Could you tell us more about that? Are you referring to the “graying” of populations in the industrialized world, or what?
The difference is that this time around, credit is extremely scarce because the global credit markets were damn near annihilated thanks to unregulated finance. It’s frankly bizarre that in the same post you can name the main cause of unemployment and then assert that the best cure is more of what caused it. Unless, of course, you are implicitly excluding reform of financial markets from the rest of the bathwater you’re throwing out. If that’s the case then I’d agree.
I suspect the employment prospects of the Louisiana shrimp boat fleet would be looking a lot better if there had been some more effective regulation.
Since there is still a lack of demand, it is not clear that business tax cuts or making hiring less expensive is going to do a lot to help. Now relaxing the credit crunch for small business might, because that will make it easier for those businesses in areas where there is more demand to expand, and thus hire. If we could somehow get banks to stop using the free money from the Fed for their own investing and use it instead for small business loans, we might get somewhere.
Unmitigated bullshit. Finance is among the most heavily regulated sectors of any economy, anywhere. The fact that the crappy government regulators can’t do their jobs worth a damn doesn’t mean they’re not regulating everything and its brother. You practically have to beg persmission to take a piss in finance - and it was the goddamn Democrats who larded up the regulatory boards and prevented any real reform.
Two things: Population collapse in some large countries (Japan is number one on the list), and entitlement and health care cost explosions due to the graying of the population pretty much everywhere. There are also Demographic issues in China and India which are somewhat different, but also troubling. There’s a further problem of non-assimilation of immigrants in Europe leading to high, permanent unemployment rates.
Japan is scary. It’s a huge economy, and it’s population is going to crash, along with its tax base. It has tried stimulus programs much larger than anything the U.S. has tried, and it’s done nothing to fix the problem. Now it’s saddled with huge debt AND a stagnant economy, just as it starts to lose its work force. Yikes.
A lot of bad crap is coming down the road fairly fast due to demographic changes around the world, and it’s got markets spooked to some degree. All you need to do is look at the projections for entitlement spending over the next 20 years in almost every major economy, and you can see the freight train heading our way.
I think this is one of the big reasons why there’s been a sudden shift towards financial austerity in Europe in the last few months. Greece was a wakeup call, but the problems go much deeper than that. Europe is in much worse shape than the U.S. in terms of its aging, stagnant populations. Most European countries are on an unsustainable path, and the weakest of them are now feeling the impact.
This could also be part of the reason for the real-estate meltdown in the U.S. In real estate circles there’s a lot of talk about the ‘boomer bubble’ - the large number of homes owned by baby boomers, which will be on the market as they retire. The newer generations can’t afford them, and don’t need houses as large because they have smaller families. So housing demand is likely to remain weak for a long, long time.
Note that none of this is partisan - it’s not the fault of Republicans or Democrats. Demographic transitions happen. Population bubbles eventually pop. But these problems are coming to a head soon enough that they are starting to affect futures markets, which in turn affect today’s business decisions. Some of these problems may fix themselves, some may not. The markets may adapt smoothly, or they may not. But all of this adds to uncertainty. What government can do is refrain from piling on to the uncertainty.
I said nothing about any specific regulations. I said there are some regulations whose costs outweigh their benefits, and there are many regulations which have benefits that outweigh the costs. Because you don’t have to spend money to eliminate regulation, it’s now a very good time to go through all of them and start cutting the counterproductive ones. It’s free stimulus.
No surprise it’s the exact same thing every time: cut taxes and regulations. Don’t you guys get tired of being wrong all the damn time? Like others have already cited, taxes are lower than they’ve ever been, how’s that cutty/deregulaty thing workin’ out for ya?
Keeping more money instead of investing or spending it does nothing for the economy. So no, they shouldn’t keep more of it. People should be taxed at a reasonable rate so that public funds can be used to provide public services. People who don’t believe that truly don’t know anything
We should. Maybe raise it to something like what Reagan had it? Cause you know it’s a myth that taxes were lower under him, right?
Giving more revenue to govenment instead of people selfishly hoarding it is better. Like your roads? Like your schools? Like parks, emergency rooms, police, firefighters? Then pay your taxes and shut up. Think maybe roads aren’t good enough, schools aren’t smart enough, and postal service is too slow? Maybe pay more taxes to help improve them. No conservative anywhere has ever answered how withholding funds from agencies they dont like such as the FBI or CIA is supposed to help them
Be careful. Some of your brethern might think you were serious. Hard to tell tea bagger crazy from regular crazy nowadays 
I didn’t say a damned thing about cutting taxes. In fact, I said they’d be counter-productive right now because they would increase the deficit which is a major source of uncertainty. I even said that Bush’s tax cuts should probably be allowed to expire.
We’re not talking about spending people’s savings. We’re talking about borrowing money to spend. That’s a completely different thing.
So would your contention be that countries with the biggest governments and the highest taxes have the best economies?
Right. Because when people keep their own money, they hide it under their bed. They don’t invest it in stocks and mutual funds or improve their homes or buy things. Nosirree. Only government can improve the economy with money. Everyone else is a parasite.
Actually, it’s the people who think that prosperity is built by government who don’t know anything. And they apparently refuse to learn, because economic prosperity has been driven by markets and private investment and entrepreneurship since, well, pretty much forever.
Prior to the housing market crash we had the one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world. My state went from one of the lowest taxed to highest and the jobs flowed out like water over Niagra. There is a relationship between taxes and business.
Wait, you’re mentioning three factors/events here: (1) the housing market crash; (2) an increase in your state’s tax rates; (3) an increase in your state’s jobless rate. What is the relationship in time between them?
Because everyone knows having more government employees is the solution to all of our problems.
If it wasn’t for the housing crash we would still have one of the lowest national employment rates. The low tax rate worked well. If it wasn’t for my state’s high tax rates we would have a lower unemployment rate.
Jobs are a function of business and businesses flow like water seeking the lowest tax level. It will always be that way. The best way to get more tax money is to increase the level of business.
How is having fewer government employees a bad thing? How would lowering taxes and/or deregulation cause environmental disasters? If the tax cuts are not combined with government spending cuts, I’ll go along with an economic problem, but if we cut spending, how is the tax cuts a bad thing?
How do you know that?
Europe has higher taxes, bigger government - and higher structural unemployment.
In the U.S., before the recession at least there was a strong correlation between low taxes and low unemployment between the various states.
When Canada had a much bigger government and higher taxes, we had an unemployment rate that was structurally about 2% higher than the U.S.'s. Now that we’ve cut the size of government and lowered our taxes, our unemployment rate is about 2% less than yours.
Can you point to some examples where higher taxes have resulted in lower structural unemployment?
Fewer health inspectors cause companies to know they can cut corners on cleanliness, until they cut a bit too much and people die. Fewer people working for the SEC - especially working for an administration which feels regulation of business is a bad thing - ignore warnings that Bernie Madoff is running a Ponzi scheme and people are out billions of dollars. Not to mention that cops are government employees also.
Oh, and chaos, graft and apathy at the agency supposed to regulate off-shore oil rigs just might possibly have a negative environmental impact.
If we need to jump start the economy by increasing consumption which can be done by reducing unemployment, throwing government employees out of work is the absolute worst thing to do.
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They do perform actual, necessary functions, believe it or not.
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When we’re talking about what ideas the GOP can offer to reduce the jobless rate, it seems counterintuitive to start by making cuts in the one segment of the job market government actually, directly controls.
Because I looked at my states tax rates over my lifetime. We use to be a place that businesses flocked to. Companies like NCR, that were founded in my city and had their world headquarters in my city have left the state.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc? There might be other reasons, you know.