat congressional majorities in 2007 and 2008 that blocked GWB's efforts to rein in Fan & Fred to stop their start of the Fan & Fred erosion of our economy.

The free market creates and does not destroy wealth.

GWB was a reign in terror as people are afraid for their jobs that disappeared because of his stupidity. His attacks on Muslim countries only made terrorism flourish and thus Americans are in terror of attacks. During Clinton years Americans were not afraid of attacks. Why even GWB was in kindergarten reading to kids. George Bush Senior made enemies everywhere in the Muslim world.

But, George, the principles are at the mercy of the applications and the latter are subject to human nature in its present state. Human nature is conditioned by socialisation. Thus, I will argue, the problems you point to, which I agree are real enough, are the result of the socialisation rather than the principles.

The question is whether human nature can be altered to bring the principles to bear fruit.

So, it seems to me, it is the socialisation which renders the principles as ineffective as you say and thus the process of socialisation is the proper subject of such discussions as these. The conditions under which the failures you mention have taken place are not necessarily the conditions which will be operative in the future. If, for example, the scientists take over from the bumbling rhetoricians (in the widest sense to include buying advertising time and space) it is possible for us to be conditioned, using up-to-date scientific developments of Pavlovian research, to be happy in submitting to authority even if we are having our bottoms smacked by lady bureaucrats wearing intellectual spectacles, high-heeled boots and sporting an impatient mien. I think that the compassionate nature of many posts on A2K from our opponents, male, female and in between as most of us are said to be, suggests that the socialist principles under discussion guided by such sweetness might have an outcome which could possibly surprise us both.

My debates with atheists, often quite heated, are posited on the assumption, which I readily admit, that the surprise will be that a pretty good system supplying growth decade by decade is transformed into a smoking ruin. If you agree with my assumption all your compromises with the sweet and passionately compassionate are vehicles for destruction and render your wordplay pointless. The wherewithal for the expression of compassion is a necessary tool for that expression to be effective and thus has priority. The group of American billionaires who are donating half their wealth to charity prove that. Their wealth has to come before their charity.

Actually, they should donate it all to the government trusting that the electorate has chosen the best people to invest in the future; which is not their own expertise.

pom, The only "highest" that spendi is claiming, is his ego and his attendance at the local pub.

Can you get 'high' on beer? I thought you needed the weed.

talk72000, I see you've not been initiated into beer drinking in the armed forces.