Friday Animations–Bush Tax Cuts
by Linda Beale
Friday Animations–Bush Tax Cuts
crossposted with Ataxingmatter
It might be worth reminding everbody about now that the Bush tax cuts were a poor idea even when they were first proposed. Like so much else done by the Bush administration (and pushed by the right generally), they amounted to yet another means of redistributing from the have-less to the have-mores that Bush called his base. The following is a good animation depicting the interrelationship of distributional issues and the tax cuts, showing visually how the riches from the last few decades went to the wealthy and then the tax cuts added to the problem by favoring them over ordinary folk.
“the Bush Tax Cuts” (Oct 14, 2004)
One can only wish that those GOP voters in the Senate and House this week had gone back to reiew these points and then listen to their own guru, John McCain, who thought that the projected 2003 deficit of 246 billion (without tax cuts and war costs) was scandalously high. He called “alarming” the 10-year deficit prediction for the cost of the Bush tax cuts of $1.8 trillion, especially when it didn’t even include the war costs, and that such a deficit could “lower the standard of income” for generations of Americans.
That is, in 2003, even the crusty rightwinger John McCain recognized that at a time of deficits and significant war costs (back when he “hoped” that we would have a “brief, successful war in Iraq”), passing tax cuts of the magnitude proposed in 2003 (including the treatment of dividends for the wealthy elite at the preferential capital gains rate) would be irresponsible lack of statesmanship that disregarded the fiscal security of the American people. He spent some time emphasizing the fact that the extent of war costs connected with the Bush invasion of Iraq were not knowable and could be quite high if the war “didn’t meet our best estimates for its duration”
Of course, most Americans have suffered throughout the last decade from the irresponsibility of the Bush tax cuts that rewarded the wealthy and continued the “winner-take-all politics” noted by Joseph Hacker and Paul Pierson (in a book to be reviewed soon).
“John McCain Ardently Opposing Bush Tax Cuts” (2003) here
(2003)
And a bonus–a graph showing the effect of the Bush Tax cuts on the deficit if they are not paid for other tax increases or appropriate spending cuts.
Lessee, Linda says: “…most Americans have suffered throughout the last decade from the irresponsibility of the Bush tax cuts…”, but the reality of how responsible Bush’s deficit policies actually were is shown below. Then we have Bush’s terrible unemployment/jobless recovery issue also included below.
Continuing the old Dem talking points when the Dems have controlled the House and Senate for four years and have had overwhelming majorities since Jan, 2009 shows a level of denial seldom seen. Dems/Obama own the current extraordinary deficit levels!
They’re talking points not data! Or for Dan, they’re story lines
CoRev,
Your graphs do not take in a lot. While we had the Bush tax cuts and Bush had deficits every year, we lost our jobs due to globalization. Corporate CEO wages in 1980 was 48 times the average worker. In 2008 CEO pay was 319 times the average worker. Deficits were rising in his last years not by democrats, but by the cost of war which was hidden in an emergency fund. And then you have a recession which shows higher unemployment. What we had was eight years of our jobs going overseas, our money going to Iraq, and the neglect of the infrastructure. And you cannot run a country like that. All those Bush tax cuts is spent money and does us little today as we try to find ways to create jobs, in which the jobs do not exist. The fed is having more money printed also to try to create jobs. But again, our jobs went overseas. You need to invest in the country, in the people, and in the future. The Bush “guns and butter” economics will take some 20 years correct and it will take that long to get unemployment down.
woody,
You don’t appear to know which U.S. President signed off on WTO. It wasn’t Bush II.
Woody said: “Deficits were rising in his last years not by democrats, but by the cost of war which was hidden in an emergency fund.” But, he seems unable to read a graph which shows the deficits going down until we started into a recession. Not the story line he has accepted.
Well Corev,
I also read Economistmom and Bruce Bartlett on tax cuts and their efficacy.
JL, I agree with what you wrote. I would change only slightly this: “The primary purposes of taxes are to 1) fund government operations, 2) regulate the macro economy through counter cyclical spending and 3) fund social policy goals. The main goal of the tax system is not to redistribute wealth.“
to this: “The primary purposes of taxes are to 1) fund government operations. The social/economic purpose of government spending is: 1) regulate the macro economy through counter cyclical spending and 2) fund social policy goals. The main goal of the tax system is not to redistribute wealth.” Changes in bold.
I know it’s a quibble.
Dan, as Mike K would say it’s just data not opinion. 🙂
Lesee, CoRev, how ya doin’
Adressing poster in 3rd person: still rude – check.
Ignoring main thrusrt of post (wealth redistribution resulting from Reagan/Bush tax policies, since you missed it) – check.
Gratuitous and irrelevant swipe at “Dem talking points” which happen to be true becaue the President sets policy, and (you know what’s coming) POLICY MATTERS! Anyway – check.
Inability to distinguish between data and talking points – check.
Posting graphs that are irrelevant to the point under discussion – that might be a new one, but- check
Ignoring who was president in 2008, and which president set the budget for 2009 – check.
In short, CoRev, typical you – ignorant, foolish, and rude – oh, my!
Cheers!
JzB
I do know who signed the WTO and he was backed by republicans. And I know it was Bush who came to Ohio time and time again and said “free trade is good” as our factories closed. Also everyone is on this bandwagon, including Obama, that free trade is working. We have lost some 4 million to 8 million jobs. The democrats are spending on failed programs (cash for clunkers, extension of unemployment benefits), the states want more casinos ‘to create jobs’, the republicans want more tax cuts to ‘create jobs’, and the fed wants more money printed to ‘create jobs.’ And none of it is working. So, I am waiting for some answers.
When Bush came into office, there was yearly surpluses for three years before he came in. The Bush deficits were every year running around 200 billion a year. At that time, our jobs kept going overseas, at that time we spent a trillion dollars on war, at that time our infrastructure was neglected, at that time and for some 20 to 30 years globalization was ignored, at that time it was “stay the course” on both the wars and the economy and they were all ran into the ground. It did not make a difference who was in congress. Bush had it his way-he stayed the course. It will take some 20 years to get out of this economic mess from his trickle down theory. And it has taken the Iraq Study Group and others to come up with a solution on the wars which got out of hand and we watched Afghanistan get ignored for some 5 or 6 years and we are trying to make up for lost time. It was eight years of wasted time. Time we don’t have to waste as we watch China grow each year at 8%. And we have nothing to show for it. The Bush tax cuts is spent money and does us little good today as we have no jobs. We lost all the stimulus of tax cuts and the fed printing the money. There is no more leverage today to jump start the economy.
Let’s be realistic here! Honestly, what is the deficit when George Bush jr left the office? What is the national debt with Bush jr? What is the national debt now?
I am neither left or right but isn’t the tax code architect is representative Rangel? A 20plus term congressman whom’s ways and means committee wrote most of america’s modern taxes.
Personally, I don’t mind if we go back to Clinton tax era tax code. The ultra left progressives will feel good… Tax the rich and redistribute the wealth! But will it really tax the rich?
If Google can be an example it won’t make a single bit of difference! They will still have the same deferrment special tax treatment. This particular piece of tax code will be still preserved for big corporation, wall street giants, so they can still pay single digit taxes.
Each party have their own sugar coat… Democrates-we help the poor Republicans-we help the small businesses. In the end, John McCain have his trophy wife, and Nancy pelosi have her buddy michael Moore as fellow learjet environmentalist liberals.
This is still a great country, I truly felt that people should look at what is truly motivating our elected leaders instead of petty political rants. Not very productive. In fact, we should be respectful of everyone that’s productive and honestly pay the highest rate of tax! They are so different from the big corporate, wall street figure that makes corrupt deals with government… This is the sort of govenment that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer!
Don’t buy into the republican retoric higher taxes drive away business, what really should happen is the leveling of tax code between the big multinational colorations and small businesses! How can a small Internet start up, sole proprietor, getting taxed at 30 plus percent compete against against someone that gets tax deferrment, and congress working with big corporates to legislate against competition(customized regulation). Just look at small bank, big bank situation in America!
Taxes can be good for society, but it must be used wisely. When we are over spending to the point of borrowing 40 cents to a tax dollar there will be no future. If we decide to tax some more, without reform, the middle class will shrink, and eventually, in a super high tax society, barter will occur! Just look at amazon, bay…lol
Refuting your error, re: revenues.
http://jazzbumpa.blogspot.com/2010/12/right-wing-talking-point-refuted.html
Cheers!
JzB
…Anyway, it has been apparent since the Washington Consensus proved to be a failure that dollar recycling through t-bills would not last much longer. The Chinese could not have been much more clear about their dissatisfaction with the Bretton Woods II arrangements. And of course the petro-dollar ‘deal’ has always been unstable.
The point is, the Repubs almost certainly foresaw that foreign-funded deficits were a temporary opportunity. So, McCain’s fiscally responsible stance was very probably in anticipation of his being the Republican nominee in 2008, which, predictably, would be a time when deficits ‘would matter’. And deficits would matter because the foreign inflows of dollars and their recycling would no longer be an option. All very predictable.
well, i think i agree mostly with ray i love, though he may not wish to be associated with a jerk.
thing is the dems enabled the bush tax cuts and are presently calling for keeping most of them.
i don’t myself know if the deficit is dangerous, but since it’s being used as a scare-story for the purpose of cutting social security… which has nothing to do with the deficit… i’d like to see some sanity in bringing it down. and since the money has already been spent, the only way to bring it down is to raise taxes.
you could hope that an economic recovery would bring it down, but that argument is beginning to wear a little thin. after 30 years of tax cuts for all seasons, tax cuts for all reasons, i think we need to just pay our bills and see what happens next.
meanwhile neither linda’s nor co rev’s hyper partisanship is the least bit convincing.
JzB, aww, and I thought we had an understanding. You promised to not ever, never respond again!
In the end you just couldn’t resist being the angry liberal.
But you haven’t addressed any of JzB’s points which show your points to be misleading and/or irrelevant to the post that Linda put up. As usual you prefer to play hit and run debate. You criticize what hasn’t been said and run from criticism of your own deception.
“So, in a way, I am somewhat neutral in these political squabbles.” ray l love
I understand the sentiment, but have to point out that there can be no neutrality when the issue is better government. No, I’m not suggesting that the ideological divide is between Democrats and Republicans. It is certainly more so the division between rapacious greed disguised as free market capitalism and progressive populism. Both political parties fall more to the side of the former and those who may try to represent the latter are often ostracized as leftist, which they are not. There would be little to complain of responsible capitalism which is held to account for its behavior in the market place. This seems not to be a part of the debate.
Jack, points?!? All that JzB wrote was ad hominem.
What part of this statement of mine did you not understand as a point? “Lessee, Linda says: “…most Americans have suffered throughout the last decade from the irresponsibility of the Bush tax cuts…”, but the reality of how responsible Bush’s deficit policies actually were is shown below. Then we have Bush’s terrible unemployment/jobless recovery issue also included below. ”
Admittedly the unemployment chart was gratis, as Linda did not mention it this time around, but the revenue/deficit charts I provided were there to counter her irresponsibility claim and her “bonus” chart based upon what if scenarios and not data.
Woody, when the USG taking out of the economy more than it actually needs, budget surpluses, is a good thing? That’s what was implicit in your: “When Bush came into office, there was yearly surpluses for three years before he came in.”
Some of us think otherwise. Some wonder how much better the already good economy might have been without his “over” taxing? Some of us wonder if there might have been surplus wealth so that investments might have prevented the 2001/2 recession? Some of us wonder if it might not have better if Clinton had lost his second term? A Republican Congress and presidency seemed to work OK for the 2004-2007 period when deficit spending was going down. (Refer to my charts.)
All the commentary re: gobalization confuses me, since it is not a new policy. We implemeted the Marshall Plan after WWII, and the ensuing various Trade Agreements are just continuations. Rebuilding others’ economies were never to create a more competitive business environment? That position seems a little naive.
I don’t want to discuss the war policy as that has been over worked. But, I am somewhat dismayed by your tax cut/policy statments after all the thought you have put into your multi-point proposal. How many tools do you think the USG has to influence your points?
You were not a jerk when you agreed with me (5 words into your comment), but then on the 7th word you were put back on my ‘jerk list’. My name is Ray LaPan-Love, and a day rarely goes by when I am not insulted with the juvenile plays on my name. “ray i love” is cute but trite.
I started out adult life as a bright eyed, bushy tailed republican, but over the years the republican has been seeping out of my body politic.
This seepage accelerated when I saw the GOP and full time Special Prosecutors chase our President Clinton around over something that Hillary seemed perfectly capable of handling. Don’t American Presidents and major political parties have better things to do, I wondered?
Then along came Bush and the seepage got so bad that now only the big toe of my right foot remains republican.
The resulting void has been difficult to fill, and the democrats have only been able to secure residency in my left big toe.
So at the moment my right big toe is having a huge laugh at the expense of my left big toe.
Why? Because after 10 years about wailing over the “Bush taxes for the rich”, the dems are forced to acknowledge they were a tax cut for the middle class too, and that these need to be preserved.
Then today I caught wind of a senate negotiation ploy. A republican announced they will fight to keep the tax cuts for the rich, and let the tax cuts for the middle class expire.
My left big toe went numb with shock.
The charts I have tell a different story. We know that bush ran up 200, 300, and 409 billion dollar deficits and that is why, when he came into office the national debt was less than 5 trillion dollars and he left with 10 trillion dollars.
And yes, the yearly surpluses was a good thing. And a little of the national debt was paid off. Bush threw all that away. Overtaxing? Now that is a crazy one. And recessions happen for many reasons, but the biggest reason is the economy gets lofty. You want to brag about the 2004-2007 period. Okay, we got the tax cuts but we lost the jobs and it was considered the lost decade as wages and jobs stagnated. Now, there is plenty of blame to go around. You had a fed, Alan Greenspan, democrats, republicans, and Bush saying we should target housing for growth. Bush talked about the home ownership society. But while they targeted that, our manufacturing jobs went overseas. Our money also went to Iraq. And we saw the neglect of our infrastructure and science, etc. And today, we have no jobs. That is what happened under Bush. It is about globalization and 2 billion cheap laborers who want our jobs, and because of that the middle class is losing jobs and having pressure on wages. All those tax cuts don’t mean a hill of beans if you don’t want to solve the problems. What is typical from the right is to have tax cuts and then laissez-faire. And we have enough proof that it does not work. Simply put, we have no jobs. The tax cuts is spent money and does little for today. The fed is printing money and that has lost its leverage also. So we used up all the stimulus and we have no jobs. That is where we are at, and it will take some 20 years to get out of this Bush mess.
If you are confused about globalization then I don’t know what state or what world you live in. We gave up some 4 million to 8 million middle class jobs. My town is devastated with closed factories. There are no jobs. Now, you can talk of tax cuts all you want, but that will not create the jobs that we lost. As far as influence, it would be a heck of a lot better to invest in the country, in the people, and in the future instead of tax cuts for the here and now and ignoring our problems. The Bush years was a total waste of time. There was no future from his policies and that is where we are today.
The charts did not show up.United Stated National Debt
Jack,
I frequently have days on these sites when I am involved in one conversation in which I am being accused of being a communist, while on another site, or even on just another thread sometimes, I’m seen as a redneck-righty. Even in person I have this affect on people, I grew up in So Cal during the hippie phase, but my family was in the horse business and I am in fact an ex-professional rodeo cowboy, a roper actually. But I have very progressive views in some ways and so I don’t fit stereotypes very well. The point is, I agree with what you said here but I am tired of the political weirdness that is so prevalent, and I presumed that my comment on this thread would be one of those that led to my being accused of being well more to the right than I actually am. Which is not a big deal of course but I am trying not to waste so much time explaining myself needlessly, which you would better understand if you knew how poor my typing and computer skills are.
Shows what a joke the republicans have become. We lost our middle class jobs and the rich want their tax cuts.
Woody, just one point. You reference debt and deficit in the same sentence. “We know that bush ran up 200, 300, and 409 billion dollar deficits and that is why, when he came into office the national debt was less than 5 trillion dollars and he left with 10 trillion dollars.
By doing so it appears you do not know the difference between them. In that sentence you imply $904B = $5T. What’s worse you then start into the Dem talking points, Bush this and Bush that, while claiming there are many causes for (fill in the blank here.)
You’re all over the place. make a point ans support it. This comment failed in that.
Bush was in office for eight years and every year he had deficits. You add up all the deficits and that amounts to 4 to 5 trillion of debt. Hence, all those accumulative years (8 years) from the time he entered office the debt went from under 5 trillion to 10 trillion dollars.
Now, during this time our jobs went overseas, our money went to Iraq, and we had the neglect of the infrastructure. So, if we are going to make things better, then we can’t go on an ideology of just tax cuts and do nothing else. You cannot ignore for example globalization and factories closing. Hence, the tax cuts did little good and it does us no good today as we lost the jobs and we are losing the middle class. So, it is a multiple of things we have to do. But let us not forget, that we are trapped in a corner. The tax cuts are used up and is doing little, the fed is printing money and is doing little, we lost a lot of jobs, and where are the jobs? We are in war and that is a drain. We are behind on our infrastructure by some 2 trillion dollars. And what exactly is going to create jobs and get our economy going again? The republicans think there is a one trick pony but that does not work. Obama is not much better, but since republicans no it all, I would like to hear some answers.
Well stated.
Good post.
A commie cowboy? Who would have thought it…
I agree. I never pinned downed the actual numbers, they have varied from place or person to another.
It is 2 billion cheap laborers and that is more than what we can do with tax cuts or anything else that they are doing in Washington. Obama keeps hoping on our exports and so is the fed. And the republicans want more tax cuts to create jobs. They are all crazy.
CoRev,
What is worse with the tax cuts is that it did not create jobs, it did not create prosperity, and it did not prevent a recession. Also, in 2007 Bush said that his policies would balance the budget by 2012. Didn’t happen. So bottom line, you cannot run a country like a one trick pony, and obviously there are more things going on than just living with an ideology.
Cedric – “A republican announced they will fight to keep the tax cuts for the rich, and let the tax cuts for the middle class expire.”
You have a name? That’s not what I read today. Sounds like a deal is being pulled together.
Ray
I am an old man with failing eyes. i can’t tell an I from an l on the computer. If it makes you feel good about yourself to despise me for that, be my guest.
Woody, your first paragraph confirms my fear that you do not understand the differences between debt and deficits.
Well then, you can explain it to me.
Woody, go back to my first comment here and look at the deficit chart. He was 1.5 to 2 FYs away from a balanced budget, IF the housing bubble had not burst.
As far as that goes, he would never have had a recession in his first term had Clinton’s tech/dot com bubble not burst. See how easy it is to make simple economic statements?
Ray, I agree with Dale. I knew not whether l or i.
MG-Can’t remember. Quickly scanned a news report this morning over coffee cup #1. They did make it sound like a negotiation ploy…like draw the line way back in ridiculous territory and get some room to negotiate.
I’ll try and do a google on it, but doesn’t sound like the idea will gain serious traction.
Woody’s blame game is useless in that it doesn’t advance the argurments nor solutions. Elsewhere he has proposed good solutions to the overall problems.
The Democrats played a role in the economic outcomes since 1994. President Clinton signed off on WTO and rode herd over a major economic bubble that was as phony as a three dollar bill.
Consumer personal credit rocketed upward beginning in 1994 and stayed at unsustainable levels through 2007. The Clinton miracle wasn’t all that it was promoted to be.
The reality is that today is where we are. We can either address the issues, propose solutions and move forward, or we can wallow in lopsided political claims that change nothing about our current predicament.
Both major political parties and the leaderless crowd in Washington, D.C. over the last few decades have put us in this position.
Screaming about the tax cuts for the rich while ignoring that over 75% of the Bush II era tax cuts were provided to other than upper income earners is a disingenuous game. If the lower income earners had any spine, they would be calling for elimination of all Bush II era tax cuts.
The Democrats and the Republicans suck. Let’s move on and deal with reality on the ground.
I bash the republicans more as it is they who ‘know’ so much, but they have no answers, just ideology. Do you ever listen to all the robots on Fox? Well, this is what you have to do. This is the reality.
1. Invest in your country: That is energy independence for security and jobs. Also a new air traffic control system that will save 12% on fuel. The savings to the airlines can go to build new aircraft. A high speed internet system. Perhaps high speed rail.
2. Invest in your people: That is mandatory vocational training. We live in a globalized world and you can no longer rely on factories. We have to be an educated society.
3. Invest in the future: Federal research grants to be given to universities and business to bring out new technologies. Today there are no new jobs to go to for those unemployed. You need new areas of growth. No playing games with embryonic stem cell research.
4. Fix the antitrust laws that Reagan relaxed. Monopolies and consolidations destroyed jobs.
5. Consider an “American job elimination tax” on companies that move out of the country. These companies do not pay middle class wages, healthcare, pensions, social security, or city and state taxes.
6. Get away from failed ideology. We saw it for 8 years. Tax cuts was used as an ideology. It did not prevent recessions. And did not create prosperity. You still have to solve problems. Ideology does not solve problems.
7. Supporting small business sounds nice and it is heard in Washington, but it does not work in my community as the big business left. That means you cannot have small business as people lost their jobs. Besides, small business will never pay what big business paid in wages.
8. We are losing the middle class. We cannot compete with 2 billion cheap laborers in the world that want our jobs. There are not enough jobs to go around. Competition is good, but it can be harmful also. All we are doing in this country is build the same business environment so that we can knock the other guy out. A person loses his job and has no place to go to. And the reason is that we did not invest in our country, in our people, and in the future.
9. Have commissions to cut government spending. It seems to be the only approach to doing this. Obviously, one side or the other will complain, but something has to be done now.
Well, it went somewhere in cyberspace, but not worth looking for.
Here’s where things are really headed as of two hours ago. So my earlier prediction of money for everyone in time for Christmas seems to be spot on. Which gets to the next question. The 2011 Prez Budget showing 25T US federal debt by 2020….did that assume expiration of the tax cuts?????
Following Senate votes Saturday, party leaders say a compromise is likely involving an extension of Bush-era tax breaks for all income levels, plus an extension of unemployment benefits.
Nope, it’s a simple search.
Totally ridiculous. Bush “stayed the course” and he ran the country into the ground. It was a “guns and butter” economics. You cannot have a war and have your pet projects at the same time. Deficits went up every year, we lost our jobs due to globalization, our money went to Iraq, and he neglected our infrastructure. The country needs to be governed and not run on an ideology. The republicans are making the same mistake today. More tax cuts to the rich and we keep losing jobs. We need to deal with our problems. Bush never took into an account of loss jobs, of future recessions, of endless wars, of losing the middle class over his failed ideologies, of not investing in our infrastructure, and of not investing in our future. The tax cuts is spent money and does us no good today.
And I ask, what widgets can be made in our country and not some other country?
How can you create jobs if jobs are going overseas?
How do small business benefit if factories are closed? They rely on traffic and without the factories you cannot have small business.
And if we need tax cuts in the hands of the consumer to buy into the economy, the dynamics have probably changed as half the products are foreign made.
So, how are we going to create jobs? How do we drive the economy? We already had tax cuts, the fed is printing more money? So why don’t we have jobs?
The housing bubble is one problem, a financial crisis another problem, not being able to stimulate another problem, not being energy independent another, the neglect of our infrastructure another, deficits and debt another, failed ideologies are another, globalization another, consolidation another. We have long term structural problems and they need to be fixed.
We still let them work here too if our employers will sponser them on a H1B visa.
I haven’t checked on the visa count lately, but thru the 1999 dot.com bust, then the general tech wreck and corporate IT work stoppage of 2000, Congress was authorizing 500,000 visas. These can be 1 to 3 years in length. Finally in 2004, after we were recovering from recession, Congress cut back new visas to 250,000 a year.
At the same time IBM announced that the 10 year plan was to have 50% of it’s workforce outside the US.
So train ’em here, then send ’em back to a IBM sweat shop in Bangalore!
What a country.
And BTW, this –
In the end you just couldn’t resist being the angry liberal.
is what ad hominem looks like.
Cheers!
JzB
www JzB. Get a grip. Below is a flow chart of normal pro-AGW attacks on skeptics. With your performance it seems appropriate to use it here. Chart is from here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/04/agw-defender-flowchart/
CoRev –
This might be your deepest excursion ever into the realm of off-topic irrelevance.
You are beyond help. But your tone-deafness to irony makes it all worth while.
Cheers!
JzB
“Woody, when the USG taking out of the economy more than it actually needs, budget surpluses, is a good thing? “
When that money it doesn’t “actually need” is going to pay down debt as a percentage of GDP then of course it is a good thing. Or are you just endorsing the Cheney theory that “deficits don’t matter”. At least once they are on the books I guess. And put there by Republicans.
US Public Debt as a percentage of GDP was paid down under every post-war President not named Reagan or Bush. Including a guy called Clinton. But you only had a freakout when the FY2009 budget could be partially attributed to Obama and so adding him to the list that didn’t seem to bother you much in real time.
You want ad homs? Well I don’t want to get Dan mad at me. Try picking up a thesaurus and examining all the cross references to ‘disingenuous’ and ‘prevaricating’. And try not to notice your picture on each entry.
Look it is not absolutely necessary to produce surpluses to drive down debt to GDP ratios. Unless you have practitioners of Voodoo Economics driving that from less than 30 to more than 60% in 12 years. That you could even begin to argue that surpluses are a bad thing would be astonishing. Except for that thesaurus thing you got going.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png
Seriously your argument would have us hold that debt can only ratchet up and never down. Because otherwise we are somehow starving the economy or something.
‘I put the 2001-2010 well paying job losses well north of 15 million as a result of U.S. trade policy established under President Clinton. It has been a disaster. “
And Bush-Cheney had no responsibility for REVERSING that disastrous trade policy? Were they helpless actors? Or did they double down on that same trade agenda? I thought that guy was ‘The Decider’ and not the ‘Helpless Giant’.
And it is funny how those job losses didn’t kick in until Bush cut tax rates on capital and ended up starving infrastructure. Nope is is all the fault of the Maquiladoras and NAFTA (and not the factory owners that actually moved the jobs). Are you guys even trying anymore? Because you just pulled that number out of nowhere and based it on nothing. Which for a guy addicted to links is pretty damn ironic.
jazz
i went round and round about ad hominem with ray L love to no good effect. thing is words change their meanings and you and i will just have to accept that most folks don’t even know what “logic” means any more, let alone just what the ad hominem fallacy used to mean. even “you just couldn’t resist being an angry liberal” is not what i would have called an ad hominem before Love so kindly corrected my foolishness. you can say mean things to a person, or about a person, or even discuss a persons motives with him or with others without committing a fallacy. the fallacy comes when you present an argument that turns on some irrelevant aspect of the person who represents the opposing argument.
poor Mr Love, and his friend kharris, may have thought i was insulting an author, or attempting to counter her argument with an observation about her possible reason for holding a particular belief, but it was not either an insult nor an ad hominem. it was just a normal part of ordinary human conversation that addressed motives… partly in frustration at the lack of progress that ordinary “logic” was making in the discourse.
of course ordinary “logic” takes a good bit of deconstruction itself. and even dictioinary definitions leave a lot in the eye of the beholder.
sorry, i couldn’t help myself.
woody
i’d offer a caution on that jobs training stuff. half the people in this country have iq’s less than 100. they can do useful work. and low iq is not the same as dumb. but the idea that we were going to educate ourselves into an economy of elites has not worked. i have been doing some farm work and labor from “unskilled” to “skilled” and let me tell you, it’s all skilled. just that folks that don’t work with their hands don’t understand what skill its. and some damn bright people i meet probably never read a book or punch a calculator. one thing we could do for ourselves is see that people get decent pay for the work they do for us, whether we think it is “skilled” or not.
cutting spending may not be the right answer. in any case we need to pay for what we already bought.
and “small business will never pay what big business paid” may indicate another problem with the way we look at the world. small business can provide more meaningful life satisfaction. chasing that big paycheck may be the way we loose our souls. and i strongly suspect that having lost our souls has more to do with the present hard times than is generally recognized… by the economists who sold theirs.
woody
i agree with a lot of what you say. but your plan to cut the secretaries etc may be wrong headed. you don’t know what those people are doing or why someone thinks it is worth while topay them. in any case you don’t grow prosperity by cutting jobs. you sound as if you think there is not enough to go around, and people who have jobs you don’t undersstand are taking something away fromyou.
fact is, aside from resources like air and water, there is plenty to go around, and the more people working the more you are going to have, not less. and no it doesn’t work if they are all making what you want and not what someone else wants.
ah, co rev, when you have just been kind to me, i hate to quibble… but the extra drilling might not be such a good idea. we coat ourselves in oil and what do we get for it… a chance to drive an hour to work and back every day. we need to be a little smarter about energy use.
Thanks for all the love, Bruce. Enjoyed it!
This is a difficult area. The world will not wait. We have automation, lean principles, and 2 billion cheap laborers that are taking the jobs. Many people in their 50’s are dropping out of the job market. Factories are automating and it requires better skills. I’m glad i could get out and retire.
The only small business in my town would be fast food. The last jewelry store closed, the laundry mat closed also. You cannot have a small business if you don’t have the big business. What was the small factory towns are screwed.
The secretaries in this case is people of authority. It delays the process in getting information done in a timely manner and causes conflicts. Unfortunately, there are areas of government that needs to be slimmed down for efficiency.
Bruce, my reply is downthread.
Bruce Webb – 9:52:41 PM – “And Bush-Cheney had no responsibility for REVERSING that disastrous trade policy? Were they helpless actors? Or did they double down on that same trade agenda? I thought that guy was ‘The Decider’ and not the ‘Helpless Giant’.”
“And it is funny how those job losses didn’t kick in until Bush cut tax rates on capital and ended up starving infrastructure. Nope is is all the fault of the Maquiladoras and NAFTA (and not the factory owners that actually moved the jobs). Are you guys even trying anymore? Because you just pulled that number out of nowhere and based it on nothing. Which for a guy addicted to links is pretty damn ironic.”
The WTO and China trade results were on their way once President Clinton signed the WTO treaty and the most favored nation trading status bill for China, the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000. It sealed our fate absent Congressional legislative overturn of both agreements. There was never an expectation that the Republicans would initiate such actions based on a review of the Trade Deficit Commission report.
There was no way out of the WTO treaty after approving it unless the U.S. Government was (or is) willing to abandon the treaty and GATT as it now exists in the WTO package of trade rules. President George W. Bush didn’t need to “double down” as the China trade agreement had already been signed by President Clinton as negotiated by representatives of his Administration and the U.S. China Relations Act of 2000 cemented the deal with the provision of most favored nation trading status for China. The floodgates were wide open and China was subsequently approved for WTO membership. Game on.
Your claim that I “pulled that number out of nowhere and based it on nothing” is false. Those numbers are based on DOL BLS data and economic development factors which I have identified previously on this blog and have now reposted on this thread (above). U.S. trade policy and resultant outcomes don’t appear to be subjects that have much importance in your world if your blog paricipation on such matters is an indicator of your level of knowledge. That’s fine, but don’t try to uselessly slam other participants who have devoted years of research and endless hours blogging on such matters since this blog was created. If you have some noteworthy contributions to make to such trade discussions, all the better.
MG, have read this article
Five myths about U.S. exports
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302208.html
woody
i keep trying to tell them that. but their answer for high unemployment is to raise the retirement age. does that tell you something about their real motives?
well, i was thinking of house construction and furniture making but i may be two centuries behind in my thinking.
thing is you can’t get small business with the china – wal mart model. but if that model is not working for either the people who don’t have jobs (don’t have enough stuff) or the people who do have jobs (don’t have enough time or reason to live), then we need to look into changing the paradigm.
it’s like the reason most people go to a psychiatrist: they want the shrink to teach them how to be a more successful neurotic. we want to fix our economy by doing more of the same thing that brought us here.
woody
i understand about corporate, and government bloat, but i wish you understood about why that may not be the best first place to look to solve the unemployment problem.
one way to get lower energy prices is to use less of it.
take a look at where energy is used in this country. i don’t think you will find that it is a major part of the cost of the things we sell to the world. it is a major part of the way we get to work and heat/cool homes that could be better designed.
We can always go back to what is coming under the Dems and Obama – in their own words…
Bush Jr doesn’t hold a candle to Obama, and I bitched about Bush!
Islam will change
Yikes. At least Benny and the Inkjets can print money and make everything better.
I was congratulating myself in the 90s for my good sense to get out of the US manufacturing sector and into the Information Age after getting pummeled by the Japanese Invasion, then Asian Tiger Invasion. But along came India and China. How much pain can this country take?
Oh yes, and some advice for young people…. be sure to go to college and get that $100k-$200k 4 year degree. That’s the ticket to a good job.
Dale,
You seem to be making some progress.
Dale this is one look at where energy is used her:
32% of US energy went to industrial uses28% to transporation21% to residential18% to the commercial sector
32 + 18 = 50% is used in industrial and commercial usage.
I always like comparing the sales revenue figures of entire industries to numbers the governmenrt kicks around for ok levels of debt.
Using our 25T projection for 2020 federal debt, which I think just went out the window again because we need tax cuts, and re-writing with all the zeros in place looks like this:
$25,000,000,000,000.00
That’s a lot of fast food.
co rev
thanks for the data. are you saying we waste half of it driving around in aimless circles?
now look at the cost of energy as a percent of the cost of production, and figure how much of that you could expect to save by increasing oil supplies.
or are you proposing the best way to cut oil prices is to use it up as fast as we can?
CR said: “Using our 25T projection for 2020 federal debt, which I think just went out the window again because we need tax cuts,…” What? Who is actually proposing any tax cuts? The latest I remember were proudly claimed from the Obama administration.
Home construction is difficult as we have an over abundance of home and in foreclosure. Furniture making, well my step-father made cabinets, but the big box stores cover that. Too much competition. If a person has a hobby and loves it, it may work, but there won’t be much money in it.
***Essentially, the only jobs that are safe in the U.S. are those that are based on physical presence requirements. Some of those will be further impacted by advances in automation and more consolidations.***
MG,
This is right on the money. It is automation, consolidation, lean principles, and 2 billion cheap laborers. And what happens is that we lose the upward movement for the middle class or even for the poor as there is nothing to go to. This is where competition will go against the middle class.
I have read that McDonalds has tried to have a speaker for when you order through the carry out, that you are talking to someone in India or Pakistan. I can also think on why you need insurance adjusters to look at your car, because with the internet you can send a picture and the police report and that could be handled in China.
Bottom line, anything can happen big or small, up or down, good or bad. And in all my postings I have reiterated that we need to invest in our country, in our people, and in the future. And get away from the failed ideologies from our politicians. As you say, this is a heckuva mess.
I meant extend the Bush tax cuts. Which is the news item of the day.
As far as who is doing it, it’s not Bush…he retired. It appears to be the entire 2010 Congress and President Elect Obama’s pen is dripping with ink waiting to sign it.
That’s as politically accurate as I can get. But you’re welcome to point out anything I may have missed.
CR, no need to expand. Just yanking your chain. 🙂
CoRev – “From this data one thing is clear. Want to be more competitive in the world export market, a better trade balance? Reduce oil/petroleum imports.”
I agree with your general point.
But let’s not stop there. We should acknowledge other efforts to reduce energy consumption. I’ll focus on one area often overlooked.
The U.S. has offshored some volume of oil/petroluem imports by establishing revised trade policy that had led to the disappearance of over 40,000 factories just in the last ten years. Same story for the reduced need of other energy sources. I suppose one could say that the U.S. is partially doing “it’s part” in trying to reduce energy consumption. Hell of an outcome, though.
This must be part of Plan B for energy consumption.
If the Congress passes the tax package extension and the President signs off, it will be interesting to see what impact that measure will have on the President’s FY2012 budget and its outyear projections.
I think we can safely throw another $1 trillion log on the 2020 national debt fire if the cuts are permanent.
Obama’s team had already provided projections based on making the other than upper income tax cuts permanent, so $3.2 trillion of the $4 trillion of the potential ten year savings were already lost in their eyes. The upper income tax cuts don’t amount to $1 trillion over ten years, but the Administration will have other costs to add which will result in more deficit spending and interest costs.
The Members of the next Congress are faced with an interesting balancing act – improve job growth in one hand…and cut the fiscal year deficits in the other hand. As Karl Malden would say, “What will you do?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0mEAYOKWo8
My rich buddy in CA has a buddy who makes high end furniture and cabinetry for rich people. For the past couple years he has been sleeping in his shop, but no work. My buddy employed him to paint the exterior and interior of his house, and has now loaned him $10k to he can pay his small shop rent and buy food.
I’ve seen some professional dog walking signs posted around here, but I don’t know how well that is going.
Diane and Bruce have data.
ray L love
if you look back there is a reply to your last note to me that may ease your troubled mind.
woody
i hate to say this, but looking for too much money may be the cause of the problem.
woody,
if your are referring to the tax cuts for all seasons, tax cuts for all reasons ideology, i agree with you. but i still don’t want to start solving the unemployment problem by laying off all the worthless people who still have jobs.
Last time I looked at oil data (a while ago) the US total oil consumption was increasing at about 2% a year. By comparison, China was increasing at 8% a year.
The article was commending us on how well we were restraining our oil usage. But if industrial demand dropped that much here, and the rest being transportation demand (a small sliver for aircraft), the that 2% annual growth in oil consumption sounds pretty bad.
But besides losing factories, we have been shifting industrial demand away from oil for a few decades. I think electric power generation from oil is down to a couple percent.
Inaccurate. I said that your response to Linda is insulting.
And my argument regarding ad homonyms was aimed at kharris’ definition due to that having too much emphasis on how personal a criticism is or isn’t. Ideas always come from ‘persons’ so it is folly to think that arguments can be limited to ideas. Arguments are therefore held to a standard based on whether criticisms are supported.
Dale is a jerk. Is, ‘ad homonym’.
Dale is jerk because he resorts to cheap shots such as this for example: “ray L love”. However, is not ad homonym. (And that use of a capital ‘L’ for my middle initial due to the fact that yesterday I mentioned that the other more common play on my name:”ray i love”, (which came from Dale in this case), is juvenile.)
Anyway… the key word in the definition of ad homonym is:’reason’.
And of course only coberly knows his definition of “logic”. But I do know that the key word in that definition is vanity (that is ad homonym [no support for why he is vain, {personal without reason(possible exemption though because it is being used as an example [plus it is true ])}]).
Having useless trillions in tax cuts and not solving our problems is a bigger problem. Watching China grow at 8% and taking our jobs is a big problem. But hey, we know the game. It is tax cuts and laissez-faire. In other words the republicans have no answers.
I don’t think I implied that.
Cedric, I track EIA, BP, and IEA data on energy consumption.
U.S. liquid fuels consumption is below 2% per year as a average. EIA projects U.S. liquid fuels consumption total growth for 2008-2035 to be 14%. The EIA short term energy outlook report projects U.S. liquid fuels consumption for 2011 at 0.6%, and 2010 consumption is forecast at 1.4%.
China crude oil consumption increased substantially during the first two quarters, 2010. China’s consumption, though, is projected to increase at a lower rate in 2011.
It’s my opinion that it’s better to track volume than rely on percentage growth figures. The percentage growth for China during 2010 may sound alarming but the only number that matters is total volume demand and whether that volume growth impacts projected overall global demand for crude oil.
Here’s an EIA page that provides links to all three reports (short term, long term, and international outlooks) as well as other data including graphs:
http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/forecasting.html
BP has its new annual report out. IEA released a new report as well.