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For a long time now, I have been trying desperately to put my finger on the absurdist arguments about the economy, social safety nets, tax policies and this ahistoric mantra about the "Framers" into some sort of perspective, that is until tonight. I suddenly remembered a Paul Krugman piece that underlies this Social Darwinist thinking. In 2003 piece published in the New York Times;
"...the tax-cut crusade actually welcomes the revenue losses from tax cuts. Its most visible spokesman today is Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who once told National Public Radio: ''I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.'' And the way to get it down to that size is to starve it of revenue. ''The goal is reducing the size and scope of government by draining its lifeblood,'' Norquist told U.S. News & World Report."
Now of course, it doesn't matter what kind of social dislocation will be required to "drown the government in the bathroom" it doesn't matter to what degree of hardship the American public will be required to experience in this quest, just as long as the government is reduced to some infinitely unrecognizable form, because the philosophy seems to be, as near as I can see, to an old adage from the Vietnam war;
"We have to destroy the village [read the U.S] in order to save it."
This explains the Republican "stay fast on our core principles" damn the news about the latest layoff.
This explains the let them fail, despite the fact that failure in the private sector still requires government expenditure to clean up the remaining mess.
This explains the I'm head to the hills, but call me when the disaster is over mentality.
And it reminds me of, do you remember, James "End of Times" Watt, let's destroy the environment before God gets a chance to do it.
Yeah, this is an interesting subject to contemplate.
As if "1913" weren't a satisfying victory enough for businesses/corporations.
Personally, i'm against the income tax on the middle/low bracket and believe the corporations should be taxed more. They, the businesses, tend to make the rules for the rest of us. Let those be taxed more for enjoying the political privileges of legislation.
Also, i wish government in general wouldn't be as connected to the hip to business. Bad move on government's part to a lack of foresight in seperating the two; business-private sector from the government-public sector. It seems to be so intertwined nowadays.
I DO NOT want corporate C.E.O.'s running this country.
a quote from the article because reading has proven not to be the strong point of most here on cd that post for the other side.
Conservatives confidently awaited a disaster -- but it failed to materialize. In fact, the economy grew at a reasonable pace through Clinton's first term, while the deficit and the unemployment rate went steadily down. And then the news got even better: unemployment fell to its lowest level in decades without causing inflation, while productivity growth accelerated to rates not seen since the 1960's. And the budget deficit turned into an impressive surplus.
Sound familiar to what conservatives are saying today?
Tax-cut advocates had claimed the Reagan years as proof of their doctrine's correctness; as we have seen, those claims wilt under close examination. But the Clinton years posed a much greater challenge: here was a president who sharply raised the marginal tax rate on high-income taxpayers, the very rate that the tax-cut movement cares most about. And instead of presiding over an economic disaster, he presided over an economic miracle.
Let's be clear: very few economists think that Clinton's policies were primarily responsible for that miracle. For the most part, the Clinton-era surge probably reflected the maturing of information technology: businesses finally figured out how to make effective use of computers, and the resulting surge in productivity drove the economy forward. But the fact that America's best growth in a generation took place after the government did exactly the opposite of what tax-cutters advocate was a body blow to their doctrine. They tried to make the best of the situation. The good economy of the late 1990's, ardent tax-cutters insisted, was caused by the 1981 tax cut. Early in 2000, Lawrence Kudlow and Stephen Moore, prominent supply-siders, published an article titled ''It's the Reagan Economy, Stupid.''
But anyone who thought about the lags involved found this implausible -- indeed, hilarious. If the tax-cut movement attributed the booming economy of 1999 to a tax cut Reagan pushed through 18 years earlier, why didn't they attribute the economic boom of 1983 and 1984 -- Reagan's ''morning in America'' -- to whatever Lyndon Johnson was doing in 1965 and 1966?
Tax-cut advocates had claimed the Reagan years as proof of their doctrine's correctness; as we have seen, those claims wilt under close examination. But the Clinton years posed a much greater challenge: here was a president who sharply raised the marginal tax rate on high-income taxpayers, the very rate that the tax-cut movement cares most about. And instead of presiding over an economic disaster, he presided over an economic miracle.
Let's be clear: very few economists think that Clinton's policies were primarily responsible for that miracle. For the most part, the Clinton-era surge probably reflected the maturing of information technology: businesses finally figured out how to make effective use of computers, and the resulting surge in productivity drove the economy forward. But the fact that America's best growth in a generation took place after the government did exactly the opposite of what tax-cutters advocate was a body blow to their doctrine. They tried to make the best of the situation. The good economy of the late 1990's, ardent tax-cutters insisted, was caused by the 1981 tax cut. Early in 2000, Lawrence Kudlow and Stephen Moore, prominent supply-siders, published an article titled ''It's the Reagan Economy, Stupid.''
But anyone who thought about the lags involved found this implausible -- indeed, hilarious. If the tax-cut movement attributed the booming economy of 1999 to a tax cut Reagan pushed through 18 years earlier, why didn't they attribute the economic boom of 1983 and 1984 -- Reagan's ''morning in America'' -- to whatever Lyndon Johnson was doing in 1965 and 1966?
Pure investments of what the majority of Reagan's economic plan went into were the economic boom of the tech sector. Military always carries the public sectors into improvements (GPS, Lasers, Smart Bombs, Missile defense, night vision, infrared... all produced usable public sector inventions but mainly started in the military). You can't just lob one era in with another (If you want to use LBJ look at where civil rights are now). Also huge cuts to the military along with many cuts in other sectors are what produced the balanced budget.... I think you would have a hard time getting a conservative to argue with that. On the other had neocons will argue about defunding the military. I stand up for that stance because I feel very strongly about being proactive in foreign affairs. The few times throughout history where foreign affairs were ignored ended in tragedy. Now even more so seeing how intertwinned the entire world economy is..and how leveraged it is to the US.
Yeah, this is an interesting subject to contemplate.
As if "1913" weren't a satisfying victory enough for businesses/corporations.
Personally, i'm against the income tax on the middle/low bracket and believe the corporations should be taxed more. They, the businesses, tend to make the rules for the rest of us. Let those be taxed more for enjoying the political privileges of legislation.
Also, i wish government in general wouldn't be as connected to the hip to business. Bad move on government's part to a lack of foresight in seperating the two; business-private sector from the government-public sector. It seems to be so intertwined nowadays.
I DO NOT want corporate C.E.O.'s running this country.
Quote:
What is a small business? The Offi ce of Advocacy defi nes a small business for research purposes as an independent business having fewer than 500 employees. Firms wishing to be designated small businesses for government programs such as contracting must meet size standards specifi ed by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Offi ce of Size Standards. These standards vary by industry; see www.sba.gov/size (broken link).
How important are small businesses to
the U.S. economy?
Small fi rms:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer fi rms.
• Employ about half of all private sector employees.
• Pay nearly 45 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually
over the last decade.
• Create more than half of nonfarm private gross domestic
product (GDP).
• Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists,
engineers, and computer workers).
• Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
• Made up 97.3 percent of all identifi ed exporters and produced
28.9 percent of the known export value in FY 2006.
• Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large
patenting fi rms; these patents are twice as likely as large
fi rm patents to be among the one percent most cited.
Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census and International
Trade Administration; Advocacy-funded research by Kathryn Kobe, 2007
(www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs299tot.pdf (http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs299tot.pdf - broken link)) and CHI Research, 2003 (www.
sba.gov/advo/research/rs225tot.pdf); Federal Procurement Data System;
U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Pure investments of what the majority of Reagan's economic plan went into were the economic boom of the tech sector. Military always carries the public sectors into improvements (GPS, Lasers, Smart Bombs, Missile defense, night vision, infrared... all produced usable public sector inventions but mainly started in the military). You can't just lob one era in with another (If you want to use LBJ look at where civil rights are now). Also huge cuts to the military along with many cuts in other sectors are what produced the balanced budget.... I think you would have a hard time getting a conservative to argue with that. On the other had neocons will argue about defunding the military. I stand up for that stance because I feel very strongly about being proactive in foreign affairs. The few times throughout history where foreign affairs were ignored ended in tragedy. Now even more so seeing how intertwinned the entire world economy is..and how leveraged it is to the US.
Big john why do you carry them on your back? I think that the op is arguing that the stimulus follows a certain economic theory that has proven to be the most accurate. I know you have read many of my links and know that I have done much research on this point. I believe the stimulus also follows the keynesian economic theory to the letter. I also believe that because it follows so closely to a theory that has proven so succesful it should go through with little compromise.
I find it unbelievable that no one comes forward to provide the argument for tax-cuts economics! All I can do islaugh!
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There is more.
Oh, there are STILL some dopes who believe in it !!!
