Very nice. You addressed all of my sentences, except the ones that went to the heart of my point. Is increased crime, polluted water, closed schools, and crumbling infrastructure a deserving punishment for people who had no involvement with the housing market fiasco? If you’re laid off, are you going to be satisfied knowing that the right people are being punished?
I’d like an answer just so that I can better understand your argument.
How would it help or boost the economy? I’m really curious why you think this would help boost things…even if you could get real oversight on the various projects so that they didn’t just devolve into a series of pork barrel projects with Senators squabbling over the scraps (something I find HIGHLY unlikely that you’d be able to do…my guess is no matter what you tried you would end up with a series of Bridges to No-Where. JMHO though).
Assuming you would want to increase taxes or cut spending in order to fund all of this infrastructure improvement it seems to me to be either a wash (to be generous) or a negative impact…you would be losing jobs in the private sector (if you increased taxes…especially since I’m guessing these increases will be aimed at ‘the rich’) or I suppose a trade off in government type positions (i.e. if you cut spending that usually results in either cutting funding to projects, cutting government/contractor positions or cutting programs entirely…with similar results).
So…how do you think it would be a help? And, do you project it would be a short term, medium or long term type help?
-XT
The amount that tax revenue decreases during a recession should in no way prevent states from carrying on their legitimate function. If there truly is increased crime, polluted water, closed schools, and crumbling infrastructure in a recession then a state is doing an incredibly poor job of allocating its revenue.
Probably not, but people get laid off for a variety of reasons. I think it’s improper government policy to try and ensure that no one ever gets laid off.
Well, the point is debatable. I think that tax cuts are generally a good thing…you obviously feel differently. For my part I just was making the point that the government needs to shit or get off the pot wrt the tax cuts so that industry has an idea of what they are going to be facing. Drawing this out isn’t a good thing as it makes the market and industry uncertain about what the future is going to hold wrt taxes.
Were it up to me…yeah, I’d make the tax cuts pertinent. And I’d probably cut additional taxes as well. Of course, were it up to me then I’d ALSO cut government spending as well and do a careful evaluation of the current regulations across the board. I’d also figure out a way to streamline the government and put a pony in every pot to, as well as solve all of the worlds problems, etc etc.
-XT
That some slip there, Sigmund.
A government can’t micromanage an economy, and it shouldn’t try. The fed needs to make sure that interest rates are set at what it sees is the right level, and the economy will take care of itself. The best thing the government can do for the economy is get out of the way and don’t make sudden changes-- businesses function best in a predictable environment. If they really want to do something, concentrate on getting the government’s own finances in order.
$150B sounds like a hell of a lot of money, but it’s about 1% of the annual GDP. IOW, mice nuts.
Now, if you want have a massive public works program or overhaul health care or set up a welfare state or give tax cuts to the rich/poor, do it because you think it’s the right policy decision to do, not because you want to try and manage the economy through what is essentially a bump in the road. Recessions are the self-correcting mechanism of an economy that is overextended. We’ve had plenty before and we’ll have plenty in the future.
I’d suggest, as others have, that we have had a perfectly good trial of this very defining Republican economic strategy for the past seven +/- years, and it has been a dismal failure. Add this on to the failure of this as a strategy in the 1980’s, and the oft-cited (by me, around here) stats that the economy does better on the whole under Democratic leaders, and at some point it should sink in.
You may also want to read up on John Maynard Keynes, since you appear to be entirely ignorant of the economic philosophy and principles he developed (in your reply to BobLibDem).
I agree, while I’m not a big fan of Keynesian Economics–if we’re going to be interfering so significantly in the economy we should spend $150 billion on public works versus a tax rebate. Like you said, it gives society something tangible while it stimulates the rest of the economy by providing jobs and a demand for goods and services. I think Keynes got that much right anyway, investment in infrastructure is the way to go, just cutting individuals a check seems asinine. It can just worsen the problem when you have tons of people just using it to pay down their debts or sit it into their savings.
This only holds true if corporations actually stimulate the economy by creating jobs, investing in the country, and increasing wages. Unregulated capitalism encourages a Wild Wild West atmosphere on Wall Street and everyone else in the U.S. is supposed to just suck it up when greed encourages high risk behavior and inhibits responsibility.
Milton Friedman and his faithful disciples have had their chance. The economy is not booming as planned, at least not for the vast majority of Americans. Trickle down seems to be clogged. How many more economic disasters do we need before the market self corrects? :dubious: It is time to find another economic theory. Perhaps there is one stuffed in some drawer at The Chicago School of Economics.
I believe in capitalism with regulation and oversight.
You shouldn’t view recession as an “illness” requiring cure. Until you realize that you’re looking at this from a fundamentally wrong perspective. During the 1930s we were dealing with a watershed, decade+ long economic depression. A recession is as natural to the economy as the common cold is to the human body. Both can work themselves out without outside help.
A more apt analogy would be it’s wasteful to go to the emergency room over a virus or an infection that your body is perfectly capable of fighting off on its own.
There’s also little evidence that all that spending Roosevelt engaged in brought us out of the depression, Roosevelt was spending and taxing like a madman for over eight years and we were still thick in the depression. It took a World War (which brought spending to a new level, and production to a whole new stratosphere than it had been during Roosevelt’s unwise infrastructure programs) to start bringing us out of the depression–and even after the World War the economy had a bit of a hiccup as it readjusted.
That’s as may be, but you have your chronology screwed up. We had a full-blown depression well before the New Deal, with bank panics, epidemic business closings, and massive unemployment through most of 1931 and more of the same in 1932. Go back and read a U.S. history survey text if you don’t believe me.
(The Hoover administration did try to put at least the banking industry on a firmer footing and kept public works construction going, but the prevailing economic wisdom of the day was that you don’t screw with the system but wait for things to get better. They just kept getting worse.)
Go back and read how Hoover decided that meddling in the economy was just fine and how many of his policies pre-dated Roosevelt’s New Deal (though on a much smaller scale).
Yes, we had an economic problem before Roosevelt. But Roosevelt’s New Deal prolonged and worsened it.
That’s pretty funny that you think anyone has actually implemented the polices that Milton Friedman advocated. He may have praised certain individual practices and polices of certain presidents, but none came even close to implementing his ideas. The only area where he was really listened to was when the Fed adopted a mostly monetarist approach in the late 70s/early 80s. I don’t think there are many who see that as an unwise decisions.
Roosevelt (FDR) provided immediate relief for desperate people. He restored hope to the hopeless. I am not sure why this level of humanity is viewed by pure capitalists in such a negative light.
Yes, setting aside things like GDP and employment, only a few economic indicators suggest the New Deal was effective.
(I’m no economist, but as I understand it, it is still a minority opinion that the New Deal was not effective. Generally expressing this viewpoint are conservatives, who have to do so while arguing amidst the smoke and rubble around their feet that gee, we should cut taxes and leave things up to the market.)
Ah, there’s your mistake. You seem to be under the impression that Chicago School Friedmanism is supposed to improve EVERYONE’S economy instead of just the people who own the corporations or have them in their pockets. See Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Russia (post-1990)…
Didn’t Ronald Reagan worship Milton Friedman? Capitalism and Freedom was Reagan’s economic bible.
No, you are right. Not everything has been privatized yet, but you cannot deny Milton’s influence. Everything from deregulation, free trade, charter schools and 401K is rooted in Friedman’s ideas.
Radicalize the masses! Burst the capitalist integument! Expropriate the expropriators! Lose inches off your hips, thighs, buttocks and abdomen!
Can you explain what you mean by this? The GDP and unemployment both improved significantly after the new deal was signed into law.
Whoosh, I believe. Especially coming from Hentor…