We are not in a recession. We are under-employed.
John Maynard Keynes already gave us the answer decades ago. And it worked! When the private sector isn’t spending or investing, it’s the government’s duty to spend and invest. Jobs are created and infrastructure is replenished. Our country is quickly becoming an embarrassment, with the deteriorating infrastructure. Visitors from the rest of the world come here, and feel lucky that they live in Socialist countries. It used to be exactly the opposite. Make the tax system more progressive to pay for the additional spending. Tax everyone more, but the wealthy at much higher rates. After all, they will end up getting the most benefit from the eventual economic prosperity. The only thing I would add is to eliminate those on the right of the aisle that don’t want the recession to end…in some legal way of course. Or at least educate the 90% of the right wing that regularly vote against their economic best interests.
Name one recession in US history that was mitigated by spending cuts.
Good Lord, the sheer economic ignorance on display here sickens me.
Wait, are you saying corporations should be doing things that are not for their own benefit but instead should be working for the greater good at their own expense?
That’s not the job of companies. Their job is be responsible to their shareholders. Things that benefit the greater good of the country should be done by the public sector, not private.
How about the prosperity of the '90s after Bill Clinton and the Republicans worked together to dismantle much of welfare and cut taxes? How about the Reagan tax cuts? How about Britain after Thatcher’s reforms? In addition each economic crisis is different and 700 billion dollars of spending has simply kept the economy afloat. To jumpstart it now, we will need tax and spending cuts-the states that are best doing in this recession are conservative ones-Indiana, New Hampshire, and the like.
There as a brief recession that ended in 1991, two years before Clinton took office.
How about the Reagan deficit increases?
Spendings cuts eliminate jobs. Please demonstrate how it could possibly work otherwise.
How about the Reagan tax increases?
Thanks for your contribution. You’re really setting us straight with that comment, and all the explanation and elucidation it provides.
The ression makes other people money who have money. The ression makers your gifting them it called dues. barrel of oil may only cost $16 barrel to make tops, yet your paying over 150 to 200 a barrel than wondering why you have a ression, depression ect…
Your born ignorant into an ignorance, there is no counter measure for it, as its a built in factor of a convient society. unless you allow it too collaspe?
Collaspe allows for change. Your not where you are from stupid uneducacted people, there’s a reason for it.
Eh. Friedman (or at least one flavor of Friedman) advocated printing money until some desired level of economic output is reached. I don’t think Friedman would have agreed with the OP’s implementation, but it’s not as if the basic idea is completely outlandish.
If you’re going to print money though, you probably don’t want to dump a load of money out all at once. You’d want to parcel it out in installments so you can stop when you hit some maximum inflation rate.
You know, if you’re going to pop into threads and lecture people, you could at least do some basic research and get your facts correct.
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There was a tax hike in 1993. Yes, several categories of taxpayer received cuts, but overall, the Clinton '93 tax change was a hike.
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Reagan cut taxes his first year in office. Then taxes were raised every single following year, except the last year of the Reagan administration, when there was no change in tax policy.
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According to the BLS, Indiana has the 29th highest unemployment rate. Furthermore, several conservative states have even higher unemployment rates (Alabama = 40th highest, Georgia = 42nd highest, Mississippi = 43rd highest).
So, now that I’ve pointed out a number of factual errors on your part, are you going to alter your viewpoint in any way? I mean, we could listen to either Friedman or Keynes, both of whom studied depression economics extensively, or we could listen to someone such as you, who can’t be bothered to go look up unemployment data.
Just for completeness, I should add there was a tax cut in 1997 under Clinton.
World war III. That’ll stimulate demand and reduce the size of the labor market. It worked last time.
Its my understanding we are in a minor depression, not a recession. I’m no economist, but how do we realistically get out of that? I thought lack of demand and lack of security/stability were the main culprits.
As far as lack of security/stability, Europe is on the brink of economic collapse. And I’ve heard China is in a bubble that could burst soon. So there goes that idea. Who’d want to invest massive amounts of money in a messed up global economy? Then again I’ve heard corporations are investing heavily in places like India and China still, so maybe not.
As far as lack of demand, at least in the US, we have millions of trained workers unemployed. So there is no incentive to offer more job security or wages. W/o demand there is no reason to hire anyone. W/o hiring anyone there is no demand.
That is all amateur and obvious, but realistically what would work to fix it? Are we just stuck waiting the next 5-10 years while the world economy slowly collapses, then is rebuilt from the ashes or something?
Which makes me wonder why some think that tax cuts, especially to wealthy individuals and corporations, would do any good. They claim it would stimulate employment, but as you said, why would they do so, given current demand and their current actions (especially the hoarding of cash)?
Start lynching bankers, hedge fund managers and anybody associated with Haliburton.
Slash military spending. 30% at least. Start at the top and cancel every weapons contract over $50 million.
Means-test Social Security.
Raise corporate income taxes by at least 50%.
Ban any and all stock options for managers.
Outlaw any Congressional staffer or Congress-critter from serving as a lobbyist for 20 years.
To be honest, I’m not even sure where to start. The problem with economics is that anyone and everyone think they know everything, but somehow always believe whatever ideas are most congenial to their politics.
I believe something much crueller: that you can’t control the economy. That government is more akin to a forest ranger with a shed full of high explosives and nalpalm than a mechanic. That single dubious examples don’t form a pattern*.
*That would a be a comment at the general obsession with the Great Depression, which is notably useless for several reasons.
First, you can’t cherry-pick your Keynesianism; if it might work, you’re going to have to be austere to a degree supporters of thw welfare state don’t want at other times, because now you can’t the debt you want without putting U.S. finance at serious risk.
Second, you can’t confuse multiple events during the Great Depression, and it probably helps for people (not neccessarily here, but in general ) not to make wild lies based on complete historical ignorance about Great Depression, nor ignore the facts.
Third, you should probably look for other evidence, because nothing is ever clear based on one example. Even if the semi-Keynesianist beliefs about the GD are true, they don’t form a pattern. Other countries have tried such responses repeatedly and not gotten much to show for it.
Of course, one can always respond that they didn’t do it big enough, which is in a way a fair concept. (Likewise, claiming that the economy was “just about” to succeed when the bad people stopped the flow of money doesn’t really help.) A plan which requires improbable human foreknowledge isn’t a plan. It’s demanding a miracle.
That may be so, but you then must accept that if the government is powerless to repair the economy, it is also powerless to damage it. Taxes don’t discourage job creation; regulations don’t limit economic growth; are you ready to accept those as equally valid?
Simple; these days the Right always claims that tax cuts are the solution.
We agree. I’m just pointing it out in a different way. Some seem to think that companies will “do what is best” for the country. Horseshit. This is why lowering their taxes will not benefit anyone except for the companies, the upper level management and the shareholders. it will not lead to jobs, nor will it help the economy.