The Obama Tax Hike

[SaadBell 0]

Our health care system is fine, this is a joke correct, and no I didn't miss your lovely sarcasm. So we don’t need to do a thing about our health care system, and if what you say is true about choosing a health care over security, Canada has both and doing just fine, why can’t we do the same.

[GaryC 7]

Paying for the things we afford ourselves only opens our eyes as to what the things really cost. That will help us evaluate better whether we really want them. Being such an advocate of the illagal attack on Iraq, for example, you shouldn't have a problem paying for that. Instead, you're forcing the next generations to pick up the tab for W's wet-dream. That just ain't right anywhay you slice it. I'd ask you to put your money where your mouth is.

I am happy to put my money where my mouth is. The war was needed and I am glad to pay for that. The cost now is less than the cost of not doing it later. It's all the other BS that the dems want I don't want to pay for. The attempt by the left to make things fair for everyone makes things unfair for all. I would love to see about 2/3 of the social programs cut back or eliminated all together. Make them what they were originally intended, a safety net and not a way of life. The economy would be healthier and the people would be able to take care of themselves without the need for the government to "take care of us".

When and where have you advocated payng higher taxes to fund the war effort? Let's see it.

I am stating it now. Show me where I ever said I didn't want to pay for it. Lets see it.

Right here. You're advocating McCain's irresponsible continuation of Bush's disastrous fiscal policy. How does that pay for the war effort in Iraq? Where does that raise the 2-3 trillion dollars that this war is costing us?

I repeat, show me where I ever said I didn't want to pay for the war. I didn't. Bush's tax cuts were the best thing any president has done since Reagan. McCain wants to continue that. It will stimulate the economy and increase the federal coffers. Cut the useless social programs that just make us dependent on the government. Pay for it that way.

Bush has drained the coffers more than he has filled them. The war is funded by IOU's that the next generations will have to shoulder. You are being dishonest here.

Do dishonesty at all. But your just not understanding the problem if you think tax hikes will fill the coffers. It will drain the even faster. Raising taxes suppresses the economy. People earn less and fewer people work. This results in fewer people paying less taxes on less income. Tax hikes hurt everyone. Cutting taxes is the answer. It stimulates the economy, puts more people to work and more people pay taxes on more income.

The late eighties (when Bush Sr. had to raise taxes to start paying for Reagan's irresponsible fiscal nightmare) and the 1990's prove you wrong, Gary. They just prove you wrong. After sensibly raising taxes and promoting economic growth, we ended the 20th century with balanced budgets and an America where the majority of the population got to share in the economic gains of the expansion period. You can deny it all you want but it worked better fiscally and economically than anything Reagan or W did. Much better.

It didn't prove anything wrong. When Bush Sr raised taxes it hurt the good economy that Reagan left him. It also didn't get him re-elected. Time after time lower taxes have been proven to help the economy. You have no clue what your talking about. But I am sure you can dig up some cherry picked story about this to "prove" your point. To yourself that is, no one that really understands isn't taken in by that load of ####### about higher taxes helping anything.

Our health care system is fine, this is a joke correct, and no I didn't miss your lovely sarcasm. So we don’t need to do a thing about our health care system, and if what you say is true about choosing a health care over security, Canada has both and doing just fine, why can’t we do the same.

Move to Canada then. See you!

[mawilson 2,133]

So after cutting taxes for the last 8 years, when do you figure the economy will be stimulated?

Where have you been the last 5 years?

[SaadBell 0]

To be honest, if Obama doesn't take this election I might just move, I can't afford this anymore, I would love to be able to see a doctor without worrying about how much it will cost me. I don't know what you are reading or watching that has given you this way of thinking, but it pretty brutal to just not care for anyone but yourself. You tell me you will buy me a ticket to get out, sounds a little like communism, and you want anyone who wants a decent life out of here. No compassion, not a way to live really. I care about people and to see hungry children makes me very sad. I see old people kicked out of the hospital cause their insurance runs out, they throw them on the street, and I have seen it. This is the kind of country you want? One time they kicked this old woman out of the hospital because of insurance and got her a taxi and put her on the streets, that is a fact and it happens every day. Lovely, bet you would not like it so much if it was your mother, sister, wife.

[zqt3344 21]

Wow imagine that, someone that is conservative was able to post some hard data facts, wonder what our radical liberal left bleeding heart Democrats will think now?

So after cutting taxes for the last 8 years, when do you figure the economy will be stimulated?

Where have you been the last 5 years?

[HAL 9000 96]

So after cutting taxes for the last 8 years, when do you figure the economy will be stimulated?

Where have you been the last 5 years?

So is the economy in good shape today?

Even Bush doesn't seem to think so.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Paying for the things we afford ourselves only opens our eyes as to what the things really cost. That will help us evaluate better whether we really want them. Being such an advocate of the illagal attack on Iraq, for example, you shouldn't have a problem paying for that. Instead, you're forcing the next generations to pick up the tab for W's wet-dream. That just ain't right anywhay you slice it. I'd ask you to put your money where your mouth is.

I am happy to put my money where my mouth is. The war was needed and I am glad to pay for that. The cost now is less than the cost of not doing it later. It's all the other BS that the dems want I don't want to pay for. The attempt by the left to make things fair for everyone makes things unfair for all. I would love to see about 2/3 of the social programs cut back or eliminated all together. Make them what they were originally intended, a safety net and not a way of life. The economy would be healthier and the people would be able to take care of themselves without the need for the government to "take care of us".

When and where have you advocated payng higher taxes to fund the war effort? Let's see it.

I am stating it now. Show me where I ever said I didn't want to pay for it. Lets see it.

Right here. You're advocating McCain's irresponsible continuation of Bush's disastrous fiscal policy. How does that pay for the war effort in Iraq? Where does that raise the 2-3 trillion dollars that this war is costing us?

I repeat, show me where I ever said I didn't want to pay for the war. I didn't. Bush's tax cuts were the best thing any president has done since Reagan. McCain wants to continue that. It will stimulate the economy and increase the federal coffers. Cut the useless social programs that just make us dependent on the government. Pay for it that way.

Bush has drained the coffers more than he has filled them. The war is funded by IOU's that the next generations will have to shoulder. You are being dishonest here.

Do dishonesty at all. But your just not understanding the problem if you think tax hikes will fill the coffers. It will drain the even faster. Raising taxes suppresses the economy. People earn less and fewer people work. This results in fewer people paying less taxes on less income. Tax hikes hurt everyone. Cutting taxes is the answer. It stimulates the economy, puts more people to work and more people pay taxes on more income.

The late eighties (when Bush Sr. had to raise taxes to start paying for Reagan's irresponsible fiscal nightmare) and the 1990's prove you wrong, Gary. They just prove you wrong. After sensibly raising taxes and promoting economic growth, we ended the 20th century with balanced budgets and an America where the majority of the population got to share in the economic gains of the expansion period. You can deny it all you want but it worked better fiscally and economically than anything Reagan or W did. Much better.

It didn't prove anything wrong. When Bush Sr raised taxes it hurt the good economy that Reagan left him. It also didn't get him re-elected. Time after time lower taxes have been proven to help the economy. You have no clue what your talking about. But I am sure you can dig up some cherry picked story about this to "prove" your point. To yourself that is, no one that really understands isn't taken in by that load of ####### about higher taxes helping anything.

Take a look at the shared economic prosperity of the 90's. Better than anything we've seen in the years prior or since. And it was built on sound fiscal policy rather than being nothing but borrowed wealth that our next generations will be burdened to repay. The economy is arguably in the worst shape it's been in decades. And you have no one to blame but failed Republican policies.

[Eli the Barrowboy 16]

I ended up jobless and homeless after Carter. I am getting to old to live through that again.

Errr, maybe you'd better vote Democrat then.

Under G.W. Bush over 1,000,000 American homes are now in foreclosure and 5.5% of Americans are unemployed, it was 3.9% when Bush came to power. 7.5% of Americans were unemployed when Carter came to power, it was 7.2% when he left. So unemployment fell under Carter, jumped to 10.8% under Reagan and rose almost two fold under G.W. Bush. Nice work.

[mawilson 2,133]

So is the economy in good shape today?

Even Bush doesn't seem to think so.

1) Subprime mortgage crisis

2) High oil prices (speculation and increased demand from India and China)

The economy is arguably in the worst shape it's been in decades. And you have no one to blame but failed Republican policies.

Worst shape it's been in decades? Who feeds you this garbage?

[SaadBell 0]

How has the United States economy gotten to this point?

Times Topics: David Leonhardt

Blogrunner: Reactions From Around the WebIt’s not just the apparent recession. Recessions happen. If you tried to build an economy immune to the human emotions that produce boom and bust, you would end up with something that looked like East Germany.

The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.

This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while the economy did. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy’s health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens?

In the second half of the 20th century, the United States passed the test in a way that arguably no other country ever has. It became, as the cliché goes, the richest country on earth. Now, though, most families aren’t getting any richer.

“We have had expansions before where the bottom end didn’t do well,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a Harvard economist who studies the job market. “But we’ve never had an expansion in which the middle of income distribution had no wage growth.”

More than anything else — more than even the war in Iraq — the stagnation of the great American middle-class machine explains the glum national mood today. As part of a poll that will be released Wednesday, the Pew Research Center asked people how they had done over the last five years. During that time, remember, the overall economy grew every year, often at a good pace.

Yet most respondents said they had either been stuck in place or fallen backward. Pew says this is the most downbeat short-term assessment of personal progress in almost a half century of polling.

The causes of the wage slowdown have been building for a long time. They have relatively little to do with President Bush or any other individual politician (though it is true that the Bush administration has shown scant interest in addressing the problem).

The slowdown began in the 1970s, with an oil shock that raised the cost of everyday living. The technological revolution and the rise of global trade followed, reducing the bargaining power of a large section of the work force. In recent years, the cost of health care has aggravated the problem, by taking a huge bite out of most workers’ paychecks.

Real median family income more than doubled from the late 1940s to the late ’70s. It has risen less than 25 percent in the three decades since. Statistics like these are now so familiar as to be almost numbing. But the larger point is still crucial: the modern American economy distributes the fruits of its growth to a relatively narrow slice of the population. We don’t need another decade of evidence to feel confident about that conclusion.

Anxiety about the income slowdown has flared at various times over the past three decades. It seemed to crescendo in the first half of the 1990s, when voters first threw George H. W. Bush out of office, then, two years later, did the same to the Democratic leaders of Congress. Pat Buchanan went around preaching a kind of pitchfork populism during the 1996 New Hampshire Republican primary — and he won it.

Then came a technology bubble that made everything seem better, for a time. Record-low oil prices in the 1990s helped, too. So did the recent housing bubble, allowing families to supplement their incomes by taking equity out of their homes.

Now, though, we appear to be out of bubbles. It’s hard to see how the economy will get back on track without some fundamental changes. This, I think, can fairly be considered the No. 1 economic project awaiting the next president.

Fortunately, there is an obvious model waiting to be dusted off. The income gains of the postwar period didn’t just happen. They were the product of a deliberate program to build up the middle class, through the Interstate highway system, the G. I. Bill and other measures.

It’s easy enough to imagine a new version of that program, with job-creating investments in biomedical research, alternative energy, roads, railroads and education. On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama all mention ideas like these.

But there is still a lack of strategic seriousness to the discussion, as Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution notes. After all, the United States spends a lot of money on education already but has still lost its standing as the country with the highest college graduation rate in the world. (South Korea and a couple of other countries have passed us, while Japan, Britain and Canada are close behind.)

The same goes for public works. Spending on physical infrastructure is at a 20-year high as a share of gross domestic product, but too much of the money is spent on the inefficient pet programs championed by individual members of Congress. Pork barrel spending does not add up to a national economic strategy.

Health care and taxes will have to be part of the discussion, too. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel of the National Institutes of Health pointed out to me that a serious effort to curtail wasteful medical spending would directly help workers. It would spare them from paying the insurance premiums and taxes that now cover that care.

The tax code, meanwhile, has become far more favorable to high-income workers at the same time that they — and they alone — have received large pretax raises. That doesn’t make much sense, does it?

It’s a pretty big to-do list. But it’s a pretty big problem. Since the economy now seems to be in recession, and since recessions inevitably bring their own pay cuts, my guess is that the problem will look even bigger by the time the next president takes office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/business...ref=todayspaper

[mawilson 2,133]

Under G.W. Bush over 1,000,000 American homes are now in foreclosure and 5.5% of Americans are unemployed, it was 3.9% when Bush came to power.

Err... how is it GWB's fault?

Let's look at the unemployment rate figures again, shall we?

2000 3.97 DOT-COM CRASH

2001 4.76 Bush, G.W. took office

2002 5.78

2003 5.99

2004 5.53

2005 5.08

2006 4.63

2007 4.61 <------ lowest

2008 5.00-5.50 SUBPRIME MORTGAGE CRISIS

[mawilson 2,133]

The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.

The "median American family"? You don't suppose the 10 million illegals who have arrived since 2000 have anything to do with that number?

[nivesito 0]

It is hard to advocate for either side to support tax cuts during a time of war or significant military operations. Taxes can be cut, in theory, for anyone right now and for years to come. The only problem is somewhere down the line the rising annual defecit and overall budget defecit of between $8-9 billion is going to continue grow. It would be great to have tax cuts, wouldn't it? But, at what expense? And what about future generations, like Mr. Big Dog was referring to?

It's hard to acknowledge paying for a "needed" war from cutting spending on domestic programs such as education, highway repairs, park services, medicare, unemployment benefits, etc. Sure, some domestic programs that are ineffective (possibly No Child Left Behind Act) should be cut or at least modified. But to cut those programs to fund a war that most Americans disapprove us doesn't make sense. And no, this isn't the liberal left talking. This is both sides of everyday Americans talking.

Domestic cuts such as for education make it harder for the not privileged to afford college education. I can only imagine an America where these kinds of programs were done away with and my kids will hopefully not be a part of it.

I agree with you Although every country has its advantages and disadvantages I noticed some difference between Europe and US. For example, first time in my life I have seen a homeless person when I came here, and I was surprised how many criminal justice study programs there is. In Europe study programs in Environment Science are very popular. But I have to much of a European way of thinking

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

These are the economic facts that people feel. These are the facts that have people think we're on the wrong track. And these are the fact that those that like to pizz down on average Joe would like to deny.

For Many, a Boom That Wasn’t

The Bush White House has again run up the national credit card. Here is a list of total debt outstanding at the end of the government's fiscal year:

09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48

09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23

09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50

09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32

09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62

09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16

09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06

09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86

The current debt outstanding is $9,437,425,175,221.31

They had this report on the news the other night about booming businesses in the Tampa Bay area. Sad thing is that the only businesses left booming are the local pawn shops. That's the state of the economic affairs and that's the reflection of failed policies of the Bush White House and their useless helpers in Congress - including one John McSame who wants to keep going down this disastrous path.

Edited June 11, 2008 by Mr. Big Dog

[Jack and Barbara 0]

The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.

The "median American family"? You don't suppose the 10 million illegals who have arrived since 2000 have anything to do with that number?

If illegal immigrants don't pay taxes (I would assume most don't) then they probably wouldn't be included in the Census figure, would they?