I just caught this article on Yahoo!. The problem I noticed with most of these companies mentioned, which employ over 300,000 employees and includes the giants Rite Aid, Chrysler and Blockbuster is twofold. First, they are suffering from a lack of liquidity. They could probably survive, and eventually thrive, if they can hold out for a year or so. Second, consumer spending is down. Americans have decided, or have been forced, to spend within their means as credit has frozen up. Spending within your means is honestly a good thing, but when most Americans haven't been doing it, and then all do it at the same time, it's bad for the economy. The Bush/Paulson stimulus package has done little to unfreeze the lines of credit and have only made America's credit worse. The answer to this is obvious to real conservatives. Cut taxes. Across the board. Cut corporate taxes, cut the marginal rates, cut capital gains taxes, cut inheritance taxes, etc. By cutting these taxes, corporations and regular Americans, from the poor all the way up to the rich will have more money to spend. If the corporations and the people had more money, consumer spending would tick up slightly, and corporations would have more money to work with, and would be more likely to ride out the recession. Lower taxes would also mean more heavily in debt Americans would be able to pay their debt down faster. This means credit and lending will open up more quickly.
The problem to this of course is government. Government and the liberals believe the answer is more government. If we expand the size of government, which is already obscene, it means we have to raise taxes to cover the cost. If we raise taxes to cover the cost, it means corporations and consumers have less money to spend. If we spend less money, it will turn the recession into a depression. My question is, why doesn't Obama and the left-wing leadership know this? Or do they know this? If we pass the Obama/Geithner stimulus it doesn't provide much for tax cuts, it just provides for a whole lot of programs that do not have lasting impacts on the economy, and provides for the furthering of the liberal agenda. Things like abortion and "green" technology. (I've come to hate that word) I'm all for clean energy, but the government will do a better job of promoting it by removing free market obstacles. By throwing money at the problem we are going to encourage the companies who make "green" technologies (ugh!) to take their sweet time in producing a good product. Look at Cancer and AIDS research, and Education if you want to see how throwing tons of money at a problem with no restrictions works at solving problems.
13 comments:
Nestro -
> "Why Obama's "Stimulus" is a bad idea"
Because you hate Americans and wish everyone to be unemployed????
Stan,
The 'stimulus' will create less jobs than lowering taxes will.
There's plenty of blame to be passed around. Bush, through his idiotic stimulus/bailout attempts got the ball rollin. Where were the repugs then? Now they're makin a stand; but imo, it's based more on opposin Obama than an ideological one.
Our national debt (which really includes SS, medicare & medicade) tho they never factor those in when they say what our debt is, will one day, unfortunately, bury us. In the next 20 yrs the social security roles are gonna massively increase due to the retirements of the baby boomers; which will bankrupt SS (that & all of the freeloaders who won't work for a living).
When we retire, SS will pay us nothin (doesn't matter if we payed into it all our workin lives). SS is a boondoggle set up for the freeloaders.
This is the issue with SS. I don't mind the idea of SS honestly. But I believe when it was set up, retirement benefits began at 65 and the average life expectancy was 63. Plus, SS was never supposed to 'support' anyone. It was designed to SUPPLEMENT your income, pensions, savings, etc. But now, people treat it as; "Government OWES me money, I'm not supposed to work anymore." Survey says! X. No! Government's job is not to provide me a check for 15-25 years. Government's job is to provide for Safety and Security. Social Security is a good idea to help those who really need it, but with the life expectancy bumped up to 78, we can't support 100,000,000 people for 13 years. Bush tried to fix SS, but got shot down. It needs to happen, but the libs have their heads buried in the sand on this one.
Really, there needs to be some sort of phasing out at this point. If you're over 60, you get what was promised. If you're over 50 you get 75% of what was promised and you don't retire (ie. start drawing benefits) until 70. If you're over 40, you get 50% of what was promised and you don't retire until 73. If you're over 30 you get 25% and don't retire until 75. If you're under 30, well, start saving. These numbers are really arbitrary, but are an example of a way to get out of the SS mess that we're about to go into that will bankrupt the nation. I almost wonder it these past few 'stimulus' packages are a way for those in power to get rich before the inevitable collapse due to the $56 trillion in SS payouts that are upcoming. The bums in charge know it is coming and they don't believe there is anything they can do about it, so they are just going to get rich while they can.
Nestor -
> The 'stimulus' will create less jobs than lowering taxes will.
Dud, (just about) everybody's unemployed now days. So they aren't paying (payroll) taxes. How can you lower the taxes from $0.00????
Wow, 7.5% unemployment, yeah, that's just about everybody.
It was an underexaggaration, true. But not as much of an underexaggaration that you might think. The 7.5% doesn't include those that have given up on trying to find work, nor those that have expired from unemployment benefits.
(correction, exaggaration not underexaggaration (even though I'm apparently misspellihg both of those (I almost misspelled "misspelling".))
Stan,
I understand that there are those who 'drop off the radar'. However, in the US, many people find jobs within a month, far sooner than their unemployment expires. Let's say that the real rate is 9%, that's far better than Western Europe which has a perpetual unemployment rate of 10-15%. Now, we will be headed for that kind of an unemployment rate if the government doesn't take REAL action to stimulate the economy NOW. But Obama's 'Porkulus', is not going to stimulate the economy. Much of the spending isn't for 3-4 years. How does that stimulate the economy now?
Immediate tax cuts will mean that companies have more capital to ride out the consumer drawback. Consumers will be able to save more, pay off more debt and spend more money. 70% of the GDP is consumer spending, so if consumers have more of their own money to spend, the recession will end.
But that's not what the government and media want. They want to create a "State of Fear" to control the masses. But it's not working right now. Obama, with his 60% approval rating, is not convincing the American people that this is a good idea. The vast majority of Americans see right through this bill, and see it for what it is. More government pork. Even a large number of liberals see this. I know a lot of George Bush haters (I live near, and work in Austin) who think this bill is bull.
The real problem w/ the so-called stimulus bill (besides the obvious attempt to capitalize on American's fears and assert more public control on the private sector) is that these "jobs" aren't really long term employment opportunities. The govt w/ their "shovel ready" road projects are creatin short term "work" w/ no long term benefit of a lastin job. When the govt monies for these pork projects runs out, so will these *SUPPOSED* yobs.
Nestor -
> I understand that there are those who 'drop off the radar'.
Great!!!! So now act upon that knowledge.
> However, in the US, many people find jobs within a month, ...
That's happening quite alot less these days.
'Tolerance And Apathy Are The
Last Virtues Of A Dying
Society' - Aristotle
"Torture is the end of a society." - Me!
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