+1. As soon as we stop wasting money on a useless war, we'll see the economy perk up. The $800 tax rebate is not only useless but detrimental to progress. We need a corrective recession. Both of these useless, idiotic, scummy political parties would rather maintain the status quo to claim "they did their part" when election time comes, rather than let it slip away and correct itself. Useless thugs.
Our economy
- Thread starter BerettaCougar
- Start date
+1. As soon as we stop wasting money on a useless war, we'll see the economy perk up. The $800 tax rebate is not only useless but detrimental to progress. We need a corrective recession. Both of these useless, idiotic, scummy political parties would rather maintain the status quo to claim "they did their part" when election time comes, rather than let it slip away and correct itself. Useless thugs.
Shane Tuttle
Staff
Really? It helped boost the economy when we got $600 ea. back a couple of years ago...but, I'm sure that's an arguement in itself...
Sooo...the feds give cash back to the masses that claim to get robbed to begin with...sounds like the govt. can't do any right no matter what.
People just can't stop bellyaching even if they get some of their own money back....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Edward429451
Bush is about to give all Americans an 800 dollar welfare check
My point exactly, Blues Man...
Unregistered
Moderator
What people are saying is that they would be happy to take back $800, but it won't fix the problem.
Anytime the government decides to give me back some of my money, I am all for it. Whether or not it helps the economy is irrelevant.
Shane Tuttle
Staff
I know it won't fix the problem. Even Bush stated, IIRC, that it's only a short term help. But, from my observation, the previous tax break Bush provided did help out our economy.
I look at it this way. No matter what people do with it, the basic economics 101 comes into play. For every dollar I have, it's induced into the economy sevenfold. Giving money back to the citizens, especially that amount, will help out.
Besides, I don't rely on the president to solve economic issues. I don't think it should be a prerequisite to consider a candidate for the presidency, either. Too many people do, and that's part of the reason we're in a balance right now...
I look at it this way. No matter what people do with it, the basic economics 101 comes into play. For every dollar I have, it's induced into the economy sevenfold. Giving money back to the citizens, especially that amount, will help out.
Besides, I don't rely on the president to solve economic issues. I don't think it should be a prerequisite to consider a candidate for the presidency, either. Too many people do, and that's part of the reason we're in a balance right now...
TheBluesMan
Moderator Emeritus
The only way that it wouldn't help the economy is if everyone who gets the rebate hides it in their mattress. If it is spent on *anything* it will have a positive effect on the economy. Imagine a hundred million taxpayers with $80 Billion burning a hole in their collective pockets.Edward429451 said:
There is just no way that this couldn't give the economy a fairly decent boost.
Rangefinder
New member
The only way I can see this "rebate" doing any good in the long run is if everyone spends it right away, AND does so on products and services within our own borders. Spending it on more imported goods is like taking half of it and shipping it immediately to another country. Only supporting American industry is going to have a long-term effect on American economy.
I dare you to look through your posessions and find a few "Made in the USA" labels. They really aren't that common anymore, and the result is a lot of well-educated shelf-stockers for import production.
I dare you to look through your posessions and find a few "Made in the USA" labels. They really aren't that common anymore, and the result is a lot of well-educated shelf-stockers for import production.
http://blog.mises.org/archives/007676.asp
-above from mises.org
Imo it will do little for the economy will see a bump then a crash. That tax money should go towards paying off the federal governments debt of all the money it has barrowed(trillions). usually tax revenue is used just to pay the interest on it. less tax money the government keeps means little when the loans of credit and currency come out of thin air ie there is nothing backing the dollar that has to be something put in place to prevent what amounts to legalized counterfeiting, which has to be repaid at some point or else you get a bubble that burst and crash.
sadly we have been involved in a global economy for nearly a hundred years.
so outside forces can affect what happens at home less secure economy.
We could see a decrease in Rights and privileges as Foreign investors buy up the nations infrastructure.
shrinking taxes anymore is no longer a check to keep government small.
-above from mises.org
Imo it will do little for the economy will see a bump then a crash. That tax money should go towards paying off the federal governments debt of all the money it has barrowed(trillions). usually tax revenue is used just to pay the interest on it. less tax money the government keeps means little when the loans of credit and currency come out of thin air ie there is nothing backing the dollar that has to be something put in place to prevent what amounts to legalized counterfeiting, which has to be repaid at some point or else you get a bubble that burst and crash.
sadly we have been involved in a global economy for nearly a hundred years.
so outside forces can affect what happens at home less secure economy.
We could see a decrease in Rights and privileges as Foreign investors buy up the nations infrastructure.
shrinking taxes anymore is no longer a check to keep government small.
Great point! I can't see how giving everyone a one-time cash handout will save the economy. Once the cash is spent, a little temporary economic blip might occur, then its back to bad subprime mortgages, crashing stock markets, growing inflation, etc. But on the bright side, the shrinking dollar is helping what few exports we still have.
My browser ate my post, so I'm going to keep this relatively short. =/
<nitpick>The 0.5*povertyline threshold for a family of four is about $830/month. $425/month is for an individual. The family you're describing is even worse off.</nitpick> I do agree with your general point, though. Freedom includes the freedom to starve.
I do wonder how many people know about the programs available to them, though; the studies I've seen show a lot of popular misunderstandings. There's a significant difference between not taking help and not knowing that help is available for the asking (I admit to being unclear about this in my post). Improving outreach and awareness would be a good step, and I don't think they would cost much relative to the main programs.
I never said it wasn't arbitrary at all, just not as arbitrary as you'd like to pretend. You're the one who said
I have an arrangement with the local community college to make Intro Finance free to their lowest-income students, and when my work schedule permits I tutor algebra and English at the high school. I make regular donations to Second Harvest, too; they're very efficient. That's a case of "Mr. Bandaid, meet Mr. Artery Wound," and I admit it, but the education is a good step in the longer term. It doesn't quite add up to a tithe, but it comes reasonably close.
Fifteen years ago I was in third grade, so I hope you'll forgive me for not matching your track record just yet.
Not to discount your wife's work at all, but this is a really interesting example. San Francisco particularly has longstanding problems with "Greyhound therapy" - instead of dealing with their homeless locally, smaller communities will sometimes just turn them into Someone Else's Problem by buying them one-way bus tickets to San Francisco, New York, Milwaukee, Los Angeles or whatever seems convenient and far away. On the reverse side, San Francisco has a program called "Homeward Bound" that tries to find their relatives and send them back to someone who will take them in. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't; I remember the paper mentioning one man who made it as far as Oakland on a three-day trip before deciding to take BART back and winding up on his usual corner. It's a really big clusterfsck.
I'm not saying that some percentage of the homeless aren't unwilling/unable to find work - one guy out in Berkeley has been panhandling the same corner for at least twelve years, grifting off generations of students (only on days when it isn't raining) - just that it's more complicated than it looks on its face.
I think I'm going to bow out of this discussion now; it's obvious that nobody is being convinced of anything other than each other's stubbornness. As Playboypenguin mentioned back on Page 6, it's probably a good idea to sit back and ask "When was the last time I actually talked about a firearm on these boards?"
My post ratio is getting uncomfortable, personally. Take care of yourselves, all of you.
Matt.25:40,
-Adrian
mvpel said:
<nitpick>The 0.5*povertyline threshold for a family of four is about $830/month. $425/month is for an individual. The family you're describing is even worse off.</nitpick> I do agree with your general point, though. Freedom includes the freedom to starve.
I do wonder how many people know about the programs available to them, though; the studies I've seen show a lot of popular misunderstandings. There's a significant difference between not taking help and not knowing that help is available for the asking (I admit to being unclear about this in my post). Improving outreach and awareness would be a good step, and I don't think they would cost much relative to the main programs.
JaserST4 said:
I never said it wasn't arbitrary at all, just not as arbitrary as you'd like to pretend. You're the one who said
I'm just showing that it's not defined that way. It's a subsistence wage, or close to it, at best.JaserST4 said:
I have an arrangement with the local community college to make Intro Finance free to their lowest-income students, and when my work schedule permits I tutor algebra and English at the high school. I make regular donations to Second Harvest, too; they're very efficient. That's a case of "Mr. Bandaid, meet Mr. Artery Wound," and I admit it, but the education is a good step in the longer term. It doesn't quite add up to a tithe, but it comes reasonably close.
Fifteen years ago I was in third grade, so I hope you'll forgive me for not matching your track record just yet.
Tuttle8 said:
Not to discount your wife's work at all, but this is a really interesting example. San Francisco particularly has longstanding problems with "Greyhound therapy" - instead of dealing with their homeless locally, smaller communities will sometimes just turn them into Someone Else's Problem by buying them one-way bus tickets to San Francisco, New York, Milwaukee, Los Angeles or whatever seems convenient and far away. On the reverse side, San Francisco has a program called "Homeward Bound" that tries to find their relatives and send them back to someone who will take them in. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't; I remember the paper mentioning one man who made it as far as Oakland on a three-day trip before deciding to take BART back and winding up on his usual corner. It's a really big clusterfsck.
I'm not saying that some percentage of the homeless aren't unwilling/unable to find work - one guy out in Berkeley has been panhandling the same corner for at least twelve years, grifting off generations of students (only on days when it isn't raining) - just that it's more complicated than it looks on its face.
I think I'm going to bow out of this discussion now; it's obvious that nobody is being convinced of anything other than each other's stubbornness. As Playboypenguin mentioned back on Page 6, it's probably a good idea to sit back and ask "When was the last time I actually talked about a firearm on these boards?"
My post ratio is getting uncomfortable, personally. Take care of yourselves, all of you.
Matt.25:40,
-Adrian
No, not even close. They don't take geography into consideration and their circular definitions can mean whatever they want. The article I cited said poverty was about half of your claims and it has gone down. The rising tide lifts all boats, I hope you teach that as well.
The biggest problem with the economy right now is that Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt and a hefty portion of that debt is structured unfavorably to the borrower. I am not surprised that America is drowning in debt, there is no financial education in the schools (The leftists running the public schools think commerce is evil; why would they teach children basic personal finance?), people want instant gratification (and that means taking out a loan instead of working overtime or saving for months/years), and given the immense amount of cash sloshing around the housing market until recently, many lenders simply threw basic business practices right out the window (Subprime is called that because subprime borrowers don't pay back their loans). The lenders also were aware that they were loaning money recklessly, so they packaged loans into investment vehicles that supposedly spread the risk out, thereby controlling it. The reality is that SIVs and CDOs made asessing the risk of the underlying investments made by lenders impossible, so the rising default rates on mortgages is roiling the financial markets now as investors discover how risky their investments really are.
A friend of mine personifies the problem America has with debt: A few years ago he bought a condo after an extended period of RE price increases in my area. Since he can't see past the end of his nose, he got an ARM since the payments were lower. Later he was griping because 1) he owed $10k on his credit cards, and the minimum payments were starting to get painful and 2) Interest rates were rising, so his mortgage payments were rising as well, and 3) He had lost about 30% of the value on his condo instead of making an easy 20% return on a leveraged investment. Another friend and I advised him to get a second, part-time job, and skip vacation for a year until the cards were paid off. Well he didn't want to work 60-70 hrs a week to get rid of it, and no way was he willing to give up his annual 2 month vacation either (No, I am not kidding about that). The icing on the cake is that he would put his routine expenses like utilities, even his mortgage, on his credit card, since he had to quit his job to take that 2 month vacation. Even with no job, he would thoughtlessly drop hundreds of dollars on toys like video cameras with the credit card.
Then he decided he wanted to get married and have kids. So a good chunk of the wedding and honeymoon expenses went onto the cards too (They just hadda have a big wedding and Caribbean honeymoon.) That put him about $20k in the hole in credit card debt alone. They had planned to go on vacation for a month later that year, but she got pregnant. Shortly after that he lost his job. Here's where it gets hard to believe (I saw it; it really did happen this way): Since the plane tickets were non-refundable, he went on vacation, with no job and a pregnant wife back home, for a month because he didn't want to "lose" the money he borrowed to pay for them. Absolutely astounding. Naturally the delivery expenses and medical care for the infant also landed in the liability column.
AS of now he and the wife are divorcing, he is going to school and borrowing heavily to pay for it, and (as if this cake doesn't have enough icing) he only works 2-3 days a week, apparently living off of school loans. By now he owes at least twice his annual gross income (if he worked full time) in unsecured debt alone.
But when he talks about his financial problems, he never takes responsibility for it. Oh no, it is President Bush's fault that he bought property at a market high, that interest rates are rising thereby causing his ARM payments to rise too, that the credit card companies realized that he was turning into a bad credit risk and raised his credit card rates to 30%, that good jobs don't just fall into his lap, etc, etc, etc. He absolutely will not take responsibility for his situation and admit that it is almost entirely his fault that he has these problems.
So what does this long winded rant about someone's financial problems boil down to? Well, that's just one guy. One case out of millions very much like it all over America. And the government is running the national finances in more or less the same fashion. The world financial markets are watching, and I bet they're nervous. If they aren't, they should be.
A friend of mine personifies the problem America has with debt: A few years ago he bought a condo after an extended period of RE price increases in my area. Since he can't see past the end of his nose, he got an ARM since the payments were lower. Later he was griping because 1) he owed $10k on his credit cards, and the minimum payments were starting to get painful and 2) Interest rates were rising, so his mortgage payments were rising as well, and 3) He had lost about 30% of the value on his condo instead of making an easy 20% return on a leveraged investment. Another friend and I advised him to get a second, part-time job, and skip vacation for a year until the cards were paid off. Well he didn't want to work 60-70 hrs a week to get rid of it, and no way was he willing to give up his annual 2 month vacation either (No, I am not kidding about that). The icing on the cake is that he would put his routine expenses like utilities, even his mortgage, on his credit card, since he had to quit his job to take that 2 month vacation. Even with no job, he would thoughtlessly drop hundreds of dollars on toys like video cameras with the credit card.
Then he decided he wanted to get married and have kids. So a good chunk of the wedding and honeymoon expenses went onto the cards too (They just hadda have a big wedding and Caribbean honeymoon.) That put him about $20k in the hole in credit card debt alone. They had planned to go on vacation for a month later that year, but she got pregnant. Shortly after that he lost his job. Here's where it gets hard to believe (I saw it; it really did happen this way): Since the plane tickets were non-refundable, he went on vacation, with no job and a pregnant wife back home, for a month because he didn't want to "lose" the money he borrowed to pay for them. Absolutely astounding. Naturally the delivery expenses and medical care for the infant also landed in the liability column.
AS of now he and the wife are divorcing, he is going to school and borrowing heavily to pay for it, and (as if this cake doesn't have enough icing) he only works 2-3 days a week, apparently living off of school loans. By now he owes at least twice his annual gross income (if he worked full time) in unsecured debt alone.
But when he talks about his financial problems, he never takes responsibility for it. Oh no, it is President Bush's fault that he bought property at a market high, that interest rates are rising thereby causing his ARM payments to rise too, that the credit card companies realized that he was turning into a bad credit risk and raised his credit card rates to 30%, that good jobs don't just fall into his lap, etc, etc, etc. He absolutely will not take responsibility for his situation and admit that it is almost entirely his fault that he has these problems.
So what does this long winded rant about someone's financial problems boil down to? Well, that's just one guy. One case out of millions very much like it all over America. And the government is running the national finances in more or less the same fashion. The world financial markets are watching, and I bet they're nervous. If they aren't, they should be.