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I don't know the official beltway definition of pork Sag. I would define pork as anything that is spent to help one constituency with the confiscated wealth of a different one. As a Libertarian, I guess I am really a radical left winger. I don't think that the federal regime should be doing any of this spending. It is all special interest, even the tax cuts, as far as I am concerned.
Right-wingers have no actual definition for PORK. They don't have one for STIMULUS either that goes anywhere beyond more tax cuts for the rich and for corporations. So they just dredge stuff up -- often from the Conference of Mayors lists of ready-to-go projects rather than from the actual Recovery Act legislation -- and ridicule it all as pork. Best they can do. Not very good, though. It's better than three million jobs and fifteen trillion dollars worth of wealth that they've erased over the past fifteen months or so. They've got no actual answer to offer for that. No apology either. They'd just rather stand around and criticize in whatever lame ways they can...
I guess hundreds of economists do not know what they are talking about either?
Or past histories attempts at this very thing and having it fail!
I guess hundreds of economists do not know what they are talking about either?
Or past histories attempts at this very thing and having it fail!
Japan has even tried it and guess what it failed!
No one here in this forum will have studied Japan's "lost decade" financial crises, or I would bet even know about it. Go to the business forum to debate that, better yet go to any forum except here to get a good debate.
But you are absolutely correct. The lessons from Japan's crises in the 90's, not the great depression or any other recession, are the road maps to this economic crises.
Japan tried to stimulate the economy and both caused it's economic crises as well as extended it unnescessarily for a decade. A government cannot in itself create self sustaining jobs. I wish that would be engraved in the halls of congress. A government can also not spend itself out of a crises like this that has it's origins in financial institutions and investment collapses.
I'm not a doom and gloom proponent, I see the economy improving. My companies financial analysts saw the recovery starting in the 1st qtr. of 2010 back at the end of last year. But with Obama's anti-stimulus bill now, who knows. He is delaying the recovery, and our economy will not be as good as it should be once the recovery is here.
Hundreds of others disagree with those you mention.
You mean recent history? Like the last eight years of tax cuts for the wealthy? We tried supply-side economics, and here we are.
The USA is not Japan.
That many economic experts disagree is simply proof that none of them REALLY can take all variables into account. The are all simply taking their own educated guesses.
Blaming tax cuts for the banking crisis makes about as much sense as blaming Clinton for the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The USSA and Japan are indeed different countries. What that significant geographical fact means to fiscal policy remains to be seen.
A government cannot in itself create self sustaining jobs.
This is true, but the government can and should provide an environment in which the economy can prosper. Republicans think such an environment is provided with tax cuts to producers. Been there, done that. We don't need to study Japan. Just look at ourselves over the last 25 years.
This is true, but the government can and should provide an environment in which the economy can prosper. Republicans think such an environment is provided with tax cuts to producers. Been there, done that. We don't need to study Japan. Just look at ourselves over the last 25 years.
I have no problem with tax cuts, or even tax rebates (provided they are given equally to trickle both up and down - Obama is ignoring the down element). Note that is not the same as "tax cuts for the rich". That's political rhetoric talking. I have no problem with deficit spending in theory really. It's a good tool and tax cuts helped ease the 1980's recession and the 2001 recession. But that alone won't solve the elements that caused this crises, since it originates in financial institutions. It doesn't address the problem. Overall, excluding the last 12 months and a few dips, the past 25 years have been prosperous for the U.S. Admittedly, some of it was built on a house of cards, and it's now crumbling.
Japan is different yes, but still it's the closest example we have to what we are facing today.
I have no problem with tax cuts, or even tax rebates (provided they are given equally to trickle both up and down - Obama is ignoring the down element). Note that is not the same as "tax cuts for the rich". That's political rhetoric talking. I have no problem with deficit spending in theory really. It's a good tool and tax cuts helped ease the 1980's recession and the 2001 recession.
I don't see how they did anything but push the national debt significantly. 2001 recession recovery is one of the worst example to quote in support of tax cut policies working. It was the mildest of recessions over last four decades, and while it was over pretty quickly, the real economy and job growth was horrible.
In 1986, it helped to close loopholes in corporate tax rates that helped the financial standing a little. And even then, the real corporate tax had a peak of about 26%, something that has gone downhill since, down to mid-teens (a BIG reason for big deficits over last eight years). Also worth noting is that 1980s was an era of massive military spending... one could see that as pork.
Quote:
But that alone won't solve the elements that caused this crises, since it originates in financial institutions. It doesn't address the problem. Overall, excluding the last 12 months and a few dips, the past 25 years have been prosperous for the U.S. Admittedly, some of it was built on a house of cards, and it's now crumbling.
It was all built on house of cards... namely "debt". We got a glimpse of it in 1990 when the credit bubble created during Reagan years finally deflated.
And to assume that the current crisis goes back only about a year or so is blasphemy. The "official" recession is already about 15 months old. The recession has been an accepted fact, otherwise, for at least two years, with signs of it appearing long before the official announcement. It was the housing bubble that had helped keep the GDP from falling to recession levels. The "real economy" has been in recession for pretty much 7-8 years.
But hey, we had an administration that believed in mindless free market and that government is not expected to do anything about economy... unless it can be spelled out as: Tax Cuts (to the rich, of course).
Trickle Down Economics: FAIL.
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