[fxbezak]

Since the economy took a dump and its slowly starting back uphill... what would you suggest to fix it. Im surious to see what people ideas are.

[finboy]

I suggest that everyone go out and work hard, and those folks who are still looking for a job keep looking.

Oh, and we could cut taxes some more, like JFK did. It would help reduce the pre-existing disincentives for people to invest.

Plus, we could tighten up our borders. That California debate reminded me that a flood of illegals lowers wages -- gotta stop that.

[chris v]

Originally posted by fxbezak:
Since the economy took a dump and its slowly starting back uphill... what would you suggest to fix it. Im surious to see what people ideas are.

I think we should take all your worldly possesions and give them to the first welfare mother we find.



Really, on topic: I'd re-direct the Star Wars money away from that rathole, and use it to improve infrastructure, altrernative energy research (incentives and grants) and public transportation.

Also, the "offshore" corporate tax loophole, whereby American companies "re-incorporate" in The Bahamas really should be shut. Us small business-types that can't afford to go offshore could benefit from the level playing field.

CV

[kvm_mkdb]

Originally posted by fxbezak:
Since the economy took a dump and its slowly starting back uphill... what would you suggest to fix it. Im surious to see what people ideas are.

Lift protectionist tariffs and farm subsidies.

[thunderous_funker]

Need to stop putting all our eggs in the "trickle down" basket. The idea that there isn't enough incentive for private investment is pretty silly. Wages are way down, stocks are way down, dividend and capital gains taxes are way down. If I was an investor, I'd be 4 kinds of happy.

The trouble isn't that we haven't built enough private wealth (we have). Private wealth has expanded considerably.

What we need is investment in public ventures--infastructure, renewable energy, alternative energy, education, job training.

Its one thing for defecit spending to initiate public works, and quite another to simply funnel as much public money into private hands as quickly as possible.

Manufacturing is in death throws. We could adopt protectionist policy to try and save it (probably futile) or we could invest in all those displaced workers by giving them job training to transition them back into the "new" economy.

Wage Labor is all record lows in terms of Real Income. When Walmart, the nation's largest private sector employer, is handing out information on company letterhead for how it's employees can get foodstamps and free medical care you know we got problems. Such tactics have incredibly depressive effects on the eoncomy.

Instead of shoring up the bottom wage earners, we consistently dump more money on the top and promise that it will trickle down because "a rising tide lifts all boats". Well, not the boats it drowns. If we really really want to raise the economic tide, raise wages at the bottom and watch those people actually become agents in the economy rather than slaves. We need to increase the purchasing power of employees, not CEO's. The CEO's are doing just fine.

[AutoJC]

Global Free Trade.

Eliminate tariffs and protectionism.

Get government out of the service and welfare sectors.

[finboy]

Originally posted by thunderous_funker:
Need to stop putting all our eggs in the "trickle down" basket.

We don't really have much of a choice in that one -- it's the only way that works long-term. But when folks hear "trickle down," they've been conditioned by the media to knee-jerk away from it. The demonized "trickle down" must be evil and it must not work because Peter Jennings and the NYT say so.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by finboy:
We don't really have much of a choice in that one -- it's the only way that works long-term. But when folks hear "trickle down," they've been conditioned by the media to knee-jerk away from it. The demonized "trickle down" must be evil and it must not work because Peter Jennings and the NYT say so.

Why is it that no one that disagrees with you could possibly be thinking for themselves and are hapless victims of mind control by powerful subversive forces?

Why would Peter Jennings be against tricle down? He benefits? Why would the NYT be against it? Who do you think advertises in their paper?

Some may say that "trickle down" is evil. I don't know about that. I doubt that very many advocates actually giggle when they think of grinding the poor into the dust and establishing Oligopoies. They are operating out of honest self-interest even if they don't want to think how that effects others.

Wealth and power concentration is detrimental to society at large. And social conflict is ultimately detrimental to the economy. Trickle Down plays on the illusion of social mobility but only delivers it to a tiny few while subjecting the rest to the brutality of the market.

[vmpaul]

Originally posted by kvm_mkdb:
Lift protectionist tariffs and farm subsidies.

Absolutely friggin' right.

Politicians who preach about free market competition are lying through their teeth when they refuse to discuss tariffs and farm subsidies. That should be brought up to every Republican when they ramble about de-regulation of industry and freeing up markets. It isn't only Republicans though, Sen John Edwards in last nights Dem Debate said he wouldn't end farm subsidies either. That means more money to North Carolina (his state) tobacco growers.

Some excerpts from Thomas Friedman's op-ed yesterday:

(user: macnn, pwd: macnn)

...The Economist quoted a World Bank study that said a Cancún agreement, reducing tariffs and agrisubsidies, could have raised global income by $500 billion a year by 2015 — over 60 percent of which would go to poor countries and pull 144 million people out of poverty.

...It would mean asking U.S. farmers to sacrifice the ridiculous subsidies they get from our federal government ($3 billion a year for 25,000 cotton farmers) that make it impossible for foreign farmers to sell here.

And one thing we know about this Bush war on terrorism: sacrifice is only for Army reservists and full-time soldiers. For the rest of us, it's guns and butter. When it comes to the police and military sides of the war on terrorism, the Bushies behave like Viking warriors. But when it comes to the political and economic sacrifices and strategies that are also required to fight this war successfully, they are cowardly wimps. That is why our war on terrorism is so one-dimensional and Pentagon-centric. It's more like a hobby — something we do only until it runs into the Bush re-election agenda.

"If the sons of American janitors can go die in Iraq to keep us safe," says Robert Wright, author of "Nonzero," a book on global interdependence, "then American cotton farmers, whose average net worth is nearly $1 million, can give up their subsidies to keep us safe. Opening our markets to farm products and textiles would be critical to drawing many nations — including Muslim ones — more deeply into the interdependent web of global capitalism and ultimately democracy."

If only the Bush team connected the dots, it would see what a nutty war on terrorism it is fighting, explains Mr. Prestowitz. Here, he says, is the Bush war on terrorism: Preach free trade, but don't deliver on it, so Pakistani farmers become more impoverished. Then ask Congress to give a tax break for any American who wants to buy a gas-guzzling Humvee for business use and also ask Congress to resist any efforts to make Detroit increase gasoline mileage in new cars. All this means more U.S. oil imports from Saudi Arabia.

So then the Saudis have more dollars to give to their Wahhabi fundamentalist evangelists, who spend it by building religious schools in Pakistan. The Pakistani farmer we've put out of business with our farm subsidies then sends his sons to the Wahhabi school because it is tuition-free and offers a hot lunch. His sons grow up getting only a Koranic education, so they are totally unprepared for modernity, but they are taught one thing: that America is the source of all their troubles. One of the farmer's sons joins Al Qaeda and is killed in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces, and we think we're winning the war on terrorism.

[Wiskedjak]

Vote in the next Presidential election

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by vmpaul:
.......<snip>.......

Damn!

[osiris]

Reduce the military and intelligence community's budget by 50%, reduce all foreign aid by 50%, move the petro industry to state control, tenfold the education budget, legalize naturally occuring drugs, remove taxes from alcohol/cigarettes/clothing/processed food, abolish slavery, abolish foreign tariffs, abolish double/triple/quadruple taxation on goods & services when paying with previously taxed monies, free Good Humor bars for everyone. Oh, build lots of bridges, tunnels, schools, and induce a higher birth rate by making 'going bra-less' fashionable again.

[roger_ramjet]

Originally posted by vmpaul:
Absolutely friggin' right.

Politicians who preach about free market competition are lying through their teeth when they refuse to discuss tariffs and farm subsidies...

I agree but part of the problem is nobody in Congress is looking to do the Pakistanis any favors these days.

[lemondrop]

Balance the ****ing budget. Huge deficits result in "crowding out" in the loanable funds market.

For some fun:

1992-1995 During the Clinton thing.

Government Consumption expenditures and Gross investment:

In Billions

1992 1263.8
1993 1261.0
1994 1260.0
1995 1260.2

[roger_ramjet]

Originally posted by lemondrop:
Balance the ****ing budget. Huge deficits result in "crowding out" in the loanable funds market.

That's the theory anyway. There's absolutely no evidence to back it up.

[MacGorilla]

Let's see, put all able bodied people to work, on the government's tab, cleaning up schools, vacant lots, repainting buildings, repairing roads and bridges. More work=more spending=more tax revenue. It has worked before: It helped pull the US out of the Great Depression.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by lemondrop:
Balance the ****ing budget. Huge deficits result in "crowding out" in the loanable funds market.

This is true, but it also ties the hands of the government when it comes to putting people to work.

Balanced budgets, while good for staying out of debt, are what economists often call procyclical; that is, upswings are better (generally less taxation, so more wealth in the hands of the people) but downturns are worse (the government doesn't have the funds on hand to attempt to correct the problems).

However, it's also probably the best hope we've got for fixing the economy. Until the government can get its spending under control, there's not much anyone else can hope to do for anyone other than themselves, and even that ability is not guaranteed.

That'll hurt, in a lot of sectors, at least in the short term. Getting one's self back under control nearly always does, and when a government does it, its subjects tend to suffer. It's like ripping a bandage off: it hurts for a little while, but if you don't do it than the wound gets infected, and the problem only gets worse.

[fulmer]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
Let's see, put all able bodied people to work, on the government's tab, cleaning up schools, vacant lots, repainting buildings, repairing roads and bridges. More work=more spending=more tax revenue. It has worked before: It helped pull the US out of the Great Depression.

many would say that World War Two and the truly massive spending it induced pulled the US out of the Depression, not specifically FDR's work programs.

more on topic: I know that, taking into account social security, federal and state income taxe, and medicare, I pay US$500 each month in taxes.

What would I do with, say $200-300? Spend some, invest some. And I'm at a lower income bracket but located in the South. I can imagine your pain if you live in the Northeast and are barely scraping by while the government (county, state, federal, and even city) take hundreds each month.

[Phanguye]

kill farm subsidies, global free trade

then get rid of the biggest waste of money... public education

[roger_ramjet]

Originally posted by Millennium:
This is true...

Where's the evidence? If deficits truly were crowding out private investment, we'd have higher interest rates. Think of interest as the price of capital. According to the law of supply and demand, when supply is down and demand is high, prices rise. If the federal deficit truly was soaking up the supply of capital, the price would be higher. Interest rates, despite backing up a bit in the last couple of months, are still very, very low. Likewise, rates fell throughout the 80s despite the deficits we ran then.

[lemondrop]

Originally posted by roger_ramjet:
Where's the evidence? If deficits truly were crowding out private investment, we'd have higher interest rates. Think of interest as the price of capital. According to the law of supply and demand, when supply is down and demand is high, prices rise. If the federal deficit truly was soaking up the supply of capital, the price would be higher. Interest rates, despite backing up a bit in the last couple of months, are still very, very low. Likewise, rates fell throughout the 80s despite the deficits we ran then.

"Crowding out" is real. Look into The "Loanable Funds Market" That's the big thing. A Bigger Defict Makes Higher Rates. Look into Say's Law. And dig.

[boots]

TF has pretty much already said everything I would have...and then some.

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by finboy:
Plus, we could tighten up our borders. That California debate reminded me that a flood of illegals lowers wages -- gotta stop that.

Exporting jobs does the same thing.

BlackGriffen

[finboy]

Originally posted by BlackGriffen:
Exporting jobs does the same thing.

BlackGriffen

Explain. How does "exporting" lower-paid domestic jobs lower domestic wages in the same manner that employing illegal aliens lowers domestic wages?

[finboy]

Originally posted by lemondrop:
"Crowding out" is real. Look into The "Loanable Funds Market" That's the big thing. A Bigger Defict Makes Higher Rates. Look into Say's Law. And dig.

I agree with Roger. The idea of "crowding out" requires a finite size to the "loanable funds market", and it's been demonstrated that "crowding out", even with strong term or quality preferences, doesn't hold. It's out there with the Phillips curve as one of those things that sounds good, just isn't true. If a bigger deficit makes higher rates, explain why it is that rates are at 40-year lows right now.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by finboy:
Explain. How does "exporting" lower-paid domestic jobs lower domestic wages in the same manner that employing illegal aliens lowers domestic wages?

We aren't exporting "lower-paid" dometic jobs. We're exporting good paying dometic jobs and importing cheap labor to perform "lower-paid" domestic work. Both of which have a devastating effect on the domestic labor market--forcing down wages for Americans.

Are you going to refute the fact that the Real Income of wage laborers has steadily decreased over the last 30 years?

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by finboy:
Explain. How does "exporting" lower-paid domestic jobs lower domestic wages in the same manner that employing illegal aliens lowers domestic wages?

These jobs weren't "lower paid" when they were in the U.S.

Dead stupid simple, finboy. There are a number of ways to look at it, but here's one of the most simple:

Permitting employers to export jobs is the same as combining the job markets. Either way (whether the low paid workers are here or there), those who demand labor now have access to labor at far cheaper prices. From a purely domestic perspective, that is an inward shift of the demand curve. This puts pressure on those here to accept lower wages and benefits cuts to avoid losing their jobs to the cheap foreign worker. In other words, the only way to counter that shift is to lower expectations, shifting demand in/down.

Examples of jobs that were supposed to be export proof going overseas:

Programming jobs to India
Call centers to, again, India (including the Bush campaign)

We're not talking about mindless assembly line jobs here: these were real high paying highly skilled jobs. It just so happens that it's cheaper to pay someone in a country were the cost of living is tiny compared to keeping the job here.

BlackGriffen

[quandarry]

bush should stop fixating on fixing iraq and fix amerika first...yeah!

[Uday's Carcass]

Originally posted by quandarry:
bush should stop fixating on fixing iraq and fix amerika first...yeah!

The post-war state of Iraq and its future has a direct bearing on the security of the Great Satan, just as post-war Western Europe and Japan were of critical importance to US and world security in the decades after World War Two.

leaving Iraq to devolve into an Iranian subsidiary, a Saudi religious camp, or the new HQ of Al Qaeda would be very bad for Iraqis and the Free World.

[vmpaul]

Interesting op-ed from NYT on Free Trade:

(user: macnn, pwd: macnn)

Bill Clinton talked a great deal during his presidency about building a bridge to the 21st century, but now that we are here, the 10 Democrats trying to occupy his old residence on Pennsylvania Avenue are pitching the country on the idea of crossing that bridge back into the late 20th century, to a happy time of high growth, low unemployment and government surpluses. As Richard Gephardt, the House minority leader, wistfully put it in last week's debate among the Democratic contenders, "Why wouldn't we want to go back to that?"

Unfortunately, when it comes to America's economic relations with the rest of the world, some of these Democrats, as Senator Joseph Lieberman is quick to scold them, seem to have selective memories about what accounted for the Clinton success. Most of the candidates are selling decidedly protectionist messages, as if seeking to become the Ross Perot of the 2004 race, not the Bill Clinton.

Mr. Clinton was one of the most committed free traders ever to serve in the White House, fighting for passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and presiding over creation of the World Trade Organization and China's entry into that body. That he also presided over the creation of 22 million new jobs is no coincidence.

Mr. Gephardt often led the fight against Mr. Clinton's opening to the world, and still seems proud of that fact, which makes his attempts to associate himself with Mr. Clinton's results a bit strange. Former Gov. Howard Dean, an early supporter of Nafta, has made protectionism a hallmark of his campaign, recklessly threatening to bolt from the regional trade bloc and even the W.T.O. And though he sounded more moderate last week, Senator John Kerry, a free-trade stalwart in the past, has talked on the campaign trail of "reviewing" the nation's trade deals, and of opposing the Free Trade Area of the Americas, proposed, of course, by Mr. Clinton.

This misguided retreat from the Clinton legacy is especially disappointing in light of President Bush's poor record on trade. It would be nice to see the Democrats attack the White House for imposing unjustified steel tariffs that have cost American jobs and angered our trading partners, but we won't hold our breath. And when asked at the debate last week if he would support eliminating farm subsidies Mr. Bush allowed to be ratcheted up last year, Senator John Edwards essentially answered, um, well, no. What he should have said is that those subsidies do need to be reined in, not only to help the poor around the world, but to ensure the survival of a world trading system that has so benefited Americans.

Some amount of pandering is to be expected at this stage of the campaign. But it is worth recalling that in early 1992, in the face of similar anxieties about a jobless recovery and Asian competition, one Democrat forcefully defended free trade before union groups — Bill Clinton.

[clarkgoble]

Mr. Clinton was one of the most committed free traders ever to serve in the White House, fighting for passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and presiding over creation of the World Trade Organization and China's entry into that body.

I'm not Clinton fan, but I'll give him kudos for that one. With respect to free trade Clinton was more of a Republican than Bush is.