Why isn’t the conversation, ‘Hey rich people, why didn’t you create more jobs when given all those tax breaks so you could create jobs?’”
–Liz Winstead (head writer, The Daily Show)
I don’t know who wrote this one.
“Economists predicted eleven of the last three recessions.”
Not enough. They are sitting on almost 2 trillion bucks. Another tax break or 2 and they may begin to feel secure.
Krugman says leaving the Bush tax cut in place is like writing a 3.1 million dollar check for the richest 1200 people in America every year. What’s wrong with that? who else deserves it as much as they do?
I like David Mitchell’s take on how we got into this mess in the first place.
Liz isn’t very bright, is she? Who does she think is creating the jobs if not the rich? I’m pretty sure the poor aren’t hiring anybody to do anything. And I’m equally sure your average working class stiff doesn’t have a half-dozen $40K/year employees on his payroll.
The self-employed work for themselves. Everybody else is working for the rich: a rich individual, a rich conglomerate or a rich corporation.
My favorite quote: “No society in the history of the world has ever taxed itself into prosperity.”
I would honestly be happy if the richest 1200 people in America got an extra 3.1 million a year. Why would that upset anyone? I want everyone to do better and it isn’t a zero sum game.
Wow, I’m surprised to see you cheerfully volunteering to have your taxes raised.
Because you somehow seem to have misplaced a digit on what the population of the United States is. 1200 people does not represent everyone doing better. It represents 1200 people doing better and the other 308,399,200 of us doing worse.
Jobs are being created? I hadn’t noticed.
I like " the resession was a hard time to be rich"
They just figured out what happened to the economy. “Your mama ate it.”
I won’t get into who’s bright and who isn’t, but being rich does not mean that you create jobs. Corporations that receive tax incentives create jobs, not the individuals who own them. If I’m a rich dude and I receive an extra bunch of cash in my paycheck, I’m not going to spend it on somebody else’s salary. Money for that comes out of corporate profits. So to give rich people a tax cut and then claim that you’re doing it to create jobs is just a smokescreen. Why do you suppose Lieberman is supporting keeping the tax cuts around for “at least another year”? Answer: so that all his insurance company rich pals can bank another several million dollars to pay for those yachts and private jets.
Stupid children/old people, stop arguing and share more economic quotes.
“economists know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
Bullshit. The rich, the investors, do NOT create jobs. CONSUMERS create jobs.
Over 80% of all economic activity in the U.S. is consumer spending. When that falls, as it does in a repression/depression (jobs lost to cheaper labor overseas, stagnating or declining wages at home, skyrocketing health insurance costs, education costs and other living expenses, the middle class paying higher taxes because the rich and corporations aren’t paying their fair share, etc…) people stop spending. Both because they simply don’t have the disposable (or any) income and because they go into frugal mode due to fear for the future.
The ONLY thing (other than government stimulus spending to create jobs which would not exist in the private sector, which then creates employed consumers with money to spend and creates a ripple effect) that creates a job is customers. People with money in their pockets to spend on goods and services at businesses, both large and small but mostly small.
I have owned 2 successful small businesses and it is a very simple equation; no customers, jobs lost and/or business goes under. More customers than the current staff can handle, more jobs created.
And NO business is going to turn away customers, some big job, a chance to earn a profit, because their tax rate went up a few percentage points. They are going to take whatever work comes their way and hire as many people as they need to do the job on time and get paid.
The top 2-3%, who have gotten 80% of the Bush tax cuts (which, BTW, failed to create a SINGLE job, quite the contrary, drained the treasury and continue to grow the debt) tend to SAVE their savings. They just add it to the pile. The other 98% of us who don’t have millions in the bank but live from paycheck to paycheck or nearly so, tend to SPEND any extra money we have on goods and services we need, stimulate the economy and create jobs.
My favorite quote, to paraphrase, is from Obama (and I am glad to see he is saying it): “All the Republicans are offering is more of the same that got us into this mess.” Absofuckinglutely.
So the University wants to hire a new faculty member, but don’t have very much money to do so, and so they ask the Chemistry, Math and Economics departments how much money they’d need to hire a new person.
The Chem Chair says “to attract a new person, we’d need to build new lab space, buy test-tubes and bunsen burners and it would cost a couple hundred thousand.”
The Math Chair says “well, then, we should definately get preference then, since all we’d need to provide a math professor for her research is some paper, a pencil and a waste-basket”
The Economics Chair says: “pfftt…thats still more then it would cost to let us hire a new person, we’d just need the paper and pencil”.
OK, thats not really a quote, but its all I got.