Where is the US economy headed?

@JPB,

Funny and true.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@okie,

okie wrote:

rabel22 wrote:

atomic power and electricity?

You might guess again. Hint, one important power source starts with with the letters di.

Di wind?

Ah, I got it. Direct Solar Radiation.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@okie,

okie, Is that supposed to be "oi" or "oy?"

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Hint, ci, you don't make diesel out of oysters, do you?

1 Reply

@okie,

oy veh!

0 Replies

Please continue on with whatever conversation is pertinent. But I have crafted an article which I wanted to toss out for discussion here.
There is this bi-partisan deficit reduction commission (7 Repubs + 7 Dems + 4 Indys), appointed to (a cynic might say) study the issue until after the recent election. Their recommendations are due by December 1st.
Co-chairman Erskine Bowles (D) and Alan Simpson (R) lobbed the 1st grenades:
eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, raise the gas tax, increase the retirement age. Some of that would be offset by reductions in tax rates.
Now some of the other commission members are weighing in with ideas such as a national sales tax.

An earlier part of the discussion had to do with the federal workforce. Specifically, how many people work for the government (excluding military) and what they earn. The idea was floated of reducing the number of government workers.

That idea resonates with many Americans. Really resonates.

I found an article by Paul Waldman at the American Prospect dated Nov 16th. 90% of it is partisan pro-labor tripe that I would not post here. But here are some stats he puts up, with citations.
I would use these as a starting point, but don't put my name on them.

> The number of government employees is declining. When JFK was President, there were 13.3 per 1,000 Americans. Now it is 8.4.
> The suggestion is made that the average Federal employee makes $120K vs an average wage in the private sector of half that. Waldman argues that the private sector includes low-wage earners like janitors who are likely to have no benefits. The Federal sector has mostly professionals and contracts out maintenance jobs. The people actually on the payroll (accountants, lawyers, doctors etc) get benefits.

I am putting this up - without agreeing to it, perhaps - as a launching point on
a discussion of the size of the federal payroll.
Ta. Or, Oy. Or Whatever.

2 Replies

@realjohnboy,

rjb, Dollars to donuts that the federal government has a lot of inefficiencies and waste even at 8.4 per 1,000 citizens. Let's add in local and state government workers, and what have we got?

Too many on government payroll and benefits; all while regular folks are losing their jobs and homes, and more families are going hungry. On top of that, all those wages and retirement benefits must be paid by everybody - including the poor. Sales tax, franchise tax, and all those hidden fees add up quickly. Heck, San Francisco is talking about a toll just to go into the city; round trip $6/day.

Somethings gotta give, but all levels of government doesn't have the kahones to trim their payroll. California is looking at a $26 billion deficit - and counting. They're still playing games with fake revenues they know will never see the light of day.

Our economy and governments are broken; I don't see any way out of this crisis.

0 Replies

@realjohnboy,

Let me begin with a question: as the population of America grows, is it not natural that the size of the government needed to properly service that population will also grow?

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

On only one level that may be true, but their pay and benefits have increased more than the average worker. I'm not sure at what level of production government workers are rated from, but I'm also pretty sure that a lot of waste goes on in duplication and inefficiencies.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

On only one level that may be true, but their pay and benefits have increased more than the average worker. I'm not sure at what level of production government workers are rated from, but I'm also pretty sure that a lot of waste goes on in duplication and inefficiencies.

Is this in fact true? Note the part of RJB's post:

Quote:

> The suggestion is made that the average Federal employee makes $120K vs an average wage in the private sector of half that. Waldman argues that the private sector includes low-wage earners like janitors who are likely to have no benefits. The Federal sector has mostly professionals and contracts out maintenance jobs. The people actually on the payroll (accountants, lawyers, doctors etc) get benefits.

If you took any private sector business and outsourced all the lower-paying and especially the lowest-paying jobs to some other business, the average payroll and benefits would be sky-high.

I do think there is redundancy and waste in government and I'm not opposed to the idea of cutting the size of government. However, I don't accept plans that recommend the cutting of government without adequately explaining how the services they currently provide will still be provided in the absence of a large portion of their workforce, or some cogent explanation for why those services are not actually needed.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

I never talked about using a hatchet to cut government workers. There are plenty of ways to look at productivity, necessity, cost/benefit - even in the government sector.

At a time when more civilians are being laid off from their jobs, and losing their homes, it's incumbent upon all levels of government to also cut back their expenses. They can't continue to spend money they don't have or will not get from tax revenues. Government can't continue to use fake revenue numbers to support expenses; that's fraud in every sense of the word. They also never learned to save for a rainy day. No household can run the way our governments run their "business."

If they're afraid to increase taxes, they must also cut costs. It's as simple as that!

I would start with bringing our soldiers home from all around the world. We can't afford it.

0 Replies

If the US does not change it's economic situation really fast we will all be speaking Chinese in 10 to 15 years.

0 Replies

More on the GM stock offering:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/g-m-prices-its-shares-at-33-in-return-to-stock-market/?emc=na

0 Replies

@mysteryman,

Quote:

Just out of curiousity, exactly what do you think trains and ships use for power?

Of course, since you are unable to work out inferences and consequences, you don't realize the comparison here is to flying. I guess if conservatives could think things out, they'd be liberals.

0 Replies

@mysteryman,

Aren't you old enough to remember those places where electric trains once ran and haven't you seen the cement arches with the electric connections below the arches?

Besides, the point is that trains are more efficient than trucks and individual cars.

0 Replies

@H2O MAN,

Quote:

It's the government school system that breeds this
kind of anti-intellectualism of the American people.

Hey, paranoid, there is no government school system except at the city level and at the level of several communities joined together in rural areas.

0 Replies

@H2O MAN,

Besides, if the left had had its way in the 1960s, schools would be better now.

When I was in high school, we had to read six books during the summer and one book each of the 10 months we were in school in addition to the class projects. Try a curriculum like that today and the right wing parents would be up in arms about making their kids work too hard.

The lefties took training themselves to teach seriously so we majored not in education but in what we wanted to teach. The right just liked easy classes, always did.

0 Replies

Quote:

November 18, 2010, 8:45 am
Were the Bush Tax Cuts Good for Growth?
By DAVID LEONHARDT

Liz Peek at FoxNews.com congratulates me for writing about the importance of economic growth. So in the spirit of maximizing growth, I want to pose a question: Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?

Those tax cuts passed in 2001 amid big promises about what they would do for the economy. What followed? The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II. Amazingly, that statement is true even if you forget about the Great Recession and simply look at 2001-7.

The competition for slowest growth is not even close, either. Growth from 2001 to 2007 averaged 2.39 percent a year (and growth from 2001 through the third quarter of 2010 averaged 1.66 percent). The decade with the second-worst showing for growth was 1971 to 1980 — the dreaded 1970s — but it still had 3.21 percent average growth.

The picture does not change if you instead look at five-year periods. Here’s a chart ranking five-year periods over the past 50 years, in descending order of average annual growth:

DESCRIPTIONBureau of Economic Analysis, via Haver Analytics

I mean this as a serious question, not a rhetorical one: Given this history, why should we believe that the Bush tax cuts were pro-growth?

Is there good evidence the tax cuts persuaded more people to join the work force (because they would be able to keep more of their income)? Not really. The labor-force participation rate fell in the years after 2001 and has never again approached its record in the year 2000.

Is there evidence that the tax cuts led to a lot of entrepreneurship and innovation? Again, no. The rate at which start-up businesses created jobs fell during the past decade.

The theory for why tax cuts should create growth and jobs is a strong one. When people are allowed to keep more of each dollar they earn, they are likely to work longer and harder. The uncertainty is the magnitude of this effect. With everything else that’s happening in a $15 trillion economy, how large of an effect on growth do tax cuts have?

Every available piece of evidence seems to suggest that the Bush tax cuts did little to lift growth. I have yet to hear a good argument to the contrary, but I’d be fascinated to see another blogger or an economist take a crack at it.

Update: A reader asks for statistics on real economic growth (that is, adjusted for inflation). The above chart is already adjusted for inflation.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/were-the-bush-tax-cuts-good-for-growth/?hp

Wow - what a great examination of the lie that is 'cutting taxes on the rich spurs growth in the economy.' This statement is regularly bandied about by Conservatives, yet it's totally false. There's no data set supporting it.

ALL the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire, immediately and permanently. It would end our budget problems quickly.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

That's not the only issue; that the Bush tax cuts did not help our economy. It also damaged the tax base at all levels of government that decimated them into bankruptcy.

Growth is needed to keep our economy and government healthy; the Bush tax cuts did neither; it made them worse.

However, the conservatives have now changed their tune to: taxing the wealthy is a shift of wealth from the rich to the poor - as if that makes any more sense. They created the poor; many middle class families lost their jobs and homes.

Conservatives rarely, if ever, makes any sense; they use sound bites that seems to resonate with their party members while destroying this country. They're doing a damn good job at it too!

They won the House based on their promise of jobs; they ain't gonna deliver. Sound bites don't produce anything. Extending the Bush tax cuts will only make things worse for everybody. Conservatives would rather see our country go bankrupt like Greece and Ireland.

The GOP had better produce jobs by June 2011, because they gave Obama two years after Bush created the Great Recession - and that was world-wide.

Let's see what their sound bites will do this time!

0 Replies

On this topic:

Quote:

Dems will vote on just middle class tax cuts, Hoyer says
By Greg Sargent

Steny Hoyer, the number two in the House Dem leadership, told Democrats at a caucus meeting this morning that they would get to vote this year on just extending the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, a senior Dem aide tells me, signaling support for a confrontational move towards the GOP that liberals have been pushing.

Asked if Democrats would definitely get a chance to hold this vote, the senior aide responded: "Definitely."

Hoyer's declaration comes as Democrats have been debating the way forward on the Bush tax cuts, and another aide tells me that "more than half" of the Dem caucus supports this course of action.

The move indicates that House Dems are growing more resolved to draw a hard line on the Bush tax cuts, forcing Republicans to choose between supporting Obama's tax plan and opposing a tax cut for the middle class. However, the way forward still remains murky. Even if such a measure were to pass in the House, it's unclear whether the Senate will agree to such a vote, and the White House has not endorsed the approach.

What's more, the vote could conceivably go down, or alternatively, Republicans might successfully mount a procedural response, known as a "motion to recommit," that could also force a House vote on the high end cuts. I have not been able to determine how House Dems might respond to such a move.

For all these reasons, this House move does not preclude a deal being reached in the end on a temporary extension of all the cuts. And plans could still change: The House Dem leadership has yet to publicly endorse this plan.

Still, this is a real step forward.

It's on now, bitches! The Dems absolutely need to do this, because it forces the Republicans to directly admit that all they care about is tax cuts for the rich. It will really put them over a barrel.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

Where is the US economy headed?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know