What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[4est_4est_Gump]

Repeat after me:
Letting a tax cut for the very rich expire is not a "tax increase".

When taxes go up, it is most certainly an increase.

They do not carry a history with them, and if they did, once you get to the root stock, you will find the first tax to be an increase.

That's all they ever do until the system collapses under the burden of maintaining the political class.

 

[mercury14]

When taxes go up, it is most certainly an increase.

They do not carry a history with them, and if they did, once you get to the root stock, you will find the first tax to be an increase.

That's all they ever do until the system collapses under the burden of maintaining the political class.

Then it's an increase designed and implemented by Bush and the Republicans. After all, they created this so-called tax increase themselves instead of permanently changing the rates.

 

[Adre]

Then it's an increase designed and implemented by Bush and the Republicans. After all, they created this so-called tax increase themselves instead of permanently changing the rates.

How dare you suggest that the Republicans ever increased taxes. You'll have the whackadoodles foaming at their mouths.

 

[richard_daily]

Then it's an increase designed and implemented by Bush and the Republicans. After all, they created this so-called tax increase themselves instead of permanently changing the rates.

I thought they were the party of "personal responsibility"?

 

[koalabear]

Stocks drop as job growth stalls

 

[dreami]

"What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?"

well i got tired of all the fear generating hype
i dont buy into all that shite
its just an illusion designed to
distract us from discovering who we really are.

we need to group together
and use our ever decreasing (?) buying power
to exact change and freedom
from the so called virtues of material wealth.

​

 

[phrodeau]

He wouldn't understand it.

It looks like you are right.

 

[richard_daily]

It looks like you are right.

People like him are the problem.

"we need growth RIGHT NOW!"

"no wait, we need JOBS, THIS SECOND!"

"No wait, we need to deal with the DEFICIT!"

Never mind that all of those things are issues that his god Reagan had trouble with.... This bunch has a very selective memory.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Then it's an increase designed and implemented by Bush and the Republicans. After all, they created this so-called tax increase themselves instead of permanently changing the rates.

So you then admit you were wrong.

Good.

Since 2007 no Republican ideas have been allowed out of Congress.

We got more bad economic news, of a slowdown nature today; the general Democratic philosophy at work. I do not want to call it Socialist, but it is most certainly not Laissez-faire...

 

[koalabear]

Jobs report may help show if recovery is just a mirage



http://economywatch.msnbc.msn.com/_...y-help-show-if-recovery-is-just-a-mirage?lite

 

[richard_daily]

So you then admit you were wrong.

Good.

Since 2007 no Republican ideas have been allowed out of Congress.

We got more bad economic news, of a slowdown nature today; the general Democratic philosophy at work. I do not want to call it Socialist, but it is most certainly not Laissez-faire...

And you still failed to show how the post-2007 congress caused the housing market collapse...

Feel free to support your ridiculous claim, at any time.

 

[mercury14]

So you then admit you were wrong.

Good.

No, it's a matter of perspective. If you want to call the Dems high-tax socialists for simply watching Republican legislation work as written, well I guess you have the right to look at it like that. Your position is absurd but you have the right to believe nonsense.

Since 2007 no Republican ideas have been allowed out of Congress.

Patently untrue.

What you mean to say is that no solely Republican ideas with no bipartisan support have made it out of congress. Those are two very different things.

We got more bad economic news, of a slowdown nature today; the general Democratic philosophy at work. I do not want to call it Socialist, but it is most certainly not Laissez-faire...

Meanwhile Republicans are hard at work to preserve that socialist entitlement program that provides federal subsidies for student loans.

So is it safe to say Republicans are socialists by your definition?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I have often said they are Socialists.

Ask any of the RINOs here.

Hell, ask perg and kbate.

That's why I'm a Libertarian and a Rothbardian...

Some more on why the economy did not rebound...

Keynesianism is a model based upon how collectivists think the economy should operate, rather than how it actually operates. As Ron Ross puts it, "Keynesianism is definitely not an evidence-based model of how the economy works. So far as I know, Keynes did no empirical studies." He sets Keynes' research, or lack thereof, against that of Reagan economic adviser Milton Friedman, a staunch advocate of free markets and limited government intervention. "Friedman," Ross says, "was a far more diligent researcher than Keynes. Friedman fit the theory to the data, rather than vice versa."

In short, a pleasant hypothesis -- that a central government can stimulate demand and shorten economic downturns for stabilized prosperity -- supports the Keynesian model. Not facts. That is why you don't hear Democrats touting the Obama administration's past successes. The facts surrounding his economic policy are simply not useful for anything but arguing the same policy's ineffectiveness. Take the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, for example. The legislation appropriated $787 billion to various initiatives, meant to stimulate the economy and job growth. But the results are painfully dismal. Unemployment has held above 8% since February of 2009, marking the highest sustained length of such unemployment since the Great Depression. In fact, the "recovery" that ensued, despite this inordinately large taxpayer "investment," has yielded the slowest recovery from any recession since World War II. And an unprecedented number of Americans now rely on government food stamps and other welfare programs for subsistence.

The list of this administration's economic failures could go on and on, including the astronomical and poorly projected liability of the Affordable Care Act. But suffice it to say that the poor economy has taken a toll upon the engine of American prosperity: workers. James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation reports that millions of Americans have "stopped trying to find jobs," and that "only 63.7% of adult Americans are active in the labor force, meaning that they are either employed or looking for a job. That's the lowest level since 1983." Incidentally, that's the year in which the bulk of the tax cuts from Reagan's Economic Recovery Tax Act were implemented, signaling a recovery from the miserable economy he inherited from Carter's administration -- which relied heavily on (you guessed it!) Keynesian economics.

That contrast should immediately stand out, and it should illustrate beautifully why Keynesianism fails, and why it will always fail when employed wholesale as an economic strategy.

Obama's stimulus was based on this Keynesian economic model, and it allocated expected future taxpayer money to achieve short-term stimulus. Why wait for these dollars to be earned, the Obama administration posited, when the government can put that future revenue in play right now to stimulate consumerism and get employment back to where it should be? "The implication," Ron Ross explains, "is that you can hit the economy a few times with a cattle prod and get society back to full employment."

But clearly, that hasn't happened. What has happened, however, is that the federal government share of GDP increased from 19% in 2008 to 24% by 2011, and this administration will have grown the federal budget by 16.5% by the time its first term ends, barring any new stimulus. This significantly increases taxpayer liability, which all but ensures the need for higher taxes. And higher taxes lead to depressed consumer demand, which does not stimulate the growth of capital in a free market -- it thwarts it.

This may seem obvious to a reasonable American who has the economic sense to balance his household budget. Increased essential spending on household repairs, for example, will leave less money for discretionary spending, which will in turn influence how you spend money. You may spend less, and you may save more, but spending patterns will be affected. But that's all alien to politicians -- particularly leftist ones. They generally embrace a "zero elasticity view of the world." They believe that "people will behave after taxes just as they behaved before taxes and the only effect of taxes is more revenue." In other words, they think we are cogs in a government-run economic machine operated by bureaucratic tinkers working for a greater good, rather than individuals who operate within individual circumstances. And that is why collectivists love Keynesianism and hate supply-side economics.

The beauty of supply-side economics is that it achieves what politicians rarely do: it recognizes and accounts for the economic realities of individuals. In fact, it relies heavily upon those realities. Reagan's economic advisers knew that cutting taxes would leave individual Americans with more discretionary income, giving a boost to demand. They knew that if they incentivized individual producers and businesses, those same people and enterprises would be eager to invest to meet that increased demand, yielding economic growth and prosperity. They knew that individuals are the drivers of economic success, not the government.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/keynesianism_and_the_collectivist_dream.html#ixzz1toDn8Lk5

Some more on your "Proofs" of a Depression avoided...

...

Say then added an important point, that economics "does not resort for any further explanation to hypothesis." In short, unlike the physical sciences, the assumptions of economics are not tentative hypotheses which, or the deductions from which, must be tested by fact; on the contrary, each step of the logical chain rests on definitely true, not "hypothetical," general facts. (It might be added that it is precisely this crucial difference between the method of economics and of physical sciences that has brought so much contumely on the head of praxeology during the 20th century.) Instead of framing hypotheses, economic science must perceive connections and regularities "from the nature of particular events," and "must conduct us from one line to another, so that every intelligent understanding may clearly comprehend in what manner the chain is united." "It is this," Say concludes, "which constitutes the excellence of the modern method of philosophizing."

In contrast, statistics exhibit particular facts, "of a particular country, at a designated period." They are "a description in detail." Statistics, Say added, "may gratify curiosity," but they can "never be productive of advantage" if they do not indicate the "origin and consequences" of the collected facts and this can only be accomplished by the separate discipline of political economy. It is precisely the confounding of these two disciplines that made Smith's Wealth of Nations, in Say's perceptive words, an "immethodical" and "irregular mass of curious and original speculations, and of known demonstrated truths."

A crucial difference between statistics and political economy, Say goes on, is that the latter's general principles or "general facts" may be discovered, and therefore may be known with certainty. The principles of political economy, wherever they rest on "the rigorous deductions of undeniable general facts," "rest upon an immovable foundation." They are what von Mises would later call "apodictic." Political economy, indeed, "is composed of a few fundamental principles, and of a great number of corollaries or conclusions, drawn from these principles." The particular facts of statistics, on the other hand, are necessarily uncertain, incomplete, inaccurate and imperfect. And even when true, Say correctly notes, they "are only true for an instant." Again, on statistics, "how small a number of particular facts are completely examined, and how few among them are observed under all their aspects? And in supposing them well examined, well observed, and well described, how many of them either prove nothing, or directly the reverse of what is intended to be established by them[?]" And yet the gullible public is often dazzled by "a display of figures and calculations … as if numerical calculations alone could prove anything, and as if any rule could be laid down, from which an inference could be drawn without the aid of sound reasoning."

Say goes on to a blistering critique of the use of statistics without theory:

Hence, there is not an absurd theory, or an extravagant opinion that has not been supported by an appeal to facts; and it is by facts also that public authorities have been so often misled. But a knowledge of facts, without a knowledge of their mutual relations, without being able to show why the one is a cause and the other a consequence, is really no better than the crude information of an office-clerk …

...

[T]he science of political economy … must show, in what manner that which in reality does take place, is the consequence of other facts equally certain. It must discover the chain which binds them together, and always, from observation, establish the existence of the two links at their point of connexion.
J.B.Say

Murray N. Rothbard
http://mises.org/daily/5981/JB-Say-and-the-Method-of-Praxeology

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

If you are taking or have taken some of the typical courses in economics, it is quite likely that you asked yourself questions like the following: If an economic model is not like the real world, why should I trust the results of that model? One of the answers I would often get when posing this question goes something like this: Of course the model is not like the real world; it is not supposed to be like the real world. If it were, then it would not be a model!

This response can leave one feeling intellectually inferior or incapable of abstract thinking. One may get the impression that there is something obvious that he or she is missing. Sometimes, the answer would go a bit further: models are simplified representations of reality that we use to better understand that reality. This answer is somewhat more polite, but it still does not tell us how we determined which features of reality were not important enough to be included in the model. Building a model in this way also seems to imply that we already understand the elements of reality and how they are interrelated.

If none of these answers left you entirely comfortable with the currently predominant, Walrasian approach in economics, you may want to look into the works of some of the Austrian economists. Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard were the leading figures in this school of thought in the 20th century. Scholars like Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard showed that there are, in all likelihood, more robust descriptions of markets than those contained solely in mathematical general-equilibrium models.

Outline of Austrian Economics:
http://mises.org/daily/6018/Assuming-Away-Reality

 

[richard_daily]

I have often said they are Socialists.

Ask any of the RINOs here.

Hell, ask perg and kbate.

That's why I'm a Libertarian and a Rothbardian...

Some more on why the economy did not rebound...

You're not a libertarian. You're an ordinary, plain, boring republican.

 

[Disgustipated]

You're not a libertarian. You're an ordinary, plain, boring republican.

I seriously think he's fooled himself into believing he's a Libertarian because he sure hasn't fooled any of us.

 

[mercury14]

That's why I'm a Libertarian

You're a Republican. And we know that because your political beliefs are virtually all Republican ones. You're just another Republican who soured on his own brand.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

You're not a libertarian. You're an ordinary, plain, boring republican.

Now, now. You'll make the guy cry being all honest like that.

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17dpe613ipv1qjpg/original.jpg

 

[RobDownSouth]

When taxes go up, it is most certainly an increase. DERP!

Suppose Coca Cola has a weekend sale on 2 liter bottles, regularly $1.59, on sale this weekend only for 99 cents. When next Monday rolls around, the price is once again $1.59.

Since the price has gone back up, is that a "59% price increase"?

I suspect most people would realize that this was NOT a price increase, because they're smart enough to realize the original price DECREASE was temporary in nature.

Partisan Glibertarians, however, would focus on the aspects of the sale that fits their preconceived political notions, so in their warped sense of reality, it's a "price increase", which is true in an absolute sense but a ridiculous distortion nonetheless.

Episodes like this help to explain why so few people take Glibertarians seriously in America.

 

[VaticanAssassin]

Suppose Coca Cola has a weekend sale on 2 liter bottles, regularly $1.59, on sale this weekend only for 99 cents. When next Monday rolls around, the price is once again $1.59.

Since the price has gone back up, is that a "59% price increase"?

I suspect most people would realize that this was NOT a price increase, because they're smart enough to realize the original price DECREASE was temporary in nature.

Partisan Glibertarians, however, would focus on the aspects of the sale that fits their preconceived political notions, so in their warped sense of reality, it's a "price increase", which is true in an absolute sense but a ridiculous distortion nonetheless.

Episodes like this help to explain why so few people take Glibertarians seriously in America.

No...It means the price increased 60.06%

 

[Sean Renaud]

I need help. I can't tell when their trolling anymore.

 

[richard_daily]

No...It means the price increased 60.06%

No, it really doesn't.

 

[koalabear]

Gas is back up to $3.99.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I love how the crowd that demands everyone see their pastel nuanced arguments have a black hat, white hat mentality when it comes to a nuance of a bolder hue...


Everyone who disagrees with Obama is a Republican.


I guess it's similar to how there are no Socialists to be found on the Left; there must be no Libertarians among us...


Does this sound "Republican?"

A_J's corollary #14, “The Modern Moderate/Conservative is defined by the enthusiasm, and self-congratulatory cries of ‘reasonable,” displayed in taking up a position held by the New Age Liberal after they have abandoned that hard-won cultural victory for one even more to the Left.”

 

[busybody..]

Tee Hee

Employment at 115K, the expected number was 165K

Yet the rate went down

BRILLIANT!