Proof that the GOP Economic Platform has Always Been DOA

For the last 30 years, the GOP economic platform has been to tax the rich less so that their wealth can "trickle down" to employ the masses while removing all safety nets for your average joe. For the most part we are still under this trickle down policy because even after Obama adjusted the tax rates, his tax rates are still lower than Clinton and Reagan. In addition, safety nets such as pensions and other benefits for your average worker are gone and are no where to be seen under Obama. So yes, the GOP trickle down economic model is still alive and well even under a democratic president.

What do we have today to show the results of this economic policy. The DOW is about 100 points away from returning to pre-economic crash levels of about 14,000. Which means that many of the companies profiting enough to increase the price of their stock.

But what about the work force? I think it's safe to say that many of the jobs that are gone are never coming back. Not only that, regardless of the profitability of these companies, if they can still "do more with less" there is absolutely no incentives for these companies to hire on more people. Hence, part of the reason why our unemployment numbers are still extremely high.

I think this is proof positive that reducing taxes for the "rich" does not translate into jobs and it definitely does NOT improve our national debt with the rich paying less than their fair share percentage wise than your average job. As we can see, these tax cuts really only benefit a small group of people and corporations, but does not benefit the masses.

This is the reason why the GOP platform is DOA. This is the reason why Romney cannot be president. He will expand the gap between the rich and poor even more. If this continues, we will be in no better shape than Mexico very soon.

Democrats forcing banks to make loans to people that can't pay them back is the REAL reason we are in the mess we are in today.

Also, we are not in the debt we are in because we are taxed too little, it's because we SPEND too much.

A rising tide raises ALL ships.

Actually, if you did your homework, banks such as Wells Fargo did tons of loans to less qualified people and Wells Fargo held up okay. Giving predatory, liar, subprime loans is another story and is the result of deregulation that republicans thought and still thinks is a great idea.

With regards to debt, it's not just that we spend too much, we're taking in too little as well. It's a two way street. The most expensive and out of control bloated spending spree is for our military. We cut that by 25% and it would absolutely help our budget problems.

Either way you look at it, the Reaganomics is exactly what GHWB said it was "voodoo economics." This is the same crap being peddled by the right wingers that our country has been f'ed six ways to sunday. And guess what, Romney is peddling the same garbage.

Originally posted by Carseller4
Democrats forcing banks to make loans to people that can't pay them back is the REAL reason we are in the mess we are in today.

Also, we are not in the debt we are in because we are taxed too little, it's because we SPEND too much.

A rising tide raises ALL ships.

Originally posted by SeekingAlpha
Actually, if you did your homework, banks such as Wells Fargo did tons of loans to less qualified people and Wells Fargo held up okay. Giving predatory, liar, subprime loans is another story and is the result of deregulation that republicans thought and still thinks is a great idea.

With regards to debt, it's not just that we spend too much, we're taking in too little as well. It's a two way street. The most expensive and out of control bloated spending spree is for our military. We cut that by 25% and it would absolutely help our budget problems.

Either way you look at it, the Reaganomics is exactly what GHWB said it was "voodoo economics." This is the same crap being peddled by the right wingers that our country has been f'ed six ways to sunday. And guess what, Romney is peddling the same garbage.

Originally posted by Carseller4
Democrats forcing banks to make loans to people that can't pay them back is the REAL reason we are in the mess we are in today.

Also, we are not in the debt we are in because we are taxed too little, it's because we SPEND too much.

A rising tide raises ALL ships.

Re-do your homework and you will see that banks were FORCED to make these risky loans by government. This phenomenon started with Jimmy Carter, and was done more forcibly in the Clinton years. Social engineering never turns out well.

I did do my homework. You didn't see the housing market collapse under Carter and Clinton like it did with Bush did you.

Predatory lending is the real issue and it was made possible by deregulating the banks and turning them into casinos thanks to the GOP.

Originally posted by Carseller4

Originally posted by SeekingAlpha
Actually, if you did your homework, banks such as Wells Fargo did tons of loans to less qualified people and Wells Fargo held up okay. Giving predatory, liar, subprime loans is another story and is the result of deregulation that republicans thought and still thinks is a great idea.

With regards to debt, it's not just that we spend too much, we're taking in too little as well. It's a two way street. The most expensive and out of control bloated spending spree is for our military. We cut that by 25% and it would absolutely help our budget problems.

Either way you look at it, the Reaganomics is exactly what GHWB said it was "voodoo economics." This is the same crap being peddled by the right wingers that our country has been f'ed six ways to sunday. And guess what, Romney is peddling the same garbage.

Originally posted by Carseller4
Democrats forcing banks to make loans to people that can't pay them back is the REAL reason we are in the mess we are in today.

Also, we are not in the debt we are in because we are taxed too little, it's because we SPEND too much.

A rising tide raises ALL ships.

Re-do your homework and you will see that banks were FORCED to make these risky loans by government. This phenomenon started with Jimmy Carter, and was done more forcibly in the Clinton years. Social engineering never turns out well.

Originally posted by SeekingAlpha
I did do my homework. You didn't see the housing market collapse under Carter and Clinton like it did with Bush did you.

Predatory lending is the real issue and it was made possible by deregulating the banks and turning them into casinos thanks to the GOP.

Originally posted by Carseller4

Originally posted by SeekingAlpha
Actually, if you did your homework, banks such as Wells Fargo did tons of loans to less qualified people and Wells Fargo held up okay. Giving predatory, liar, subprime loans is another story and is the result of deregulation that republicans thought and still thinks is a great idea.

With regards to debt, it's not just that we spend too much, we're taking in too little as well. It's a two way street. The most expensive and out of control bloated spending spree is for our military. We cut that by 25% and it would absolutely help our budget problems.

Either way you look at it, the Reaganomics is exactly what GHWB said it was "voodoo economics." This is the same crap being peddled by the right wingers that our country has been f'ed six ways to sunday. And guess what, Romney is peddling the same garbage.

Originally posted by Carseller4
Democrats forcing banks to make loans to people that can't pay them back is the REAL reason we are in the mess we are in today.

Also, we are not in the debt we are in because we are taxed too little, it's because we SPEND too much.

A rising tide raises ALL ships.

Re-do your homework and you will see that banks were FORCED to make these risky loans by government. This phenomenon started with Jimmy Carter, and was done more forcibly in the Clinton years. Social engineering never turns out well.

This does not happen overnight. George Bush actually warned us about this. Government forcing banks to lend to minorities and the poor was a stupid idea, and it crashed the economy.

This is a topic I really enjoy because it has a great back story.

Trickle-down economics used to be called the "Horse and Sparrow" theory. The premise was that if you shove enough oats into the mouth of the horse, enough will come out the back end for the sparrows to pick out.

In modern terms, you feed the rich so that the poor can fight over their leftovers.

But as you can see it is completely flawed. A business or corporation can have all the money they want but if they can meet demand with their current workforce, why would they hire?

If demand for their goods or services increases, so will their labor force.

So we must recognize that we must increase demand from the bottom up to spur economic activity. Feeding the rich only leaves the rest of us to fight over whats left.

reply to post by Carseller4

This does not happen overnight. George Bush actually warned us about this. Government forcing banks to lend to minorities and the poor was a stupid idea, and it crashed the economy.

Giving loans to minorities and lower-income people is what crashed the economy?

C'mon...that's ridiculous.

What crashed the economy was the repeal of Glass-Steagal. This allowed banks to bundle homes and default swaps so that they could sell and resell the instrument.

It also allowed the banks to loan out money they never had at a much higher ratio than their holdings.

So I think your statement is a bit......wrong.

reply to post by SeekingAlpha


I think … I think the trickle-down model is less GOP in nature as it is New Keynesianism (and it is contended that New Keynesians are, in fact, not so new as they are flat-out Keynesians) & countercyclical policy. I suggest this for the following reasons:

1) Keynesianism is the leader of the pack, so to speak, in terms of economic thinking. This is most evident within the Federal Reserve System, whose quasi-governmental and quasi-private (an odd way to describe the Fed reserve, but a mainstream description nonetheless) stature afford it significant influence among government policy makers & private (but federally funded) think tanks, whose analyses often influence governmental policies as well. So I’m suggesting the trickle-down model reflects, to a greater extent than not, an economic theory whose present use is meant to avert further economic downturn. A more interesting question--in my opinion—asks this: Does Keynesian economic predictive capability live up to its actual projection(s)? My unqualified response: no.

2) I tend to be cautious about ideas which address the U.S. income tax rate that do not also address spending cuts. Moreover, I try to be careful in terms of avoiding normative ethics on questions about what is adequate for defense spending, environmental spending, social safety spending, etc. That doesn’t mean I lack prescriptive opinions about these areas of spending, but will suggest that such subtopics are diversionary when we seek to assess &, hopefully, determine the root causes of governmental decisions that lead to unhealthy outcomes. Allow me to elaborate:

a) There is this idea about fairness, an idea which I cannot descriptively pinpoint. The best I could do is say, “In principle X …” & hope that my argument is sufficient enough to align with the subjective-value index of fairness among those I’m trying to convince. I mean—I think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that you & I would agree it’s not fair for one person to take another person’s belongings. For instance it would not be fair if, while leaving the supermarket to get to my car, someone came up to me and stole items I’d just purchased. If we were in a large auditorium with a full crowd of folks present and this same scenario was posed, I’m confident the majority of people would agree that it’s not fair for the thief to take my items. (I do not claim that a majority consensus ensures a sound norm, but rather that most people—even thieves—would prefer not to be robbed. The thief might even think it was unfair to be robbed no less!)

b) Ideas about what is fair become more & more fragmented when wealth (and I claim that something as simple as your labor represents an aspect of your wealth) is redistributed. Whether it is right or wrong to redistribute wealth is not a question I want to try & answer. I only want to emphasize that determining aggregately the subjective-value index of wealth redistribution is near impossible to accomplish when balanced against my initial idea that, in general, most people would agree that the original theft broke away from what we would tend to agree represents fairness. And so I am postulating that we can more readily identify with one another about ideas of fairness when we relate as individuals, but from the point at which individual resources are redistributed disharmony creeps in and, for lack of a better expression, we begin to exude a fragmented, collective identity crisis. I cannot prove this idea, but qualitatively I do think the observation carries weight. If this were not so then we should expect or anticipate there would be greater harmony insofar as collective decisions are agreed on & implemented. But politics demonstrates this is not the case.

Here is an interesting article that I posted in another ATS thread not long ago which sheds some quantitative light on what awaits: www.bloomberg.com...

It’s my impression that your OP roughly corresponds, in tone, with the Bloomberg article. Nonetheless, I’m going to make an unqualified assumption based on the linked report & claim there’s not enough rich in the U.S. to settle government debts, regardless what tax rate might be assigned. And this points back to my reservation about discussions which address the U.S. tax rate, but fail to address spending as well.

reply to post by SeekingAlpha


(continued)

How do I think this all ties in with your theme? I’m doing my best to avoid normative prescriptions. It’s not easy to do so. In my effort to overlook the ethics of right & wrong I speculate we’ve moved beyond what the, say, top 10% of earners in the United States can cover down on in terms of government obligations. Moreover, fiscal spending shows no indication of halting back. That is, fiscal spending is increasing year after year. Can’t we even get one year of no growth in fiscal spending? Evidently we can’t. Not when full employment (~ 5 – 6%) has been nonexistent since on/about ’08; not when private, failed financial markets’ assets are transferred to public debt; not when credit expansion (the precursor to our current economic crisis according to one economic theory) is thought of as lacking in the market and remains an unimportant part of the national discussion.

Now full employment, defined, is strictly that: defined. For that matter full employment is statistically defined, and it has been suggested among some economists that the old definition be amended to reflect the current unemployment rate. In other words, the current unemployment rate would become the new definition of full employment. Arbitrary? Yeah, me thinks so.

I’m unaware of economic theory which establishes the … correct (i.e., full) employment rate for a nation. I tend to think there are economists out and about who dabble in ideas about what the number should be, but opinions are normative. And then there is the matter of acidic asset transfers to public debt—a purely political maneuver in my opinion. The mantra “too big to fail” was the catch line that failed to discuss whether it might have been better to liquidate, suffer the consequences, and rebuild. As best I understand the financial market suffers from failing organs & has been receiving transplant after transplant. At some point there will simply be no organs left to replace the failing organs, or the expense of transplant will exceed our ability to afford. In an expression these continual transplants are also purely political, but they are nonetheless described as pragmatic. Well, pick your poison I guess.

Credit expansion, credit expansion, credit expansion: Why aren’t credit expansion & the business cycle theory a part of the mainstream discussion? If we judge the predictive capability of a theory to warrant its use then, presumably, business cycle theory is worth talking about. After all, New Keynesians are in the hot seat—it’s their policies which receive the most attention. Granted these thinkers have probably not gotten government policy makers to apply the full spectrum of their recommendations, but it would be ignorant to claim that government policy makers (Repub. & Dem.) have not ceded to the core of their recommendations.

It is very difficult for me to make my case in terms of your theme (i.e., trickle-down effect) & not emphasize factors which point toward normative conclusions. And, once again, the importance of doing so ties in with my idea that once we take on a collective mindset it becomes much, much more difficult to form a consensus or even identify factors in this discussion which might be more fundamental than the present tax rate for the top earners in the United States. In saying this it is my hope that you’ll recognize I’m trying to engage in dialogue with you versus pontificate. Not an easy thing to do with such a sensitive topic.

When I consider your arguments and the arguments of others similar to yours I do speculate about the ramifications of concentrated wealth; moreover, I don’t simply rely on my own limited ability to speculate, but seek out the viewpoints of others whose understanding about economics & history is much more thoroughgoing than mine. If you would like links to some of the thinkers who’ve influenced my thoughts then I’d be glad to post them for you.

To date I’m inclined to agree with one school of thought: that concentrated wealth is, in part, related to the relationship between the state & industry. On the other hand there are individuals who succeed simply because they’re talented, work hard, and can predict the market with greater acumen (probably luck, too) than others. And so, I think, we are presented with a sort of crux about fairness in terms of a) the consistent use of fairness in terms of application & b) the sense in which we deprive economic productivity because we cannot collectively agree on what is fair. Enter politics: the civil form of rivalry amongst people born into some geographical territory. At least it’s civil, or possesses a veneer of civility. Mostly.

reply to post by SeekingAlpha


(and finally)

I might add (better said, “I will add”) that investment is thought of as the primary factor which will catalyze economic growth. I don’t disagree with that viewpoint, either. But, as it stands, a big problem among mainstream economists is that we (you, me, everyone) simply aren’t consuming enough. From their point of view economic health is translated thru consumption rather than production. And, I think, the distinction is subtle. Be that as it may I believe economic health is translated thru production rather than consumption. One must have the ability to produce (to meet a demand) before one can consume; hence, I think the Keynesians’ chronological framework (emphasis: consumption) is backwards. Just one more reason I believe that political attachments, be it Dem., Repub., and even Libertarian in some instances, obscure roots causes that we might otherwise have considered. Why? It's in the language we use: GOPers, Liberals, etc., are all most commonly ascribed to some political action. If we can't get past our attachments to an organization & look at circumstances more ... rawly, then I don't think we will ever really make our situation better.

Do I think an increase in top earners’ tax rate is the answer? No. Without imposing my own views about right or wrong ... my opinion is that we’ve passed the point in which top earners could even sustain government spending should they be taxed at, say, 99% of their annual earnings.

Of course I could be wrong. I’ll concede that, quite possibly, my opinion could be wrong. But if my opinion/speculation is correct then increasing the top earners' tax rate is not the right course (at least as the increase is “commonly” formulated, i.e., top 10% earners). Included in that speculation is increased growth in fiscal spending as well.

Folks are starting to realize that the MISSION of the Republicans is to CUT AND GUT everything for the average citizen in attempt to keep the super-wealthy from sharing in any of the BURDEN of getting this country back on track. The SUPER-wealthy are NOT paying their fair share percentage-wise and the republicans wish to KEEP IT THAT WAY at OUR EXPENSE!! Heck many SUPER-wealthy arent even paying a DIME in taxes, but are getting in return OUR TAX MONEY BACK!!!!!! Thats the ultimate MIDDLE-FINGER to American tax payers! Then they turn around and invest this money (that is OURS) overseas!!! Republicans just LOVE this type of business conduct and wish to keep it going!!

Our previous generations have fought SO HARD to gain for us certain befits and safety cushions that the republicans wish to completely STRIP away from us just to protect the SUPER-wealthy.

[color=hotpink]Its really strange how all of the NEW RADICAL EXTREMIST IDEALS of the Right is in PERFECT ALIGNMENT with the ideals of the BIG-MONEY-FAT-CAT funders of the Right-wing. I just keep hearing about a lot of BEHIND THE SCENES funding (bribery) going on from certain SUPER-wealthy folks with none of our best interests in mind. Ahem, I dunno, KOCH BROTHERS maybe?? Maybe?? There is some RADICAL EXTREME IDEALS that are not in the interest of the average citizen that the Republicans have been adopting lately... must be some $$$$$$$$TRONG behind-the-scenes influence going on...Hmmmmmmmm........

The EXTREME RADICAL HATE for the average middle-class and poor Americans, the absolute SCREWING of the American workers of their wages, rights, health-care, and benefits, the protection and constant coddling of the SUPER-wealthy and CRONY-CAPITALIST SNAKES and their CASINOS with a never-ending appetite for SCREWING this country for all its worth, the COMPLETE DESTRUCTION of the ENVIRONMENT via deregulation and elimination of the EPA, the elimination of entitlements for Americans that they PAID FOR BY FORCE their entire lives, and ON AND ON AND ON...

The Right is FULLY FUNDED by the SUPER-wealthy to SCREW us and this country over to no end. Their IDEALS ALIGN PERFECTLY with the DEVILS and SNAKES who are funding them, and it AINT GOOD for us!!

The Right better be DOA, because if NOT, then the AVERAGE American family will be DOA soon...