Obamer's job billFollow

Kentucky to Ohio is now "nowhere."

Sounds about right.

I'm baffled as to why gbaji thinks tax cuts to small business would be bad.

I'm baffled as to why you seem to think that's all that's in this bill. What part of me saying earlier that there are some good things in here but sufficient poison pills to make the GOP oppose it did you not get? There's just enough of that stuff so that if/when the GOP opposes it the Dems can jump up and down (as many libs on this forum are doing) and declare that "The GOP opposes tax cuts for small businesses and veterans!!!!", when it's really about the GOP opposing all the other wasteful and ill defined "stimulus" spending in the same bill.

Why not *just* do the tax cuts and incentives? If that's what you're holding the GOP to, then that must be the most important parts of this plan, right? But let me go out on a limb and suspect that if the GOP were to counter with a bill that had every single (real) tax cut in this proposal but which eliminated all of the spending, the Dems would still howl about it. And you'd be right there with them, parroting whatever talking points they choose to use.


It's pure politics. This plan has nothing to do with economic recovery or jobs.

Nah. There's a pretty easy way for the GOP to win, and they've got exactly the correct position and tools to do it. Remember, this is a jobs "plan". It's not yet a bill. Interestingly enough, Obama's staff doesn't appear to have even started working with any members of congress to write any actual legislation. So this is so far just the political equivalent of an idea sketched on the back of a napkin.

What the GOP should do is write the bill for the President. Make it sound like it hits all the points the President asked for, but do it "their way" so to speak. Then you effectively reverse the political aspect of this. You have to remember that much of the debate right now is over rhetoric. What is a "tax cut", what is a "small business", what is "infrastructure spending"? The GOP could use that to their advantage for a change and basically hoist Obama on his own petard. It would put the Dems in the position of having to oppose their own jobs plan.

Funny! We'll probably see some variation of this to be honest. The GOP will propose their version of the jobs plan, and the Dems will as well. Then much bickering will ensue. I suppose there's some slim chance that Obama comes out looking slightly better in all of that, but I still don't think it raises him above someone who's "clean" and coming in from outside (ie: pretty much any GOP presidential candidate).

I don't fault Obama for trying this though. It's pretty much the only shot he's got left.

You mean the ones who have to cater to the right wing loonies who call them selves the Tea Party. The GOP is sunk, mostly due to the reception of the Tea Party candidates lack of well anything in Congress. I personally don't like Obama either I think he has been a joke of a president (mostly because he is 90% fluff), you are fooling yourself if you think the collection of wannabes the GOP has assembled has any hope of winning next november. I doubt it will be as big a blow out as 08 was, but its still not going to be a contest.

At least people already know what they will get with Obama. Of course, thanks to the stagnant congress, (both sides are really to blame but since the dems lost control of congress/senate nothing Obama has played for has really come together.) his elaborate plans didn't really go anywhere.

I also think I said this before, but placing blame on Presidents is ******* stupid. Its not his fault the children in Congress can't play nice. Similar to the latter years of the Bush administration. Fix your damn Congress and overall your political system, I mean I love watching you and Joph toss your respective groups talking points around, quoting your biased news sources like its the end all be all of printed information.

Its pathetic your country is split in two, with venom being sprayed from both sides. Americans want Jobs, Obama has a half assed plan, and no one else does.

Your congress is crap, not your president.

The part where you claimed the tax cuts were a grand mixture of rewarding Democratic allies and punishing their enemies and those small business tax cuts just proved it because they're not for big business.

I'll happily admit that's not the only thing in the bill but you've still failed to make any convincing argument supporting your claim.


Heh.

Edited, Sep 12th 2011 5:41pm by Jophiel

Wow, are you going to marry that strawman? I mean, you've got yourself balls deep in it like a motherfucker. I hope you at least bought it dinner first.


Really? This is the game you need to play now? That desperate that soon?

Why do you suppose that is? Don't you think that being rich and being greedy, they wouldn't just sit on so much money? Wouldn't they want to use it to make more money for themselves? So why aren't they?



Ah. So you do understand why? It's because rich people invest their money in places where their investments are more likely to be lucrative. So isn't the obvious solution to make the USA a more lucrative place to invest? At the very least, shouldn't we entertain the possibility that doing things that make said investment less lucrative might just have something to do with those rich people not creating jobs?




Consumption really isn't the problem though. I know that lots of people keep saying it is, but that's a symptom of the problem, not the cause. It's kind of a chicken and egg issue, right? If you employ more people, they'll have more money and buy stuff, which allows the business community to continue employing them. But that only works if they're employed making stuff that other people are buying. I really can't stress this enough. It's why I keep harping about "productive jobs".

If you pay people to do stuff that you nor I want or are willing to pay for (the result, not the salary itself), then the job wont be self sustaining and we wont see economic recovery as a result of it existing. If those people are employed making stuff other people buy (for example), then there is much greater economic effect. Because not only do we get the economic effects of their income being spent in the economy, but we get the effect of their labor as something others can spend their incomes on.


I just keep trying to explain this concept on this board, and it feels like I'm just not getting it through. And the reason why the private sector is important is because private sector jobs (especially those unburdened by government subsidies and whatnot) are much much more likely to result in those "productive jobs" that we need than the public sector is.



Those aren't connected to each other though. Not directly. Are you aware that in the 2010 to early 2011 time frame consumption rates were pretty healthy? As a result of pumping money into the demand side of the economy for a couple years, we were artificially keeping consumption at decent levels. But as I (and most conservatives) predicted, once the money runs out, the effect disappears. It's not sustainable.

You need useful productivity to match consumption demand. And when this happens as a result of jobs being created in the free market, those two will tend to match each other nicely.



This is a much broader and longer term statement though. I'll point out again that very few people working for small businesses are what we'd call middle class. Focusing our efforts on creating jobs for the sake of being able to point to a number and say we've made things better just seems counter productive. This jobs bill will create some jobs. But most of the jobs it'll create are low income subsistence level jobs (except for the union jobs it'll create as well, but that's another subject).

They wont last. And they certainly wont help the middle class grow.



What is "private sector spending"? The private sector seeks to make a profit. It does this by hiring people to do things which produce a greater economic value than the cost of the labor itself. The net result is that people have jobs, the government gets some tax revenue, and the economy grows. It's not about how much money it "spends", and it's bizarre that you'd even use that phrase. It suggests you really have no clue what the role of the private sector is and are treating everything through the lens of public spending.


That's *not* normal. The idea that you should spend money to create jobs is not normal. Jobs should make money, not cost it.

Nothing?



Edited, Sep 12th 2011 9:34pm by Jophiel

Social responsibility for conservatives is giving a $10 box of canned goods to a Thanksgiving drive.