Official: Obama plans to slash deficit in half

[Goyboy]

Official: Obama plans to slash deficit in half

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to help revive the economy and is working on a plan to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term.

The President wants to spend billions of dollars and to cut the budget in half.
What am I missing here?

[thebuescherman]

Tax such an incredible amount from the top, and you CAN do both. Scary stuff.

Scaling back in Iraq was going to happen regardless of who was President. Things are getting better every day, and it would be natural to start to withdraw from there. But he talks about increasing our role in Afghanistan and potential confrontation with Pakistan. Interesting, I'd think scaling back in Iraq and increasing support in Afghanistan would balance each other out.

Fiscal discipline? I don't buy it for a second. Looks like that ole' taxes will starting getting a nice raise.

[Deadeye]

Can someone tell me how huge massive government spending can solve problems caused by huge massive government spending?

Boy, the guy who figured this out must be a smoker too, you know like really, really dim.

Say, has anyone seen the Comradpresident's college grades yet? Why are they secret anyway? You know if they had been good they would have been put up in lights.

Let's see, the guy was probably a poor student, smokes cigarettes, and is a socialist. He's never had a real job, but yet we elected him to hold the most difficult job in the World. Boy was that a good idea.

[Disinformant]

Official: Obama plans to slash deficit in half

The President wants to spend billions of dollars and to cut the budget in half.
What am I missing here?

I believe they call it "creative accounting". I couldn't give you more details I've never engaged in fraud.

[Yarn]

Goyboy:

The President wants to spend billions of dollars and to cut the budget in half.
What am I missing here?

Yeah. I agree its a copout for him to say he'll half the deficit in 8 years by reducing it to about triple what it was in 07.

thebuescherman:

Tax such an incredible amount from the top

The tax code under Bush was plainly immoral. To begin with, if trickle down really worked than the upper 1%'s income would not have increated for 30 years while middle class income remained stagnant despite the middle class putting in more hours.

Further, Bush reduced taxes on the wealthy so much that he actually made our tax code regressive. He reduced the capital gains tax, from which the upper class makes the majority of its income, to 15%. Whereas any middle class salary is taxed between 20 and 30%.

The present tax system is immoral, and that is a good part of why many want it restored to what it was under Clinton. Will Clinton era taxes be enough to pay for what Obama wants?

Of course not, but he isn't pretending they will be.

Deadeye:

Can someone tell me how huge massive government spending can solve problems caused by huge massive government spending?

Which problems are you refering to exactly?

The only way this might be argued to help deal with the deficit would be something like the opposite of reaganomics/supply side economics.

[Deadeye]

Goyboy:





The tax code under Bush was plainly immoral. To begin with, if trickle down really worked than the upper 1%'s income would not have increated for 30 years while middle class income remained stagnant despite the middle class putting in more hours.

I'm going to give you a real quick and dirty lesson in economics. You need it.

Listen closely: If people are allowed the spend their money then it provides jobs to people who are paid by the people who spend money.

It's not hard to understand. The the inverse is also true, which is; If government takes money from people who would normally spend the money, then the people who would have been paid with that money will no longer be paid and they will lose their jobs.

Reagan cut taxes and government revenue increased. Do you understand that? If government lowers taxes business activity will increase. More people will make more money to pay taxes and even though taxes went down government income went up. This is always the case.

Now, you; a socialist; believe that government should spend money taken from those who earn it to pay for goods and services, and government will decide how to distribute the wealth. In this way you can rob from the rich and give to the poor, something that liberals adore.

Trouble is, without entrepreneurs to apply capital goods in response to demand, nothing is made and no services are provided. Thus the fall of the Soviet Union and the partial collapse of the British economy decades ago.

What government needs to do is to encourage entrepreneurs to invest their time, money and knowledge to make things and help people. Government bureaucracies are neither qualified nor able to accomplish this end.

What has happened now is that entrepreneurs have lost all faith in the government to do the right thing, so the stock market is in a tail spin. Obama is not changing his tune, so the forces that drove the market down are still in place, and there is nothing on the horizon to stop the bleeding.

Obama likes this, becauase he can point to it and declare capitalism a failure, and then provide more govenment management. Finally Demcorats have been unmasked; as the socialists that we all knew they were. Obama and his fiends are at war with our way of life.

I have lost more than half of my wealth and Obama couldn't care less. He is waiting for me to stick out my hand and plead for a handout. This makes him both happy and powerful.

And evil.

[Yarn]

Deadeye:

If people are allowed the spend their money then it provides jobs to people who are paid by the people who spend money.

Demand is just as important as investment, and demand is most efficiently produced by giving money to the lower classes. I see no reason to believe that taxing the upper class less is better for the rest of society than taxing the lower classes less, given that an increasingly trickle down tax code has failed over the past 30 years.

If government takes money from people who would normally spend the money, then the people who would have been paid with that money will no longer be paid and they will lose their jobs.

And the government creates jobs too. It is universally accepted that the private sector is more efficient, but if the private sector is tanking as seriously as it is now then many resources won't be used unless the government employs them.

Reagan cut taxes and government revenue increased. Do you understand that? If government lowers taxes business activity will increase. More people will make more money to pay taxes and even though taxes went down government income went up. This is always the case.

Looking purely at the broad statistics, there doesn't seem to be any correlation at all between economic growth and how much we tax the wealthy.

Reagan didn't balance the budget, Clinton did.

Now, you; a socialist; believe that government should spend money taken from those who earn it to pay for goods and services, and government will decide how to distribute the wealth. In this way you can rob from the rich and give to the poor, something that liberals adore.

From a moral standpoint, the top 1% doesn't exist. Its how well the economy does for the typical person, for the other 99% of citizens, that matters. We are a democracy, not a fuedal country. Like I said, trickle down failed. The statistics show that the upper class tax cuts coincided with a 30 year period during which the middle class got less and less per hour, and the same amount in aggregate. Any functional economy has large income disparities, but also has a prosperous middle class.

The solution to the past 30 years is a more equitable distribution of social services and programs that empower our people to become more productive. Ideally, the government doesn't supplant the private economy, it amplifies it. It invests in education, which makes the middle class possible and vibrant, and a safety net, which softens the harsher edges of capitalism and stabilizes the economy.

Also, theres more to life than GDP. Reducing stress, increasing leisure, and redistributing wealth can be worth reductions in growth.
- Denmark 'happiest' country in the world - CNN.com

What has happened now is that entrepreneurs have lost all faith in the government to do the right thing, so the stock market is in a tail spin. Obama is not changing his tune, so the forces that drove the market down are still in place, and there is nothing on the horizon to stop the bleeding.

Your kidding me.

No. We've had plenty of trendy new products and services these past few years. The problem is not that we lack active entrepreneurs, the problem is that our banks are trillions of dollars in the red because of their innovative investment schemes. Canada's banks are healthy because their regulatory system did its job. The US is dragging down the leftists, not visa versa.

[grandpa]

Demand is just as important as investment, and demand is
most efficiently produced by giving money to the lower classes.
I see no reason to believe that taxing the upper
class less is better for the rest of society than
taxing the lower classes less, given that an increasingly trickle
down tax code has failed over the past 30 years.

As Noam Chomsky put it:
"South Korea in the late 1950s was probably about the
level of Ghana today. But they developed by following the Japanese model
- violating all the rules of the IMF and Western economists and
developing pretty much the way the Western countries had developed, by
substantial direction and involvement of the state sector. So South
Korea, for example built a major steel industry, one of the most
efficient in the world, by flatly violating the advice of the IMF and
the World Bank, who said it was impossible. But they did it through
state intervention, directing of resources, and also by restricting
capital flight. Capital flight is a major problem for a developing
country, and also for democracy."
ZNet - Understanding the Crisis

If anyone objects to either government intervention or revolution, he or she might as well just
say no to having a viable economy for the next decade.

And the whole "Trickle-down vs Trickle-up" debate is pretty ridiculous. Our aim should be to eliminate class, not to prop one up on top of the other.

Grandpa h.

[Yarn]

grandpa:

And the whole "Trickle-down vs Trickle-up" debate is pretty ridiculous. Our aim should be to eliminate class, not to prop one up on top of the other.

Every industrialized nation has classes. Classes are an integral part of the process which makes a country rich. Perhaps we should aim to make class distinctions less extreme, but the coercion required to do away with classes all together would interfere too much with market efficiency.

[Deadeye]

Deadeye:



Demand is just as important as investment, and demand is most efficiently produced by giving money to the lower classes. I see no reason to believe that taxing the upper class less is better for the rest of society than taxing the lower classes less, given that an increasingly trickle down tax code has failed over the past 30 years.

But to have demand one must have something to demand. For years the Soviet people had gobs of money to spend, but nothing to spend it upon. Demand plays off of supply. No Supply, no Demand. (What brought down the Soviet Union was that the people demanded things that the government could not supply. The only way they could get what they wanted was to removed the government, which was putting up an artificial obstacle.)

So to have demand you first must have investiment in capital goods, which are things that make things and people who make the things and money to invest.

One of the best ways to stimulate capital investment is to lower taxes.

Just giving people money does not in of itself creat demand. Providing goods and services that people want does. The people who do that sort of thing are called capitalists and entrepreneurs.

[Deadeye]

Deadeye:





And the government creates jobs too. It is universally accepted that the private sector is more efficient, but if the private sector is tanking as seriously as it is now then many resources won't be used unless the government employs them.

Yes, government creates jobs too, but not productive jobs. Government creates bureaucrats who act to stifle productivity and increase the cost of doing business.

When you stand in Washington DC and look at those huge buildings that house tens of thousands of bureaucrats they don't produce a single thing that you can eat or use. They create red tape, that strangles investment and productivity. Money spend upon government agencies is largely wasted money.

If all of the people in those buildings were given a year off with pay, we'd see little difference; except that things would work better and cheaper.

[Deadeye]

Deadeye:

And the government creates jobs too. It is universally accepted that the private sector is more efficient, but if the private sector is tanking as seriously as it is now then many resources won't be used unless the government employs them.

Why then is the private sector tanking? It's because of poor business regulations required of the lending institutions by government agencies, specifically Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Banks were required to make sub prime loans. Something they would not have done if their tried and true lending rules had remained in place.

Were there crooked lenders? Yes, there were, because they were making bonuses on the number of subprime loans thay made; again required by government.

Government does indeed create jobs, but doing what? Nothing good, that's for sure.

What did Reagan say was one of the three greatest lies? One was, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

Government jobs are largely make work jobs. They are used to enforce government regulations that are largely a huge waste of time in the first place.

Government jobs are notoriously inefficient. Just compare the Post Office to your local Rapid Transit or UPS.

Government jobs are a waste of time and government agencies should be severely cut.