US payrolls slashed (CNN Money) (http://money.cnn.com/2003/03/07/news/economy/unemployment/index.htm)U.S. employers slashed 308,000 jobs in February, the government said Friday, the worst round of job-cutting in 15 months, as the world's biggest economy nearly ground to a halt ahead of a possible war with Iraq. See, the Bush news conference reminded me (seriously) of one of the Doonesbury satires; several times I got this seventies-era frame in my mind, "Come on, Rather, don't be piggy ...." (http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.cfm?uc_full_date=19740120&uc_daction=X) The strip is an excellent source of reflection (http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.cfm?uc_full_date=19730522&uc_daction=X).

Oh, yeah ... the article, the article. Um ... really sucks about the economy, eh?

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

America is in decline and Georgie is speeding the process.

good time to pull out your domestic investments and hoard em up :bugeye:

U.S. employers slashed 308,000 jobs in February, the government said Friday, the worst round of job-cutting in 15 months, as the world's biggest economy nearly ground to a halt ahead of a possible war with Iraq.

It looks like it's time for another tax cut (for the wealthy). :)

More Bush bashing I see. Everything bad that happens is his fault. This one is SOOO tired.

no its not his fault that he thinks that by owning companies to act as colonies will help the working class. His actions are not his fualt. Just as me hitting you in the nose is not my fualt. Silly me huh or silly you?

The president is doing things all wrong. Decrease taxes on the poor and middle class and increase them for the rich. That way, the majority has more money to spend. Then, they buy things with that money, and help out the economy. Helping out the rich does nothing, because they make up a very miniscule portion of the population--whereas helping out everybody else would greatly make things "better."

This is a great weapon to throw at a crappy economy, but the president is doing the opposite, and, like every other time that it has been tried (going back to the end of the Roman Empire) it has failed. Giving the rich tax cuts does not work. Call it trickle down economics, it's the same formula that, if overused, contributes greatly to the downfall of an empire.

Bush bashing is common because it's so easy to do, and often legitimate. immane1, please, counter my argument(s), if you will...

good time to pull out your domestic investments and hoard em up Won't that cause further decay? And more rapid?It looks like it's time for another tax cut ( for the wealthy )You know, my brother used to have this great British joke, about Clinton at Oxford. How when the broadcast went out and Clinton said, "I didn't inhale", there must have been a chuckle and then a roar at a pub or two, and a couple of chaps wiping a tear, saying, "Oh, Billy! You still make us laugh."

I think everybody in Poppy's "Skull and Bones" (http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.cfm?uc_full_date=19880629&uc_comic=db&uc_daction=X) circle just falls over laughing every time Dubya proposes another tax cut. Something about this Republican economy--reduce revenues, increase spending, blame the Democrats--just doesn't sit right.

(Oh, f:eek:ck, this is funny .... (http://doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.cfm?uc_full_date=20030309&uc_comic=db&uc_daction=X))More Bush bashing I see. Everything bad that happens is his fault. This one is SOOO tired. The thing is that Bush has known the economy is going south since he started screaming "Recession! Recession!" without any dignified restraint. In the meantime, it's still declining. An interesting article from the Globe and Mail (http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/gttech/TGAM/20030308/UBUSHN):The U.S. Congressional Budget Office now estimates that the President's budget would produce a string of federal deficits over the coming decade totalling $1.82-trillion (U.S.).

The economic news is so bad that Mr. Bush has virtually abandoned efforts to talk it up, and reporters have stopped asking serious questions. Only two of 19 questions during Thursday night's unusual prime-time news conference dealt with the economy.

Asked, for example, what a war with Iraq might do to the U.S. economy, Mr. Bush shot back: "The price of doing nothing exceeds the price of taking action."

What else could he say? Mr. Bush knows that his economic plan, featuring an unpopular abolition of taxes on corporate dividends, is in deep trouble. It has been sharply criticized by U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, many economists and even key Republicans in Congress whom he needs to push the package through. The economy is a very rough issue with George. He can't seem to do much to get it together. But it's not his fault. He only hollered that the sky was falling. It took a village--rather, a whole nation--to make an excuse of it.° Nonetheless, Bush has done little, if anything, to help the economy; he may have done more to hurt it than anything.

Now, the Globe and Mail can say what it wants about the prestige of the Quinnipiac College poll, but it's still a bloody poll. This observation held irrelevant--as that's the way the political machine works--what we have here is the first shot across the bow of a sinking administration:Previous Quinnipiac polls had put Mr. Bush over the key 50-per-cent threshold. Re-election is now "far from a sure thing," concluded polling director Maurice Carroll, who added that the economy is starting to weigh down Mr. Bush politically.

All other major polls show that Mr. Bush's job approval ratings, which were mediocre before 9/11, are drifting back to where they started. Like I said--polls, schmolls. But still, that first poll to suggest that you're in that serious of trouble is always an unwelcome omen.Decrease taxes on the poor and middle class and increase them for the rich. That way, the majority has more money to spend. Most excellent. The same amount of money spent by the middle class will be better-invested in the economy than spent by the upper class (http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.cfm?uc_full_date=19890313&uc_daction=X).

Notes:

° It took a village - I worked for a company that made a very bad move in the 1990s. As a result, the stock price slid, customers jumped ship, investors lost confidence, and the whole thing started coming apart. As Bush came into office, the company was restructuring under a new CEO. Upper-level axes fell left and right; heads rolled. Bush screamed, "Recession! Recession!" and the company dared look the public and the investors in the eye and blame the economy for the layoff of ten percent of its labor force. Once again, poor corporate stewardship is blamed on "The Economy". On the one hand, no wonder Bush is taking hits. To the other ... well, he started it.

:m:,
Tiassa :cool:

Won't that cause further decay? And more rapid?

i knoww that tiassa.. i didnt really mean that seriously... but on one hand, id like to see that... im just a pessimist... 'everythin can go to hell' is a nice motto ;)

Hehe yeah when everyone starts hoarding gold all it takes is for some smart terrorist to go round bombarding reserves with the right kinda radiation and boom goes your gold reserves ^_^ Radioactive for generations hehehe.

in rome only the wealthy contributed to the state. The poor were fed soup. What was needed was a way to put the poor to work as production mechanisms to further stregnthen the economy by makeing the money go further. You tax the rich by using property tax for large estates and you tax the poor through sales tax and social programs. The rich don't use these programs but they still pay into them. Another issue that hurt rome was slavery that displaced the poorer people. We use the poor as the wage earner class. If rome instituted the wage earning class it would have reduced its over head and been able to strengthen its economy in the long run.