You don’t sound undecided to me. Hopefully everyone is undecided about the 2016 election right now, but also right now it’s a few weeks before an election that started 4 years ago. Anybody who’s undecided about the 2012 election right now just shouldn’t vote.
Trickle down has literally never worked. It has harmed the economy whenever it has been tried. It is a fantasy.
The thing is, in our economy, my spending is your income and your spending is my income.
All this has been clear for decades though. I’m at a loss as to how people could be undecided about it.
You take someone who has after tax income of $500K. He spends $200K on “living” and is comfortable. He puts $300K into savings and investments.
Year after year banking that extra $300K yields compound returns from investments increasing income.
Now cut his taxes so he’s got $550K.
Is that person going to increase what he spends on “living” (contributing to the “trickle down”) or just increase savings and investments?
Take someone who has after tax income of $50K. He spends $50K on “living” and is struggling to make ends meet. He puts $0 into savings and investments.
He gets basically the same inflation adjusted salary year after year.
Cut his taxes so he’s got $55K.
Is that person going to increase what he spends on “living” or start saving?
The banks and wealthy have buckets of cash sitting around looking for things to invest in. Demand for goods and services at the lowest levels has plummeted.
To combat this situation, is the solution to add more money to the “job creator” class or the “working class”?
It’s one thing to imagine a hypothetical mechanism for trickle down working. We can also imagine a hypothetical woman living in a shoe.
Trickle down has never worked in reality. It has hurt the economy each time it has been tried. If we try it again right now it will be devastating.
The point is that the tax increases Obama is proposing, for the people he’s targeting, will have very little impact on the debt. It’s the Dem’s version of a “pain-free” solution that doesn’t solve anything. It panders to people who don’t know any better. “Yeah, let those rich MFers pay some more. They’re rich enough. That’ll take care of the debt.” Uh, no, it won’t. And that’s the Obama plan.
They didn’t say they wouldn’t touch Medicare spending. They said 55 and olders won’t be impacted. The whole point of the Medicare changes proposed is to cut costs and make it sustainable. Obama’s plan is…? Because I guarantee you, every Dem in D.C. shrieking and clutching their pearls that the GOP is trying to change Medicare as we know it, knows that Medicare as we know it needs to be changed. But rather than debate ideas (since they don’t have any on the topic), they revert to the standard scare strategy, knowing damn well something has to give.
Obama is cutting Medicare to pay for Obamacare. He isn’t saving anything, all that CBO jive about it being revenue neutral aside. Congress never follows through on “promised” Medicare cuts to fund other stuff. We are going to spend a LOT of money on Obamacare, and we don’t have it to spend.
There was a commercial explaining why the undecided voters are waiting. It seems like they still have a few questions the candidates need to address.
This is just pure ignorance. Nobody is making the claim you suggest. In fact, the debt is very low on the list of things we need to worry about right now. Where do you get your information?
Uh, to make Medicare and the overall health care system more stable and effective. Slashing Medicaid, as Romney and Ryan want to do, will increase the burden on Medicare and reduce it’s long term sustainability. Again, you seem to be ignorant on the basic facts.
No, they propose an actual workable plan that improves the long term stability of Medicare, improves the overall health care for the country and reduces the debt! And Republicans pass along disinformation to their low-information voting base, who shriek of socialism and redistribuation and other stupid things.
Well, largely false. He is reducing the costs of Medicare without sacrificing coverage in order to shore up other aspects of our national health care coverage.
HANDWAVE! Nice.
More ignorance. You’re a veritable cornucopia of misinformation. Congratulations.
Other posters have addressed this, but there’s one method the government can do to reduce unemployment: namely, increased public expenditure. You’ve alighted on the infrastructure projects, but historically there were also arts employees of the states. This has been termed “semi-productive employment”, but the alternatives are redistributing wealth to private concentrations of power (as in the stimulus), which while it has had an affect on unemployment, hasn’t had as drastic a one as one could expect from widescale public programs - or cutting taxation, which will have the same effect, though slightly divorced and less amenable to public input (stimulus money can at least be directed according to the wishes of the public).
Other differences of opinion revolve around whether unemployment insurance is effective or not. Recent economic studies demonstrate that unemployment insurance is effective, contrary to the standard libertarian view. Unemployment benefits are spent primarily on amenities, rather than fiscal instruments. More labour is required to produce amenities than to handle fiscal instruments, so money has a more stimulative effect on employment when its being spent at that level.
Another thing a member of the proletariat should keep in mind, apart from whether the government should combat unemployment, is whether other “entitlements” enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the US is a signatory as per article 2, section 2, clause 2 of the Constituion, are worth defending. For instance, whether they have a right to food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services (article 25). Of course, one has to discuss the necessary sacrifices made in order to ensure each member of society has access to these and whether the hampered productivity (if there is any) would be worthwhile. I think the Scandinavian countries are good examples of countries which have enshrined the rights guaranteed in the Universal Declaration and Norway is a particularly apt example. It ranks highest in terms of satisfaction, 7th in education, joint first in press freedom, 15th in life expectancy, 6th (or 14th) lowest infant mortality, third in GDP per capita, and has under 50% of its GDP in public debt.
There are three metrics I can think off from the top of my head under which the US outperforms Norway: total GDP, lower marginal tax rates and defence expenditure.
One has to consider when people appeal to the debt and make appeals to cut entitlement spending how consistent a trend this has been. Noam Chomsky summarises the wavering attitude:
Reagan massively increased the deficit with his supply side expenditure and savings and loans bailout, while at the same time effectively demonising people reliant on the government for meagre provisions (people dislike feeling like they’re subsidising those gaming the system and that their labour supports leisure for others).
So, when they make appeals to cut “entitlement” spending in order to rectify the “debt crisis” or preserve its solvency, look at that with a jaundiced eye if they’ve previously claimed said entitlements are unconstitutional.
There are more instances of schizoid approaches, usually indicative of class affiliation. When someone receives a large income without labouring, that’ll discourage them from working, which is a bad thing: unless they received it from a relative rather than the public as a whole. Raising tax rates is a poor way to deal with the deficit (and evidence of Marxist reasoning! - “But it can do so only in the same way that it proceeds to the abolition of private property, to the maximum, to confiscation, to progressive taxation, just as it goes as far as the abolition of life, the guillotine.”), as it encourages people to take illegal measures in order to avoid taxation (despite lower rates of unemployment during the 90% top marginal tax rates of the Eisenhower administration designed to pay off the war debt). Just as the GOP supports the legality of anything for which there is a black market when it is banned: alcohol, abortions, marijuana, assassinations. On the other hand, broadening the tax base by ensuring more people have skin in the game is good policy and in no way will hamper the productivity of the class which spends most of its money on amenities. Protectionism hinders the economy, we shouldn’t apply tariffs to international trade or penalise corporations which move jobs overseas, nor should we reinstitute the Buy American clause… but free movement of labour, an integral feature of capitalist political economy, is something to be opposed at every turn.
That said, one way in which the debt could be reduced is by adopting public healthcare (not the ACA compromise): the US spends far more of its GDP on healthcare than any other country for worse outcomes than essentially every other industrialised country.
Ultimately I think all of these issues could be rectified by direct democracy.
Oh, I neglected to mention,Norway has a flat corporate tax of 28%, a top income tax rate of 47.8%, a top payroll rate of 14.1% (actually lower than the US), sales tax of 25%, 14% of food and drink and 8% of transport. Their unemployment rate is 3%.
No one else addressed this so I will. Our infrastructure is in fairly awful shape. Repairing all the roads and bridges that need it is a 20-30 year job. It won’t be finished any time soon. It’s sheer luck that more bridges haven’t fallen down other than the one in Minnesota.
Huh, having grown up in a city where they seemed to be “fixing” the major commuter routes all the time I’m surprised to hear that and appreciate the information.
Since you’re all being very patient with me (thank you for that) I have a few more questions:
What would be the political ramifications of reducing foreign aid? Same question re: economic effects of reducing business/farm subsidies. Are these even on the table?
It depends what you mean by “undecided”. I’m decided for all partisan races, especially for president.
But there are a bunch of nonpartisan races on my ballot, such as for school board, mayor, and county supervisor. I’m not decided about all of those yet.
The worst is probably a race for a local city council seat. The local newspaper, in an unusual move, declined to endorse either of the two candidates. In an editorial, it said that both candidates were unqualified. Yet I have to choose.