tagged w/ Economic Stimulus
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How did Australia do it? Did they cut government programs? Were there huge public sector layoffs? Did they give the super-rich insane tax breaks?
http://veracitystew.com/?p=35407How did Australia do it? Did they cut government programs? Were there huge public... more
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Here’s a simple chart that shows how awfully Mr. Romney’s current rhetoric contradicts his record...
http://veracitystew.com/?p=35022Here’s a simple chart that shows how awfully Mr. Romney’s current rhetoric... more
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WATCH: Herman Cain proves once again that he's nuttier than a PayDay candy bar...
http://veracitystew.com/?p=32683WATCH: Herman Cain proves once again that he's nuttier than a PayDay candy bar...... more
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WATCH: The description for the video includes the claim that “the goldfish is fine.” But we don’t see how that’s possible when the fish is filmed struggling for its last breath as the mean little girl throws thick muddy water on it.
http://veracitystew.com/?p=31618WATCH: The description for the video includes the claim that “the goldfish is... more
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President Obama presented his plan yesterday before a joint session of congress to get America back to work. The ambitious plan comprises a combination of tax cuts and stimulus spending while asking (once again) that the highest income earners share the burden — a notion that the TeaPublicans continue to resist. - http://veracitystew.com/2011/09/09/recap-whats-in-the-american-jobs-act/President Obama presented his plan yesterday before a joint session of congress to get... more
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By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger
One year after President Barack Obama secured passage of his critical economic stimulus package, the U.S. Senate is finally taking anther look at how to create jobs and repair the economy. These issues are more important than ever, but absurd Republican obstructionism and timid Democratic negotiation are once again threatening good public policy.
Not really bipartisan, is it?
As Steve Benen notes for The Washington Monthly, the Senate Finance Committee reached a “bipartisan” agreement to supposedly spur job creation last week. Republicans demanded billions in tax cuts for wealthy people, but kept on caterwauling about the federal budget deficit. In exchange for $80 billion to dedicate to jobs—an extremely modest figure given the state of the labor market—Republicans asked for hundreds of billions in giveaways for the rich. And that’s just to get the bill through the Finance Committee, much less the full Senate.
In a piece for Working In These Times, Michelle Chen notes that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled the plug on the Finance Committee “compromise,” but stripped out a critical extension of unemployment benefits for laid-off workers in the process.
The Republican uproar over such modest job figures is an economically preposterous political ploy, and Democratic cave-ins to their demands are both bad politics and bad economics. Chen notes that 70% of Americans support a $100 billion jobs bill. And we know what kinds of programs help spur employment—many of them were passed in the stimulus bill last year and have saved millions of jobs.
Stopping the Bleeding
In an interview with Christopher Hayes of The Nation, Economic Policy Institute Fellow Josh Bivens explains that Obama’s economic stimulus package has worked well, effectively stopping the job hemorrhaging that the economy was experiencing immediately before Obama took office. Here’s Bivens:
“We haven’t returned to growth on employment … but the rate of contraction has slowed radically. Immediately before the Recovery Act is passed, we’re losing on the order of 700,000 jobs per month … In the past three months, we’re now down to something like between 50 and 75,000 jobs lost per month, on average … it really is a stark before and after.”
Racial inequality and the recession
The trouble is, the stimulus was only big enough to prevent the economy from getting much worse. It was not large enough to return the economy to serious job growth. And the brutal effects of the recession are not being shouldered equally. As LinkTV’s collaboration with ColorLines illustrates (video below), the Great Recession is hitting people of color much harder, but the story of racial inequality is being lost in stories about statistical economic recovery in the financial sector. The special profiles several families of color struggling to make ends meet in the worst recession since the Great Depression, which features Depression-era unemployment rates for African Americans.
“What we don’t see on TV are the [people] who never had a home or a good job to lose in the first place. These are the millions of poor people whose chance to cross the line into middle class has always been cut short by another kind of line, the color line,” says host Chris Rabb, founder of Afro-Netizen.
Rabb, ColorLines and LinkTV describe a social safety net that has been shredded by opportunistic politicians. Instead of focusing on ways to guarantee good jobs, politicians since the Reagan era have demonized black single mothers by exploiting racist stereotypes in an effort to justify slashing federal supports for the poor and unemployed. The result is a fundamentally unstable economy. Our society has weak demand for goods and services in good times, and that demand completely falls apart when economic conditions deteriorate. And while these socially destructive initiatives have been described as “pro-business,” the truth is, businesses don’t like societies where millions of people are impoverished. They don’t have any customers.
Predatory lending strikes again
The recession hasn’t exactly been a picnic for the middle class, either. In an article for Mother Jones, Andy Kroll profiles the mortgage mess that Ocwen Loan Servicing created for borrower Deanna Walters. Unlike millions of other borrowers dealing with mortgage headaches, Walters wasn’t actually behind on her payments. She was making payments regularly, but Ocwen was misplacing them, and charging her thousands of dollars in improper fees. Walters even paid the fees, but Ocwen eventually foreclosed on her home and sold it in an auction without even informing Walters.
As Kroll emphasizes, Ocwen’s antics aren’t unique. There is an entire class of companies known as mortgage servicers that specialize in deceiving and bullying borrowers out of their money. They often use illegal tactics, and as I note for AlterNet, have been systematically exploiting a badly designed foreclosure relief program from the U.S. Treasury Department.
Funding projects that will put people to work
As prominent economist Dean Baker argues for The American Prospect, there are dozens of productive programs that would put millions of people back to work—if they could just get the funding. The government could quickly and easily provide money to improve public transportation, develop open-source software, fund objective clinical drug trials and (my favorite) support writers and artists, whose work would subsequently be available for the public to enjoy for free.
Taxing financial speculation
The federal government can afford these programs right now, especially without any additional tax revenue. But if we’re really worried about the budget deficit, we can always turn to reasonable new sources for taxes. As Sarah Anderson details for Yes!, an obvious place to look is financial speculation. Since excessive and risky trading helped bring down the economy in 2008, a tax discouraging this behavior could make the economy stronger and reap as much as $175 billion a year for the public.
Our economy wouldn’t face troubles of the same order as those it must overcome today if so-called conservatives had not spend decades pursuing a radical agenda to shred the social safety net. The stimulus package has not spurred job growth to date because of cuts demanded by Congressional Republicans, nearly all of whom refused to vote for the bill anyway. Our economy needs a jobs bill now. It’d be nice if Republicans would show some interest in governing, but if they continue to refuse, Democrats must act on their own.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger
One year after President Barack Obama... more
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Vice President Joe Biden is warning that if states don't use federal stimulus money as intended, the Obama administration may take the money back or mount a public campaign to embarrass them.Vice President Joe Biden is warning that if states don't use federal stimulus... more
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This is the Unfortunate truth about our Governments Plan and our Nations flaws:
Read on!
Dear Airbourne In-forums Readers,
The current global economy is quite concerning. Among many things going on in all of our lives, we have the growing concern that some of us may not have a job in the coming months. None of you are alone with that train of thought. Even the most experienced in his field suffers from stress filled sleepless nights [unless he is naïve to his actual value] that revolve around the very thought, that we are all expandable. I want to ensure all of my readers; you are by far, not alone.
[Read on at http://airbourneinforums.blogspot.com/2009/02/unfortunate-truth.html ]This is the Unfortunate truth about our Governments Plan and our Nations flaws:... more
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Finally something that we can all get behind: Don't pay your bills. It's not my idea, although it has appeal. It's the Fed's and it's the cornerstone of the new Homeownership Preservation Policy. To qualify for aid, the homeowner must be at least 60 days past due on his or her mortgage payments. (This program is for mortgages acquired from Bear Stearns and AIG rescues. Another program begun in December 2008 required that the homeowner be 90 days late.) At the same time, the mortgagee must be able to make a reduced monthly payment, therefore, must have some income, presumably a job. The having a job part might be tough; the missing two payments part, easy.Finally something that we can all get behind: Don't pay your bills. It's not... more
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The huge budget deficits are in contrast to the roughly $455 billion deficit recorded last year and do not account for an economic stimulus plan that Congress plans to consider over the next month, which could total $775 billion more over two years.
Congress also is also expected to be called on in the coming months to approve tens of billions of dollars in additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Economists have said that the burgeoning deficits are a result of a steep falloff in tax revenue as the global recession saps the economy as well as huge government outlays to prop up the financial industry and U.S. automakers.
This year's deficit also was worsened by an economic stimulus measure that Congress and President George W. Bush enacted a year ago that totaled $168 billion over two years.
The Bush administration, which began with large budget surpluses in 2001, has loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to help ailing financial institutions recover after they made risky real estate investments that went sour.
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Full article at link.
At a time where money seems more scarce than ever, the debt spiral keeps worsening.The huge budget deficits are in contrast to the roughly $455 billion deficit recorded... more
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islek
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added this
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3 years ago
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The second I read the headline about Obama's $300M in tax cuts, I knew Nobel-laureate Paul Krugman would be skeptical... Why is it that his arguments always make logical sense?
What he boils it down to is this:
"Other things equal, public investment is a much better way to provide economic stimulus than tax cuts, for two reasons. First, if the government spends money, that money is spent, helping support demand, whereas tax cuts may be largely saved. So public investment offers more bang for the buck. Second, public investment leaves something of value behind when the stimulus is over."
and
"$140 billion for Obama’s tax break for workers, which gives most workers $500. But it sounds as if the rest is mainly, perhaps almost entirely, tax cuts for business. Not very New Dealish."The second I read the headline about Obama's $300M in tax cuts, I knew... more
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As long as these cuts don't follow the Bush legacy of only benefiting the top 1%, I'm all for it.
Even the conservative IMF recently said that "tax cuts should be aimed at people likely to spend money rather than save it" and " tax cuts needed to concentrate on individuals who were having difficulty getting access to credit rather than those who were saving instead of spending." (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2008/1230/1230581468552.html)
Maybe the middle class will finally have their day!
I'd be lying if I didn't say that it makes me a bit uneasy that Republicans like Mitch McConnell are supporting the plan...
"WASHINGTON -- President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer about $300 billion of tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for an economic-stimulus package and prodding companies to create jobs.
The size of the proposed tax cuts -- which would account for about 40% of a stimulus package that could reach $775 billion over two years -- is greater than many on both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated. It may make it easier to win over Republicans who have stressed that any initiative should rely more heavily on tax cuts rather than spending.
The Obama tax-cut proposals, if enacted, could pack more punch in two years than either of President George W. Bush's tax cuts did in their first two years. Mr. Bush's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut of 2001, considered the largest in history, contained $174 billion of cuts during its first two full years, according to Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. The second-largest tax cut -- the 10-year, $350 billion package engineered by Mr. Bush in 2003 -- contained $231 billion in 2004 and 2005."
(Follow link to complete the article)As long as these cuts don't follow the Bush legacy of only benefiting the top 1%,... more
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