Night Strike wrote:stahrgazer wrote:Obama's plan was to take us back to Reagan tax rates, which worked, rather than Bush tax rates, which led us into economic decline. And if you want to scream at that because it will cost "the rich" more money, take a better look at Romney's plans; he won't directly increase the tax rate, he'll just reduce or eliminate the deductions for your house, your medical care, your childcare expenses... all those things that help the little guy, including the small business owner, stay just a little above drowning.
For claiming to be a conservative, you sure do parrot liberalism most of the time. Reagan's tax rates worked because it wasn't the tax rate: it was the massive tax CUT that provided those rates. Raising the rates from today's rate to the 1980s rate won't do anything to spur economic growth. And the idea that we had economic decline after Bush's tax cuts is a complete falsehood that ignored everything that happened prior to the summer of 2008. We had over 4 years of low unemployment and continually-expanding revenues to the federal government after the two phases of tax cuts were passed. Furthermore, the collapse in 2008 had
absolutely nothing to do with tax rates. It was a banking and housing bubble bursting open, neither of which were tied to tax rates. Obama's answer was to print tons of money to use as governmental stimulus, which has given us the past 3.5 years of economic stagflation.
So basically your stance is, no matter how low the taxes go on those who can afford it, the businesses won't hire Americans unless they get yet ANOTHER tax reduction.
My "conservatism" ends where logic begins, Night Strike. I won't play blind man's bluff like so many "Republicans" today do, just because I detest some liberal ideas; not when "my party" is being even more despicable than my worst liberal nightmares.
The banking bubble was allowed to burst because BUSH removed some regulations, and removed some oversight that forced appropriate ethics and legalities. The repackaging of debt obligations was legal, but someone was still supposed to hold back sufficient funds to back those obligations, and regulations and overseers had been assigned to ensure that occured. When BUSH removed those watchdogs, companies that were doing the repackaging and selling Collateralized Debt Obligations, started to conveniently forget to hold back funds to cover the debts. Furthermore, they increased the risks by packaging many less secure loans with a few more secure loans, and calling them the lesser risk rather than admitting these packages had more risk than they were admitting.
As you said to someone else, these facts are all out on the web, look them up.
Then, when folks who owed the monies lost their jobs under Bush because plants closed in America to "expand" to various overseas locations (which Bush did nothing about and in fact, even backed legislation that made those moves more profitable for those once-American companies) the shady stack of cards BUSH allowed to build, collapsed.
Additionally, printing a bunch of money and making a stimulus was Bush's idea, only where he put the money didn't stimulate at all. So, Obama gets blamed for printing a little more money for a second stimulus that worked a little but not quite enough - or not quite enough yet.
Again, facts, look them up, Night Strike, rather than parrot Rush Limbaugh's distortions of the truth.
Finally, check your economics. It takes time for a financial cause to achieve effect; there's years of lag - it used to be 8-10 years, although that's lessened a little. Basically, Bush's policies in 2004 and 2005 caused what occurred in 2008 and 2009, and what Obama did in 2008 are finally starting to achieve some results in 2012.
Obama kept us from being totally snowed under the avalanche Bush's policies caused; it's not his fault that time takes time, and reverting back to the very policies that caused the avalanche would finalize our country's economic ruin.
Also remember: when Reagan cut the tax rates, they were 70%. Then he realized he cut them too low for our nation's wellbeing, and had to adjust and raise them back up again.
Then Bush came along and cut them back down, despite Ronald had already realized, "too much cut is not a good thing for our nation after all."
So. Obama wanting to put the rates back to Reagan rates DOES make sense.
If your fingernails are too long, sure, you should trim them; but if you cut them to the quick, you risk infection and loss of your fingernail. Similarly, Bush cut the taxes too low and left them there, causing an infection and risking loss of our nation as a strong financial entity.
BigBallinStalin wrote:And what of the poorer people in foreign nations?
Appropriate EXPANSION is one thing. Moving American jobs overseas to turn around and sell the now-foreign products back in America at prices Americans could afford when Americans were making the products, is a problem.
And if you do some more of your homework, you'd find that damned few of those poorer people in foreign nations get elevated living standards because they're being paid extremely low wages, commensurate to or only very slightly above their typical living standards. That's what makes it so "profitable" for American companies to move, you see. They get the best of all worlds, pay peanuts to the laborers but still sell high over in the U.S. for the very few who can still afford their product.
And then what happened is, companies realized less people in America could afford their product, so they laid off more workers, causing even less people to be able to afford their product, causing more layoffs.
Obama has done well trying to stop the avalanche, with zero help from Congress who continue to take their vaca's, get their salaries, get their ultra premium healthcare and can still rely on tremendous pensions PLUS Social Security. And, of course, the Ryan/Romney Social Security and Medicare plans don't dare to touch most of the Congressmen and Senators who are primarily above the golden age of 55 they keep spouting - as are almost all the baby boomers who lived beyond the planned-for time which caused THAT little problem.
I wish. I really wish. That I could still espouse Republican ideas. But, as a rational and critical thinking person, I cannot. They, the Republicans, broke some things, and their idea to "fix" it is to repeat the exact same actions that broke the things in the first place, NONE of which will help poorer Americans get back to work.
We can all agree that there are "some" Americans who thrive on living off the system when they don't have to. It's fraud, and should be addressed appropriately. But lumping everyone who's now unemployed because of faulty Republican actions into that same category is wrong. Doing more of what really caused the problem, is wrong. Blaming Obama because his fix isn't working FAST enough, is wrong.