Republican Nomination Thread

That's blasphemy in DC

 

Heh! The size of deficits have been decreasing following the free fall of the Great Recesssion. The reason is the economy has improved since the Democrats took over the White House from the GOP after that initial decline.

But if the efect of government debt was really so pernicious, how do you explain the historically low interest rates on T-bills?

And of course talking about history we don't haev to go too far back to remember that that paragon of conservatism, Ronald Reagan, essentially tripled the national debt by cutting taxes and failing to decrease the size of government by any appreciable amount.

Right wingers talk about cutting the size of government in order that they can lower taxes on the wealthy, which is their primary economic policy proscription. But in fact most government spending has substantial support. This includes defense spending, but also social security and Medicare. By historical measures we do not prsently spend enough on infrastructure.

I don't want my taxes raised, either. But any candidate who says he can lower them without saying how he will pay for the cuts is full of shit.

 

That is a right wing think tank production. Those same people were saying "OUT OF CONTROL!" a few years ago, predicting T-bill rates would skyrocket. Instead they have gone down and down, inflation is near zero. How is that out of control?

If your predictions always fail to come true, perhaps you need a new analysis.

In any event if you want to cut the size of the deficit, you can raise taxes. Worked in the nineties.

We can go back and forth on this. And no doubt at the appropriate time, if inflation picks up, taxes should be raised. But the point is that none of the short term effects of deficit spending have occurred as predcited by right wingers. And of course when a GOP president is in the WH, the cocnerns about deficit spending are placed on the far back burner.

Ask Dick Cheney about deficits.

It's all political hypocrisy by the right wing.

 

Taxes should be kept the same except for long term capital gains/dividends - should be much closer to ordinary rates.

Spending should be cut in all areas - no favorites at all.

Oh and not the fake cuts like the current GOP Congress is willing to do - cutting the rate of increase and calling it cuts.

To start paying of the debt, we need the revenue side to stay constant/keep rising while cutting spending...

But this is too hard apparently as lobbyist money is very good.

 

Taxation should definitely be taken out of the political football arena. It's too easy to score cheap points by screwing society to the tenth generation by cutting taxes and just waving at spending before you bow to the inevitable and borrow some more.

 

How about a requirement that funding must be sourced in the same bill that enables the spending, even if it takes a constitutional amendment to get it done?

All the backslapping hacks would be loathe to approve that "Bridge to Nowhere" if their own constituents were shown what it would cost them. We need zero base budgeting where every dollar spent must be justified rather than just rationalizing the increase over whatever pie-in-the-sky number each organization had last year.

Of course none of this will happen because under those red and blue hats there is not a single spine on Capitol Hill.

 

You just come up with one awful idea after another. Now on top of implying the wealthy "need" a tax cut, you want to require a balanced budget. Regardless of where we are on the economic cycle???

You need to read some history, like of the Hoover Administration. And read some Keynes as well.

Cutting the federal budget in a recession, due to declining tax revenues, and then needing cuts to balance the budget, will exacerbate the recession.

 

I dont hate rich people. I just don't feel sorry for them like you do.

 

Keynesian Economics works in an economy that needs a boost, it's a cyclical tool that should be revved up when the economy is in the doldrums and cut back when the economy is booming. The problem we have is that we're in borrow and spend mode all the time and in a big way. We don't tax enough to make Keynesian mechanics work really well at this point and we don't know how to cut back in appropriate ways when the economy has cycled up again.

 

NSN -Do we really know for sure its the corporate tax rate being the highest in the world as why we have a problem with jobs? I guess a better way of asking this is, do we really think/know that lowering corporate tax rate would bring jobs back to this country that we have lost? I mean I personally don't think its taxes that are causing the problem at all. I think you could lower the tax rate completely and it wouldn't make much difference at all in terms of job creation..

They are outsourcing jobs because in today's world you can get labor at half the price and ship it back into the country much easier... Other countries of the world have less regulations in terms of safety and otherwise which make it less risky to operate, and lastly technology has rendered a lot of manual labor obsolete anyway in many fields.

I think a better way to create jobs is not to bend over for these corporations but make it so they would want/need to operate here. Tariff/ tax the fuck out of goods brought into this country. Improve infrastructure, education and technology here at home so they want to operate in the U.S. to take advantage of the U.S. workforce and also the cost savings associated with the pipeline /proximity to their customers.

I mean "lean manufacturing" and "build where you sell" is at the forefront now of advanced analytics and how the best companies are doing things. Toyota manufacturing is a huge proponent of this. From 2013-2015 alone they have over $2 billion invested in manufacturing alone in the U.S. with nearly 5,000 jobs created across numerous states. Nearly every transmission in Toyota cars today is made in WV. If they were worried about taxes they'd be setting up shop in Mexico. Hell, they could just stay at home in Japan and ship em over here, save money on their taxes- that strategy worked since the freakin second world war for them.

No- they are coming here because they believe in smart manufacturing. Its smarter to put everything together in their biggest sales market! Engine made in Kentucky, Transmission in West Virginia, final assembly in Indiana and on the sales lot in Nashville, TN in less than a month... The American workforce is doing a good job operating under and even influencing their lean manufacturing philosophy.

 

furthermore NSN, think about the silicon valley. That area easily could be what Detroit, MI was to America at the peak of automobile manufacturing. But its not. Why?

Nearly all manufacturing is done oversees and shipped in. Its not because of taxes- these companies keep their headquarters /revenue figures in the U.S. for shit's sake! Its because of how easy it is today to take advantage of the cheap labor in China and ship everything in. Shipping is nothing- the components are typically very light and small, tariffs aren't that scary at all, and in the case of semiconductor fabrication manufacturing- which can be quite dangerous, in China they have like literally no restrictions.

All things considered I imagine they'd love to say they were made in America but were making it too damned easy for them not to.

I think you raise the taxes on goods brought in China significantly. You invest in advanced science technology and manufacturing, things like 3D printing and Scanning and you do a hell of a lot more towards bringing jobs back to this country than you do stripping the tax rate. A company like Samsung will laugh at that!

 

If the corporate tax rate was the issue corporations would be moving overseas, not exporting jobs - exporting the entire enterprise.

Cheap labor and lack of regulation overseas is the issue. Every year we hear about another country doing something obnoxious to the workforce or in the workplace and yet those goods still sell just fine in the US market because we don't legislate against the abuses the way we do in the US.

We should make every piece of goods sold in the US stand up to the same regulatory scrutiny and OSHA standards that exist in the US. Free trade is fine but it should be fair trade also.