You seriously need to look up what the CBO is.
Why is cited evidence not good enough for you?
HAhahahahahaha!!! Thanks PT. I needed that laugh today.
I think Obama made a mistake. First, he already has a reputation for giving in to his political opponents too readily - this will reinforce it. Second, the tax cuts were a bad idea - and Obama will end up being the one who takes the heat for the deficit.
It was a straight win for the Republicans. They got the tax cuts they want for their constituency; Obama will pay the price for it; they end up looking strong; Obama looks weak; and the Republicans can even claim whatever credit they can derive from having backed the unemployment extension.
Nonsense. The personal spending of the middle class far exceeds that of the rich. The wealthy invest the majority of their money in the lowest risk acquisitions. And those will have the lowest rates of hiring, or be in another country. Capitalism and Free Enterprise are based on a competitive market, where risk is required in order to profit. We stopped practising that long ago.
I’d vote for Hilary this time. Perhaps i should have voted for her last time.
I’ll be the first to say it… I was wrong about Obama. He’s not the transformative president we were looking for, the one who was going to change the course of the nation. Next time I’m going to vote for the candidate with bigger balls. HILLARY '12!!!
He didn’t claim the research was any good. He just claimed it was recent.
George Mason university constantly pumps out economics research papers that seem to be reversed engineered from the conclusion “tax cuts= teh win” There is a relatively prolific Aurtalian University that does much teh same thing.
Cutting taxes for the rich will generally cause more investing but with interest rates at historical lows we are not in danger of underinvestment right now.
A < B is not equivalent to A = 0.
Thanks for pointing that out. I’m very bad at math and might have missed it. I might even have been foolish anough to believe that A != 0 means A is equivalent to B.
In fact, it appears that you did.
OK I hear you. but we can’t save everyone and we are putting ourselves in a worse position to be able to save ANYONE going forward.
OK, so maybe its selfish of me to insist on my principles when the unemployed family looking at week 99 of unemployment is the one that will be at the soup kitchen on Christmas this year while I buy a new 60" 3D television set but do we stand on principle at any point or do we keep caving to republilcan demands as long as they give us some crumb that the country needs?
That’s the way I see it. Obama’s like Carter - a nice guy but he lacks the killer instinct he needs for the job of being President. To be effective, people have to be a little bit afraid of you.
I guess you aren’t picking it up. A, the personal spending of the rich, is less than B, the personal spending of everyone else. Increased income for the rich does not automatically go to personal spending. They are already rich, and spend as much as they want. Everybody else will spend almost all of any increase in income.
I’m not in favor of increasing anybody’s income, except for people who are out of work. I’m not in favor of maintaining the inefficient unemployment insurance system we have either. I’m in favor of everybody in this country contributing more to lower our debt, and provide incentives for creating jobs. Rich, poor, and middle class alike have been living on revolving credit, and IMHO that is a major factor in our current economic situation. And it needs to change. Not for the sake of the rich, but for everyone else.
…Or at least a little bit afraid of your Vice-President.
That’s true, but the personal spending of the rich is not 0. It does not follow from the fact that personal spending of the rich is less than that of everyone else that increasing net income of the rich does not increase their spending and thus create jobs.
Right. But some of it does.
You’re saying that everyone whose income is above $250K spends as much as they want?
Ah yes, the good old days of 2001. Back when unemployment was rising, the deficit was growing, growth of net worth was negative, and the economy was going through the aftereffect of the dotcom’s blowup the previous year. Your grasp of economic history is truly unique.
Are you suggesting he is? We’re talking about huge numbers of people. Why would you think he’s declaring *all *people act like X? We need to be looking at what large numbers of them do.
You are aware that single counter-examples don’t invalidate statistics, right? If so, why would you even ask about everyone?
Because if there are some people with incomes above $250K who will increase spending due to having more income, then there is some amount of demand that will be stimulated by giving these people more net income and some amount of jobs created.
If you look back at my original post which TriPolar disputed, I explicitly said that “I don’t know about how the multiplyers work and all that, but it’s a mistake to focus on investing in this context.” (TP actually quoted this part as well.) IOW my point was not that we should give tax breaks to the rich, or that the impact overall is a positive one for the economy, but solely that the primary impact on jobs from doing so - to the extent that there is one - is not from rich people going out to invest the tax-cut money on hiring people, but rather on rich people having increased consumption, which in turn stimulates jobs for providers.
And having most of their needs met in the first 200k of their income, they will likely spend less of their tax savings as a percentage.
An unemployed person needs every cent because they are on a shoe-string. $1500 a month is tough to live on. So government dollars spent on them are more likely to be used, right?
So if you have, let’s say, $70 billion to spend, doesn’t it make sense to spend it where it will have the most impact?
Of course not but the marginal propensity to save is a lot higher at $250K income levels than at $50K income levels.