Budget up to $1.7T in one month
This is reckless spending.
I hope everyone in America realizes Obama forced us to ask our unborn for a huge loan, and we’re getting it.
The tax plan is also the antithesis of a stimulus, siphoning monies from the very people who power industries. They are, of course, the rich. The ones who buy yachts, sports cars, housing additions, etc.
Also, business taxes are going up, which ALWAYS results in layoffs, which is lost jobs. Sorta the reverse of adding jobs.
Quick math quiz: You pass a bill creating 3M transient jobs. You then tax the crap out of people who consume goods and the businesses that sign the paychecks for everyone else. People lose jobs. How much stimulus have you created?
Question two: When unemployment is below 10%, how do you create 3M jobs when your total population is a shade higher than 300M? Have you really made any dent in anything? Show your work.
Chris said,
February 26, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Alright, I’ll bite.
Answer 1: The only tax increases in the ARRA are for Americans making more than $250,000 annually (less than 2% of the total population). Those are not the people looking for jobs, I’m afraid. Also, the bill contains 23.8 billion in corporate tax breaks (one of the compromises for its passage, in fact) and numerous tax breaks for small businesses. End result = stimulus.
Answer 2: Perhaps it is you who should show your work – according to the BLS, America has lost 4.1 million jobs over the last twelve months. Obama wants 3 million back. Simple arithmetic.
regulusred said,
February 27, 2009 at 2:53 pm
As for answer one, you are making a very dangerous assumption that raising taxes will not affect taxpayer behavior, even in the 2% of the nation demographic. I can promise that the rich are mostly so due to extremely hard work and very grave sacrifices during their earlier lives. That said, one thing they fear above most else is losing the edge they carved out for themselves. You’ll see a huge dip in consumer spending if and when they feel threatened, and raising taxes on ONLY them is pretty threatening. Just watch.
As for answer two, you caught me. I was going to make a different point but I had a number incorrect. I noticed after I finished and was out of time to fix/remove it, so it was a pretty weak question that I left in.
A better question would be, what is the idea behind making temporary jobs, and what happens when the federal money dries up? There are two possibilities I see.
1) The jobs switch to state funding and force higher taxes to maintain them as a new permanent spending program. More taxes. Yay.
2) The jobs are gone, and we’re back where we started
If the idea is to hide what would be unemployed people in public works jobs (assuming they have the skills in the first place) until the economy is better, then I can only attack the idea itself and not its logic, but somehow I doubt that’s how you see it.