Where Are the Wingnuts

[Hugh Conway]

Oh.... Jay_B's already beating off over the movie version of Atlas Shrugged.

 

amazing how many papers you can read and not leave junior high

[j_b]

Great ideas there. Apparently the "Grecian Formula" works for hair *and* economies!

 

tax increases on the wealthy and doing away with unnecessary tax cuts for corporations on the ballot in 2011 is the "Grecian Formula"? I don't see the connection.

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Great ideas there. Apparently the "Grecian Formula" works for hair *and* economies!

 

tax increases on the wealthy and doing away with unnecessary tax cuts for corporations on the ballot in 2011 is the "Grecian Formula"? I don't see the connection.

 

FAP FAP FAP

[j_b]

indeed, our village idiot eventually reverts to the monosyllabic state.

[prole]

The Austerity Delusion

By PAUL KRUGMAN

 

Portugal’s government has just fallen in a dispute over austerity proposals. Irish bond yields have topped 10 percent for the first time. And the British government has just marked its economic forecast down and its deficit forecast up.

 

What do these events have in common? They’re all evidence that slashing spending in the face of high unemployment is a mistake. Austerity advocates predicted that spending cuts would bring quick dividends in the form of rising confidence, and that there would be few, if any, adverse effects on growth and jobs; but they were wrong.

 

It’s too bad, then, that these days you’re not considered serious in Washington unless you profess allegiance to the same doctrine that’s failing so dismally in Europe.

 

It was not always thus. Two years ago, faced with soaring unemployment and large budget deficits — both the consequences of a severe financial crisis — most advanced-country leaders seemingly understood that the problems had to be tackled in sequence, with an immediate focus on creating jobs combined with a long-run strategy of deficit reduction.

 

Why not slash deficits immediately? Because tax increases and cuts in government spending would depress economies further, worsening unemployment. And cutting spending in a deeply depressed economy is largely self-defeating even in purely fiscal terms: any savings achieved at the front end are partly offset by lower revenue, as the economy shrinks.

 

So jobs now, deficits later was and is the right strategy. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that has been abandoned in the face of phantom risks and delusional hopes. On one side, we’re constantly told that if we don’t slash spending immediately we’ll end up just like Greece, unable to borrow except at exorbitant interest rates. On the other, we’re told not to worry about the impact of spending cuts on jobs because fiscal austerity will actually create jobs by raising confidence.

 

How’s that story working out so far?

 

Self-styled deficit hawks have been crying wolf over U.S. interest rates more or less continuously since the financial crisis began to ease, taking every uptick in rates as a sign that markets were turning on America. But the truth is that rates have fluctuated, not with debt fears, but with rising and falling hope for economic recovery. And with full recovery still seeming very distant, rates are lower now than they were two years ago.

 

But couldn’t America still end up like Greece? Yes, of course. If investors decide that we’re a banana republic whose politicians can’t or won’t come to grips with long-term problems, they will indeed stop buying our debt. But that’s not a prospect that hinges, one way or another, on whether we punish ourselves with short-run spending cuts.

 

Just ask the Irish, whose government — having taken on an unsustainable debt burden by trying to bail out runaway banks — tried to reassure markets by imposing savage austerity measures on ordinary citizens. The same people urging spending cuts on America cheered. “Ireland offers an admirable lesson in fiscal responsibility,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute, who said that the spending cuts had removed fears over Irish solvency and predicted rapid economic recovery.

 

That was in June 2009. Since then, the interest rate on Irish debt has doubled; Ireland’s unemployment rate now stands at 13.5 percent.

 

And then there’s the British experience. Like America, Britain is still perceived as solvent by financial markets, giving it room to pursue a strategy of jobs first, deficits later. But the government of Prime Minister David Cameron chose instead to move to immediate, unforced austerity, in the belief that private spending would more than make up for the government’s pullback. As I like to put it, the Cameron plan was based on belief that the confidence fairy would make everything all right.

 

But she hasn’t: British growth has stalled, and the government has marked up its deficit projections as a result.

 

Which brings me back to what passes for budget debate in Washington these days.

 

A serious fiscal plan for America would address the long-run drivers of spending, above all health care costs, and it would almost certainly include some kind of tax increase. But we’re not serious: any talk of using Medicare funds effectively is met with shrieks of “death panels,” and the official G.O.P. position — barely challenged by Democrats — appears to be that nobody should ever pay higher taxes. Instead, all the talk is about short-run spending cuts.

 

In short, we have a political climate in which self-styled deficit hawks want to punish the unemployed even as they oppose any action that would address our long-run budget problems. And here’s what we know from experience abroad: The confidence fairy won’t save us from the consequences of our folly.

[j_b]

Sorry, but Democrats and assorted 'liberals' have no time campaigning to put revenue increases on the ballot in 2011 given their total commitment to cutting the budget. Austerity is inevitable since nobody is campaigning for anything else [/snark]

[j_b]

Next time one of the sycophants for corporatism invokes official corporate tax rates, think about effective tax rate:

 

General Electric: King of the Tax Dodgers

by Chuck Collins

 

Congressional Republicans are about to cut the Tsunami Warning System from the National Weather Service budget. But if General Electric paid their fair share of taxes, we could reverse this and billions in additional budget cuts.

 

GE — best known for its light bulbs, refrigerators — and lately, its nuclear reactors — is one of the country's biggest tax dodgers.

 

Recent filings show that in 2010, General Electric reported global profits of $14.2 billion, claiming $5.1 billion from U.S. operations.

 

How much did it pay in U.S. corporate taxes? Zero. Actually, less than zero. We taxpayers paid G.E. $3.2 billion.

 

As David Kocieniewski reports in The New York Times, G.E. "has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than most multinational companies."

 

According to Citizens for Tax Justice, between 2006 and 2010, General Electric reported $26.3 billion in pretax profits to its shareholders but paid no U.S. taxes. In fact, they received $4.2 billion in refunds from Uncle Sam for an effective tax rate of negative 15.8 percent over these five years.

 

General Electric accomplishes this feat by using is political muscle in Congress and lobbying for special tax treatment and corporate welfare. It also aggressively moves is profits to offshore tax havens including Bermuda, Singapore, and Luxembourg.

 

While several divisions of GE have struggled over the last decade, GE's accountants think of themselves as a profit center. The company¹s 975-member tax division includes many former Treasury and IRS officials who never a met a loophole they didn¹t love.

 

[...]

 

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/25

[Off_White]

Prole, that was a good Krugman editorial, I read it earlier today and thought of this thread. The easy summary for those of you who won't read that many words: Budget cutting and austerity measures have been proven to fail at turning around unemployment, which in turn leads to continuing economic decline.

 

See: Portugal, Ireland, England.

[prole]

The story that Krugman isn't telling (but one you can read between the lines of Jay's posts) is that, rather than part of the problem, increasing unemployment is actually an important part of the structural adjustment process that austerity is intended to achieve. For neoliberals, (re)imposing labor discipline (i.e. lower wages, fewer rights, diminished expectations, etc.) is seen as key to restoring American competitiveness. "No pain, no gain" was the slogan for IMF-imposed structural adjustment programs that took place in the debt-plagued Third World that all those kooky anti-globalization activists were so hot about. Same here. A large (but hopefully depoliticized) pool of unemployed keep wage demands low and stripping collective bargaining rights prevents any uppidyness in the near and medium term. The theory goes that once living standards and wage demands are low enough again, employers will swoop back in to put li'l ol' us back to work on new terms. Fucking delightful, eh?

[glassgowkiss]

rhetorical saussage making.

 

I'm not sure what exactly this means?

 

j_b loves sausage

like your mom....

[prole]

The story that Krugman isn't telling (but one you can read between the lines of Jay's posts) is that, rather than part of the problem, increasing unemployment is actually an important part of the structural adjustment process that austerity is intended to achieve. For neoliberals, (re)imposing labor discipline (i.e. lower wages, fewer rights, diminished expectations, etc.) is seen as key to restoring American competitiveness. "No pain, no gain" was the slogan for IMF-imposed structural adjustment programs that took place in the debt-plagued Third World that all those kooky anti-globalization activists were so hot about. Same here. A large (but hopefully depoliticized) pool of unemployed keep wage demands low and stripping collective bargaining rights prevents any uppidyness in the near and medium term. The theory goes that once living standards and wage demands are low enough again, employers will swoop back in to put li'l ol' us back to work on new terms. Fucking delightful, eh?

 

Perhaps he's changed his mind.

[j_b]

 

and some retards would claim 'regressive' isn't appropriate to describe these knuckledraggers:

 

Maine Republicans seek to loosen child labor laws

"The bill also would eliminate the maximum hours a minor over 16 can work during school days and allow minors to work over 50 hours a week when school is not in session.

 

Another bill, LD 516, is headed to the Senate floor for a vote after being passed along party lines by a Senate committee, with Democrats voting against the measure. It would allow minors 16 years and older to work up to six hours a day and until 11pm on a school night."

 

 

[prole]

"The bill, LD 1346, establishes a "training wage" for employees under 20 years of age at $5.25 per hour for their first 180 days of employment and increases the amount of hours minors can legally work. The proposed "training wage" is over two dollars less than the state's current minimum wage...Republicans claim rolling back the child labor laws would give employees and employers greater flexibility and let students save more money for college."

 

APRIL FOOLS!!

 

uh, no not really...

[j_b]

I am fully waiting for the free-market zealots to claim that child labor wouldn't be necessary if adults weren't paid so much. You know what you have to do to prevent your kids from starting work at 12. Do it for the children ...

[ivan]

and some retards would claim 'regressive' isn't appropriate to describe these knuckledraggers:

 

Maine Republicans seek to loosen child labor laws

"The bill also would eliminate the maximum hours a minor over 16 can work during school days and allow minors to work over 50 hours a week when school is not in session.

 

Another bill, LD 516, is headed to the Senate floor for a vote after being passed along party lines by a Senate committee, with Democrats voting against the measure. It would allow minors 16 years and older to work up to six hours a day and until 11pm on a school night."

 

wait, wtf? there's republicans in maine?

[JayB]

Did somebody say wingnuts?

 

"Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN) -- Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

 

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

 

Hena dropped after 70."

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/29/bangladesh.lashing.death/index.html?on.cnn=1

 

"Seven killed in worst-ever attack on UN workers in Afghanistan

 

Seven United Nations workers have been executed in the northern Afghanistan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, two of them by beheading, by demonstrators protesting the burning of a Koran at a church in Florida."

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8422469/Seven-killed-in-worst-ever-attack-on-UN-workers-in-Afghanistan.html

 

 

 

 

 

[j_b]

I am fully waiting for the free-market zealots to claim that child labor wouldn't be necessary if adults weren't paid so much. You know what you have to do to prevent your kids from starting work at 12. Do it for the children ...

 

freakin extortionists (adults) want more than market rate for that kind of work so kids are perfect for these jobs. Didn't the free market institute have a "study" about that? [/snark]

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Did somebody say wingnuts?

 

"Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN) -- Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

 

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

 

Hena dropped after 70."

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/29/bangladesh.lashing.death/index.html?on.cnn=1

 

 

Yeah, but, like, Christianity is the same...

[prole]

Did somebody say wingnuts?

 

"Shariatpur, Bangladesh (CNN) -- Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

 

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

 

Hena dropped after 70."

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/29/bangladesh.lashing.death/index.html?on.cnn=1

 

 

Yeah, but, like, Christianity is the same...

 

Look, the diversion worked! Hey Mikey, he likes it!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Look, the diversion worked! Hey Mikey, he likes it!

 

Are you spayed or neutered?