Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - The Obama Presidency

albionmoonlight · 03-25-2009, 08:45 AM

Mandate the return of elevator men. That's got to be, what, a quarter million jobs right there. And if we let them form a union, then they will be high paying jobs.

Seriously, this whole thing seems so . . . off because managing the economy to this degree is very very hard for the government to do. Put another way, if this were easy, then we would live in a world where communism worked.

That said, the government intervention in this case seems like the least bad option. My social contract with the good old U.S. of A. means, at a minimum, that I don't expect Congress and the White House to be fiddling while the economy burns. It turns out that the last decade or so of "economic growth" was really just us buying and selling houses to each other with money that we borrowed from the Chinese. Unwinding that reality with as little long term damage as possible to the greatest number of people strikes me as mind-bogglingly difficult. Considering this difficulty, I am happy with what the government has done so far. Again--the least worst option it seems. I am especially heartened by the fact that market solutions--to the extent possible--seem to be the order of the day. 3 months ago, I was afraid that this country would look a lot more socialist than it actually does today.

As for tax rates, the President's plan is a tax cut. I like that. Again--market based. Give us the money and let us start doing economic things with it.

But, what about "the wealthy?" Under the President's budget, tax rates on "the wealthy" are still near historical bottoms. I have no problem with that. Indeed, I'd like them to be a bit higher, but I am more liberal than the President. I really don't see the issue with tax rates going back to the rates that they were in the 90s--when we had real economic growth across all income brackets in the economy.

I think that people see the potential raising of these taxes as a problem because they see the Bush/GOP tax rates as the base from which to work. And I disagree with that. The Bush tax cuts were always designed to sunset in 2010. And that is because you could not make a realistic budget that assumed their continued existence. Even Bush and a GOP led Congress passed these tax cuts as a short term deal. Anyone who believes that they should be permanent is to the right of Bush on taxes and to the extreme right of historical tax rates and the vast majority of mainstream economic thinking.

A slight shift of tax relief from the top income brackets to the middle class brackets (which really operates as more of a correction to the mean and is still lower taxes than we have had in a long time) is a good idea for a country trying to invest in a non-bubble related economy.

The usual caveats about my not being an economist nor having stayed at a Holiday Inn Express apply.

03-25-2009, 08:45 AM	#977
albionmoonlight Head Coach Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: North Carolina	Mandate the return of elevator men. That's got to be, what, a quarter million jobs right there. And if we let them form a union, then they will be high paying jobs. Seriously, this whole thing seems so . . . off because managing the economy to this degree is very very hard for the government to do. Put another way, if this were easy, then we would live in a world where communism worked. That said, the government intervention in this case seems like the least bad option. My social contract with the good old U.S. of A. means, at a minimum, that I don't expect Congress and the White House to be fiddling while the economy burns. It turns out that the last decade or so of "economic growth" was really just us buying and selling houses to each other with money that we borrowed from the Chinese. Unwinding that reality with as little long term damage as possible to the greatest number of people strikes me as mind-bogglingly difficult. Considering this difficulty, I am happy with what the government has done so far. Again--the least worst option it seems. I am especially heartened by the fact that market solutions--to the extent possible--seem to be the order of the day. 3 months ago, I was afraid that this country would look a lot more socialist than it actually does today. As for tax rates, the President's plan is a tax cut. I like that. Again--market based. Give us the money and let us start doing economic things with it. But, what about "the wealthy?" Under the President's budget, tax rates on "the wealthy" are still near historical bottoms. I have no problem with that. Indeed, I'd like them to be a bit higher, but I am more liberal than the President. I really don't see the issue with tax rates going back to the rates that they were in the 90s--when we had real economic growth across all income brackets in the economy. I think that people see the potential raising of these taxes as a problem because they see the Bush/GOP tax rates as the base from which to work. And I disagree with that. The Bush tax cuts were always designed to sunset in 2010. And that is because you could not make a realistic budget that assumed their continued existence. Even Bush and a GOP led Congress passed these tax cuts as a short term deal. Anyone who believes that they should be permanent is to the right of Bush on taxes and to the extreme right of historical tax rates and the vast majority of mainstream economic thinking. A slight shift of tax relief from the top income brackets to the middle class brackets (which really operates as more of a correction to the mean and is still lower taxes than we have had in a long time) is a good idea for a country trying to invest in a non-bubble related economy. The usual caveats about my not being an economist nor having stayed at a Holiday Inn Express apply.