According to who you listen to, the first week of the Trump Presidency has been the greatest week in American governance or the beginning of the dismantling of American values.
There have been too many declarations and Executive Orders to cover in one short commentary, so I will focus on just one.
Paul Ryan stated that now the Republicans have the Presidency, the House and the Senate they can begin to simplify the tax code. This sounds like a great move, because we all feel that tax preparation is too difficult.
But the devil is often in the details. To Republicans, ‘simplification of the tax code’ means drastically lowering corporate taxes, taxes on investment income and taxes on the mega-wealthy.
In order to pay for these tax cuts, the Republicans will cut discretionary spending.
‘Discretionary spending’ is the covert phrase for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government subsidized health care (The Affordable Care Act.) There is a Republican proposal now to increase the Social Security retirement age to 70 and to cut benefits in existing Social Security and Medicare payments.
But, if you live in the Fox alternative news world you will not worry about simplification of the tax code; because the alternative issues are women who enjoy killing their unborn children, gays destroying family values and Democrats who wish to take away your guns and your freedom.
Wm Gilliland
Farmington
You know,,,,,,
I give it an honest try to be…..honest.
I try not to swallow “anything” hook line and sinker.
I try to seek the truth.
This little letter to the editor makes me feel “SUPERIOR”…lol
Is this guy being serious??
I agree the Fox news is slanted.
If this guy or anyone else honestly thinks the “other” news isn’t slanted also….
I cannot imagine a more naïve letter to the editor than this one.
Lot of this hysteria going on these days.
Grow up.
I totally agree with that niave opinion!
Give the new administration a chance.
There isn’t much they can do that would make things any worse than Obama!
God has given America another chance … let’s not botch it!
CORRECTION … I totally DISAGREE with that naïve opinion.
Yup, my facts are factier than your facts. lol
Tax cuts, AKA trickle down economics, didn’t work for Reagan or Bush. They drove the deficit sky high: check your facts, the real ones. Clinton left office with a surplus, which was quickly wasted by Bush and the tax cuts given to the wealthy. All they did was concentrate the wealth at the top. Think about it: when, or if, the average guy gets a tax cut, what does he/she do? Spend it. What does the wealthy person do? They certainly don’t create jobs or spend it, that’s why they have all that money! They hang on to it instead of investing or creating jobs. Obama may not have been perfect, but he certainly cleaned up the mess that Bush and his cronies created. Unemployment when Bush left office compared to what it is today? Way down, a result of a gradual recovery, not a rapid one that’s not sustainable. If tax cuts (which means cuts for the wealthy, not you or me) didn’t work the last two times, what makes you think they will work this time?
http://www.polidiotic.com/by-the-numbers/us-national-debt-by-year/
First of all let’s get this clear, I have tried my best following the advice of a health and spiritual guru I heard at a college speaking engagement years ago. From what I can remember he stated something like this, “…news is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release of growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. High glucocorticoid levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth (cell, hair, bone), nervousness and susceptibility to infections. The other potential side-effects include fear, aggression, tunnel-vision and desensitization…” Unfortunately, with the expanding media/internet and the increasingly ability of devices to have pop-up news clips, etc., it’s almost impossible to avoid all versions of any given story and just to be able to make an educated choice between what is fake and what might be accurate is very frustrating. Not to mention the low informed parroting the fake news through their foolish opinions and comments not just on this rag but across the world of media.
What I can say about this “open letter” is that it just re-affirmed what I just stated above. The panic cry of either party as to hurting the poor by cutting taxes for the rich is one of the oldest panic cries of all times. Without getting into a long economic theory article, simple math will demonstrate that this battle cry from the left is no only irrelevant but not even close to factual. The fact is that the top 1% getting any tax break will not affect any working class or poor person’s wealth. However, by allowing the wealthy to have more business relief from the tax code will help the working class by making it more economical and feasible to either expand their businesses or hire more workers, etc. Which actually is a win win for both sides.
Nuff Said…
Wm. Gilliland: (also MoveOn) Many of us believe as you do.
“Most Americans don’t have any stocks to their name. In fact, many Americans don’t even have any savings to their name. Those 25 to 34 have a median amount saved for retirement in the sum of zero dollars.”
http://www.mybudget360.com/stock-market-sham-most-americans-own-no-stocks-who-owns-us-wealth/
The situation above hasn’t changed (much) although this article is a couple of years old.
“allowing the wealthy to have more business relief from the tax code will help the working class by making it more economical and feasible to either expand their businesses or hire more workers, etc. Which actually is a win win for both sides.”
Dream on!
Expanding businesses and/or hiring more workers has enhanced/more profits as its core/basic motivation and without an accompanying enhanced something approaching a living wage is hardly a win win
From the administration that brought the “Bowling Green Massacre” ? And has given so many out of work bankers new jobs, to help make fair and equitable rules?
Look at todays interpretation of an EO: Financial Advisors will not have to act in the best interest of their clients? That sounds like another step in the right direction for Wall Street….How about Main Street?
How about the reversal of mining regs that will allow mining companies to basically excavate, dump and run? Clean water? Hold onto what you have, may be the last you can get!
Dreaming or are you a ¿dreamer? This article was not about minimum wage or a so called “living wage”. Economically not the best option and a liberal narrative that makes for good politics. Most non-partisan economists as well as even liberal Democrat business leaders, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, admit raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. Also, as I have stated previously on this subject, it’s not the responsibility of a business owner to provide a “living wage”.
Raise minimum wage too quickly?
1 Automation of Food service jobs will accelerate.
2. Growth rate of low skilled jobs will decline.
3. Higher skilled workers will now be attracted to “minimum wage jobs”.
4. Lower skilled worker will be “pushed out” when competing with higher skilled workers,
5. Greater Skilled jobs with higher pay will “piggy back” on higher minimum wages.
6. All wages rates will rise pushing inflation (currently at zero) to 2-4 percent?
7. Higher inflation will help “people of greater wealth” to “buy down” debt levels (home mortgages) thereby actually accentuating the income and wealth differences.
Anyway, No one is holding guns to these peoples heads and making them apply for and accept minimum wage paying jobs? We’re they told when they applied that the cashier job at McDonald’s paid 35k a year, and then we’re horrified to find out it only pays $7 hr once they got their first check? Nobody is forced to take any job. No wage or pay rate is set in stone. It’s negotiable. You trade your education and experience and skill set for various forms of compensation (health, stock options, 401k, vacation pay, and hourly wages. All negotiable. But it’s disingenuous for these employees to accept these jobs knowing that they pay minimum wage, then complain that they pay minimum wage. If they want a higher wage, negotiate with the employer for that wage when you’re applying. Or take their college degree or skilled trades abilities and experience and apply for a job that pays more than minimum wage. No skills or education and people are expecting the employer to match their pay rate to their cost of living? Or use the government to force the employer to pay more for unskilled labor than its worth to the company. Preposterous! When I get to work today, I’m going to tell my boss that I live in harbor view condo here in downtown Boston, and I have a brand new BMW.. He’s gonna have to match my salary to my cost of living, or my “living wage”…Right, I’m not holding my breath!
Nuff Sad…
Oh….and to keep it local…let’s see, a lumber inspector or equipment operator makes about $15 per hour on average. And to get there, they had to put in long and hard hours, even years in some cases, some minimum education and trade certificates, literally blood, sweat and tears to get there. And yet, a burger joint burger flipper nowadays wants a minimum of $15 an hour to start, and or a minimum “living wage”.
Is that fair? And or does the logger/inspector also get an equivalent raise to adjust for the difference between a non-skilled worker at $15 vs his or her base averaged $15, to say, $30-$35 per hour? Businesses and employers will absorb the increase by cutting their workforces, delaying hiring, cutting pay increases or raising prices. Hardest hit will be the young and the old, who are more likely to take part-time jobs to save for school or augment retirement income.
Again, bad economics, good political narrative.
Nuff Said…
JL Keeping it local…nothing wrong with wanting $15 an hour as a food service worker. Is anyone paying that? Local? Anyone demonstrating locally for $15/hr?
What reality should we use? Local? Portland? Boston? San Francisco?
Wages very tremendously by location, as do living expenses, right? …$ 9.00 makes a big difference when you were at $7.75…..
like your thinking JL
If an employer has to raise wages, with no increase in productivity, they have to raise prices or lose money. If all unskilled people get wages, all skilled labor/professionals will want raises to reflect their higher value vs unskilled workers. The dollar is devalued because of pay rates going up with no increased productivity, so vendors raise their prices to compensate for the devalued dollars they receive and higher wages they have to pay. Foreign countries raise their export prices for goods we import to reflect the devalued dollar. Net result? Back to status quo, but with devalued money and decrease in value of pensions and retirement plans that don’t have COLA, and all savings and investments, directly hurting people on FIXED INCOMES most! If you think the people advocating large minimum wage increases don’t KNOW this, you’re WRONG! It ultimately does no-one any GOOD, and does people on fixed incomes HARM!
Right on, Mr. Gilliland. Trump may have gotten elected by championing the underserved working man, but his cabinet – a gang of billionaire’s, Wall Street cronies, and representatives of mega business – suggests his true interests lie elsewhere. It’s awfully hard to believe that cutting taxes to wealthy corporations who pay their CEO’s 10 or 15 million a year is going to help the middle class or improve education for America’s children.
The tax code does need to be simplified, but the wealthy pay the least taxes in the US than anywhere in the industrialized world, and tax cuts are a poor stimulus for the economy. Tax cuts, in fact, were what helped fuel the housing bubble as wealthy folk seek investments to make their money grow. In the past that used to often be investing in the economy (hence a tax cut in the early sixties led to more revenues), but in the era of globalization the money is likely to be invested off shore, or too often go into speculative bubbles.
The gap between the wealthy and the poor has grown consistently since 1980 under Democrats and Republicans. The tax rate on the wealthy has fallen dramatically. Moreover, 1981 was the year the national debt started to grow. It had fallen from 120% of GDP in 1945 to 30% of GDP by 1980. By 1990 it was back to 60% of GDP – the 80s was a decade built on debt. Worse, the public was as bad as the government. Total debt from all was relatively steady at around 110% of GDP until 1980. It started climbing and hit 375% of GDP before the recession hit (now it’s about 350%). We have an economy built on massive debt. It’s a structural problem that began with poor economic choices in the early eighties. Both parties share blame. I don’t know how to fix it, but more tax cuts for the wealthy doesn’t make sense. Tax simplification and closing loopholes those with access to lobbyists had written into the code would help, but I don’t get the sense either party has pushed that direction.
The fix is to stop spending money we don’t have.
Whoa! Teacher…not your best diss on a fellow commenter, but a slick writ and quite disingenuous and slightly misleading…facts and figures allows for the appearance of validity, especially like others here that just paste multiple links but never offer a genuine opinion, just parroting the narrative. It would take quite a bit of characters to fully expose the faulty premise, however, I will keep it short and simple (KISS).
Numero Uno, I did not suggest that the relief for the “rich” in the form of easing of the tax code for business owners and the wealthy was a sole correction for our economy or in any way the route to prosperity or suggested that this was a form of stimulus. However, the prior Pres., did believe that giving away “the people’s money” was going to “stimulate” the economy? Very distinctly different than my suggestion and the current ruling class view, that suggests ways for the “wealthy business owners” invest their own resources and both human capital to grow and expand wealth.
Numero Dos, your “housing bubble theory ” is quite different than what I remember experiencing or literally saw appear before my eyes in economics class. It was in fact largely due to a multitude of factors that expanded exponentially. These are the same reasons today as they were back starting more recently (2004 -2005 and through to this administration), why the “government ” needs to back off and keep its hands out of the cookie jar and not attempt to “materially ” be involved in the market and take over in direct control and fiddle with the science of economics by using political correctness and political science In attempting to fix the economy.
Numero Tres, the housing market values increased at an incredible rate artificially induced or infused by the remarkable ignorance of allow or “forced ” lending to otherwise high risk borrowers and bad debts. And yes, those with real money did capitalize of the abnormally, or anomaly to the normal economic process. I think you called it investments, I rather call it speculation with the added high risk. Many pundits argue today that hind sight is 20/20, but those that were not ruled by the ruling class during this episode in American economics, were not able to fully predict the final outcome, but we knew it was not good what was happening, in fact I recall the term “the American economy was overheating ” was getting tossed around in class. No one called it the “housing bubble”. In fact, there was a housing construction boom leading into this episode and actually continued for a while before it to was over come it’s the explosion of the “housing bubble ” This occurred because under the normalization of economic theory, a thriving housing construction market is a very good indicator of a good and prosperous economy. But because we had an artificial “stimulus ” courtesy of the ruling party, many were fooled again and again.
Lastly, to add to another post, what we had in the previous administration and its “PC economics” as they say, what we have here, is a “spending problem” and a “distribution problem ” not a revenue problem.
Nuff Said…
The housing bubble was not caused by forced lending by any stretch of the imagination. It was caused by too little government regulation and greed on Wall Street. Here’s what happened – the Clinton Administration fought off an effort to regulate derivative bonds (bonds that derive their value from something else). It was a totally free market. The big banks then packaged mortgages into bonds, with the idea that they were very safe because there was only a 2% default rate on mortgages. The bonds got rated AAA, so they were seen as safe. Wall Street made massive amounts of money. They didn’t want the cash cow to end so they increased demand for mortgages. Mortgage brokers stopped even caring if people could repay – they had no risk since the big banks would buy any mortgage they’d arrange. There were NIJA loans (no-income no-job), bizarre arrangements to pay only interest for a short time with the idea you could refinance to a better loan once the value of the house went up. All of this led to a speculative bubble for real estate. The bonds that didn’t sell could be repackaged as CDOs, synthetic CDOs (those were the CDOs that didn’t sell), and Wall Street made money, and as long as housing prices rose, the lack of concern for whether the people could pay back was irrelevant. People also used their property like an ATM, refinancing to get cash for the higher value. Derivative bonds were $83 trillion of investment in 2003, went to over $500 trillion before the crash. They were the toxic bonds that brought down the housing market.
Nobody pressured the banks to buy mortgages, they did so in order to create more money making bonds – all rated AAA because the ratings agencies wanted the business of the big banks. A lot has been written about this, but the most accessible is Michael Lewis’ “The Big Short” (the movie made about the book is pretty good too). Those who say it was the government pressuring banks to lend to the poor are objectively wrong, that was not even remotely the cause of the housing bubble. It was too little government regulation, not too much that was the problem here.
It was greed. You think it was possible that ” too little regulation ” was by design? Naw, that could never happen.
I did ask to KISS, and after I hit the send key earlier, (I swear)…I had a feeling that the “Movie-source/book” was going to come up! However, as noted, I had mentioned that the crash was due to a multitude of factors and largely due to the government’s “influence “-“mandated” or whatever you prefer, as to appear that it’s not regulating. But in fact, it still forced the deterioration of mortgage underwriting standards, is by defacto “regulating”…I also mentioned that it’s effects was building up and “overheating the economy ” due to poor policy making from the left in order to make homeownership more accessible to more people. This was clearly demonstrated by the increasing homeownership,(mortgage originations increased from low 30s to almost 70% ). This activity also greased the artificial growing property values only to be normalized by the negative effect in the increasing “speculative market increase”. However, you dismissed my position and offered alternative facts. Even though I somewhat agreed with your reference data (not dismissing the numbers)…the policies and drive from the left during those years were perhaps a worthwhile goal (politically speaking) and charitable in nature (appearances mean everything to the left), it caused the financial crisis when it was done, in effect lowering the underwriting standards. Basically, this episode became a huuuugh policy /political error by the congress and two presidential administrations. In fact, Barney Frank recognized and admitted his error in 2007. And as we all know and some experienced its effects in one way or another, (didn’t need a book or a movie to tell us that), Fannie and Freddie were just about to become insolvent and the housing market was so grossly bloated in sub-prime and low-quality mortgages that nothing could save it.
Nuff Said…
Oh…almost forgot, (and in some ways I have tried to forget that era) part of the building up I mentioned, if you insist in believing otherwise, as to the forced effect from the government, let’s not forget the demands of activists from the likes of “ACORN” for one, and even our former Pres., also sued the banks for easing of underwriting standards in order to make homeownership more accessible to people with weaker credit ratings.
Nuff Said…
JL, when the crash hit I became obsessed with finding out exactly what happened. While Lewis’ book is excellent, there are numerous others I could list (All the Devils are Here by Nocera and McLean was my favorite – not as entertaining as Lewis, but very detailed, and it addressed the issues of Fannie and Freddie). But nobody was mandating all the bad loans made, they were made by brokers who knew they had no risk – they would pass the mortgages on to the big banks who just wanted to fill bonds. They thought they had no risk because the bondholders would assume the risk. The bond holders thought that since the bonds were AAA, they had no risk. When everyone thinks there is no risk, there is systemic risk.
In 2007 this was mostly hidden, Frank could not have known the toxicity in the bond market at that time, and how all lending standards had vanished in the private sector (indeed Fannie Mae was avoided because its standards were too strict). Alan Greenspan did later say (I think in 2010) that he had made an error in his world view, he said he had believed that “markets get it right,” and he learned that was wrong. Easing standards for the poor may or may not be a good idea, but if that was the problem it would never have caused such a bubble or crash. That was the derivative bond market, in particular mortgage backed securities, CDOs, and the wild financial instruments created by the banks. I do NOT want to be partisan about this – Democrats and Republicans share a lot of blame, to me it’s more about learning how capitalism requires rational regulation in order to function. Markets on their own do not do the trick. Markets did eventually force reality to be recognized, but only at a very high social and economic cost! If you have time, you might want to find the Frontline episode “The Warning,” showing how CFTC head Brooksley Born tried in the 90s to argue that the derivative market was dangerous and there should be minimal regulations. She was stopped by Wall Street, the Republican Congress, and the Clinton White House. I think the episode aired in 2009 or 2010, but it’s worth a watch (PBN keeps the Frontline series available to stream).
Ok…I think we have killed this one or “beat it to death ” …but in all seriousness, you do make valid points, what you mentioned did occur, it’s not denying that the crash occurred, but what led to it is not simple. Let me put it this way, I do agree that the market needs a level of oversight, but not steered and then let loose. I am aware of the books and even the movie, and went as far as teased myself as to whether or not to watch it recently as it became available on Netflix for free, for it’s entertainment value but didn’t see after all. I just didn’t get absorbed or absessed in finding out as you did and many have tried and argued across all networks for years and even recently.
Nuff Said…
OK, sounds good – we agree on enough, yet have some different perspectives. The movie is pretty well done. They have some comedy bits that makes the complexity of the subject matter a little easier to understand. It is entertaining and has a good cast.
To me the real problem lies elsewhere. I am not a Trump Supporter. But again I am trying on s daily baisis to be open minded that he is my president. as I watch everything I believe in being torn apart …literally, spiritually, socially, politically…I watch as the value of human life take the personal twists of those in power. I am saddened and discouraged with my country. But I keep waiting for any sign that this administration is at all interested in the other half of us. Any sign that they are trying to unify the country to work together. But instead it seems to be the tactics to keep us fighting and apart. When I see that this administration accepts me as its American…I will follow suit and accept him as my President.
Here’s a link to the Frontline episode, “The Warning”. It’s a fascinating story, both of a remarkable person, and also how fraud can be perpetrated upon consumers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2meePSZ69eY