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Geuss how much the economy has expanded!!

Cal

Well-known member
The big-bang story of U.S. private business

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=the_big-bang_story_of_us_private_business&ns=LawrenceKudlow&dt=07/08/2006&page=1
By Lawrence Kudlow
Saturday, July 8, 2006

Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland and Belgium. This is an extraordinary fact, although you may be reading it here first. Most in the mainstream media would rather tout the faults of American capitalism than sing its praises. And of course, the media will almost always discuss supply-side tax cuts in negative terms, such as big budget deficits and static revenue losses. But here's another suppressed fact: Since the 2003 tax cuts, tax-revenue collections from the expanding economy have been surging at double-digit rates, while the deficit is constantly being revised downward.

For those who bother to look, the economic power of lower-tax-rate incentives is once again working its magic. While most reporters obsess about a mild slowdown in housing, the big-bang story is a high-sizzle pick-up in private business investment, which is directly traceable to Bush's tax reform. It was private investment that was hardest hit in the early decade stock market plunge and the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist bombings. So team Bush's wise men correctly targeted investment in order to slash the after-tax cost of capital and rejuvenate investment incentives.

The move paid off. Investors now keep nearly 50 percent more of their after-tax capital returns -- an enormous increase that has resulted in a remarkably profitable and highly productive business sector. While the overall economy has grown by one-fifth since mid-2003, private business investment has expanded by 37 percent.

The dirty little secret here is that record low tax rates on capital are leading to continued job and income gains, as businesses continue to expand.

"But," you might respond, "I thought job gains were soft." Well, the marquis employment report for June may have showed "only" 121,000 new non-farm payroll jobs, below Wall Street expectations. But this leads to another factoid that the mainstream media largely ignores: The household survey of job creation has been booming at a much faster clip than headline corporate payrolls.

When this last happened in 2003-04 (remember the "jobless recovery" election-year rant of Democrats?), it was corporate payrolls that caught up to the more entrepreneurial household survey -- which more accurately records job creation by small-business owner-operators. This is the source of the bulk of American job creation.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, firms with less than 500 employees created 88 percent of the net new jobs in the United States between 1990 and 2003 (the last year for Census Bureau data). During this 14-year period, the share of total jobs created by small businesses was never less than 50 percent and was sometimes double the employment total.

Large corporations are reluctant to hire because it is so expensive to do so. Think health care and pension costs, as well as payroll add-ons for unemployment compensation and worker disability. The modern cost-cutting pressures of globalization also force large firms to take a highly cautious hiring approach.

But newly minted entrepreneurs don't face all these costs -- at least not initially. And that is why the household survey has become so important in the 21st century economy.

Wages are rising today, so we know domestic labor markets must be tightening, not softening. To wit, average hourly compensation has risen to 3.9 percent over the past year, while average weekly earnings have grown to 4.5 percent. In early 2004, these wage measures were only up 1.5 percent.

The June Labor report also revealed a 2.3 percent annual gain in aggregate hours worked -- which is consistent with 3.7 percent real GDP growth and a 6.6 percent gain in wages and salaries. These hefty numbers will bolster consumer spending in the period ahead.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is recognizing the importance of the small-business-driven household survey, and has suggested averaging household jobs with the corporate payroll survey to get a clearer jobs picture. Doing this yields a strong 186,000 new jobs per month over the past year, which is the key reason why the unemployment rate stands at a historically low 4.6 percent rate, with total employment now at a record high 144.5 million.

These data points hardly suggest a slumping economy. Instead, they reveal a low-tax, durable, resilient and flexible American market system that easily shifts from one sector (housing) to another (business investment). It is this American economic dynamism that separates our ongoing prosperity from the overtaxed and overregulated stutter-start stagnation of industrial economies in Western Europe and Japan.

Did someone say prosperity?
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Cal, this is a little simplistic article. Here are the reservations relating to the relevance of the GDP (I am assuming this is the figure quoted in the article) as a measure of personal welfare:
GDP and standard of living

GDP per capita is often used as an indicator of standard of living in an economy. While this approach has advantages, many criticisms of GDP focus on its use as an indicator of standard of living.

The major advantages to using GDP per capita as an indicator of standard of living are that it is measured frequently, widely and consistently; frequently in that most countries provide information on GDP on a quarterly basis (which allows a user to spot trends more quickly), widely in that some measure of GDP is available for practically every country in the world (allowing crude comparisons between the standard of living in different countries), and consistently in that the technical definitions used within GDP are relatively consistent between countries, and so there can be confidence that the same thing is being measured in each country.

The major disadvantage of using GDP as an indicator of standard of living is that it is not, strictly speaking, a measure of standard of living. GDP is intended to be a measure of particular types of economic activity within a country. Nothing about the definition of GDP suggests that it is necessarily a measure of standard of living. For instance, in an extreme example, a country which exported 100 per cent of its production would still have a high GDP, but a very poor standard of living.

The argument in favour of using GDP is not that it is a good indicator of standard of living, but rather that (all other things being equal) standard of living tends to increase when GDP per capita increases. This makes GDP a proxy for standard of living, rather than a direct measure of it.

There are a number of controversies about this use of GDP.
[edit]

Criticisms

Although GDP is widely used by economists, its value as an indicator for the standard of living has also been the subject of controversy (an alternative is the United Nations' Human Development Index). Criticisms of how the GDP is used include:

* GDP does not take into account the black market, where the money spent isn't registered, and the non-monetary economy, where no money comes into play at all, resulting in inaccurate or abnormally low GDP figures. For example, in countries with major business transactions occurring informally, portions of local economy are not easily registered. Bartering may be more prominent than the use of money, even extending to services (I helped you build your house ten years ago, so now you help me).
* Very often different calculations of GDP are confused among each other. For cross-border comparisons one should especially regard whether it is calculated by purchasing power parity (PPP) method or current exchange rate method.
* GDP counts work that produces no net change or that results from repairing harm. For example, rebuilding after a natural disaster or war may produce a considerable amount of economic activity and thus boost GDP, but it would have been far better if the disaster had never occurred in the first place. The economic value of health care is another classic example - it may raise GDP if many people are sick and they are receiving expensive treatment, but it is not a desirable situation. Alternative economic measures, such as the standard of living or discretionary income per capita better measure the human utility of economic activity. See uneconomic growth.
* Quality of life - human happiness - is determined by many other things than physical goods and services. Even the alternative economic measures of standard of living and discretionary income do not take these factors into account.
* As the single most important figure in statistics it is subject to fraud, such as the usage of hedonic price indexing on official GDP numbers in the US, thereby creating investments out of nothing while statistically dampening inflation.[citation needed]
* Crossborder trade within companies distorts the GDP and is done frequently to escape high taxation. Examples include the German Ebay that evades German tax by doing business in Switzerland, and American companies that have founded holdings in Ireland to "buy" their own products for cheap from their continental factories (without shipping) and selling them for profit via Ireland - thereby reducing their taxes and increasing Irish GDP.[citation needed]
* People may buy cheap, low-durability goods over and over again, or they may buy high-durability goods less often. It is possible that the monetary value of the items sold in the first case is higher than that in the second case, in which case a higher GDP is simply the result of greater inefficiency and waste. (This is not always the case; durable goods are often more difficult to produce than flimsy goods, and consumers have a financial incentive to find the cheapest long-term option. With goods that are undergoing rapid change, such as in fashion or high technology, the short lifespan may increase customer satisfaction by allowing them to have newer products.)
* If a nation does not spend, but saves and invests overseas, as Japan does, its GDP will be diminished in comparison to one that spends borrowed money, like the US; thus accumulated savings and debt are not taken into account so long as adequate financing continues.
* GDP does not measure the sustainability of growth. A country may achieve a temporarily high GDP by over-exploiting natural resources or by misallocating investment. For example, the large deposits of phosphates gave the people of Nauru one of the highest per capita incomes on earth, but since 1989 their standard of living has declined sharply as the supply has run out. Oil-rich states can sustain high GDPs without industrializing, but this high level will not be sustainable past the point when the oil runs out. Economies experiencing an asset bubble, such as a housing bubble or stock bubble, or a low private-saving rate tend to appear to grow faster due to higher consumption, mortgaging their futures for present growth. Economic growth at the expense of environmental degradation can end up costing dearly to clean up; GDP does not account for this in places such as China.
* As a measure of actual sale prices, GDP does not capture the economic surplus between the price paid and subjective value received, and can therefore underestimate aggregate utility.
* The annual growth of real GDP is adjusted by using the "GDP deflator", which tends to underestimate the objective differences in the quality of manufactured output over time. (The deflator is explicitly based on subjective experience when measuring such things as the consumer benefit received from computer-power improvements since the early 1980s). Therefore the GDP figure may underestimate the degree to which improving technology and quality-level are increasing the real standard of living.
* GDP does not take disparity in incomes between the rich and poor into account. See income inequality metrics for discussion of a variety of complementary economic measures.

Some economists have attempted to create a replacement for GDP called the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which attempts to address many of the above criticisms. Many nations calculate a national wealth, a sum of all assets in a nation, but this again does not account for future obligations such as environmental degradation, asset bubbles, and debt. Other nations such as Bhutan have advocated gross national happiness as a standard of living. (Bhutan claims to be the world's happiest nation.)
[edit]

Using the GDP as a measure of personal wealth is a fraud for a lot of reasons. I will post info on more relevant terms than this. You might want to brush up on GDP from the wikpedia site as it is pretty accurate and relatively easy to understand for non economists.
 

Cal

Well-known member
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product

Look again at the article by Kudlow, as well as GDP he refers to the economy growing by 20%; an expansion of $2.2 trillion, tax revenue collections surging at double digit rates, private business expansion of 37%, average hourly and weekly compensation rates growing by 3.9 and 4.5% respectively, unemployment rate at an unheard of 4.6%, total employment at a record 144.5 million, and "a low-tax, durable, resilient and flexible American market system that easily shifts from one sector (housing) to another (business investment). It is this American economic dynamism that separates our ongoing prosperity from the overtaxed and overregulated stutter-start stagnation of industrial economies in Western Europe and Japan".
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Cal said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product

Look again at the article by Kudlow, as well as GDP he refers to the economy growing by 20%; an expansion of $2.2 trillion, tax revenue collections surging at double digit rates, private business expansion of 37%, average hourly and weekly compensation rates growing by 3.9 and 4.5% respectively, unemployment rate at an unheard of 4.6%, total employment at a record 144.5 million, and "a low-tax, durable, resilient and flexible American market system that easily shifts from one sector (housing) to another (business investment). It is this American economic dynamism that separates our ongoing prosperity from the overtaxed and overregulated stutter-start stagnation of industrial economies in Western Europe and Japan".

The economy is measured by the GDP in most instances and hence the measurement itself is an economic deception.

If we hired two million more people working min. wage after getting chunked out of their jobs, it would bring the unemployment rate down but still lead to a lowering of the avg. pay despite the "strong" economy.
These numbers don't mean anything if you do not know their meaning and put them in perspective.

Business has prospered in this "recovery" but the average pay has not moved up correspondingly.

If GDP went up by 3 trillion and went disproportionatley to the wealthy, the majority of people could actually be worse off. GDP measures only the goods and services produced (compare that with GNP) and has not much relevance as to whether the majority is better off or worse off.

There are some measurements that are a little better at this but I could not copy them for you as they are in pdf. You could find them the Statistical Abstract for 2006 which was released a few months ago.

The things you cite are not necessarily good economic indicators when it comes to measuring average prosperity in themselves.

Another funny one on the news today was the "decrease in the national deficit". The "decrease" was relative to what the repubs. had projected and had no real relevance. It is like the hardware store man putting the price up on a lawnmower 30% and then reducing the price by 10% and advertising a great sale.

At this stage in our economy, we should not have any budget deficits and should having surpluses. We shouldn't have to be borrowing from the Chinese to finance our bad spending habits. All monies spent now are going to be compounded with interest and come out of future SS benefits and medicare benefits.

I hope you are saving.
 

Cal

Well-known member
Econ101 said:
Cal said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product

Look again at the article by Kudlow, as well as GDP he refers to the economy growing by 20%; an expansion of $2.2 trillion, tax revenue collections surging at double digit rates, private business expansion of 37%, average hourly and weekly compensation rates growing by 3.9 and 4.5% respectively, unemployment rate at an unheard of 4.6%, total employment at a record 144.5 million, and "a low-tax, durable, resilient and flexible American market system that easily shifts from one sector (housing) to another (business investment). It is this American economic dynamism that separates our ongoing prosperity from the overtaxed and overregulated stutter-start stagnation of industrial economies in Western Europe and Japan".

The economy is measured by the GDP in most instances and hence the measurement itself is an economic deception.

If we hired two million more people working min. wage after getting chunked out of their jobs, it would bring the unemployment rate down but still lead to a lowering of the avg. pay despite the "strong" economy.
These numbers don't mean anything if you do not know their meaning and put them in perspective.

Business has prospered in this "recovery" but the average pay has not moved up correspondingly.

If GDP went up by 3 trillion and went disproportionatley to the wealthy, the majority of people could actually be worse off. GDP measures only the goods and services produced (compare that with GNP) and has not much relevance as to whether the majority is better off or worse off.

There are some measurements that are a little better at this but I could not copy them for you as they are in pdf. You could find them the Statistical Abstract for 2006 which was released a few months ago.

The things you cite are not necessarily good economic indicators when it comes to measuring average prosperity in themselves.

Another funny one on the news today was the "decrease in the national deficit". The "decrease" was relative to what the repubs. had projected and had no real relevance. It is like the hardware store man putting the price up on a lawnmower 30% and then reducing the price by 10% and advertising a great sale.

At this stage in our economy, we should not have any budget deficits and should having surpluses. We shouldn't have to be borrowing from the Chinese to finance our bad spending habits. All monies spent now are going to be compounded with interest and come out of future SS benefits and medicare benefits.

I hope you are saving.
Am not sure where you're getting your info about pay not moving up corresponedingly. If you don't think GDP and other numbers representing the countries economic expansion are reliable, maybe you could plot us somewhere in negative territory using the old Jimmy Carter "misery index". :lol: Actually, what I'm most worried about is what is going to happen in a few years with the Social Security and Medicare mess. I'm not counting on either.
 

Econ101

Well-known member
...and yet you bring up an article that applauds the economics that will be its undermining.

Cal, when there is a redistribution of wealth to the wealthy because we value capital over labor and give it more value than labor in our taxation system, we create inequities in the economy. We also enrich the rich. That is what is happening right now.

The assertions being put out by republicans, and where they are going wrong, is that tax cuts are great at any cost.

The cost of the social security system doesn't seem to matter. Nor does the cost of adding more debt to get economic growth.

You applaud economic growth, but you do not measure the costs of that growth. You attribute the growth as good, which it is, but when you do not count the costs, you can not tell if it is profitable.

Any fool can add to his standard of living by pulling out the credit card. Measuring the standard of living by his spending alone does not measure the full costs of that "higher" standard of living. Nor does it account for the standard of living that he is giving up in the future because of his credit card purchases today.

To illustrate this in the national economy, let us take hurricane Katrina and its effects. Hurricane Katrina definitely caused much property damage in economic damage. The current measures of GDP do not account for these costs of property damage or infrastructure at all. The effects of hurricane Katrina and the rebuilding are all counted as positives in the GDP calculation and none of the negative effects of the damage are counted.

GDP, is therefore, not a good measure of economic wealth generation. It is only one number factored in the equation. To misuse GDP in the policy analysis only shows the author of the article does not realize, or want to admit, to the costs associated with an increase in personal plus collective (government) wealth.

The fact that republicans are misusing the economic data for political points tells me they are more interested in their own elections than in a proper analysis of the "truth".

Does the ends justify the means? If you are an "enlighted" Christian, you would immediately recognize that life is just as much about the means as it is the end. The end always belongs to God. All we have is the means. It is the space between the dash on a tombstone.
 

Cal

Well-known member
Econ, I don't buy into your theories, but that's okay. I don't have the time nor desire to argue to the death like my friend SH, nor am I good at it like him. What I'm wondering is what numbers can you present to back up your arguments?
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Cal said:
Econ, I don't buy into your theories, but that's okay. I don't have the time nor desire to argue to the death like my friend SH, nor am I good at it like him. What I'm wondering is what numbers can you present to back up your arguments?

Cal, if you like SH for his arguing skills, you will never know the truth. He isn't good at it other than his persistence.

Here is a little info on the current cycle: (the link below is a better place to view the article)

Print PDFPrint PDF Email this pageEmail this page


Snapshots

A weekly presentation of downloadable charts and short analyses designed to graphically illustrate important economic issues. Updated every Wednesday.
[Sign up for our Economic Snapshots mailing list to receive an alert whenever a new Snapshot is posted.]
[See Snapshots Archive.]

This Snapshot is part of a series; see also part 2, part 3 and part 4 of the series, or print the entire series.Adobe Acrobat (PDF)

Snapshot for May 3, 2006.

Critiquing misleading White House statements about the economy, part 1
Income growth and median earnings

A recent White House news release contains this claim regarding income growth:

Real disposable income has risen 2.2 % over the past 12 months. Since January 2001, real after-tax income per person has risen 8.3%.
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060411-9.html)

Since income growth is the primary determinant of living standards, the validity of this claim is central to the White House's argument that their policies are lifting the living standards of most families. The problem here is that the measures cited are of limited use in judging the extent to which the recovery is truly reaching most families.

First, these measures represent the aggregate of trillions of dollars in income generated by the economy. Real disposable income (inflation-adjusted income after taxes) always tends to expand in recoveries because more persons are working. Disposable personal income (DPI) also includes income from business ownership, interest, and dividends, but is also lifted significantly by the high levels of executive compensation, as reflected in recent news reports (see The New York Times, "A cozy arrangement." April 13, 2006).

To measure the effectiveness of the administration's policies, the question is not whether real DPI is growing, but how fast are the growth rates relative to past recoveries. By both measures cited by the White House, the growth over this business cycle is considerably weaker than the average for past cycles.

As shown in Figure A, DPI per capita has gained 8.4% since March 2001, but the average for comparable periods is 11.1%.1 In addition, the 2.3% gain in real DPI over the past year—2005q1-2006q1—falls short of the average growth of 3.6% over comparable periods in past recoveries.

Figure A. Growth in real disposable personal income per capita, this cycle vs. past averages

The second problem with the White House's claim is that the increase in inequality in recent years has meant that average income growth is less descriptive of how the typical family is faring. As growth has flowed up the wealth scale, middle and lower income households have not enjoyed even the modest growth shown in the average income figure above. Median family income declined not only in the recession year of 2001, but has consistently fallen in real terms through 2004 (down 2.9 %, or $1,500). Though median income results for 2005 will not be available until late this summer, the trend in median earnings, shown next, suggests things are unlikely to have improved much since 2004.

Figure B shows the trend in real median earnings of full-time workers since 2001. Median earnings, representing the paychecks of the typical working person, have stagnated or declined since 2002, and by the end of the period are little changed from where they began, despite four years of recovery and strong productivity growth.

Figure B. Real median earnings, full-time workers, 2001q1-2006q1

The gap between the per capita income growth and median earnings is a stark reminder of the unbalanced nature of the current recovery, one that contradicts the White House's rhetoric regarding the success of their policy agenda.

Coming next: Setting the record straight on the White House's claims rhttp://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060503egarding job growth: U.S. vs. Europe.

Notes
1. Notice that our comparison starts in March 2001 instead of January 2001. In order to make sound comparisons with past cycles, we examine the first five years of business cycles that have lasted at least as long as the current one.

This week's Snapshot was written by EPI Economist Jared Bernstein.

Here is the link:

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060503

The information you provided is accurate, but the conclusions are misleading.

Hey, that sounds like your buddy SH to me.

Cal, why don't you poke SH for me.
 

Econ101

Well-known member
This was a little pertinent to some of the points made regarding the war profiteers. I haven't seen the show (it is on sometime this weekend) but it will show some possible pertinent information on the possible abuse of power of association. The abuse of power of association (and poltical favors) was at the base of the Abramoff scandals and part of the crude calculation of the roundup of K Street.

It does, in my opinion, show that some in positions of responsibility do not take their responsibility to the nation as seriously as they take the responsibilities to their friends. This is loyalty over competence/ethics. It happens in every government but the extent of it in this administration with this particular leadership of the republican party has, in my opinion, been over the line. It is about like Jimmy Swaggert getting caught for prostitition. You can not woo the religious right and do these kind of things. They are incongruent.

NOW INTERVIEW: Bunnatine Greenhouse

Once the top civilian at the Army Corps of Engineers, Bunnatine Greenhouse exposed how Halliburton and its subsidiaries were able to get preferential treatment, including billion-dollar contracts, for Iraqi rebuilding projects. David Brancaccio sits down with Greenhouse for her reaction to the Army's recent decision to discontinue exclusive contracts with Halliburton. Does she feel vindicated? Tune in and find out.
 

Cal

Well-known member
Whoa Nellie! Econ, the Home Page for the link you listed reads like who's who for fairness and socialism and a small pity party for anyone not represented by a union. Here's the deal; poor people don't pay taxes, nor do they employ anyone, but they have moved up the ladder accordingly to join the ranks of the middle class. The tax cuts have stimulated business, increased tax reciepts, expanded the economy not just for the rich but for anyone that wants to work or take on the role of entrepreunership. It couldn't be simpler, lower tax rates grow the economy and higher taxes create a Carteresque misery index across the board with high unemployment, interest rates, and stagflation. Surely an "enlightened Christian" like yourself can see the error of your ways. It's been some years since I've had any economic classes at a reasonably good private college, but I don't remember any professor spending much time criticizing the accuracy of (current term) gdp.
 

Econ101

Well-known member
If the economy is so good Cal, why is the fed. govt. having to borrow money? And from the Chinese at that?

I agree lower taxes are the way to go. I just want the politicians to stop spending money they don't have and to give my kids and if you have any, future obligations they have to pay. When they do this, it seems to me the wet they are saying is rain on my leg smells a little more like pee than rain.

Some people don't know the difference between pee and rain. I assure you that I do. And it don't matter if its a democrat or a republican calling it rain.
 

Cal

Well-known member
Econ101 said:
If the economy is so good Cal, why is the fed. govt. having to borrow money? And from the Chinese at that?

I agree lower taxes are the way to go. I just want the politicians to stop spending money they don't have and to give my kids and if you have any, future obligations they have to pay. When they do this, it seems to me the wet they are saying is rain on my leg smells a little more like pee than rain.

Some people don't know the difference between pee and rain. I assure you that I do. And it don't matter if its a democrat or a republican calling it rain.
I will start worrying when we stop getting foreign investment, because that will signal our economy isn't worthy of investing in.
 

Brad S

Well-known member
Cal did you read the revised tax collections and decreased deficit. The Economist has a nice article this week. Now the liars are saying the OMB scored it wrongly high so GWB could declare victory - makes sense to me?
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Brad S said:
Cal did you read the revised tax collections and decreased deficit. The Economist has a nice article this week. Now the liars are saying the OMB scored it wrongly high so GWB could declare victory - makes sense to me?

In any recovery there is always higher tax revenues. That embodies the definition of a recovery.

GWB's administration garbage was the estimate of the deficit that was way high and then a "lower than projected" deficit. It shows they don't know how to either project properly (this is easy to miss and not at all surprising) or they did so on purpose.

One of the problems with the tax cut game for capital is that the taxes on capital are always deferred until a sale. In other words, you could own a stock for 20 years, have it go from 1 cent to $1,000 and you pay no taxes on it until you sell the stock. When tax rates are decreased to a lower level, more people owning those stocks will cash in on their investment. This represents a deferred tax liability of the past 20 years. To allocate that capital gains over current 1 year tax period is a fraud. Unfortunately that is how the deal is being sold when it comes to the capital gains taxes.

You are allocating a capital gains rate from 20 years (this example only) in a one year time period.

It is an argument only fools make that decreases in capital gains increases taxes when computing this way.

The tax liabilty should be calculated over the term of the capital gains. If only labor could be afforded the same tricky mechanism.

Please don't misquote me by saying I am not for tax decreases. I am. They must be paid for by decreases in spending, however. That is not the case when you have these kind of tricky tax arguments.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
On his radio show today, Bill O'Riley said the economy has risen 4% a year in the past 3 years due to President Bush's tax cuts. Before that,
the economy rose .75% a year.
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Go look at the article I posted at the onset on their website. You measure economic recoveries in the light of other economic recoveries to see how they compare. You don't measure economic recoveries with recessions or slow economies.

Personally I think the business cycle has its own life. It can be influenced by the current politicians, but for them to take credit for it is a bit of a stretch.

We had one of the best economic recoveries under Clinton because the government restrained spending. That only makes sense. If the govt. is sucking up less resources, there is more for private enterprise and the economy to use.

You can't argue with facts, you can just misuse them.

Get Bush to quit pulling a scam by borrowing on the nation's credit card and the arguments of growth might have a little more merit. As they stand now, we are only sucking up resources from the economy with promises to pay in the future (deficit spending). From an economic sense deficit spending can be helpful at times to stimulate the economy. When the economy is in a recovery, there is no excuse. It just shows lack of restraint by politicians in handling our country's resources.

It is a fraud what they are trying to sell us right now.
 

Brad S

Well-known member
Yes compare this recovery to recessions where the recession began in a previous administration but deepened because they denied the existance of recession for political purposes. A recession exaserbated by a huge market correction, and tripple whameyed by a massive terrorist assault 7 months into the administration.

Yeah, compare it to that. To say nothing of China and India using so much oil as to double crude prices while gas prices triple in the US because a large leftist faction has blocked refinery expansion.


Everytime I read Econ101 post something about rising above partisianship, I see about a dozen examples proving he is merely a leftist schill. So remind me that you know someone that serves on a hospital board, and produce some marginally relevant point and perhaps I'll lose track of the issue. Yeah, that might work.
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Brad S said:
Yes compare this recovery to recessions where the recession began in a previous administration but deepened because they denied the existance of recession for political purposes. A recession exaserbated by a huge market correction, and tripple whameyed by a massive terrorist assault 7 months into the administration.

Yeah, compare it to that. To say nothing of China and India using so much oil as to double crude prices while gas prices triple in the US because a large leftist faction has blocked refinery expansion.


Everytime I read Econ101 post something about rising above partisianship, I see about a dozen examples proving he is merely a leftist schill. So remind me that you know someone that serves on a hospital board, and produce some marginally relevant point and perhaps I'll lose track of the issue. Yeah, that might work.

Brad, I don't care what you think of me and my thoughts. You seem like a nice enough fellow before the name calling is it that you have run out of points for the argument and have to resort to that sort of thing?

The consensus among the republican senators was that they wanted to keep using oil until the world was running out of it. One of the staffers even told this to me. It doesn't tell much for their planning for an energy crisis but it does tell me they wanted the oil industry to be able to sell oil at higher prices. Halliburton went up hugely on this policy and we are all paying for it at the pump.

The cafe standards were never increased and the research on alternative fuels was snubbed until it got out of hand. Now those same technologies are getting a paltry amount of funding because of the crises and they say more is not needed, we need only time. This policy should have been instituted for ethanol enzymes some time ago.

I come from and energy state and worked in the industry myself for some time. The self serving of this administration when it comes to the energy policy has embarassed even me. We are in an intractable war in the middle east and it isn't only money we are expending.

I hope we are able to pull it off in Iraq but the deal has been raft with idiot decisions because politicians trumped the military in decision making.

You can bash me all you want, but there is a mess out there and plain old patriotism isn't going to solve it.

I haven't blocked any oil refinery expansions and haven't asked that they be blocked in any way. The refinery excuse is just that, an excuse. The industry could have asked for more refineries and in fact, they have increased the refinery capacity in the refineries that are open instead of just building new ones. My dad holds patents on some of the oil industry equipment so I know a little about it.

We have shifted some of our manufactoring over to China because it was cheaper and that has caused them to use more oil. We are still buying those products. China and India combined don't come close to the amount of oil we use daily. The U.S. uses more oil per day (over 20 million) than the next 5 countries put together with Inda being one of them at 2.4 million barrels/day and China at almost 6 million barrels. Neither China nor India are in the top 22 countries per capita of energy consumption. China only consumes only 2.586 million barrels more than they produce and who knows about India, but it has to be less given the numbers I just posted. The US uses 12.61 million more per day than it produces. Don't say it is China and India that is the problem.

The deal on oil is that we are running out of the cheap oil and we have to start developing the more expensive oil. The people sitting in govt. on these committees have done almost nothing to get the infrastructure readey for these changes. They have just given "goodies" to the oil companies. Now with record prices they look the fools that they are. I am sorry to say they are republicans.

It seems you can find any excuse that you can for this bunch of republicans but the fact is they have made the bed we must all sleep in and some of us aren't getting much sleep--including our servicemen in Iraq. I wish you would use a few more facts to show why you come up with your conclusions instead of just a bunch of political rhetoric. Political rhetoric doesn't solve the problem, it just excuses them.

I have been down on the democrats when they need it but they aren't the party in charge that is blocking congressional oversight hearings for political arguments that don't amount to much like flag burning.

It is time we held them accountable for doing the job we sent them there to do. It seems all you can do is make excuses for them.

As I said before, I am a RR republican. I just wish the republican leadership was instead of a bunch of crooks trying to scam our system.

The real republicans need to stand up.

I guess your just not one of them.
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
Econ101 said:
We had one of the best economic recoveries under Clinton because the government restrained spending. That only makes sense. If the govt. is sucking up less resources, there is more for private enterprise and the economy to use.

The only reason it looked like "one of the best economic recoveries" under Clinton, is because he sold off assets to fund his spending. Mainly, he sold out the military, which resulted in the security of our country being at stake. Those in charge of keeping the USA safe were handicapped with limited personnel, poor equipment, and sloppy leadership. Then when the chips were down, and a strong military was needed, it had to be started again from scratch.
 
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