Tornado Alley (PROG)

[wbmw]

wbmw, I am way past the blame game, hate and mock so prevelant here and most political discussion, so I don't give a flip if it's Clinton, Bush or Obama who sticks it to us. I am looking for enlightenment and solutions.

Hogsgeteaten, I was hoping my comments would be INstructive, rather than DEstructive. It's important not to place blame for the sake of placing blame, but at the same time we can't pretend that the past did not happen, nor should we avoid learning from those who have made mistakes in the past.

You did read the Moseley speech text, right? You don't dispute his premise, but you still think that the government is going to be more effecient at dispersing 'stimulus' 'jobs' money than millions of citizens?

This can be true, actually, but tactically things will have to change, depending on where we are in the recession. On the way down, most businesses fear the uncertainty, and they will contract and stop spending money in order to save their way out of the recession. That's natural, and it's why the government needs to take the place of business spending with a stimulus program that grants projects and loans in spite of the contraction.

Alternatively, on the way towards recovery, it's important that the government pull out of grants, but instead seed out incentives for businesses to come out of their shells and resume spending on their own. The secondary problem right now, however, is that banks are not lending to small businesses in spite of good credit. So the government can help here, too, by making loans readily available to small businesses.

You 'trust' the pols to pick the 'right' projects and you are confident no favoritism, supporter paybacks, fraud,waste and moral hazard will ensue?

Come on... I'm not naive. I know there's going to be waste, but there is much to be said about the structure and transparency of the ARRA bill. We can infinitely debate the details of the bill, but I still think it accomplished what it set out to do.

Tell me what is "spending on jobs" anyhow? Employers create jobs.

You should listen to Obama directly. There are multiple videos on the Whitehouse website where he talks about jobs creation, and summarizing it here won't do it justice. It's basically a matter of creating tax incentives for businesses to hire more work, while making sure local banks have the capital to make small business loans, but you should hear it from Obama himself for the details to make an impact.

Spending Spending Spending (repeat 13 trillion times) is what causes deficits. Moseley is saying that taxes are punitive to our citizens, especially to the lower income segment who still pay FICA as a heavy percentage of their income, even if they don't pay much Federal and State income tax. A Tax Holiday for a year would "create jobs" as our economy boomed with discrecionary income to spend spend spend (repeat a trillion times)!

A get the theory, but a tax holiday as good as it sounds would be extremely expensive. If you took the same amount of money as one year of revenues, think about what could be done with it. And also think about the number of people who don't need the tax incentives to spend money. Lots of wealthy individuals are not being impeded by tax costs today as they are going out and fueling the GDP. Any tax cuts need to be targeted at the middle class, including the lower middle class who are struggling with under-employment, but still making enough to be in a marginal tax bracket.

So I support "some" kind of tax cuts, but would you give Goldman-Sachs a tax break so that it can give bigger bonuses to its executives? Would you give those executives a tax holiday...? I don't see why anyone would.