Bill Kristol Sez "It Won't Kill The Country" To Raise Taxes On Millionaires

That's just not right.

If it were, and not even going to extremes here, then Obama's stimulus would have worked as he predicted, the summer of recovery in 2010 would have been an actual summer of recovery, unemployment would never have been at 10%+, etc.

How many times do you see your hypothesis proven wrong by experiment and observed results before you agree with the science?

 

The $16T is important because it masks how the govt. spending chokes the economy. With $1T+ in money borrowed from China, our GDP is $1T+ higher.

 

look, I can buy it a little bit if you say you need to go into debt to dig out...but last time I checked interest on that debt was somewhere around 400B a year. When you're bringing in between 2.5T and 3T in tax revenue, that's a hefty chunk to just flush down the drain.

 

Sorry, none of that contradicts or disproves my statement.

How many times do you see your post shown to be a strawman before you address the point?

Let's say I have a huge pile of cash just sitting around. Let's say the government takes it from me, and gives it to poor people, who spend it all on beer, cigarettes, and porn. Are not the economic effects of that transaction overwhelmingly greater than 1?

barfo

 

I don't have to "contradict your statement" to prove you're wrong. You pretty much admit this by trying to fabricate a scenario that you think might show a multiplier of 1+.

The amount of cash sitting around in safes or peoples' mattresses is insignificant. More likely, the cash you've saved is in a bank account, and the bank puts your money to use by issuing loans.

There is some cost in having someone drive a dump truck over to your house to haul away your cash and then for some other number of govt. workers to divvy up your cash. In the end you're minus the cash, as well. To boot, all the things you listed aren't assets - they're literally shit. You've turned cash into shit and flushed it down the toilet. Literally.

Even your guy Obama gets it that tax cuts are the real stimulus. He's proposing extending the Bush cuts, has spent the SS trust fund on them, in February proposed to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 28%, and so on. Why? It cuts out the middleman.

 

You crap beer, cigarettes, and porn? Your diet must be strange.

barfo

 

The porn you watched went where? Can you sell it to someone else at a profit (or loss)?

The cigarettes. Maybe if you haven't smoked them all the way down you might find a homeless person who'd want the butts.

Beer? OK, maybe not shit, but certainly piss.

 

What difference does any of that make? Buying assets isn't the point. There's a reason why the population is known as "consumers".

The point is that the money spent on beer at the 7-11 is then used to pay the clerk at the 7-11, who then buys more beer with the money, and receives another paycheck, and buys more beer with the money, and so on. Essentially, the clerk receives a lifetime income, and a lifetime supply of beer, because of that first purchase.

barfo

 

Do you actually think about what you write?

Someone is growing and harvesting hops and the other ingredients in beer. That's how the economy grows. Not govt. spending.

What govt. does is fuck up the markets by creating a distorted demand. At non-market prices, too. Again, this is why tax cuts are stimulus - govt. isn't taking the money in the first place and choosing to turn it into shit.

 

What do you mean by piss the money away? Consumer purchases are 70% of our economy. We NEED people to 'piss the money away'.

See above. Consumer spending, not investing, is what drives the economy. You build a brewery because there is demand for beer. Building a brewery doesn't create the demand for beer.

barfo

 

If investing doesn't drive the economy, we should "just say no" when Obama tells us he wants to invest (I mean spend) the money government takes from us.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-capitalism

 

Investing in infrastructure, investing in education, is not investing in the financial sense. The government isn't looking to sell those educated children later for a profit. It will do that when I'm president, but the current government seems to have some sort of moral issue with selling children. Infrastructure and education and research and so on is indeed spending, and spending is what drives the economy.

barfo

 

O yeah I conquered all those countries
They were weak an' I was strong
A little too ambitious maybe,
But I never loved Eva Braun.

barfo