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Yep, looking at your chart it is easy to see that an aggressive tax policy of extreme income had paid off the massive debt of WWII in less than five years while the economy flourished.
You do realize that's because all of our competitors had been bombed to smithereens, right? We can emulate those conditions as soon as liberals are willing to bomb the hell out of all of Europe, the eastern pacific rim, and the U.S.'s NATO trade partners.
You do realize that's because all of our competitors had been bombed to smithereens, right? We can emulate those conditions as soon as liberals are willing to bomb the hell out of all of Europe, the eastern pacific rim, and the U.S.'s NATO trade partners.
Deal?
Didn't think so.
That 'bombed to smithereens' argument is often used, but it is essentially wrong. While Europe had little industrial capacity, it also had little money to buy U.S. goods and services, which were very expensive to foreigners.
Here is a graph of exports, adjusted for inflation:
As you can see, we export much more today than during the post-war period.
On the history: the great postwar boom wasn’t just a few years after the war; it was a whole generation long, from 1947 to 1973 — well into an era in which Europe had very much recovered. Here’s West German GDP per capita as a share of US GDP per capita:
The Europe-in-ruins era was long over while the US boom was still going strong.
In essence, there is no answer on the right why during a time when the nation had high taxes, strong unions and well-paid workers, we flourished. Since then, we held down wages, almost eliminated unions and drastically lowered taxes, and most feel poorer.
You do realize that's because all of our competitors had been bombed to smithereens, right? We can emulate those conditions as soon as liberals are willing to bomb the hell out of all of Europe, the eastern pacific rim, and the U.S.'s NATO trade partners.
Deal?
Didn't think so.
We could also emulate this imaginary boom times of yours by becoming the world leaders in green technology, environment technology and the new technology still on the drawing board.
Right now all were leading the world in is self destructive greed, hubris and hedonism.
The tax code is used to control the health of the economy. In general, poor people spend money and rich people tend to loan it to poor people to spend expecting to get it back with interest.
BS. Republicans are blatantly pro super rich.
Give the rich a tax brake and the economy will grow enough to offset the loss of revenue.
The Republicans are Pro-Success.
Im sorry you cant invent the next big thing and become rich/successful at that.
But you dont need to be jealous and steal from them just cause you cant achieve it.
*If i cant have it NOBODY can have it* The most stupid liberal arguement i have EVER heard.
as Winston Churchill said.
If your not a liberal when your young you have no heart. If your not a conservative when your old you have no brain.
Im young so i have no heart but im not afraid to admit that. Its called Reality.
Extreme income would be making 500 to 1000 times what the average wage earner makes. Nobody is worth $50,000,000 or more a year for simply occupying a corner office.[/quote]
The author of the above bolded statement, no doubt, things he is being intellectual, making a valuable point, etc.l, when all he did was show just how vacuous and vapid his position and logic in.
By inference he is saying that people who get rich do so merely by sitting pretty-as-a-picture in a corner office somewhere, who nothing could be further from the truth.
This is what passes for rational thought on and by the left. No wonder we being flushed.
The Republicans are Pro-Success.
Im sorry you cant invent the next big thing and become rich/successful at that.
But you dont need to be jealous and steal from them just cause you cant achieve it.
*If i cant have it NOBODY can have it* The most stupid liberal arguement i have EVER heard.
as Winston Churchill said.
If your not a liberal when your young you have no heart. If your not a conservative when your old you have no brain.
Im young so i have no heart but im not afraid to admit that. Its called Reality.
A discussion about whether the federal income tax should be 35% or 39.5%, or whether the capital gains tax should be 25% or 35% -- or zero -- is a debate worth having and one where reasonable arguments exist on both sides.
Those are also debates Republicans and the rich might lose. So, following Reagan, Republicans have decided it is far better to invent "welfare queens" who drive Cadillacs on the taxpayer's dime so as to change the subject away from stale fiscal policy and toward morality tales about lazy Democrats using the confiscatory powers of tyrannical government to rob the virtuous in order to reward the venal.
Republicans, in other words, have traded governing for story-telling where the translation of our political disputes into fairy tales is now ubiquitous on the right.
...
hink Progress was able to document how the businesses singled out by Romney did not make it on their own but were instead given a helping hand from government in the form of a grant, subsidy or contract -- sometimes a massive one.
There was Ball Office Products, which was featured at a Romney event in Richmond, Virginia. It got a $635,000 loan through the Small Business Administration in 2012 and later a $52,525 contract with the General Services Administration.
There was Midwest Tapes of Holland, Ohio that received stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. There was Cranston Material Handling Equipment Corporation that got $61,729 in contracts with the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. There was Home Instead Senior Care of Roanoke, Virginia that receives 75% of its funding from Medicare and Medicaid. And on and on it goes.
...
The decision of Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party to deliberately use tax and de-regulatory policy to favor finance capital over labor and manufacturing beginning in 1980 has had its predictable results.
Since Reagan's election, we've seen the steady concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands along with the accompanying rise in inequality. We've seen the weakening of the state and the rise of a financial plutocracy that understandably wants to dominate the political sphere in exactly the same way they control the economic. Hence the attacks on public sector unions, the disenfranchisement of Democratic-leaning voters even in defiance of Department of Justice injunctions and a Republican Supreme Court willing to overturn a century of settled law so that the rich can let their money do the talking.
Obscuring this harsh new reality with celebrations of a mutant American capitalism that invokes memories of a free market that no longer exists (if it ever really did) is a priority for today's plutocrats who are desperate to find a legitimizing narrative that will help explain and rationalize their outsized wealth and power.
...
The Republican talking point that Obama's stimulus didn't reduce unemployment is wrong they say - in fact 92% of economists agree it did create jobs. On the question of bank bailouts, no economist disputes that the bailouts lowered unemployment. Market factors rather than energy policy were responsible for gas price hikes, unlike GOP claims, say the experts. The oft-cited Republican claim that tax cuts will boost the economy and pay for themselves may have been true when the tax rate was 91% -- but today with taxes at 60-year lows it's pure "fantasy."
The debate in Washington, the experts agree, "has become completely unmoored from this consensus, and in a particular direction: Angry Republicans have pushed their representatives to adopt positions that are at odds with the best of modern economic thinking. That may be good politics, but it's terrible policy."
I know, I know, "experts" are always liberals and therefore "biased." There's even a scientific consensus on climate change, as well, despite what we all know about global warming being a hoax.
But with the facts and the experts all lining up against them, the only real card Republicans have left to play, as Sargent says, is to somehow fool a frightened public with wild conspiracy theories that President Obama "demeans success," harbors "active ill will toward private business owners and entrepreneurs" - and that this irrational animosity is all that stands in the way of a real economic recovery.
The author of the above bolded statement, no doubt, things he is being intellectual, making a valuable point, etc.l, when all he did was show just how vacuous and vapid his position and logic in.
By inference he is saying that people who get rich do so merely by sitting pretty-as-a-picture in a corner office somewhere, who nothing could be further from the truth.
This is what passes for rational thought on and by the left. No wonder we being flushed.
Ahh, cannot deal with the message so you go after the messenger, real grown up. I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and out a better argument. Heck you cannot even quote a post without screwing it up.
Who is worth $50,000,000 a year? Justify one person taking that much out of the capital worth of a company and out of this economy....
Last edited by CaseyB; 12-03-2012 at 05:32 AM..
Reason: language
That 'bombed to smithereens' argument is often used, but it is essentially wrong. While Europe had little industrial capacity, it also had little money to buy U.S. goods and services, which were very expensive to foreigners.
Failed deflection. The point is that goods made in the U.S. did not have to compete with foreign-made goods in the U.S. or any other market.
Quote:
...the disruptions of war made the 1930s and 1940s less than propitious times for Europe to emulate America's example. Consequently, by the end of World War II, the United States had opened up a huge lead in levels of output and productivity. But this also meant that there existed an extraordinary backlog of technological and organizational knowledge ready for Europe's commercial use. By licensing American technology... - The European Economy Since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond By Barry Eichengreen
Quote:
Europe was devastated by years of conflict during World War II. Millions of people had been killed or wounded. Industrial and residential centers in England, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Belgium and elsewhere lay in ruins. Much of Europe was on the brink of famine as agricultural production had been disrupted by war. Transportation infrastructure was in shambles. The only major power in the world that was not significantly damaged was the United States. ...Officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP), the Marshall Plan was intended to rebuild the economies and spirits of western Europe, primarily.
We could also emulate this imaginary boom times of yours by becoming the world leaders in green technology, environment technology and the new technology still on the drawing board.
Are you really advocating that Obama give even more billions of dollars away to his green energy cronies with nothing to show for it?
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