Thursday, December 30, 2010

How to Get a Booming Economy.

Want to have a booming economy? It's really very simple if the "Wizards of Smart"(Thanks, Rush) in Washington, D.C. would get their collective heads out of their ***** and do what works.

1. Repeal Obamacare - That should be # 1 on the list. Because businesses don't know what the
    final regulations are going to be once fully implemented, they are frozen. They won't hire or
    expand with all that uncertainty.

2. Repeal the recently passed Financial Regulation legislation. Why? See #1.

3. Reduce the Corporate Tax rate from 35% to 20%. We currently have the highest tax
    rate in the world and this will put the United States more in line with other countries
    corporate tax rates and will result in more jobs being created in this country and
    fewer in overseas countries by U.S. Corporations.

4. Cut all income tax brackets by 2-4% across the board.

5. Eliminate the inheritance tax.

6. Cut the capital gains and dividends taxes in half.

7. Make people who are on unemployment prove that they are actively seeking a
    job in order to continue collecting. Unemployment insurance should not be a
    new welfare program.

8. Eliminate the minimum wage.

9. Freeze discretionary Federal spending at 2008 levels.

10. Stop the EPA from instituting "cap and trade" regulations in early january, 2011

11. Open all potential areas to oil drilling. This includes the East and West coasts,
      ANWR, and the Bakken formation in the Dakotas and eastern Montana. The
      current restrictions on oil drilling has cost jobs in the Gulf of Mexico and some
      drilling rigs have left the Gulf, never to return. Gas prices are rising because of the
      growing world wide demand for oil and by restricting drilling in this country, we are
      becoming more dependent on foreign oil. Has anyone noticed that gas is well
      over $3 a gallon now, and predicted to be at $5 a gallon by 2012? These increased
      costs are passed on to consumers in prices for everything. Expanding drilling will
      result in lower oil costs and tens of thousands of new jobs.

      If all of this was done with cooperation between Congress and President Obama the election in 2012 would see Obama being reelected and most of Congress being reelected. If most of this is not done, the economy will continue to stagnate, the deficit and national debt will continue to increase, and people will continue to suffer, and Obama will be a one term President.
     If all or most of the items I have listed above were done early next year, then by election day 2012 the unemployment rate would be approaching 6.0 and falling, and the federal budget deficit would be below $400 billion and falling.
     Unfortunately, Obama does not want a booming economy, because that goes totally against his philosophy and agenda. Get a growing, booming economy going, and more people are less dependent on the government, and Obama wants as many people as possible dependent on the government, so it has control over them. Don't believe me? Let' see what happens over the next two years.
    If anyone wishes to comment on this post, please don't tell me about Bush's policies, the "evil rich', or any other Left wing talking points. Tell me what YOU would do to get the economy started, if you don't agree with my ideas.

9 comments:

  1. I think what is most amazing about your post is that you actually think it might work.

    Lets start with Numbers 1&2.

    The concept that companies are not hiring right now because the implementing regulations for the health care reform and financial regulatory reform bills are not finalized is simply wrong. Companies are not hiring right now because people are not spending money right now. Big corporations, those companies that could hire hundreds of thousands of people, are sitting on more than a Trillion dollars in liquid assets. They do not need more money for investment, they need for demand to pick up. When demand picks up, they will be selling more stuff and they will hire more people to make that stuff. Some vague and illusory uncertainty about future regulations is not what is standing in the way of recovery, a persistent lack of demand is what is holding back the recovery.

    As an aside, neither the Health Care Reform bill nor Financial Regulatory Reform will increase the deficit or the debt. The latest scoring by the CBO still has Health Care Reform actually reducing the deficit slightly.

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  2. Items 3, 4, 5, and 6 are a range or tax cuts.

    It would be interesting to see how these tax cuts would impact the deficit, but the one certainty is that they would INCREASE the deficit.

    Despite the constant refrain from Conservatives/Republicans, tax cuts have not and do not ever pay for them selves. Every study of tax cuts has reached the same conclusion. Budget officials from both Bush administrations and the Reagan administration all agree that the Reagan and Bush tax cuts exploded the deficits, and further tax cuts will explode it even more.

    Second point.

    Tax cuts have proven to be a far les effective way to spur economic growth than direct spending. One recent study showed that tax cuts yeild $1.06 in increaded economic activity for every dollar of reduced taxes while every dollar of direct spending like extended unemployment benefits and infrastructure projects and aid to state and localities that will allow them to keep cops and firefighters and teachers on the payroll, each dollar in direct spending creates $1.60 in increased economic activity.

    Tax cuts actually make for lousy stimulus.

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  3. Item 7

    People who are on unemployment already do have to document that they are looking for a job. Every week they have to document what jobs they applied for and what the outcome was.

    That was easy

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  4. I have no idea how you think eliminating the minimum wage will do anything to spur economic growth. Though it could lead to increased corporate profits, we are in a period now where corporations are making very handsome profits. They are not hiring, just sitting on their cash. Increasing their profits are not actually going to lead to them doing more hiring. Increasing demand for their goods will lead to them doing more hiring. And eliminating the minimum wage will only tend to reduce demand even more as the lower wages at the bottom of the job market will simply depress wages throughout the economy even more. And if people have less money coming in, they will spend less, leading to weaker, not stronger demand. And weaker demand means less hiring.

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  5. Freezing descretionary spending at 2008 levels would have a small affect on the deficit, but since the non-stimulus part of the budget has grown by very little since 2008 and most of that has been in defense spending, and the direct spending in the stimulus bill ends in FY2011, this will have little or no impact on deficits.

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  6. Banning the EPA from addressing global warming and opening up anywhere and everywhere to drilling for oil and natural gas will have very little effect on either the economy or the deficit. Unless some scientist comes up with some magical way to extract useful oil from oil sands, there are insufficient proven or suspected reserves to make any real long term difference in our dependence on foriegn oil.

    The real solution to both our dependence on foriegn oil and the looming costs of global warming is to move quickly away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, partidularly wind, solar, and nuclear. That combined with a more effieienct smart energy grid and increased effeciency in building construction and transportation fuels are the long term answer.

    That is of course unlesss you like pollution.

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  7. My proposal

    Eliminate the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $150,000/year. This by itself will reduce the debt by about a trillion dollars.

    Reinstate the inheritance tax structure we had under Bill Clinton.

    Tax short term capital gains as regular income.

    Extend unemployment benefits for the long term out of work until the unemployment rate drops below 7% (either nationwide or state by state, I am OK with either approach)

    Reduce defense spending by 10% in real terms over the next 3 years.

    Eliminate corporate tax breaks that have the affect of encouraging companies to ship jobs and/profits overseas.

    Despite the shit sandwich that President Bush left behind, we need to be more focused on getting the economy moving right now than we do on cutting the deficit. It is worth remembering that with the tax rates that existed at the beginning of George Bush's terms, we had a slight budget surplus AND strong economic and job growth. Despite, perhaps even because of, the Bush Tax Cuts, economic growth and job growth during the Bush years was anemic while the deficit exploded. Your prescription for more tax cuts with tiny spending cuts is a prescription for even larger deficits and a continuation of weak economic and job growth.

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  8. Uncle Walt - You just listed the entire list of Liberal talking points. All government and no private sector. No country ever taxed it's way to prosperity!

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  9. The idea that my solutions might be liberal ideas is no surprise to either of us.

    And I agree that no country has ever taxed its way to prosperity.

    However, tax cuts still make for lousy stimulus while extending unemployment is, dollar for dollar, far more effective at stimulating the economy.

    The one thing I forgot to mention in my proposal is a $200B/year program of infrastructure projects. Projects like rebuilding/fixing/replacing bridges, upgrading airports, building high speed rail lines, Rebuilding/fixing tunnels, fixing upgrading highways and making major government buildings far more energy efficient through increased insulation, and replacing old inefficient heating and cooling systems.

    That kind of spending is far more effective at stimulating the economy than tax cuts as well. And the projects will have the added benefit of making our economy more stable and efficient because of the upgrades to our infrastructure.

    Yes. Liberal proposals.

    The thing is actions like I have proposed have actually been proven stimulute the economy far more than tax cuts and the tax increases will actually reduce the deficit. Not only will your proposal have a very small stimulative effect, it will undoubtedly explode the deficit to levels taht would even make George Bush blush.

    ReplyDelete