Republicans: Tax cuts create jobs and stimulate the economy!

Last resident of abandoned street, suburbs becoming ghost towns...
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/no_ones_home_neighborhood

 

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Agreed.

 

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This is a good sign. We have overbuilt. People need to move back in with their parents if they can't afford their McMansions, learn to save, develop sustainable budgets.

 

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Saving wont be possible.What we need to do is raise everyones salaries, raise our prices for all our goods and services, and through inflation the economy will balance out. If you make more money then you can save. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage

 

Basically we will have to charge more for services, and pay each other more so we can afford them. This could take a decade, but saving isn't an option unless theres inflation, because of the ever increasing debt requiring an ever increasing salary(inflation).

 

If you increase salary and prices you haven't done anything. We will be in the exact same place that we are right now.

 

First people will be able to pay off their debt. It's not like the debt is indexed to inflation. This means if your contract for your student loan or your house says you have to pay $100,000, this is a fixed amount and if interest rates are frozen at 1% or removed entirely, eventually everyone will be able to pay off their debts by inflation.

However if we go into DEFLATION while everyone is in debt, we are ALL going to be screwed because now they wont be able to ever pay back their debts, and what are we going to do? The only way people are ever going to be able to pay back the kinda debts they have, as well as the national debt, is through inflation. This is how we paid back the debt from the great depression. FDR used government spending and welfare, the minimum wage and the war to create inflation, which expanded the middle class and left everyone with more money in their pockets at the end of the day. The money wasn't worth more, but everyone had more of it so everyone could buy a car, a house, afford a dog and 3 kids, and they didn't need college to do this.

Now to have that lifestyle you have to get a masters degree or get married to someone who has a masters degree, and not just a masters degree but in a high paying field like medicine, law or business, and then you can buy a house, have 3 kids, and live the same American dream that previous generations could have with just a highschool diploma.

The current system is debt for diploma. In the past a highschool diploma was completely free, so FDR's generation had it easy in many ways, they didn't have global competition, they didn't have to be smart or educated, they just had to show up on time and work hard. Now you have to show up on time, work hard long hours (twice as many hours as FDR's time for the same pay), and you start off in debt. There is no GI Bill for ordinary Americans, welfare doesn't work anymore because illegal immigration has neutralized the benefits. The problem is that there is no way out of the debt bondage, and telling people to work harder and get smarter isn't realistic and wont work.

Better advice is to tell them to move the hell out of the USA and live somewhere where college is free, healthcare is free, and the working hours aren't as high. Even Canada is offering a better deal to the average worker than the USA. How long before Mexico surpasses us?

 

Do you really think there are that many people with the cash to buy that $250k house wanting to immigrate to the US? Enough to buy up all the excess housing?

 

I sure don't! That's about the LEAST workable idea that anyone could come up with.

Odds are that only 1 immigrant in a million could come up with a quarter-million dollars for a house - and he would be some minor drug lord looking for a safe haven.

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There is no habit of blaming Bush for everything. There is a habit of denying blame of him for what he manifestly has done. The people with that habit have no chance of looking deeper, finding real causes, etc.

The media have been delivering the Republican line and talking points quite faithfully.

Measured in dollars. We have been fighting a war, you may recall - economically, digging useless holes and then not filling them in. The Egyptians under the Pharoah had a booming manufacturing output in pyramids - not so good for the actual manufacturing base of the economy overall.

The jobs lost were also automated, and have increasingly involved high-end value-added products.

Displaced to even lower paid service jobs, instead of automated in place and sharing in the productivity gain - the automation taking place elsewhere, and the productivity payoff unshared by the capital.

Service jobs pay less, in general, partly because they are often difficult to automate for productivity, and partly because they often involve a direct time-value comparison with the buyer. When they are automated and productivity gains loom, they can be exported as well - WalMart is moving its IT department to India, last I heard.

Does the word "feudalism" ring a bell? How about the phrase "at your service" ?

 

Hell yeah I do. I'm not talking about people dragging themselves across the border, I'm talking about families from all over the world that would gladly pack their bags and fly the entire family over to get out of countries that are hurting financially far worse than ours. I imagine millions of families would come from just the English-speaking countries of Australia, South Africa, England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, etc...

When I was working on boats I met hundreds of people from these countries that were dying to settle here permanently but couldn't get long-term visa's. We could also offer citizenship to every student that graduates from any of our universities and to their entire family.

The quickest way to grow an economy is to grow the population. We need to set our racism aside and open our borders.

Edit: I'm not sure why you guys are suggesting that they pay CASH for a house. Very few people do this. My idea works far better than anything politicians are doing today.

 

Yes, so? What does it matter how we denominate the output when comparing between countries?

Do you have a better suggestion?

Indeed, but said war consumes far less than 10% of our output. We've also been manufacturing computer processors, airplanes, industrial machinery, etc. by the boatload and selling it all over the world. Meanwhile, foreign car companies have been building slews of factories here to employ the auto workers that can't be supported by the Detriot welfare fiefdom (which produces products that, for the most part, nobody wants in the first place).

Also, last I checked, war-related production has historically been one of the (if not the) primary factors that has bolstered the manufacturing base. If what you're concerned about is the manufacturing base for its own sake, I don't see why we should care what use (if any) the products are put to. The key is that stimulus is provided that results in infrastructure spending. I.e., the factories will still be there, waiting to be used, long after the war is over, whereas they would not have been built (or rather, would have been closed) without the extra demand for military production.

That's cute. Beneath you, but still... cute.

Such as?

There are other service jobs than answering phones and telling people to restart Windows, you realize.

The professions, for example.

"Feudalism?" Really?

Again, less cuteness and more substance would be appreciated.

 

Wow. One story from a city that has been on the out's for decades and suddenly it's the great depression?

Bullshit.

Again, lose your bias and get some perspective. Or go watch a documentary about the real great depression.

Meanwhile, I love the anger here.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853

 

We're not comparing between countries. We're comparing within the US, which has been losing the capability of manufacturing many things people need every day, and the employment of making them.

These lost dollars are not fully compensated by the manufacture of things like missiles, which add to the dollars the same way those pyramids you haven't considered carefully do.

And the jobs are not compensated by the creation of greeter positions at WalMart, housecleaning and yard work on the estates, day care and home care for the infirm, etc.

Government protectionism in action, forcing the siting of factories in US Congressmen's districts rather than more efficiently in, say, Mexico. Or Japan itself.

Which we are importing, that being cheaper for the rich than educating the lower classes.

We'll all take in each other's lawsuits, after we've each gone $75,000 in debt to get the certification. Sounds like a plan.

The modern war does not actually end, from the manufacturing pov. And the kinds of factories that traditionally have been left idle and ready for consumer manufactures are often no longer in America. We've been buying ammo and other gear from Asia, for example.

 

And yet, the text of mine you quoted was an explicit comparison between the manufacturing output of the United States and that of any other country.

If that's not what you want to talk about, well, okay. Just don't present your statements as if they are direct responses to that topic.

And, again, if you have some inflation-adjusted manufacturing output numbers, I'm all ears. The bald supposition that any reported manufacturing output increases must necessarily be inflation artifacts is less than impressive.

And simultaneously gaining the capability of manufacturing many other things that people need every day, and the employment of making them.

Why should I care if my t-shirt is made in Vietnam, or my computer keyboard assembled in China? Why should I care if high school graduates can't afford a second car? I say institute national healthcare, expand educational quality and opportunities (and maybe invest a bit more in public transit), and then let the chips fall where they may. If somebody wants to stop their education when/before they graduate high school, and then sit around waiting for some capitalist to pay him a middle-class wage to stand next to an assembly line pulling a lever, well... he's chosen to be a vassal, hasn't he? Why should I care if he doesn't get paid what he thinks he's entitled to?

All of the dollars, whether they went to pyramids or missiles or teddy bears, ended up in the pockets of people who work producing those things. Wasn't that supposed to be the point?

Again, I've already agreed that the safety net for helping workers transition from manufacturing to services is insufficient. I don't see that as having anything to do with preferring manufacturing to service work for its own sake.

The protectionism only determines which state in the US the factory gets built in. The decision to site the factory in the US is driven by distance to market, labor costs and public relations considerations. Building a factory in Mexico will never make American consumers feel warm and fuzzy about the prospect of buying the cars you produce, nor shield your revenue stream from currency spikes or national trade disputes.

Also, aren't you in the middle of complaining about American manufacturing jobs being resited in (more efficient) foreign locals? Isn't such protectionism exactly what you are advocating? I'm at a loss as to what your point is here... am I supposed to disown these factories out of some kind of free-market fundamentalism or something?

More to the point, weren't many of these factories sited in the districts of Republicans firmly in the Reagan/W camp?

It's cheaper for the middle class, too. For that matter, it's cheaper for most of the people in the lower classes, since only a small portion of them stand to get educated in the immigrants'/imports' stead. Not that I wouldn't like to see an improvement in educational quality and opportunities, but the benefits of imports are often more crucial to the lower classes than the affluent. That's not to say that the downsides of imports don't also fall disproportioniately on them as well, but I don't see any grounds for putting it in such crude class terms.

Also, I'm pretty sure that we're a country of immigrants. Whom do you suppose we should admit instead? More low-skill workers that will depress the wages of the lower classes? Nobody at all?

I had imagined that many of us would become doctors, engineers, accountants and businessmen, in addition to lawyers. Hell, maybe some of us would even decide to teach.

But the point was simply that service jobs come in a wide variety. Taking a job in the service sector does not imply that you don't produce anything of real value, or that you are worse off than a manufacturing worker. Quite the opposite, in many cases.

Well, then, the stimulus to the manufacturing sector provided by said war will likewise be permanent then, and so help to sustain the nation's manufacturing base.

Well, if they aren't ever going to be left idle, I don't see why we'd focus on those particular factories... But we don't want the usual low-end factories anymore anyway. It's much better to build factories for advanced metallurgy and automated assembly, and then retool those to build high-value-added goods. The idea is not to regress to the 1950s, but to move forward.

 

What we also need to do is shorten the work week from 40 hours a week to 20 hours a week, this will allow us to hire twice as many people. We should also design our businesses to operate 24/7, this way people can shop or work at any hour of the day or night, this is more efficient than 9-5 segments. It should be 24/7, and the hours should be decreased so there are more jobs than people.

 

You are either insane, delusional, or stupid if you think people are going to pay to come to a broken economy where there are no jobs waiting for them and the toughest most competitive environment in the world. You'd be an idiot to come to the USA. You'd be much smarter to go to Canada, or Europe, because they have better economies at the foundation. And if you really want to go somewhere, go to China where you know there will be plenty of jobs, or Brazil, or France.

 

And this is the worst thing you can do for the economy. If you grow the population then you have to reduce the working hours for all the society. If we are working 40 hours a week and want to double our population next year, we have to start working 20 hours a week by next year so that we have enough working hours for everyone. I think we need to focus on reforming the work day, and we need LESS Americans not more. We don't even have enough jobs for all the people we have and you want more Nadya Sulemans? Are you insane?

 

Haha, you are clueless. Growing the population increases the demand for jobs just as much as it increases the supply of workers. Every citizen still eats, clothes themselves, entertains themselves, etc...

My goodness, you just showed me that nothing you think about economics or politics should be taken seriously. Thinking that people moving here are going to work but not consume?! Bwwaahahahahhahaha!

 

The OP asks: “Question for my Conservative friends. How many jobs did Bush's 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut create? "

Before making an "analytical guess" at answer, let me first note from memory, that this sum was during his eight years and was mainly reductions in Capital Gains and Dividend Taxes plus Corporation Tax reductions with some downward adjustments in the Alternate Minimum Tax formulae. Exact details are not important for my point, which is these funds were not targeted on the poor who would immediately spend the funds, but mainly benefited the already rich, many of whom were rich because they were frugal, made good investments etc. and consumed much less than they could afford.

They mainly invested the funds and this did create a lot of jobs. A very crude estimate of the funds required to create an industrial job in the US might be $300,000 and a “MacD” job for $50,000 dollars. (3e5 or 5e4). A trillion is 1e12. So if these jobs were created in the US, 15e11 could create 5e6 or 5 million good industrial jobs or 30 million MacD jobs; HOWEVER, investors are ALWAYS seeking the highest rate of returns, adjusted for risks.

During GWB’s eight years China’s GDP growth Was about 12% on average and US was less than 3%. So the investments mainly made China’s industrial capacity grow and become more modern. Creating a job in China costs less than half what it does in the US so during these eight years (if all went to China) about 10 million good industrial jobs OR 60 million MacD jobs could be produced. The modern Chinese factories with cheaper labor filled the shelves at Wal-Mart and closed many factories in the US. Of course not all went to China. Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. also benefited.

Thus it is highly probably that GWB’s tax relief for the already wealthy, speeded and deepened the current recession in the US. Giving funds to the wealthy does cause investment which do create jobs. “Trickle down” AWAYS works this way, but in a global economy, US tax reductions for the wealthy, destroys jobs in the US and creates them in high growth regions, like China. One should not be surprised that that is what in fact happened. Obama is very wise NOT to repeat this mistake.

SUMMARY: The 1.5 Trillion probably made about 5 million industrial jobs and 30 million MacD jobs* in Asia, mainly China.
AND
destroyed about the same number of jobs in the US, but a greater fraction were industrial jobs (fired factory worker often got or created MacD jobs). Thus, by my above “analytical guess,” as direct result of GWB’s tax relief for the wealthy, US lost at least 4 million industrial jobs and about 15 million MacD jobs .

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*Some were the toy factories that are now closed, so could call these "temporary jobs" of few years duration.