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NO, Ross Perot should be the pirates!
There's no need to blame one side or the other for the financial mess. Both are at fault, republicans let major changes to the CRA through congress. Republicans let the GSE's grow to be half the market. That democrats were the ones pushing for them is irrelevant, republicans had power and let them come about and are thus equally at fault. Both parties were so happy with the debt bubble they were building up that they just kept on encouraging it.
Dozer, you're still an idiot. Before the 1920's, the government wasn't pissing away a substantial portion of the gdp on crap. Try learning about our banking system's history. Finding something out about the world economy at the time might be useful too.
Jonnan, thankyou for proving that Reagan was fiscally responsible and tried to decrease the deficit.
I know it's hard, but think. 2.5%-6% deficit. 5% increase over Reagan's request. Fucktard.
When the president submits a near balanced budget with a 1% deficit, decreasing the deficit from 2.5% to 1%, and congress then tacks another 5% on, congress is accountable for for the deficit increase. Chalk another one up to the general stupidity of man, someone submits a near balanced budget and then gets castrated for the increases congress adds in. Sounds like Bush Jr. too, but that asshole could have veto'd his and didn't. Reagan was fighting a super majority in the house.
Not that anyone will learn from it, some reality.
The business cycle. This is a natural law followed by every species on earth. Business mimics perfectly that cycle perpetuated by life in general to a degree that is quite humbling. We're not much different from protozoa. All life forms inherently boom and bust in cycles, occasionally becoming extinct in the process. When the wolves have good hunting, they grow in numbers, kill off their prey, starve, and die off en mass. Their prey then balloons in population following the loss of the predators. The food gets scarce, the prey gets numerous through plentiful, malnourished food, and the cycle then repeats. It's an unavoidable and necessary cleaning process. It weeds out the genetic garbage.
When a certain industry is making lots of money, lots of stupid people get into that industry, profits shrink, businesses become unsustainable, and the only ones left at the end are the best. The tech bubble was a perfect example. That would be the one that had just burst as Clinton left office. His "growth" was a bubble. When you stop pretending there is no business cycle and accept that major industries balloon and then collapse as a function of nature, trickle down economics is the best thing that ever happened to this country. We've had half the unemployment rate and the standard of living has more than doubled since the 70's.
People are only crapping about their lives because they have no sense of perspective. They want to buy a new car every two years when cars last three times as long as they did thirty years ago with the same amount of work, and were kept far longer then. The single guy fresh out of highschool wants to work one job and start a family without having it hard when thirty years ago, people that tried that were also working two full time jobs to make ends meet and didn't get to buy a new car ever. Fifty years ago, they had a third part time job as well and walked to work. This piddling 6.5% unemployment was normal before Reagan. 6% was considered full, reaching it meant you'd done everything right. 7% was minor unemployment. We owe Reagan the fucked up view that 4.5% was disastrous through the last presidency.
@psychoak
Are you saying I can't blame Nader?
Blame him for Gore winning the popular vote and having a life after politics that allowed him to brainwash a billion retards into thinking an already finished and in reverse warming cycle was going to doom humanity.
Joe the Plumber.
I'm pretty sure if I asked around I could find more. A lot of businesses that run on slim margins are affected greatly by tax rates.
Can you prove this? Have you done a survey of businesses? Have you asked their accounting departments? Have you done research?
Sigh.
It's really quite simple.
There are three major places where money can go: The government, businesses, and individuals.
Money isn't magic. If it enters one place, it leaves another. If it leaves one place, it enters another. You can't pretend that moving more of it to one place won't reduce it in others. It doesn't work that way. It's a finite resource.
Joe the Plumber isn't a business owner. He's intending to buy the business he works at...
Bad Cobra.
If money is used to a purpose, it creates something. If it creates something, the odds are someone was employed. If a business owner simply pockets the extra money instead of expanding, and most of them expand, he's still going to spend it at some point, and people worked to provide whatever he spends it on. Now if he burns it, ok.
Of course, the problem with taxes aren't that they don't create something because they do the exact same thing, it's that they tend to encourage bad behavior. Instead of being paid to create, welfare pays you to not. When government employees slack on their job, nothing happens. When private employees slack on their job, they get fired. When government does a bad job at something, nothing happens, when a company does a bad job at something, they lose money over it. Since wealth generation is what determines how prosperous a country is, the more wealth sunk into activities that either slow or do't generate any at all, the worse off you are.
This is also why these bailouts they keep doing have had such catastrophic effects on the industries they've targetted. They encouraged bad behavior by rewarding it, sustaining the ineptitude that got them into a tight spot. As a result, we have a failing auto industry, mortgage companies taking insane loans out, airlines that go bankrupt every few years...
I am trying not to take sides here, because I tend to rip one side apart when I do, or play devil's advocate but let's talk about taxes, bipartisan:
If Stardock/Ironclad made this game with the current taxes in place and were able to sell it digitally for $20 US; does it or does it not make sense that if taxes were raised on them, to say, the tune of net result, $5 US per digital copy, that they would raise the price to the consumer, passing along the "tax" increase, or eat the $5 US from their bottom line? That would be $2,500,000 US they would have to eat, according to their estimate of the 500,000 copies sold, correct? This is basic inflation. Taxes raised on business, business passes along to consumer, prices rarely decrease, wages thus increase, taxes increase, business passes... etc... right? It's not really hard to think about it logically. Decreasing taxes on business, could have the effect of lowering net result prices to the consumer if there is enough competition. If you owned a business, would you eat that much?
To put an end to the discussion of the "Rich not being taxed enough" you should read this by the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121659695380368965.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Hayseeds galore..
You are aware that the bottom 50% doesn't work enought, either because they are the youth of the country, earn too little, or are retired working part tine. Of course people that make 5 to 10k a year aren't going to contribute large percentages, they're fuking broke! like most of the country. What should alarm the average user is, 50% of Americans make so little that they aren't even capable of contributing to society in a higher percentage. This absolutely shows the wealth gap in the Country, and that gap is widening with each passing year, especailly under these current tax cuts, and the wealthy only tax cuts under Reagan. The top 50% earn the money, and obviously, that's where the tax burden lies. The Progressive tax system can be put up for discussion, but there would have to be stipulations on who would qualify for the flat tax if it were to be implemented. The consumption tax is another one to look at, but as far as either the Republican o r Democratic parties are concerned, neither want to rock the system, just tweak to coincide on what their platforms stand for.
The only people that are going to refrom the tax system in a radical way are most likely going to be the independents of the Country, which as of now have no chance in the general. Both parties are the Busiess party, with the Right placing more care and emphasis on the upper middle and Big Business, and the Left placing more emphasis on the average worker and the overwhelming majority of small business. This has at least been the party platform over the past 50 years, with obvious changes to the major parties over the generations. Foreign policy on both sides are imperialistic in nature, and needs to change, otherwise, we're gonna continue down this path we're on right now.
To bring this conversation back to the point, I think the Country was willing to give a Leftist polictician a chance for several reasons. Over the past eight years, the Amercian people didn't seem to agree with the financial and economic policy(proven the tax cuts for the top earners did not work in the way they were intended, which was BS from the get go), which has seen this country turned upside down. The Dollar reached all time modern day lows, oil reached levels and exceeded those we haven't seen in decades, important social programs were being threatened with privatization which ironically came at a very unfortunate time on Wall Street, and the list goes on. After both the Presidency, the House, and the Senate all gaining more positions for the Left, this country is Center right in a lot less places then where it's Center Left.
This Picture shows it all
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/05/us/politics/20081104_ELECTION_RECAP.html
Shows the Bible belt clearly, the last remaining strong hold of the Republican Party, ie..the Palin Supporters. Next time around, look for Texas to go blue, it almost did, and this was a Black Candidate afterall. Imagine the wider margins with a White candidate.
I was speaking from personal experience as a Business owner, and the number of people I know and associate with. I wasn't claiming fact, just what I believe is common sense. Tax Cuts certainly have benefits, but have very little impact on job growth. Let's look at a very recent example that's glaring and punching both of us in the face right now. The Bush Tax cuts. We've had horrid job growth under this adminstration. If Taxes impacted job growth in any susbstantial way, we'd have seen ENORMOUS job growth over the years, but this just isn't the case. I'm not counting fast food and Walmart part time jobs that don't even pay a living wage(which the Bush admin has always tried to claim as a success). If that's the benefit of massive one sides tax cuts, then that's another negative.
Releasing massive amounts of capital into the economy creates jobs(Both public and private through spending projects like infrastructure, or a Home Builder like Toll Brothers bulding 20,000 homes..etc), newly found industries, renewed industries, growing industries from consumer demand, etc...all are job creaters. Bush and company have been a cancer to this Economy, and we'll be very lucky to get out of this current downturn in the near future. I would blame it soley on his policies, but they certainly didn't help. One of the biggest problems right now for American companies is our ability to be competitive with foreign companies. Our healthcare costs alone make it very difficult to compete on a global scale where Business doesn't need accomodate for, and this adminstation has turned a blind eye to it. Of course, it's not just the tax cuts impacting the economy, it's the Wars and massive deficit spending all contributing to one big cluster fuck. Hopefully the new guy can do something, but at this point, I think we're all gonna have to hold on tight, it's gonna be a rough ride no matter what policies are put into place in the near future.
Just look how fucking stupid Conservatives were before all of this, and their condesending attitude towards anyone with differing opnions. It's no wonder Fox viewers are the least informed of all...just listen to this excellent video. They were in denial the whole time...and they're in denial about this election as well..
Excellent video showing the WRONG
Do people that listen to Noam Chomsky just not know how to count or what?
Vietnam war entered into by Truman as primariy observation and advice, Korean war entered into with full scale combat operations.
Korean war ended by Eisenhower, Vietnam remains in the observation and advice stage.
Kennedy takes office, ramps up Vietnam war, sending in special forces, starts napalm clearing and other rather disagreeable acts. Kennedy also interfers in Cuba, Bay of Pigs anyone? We can't forget his more recent contribution either. That little Hitler wannabe in Iraq was put there by, wait for it, Kennedy! Yeah, the Kennedy administration set the Baath party up in power too, nice huh? Gotta love coups.
Then of course there's Johnson, Mister Great Society himself. Vietnam explodes into a massive blood bath with 200,000 troops shipped into theater, rising to over half a million before he leaves office.
Damn those conservatives for being a bunch of warmongering imperialists! Shit tard.
eriously? Noam Chomsky? Weak sauce.
I am all for consumption tax, it makes too much sense.
And Obama wants to cut taxes on the bottom 50%????
F.Y.I. I spent most of my life in that bottom 50%...
That political map is Bush reaction from war mismanagement, and Black racism.
don't pretend it didn't happen this time. Less will vote for a white person.
Oh and this country had it's biggest boom, economically, with the Bush tax cuts since the "Dot Bomb" and 9/11, remember those things?
Bush and company are barely Republicans and NOT Conservatives, btw. I think they should be on the "other side of the aisle"
edit: font messed up I don't know why...
. . . and I'm assuming he intends to do stuff with it. I don't think he'd buy it if it didn't have potential for growth.
Okay. I'm waiting for your numbers and statistics. With sources, please.
Well, that capital has to come from somwhere. As I've said, it's not magic.
. . . and all things I've seen businesses do. My parents had a house built a few years back, and the government didn't need to help them. Habitat for Humanity has built 300,000 homes using donations mostly from individuals and businesses. Yes, the government is capable of this stuff - but so are individuals and businesses. There's no pressing need for the government to do it, and no proof that the government can do it better than anybody else can.
I think blaming him is nuts. We didn't have this crises until very recently. If his policies were as truly horrible as you claim, it should've collapsed dirung his first year. Personally, the only thing I'd blame him for was not seeing it coming. I'd blame other people for the crises itself.
Maybe Fox news has a condescending attitude, but so what - I want facts, not emotional appeal. I don't look at attitudes. I don't have time to watch the video right now, maybe later.
Probably from a copy and paste somewhere. For some odd reason, this forum likes to pull in random styles from other places. Try using the HTML button to look at the source code and clean it up.
The real problem with trying to argue all science-like with this economic nonsense is that there's no hope of seriously hard data. Money is all just a web of agreements--it ain't specific tickets based on a fixed amount of some underlying resource like silver, gold, or oil. Survey data is based on the messiness of language and totally undermined by the fact that people both lie and change their minds. When you start talking about things like whether a tax cut will encourage "business" to create more jobs or a tax hike will be directly passed on to consumers, you're totally in astrology-land. Each business is unique, and, for some, doing what you think is "stupid" is exactly the right choice, at least from their POV.
All we can really do is make our best guesses, acknowledge that they seriously include hunch factors, pick leadership who seem to agree, and hope things work out adequately in the short run if our folks win power in a given election. Well, that, and, if you're a stupid hippy like me, you might also want your leaders to put some money behind their talk about just taking care of people even if it means no plasma screen any time soon.
What psychoak says about biological boom-bust cycles is true as far as my lay reading has gone, and I'm a pretty big fan of the life sciences. But one of my favorite college instructors, who is a respectable sociologist, once chewed me up one side and down the other for trying to pin most of an essay on a biological metaphor. If you take the idea of our being self-aware with any seriousness, it will force you to accept that we have a major additional variable in our activities that over-breeding deer do not. It also brings in all that morality baggage, and consensus so far seems to be in favor of assuming we can somehow learn enough to make our economy stop emulating the biological boom-bust thing, or at least moderate the process so the extremes are not so unsettling. My youthful love of chaos is completely gone, so I shamelessly hope that this view is close to correct even if we're about to go through some long, hard years of additional learning.
Except societal inertia will keep things from changing extremely quickly -- it takes time for even presidential authority to move something as large as the economy.