I thought it was self-evident that once Mr. Obama was turned out of office, everything would sort itself out.
Um, what? You can’t eliminate fiat currency.
If we go back to government backing of currency, that means the government has to find some gold or silver or platinum or whatever to back it with. The government doesn’t have that much gold or silver or platinum, because it doesn’t exist. The money supply has grown by orders of magnitude since we went off the gold standard.
Hence the lack of undesirable side effects, relative to something that might actually be a possibility. 
How is the government “messing up the playing field” exactly? And what would you have them do different? We just had eight years of the most business-friendly pro-growth policies in history and it ended in a gigantic economic meltdown.
The private sector is far more indebted than the government and has cut back spending. If the government doesn’t increase spending, who is going to?
After the events of the past couple of years, do you seriously think that America needs less regulation than it currently has? Did we get the biggest economic meltdown since the Depression because the financial sector was overregulated or underregulated?
How are investors and businesspeople being demonised?
How are the markets becoming increasingly spooked by government debt? The government can currently borrow money from the markets for ten years into the future at 0.045% above the expected inflation rate over that period. The private sector, not so much.
I don’t disagree. I was merely pointing out what, to my knowledge, is the most complete and concrete plan that a GOP member has proposed. I certainly wasn’t endorsing it - I figured posting the link was better than snark.
Elimination or severe reduction of the Corporate Income Tax is a very central idea to much of conservative economic thought. And, frankly, as long as a revenue source that replaces it is sufficiently progressive, I don’t have a problem with it. There is certainly some merit to the argument that higher corporate taxes can discourage business growth (or lead towards off-shoring).
I believe one of the points you skipped was his proposed replacement for the Corporate Income Tax - a VAT-like device he calls a Business Consumption Tax (seems to be a flat 8.5%). I do believe this was one area in which his math was shown to be a bit dodgy (i.e., the hole created in the budget is much larger than he claims). It would likely need to be closer to double that to be a viable replacement, IIRC.
You also didn’t mention his more radical personal income tax proposals - two brackets, no deductions, no capital gains or interest income taxes, nor estate taxes. The net result of those is a far more regressive tax code, and a large decrease in revenue. Whether that is a bug or a feature probably depends on your political alignment.
Excellent post, Jas.
TARP is just one of an alphabet soup of bailout programs, a lot of which we know little or nothing about because the Fed won’t tell us. And they’re a drop in the bucket compared to the bad debt and toxic crap that’s still being held on bank balance sheets/being dumped on Fannie and Freddie at full boat.
Terrible post JAS. The fact is many of our corporations pay little or no tax. Many do billions of dollars in business and get millions of bucks back from the tax payers.
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_welfare/real_tax_rates_plummet.php
When the tax rate was higher, business flourished.
Do you want to eliminate environmental laws to hopefully get more jobs, without knowing if it would work? Should we cut our pay rates until we match Indonesia, to draw business? Shall we get rid of worker vacations and labor laws? Then maybe we can get a factory or two back.
I think you skipped a few lines in my post… in particular the “I certainly wasn’t endorsing it” and the “as long as a revenue source that replaces it is sufficiently progressive” lines.
I am certainly not against tax reforms in general, however - either personal or business. As long as the revised codes both (a) bring in sufficient revenue to not increase (and hopefully reduce) deficits and (b) are sufficiently progressive.
In fact, you highlight one of the problems with the current tax structure - businesses and individuals both have become quite proficient at avoiding taxation. I have read some arguments that indicate that a consumption tax is a bit harder to game.
As to your other comments (environmental laws, labor laws), I don’t believe there was anything in the link or in my posts directed towards those policies. If so, please point them out.
That’s funny. This is precisely what the Republicans said during the Bush years – the Dems were treasonous because it was advantageous to them for the country and president to fail, and the Dems were working to hasten those failings. I swear you guys read from the same script.
The left and right mean treasonous in very different ways. For the right, its a more militaristic take on it, they mean treason as in betraying the country to foreign enemies, or hampering the ability to smite them, hip and thigh. We on the left think of treasonous as harmful to the well being of the American people, rather than the success or failure of some military adventure in pursuit of hopeless foreign policy goals.
The architects and enablers of the Viet Nam War and the Iraq War committed that form of treason. The consequences of that treason make the deranged fanaticism of a John Walker Lind seem quaint. Theres only so many people can be fucked over by a single madman, but get enough sober, sensible men in suits and ties, mix in a little hubris and unchecked power…
Don’t forget that the Republicans also believed that Saddams’s weapons of mass destruction were “in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” With GOP standards of evidence as low as that, it’s hard to see any real equivalency in the humorous parallel you’re pushing. Do you have anything concrete, like massive abuse of the procedural filibuster by dems, or perhaps Howard Dean screaming about how Bush pre-planned 9/11 with the aid of Kenyan nationalists in the northern Marianas?
Your attempted point falls flat without real world examples of how the Dems acted then just like the pubs are acting now.
It turns out that it’s very easy to draw equivalencies, but the ability to draw them is never enough to make them ring true.
I’m only pointing out the similar script between both corrupt, treasonous parties. The flipping of rhetoric between them and their copy paste legions is dizzying. But to take your Iraq example, yes, it was hysterical to see Pubs call the Dems treasonous on that issue because the Dems supported it to the hilt. And still do.
But it was a more general point the Pubs were making. They said the Dems just had to wait and if things went to wreck and ruin they were more likely to get elected (as it turned out, that was correct). So they had treason in their hearts! A thought crime against Amerca and lady liberty! The hand wringing from the Donk is still fresh in my mind. So to see an ostensible Dem use that exact same reasoning without a wink and a smile just a couple short years later is just sublime.
Actually the Dems voted for every war bill the president wanted. They allowed him everything he said he required to succeed. I was dead against the war because I do not believe in attacking a country that did not attack us. But the Dems gave Bush everything he asked for. Where is the treason?