Another help for those mortgages underwater.

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

Krugman wasn't proposing "massive" increases in the deficit. He wanted the stimulus to be $1.2 -1.4B, up from $700M. Just an extra $500 - 700M in spending. And it's not the deficit that creates the jobs, it's the spending.

What is a half trillion or so among friends.

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

And paying the deficit back isn't that hard. We're going to have to raise taxes to the same level that everyone else in the world pays. The U.S. presently has a effective taxation rate of about 27% of GDP. Most other countries are around 35 -37%. We can't go on trying to keep up with the other countries of the industrialized world on the cheap. We have inferior health care, we have an inferior education system, an inferior transportation system. Our pension system is in near ruin. And for what? To keep taxes low for the wealthy few. That's ridiculous and short sighted.

And the point you miss is that those other countries with 35-37% of GDP tax systems have a) slow growing static economies that lock people into roles without the ability to advance and b) tax systems that are funded by the masses through VAT's -- not by getting more taxes from the rich.

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

Krugman wasn't proposing "massive" increases in the deficit. He wanted the stimulus to be $1.2 -1.4B, up from $700M. Just an extra $500 - 700M in spending. And it's not the deficit that creates the jobs, it's the spending.

Originally Posted by pjorourke

What is a half trillion or so among friends.

Since when is $500-$700M a half trillion. My elementary school math teach called it a half billion.

[Rudyard K]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

Since when is $500-$700M a half trillion. My elementary school math teach called it a half billion.

Whew!! I feel better already.

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

Since when is $500-$700M a half trillion. My elementary school math teach called it a half billion.

Except it was TTH who used the wrong letters. The actual stimulus was about $800 billion, Krugman wanted $1.2 to $1.4 trillion.

[TexTushHog]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

And the point you miss is that those other countries with 35-37% of GDP tax systems have a) slow growing static economies that lock people into roles without the ability to advance and b) tax systems that are funded by the masses through VAT's -- not by getting more taxes from the rich.

I disagree that they are growing slower than we are. The UK is getting out of the recession faster than we are and is generally growing as fast as we are. We can't under-invest in infrastructure forever and pay no price. Frankly, we've been coasting for a long time in our investment in education a couple of generations ago. In the past 30 years, we've been falling further and further behind in education and that will is catching up to us.

As for the $500B extra, it would be a lot easier to pay back if we were having jobs in the recovery instead of enduring a jobless recovery for another 3 or 4 years. And that's what will happen if we don't invest adequately now when times are bad. See the graph in this article for an example:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/ec...icymakers.html

[WTF]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

And the point you miss is that those other countries with 35-37% of GDP tax systems have a) slow growing static economies that lock people into roles without the ability to advance and b) tax systems that are funded by the masses through VAT's -- not by getting more taxes from the rich.

And our growth was built on a housing bubble.

That is the point you seem to be missing pj.

Is the unregulated free market system the one the world want to emulate? Is it even what we want to go back to? Greenspan sure seems to have seen the error of its ways.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Just imagine how they would be doing without the Al Gore fees.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius

Just imagine how they would be doing without the Al Gore fees.

I does depend where a country is on Maslow's hierarchy of needs scale. China can not afford to tax energy. Other countries can....after they of course trashed certain parts of their environment bringing their citizens out of object poverty.

That is just an observation , not a judgement.

[Marcus Aurelius]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxymwN7nYQQ

[pjorourke]

Interesting WTF & TTH jumped on the growth issue and smooth ignored the VAT point.

Maybe this will help: http://blogs.reuters.com/james-petho...at-of-its-own/

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by WTF

And our growth was built on a housing bubble.

That is the point you seem to be missing pj.

So you and TTH want to fix this bubble with one based on out of control government debt -- a public spending bubble. Fricken brilliant!

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

I disagree that they are growing slower than we are.

There are short term blips, but when you look over long periods of time, the US economy is clearly growing faster that the major European countries as shown in the chart below -- the difference in compound growth rates over that period is about .7% a year -- that is huge.

Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Macroeconomics/

[Marcus Aurelius]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

There are short term blips, but when you look over long periods of time, the US economy is clearly growing faster that the major European countries as shown in the chart below -- the median difference in growth is over 1% a year -- that is huge.

Now don't confuse people with facts.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

So you and TTH want to fix this bubble with one based on out of control government debt -- a public spending bubble. Fricken brilliant!

No, but I also do not think that out of control consumer spending is really growth you want to brag about.

That is what you are doing PJ.