Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds

[bafbrian]

I put blame at 30% BUSH, 30% Clinton, 10% Carter, 30% Obama.......for now.

Katrina wasnt such a fuck up after all after this BP Oil disaster huh? At least Bush was a leader, Obama tries to win the daily news cycle like a guy running for high school office.

If you think for one second jacking tax rates (by letting the bush tax cuts expire) is going to spur economic growth, go take Econ 101 again. Thats like asking someone that is living poay check to pay check to take on $200 more a month in bills for the hell of it.

Thats all this shit is about, CURB spending , lower taxes. The Left wants to spend MORE and raise taxes on the few remaining rich people in this country and destroy all wealth so the people become dependent on the people with the power to give them more handouts.

I think you missed a pair of presidents in your percentage of blame. With regards to the Katrina and BP Oil Spill, both are disasters; I only had the opportunity to experience the Katrina Aftermath first hand with the military, trust me, it was bad and it hasn't gotten much better. Concurrently, the same goes for the BP Oil Spill. I agree with you Mike in that raising taxes is not the answer, but at the same time, lower taxes for businesses and corporations does not guarantee that they will hire more people, that is purely an assumption.

If you just give money to the CEO's there isn't any incentive to invest that money into the business. Most CEO's consider their compensation and the finances of their company to be separate. It would be foolish for them to invest into a business without an increase in demand. They will just hoard any increase in funds they receive into savings. Most CEO's are paid in such a manner that they are well insulated from the failures or sufferings of their companies. Their compensation is not dependent on success or failure. Also, given the piss-poor economy most companies are actually looking to shrink, even if they do get a large tax cut there's no use in paying employees to just stand around doing nothing or maintaining a lot of inventory that will just sit on the shelves.

Meanwhile, if you put money into the general population by economic stimulus, it will give consumers money to spend which will increase demand. This will make it necessary for businesses to hire more employees, expand facilities, etc. The unemployed and the poor have much more incentive to spend money (needs that are not met by wages) than the super-wealthy (who want for nothing even in the toughest times). Its a known fact that consumption drops as unemployment rises as people consume less when they are out of work and have more incentive to save when they fear losing their jobs.

Why demonize a CEO for making money? Don't group them all together and make assumptions as to what they all will do. I agree with your opinion that putting money into the population gives people money, but that doesn't give them an incentive to spend. Simply spending our way out is not going to solve anything either.

The problem is VASTLY more people collect or stay on unemployment than who pay into it. Just like Social Security

I would love to see some facts on that because this point is irrelevant without them. But for the sake of argument, lets take the numbers so far and give an estimation. Unemployment rate 9.3% (US BLS) x $330 per week (US DOL) x 52 weeks (Benefits with Extension) Equals - $497,640,000,000 is what is spent on unemployment benefits. Now, this number is not scientific, merely a collection of numbers from the US Govt', meaning it could be right or wrong, do your own research and decide for yourself. What is drawn from the Employment Tax? I don't know, but I would hope more than that amount above.

Sure not EVERYONE wants to stay on unemployment, but many do because they can milk the govt cow AND do side work. its free money. and if yo uare used to making $400-500 a week WORKING, who wouldnt want to make 60-70% of your working salary to do NOTHING.

Again, do you have facts to support that because without facts, that is purely assumption.

Simple jist of it, the Bush tax cuts did far more for middle and lower class than anyone else. Here is a pretty good article about the cuts. You will notice that they favor the lower and middle class, but also contain provisions to spur investment and entrepreneurship also.

http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/artic...dvice_strategy

That article is good, but skewed, it doesn't list all the provisions of the bill, which can found on the Library of Congress website. I agree that it helped a lot of people, but be honest, it helped some considerably more than others based of the tax cut.

Seriously though, the we are in the middle of a deep recession and because of several extremely far reaching pieces of legislation, along with the promise to raise taxes, businesses and individuals simply are not spending money. I did a quick search and couldnt find a decent source, but according to Clark Howard US savings rates are the highest they have been in a couple decades and individual debt is also coming down for the first time in a while.

You are correct that we are in a recession, but a recession is not created overnight. As you say, its because of several extremely far reaching pieces of legislation, meaning that it started before Pres. Obama, before Pres. Bush, this is a recession nearly 40 years in the making, look at the legislation around those years via the Library of Congress.

Second, you proved that point with the Clark Howard piece that many Americans are saving more for the first time in decade, thus giving the answer to Total Blender's assumption that just giving people money doesn't guarantee they will spend it.

Just because a company grows, it doesnt automaticly mean that a $10/hr job is now worth $12/hr. It may simply mean you need more people to do that $10/hr job.

Right now businesses are afraid to expand further because of all the uncertainty coming from Washington.

Think of it this way. I work at Lockheed. Its a major multi-national fortune 500 corporation. We currently have a pretty good profit margin on the c-130 but at the same time, we have very serious competition from an airbus product. Imagine if cap and trade was to pass this month and went into effect next year. Because power companies, and probably lockheed itself, will be forced to buy carbon credits the costs of producing electricity will go up. That means the lockheed's overhead costs for electricity will go up, cutting into the profit margin. This also means that all domesticly produced components' prices will go up, further cutting into the profit margin. Before long lockheed has to make a decision:

A. Raise the price of their product and possibly price themselves out of competition with Airbus.
B. Reduce the dividend payed to stock holders and possibly reduce investments.
C. Reduce payroll and possibly fall behind schedule projections.

Of those 3, which do you think they are going to do?

Today, every company, from the mom and pop ice cream joint with 2 employees to fortune 500 corporations with 10's of thousands of employees is faced with that exact decision on several issues. How will financial reform affect lending to small and major corporations? How will heath care reform affect everyone? How much more will they need to budget to pay increased utility costs if cap and trade passes. For companies like Lockheed and Chase, the answers to each of those questions affects millions of dollars.

Concurrent to the first sentence, a company's growth will not guarantee they will hire more individuals either, that is purely speculation based on ideas from Adam Smith in "Wealth of Nations".

You are right about company's being afraid to hire because of the uncertainty, but when you allocute that belief to a company's decision based upon legislation, why do you think a company willreduce payroll at the lowest instead of at the highest? Based upon the business practices within the country over the last few decades, there are very few businesses who have executives willing to take a pay cut to save jobs within their company.

If you were faced as an executive ($9.25mil per year) with a payroll decision, let's say you have to fire 10 workers who work in the mail room, whose combined salary ($20k per year per individual) would equal $200k, would you fire them or would you take a pay cut to save their jobs? How about 100 workers ($2mil)? How many CEO's and/or executives would be willing to take a pay cut to save their employees? There are a few. Would you be one of them? Does that mean a CEO or executive is bad for not taking the pay cut? IMO, no. But, if I were in that position, I would take the pay cut because it would hurt me less as opposed to the low income worker living paycheck to paycheck. As you asked Mike and I will invert your question, in this case, who stands to lose more, the CEO or the mail room worker?