9/11: Sen Schumer (D-NY) "I think if you ask the average middle-class American, they would clearly say we are in a recession."
9/11: Sen Stabenow(D-MI) "...we are absolutely in a recession."
9/11: Sen Casey(D-PA) "...we have been in a recession."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,421301,00.html
link2
The Bureau of Economic Analysis says the economy is in positive growth.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Current Numbers:
- 2nd quarter 2008: +3.3 percent
- 1st quarter 2008: +0.9 percent
Posts
16 comments:
I guess some people just don't know what else to call needing to decide between buying milk for their kids and buying a gallon of gas to get to work.
That sounds like the person is poor. But it doesn't help by frightening people into believing a recession is here or coming. They will spend less to save for the future, which will cause people to lose jobs. Kind of a self-fulling prophecy.
You can't spend what you don't have. And you can't save it either.
When you have people in power who have NEVER had to worry about the cost of anything how can they relate to people who have to worry about the cost of just keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table.
The poor always have a problem. But it is made worse when they lose their jobs. Conditions can be made worse if the people believe that future conditions will be worse. It does not help when politicians hurt the economy for their own political gain.
I am not sure how being able to relate changes the economic picture.
Let me put this into a simple example. Think of the tax payers as a hard working husband and the people in power as a never has worked wife who spends more than the husband makes. She can not relate to how hard he works so she doesn't care how much she spends. He goes without lunch and she eats prime rib.
If your housewife is Senator Schumer, who doesn't understand that shouting "recession" is not going to help the economy, then I agree.
The technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth..the problem is the Bush Republican controlled government has obscured the economic reporting so much over the last few years we will never know the true state of the economy, Bush eliminated the publishing of M3, measuring the money supply, to hide the extent of our debt and dollar weakening and has put industrial and financial cronies direct from big oil, k street and wall street to direct and manage our tax payer funded watchdog federal dept's like the SEC, FCC etc so they won't do what they're mandated to do, the people fund these watchdog with their tax dollars and Republicans put at the head of these departments ex-CEO's etc... the foxes guarding the henhouse .... thus the corporate press won't be able, even if it wanted to, to verify the true origins of distressing economic news and certainely not until after the fact, so if wall street crashes we the people won't know until after the fact unless you watch independent programs like Democracy Now to stay ahead of the game.
Over the last 7 years Republicans in power with the complicity of right wing Democrats have orchestrated a big huge coverup of the true state of the American economy. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that spending 12 billion a month on invading a country for oil, only to see oil prices go up, is not helping the American people.
The trillions in tax payer funded bailouts for banks and wall street is not helping our economy grow either. Sending all our manufacturing to slave labor China is only helping the rich get richer in America and is destroying the middle class, the essence of any economy.
America is living on borrowed time to the tune of at least 8 trillion , and growing fast, in added debt from the Bush administration, this is not calculated into the growth rates, as it should be to get realistic picture of the economy, so the corporate media can translate the facts into an easy digestable format for the average Joe sixpack Nascar Republican.
As long as the corporate media do not do their job, the Republicans will remain in power... as long as the Republicans remain in power America will continue to decline economically and morally... its so obvious, so easy to see, especially since Bush, yet the latest polls show the majority of people are still going to vote McCain????
If Americans vote McCain the Economy will tank, the Republicans in power will then demand emergency measures, obliterating any civil rights we have left, turning America into a fascist police state, immigrants, liberals and gays will be rounded up as terrorists... real terrorists will probably attack another Republican ruled America, and they can, with all those loose nukes floating around, and a Republican America would most probably retaliate with a nuclear strike somewhere anywhere, though not even remotely connected to the true terrorists... setting the gears in motion for all out nuclear war.
I'm not the only one saying this by the way....the following is a recent quote from former Republican, Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was also Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions."
he said recently
"If you desire to be poor, oppressed, and eventually vaporized in a nuclear war, vote Republican."
By the way it is impossible to survive a nuclear war but it is possible to survive a terrorist nuclear attack...watch the following to find out how. If McCain wins you will probably need to know this.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/irwin_redlener_warns_of_nuclear_terrorism.html
Well, if you truly believe debt is a problem, then you would have to vote for McCain. McCain promises to veto earmarks, Obama promises tax cuts for 90% of families and trillions in extra spending. Unlike the war funding, which we all hope will end soon, Obama's spending will last forever.
Where is your common sense Joe? Obama cutting taxes to 95% of the population will stimulate the economy much more than cutting taxes for the top 1% as Bush has done. Cutting taxes always stimulates the economy, the only difference is, cutting taxes for the middle class stimulates the economy much faster and stronger than cutting taxes for the rich only, like Bush did.
Ideally we could cut or eliminate taxes for everyone like Ron Paul wants but somebody has to pay for the fire depts and police depts and social security, free education for our kids, healtcare, the FDA, EPA, FCC...the Justice system and the trash collection etc...so unfortunately we have to tax someone if we want all those things for everyone. The rich just want those things for the rich and screw the other 95% of the population, like it was in South America for a long time when it was ruled by dictators...or Europe when it was ruled by Kings and Queens....
Debt is not a problem because of earmarks, earmarks make up less than 1% of our debt, our debt is 99% caused by war spending and the privatization of formerly government regulated banking and financial institutions as well as enormous tax cuts for the very rich and interest on the debt.
Earmarks are a waste of money sure but not all the time, sometimes they're useful and help the taxpayer more than hurt the taxpayer it depends on the earmark...yet next to war spending and corruption in the financial sectors, the rich not paying taxes like before and debt interest, earmarks are a negligiable contribution to the debt.
So voting for McCain is like voting for King Bush again and we will surely witness our country spin into a severe depression...Obama can perhaps pull us out, but it might even be too late for even Obama...McCain will only worsen things further that's a certainty, he will quicken the perhaps inevitable.
First, 40% of the people do not pay any income tax. And through the earned income tax credit, some do not even pay social security tax. Therefore, 35% of the people will be getting what we used to call welfare, or you can use the term "stimulus". Bush cut tax rate for everyone, since the rich pay more proportional (up from 35% to 40% of total income taxes paid under Bush), they would receive more of the actual money.
Second, to say the rich just want those for rich, is just ignorant of past and current history. Many of the public libraries, schools, museums where started by the rich. Today, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have given mass amount to charities. Other wealthy believe that the best way to help people is to create jobs and invest their wealth accordingly.
Third, earmarks are a problem because they go through no check or balances. They don't go through any committee to see whether they worthwhile to the nation, not just helping a Senator or Congressman being re-elected.
"Today, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have given mass amount to charities"
Tax write offs?
Yes, they do get tax-write offs, but even at today rates, if they were only interested in money, they would be better off without the tax-write off and kept what is left over.
What they do get is the ability to control what their money is used for. They can direct to AIDS, schools, etc. We, however, are at the mercy of our representatives in Congress.
Personally, I think we would all be better off if we eliminated all charity deductions.
First of all I can't believe 40% of working Americans don't pay taxes, where did you get that figure? If you count the 10% of Americans who are in prison in that 40%, plus children under 18 and grad students under 25, plus non-income earning housewives, homeless vets and the homeless in general, plus illegal immigrants, plus those out of work for more than a year, etc....ok you can easily get that 40% of the population does not pay any taxes.
However, even people making only minimum wage with steady full time employment pay taxes...the poor do pay taxes. If you live in a house you pay property taxes, if you rent you pay insurance taxes, if you buy food or clothes or medicine for your children or gas for your car you pay sales tax and inflation (a hidden tax). If you borrow money to get by you pay bank taxes called interest....if you look at all the hidden taxes the poor pay a far higher percentage of their income in tax than the rich, and if you only look at federal income tax don't tell me full time workers at minimum wage aren't paying any income tax at all! If we stop taxing the poor and middle classes and only tax the very rich the American economy will boom, entrepreneurs come from the middle class, many are poor to beging with and start with nothing, taxing the rich will not do anything to hinder economic growth, taxing the poor does.
I disagree with you that charity should not be tax deductible as long as it is efficiently regulated, I'm sure there's a lot of charity fraud...yet people like Bill Gates have earned the right to give their money to the causes they believe in and it should be tax deductable if in accordance with the majority of the collective community. Furthermore only income is taxed not accumulated wealth...we've got it all backwards we should be taxing heavily accumulated wealth exceeding say 15 million dollars and leave income alone for everyone making less than say 250K like Obama wants. For income above 250K keep taxes low yet tax accumulated wealth. That's fair because most people who have accumulated large amounts of wealth have done it by exploiting natural resources belonging to everyone or exploiting human labor.
So I'm curious common sense Joe how you came up with those statistics and how they break down!
Further you say we are at the mercy of our congress persons...well we elected them, its our own fault, if we elected more liberals and fewer sycophants to the robber barons then we wouldn't be in this mess... and if we elect the wrong people because of the corporate media than let's make corporate owned media illegal. All media should be independent paid for by tax dollars, now that's a good use of tax dollars.
http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6
The data is a little hard to find, but for the latest year available, 2005, the bottom 50% paid 2.99% (versus 3.91% in 2000) of the income tax.
The top 1% pay, 39.89%, up from 37.42% in 2000. The top 2%-5% pay 20.25% of the income taxes, top 6-10%, pay 10.65%, 11-25% pay 15.48 %, 26-50% pay 10.74% of the income taxes.
So the bottom 50% of filers paid 2.99% taxes. Since not all people who earn income have to file, and those like prisoners don't file, it is hard to estimate total population not paying income taxes. I heard the figure on television, but given the above information, I would guess that the number is close to being accurate.
I specifically mention income taxes, not property or sales taxes, something the federal government has nothing to do with.
Again data and statistics not clear, we don't know who pays what and how many...i.e., we don't know how many Americans have wealth exceeding 100 million and how much they paid in taxes since the Bush tax cuts, what percentage of their wealth was that, how that wealth was obtained, same goes for income...how much did people pay in taxes as percentage of income of say over 100 million per year. That information is not available by the IRS, and where does the tax money go...some estimate that more than 50% goes directly or indirectly to the military and war, more than 50%!!! When true costs like the war debts and future interest costs are added in... The bigger problem is not who pays taxes but how we spend that tax money! It looks like the lion's share of future taxes will go to paying off war debt.
Well, here is one breakdown of the federal budget.
http://www.cbpp.org/4-10-07tax2.htm
Again, the point is the rich are paying more under Bush because of his tax cuts.
Post a Comment