Friday, April 29, 2011

"The Path to Prosperity?: Bush Era Tax Cuts Give USA Slow Growth Despite Big Tax Breaks." Everyone,as John Adams once said, is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. Here Jeff Medrick, from The New York Review of Books blog site, shows how Congressman Paul Ryan's plans to cut taxes for those making or receiving the top two percent of national income is nothing a digital age version of 1920's style income inequality. Take it away, Jeff: "Since the bottom of the 2001 recession to the top of the expansion in 2007—before the credit crisis and Great Recession!—GDP discounted for inflation grew more slowly than during any expansion in post-World War II history. Job growth was even worse, way behind any expansion in the last 65 years. Below are the data, prepared by the Economic Cycle Research Institute." http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/apr/19/budget-fallacies-why-ryan-plan-wont-work/

12 comments:

  1. Actually, Ryan's plan WILL work - that's the scary thing. In brief, here's his plan:

    1. Take nearly 30,000,000 seniors and throw them all in the street by way of removing their only source of income

    2. Next, you remove their only means of medical care (along with that of a lot of other people).

    3. Cancel unemployment insurance (throwing another 7-15,000,000 people into the street).

    4. In three years, you'll have under 3% unemployment.

    (In retrospect, it's easy to see how - you've effectively eliminated a huge part of the American population. What I wonder is this: Why didn't he have the balls to suggest shooting people until we reached zero unemployment? That would work, also.)

    Doug - Paul Ryan is insane. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply hasn't looked at the facts.

    What the Economic Cycle Research Institute is really saying: Before Ryan's plan could reach full effect, we'd have a revolution. One of the nasty kinds, without polite talk and peaceful protests. Think of any West African shit-hole, complete with warlords and plenty, plenty guns....

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  2. Excellent, Will! It's so totally logical. Who can deny the logic in his plan?

    "Paul Ryan is insane." He sure as hell is. Considering that logic & humane have nothing to do with each other.

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  3. This war doesn't involve the use of military action. It doesn't involve the President making a formal declaration of war. This war is covert. Instead of guns fired by soldiers, it's bills passed by elected officials. Instead of bombs dropped from planes, it's bombs dropped from Corporate America. Instead of the invasion of another country, this war involves the invasion of people's paychecks and pensions.

    To understand this war, to truly grasp the scale of it, we need to look at the people who have declared war on the poor and middle class of this country.

    Ronald Reagan

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  4. There are lies, dam lies and statistics. The only people who did well were the wealthy!

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  5. Mike, very well said. War has been declared. The question is...what can we do now, anything short of Will's comment?

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  6. I am angry.

    I'm tired of pundits and know-nothing, media gasbags. I'm tired of snarky
    "inside politics" programming. I am sick of the bigotry and hatred by
    "birthers" and faux patriotic cranks and their GOP puppet masters. And I'm
    really pissed at the Democratic Party that confuses having a plate of limp
    noodles with having a spine.

    I'm going to vomit if I hear the word "bipartisanship" one more time.

    It was bipartisanship that gave us this activist, conservative Supreme
    Court, a Supreme Court that says money is free speech and corporations are
    persons except when real people try to hold them accountable for their greed
    and poisonous ways.
    more later....

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  7. This is one of the most well written, on point, have-a-total-grip comments that I have seen for some time. I, too, would appreciate seeing more from you.

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  8. Yes, it amazes me how Ryan was even elected--he's not a conservative nor is Rand Paul down in Kentucky . All you need is a little horse sense t ospiin this out and see where it's going, Will, and I agree its not pretty.

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  9. There seems an inescapable conclusion Mike. It seems impossible to me that politicans are still being elected who are even further right than Reagan. How did the housing bubble and the Wall Street investment banking crisis get spun into a 100 percent federal government fiasco? How does that happen? And yet a few people who are smart at what they do will tell me that to my face and over the phone without a hint of irony.

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  10. Well put Fred. Succinct and to the point.

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  11. I second that with a vengence!

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