I love it, everything bad that happened when Clinton was in office is his fault because "it was his watch" but anything bad that happens "on Bush's watch" has an excuse.

On the contrary, I don't think it was Bill Clintons fault at all. The fact is
economies go in cycles, they always have they always will. The entire field of
econimics is devoted to the study of economies and their cycles in an attempt to eliminate those cycles. To date it's been a dismal failure.

The reality is, it does'nt matter who took over the Oval Office in Jan of 01, the economy was going into the tank period. In my mind the only real discussion is how to deal with it. The rest is just finger pointing.

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I'm sick of .sig files

Just my luck. I started an argument on the most stupid thread on the forum, right before it was about to die. That's what I get for using the word "Clinton".

Well if it doesn't matter who was in office, why do you make a point of highlighting the fact that it happened while Clinton was in office.

That may all be true, but they are the legal source of record for that particular fact. Its a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Its an official capacity that they have by law, and they report the information on this and other things to Congress, and it is put into the history books as such from there. Also, a recession has a pretty straightforward definition - the GNP heads south instead of north. If GNP goes negative, our economy is getting smaller and we are in recession. We were already in negative GNP when 911 hit. It just made it worse.

Exactly. For three years, the people in office didn't do jack **** about it and did a lot of things that made it worse. Like invading Iraq. Their main way of dealing with the recession was blaming Clinton. Fat lot of good it did us.

I mention it because it's a fact, facts are relevent wether you like them or not.
And their main way of dealing with it has been through tax cuts and it's working. Working a whole lot better than social welfare spending would have.

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I'm sick of .sig files

No, not all facts are relevent. The sun rose in the east today, that's a fact; how is that relevent to the pastrami and swiss I had for lunch?

Are you implying some kind of cause and effect? If so what is it?

Potato/ potatoe is a conservative Dan Quayle Republican F***-up.
What does the BLS say about the number of jobs, over the term of "W" , exported to to keep from paying living wages. What is the net gain over the last 4 years. It is so heart warming to see how much a
"real African American" feels for those poor corrupt Mozambiquians. Can't make much of a change from here.

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N. Hodges
1994 S350
1987 300 SDL (for sale)

The dirty little secret is that we have actually imported more jobs than have exported. I don't remember the numbers. I heard the report on NPR of all places.

Tax cuts produce economic activity and thus tax revenue. Tax cuts have always helped. This is because we are on the right side of the curve.

Draw a bell curve. This is tax revenue on the y-axis and tax rates on the x-axis. There is a spot in the middle somewhere, where you maximize tax revenue at a particular tax rate. Think about it. No taxes, no revenue. Tax everything and you can't live: there's no reason to work. That doesn't work either.

We have been on the right side of the curve since the depression. Therefore any tax cut will bring us back toward center and produce tax revenue, jobs, growth, and wealth.

The "boom" of the 90's was false and the bottom fell out. Many of those so-called created jobs were not sustainable. The bottom of the tub was falling out before Clinton left office.

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Michael LaFleur

'05 E320 CDI - 86,000 miles
'86 300SDL - 360,000 miles
'85 300SD - 150,000 miles (sold)
'89 190D - 120,000 miles (sold)
'85 300SD - 317,000 miles (sold)
'98 ML320 - 270,000 miles (sold)
'75 300D - 170,000 miles (sold)
'83 Harley Davidson FLTC (Broken again) :-(
'61 Plymouth Valiant - 60k mikes
2004 Papillon (Oliver)
2005 Tzitzu (Griffon)
2009 Welsh Corgi (Buba)

You are describing the Supply Side model and the "Laffer Curve". It is a simplistic way of thinking about complicated macro-economics, and has never worked. It totallly neglects the internationalization of money, and no where in your theory do you address what happens to the economy if you use borrowed government money to finance tax cuts, which is what the Republicans have been doing since Reagan. A much better case can be made that what the Bush tax cuts have really done is moved the tax burden to the middle class, and slowed the private economy because government is borrowing vast sums. In addition, if the tax cuts disportionately favor the very rich, it will disproportionately be moved into international assets. Pretty simple really, you give a million dollar tax break to 100,000 middle class people and they are going to go spend it locally on a thousand diffferent things, give it to a rich guy and he is going to use it to build a plant in China. The result has been an Administration that has created more jobs than any other administration, unfortunately, it has created them in China. It was this imbalance that Clinton addressed when he changed the tax code when he first took office, and it caused the biggest economic rise in history. You claim it was nonsustainable - I will simply point out that it came to a halt as soon as Bush arrived and restored the imbalance Clinton corrected. You also ascribe the Clinton expansion to the Internet, when it was in fact a general expansion of the economy in all sectors, again which came to halt as soon as Bush implemented his tax policy of tax cuts financed by borrowed money, creating vast deficits where there once was surplus.

In addition, your simplistic model neglects a thousand factors that effect economic expansion and tax revenues, one of which we are now experiencing, a huge rise in energy costs, which the government also uses a lot of, and now will have to borrow even more money to pay for. It really pokes a hole in your assertion that tax policies are the only factor in making economies contract and expand. There are economies all over the world with higher tax loads than us, and a number of them have surpassed the United States in per capita wealth. The reasons they have done so are complicated and varied, just like they are for us. Basing entire economic models on tax cuts alone is absurd.

In order for tax cuts to actually produce the wealth you describe, we must put away the fantasies and use old fashion business common sense. If you face a revenue cut in a business, the only known way to maintain profitablity is to cut costs or borrow money to survive. If you borrow the money, you become less and less credit worthy, and it is reflected in your credit rating, and if revenues don't increase, you have simply increased your costs even further. The credit rating of the US is the current value of the dollar in terms of what other countries think it is worth in relation to their currency, and that, my friend, is in the toilet. Please refer to my "Bush Story in Pictures Thread" for details.

Until we have a responsible Congress, which will probablty be never, we will continue to wreck our future by following your insane logic of the aptly named Laffer curve applied to a government that will not balance its books. Sooner or later, bankruptcy is, just like for a business who borrows and borrows to cover decreasing revenues instead of cutting costs, inevitable. The last bankruptcy the US declared was in 1929, and it took us generations to recover.

In the end, it is immoral and irresponsible to demand tax cuts and expect your grandchildren to pay for them. You want tax cuts? Get a Congress that will cut spending, and I will be for them too, and give them disportionality to the low and middle classes, and the high classes will benefit from higher profits, due to increased demand for the products they have invested in, by the common people. Thats how it really works.

Sorry, no holes poked in anything.

Tax cuts don't COST anything. When I got a tax cut last year, it didn't cost me. I didn't send a bigger check to the IRS.

I do agree that we have a problem with spending. Over half our budget is unconstitutional spending. None of it is authorized by the constitution. I realize that no court will ever rule against it.

I would like to see some president have the balls to demand "No budget increase while I'm in office. Spending freeze for everybody. No decrease, no increase. There's more than enough money available to get our job done."

Businesses have to find efficiencies all the time just to stay competitive and stay in business. Why can't government do the same?

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Michael LaFleur

'05 E320 CDI - 86,000 miles
'86 300SDL - 360,000 miles
'85 300SD - 150,000 miles (sold)
'89 190D - 120,000 miles (sold)
'85 300SD - 317,000 miles (sold)
'98 ML320 - 270,000 miles (sold)
'75 300D - 170,000 miles (sold)
'83 Harley Davidson FLTC (Broken again) :-(
'61 Plymouth Valiant - 60k mikes
2004 Papillon (Oliver)
2005 Tzitzu (Griffon)
2009 Welsh Corgi (Buba)

If you get a tax cut, and the government has to borrow money to give it to you, how does it not cost you anything? Also, what do you think all those Arab shieks and japanese tycoons do with all that oil and car money? They buy the debt caused by your tax cut. You guys talk about these tax cuts the way my five yearold talks about Santa Claus and the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

I EARNED that tax money. It is MINE. If the government took it from me, and spent it on something stupid, that's not my fault, and I do not care what they have to "borrow" in order to return it to me. The government is BORROWING......no....they are FORCIBLY TAKING money from ME, and I want it back, because I do not approve of the ways in which they are pi$$ing it away. If you want to think that is "juvenile" or something, then fine: We need more a more "juvenile" tax system!

We are all required to live within our budget, or pay the consequences. Our politicians should be held to the same standard. If they want to spend more money than is coming in, then it should come out of THEIR pockets, NOT MINE.

I am REALLY fed up with this $h!t.

Mike

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1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
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1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
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1985 300TD
270,000 miles
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1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

And here Mike has struck at the real root of the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals believe that all wealth is owned by the goverment not the people who earn it therefore, goverment is justifed in taking any amount of it at any time. Whereas conservatives believe that wealth belongs to the people who actually earn it. This is the only way you can come up with intensly stupid ideas like "a tax cut is a redistribution of wealth".

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I'm sick of .sig files