PatsFanInVa

I want to specify that I'm talking about the current deal between the president and the Republican leadership in congress.

Now, deals and compromises always have contradictory elements in them. But this one is just funny, in light of the concurrent conversation about the debt commission's recommendations.

Leaving aside the extention of hundreds of billions in tax cuts for the wealthy (I know a lot of you guys like that,) and leaving aside the fact that the most stimulative tax cuts are to the middle class, and leaving aside that (boo! hiss!) sooner or later, those cuts need to go too... here's the part that tickles me:

They're throwing in a 2% cut to everybody's Social Security tax - the dedicated tax to the SS system we're all foretelling the doom of.

You really think the guys in SSA aren't soiling their drawers at this very moment? They're busily tapping the numbers into the software, and spitting out the next estimate of how many years we just moved up the insolvency date, assuming this package passes.

Can it be any clearer guys? You can't simultaneously talk about how terrible debt is and how much we need to stop taxing anybody ever.

All of these measures get the throw-the-hands-up reaction from me. It's inconsistent and it's stupid.

Our problem right now is employing more of the ranks of the unemployed. Our problem once that's accomplished will be to maintain a certain minimal level of services consistent with the obligations of a first-world government. We see similar economies - Europe, Japan - raising retirement ages from 60 to 62, or 62 to 65. We're looking at 69.

But even if you're a screw-the-poor-I-want-a-tax-cut type, when you look at the debt commission recommendations, you have to be confused as hell by our current actions.

Here's my take, which you guys are used to by now:

- stimulus spending, scary as it may be, is where you need to be in the short term. NON-stimulative spending, like gifts to the rich, are absolutely luxuries we can't afford.

- Get the unemployment rate under, say, 7%, and then you can restore normal levels of taxation on the middle class. And you have to. We do have this little debt issue.

- In addition to finally re-balancing the budget one day, we need to still pay the enormous bills, the majority of which were run up in the last 10 years. Nobody likes it, but there ya go.

- Spare me the voodoo economics. Here's reality: you cut taxes, you get a stimulus by borrowing the money to spend it. You spend the money to put it in pockets, people spend the money, the economy picks up again, and measured against a high-unemployment era, your revenue grows. But once you have a normal level of unemployment, you need to make up the revenue. The cut has to expire. Otherwise you're borrowing 20 bucks to buy a value meal and have 15 bucks left over, claiming you've delivered a free value meal, and planning on how to spend your 15 dollar surplus.

So here's what you do, in order:
1) cut taxes on the middle class. Do not cut taxes on the rich.
1a) Another aspect of digging the hell out of the unemployment hole - which is the opposite of the debt hole concern: Put people to work to give them money. That is, engage in large-scale public works - repair infrastructure, incentivize development of alternative energy (if you don't have the balls to let the government set up nationalized renewable energy utilities, to be privatized at a profit to taxpayers at some later date when everybody wants in.)

1c) This is one item we can start -- and have started -- toward lower debt: 2Wind down our remaining war - continually minimize our remaining obligation in Iraq


That's the "getting people employed" part. Then you've got the debt issue. You'll have more of one, of course. But here's what you do about that, at the right time, which is a couple years later.

2) Figure out how to pay for the last 10 year's tax giveaway to the rich.
2a) Let the middle class cuts expire, but not until unemployment is "acceptable" and the recovery is a little less fragile than at present.
2b) Just take the debt commission recommendations or something like them. Accept that idiots on the right must be pacified, unless people wake the hell up in the interim, though I doubt they will.

I'm a fiscal hawk in normal times, believe it or not. I don't believe in passing out candy to the children to make everybody like you. We're still reacting to the relatively scattered instances of waste, fraud, abuse, etc. etc. etc. But our systemic problem is the abiding belief that any tax rate can and should be cut.

But if you want to "attrit" the federal workforce down to a lower level, and it works, be my guest. If you want to freeze federal pay as "part of the complete breakfast" of austerity measures, I'm down. Maybe you feel "security theater" is costing too much and doing no good. Okay, worth considering.

BUT, I don't believe that the working class should be pushed over the edge into poverty, and I don't believe that the poor should be pushed into homelessness. Even in a heartless analysis, you must realize that it's cheaper to pay unemployment benefits (for example) than to pick up the basic functions of life through other programs. Push people out of their homes and you have homelessness... then you need shelters, soup kitchens, and all the rest.

So that's my take on the rational way to do this. Step 1, get unemployment down. Step 2, ah say step 2, you panicky b1tches, deal with debt.

But complaining about debt when you're trying to stimulate the economy is just plain dumb. When you bolt it together with "yayyyyyyy cut some more taxes!!!" the results are downright self-contradictory.

PFnV

apple strudel

If Obama signs off on this (seriously, can he even try threatening a veto? just try, once, for me, please?) I'm voting socialist or green party for the rest of my life. The complaints about debt are really only because the debt isn't subsidizing military contractors enough. Hey, that's my pork!

PatsFanInVa

Yeah well. I'll vote for the guy with the best chance of making progress and (in cases when it's needed) saving the country from oblivion. I don't like the capitulatory style of this Administration of late, but it's always been their style. Meanwhile, the accomplishments of this administration to date have been pretty impressive.

It's just a WTF moment, and I think it signifies the "uniter" role Obama wants to play -- despite the wrongness of the "deal" meant to "unite" us.

Before going protest vote (let's be honest,) consider the causes of and "response" of Bush economic meltdown:

- Collapse of the West's market economy
- One tranch of life-support TARP funding, then no intervention in an ever-worsening crisis after the election
- Gigantic tax giveaways and a general policy of hyperindebtedness
- Invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, another mess Obama's administration has to deal with

Realize that these overreactions to teabagger midterm results we're seeing now, while on the somewhat silly side, do not wipe out the reforms of health care, consumer credit, and the financial sector that have been managed. None of them are perfect, but they're all good starts. Compare that with the equivalent Republican actions, had we hired on a Bush clone, an ultra-conservative know-nothing, or a random-acting "maverick."

The 2000 election permanently engraved in my mind that the right can squeek by far too easily in a close election... Without playing the woulda-shoulda-coulda alternate history game with the righties, in terms of outcomes, how would you have felt about the outcome, had we elected the probably luke-warm, compromising, center-left Gore, vs. what we got?

This kind of stuff baffles me too. But I'm not going to reward the hardcore wrong guys, because I don't like my guys' negotiating prowess. If I don't like the right wing using their "superminority" to get 70% of what they want, why would I want them to get 100% of what they want?

PFnV

DarrylS

Do we need to spend more than 3X more than any other country on Defense, military madness has ruined my country..

58% of our budget goes toward military expenditures.. the military industrial complex runs this country, the rest are all just puppets..

How Our Trillion-Dollar Empire Is the Cause of Our 'Deficit Problem' | Economy | AlterNet

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"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

PatriotsReign

In all honesty, our gov't shouldn't even be trying to "stimulate the economy". All that does is create artificial growth and we don't need artificial growth, we need REAL growth.

The whole reason (as in 100%) we are in this mess is because our gov't (along with our banking system) created artificial growth for far too long. The solution to our economic woes isnt to continue to do what we did to get us into this mess...which is what "stimulating" does.

For once, Americans need to be patient. No economy has ever been "fixed" by it's gov't. See Japan for the best example.

Let's all remember that the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.

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The Brandon Five

I find the language around this kind of thing pretty interesting. Were tax rates brought down on tablets from Mt. Sinai? Why are the current rates treated as "cuts"? The old rates are permanent and unchangeable? Isn't it just a case of keeping the current rates rather than letting an automatic increase kick in?

I am not arguing for or against them. To me, the GOP are being dumb by holding out. Why not build in a small-business exemption if you are worried about jobs? Protecting millionaires is proving very unpopular in a tough economy.

apple strudel

The hallmark of a good politician is that he can sell or justify something to you that is against your own self interest.

Holy Diver

Obama sucks.

Real World

I wouldn't call those types "good" politicians. Maybe "lying scumbag establishment" types for short.

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"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."
Leo Tolstoy, 1897

Real World

As far as I understand this isn't a "cut" in taxes, as much as it is a matter of maintaining the status quo. The SS issue aside. That one I'm trying to figure out. SS taxes are matching, so it might be a means to put more $$ into the hands of both businesses and employees. With it being SS money, the actual expense won't be felt for years down the road, whereas actual income rate deductions are felt immediately. At least in their view. The reality is that the gubmit already includes excess SS funds as revenue, as it confiscates them from the fund, and replaces them with IOU's in the form of Treasuries. Nice!


What's one's definition of wealthy btw? $250k per certainly isn't wealthy is some parts of this country. I've got no issues with giving everyone a fair shake here. If one guy gets one, so should the next. Those who earn more already pay a disporportionate size of the bill.

We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. How about slashing programs across the board? Military programs included. It's going to have to happen at some point, so we're better off starting now.

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"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."
Leo Tolstoy, 1897