Do we need another Great Depression...?

phobicsquirrel

First I would like to keep this more or less civil... Anyhoo I came across this article... http://www.alternet.org/economy/149586/will_only_another_great_depression_save_america?page=entire

I don't read alternet too much, and I know it leans left but some good stuff is in here. I also noticed the GOP house came out with their "cost" saving plan

A list of specific cuts the RSC is proposing:

? Corporation for Public Broadcasting Subsidy. $445 million annual savings. ? Save America's Treasures Program. $25 million annual savings.
? International Fund for Ireland. $17 million annual savings.

? Legal Services Corporation. $420 million annual savings.

? National Endowment for the Arts. $167.5 million annual savings.

? National Endowment for the Humanities. $167.5 million annual savings.

? Hope VI Program. $250 million annual savings.

? Amtrak Subsidies. $1.565 billion annual savings.

? Eliminate duplicative education programs. H.R. 2274 (in last Congress), authored by Rep. McKeon, eliminates 68 at a savings of $1.3 billion annually.

? U.S. Trade Development Agency. $55 million annual savings.

? Woodrow Wilson Center Subsidy. $20 million annual savings.

? Cut in half funding for congressional printing and binding. $47 million annual savings.

? John C. Stennis Center Subsidy. $430,000 annual savings.

? Community Development Fund. $4.5 billion annual savings.

? Heritage Area Grants and Statutory Aid. $24 million annual savings.

? Cut Federal Travel Budget in Half. $7.5 billion annual savings.

? Trim Federal Vehicle Budget by 20%. $600 million annual savings.

? Essential Air Service. $150 million annual savings.

? Technology Innovation Program. $70 million annual savings.

? Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Program. $125 million annual savings.

? Department of Energy Grants to States for Weatherization. $530 million annual savings.

? Beach Replenishment. $95 million annual savings.

? New Starts Transit. $2 billion annual savings.

? Exchange Programs for Alaska, Natives Native Hawaiians, and Their Historical Trading Partners in Massachusetts. $9 million annual savings.

? Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants. $2.5 billion annual savings.

? Title X Family Planning. $318 million annual savings.

? Appalachian Regional Commission. $76 million annual savings.

? Economic Development Administration. $293 million annual savings.

? Programs under the National and Community Services Act. $1.15 billion annual savings.

? Applied Research at Department of Energy. $1.27 billion annual savings.

? FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership. $200 million annual savings.

? Energy Star Program. $52 million annual savings.

? Economic Assistance to Egypt. $250 million annually.

? U.S. Agency for International Development. $1.39 billion annual savings.

? General Assistance to District of Columbia. $210 million annual savings.

? Subsidy for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. $150 million annual savings.

? Presidential Campaign Fund. $775 million savings over ten years.

? No funding for federal office space acquisition. $864 million annual savings.

? End prohibitions on competitive sourcing of government services.

? Repeal the Davis-Bacon Act. More than $1 billion annually.

? IRS Direct Deposit: Require the IRS to deposit fees for some services it offers (such as processing payment plans for taxpayers) to the Treasury, instead of allowing it to remain as part of its budget. $1.8 billion savings over ten years.

? Require collection of unpaid taxes by federal employees. $1 billion total savings.

? Prohibit taxpayer funded union activities by federal employees. $1.2 billion savings over ten years.

? Sell excess federal properties the government does not make use of. $15 billion total savings.

? Eliminate death gratuity for Members of Congress.

? Eliminate Mohair Subsidies. $1 million annual savings.

? Eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. $12.5 million annual savings.

? Eliminate Market Access Program. $200 million annual savings.

? USDA Sugar Program. $14 million annual savings.

? Subsidy to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). $93 million annual savings.

? Eliminate the National Organic Certification Cost-Share Program. $56.2 million annual savings.

? Eliminate fund for Obamacare administrative costs. $900 million savings.

? Ready to Learn TV Program. $27 million savings.

Some things I like but a lot are going to gut more people. Sad thing is, with how our economy is suffering, and the continued love to large banks and the back turning on the people and small business and jobs things don't look good. Sadly the last house (which some of you demonize, though they passed over 200 bills) had most of their bills die in the senate and the new house is all about repealing and not really interested in passing anything that will really fix anything we, the United States are not going to be moving forward anytime soon. With china poised to surpass us in the next few years "economically" and with our economic policies we will hit a breaking point.

Tokinstogie

Nothin there involves me, cut it all.

ellinas

we were inches from having one about a 1.5 years-2 years go.

xmacro

I read the article; seems more scare-tactics than substance. The fact that it's based on a book by political professors, without any economic underpinning (if any, it's all demand-side economics), just tells me the entire thing is a scare-mongering along the lines of "Repent now! China will beat us all unless we increase social justice!" This paragraph in particular is rather enlightening -

This could catapult a viciously right-wing corporatist clique into power, fueling ever-greater economic inequality, evangelical moral intolerance, neo-fascist and racist immigration policies, and a growing surveillance state.

I mean, really?! The authors never consider that conservatives have any good intentions, they think that everyone who disagrees with them must have evil designs. So it goes throughout the entire article - corporations = bad, middle class = good (and by middle class, they almost certainly mean unionized jobs). The entire economic outlook is one big class-warfare argument.

I'd go a little farther than saying Alternet leans left - Wikipedia has them described as a progressive site that advocates social justice, etc, which generally puts them in the same category as the Daily Kos/Howard Dean crowd.

As for the rest of the article, the "Woe is us, we're doomed to become a second-tier country", I'd direct you to an article I found in the WSJ (yes, the newspaper targeted towards those "evil corporate overlords", as the article describes them). The articles point is that democracies always fret over their perceived weaknesses, while dictatorships always project strength, even if they're crumbling internally. It's nothing new, and America has a lot more going for her than most people give credit for:

WSJ Article I'd recommend reading: http://www.cigar.com/cs/forums/thread/236642.aspx

bigharpoon

Looks like they want to cut everything that isn't directly correlated to generating short-term corporate profits. The problem with corporations dictating economic policy is that only a few people benefit and everyone else continues to struggle to make ends meet. When enough people have no alternatives left this will come to an ugly boiling point.

phobicsquirrel

xmacro:

I read the article; seems more scare-tactics than substance. The fact that it's based on a book by political professors, without any economic underpinning (if any, it's all demand-side economics), just tells me the entire thing is a scare-mongering along the lines of "Repent now! China will beat us all unless we increase social justice!" This paragraph in particular is rather enlightening -

This could catapult a viciously right-wing corporatist clique into power, fueling ever-greater economic inequality, evangelical moral intolerance, neo-fascist and racist immigration policies, and a growing surveillance state.

I mean, really?! The authors never consider that conservatives have any good intentions, they think that everyone who disagrees with them must have evil designs. So it goes throughout the entire article - corporations = bad, middle class = good (and by middle class, they almost certainly mean unionized jobs). The entire economic outlook is one big class-warfare argument.

I'd go a little farther than saying Alternet leans left - Wikipedia has them described as a progressive site that advocates social justice, etc, which generally puts them in the same category as the Daily Kos/Howard Dean crowd.

As for the rest of the article, the "Woe is us, we're doomed to become a second-tier country", I'd direct you to an article I found in the WSJ (yes, the newspaper targeted towards those "evil corporate overlords", as the article describes them). The articles point is that democracies always fret over their perceived weaknesses, while dictatorships always project strength, even if they're crumbling internally. It's nothing new, and America has a lot more going for her than most people give credit for:

WSJ Article I'd recommend reading: http://www.cigar.com/cs/forums/thread/236642.aspx

Well it's an article over the book yes, and though it's not the book you can't say there is not evidence proposed. The evidence is all around what is going on right now. I'm sure the book provides some good evidence, though I haven't read the book. Like it or not there is only a handful of people that run/oversee or sit on boards of every major corporation that reaches into all of our lives. Is that right? Well that's for you to decided but given the fact that after the huge heist from wall street in 2008 and congress was unable to pass any legislation that would stop it again tells any critical thinker that they have too much control.

I love it how on all these supposed proposals on saving money or cutting costs nothing is done that really saves money that doesn't effect everyday people. Why is it never a good idea to put tax rates more or less back to what they were during the 70's? Why isn't okay to tax wall street transactions, why not enforce tariffs? Why not build up manufacturing? Why not stop allowing private companies and countries from using our resources? Why allow corporations to get tax breaks for moving overseas (btw the dems tried to stop that though the GOP stopped it), it goes on and on. It's always cut schools, cut social services, state workers, union workers, city projects, infrastructure spending, research in other forms of fuel, the list goes on and on.

On another note, this panel obama put together to go over the deficit was a joke. So the GOP has no plans on fixing anything, and the Dems just don't have a spine and what they do is just prolong the agony.

America doesn't have much going for it.. It's the biggest debtor, we use to be the biggest creditor pre 80's. We already have pissed in the pools of many countries, we don't make anything anymore, we do not have a economic policy that protects this country, we give away our resources, we reward people for failing, we don't prosecute war crimes in our own house, we have allowed the biggest shift of wealth since before the great depression, this country is basically selling it's military to private companies, and we have our defense computers made in china. Our social services are crumbling, our infrastructure is becoming obsolete to the rest of the world. There isn't a lot going for it. It's fumbling fast.

phobicsquirrel

bigharpoon:

Looks like they want to cut everything that isn't directly correlated to generating short-term corporate profits. The problem with corporations dictating economic policy is that only a few people benefit and everyone else continues to struggle to make ends meet. When enough people have no alternatives left this will come to an ugly boiling point.

Yup.

xmacro

phobicsquirrel:

Why is it never a good idea to put tax rates more or less back to what they were during the 70's?

How much is enough for you? Tax rates were 70% - that means if a guy makes $100,000 a year, the gov't gets $70,000; now, that same guy wil pay $35,000, but that's still $35k out of his pocket. How much confiscation of earned wealth is enough?

phobicsquirrel:

Why isn't okay to tax wall street transactions, why not enforce tariffs?

Country A imposes tariff on tires, Country B retaliates and imposes tariff on sheet metal. Tire companies in Country A suffer, sheet metal companies in country B suffer - both as their gov'ts to impose more retaliatory tariffs that end up hurting more industries.

It's called gloablization and free trade - there should be ANY tariffs. Goods should be allowed to move freely. To do otherwise is to slide back into the 30's, when markets seized up. The trend for the past 80 years has been towards freer markets, lower tariffs, and easier movement of goods across continents.

phobicsquirrel:

Why not build up manufacturing?

Manufacturer in china pays workers $1 a day; detroit pays workers $70/hr. If you were a company, which place would you wanna locate a plant that employs 1,000 workers?

What's the gov't gonna do? Tell companies where they can and can't build plants? Are they gonna pay companies the difference in wages, thereby wasting billions of taxpayer dollars? Central planning never works out too well.

phobicsquirrel:

Why not stop allowing private companies and countries from using our resources?

Honda employs 25,000 Americans, Totoya employs 386,000 Americans, and the list goes on. But hey, if you wanna stop allowing these companies from buying supplies from American companies, using American workers, and building goods for an American audience because "they're foreigners", be my guest. Xenophobia isn't in anyone's economic interest, but it makes a great political talking point.

phobicsquirrel:

Why allow corporations to get tax breaks for moving overseas (btw the dems tried to stop that though the GOP stopped it)

Ireland has a flat corporate tax of 12%, while the US has a progressive tax code that tops out at 35%. If you had the pay the bills, which would you choose?

And what's the gov't gonna do? Tell Company A, "You're not allowed to sell goods in America unless you locate in our borders"? Again - globalization. It's not gonna be stopped.

phobicsquirrel:

It's always cut schools, cut social services, state workers, union workers, city projects, infrastructure spending, research in other forms of fuel, the list goes on and on.

Because that's where taxpayer money is going, and that's what's causing the deficits. All your solutions you listed involve more taxation, more regulation, and more of the same junk that got us into this mess in the first place.

If a guy is $20,000 in debt with credit cards, do you tell him to go to the welfare line and ask for a handout, or do you tell him to cut up the cards, cut back on expenses, and start paying down the debt?

phobicsquirrel:

America doesn't have much going for it..

Read the link in my previous post, I already addressed this.

At any rate, I've said my peace on your ideas so I'm done. No country in the world would take Alternets suggestions - every trend for the past half century has been towards, more globalization, less regulation, less taxation, freer trade, etc. Whether progressives like it or not, the world is moving towards fiscal conservatism.

fla-gypsy

xmacro:

phobicsquirrel:

Why is it never a good idea to put tax rates more or less back to what they were during the 70's?

How much is enough for you? Tax rates were 70% - that means if a guy makes $100,000 a year, the gov't gets $70,000; now, that same guy wil pay $35,000, but that's still $35k out of his pocket. How much confiscation of earned wealth is enough?

phobicsquirrel:

Why isn't okay to tax wall street transactions, why not enforce tariffs?

Country A imposes tariff on tires, Country B retaliates and imposes tariff on sheet metal. Tire companies in Country A suffer, sheet metal companies in country B suffer - both as their gov'ts to impose more retaliatory tariffs that end up hurting more industries.

It's called gloablization and free trade - there should be ANY tariffs. Goods should be allowed to move freely. To do otherwise is to slide back into the 30's, when markets seized up. The trend for the past 80 years has been towards freer markets, lower tariffs, and easier movement of goods across continents.

phobicsquirrel:

Why not build up manufacturing?

Manufacturer in china pays workers $1 a day; detroit pays workers $70/hr. If you were a company, which place would you wanna locate a plant that employs 1,000 workers?

What's the gov't gonna do? Tell companies where they can and can't build plants? Are they gonna pay companies the difference in wages, thereby wasting billions of taxpayer dollars? Central planning never works out too well.

phobicsquirrel:

Why not stop allowing private companies and countries from using our resources?

Honda employs 25,000 Americans, Totoya employs 386,000 Americans, and the list goes on. But hey, if you wanna stop allowing these companies from buying supplies from American companies, using American workers, and building goods for an American audience because "they're foreigners", be my guest. Xenophobia isn't in anyone's economic interest, but it makes a great political talking point.

phobicsquirrel:

Why allow corporations to get tax breaks for moving overseas (btw the dems tried to stop that though the GOP stopped it)

Ireland has a flat corporate tax of 12%, while the US has a progressive tax code that tops out at 35%. If you had the pay the bills, which would you choose?

And what's the gov't gonna do? Tell Company A, "You're not allowed to sell goods in America unless you locate in our borders"? Again - globalization. It's not gonna be stopped.

phobicsquirrel:

It's always cut schools, cut social services, state workers, union workers, city projects, infrastructure spending, research in other forms of fuel, the list goes on and on.

Because that's where taxpayer money is going, and that's what's causing the deficits. All your solutions you listed involve more taxation, more regulation, and more of the same junk that got us into this mess in the first place.

If a guy is $20,000 in debt with credit cards, do you tell him to go to the welfare line and ask for a handout, or do you tell him to cut up the cards, cut back on expenses, and start paying down the debt?

phobicsquirrel:

America doesn't have much going for it..

Read the link in my previous post, I already addressed this.

At any rate, I've said my peace on your ideas so I'm done. No country in the world would take Alternets suggestions - every trend for the past half century has been towards, more globalization, less regulation, less taxation, freer trade, etc. Whether progressives like it or not, the world is moving towards fiscal conservatism.

Dude! you saved me a bunch of writing, I am through with this thread

PuroFreak

phobicsquirrel:

xmacro:

I read the article; seems more scare-tactics than substance. The fact that it's based on a book by political professors, without any economic underpinning (if any, it's all demand-side economics), just tells me the entire thing is a scare-mongering along the lines of "Repent now! China will beat us all unless we increase social justice!" This paragraph in particular is rather enlightening -

This could catapult a viciously right-wing corporatist clique into power, fueling ever-greater economic inequality, evangelical moral intolerance, neo-fascist and racist immigration policies, and a growing surveillance state.

I mean, really?! The authors never consider that conservatives have any good intentions, they think that everyone who disagrees with them must have evil designs. So it goes throughout the entire article - corporations = bad, middle class = good (and by middle class, they almost certainly mean unionized jobs). The entire economic outlook is one big class-warfare argument.

I'd go a little farther than saying Alternet leans left - Wikipedia has them described as a progressive site that advocates social justice, etc, which generally puts them in the same category as the Daily Kos/Howard Dean crowd.

As for the rest of the article, the "Woe is us, we're doomed to become a second-tier country", I'd direct you to an article I found in the WSJ (yes, the newspaper targeted towards those "evil corporate overlords", as the article describes them). The articles point is that democracies always fret over their perceived weaknesses, while dictatorships always project strength, even if they're crumbling internally. It's nothing new, and America has a lot more going for her than most people give credit for:

WSJ Article I'd recommend reading: http://www.cigar.com/cs/forums/thread/236642.aspx

Well it's an article over the book yes, and though it's not the book you can't say there is not evidence proposed. The evidence is all around what is going on right now. I'm sure the book provides some good evidence, though I haven't read the book. Like it or not there is only a handful of people that run/oversee or sit on boards of every major corporation that reaches into all of our lives. Is that right? Well that's for you to decided but given the fact that after the huge heist from wall street in 2008 and congress was unable to pass any legislation that would stop it again tells any critical thinker that they have too much control.

I love it how on all these supposed proposals on saving money or cutting costs nothing is done that really saves money that doesn't effect everyday people. Why is it never a good idea to put tax rates more or less back to what they were during the 70's? Why isn't okay to tax wall street transactions, why not enforce tariffs? Why not build up manufacturing? Why not stop allowing private companies and countries from using our resources? Why allow corporations to get tax breaks for moving overseas (btw the dems tried to stop that though the GOP stopped it), it goes on and on. It's always cut schools, cut social services, state workers, union workers, city projects, infrastructure spending, research in other forms of fuel, the list goes on and on.

On another note, this panel obama put together to go over the deficit was a joke. So the GOP has no plans on fixing anything, and the Dems just don't have a spine and what they do is just prolong the agony.

America doesn't have much going for it.. It's the biggest debtor, we use to be the biggest creditor pre 80's. We already have pissed in the pools of many countries, we don't make anything anymore, we do not have a economic policy that protects this country, we give away our resources, we reward people for failing, we don't prosecute war crimes in our own house, we have allowed the biggest shift of wealth since before the great depression, this country is basically selling it's military to private companies, and we have our defense computers made in china. Our social services are crumbling, our infrastructure is becoming obsolete to the rest of the world. There isn't a lot going for it. It's fumbling fast.

It's funny how you say all of these proposed ideas to cut the budget effect everyday people, yet MANY MANY of them in fact do not. It shows a total unwillingness to see things objectivly just like the authors of this article. Some examples are:

Corporation for Public Broadcasting Subsidy. $445 million annual savings.

International Fund for Ireland. $17 million annual savings.

National Endowment for the Arts. $167.5 million annual savings. (this one area that NEEDS cuts)

Woodrow Wilson Center Subsidy. $20 million annual savings.

Cut in half funding for congressional printing and binding. $47 million annual savings.

Cut Federal Travel Budget in Half. $7.5 billion annual savings.

Trim Federal Vehicle Budget by 20%. $600 million annual savings.

Essential Air Service. $150 million annual savings.

U.S. Agency for International Development. $1.39 billion annual savings.

Presidential Campaign Fund. $775 million savings over ten years.

No funding for federal office space acquisition. $864 million annual savings.

Require collection of unpaid taxes by federal employees. $1 billion total savings.

Prohibit taxpayer funded union activities by federal employees. $1.2 billion savings over ten years.

Sell excess federal properties the government does not make use of. $15 billion total savings.

Eliminate death gratuity for Members of Congress.

Eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. $12.5 million annual savings.

None of these effect "everyday people" but mostly effect government red tape and crap that we don't need to be spending money on when we are being burried alive under massive amounts of debt.

According to a new CBS survey 77% of the country admits that we need to cut spending, the problem is, anytime someone mentions cutting any program people throw a fit. We have to learn to make serious sacrifices and understand that we may have to suffer a little now to save for our future. Just like when you put money in a retirement plan, you are doing without now, so that in the future you can have a better life and weather the economic downturns more easily.

bigharpoon

Just to clarify the income tax rate thing, the 70% rate was the top tier and you had to work your way through all the preceeding income brackets with their correspondingly lower rates and if you made more income than they had brackets for the remaining income went to that 70% rate. It was the rate only the uber-wealthy had to pay on the top tier of their income, and it was 90% before the 70's.

PuroFreak

bigharpoon:

Just to clarify the income tax rate thing, the 70% rate was the top tier and you had to work your way through all the preceeding income brackets with their correspondingly lower rates and if you made more income than they had brackets for the remaining income went to that 70% rate. It was the rate only the uber-wealthy had to pay on the top tier of their income, and it was 90% before the 70's.

Ok, so why should their success be punished for the good of the masses? How many of those "uber-wealthy" created thousands of jobs throughout their careers that provided families across the nation with food and shelter? I don't understand this insane idea that profits and success is are evil things.

bigharpoon

PuroFreak:

bigharpoon:

Just to clarify the income tax rate thing, the 70% rate was the top tier and you had to work your way through all the preceeding income brackets with their correspondingly lower rates and if you made more income than they had brackets for the remaining income went to that 70% rate. It was the rate only the uber-wealthy had to pay on the top tier of their income, and it was 90% before the 70's.

Ok, so why should their success be punished for the good of the masses? How many of those "uber-wealthy" created thousands of jobs throughout their careers that provided families across the nation with food and shelter? I don't understand this insane idea that profits and success is are evil things.

This is exactly the argument which succeeded in lowering the rate. It marks the transition period in American history when corporations (mostly banks) began to occupy appointed positions in federal government en masse and started creating laws which were directly beneficial to themselves.

These arguments are basically un-winnable and are the reason why I try so hard to stay away from off-topic threads. I just wanted to explain what the tax rate really was so nobody thought they would be paying that rate on all their income.

Tokinstogie

bigharpoon:

When enough people have no alternatives left this will come to an ugly boiling point.

Yep, looks like if the goverment don't steal enough, the folks will have to steal it for themselves. I prefer the latter....easyer to defend against.

PuroFreak

bigharpoon:

PuroFreak:

bigharpoon:

Just to clarify the income tax rate thing, the 70% rate was the top tier and you had to work your way through all the preceeding income brackets with their correspondingly lower rates and if you made more income than they had brackets for the remaining income went to that 70% rate. It was the rate only the uber-wealthy had to pay on the top tier of their income, and it was 90% before the 70's.

Ok, so why should their success be punished for the good of the masses? How many of those "uber-wealthy" created thousands of jobs throughout their careers that provided families across the nation with food and shelter? I don't understand this insane idea that profits and success is are evil things.

This is exactly the argument which succeeded in lowering the rate. It marks the transition period in American history when corporations (mostly banks) began to occupy appointed positions in federal government en masse and started creating laws which were directly beneficial to themselves.

These arguments are basically un-winnable and are the reason why I try so hard to stay away from off-topic threads. I just wanted to explain what the tax rate really was so nobody thought they would be paying that rate on all their income.

Actually, the argument that succeeded in lowering the rate was the fact that high taxes does not equal higher government revenue. Higher taxes means slower growth rates for the economy, higher unemployment, less investment, and less risk taking with new business adventures that create a competitive market place. This also causes higher prices on goods and services.

If you want to look at corporate tax rates then that is a whole other story because the U.S. now has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. We will not be competitive in the global market for attracting new business until we make it profitable to open new businesses here.