It just never stops. James Pethokoukis, who spent the fall telling us that the market was falling due to the impending Obama election (AKA the Goldberg Theorem), writes about the next stimulus package (since the current bill, which has not even been signed yet, is going to fail). Not surprising, he has some ideas as to what should be in it. You won’t be surprised by his prescription for economic recovery:
Bad economy, and elections looming at the end of 2010. Kind of sounds like the sort of environment where, if you were a Washington politico, you might push hard for Son of Stimulus. Any such package might look a lot like a paint-by-numbers sequel to the 2009 version. And the White House itself keeps saying that the $800 billion stimulus is merely a “down payment” for future spending on things like green energy and healthcare.
But another option would be a growthier package that would improve the long-term productivity of the economy and help families in the near term. Here are a few ideas: 1) eliminate capital-gains taxes so that the income tax would be transformed into a de facto consumption tax that encourages investment; 2) dramatically cut or eliminate business taxes so that U.S. companies could better compete globally; 3) index Social Security benefits to inflation and extend the retirement age, allowing a big cut in payroll taxes for the middle class; 4) create government-funded “innovation prizes” for key technology challenges; and 5) give universities financial incentives to create more science geeks and offer grad students free-floating fellowships to choose the field with the best prospects.
Tax cuts and John McCain’s technology prize.
Ugh
Tax cuts for the rich you say?
Comrade Dread
I have an even better idea. Let’s cut all taxes to -10%. The government pays you a tax just for being awesome enough to have chosen to completely fuck up an economy that was the envy of the world.
And it’s not welfare or free socialist payments. It’s just a negative tax cut!
Republicans, you surely can’t let this idea pass. I give you permission to make this the central platform of your party and only ask in return that you nominate me for an impressive sounding office that really doesn’t do anything except trade favors with ‘private’ industry for personal gain.
Something like Secretary of the Treasury Department
Reverend Dennis
"growthier" WTF?
Advocates of cutting business taxes neglect to mention that most major American companies don’t pay the full rate anyway. Compliant Congressmen and Senators have included targeted exemptions, exclusions, write-downs, write-offs, etc. in legislation for years.
SGEW
What a senseless waste of human life.
Will
Unfortunate use of the made-up word "growthier". Paging Coulbert…
cleek
how does cutting the capital gains tax help families ?
are there a lot of families out there who need cash but just can’t bear to sell their stocks because they’re afraid of paying taxes on the giant profits they’re not going to get in this market ?
"growthier" sounds like standard middle-manager fappery. paging Michael Scott.
robertdsc
Figuratively speaking, anyone who mentions of this kind of crap should have their fingers chopped off and the stumps thrust into boiling oil.
jenniebee
Isn’t the free market supposed to determine who studies what already? Here’s a hint: nobody majors in History for the money. People do, however, major in Art History for the money. Go figure.
Somebody should tell these guys that one of the top majors for becoming a successful computer programmer is English Lit. No foolin’.
Comrade javafascist
I think it is an excellent idea to encourage people to enter science by calling them names.
Perry Como
I’ve figured out what to do for the next Loebner prize. I’m going to write a RepublicanBot that answers every question with "Tax cut." It will be indistinguishable from a real Republican.
KT
Tax cuts don’t work so well when the massive job losses kick in. Besides, even cutting taxes as much as $1,000 per working adult would only add about $175 billion into the economy, roughly 1 percent. Hardly enough to stem the tide.
Brian J
Hey, in the spirit of bipartisanship, let me recommend two ideas that are often recommended by some sane conservatives. The first is replacing part of the payroll tax with an increase in the gas tax. Even if there are some short-term deficit concerns, this seems to be a way to not lose revenue over the long-term while helping the environment. The second is to give a HB1 visa to someone who buys a house. Aside from any cultural recommendations from people of the countries themselves (it’s supposedly highly shameful to not pay your mortgage in India, so people will do whatever it takes to make the payments), it seems like a fair trade off because it gives them something they want and we get something we want. I’m not sure if there would be sufficient demand at first, but if enough people did it as the program went on, particularly in distressed areas, perhaps the simple acts of consumption (buying food, diapers, house supplies, and so on) along with taking a draining asset off a bank’s books would help stimulate the economy without there being additional government spending.
Anyway, I don’t think the idea of lowered taxes is necessarily wrong. I’m not sure it’s really a key to helping with an economic recovery, but there are often calls for a better tax system, perhaps focused more generally on lower rates, a broadened base, and fewer loopholes and special conditions and more specifically on consumption taxes as opposed to income taxes and investment taxes. The problem is any calls for any sort of "reform" by people like Pethokoukis resemble a blind devotion to ideology, not practical policy and sound economics. It’s hard to take them seriously.
Ugh
Try this.
Atanarjuat
Oh, sure, everyone knows that trying to encourage young men and women to become scientists and engineers is an absolutely wingnut idea — completely fringe and lacking any semblance of credibility.
Keep shooting your lame-ass spitballs, leftists. The adults are trying to figure out how to dig us out of this economic hole we’re all in, and all you can offer is petulant raspberries.
How fucking pathetic.
xaaronx
Actually, as a soon-to-be grad student I kinda like number five.
Ugh
Adults? Hmm…lame-ass, spitballs, raspberries, fucking pathetic. Sounds adulty.
Stuck
I think this bill and it’s potential success has wrested away what little sanity wingnuts are currently clinging to. It is an existential threat to their economic philosophy and viability as a major party. It’s success, or the possible success would likely be the final nail in their coffin for a generation, or longer, So it must be rhetorically kilt with extreme prejudice even before it is enacted. Poor little wingnuts, the worlds smallest fiddle for your pain.
bago
@jenniebee: Actually, you could make the case that formal study in grammar and semantics makes it much easier to parse existing and new computer languages. Of course there’s not an effective BNF for english, but when you see syntactic rules formalized in such a manner it makes you wonder why meta-language is not taught first.
Dave
Here’s the thing; his #3 and #4 ideas aren’t bad…as separate policy issues. As stimulus-creating ideas they’re fucking idiotic.
And another thing…I am sick and tired of the GOP saying that spending didn’t end the Great Depression, World War Two did.
What the hell do they thing WW2 was if not the biggest spending plan the country ever had up to that time?? It was just another stimulus package at its core. You could have built those tanks and planes and just stuck them in a warehouse and it would have had the same effect.
Legalize
Here we go. Because teh Stim won’t turn the economy around 100% by next Wednesday, the wingers will bark and scream for a "real" Stim made up entirely of tax cuts to off-set the "failed" attempt of President Obama (who they really reall really like by the way). They will whine about bipartisanship and why they deserve a chance too. The media will say "yeah, what about giving tax cuts a chance too? Isn’t Obama supposed to be all bi-partisany?"
Dave
@Atanarjuat:
Which idea have you heroes proposed? The tax cuts that won’t stimulate demand, the tax cuts that won’t stimulate demand, or the tax cuts that won’t stimulate demand?
Maybe when Cantor and Company come up with a real idea, then we’ll treat your side with a little more respect.
bago
Ok, there is seriously a CSS class for any given text that is parsed to include all caps that gives it a mouseover behavior? Really?
acronym, abbr, span.caps { cursor: help; } section in https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/themes/balloon-juice/style.css .
WTF?
amorphous
If I hear one more person suggest reducing business taxes (or in this case laughably eliminating them) on some completely indefensible position (which are all of them, anyway, but here "so that U.S. companies could better compete globally"), I am going to to go on a four state crime spree (misdemeanor only, I’m no sociopath).
We already know that they DON’T PAY TAXES ANYWAY SO STFU.
JohnR
I see – the stimulus is bad and won’t work because it doesn’t provide enough short-term benefit; so we must do the right thing, which is to enact legislation which will have little or no short-term effects. What remarkable thinking! Alas, all too typical of the modern Republican Party.
TheFountainHead
Win.
Comrade Dread
To be fair, WWII did end up sending off some 400,000 young Americans to die overseas, which I’m sure lowered demand for jobs at home a bit.
Maybe that’s why the Republicans are still pushing so hard for expanded and permanent war in the Middle East. It’s part of their economic recovery plan.
Ugh
I would suggest we reduce business taxes.
Brian J
This is probably a combination of me not sticking with economics and math in college, not taking college nearly as seriously as I planned, and being young, single, without a lot of money, and without having complicated taxes, but I find all of this very confusing. It was made all the more clear to me talking with my cousin/godfather at Christmastime that I was going in many different directions about what to think of this stuff.
Here’s something I don’t understand, just to give one example. There are numerous deductions and credits in the tax code, including, I thought, the ability to deduct state and local taxes from your federal burden. If that’s the case, why are people always complaining that the federal rate may not be bad, but that combined with any state and local taxes along with sales taxes makes for a near crippling burden on people. Here’s another: aren’t taxes only on gains, not losses? Even if that’s true for only capital gains, aren’t the investment taxes so small for most people, because their overall asset level is so small, that paying any sort of taxes is sort of like paying a toll? If that’s the case, why would people be discouraged from cashing out by this? Isn’t the answer more likely that they don’t want to do it, if it’s necessary, at the wrong moment?
Zifnab
Abuh? Consumption tax that encourages investment? Why? Why do we need to encourage investment? I’ve never heard the rationale for this? Are too many people buying yachts? Was the DOW – scraping 14k – just not high enough for you back in August? Do we really want to encourage spending by taxing it exclusively? Why does this make any sense whatsoever?
Again, what? When did the United States – Capitalist World Leader and home to companies with more income than other first world nations – need to help companies better compete globally? Exxon was posting regular $40 billion profits. PROFITS. Microsoft and Citigroup and GM continue to pay their chief executives tens of millions in salary and bonus a year. As the GOP loves to remind us America-hating liberals, we’re #1! We’re #1! Why do we need to cut taxes on corporations to get any better?
So you want to pay more in social security by linking it to inflation (I’m all for that) then jack up the retirement age so no one lives long enough to receive any of it (not so much for that). Wow, you’re really helping out the middle class there, so long as we’re not talking about anyone about to turn 60. Then you’re kinda giving them the shaft.
Some people fund universities. Other people shove $5 million into a pinata. I guess its different strategies for everyone.
Yeah, we did that already. We had Pell Grants and research grants and all sorts of education tax credits. The GOP has been taking an axe to them for years. But this isn’t exactly a shot-in-the-arm for the economy. Kinda looks like you’re planning "long term" and we all know that if the pay out isn’t instantaneous its a no-go in the GOP. So I don’t think this idea is going to make it passed the die-hard conservative fiscal chopping block. No thank you.
El Cid
My dramatic new idea is the only thing which can save us: negative tax rates for everyone earning more than $10 million per year, wages or dividends etc.
So, the more you make, the more the government hands you money! Not only do you not pay any taxes, but for once all your hard work will finally be rewarded by all those lazy low-wage service workers, construction laborers, teachers, all the parasites.
By putting the American taxpayer on the hook for the economic success of the super-wealthy, the true spirit of entrepreneurial freedom will be loosed and GDP will grow at 1000% per minute!
John PM
@Dave: #19
Not to mention the Lend Lease Act that predated America’s actual entry into WWII, under which Great Britain paid America to "lease" equipment to fight the Germans. Oddly enough, I do not think we ever got any of the equipment back.
Clearly, we cannot do the same thing today as we did in WWII because we already spend over $500 billion a year on defense spending (along with the fact that this would involve us going to war with Russia and/or China). By cutting defense spending in half, we could almost instantly obtain one-third of the amount of the current stimulus package. However, as Glenn Greenwald and others have pointed out, to even think about such a scenario is instant political death.
Fulcanelli
When these government-funded geek scientists presently mapping human DNA isolate the dominant greed gene and eventually eliminate it in the human sub-species republicanus idioticus, this jackass’s plan might work.
Until then, it’s political whack-a-mole with the heavy, blunt object of your choice. It’s thinking like this that gave rise to the use of electroshock therapy in mental health institutions.
Lee
Actually I like #3.
As long as they also raise the age of mandetory 401k/IRA withdrawals.
amorphous
@Ugh: That’s it. I can be to the nearest state border in five hours (damn you oversized shithole states)*. Check the Baton Rouge blotters tomorrow because I am going to commit something heinous, like being publicly intoxicated. Then it’s on to Hattiesburg where I’ll vandalize something. From there it’s up in the air.
*LOTS of fist shaking happening here
bago
Seriously, the code blocking style in that CSS? Eww!
It’s not even internally consistent!
I would show you, but the code tag does not preserve whitespace, rendering my efforts null.
jcricket
This makes no sense, basically, unless you also jack up the top tax rates. Most people who are not wealthy can’t even afford to pay for their current lifestyle with cash – even if they’re being responsible (stagnant wages, rising college costs, rising healthcare costs, layoffs). So how exactly is cutting the capital gains rate going to help them? (It won’t, SASQ).
I think, actually, the capital gains rate should be eliminated and long-term gains should be taxed at the same rate as other income. 95% of the people who benefit from the lowered rate are already rich (or are big corporations). And you can’t tell me everyone’s going to turn into a day trader because the long and short-term rates are the same. If an investment’s worth hanging on to at 15 or 20% rates, it’s worth hanging on to at 30 or 40% rates too.
And btw, once you factor in our loopholes, our effective corporate tax rate is already one of the lowest in the industrialized world. I’d be fine with going to Ireland’s lower "posted" rate if we eliminate our loopholes (thus actually raising corporate taxes).
jcricket
Speaking of that, did you read about the libertarian paradise of Dubai? Seems zero corporate taxes or regulations doesn’t lead to utopia. Also note the effect of debtor’s prisons (people flee when they can’t pay their debts) – somewhere we’re headed if the bankruptcy bill isn’t repealed.
PeakVT
eliminate capital-gains taxes so that the income tax would be transformed into a de facto consumption tax that encourages investment
Leaving aside that this idea is yet another attack on the middle class, what investment would be profitable right now? We have overcapacity in nearly everything – auto plants, auto dealers, strip malls, big box stores, office space, housing(!), trucking, construction equipment, and peanut butter factories (though that is probably temporary). And then there is massive overcapacity in China to make nearly every consumer good. Freeing up more money for investment doesn’t make opportunities available, only marginal ones somewhat more viable – if the economy is doing well.
Lee
There was an interesting article awhile back that had a very large % of corporations do not pay ANY tax.
Atanarjuat
@Dave:
Of course leftists think that substantial tax cuts for businesses are evil and worthy of endless scorn.
Such cuts would, naturally, accompany spending cuts to liberal sacred cows such as "arts" endowment programs and financially rewarding the chronically lazy (aka, welfare).
No, no, no, that just won’t do. Leftists are entitled to all the benefits and privileges that society has mommy promised them. It’s just too bad that the people who make up the actual tax-paying base, conservatives, have to bear the brunt of the costs and none of the benefits. Tax cuts for this latter group would be so absolutely unfair, indeed.
It must stimulate all of your little wealth-redistributing hearts that the Chosen Leader will be spending the future of the nation into oblivion, because tax cuts are Teh Evil(tm).
Like I said, fucking pathetic.
Comrade Dread
I wouldn’t call any Middle Eastern country a ‘libertarian’ paradise. A corporatist paradise or a Randian paradise, perhaps, but not a libertarian one.
The Other Steve
I assumed we’d increase income taxes on Republicans to help pay for those programs.
It’d be simple really. You go in register your party affiliation, and if you are a Republican you pay 80%. If you are a Democrat you pay 20%. It’d be a big boost to the Democratic party, so obviously it’s a good idea.
jibeaux
Big Tuna, you spell well for a repub (what happened to the "country first" peaceout? I miss that! Is country second now?), but here’s a fairly basic bit of math.
If I get $1 from you, and then spend $.50 of it, I have $.50. I I get $1 from you, and decide to give $.50 back to you, I have $.50. It is an expenditure either way.
The Grand Panjandrum
Speak of never stopping. This just in from Powerline (via Sullivan):
Oh, snap! … he’s worse than Carter.
Did Hinderaker just get back from visiting another galaxy?
burnspbesq
Wow. That’s a bonus-size package of stupid.
woesinger
Wouldn’t the result of a growthier stimulus be growthiness, which is to growth what truthiness is to truth.
jibeaux
These are usually the magic words which trigger a S,N post.
burnspbesq
@Atanarjuat:
Reading is fundamental. Your guy is proposing to incent universities to create more science majors. Please explain how that works. Conscription?
joe from Lowell
So your plan to stimulate the economy is to…not.
Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
bvac
Wasn’t McCain offering $300,000 to the first person who could develop a fuel cell capable of powering an electric car for a hundred miles?
Yeah, I’ll get right on that.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@Assatunahat – Who uses words like "leftists" anymore to make asinine points? Reread your last post. You sound ridiculous spouting off about the arts and chronically lazy. Give it a rest already.
Here’s a tip: let your arguments rise and fall by their own weight and refrain from peppering your screeds with pejorative phraseology.
I think we all realize that if you actually did this you would be left with nothing that is even close to resembling a coherent point.
Rommie
God, it’s like if Dr. Smith programmed the Robot to blast the hell out of the insides of the Jupiter 2, and then complain about the incompetent crew for all the subsequent difficulties. I don’t think even the president will muster that level of forgiveness and begin liberal (har har) use of the airlock for disposal.
Zifnab
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Thank god for intellectually like Hinderocket. Without him we would fail to remember that Carter’s policies were terrible, even if we still can’t be bothered with what they actually were at the time. Just feel better knowing that Carter "Tax Cuts", ergo economic doom, QED.
whinger
As someone who just finished a mathematics degree in August, I’d be thrilled if someone wanted to "incentivize" me to go do math somewhere rather than manage an office…which is how I supported myself while I got my degree, and which is how I continue to support myself now that I have it.
Notorious P.A.T.
Fucking don’t.
The Moar You Know
@El Cid: We already have this.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Zifnab: It really is that simple, right? Just put the name Carter in your piece and you have automatic dispensation from basing your opinion on facts!
Why try harder? Alfred E. Newman would be proud.
DonkeyKong
I discovered that the earth is 4004 years old and is being warmed by SOCIALISM!
How much do I get?
RSA
Translation: Wikipedia is just too hard to use!
While [Carter] began his term with a 66% approval rating
Obama’s close to 70% in the latest polls out today. Somehow I doubt this will cause Hindrocket to change his conclusion; he’ll just rearrange his premises.
maya
I’m surprised that Hindracker,et alia, haven’t made the correlation yet between the peanut salmonella scandal and Carter having been a peanut farmer. I mean – it all fits.
Michael
Do they explain how tax cuts work if nobody is making any money to pay taxes on?
4tehlulz
@DonkeyKong: You win a paid position at the American Enterprise Institute.
Michael
Pumping out the forecastle of the Titanic in order to keep it from sinking…..
zzyzx
@Michael: ESPECIALLY because conservatives were furious about a payroll tax cut because people who didn’t make enough to pay income tax were getting a tax cut.
El Cid
@Michael: They work because the Spirit of Tax Cuts Past will grant the magic power of extra productivity based on remembrance.
Ed Drone
Do you have a subroutine where it puts its hand out for free money? If not, that’d be the difference.
Ed
OniHanzo
@maya:
And George Washington Carver was into peanuts and he was black ergo Obama must be involved in…
Conservative Mad-Libs is so fucking easy.
btchakir
The National Endowment for the Arts IS Stimulative!
I just heard Representative David Dreier, Republican of California and Ranking Member of the House Rules Committee, say that the $50 Million in the Stimulus Bill allotted to the National Endowment for the Arts was "not stimulative."
I have to take issue here, and, as an example, I will point to my little village of Shepherdstown, West Virginia (at the last census with a population of 800). We’re about an hour and a half from Washington DC or an hour from Baltimore, and our local Shepherd University is the home of a wonderful arts event, The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) which will enter its nineteenth season this year.
In 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded CATF with a $17,000 grant "to support the creation, development, and production of Jazzland, by Keith Glover. The play tells the story of a gifted musician involved in an accident who strives to regain his skills and memory. The development phase will include staged readings, workshops, and panel discussions with local scholars, journalists, and artists."
So what did this mean for our local economy?
First, the grant had to be matched, so the Director, Board and staff of the CATF had to go out and bring back at least another $17,000 to be spent with the NEA grant. Most of that came from outside our town. That means the original NEA donation was now doubled to $34,000.
Then there was the way the money was used. It paid for a portion of the costs of the 2006 Festival… that means salaries for actors, technicians, designers, administrators, box office personnel. It meant paid advertising in local papers and on local radio (which was spent again in the community by those institutions.) It meant hotel rooms rented during rehearsals and production for playwright, actors who had come in from New York, Baltimore, DC and other cities.
The production attracts program advertising for the local, tourist oriented stores and restaurants on our 2-block downtown area: German Street. Because of those ads, cast, crews, administrators, audiences, visiting press and others spend even more money here in Shepherdstown… money that would not be spent here if CATF were not funded.
Because of CATF, students are drawn to Shepherd University, which houses the Festival and whose staff provides faculty support in the academic season. This brings even more money in the form of tuitions, book expenditures and related items into the town… money that woud not be there if the CATF were not funded.
So you see, the NEA makes a very stimulative difference here.
It has been shown by wiser economists than me that the average return of funds put into a program by the NEA is approximately 8 to 1. Which means that original $17,000 grant in 2006 really equaled $136,000.00. WOW! I get stimulated just thinking about it.
So when Representative Dreier says that $50 Million for the NEA, whose function is to give out grants for operations of arts organizations and artists all over the country, is "not stimulative," then I’m probably listening to a guy who never looked at the hard reality of the benefit of the arts.
I am glad, then, that there are enough Democrats in the House to approve the compromise bill. And I hope Representative Dreier can realize his error in the near future.
Under The LobsterScope
jake 4 that 1
fReichtards in the 20th Century: NO NEW TAXES!
fReichtards in the 21st Century: NO TAXES!
Soon it will just be NO!
Legalize
This story gives me a good deal of hope that the President has learned that he can’t bargain in good faith with members of party inherently capable of behaving in good faith:
Hopefully the President finally realizes that the public is behind HIS ideas and HIS leadership on the issues, and that we don’t want him palling around with GOPer obstructionists if it gets in the way of good policy.
OniHanzo
@btchakir:
Denigration of your community by sabotage-loving tools like Atanarjuat in 3…2…1…
Extra points if "how does that benefit real Americans?" gets asked.
Comrade Some Guy Named Mattski
@Atanarjuat: I haven’t been here for a while….. but your ripping off of McCains Lame "Country First" tagline during the campaign was great!! I’m disapointed that you no longer use it…. what happened you no longer believe in "country first".
I mean if you no longer believe in "country first" then is there anything to believe in anymore? 1st Santa Clause now this?!?!
Please tell me that your country is still in the top 5 for you and not something dissapointing like "Country Seventh".
Fern
@Michael:
I think that one of the most economically stimulative things they could do was raise welfare rates, or give a cash grant to the poorest people in the country, who would spend it immediately if not sooner.
But Americans would never go for it.
Brick Oven Bill
I would like to have a chance to review this spending bill before my representatives vote it into law. Spending a trillion in secret is enough to make some people cynical.
TenguPhule
And I’d like the GOP rounded up and shot en masse.
We don’t always get what we want.
jcricket
Big L Libertarian – as represented by Norquist, Reynolds, Ron Paul and others.
Sure, Radley Balko, the last intellectually honest Libertarian, might disagree, but I think the ship has sailed. The Libertarian movement (as a political entity) has no social libertarianism in it. It’s wholly aligned with Republicans.
Legalize
If only there was a way for individuals to find out such things for themselves ….
David Hunt
We’ve been there since 2007. They even held up a declaration celebrating Mother’s Day. "No" is the whole strategy while they’re our of power.
jibeaux
@TenguPhule:
funny
Walker
@Michael:
[wingnut]
It is quite simple:
1. The tax cuts go to businesses.
2. These businesses use this extra money to hire employees who, by the way, are all in China.
3. This improves the Chinese economy and makes them happier to buy our debt.
4. Because they buy our debt, we can have large deficits and reduce taxes even more.
[/wingnut]
Svensker
Most companies right now are not worried about how to pay the taxes on their non-existent profits. And if there’s anyone out there who is pacing the floor trying to figure out how to pay their whopping capital gains taxes, I say let’s find ’em and have ’em run the economy for the rest of us.
Also, you betcha.
patrick
I’m a mechanical engineer, 12 years out of college….how will this help since all the engineering jobs around me are being offshored to China and India? right now it looks like I get laid off at the end of march because the engineering services company I work for isn’t getting any work. our customer’s purchasing dept is forcing their engineering department to send work that normally goes to us over to Satyam in India, because their hourly rate is less than ours (never mind, our total project cost is always less).
patrick
sounds like the underpants gnome rationality…..
PaulB
No, he wants to pay less. What he’s almost certainly talking about is not the adjustment of SS benefits once someone is already on the program (which is already happening), but the adjustment of what your initial level of benefit should be.
Currently, that initial benefit level is tied to the prevailing wages through an extremely complex formula, routinely adjusted. The prevailing wages, in general, rise at a rate well above inflation.
For the first few years, his proposal wouldn’t make much difference, either in costs or in benefits. Over time, it would be a dramatic drop in Social Security benefits, effectively eliminating it as a safety net.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Legalize: Hopefully the President finally realizes that the public is behind HIS ideas and HIS leadership on the issues, and that we don’t want him palling around with GOPer obstructionists if it gets in the way of good policy.
Agreed, but I think it was important for Obama to extend the olive branch – and pull back a fang-gnawed twig – before reaching for the ax handle. He’s shown he’s dealing in good faith and that the Redoublechins aren’t interested in that.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Fixed.
RSA
I guess it’s good to keep in mind that this suggestion comes from someone with a journalism degree rather than, you know, a Ph.D. in science geekery or economic wonkery.
Ed Drone
I always assumed that "country first" was a target-prioritization designation, personally.
Ed
Chuck
@jcricket: Thanks for saying this. Contrary to what some others are saying, there is some sense to capital gains tax cuts, offset by income tax increases aimed at the same people. The "investment" we’re talking about isn’t the consumer version of investment (buying stocks), but the business version: spending money on stuff for the company that will make you money in the long run. E.g., Intel building a new chip fab plant, Microsoft hiring 20 more programmers to make a new product, etc. Jobs.
When the company’s balance sheet looks good, they have the choice to spend money on the company (investment -> capital gains) or to distribute the money to the shareholders (dividends -> taxed as income). If we want to increase non-wasteful consumption, a revenue-neutral way of encouraging companies to create jobs rather than pad the bank accounts of shareholders really would make sense.
I don’t claim to be able to vouch for anything else in the article, and I don’t think he expressed this idea very well for people who aren’t hardcore business people, but I wouldn’t reject out of hand this idea that income tax is a sort of "consumption tax" when compared to capital gains tax.
iluvsummr
Heard on NPR today (paraphrasing):
Wonder how long it will take for that sentiment to spread widely. There’s still an awful lot of people that don’t seem to see through the grandstanding.
Conservatively Liberal
Read over a Calculated Risk that Lloyds of London announced a $12 billion dollar black hole and dropped 40% in value, Mexico canceled a bond sale because nobody wanted to buy their bonds, S&P 500 corporations lose an average of over $10.00 a share for the last quarter…
So, how’s your day going?
iluvsummr
@jcricket: Imagine thousands of cars parked in airport long-term lots across the country with envelopes filled with apologies and maxed out credit cards taped to windshields while the owners flee overseas to avoid US debtor prisons. I mean it just warms the heart. It means the GOP can reinvigorate the economy by spending government funds on international bounty hunters who will bring back debtors and get them to work off their debt on tobacco plantations, gun manufacturing factories and clean coal plants. Everyone wins (and we’ll even get a new generation of Dickensian authors eager to share their stories of character-molding child labor).
Chris Johnson
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/i_got_what_america_needs_right
After all the dissing on Carter I just had to go read that Onion article again :)
Brick Oven Bill
Thank you for that link Legalize, I have actually been busy today. I have not had a chance to read all 1000+ pages, but have read through the first few, and note that things are crossed out with a pen, and other things are circled, and there are arrows, and then I got down to the part where there is $11 billion to guarantee rural insurance, and then I stopped reading.
This bill should be finalized, and then put online for forty eight hours, as we were promised. 48 hours would give the public a chance to go through this bad legislation.
Sunlight. Disinfectant. We were promised this.
LB
‘free-floating fellowships’? How’s that supposed to work? And how is it different from what is here now? If you want a joint degree or want to take classes from another department, it’s a routine thing that’s done all the time.
Mike G
The GOP talking about encouraging science and technology education? That’s rich, after eight years of denying and denigrating science, from global warming to evolution to Young Republicans rewriting NASA scientists’ reports to insert skeptisicsm about the Big Bang theory; and general contempt for evidence-based rational decision making in favor of Jeebus-ideology magical-thinking and ‘might makes right’ bullying tactics. They need to be properly ashamed and shut the fuck up for the next ten years until people forget what authoritarian-bootlicking gullible, stupid tools they were during the Chimp assministration.
The GOP’s idea of "government-funded ‘innovation prizes’ for key technology challenges" is money for proving Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church 6000 years ago and hunting for Noah’s Ark on mountaintops in Turkey.
OniHanzo
@Brick Oven Bill:
Comedy gold.
binzinerator
@TenguPhule:
Bwa-ha-ha!
Uh-oh. Am I a sick and evil miscreant for liking that one? But I can’t help it. I can’t help it.
Bwa-ha-ha!
binzinerator
@Ed Drone:
And I always thought it was a garbling of ‘country fisting’, which is basically what the goopers have done to this country for the last 8 years.
Derek
Pethokoukis is a joke. Not only was he spending the fall trying to put the markets fall on Obama. He spent the rest of the year trying to say the recession was a democrat myth