The Glade 4.0

To start I am a bit behind on what provides what benefits. The current debate is those arguing to extend unemployment, which is at 99 weeks now? Why not just go on welfare at this point? Are the benefits different?

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

The amount varies from state to state, but a ball park figure is usually 50% of your former rate of pay, then usually capped between $450-$650/week with an additional $25 or so per dependant child.

What provides the benefits at the federal level is the general fund (of which a sizable amount is deficit). Neo-Keynesians are making the argument that the benefits are a stimulant to the economy, so it is appropriate to continue to fund them out of the deficit , and not worry about budgeting the funding.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I know Pelosi is arguing employments creates jobs, while tax cuts do not, but Pelosi is a crack whore when it comes to economics.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Tax cuts don't create jobs if you don't also cut spending. Someone ought to explain this to the debt comissions, like that one that says we can somehow magically save $6 trillion and create millions of jobs by cutting the top marginal income tax rate from 40% to 27%.

I'm getting confused as to who you think are getting cuts. If the current rate does not expire, the rates will not change. that does not = the rich getting more money, it just means the government isn't getting more money. Second, if you actually were to cut taxes on those who create jobs, they are going to reinvest at least some of their capital back into the business.

However this bubble up fantasy that is being played out has less of a chance then trickle down. Ultimately, taxes need to be lowered, and SIMPLIFIED. If you don't know what the Gov is going to hit you with next year, why would a business take an unnecessary risk? A lot of the healthcare law isn't written and will be done via regulation. Thats a problem. Taxes might go up, and will prob go up due to the massive spending- another problem and another red flag.

If my business just survived the worst economic situation in a long time, I'm only interested in making sure I can ride out the aftershocks. Keep me in an enviorment where I don't know when that is coming- this is the result- low job production.

Christ, even after cooking the books, they had to admit unemployment was 9.8. Tho Id bet it will start to magically tick down right up to the 2012 elections.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

i have less of an issue with UI than welfare. It's a short term safety net that keeps workers productive, and not only that, turns a surplus with a miniscule payroll cost (Here it's about 1.5% of insurable earnings.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

the part that I am getting confused at is, at what point with the government extending welfare to almost the two year mark, or longer, how does it differ from welfare, and wouldn't it be easier at that point to switch to welfare?

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

There is a fundamental difference in perception that you're running up against. Despite having lived in the United States for perhaps most of his life, Xeq is still a product of a European household. Money that you earn belongs to the government, and not to you. Therefore, a reduction in any amount of taxation is money that the government gives to the rich.

That is how the rest of the world, with the possible exception of Canada and Australia view money and taxes. That's why the United States is viewed as stingy despite donations private U.S. citizens often eclipsing the rest of the world's combined contribution to various charities. A private citizen owning property is a foreign concept to every other country in the world. U.S. citizens, after decades of public education, are starting to adopt the same perception - that money and property is owned by the government, and not by citizens.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Unlike Corolinth, I don't care about what technically constitutes public or private property. I just want what's best for the country to advance the fastest. I'm sure there's a fine balance to be struck for unemployment benefits and welfare. I wish there was some type of "unemployment insurance" that could handle this instead of the government.

No one actually knows that. In fact, without a pretty extensive defintion of "advance" we can't even begin to guess what it might be.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's really difficult to define "advance". I would say the biggest priority is to persistently advance technology and provide it at low costs so it can reach the average consumer. There are great gains to be made in computing (which helps every market and industry) and healthcare if we don't screw it up.

That's still exceedingly vague. The fact that it's really difficult to define "advance" (or "improve", or whatever adjective the speaker happens to use) is why there's so much dissension on this issue. What's advancement to you may not be advancement to someone who thinks solcing social problems is the best form of "advancement".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

In essence I think he means technological advancements, both in ability and availability.

To be more specific, I see some important and reachable goals as curing cancer, AIDS, obesity, blindness, the energy crisis, making it illegal for people to steer their own cars (when the time comes), and age-related illnesses. Another goal is providing universal healthcare and social security without burdening the rest of the economy too much. Also we eventually need societal adjustments so that mental illnesses won't be so prevalent. I also want holographic gaming consoles or good VR systems.

I want our policies regarding the original topic to be fine-tuned to let this all happen the soonest. I don't care about the specific poor deserve/rich have private prop./government needs money arguments.

I haven't looked into the extension. My gut reaction is it's not a good idea. But it's still less than 2 years, in rough economic times... I don't know enough about this to say for sure one way or another.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I'm not even talking about the 39.6% vs. 35% tax rate that's being discussed in Congress now. Obama's official debt commission and two other independent ones all came up with similar recommendations - shift the tax burden down. It's deplorable. All three advised reducing or eliminating tax breaks and loopholes in exchange for lowering the highest marginal income tax rate and either getting rid of or reducing the impact of the Alternative Minimum Tax, AKA the wealth tax. And somehow, they all concluded that drastically lowering taxes on the group that pays most of the taxes will somehow generate more revenue and generate jobs, despite the fact that shifting the tax burden down creates a huge disincentive to work at all.

And Coro, I hate to break it to you, but the government effectively does control all the money in every country in the world. If they want money from you, and you won't give it up, they can simply ignore you and print more for the same effect.

You want to create jobs? Tell the big companies that if they don't hire X people annually based on their size they eat a massive tax penalty. They don't like it and want to move out of the country? Fine. You get a huge duty if you want to sell back into the US. Would this have negative effects on the health of these companies? Sure, it would, but no worse than the massive inflation caused by the government printing trillions of dollars. This is what China does, and it works great for them. There are massive duties on goods sold in China by foreign corporations, that's if they let you sell at all. If you want to sell anything there, you need to combine or ally with a Chinese corporation and give their government oversight of all your assets, so if you try to make a quick profit and run they can seize all your crap.

I think as a general practice, we should leave businesses alone unless they are monopolies that stifle innovation. Imposing stupid rules on them like who they must hire would just make things worse. You can't artificially construct an economy like that. If companies have work to be done, then they will already hire the people to do it.

What makes you think the world needs the US consumer market? There's more lucrative places for companies to sell anyway.

All this does is cause inflation in the USA to skyrocket and force americans to buy inferior, overpriced goods.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

What if they just go out of business? Put them in stocks? Hang them for Treason? Yes Let's be more like the Chinese. People over there have it sooo Well. If you said some of the things on here that you've said about the US government about the Chinese government in china, they'd stick you a little hole to rot.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I think unemployment is a good idea. It helps prevent catastrophic upheaval in a family if someone loses their job suddenly. It buys you a short period of time to find a job and/or adjust your expenses.

There is serious harm in allowing it to extend to 2 years, though. I would cut it somewhere between 3 and 6 months.

Why is it deplorable? We have people saying it's patriotic to pay taxes. We have a president saying that everyone needs to have "skin in the game". I find it offensive that someone who pays little to no taxes to begin with, on top of getting public assistance, will then recive a refund check from the IRS at the end of the year. It's State sponsored theft.




So raising taxes, or rather causing the segment of society that consumes the most public resources to pay a portion of them is a huge disincentive to work at all- yet raising taxes on the segment of society that already foots most of the bills, as well as provides jobs to the other people is a good idea? Would we really like to find the breaking threshold for small businesses? The point where exsisting as a business is no longer worth it? That will make a serious case for being in a mega corporation, who has the ability to broker independant deals with the lawmakers.

I think going with the Chinese model of government is quite the bad idea.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Why is it deplorable? You don't pay taxes. Other posters who would make the same comment, don't pay taxes either. For the majority of Americans, even their payroll taxes are returned in the form of credits and other deductions. So how on earth are we going to shift the tax burden up? People keep telling me the rich need to pay more and more and more, while the definition of rich keeps inching ever and ever lower. That said, Obama's Official Debt Commission has the right idea. You actually do need to shift some of the tax burden down and eliminate entitlement programs. It's funny how you ignore the parts about functionally eliminating social security, hamstringing Medicare, and effectively repealing the Health Care Reform Act. It's also amusing that if you look at the number suggested, we're talking about approximately $500 a year from 220,000,000 Americans: or another trillion dollars in real revenue at a truly dispersed rate.

Except, again, you didn't real the entirely of their suggestions which are some of the most economically conservative things to come out of Washington in decades and very reminiscent of that Democratic Poster Child John F. Kennedy. More to the point, they didn't conclude anything about drastically lowering taxes on the rich, as they suggested a top marginal of 30% and elimination of the Capital Gains Tax discount which would push revenues up (or, more likely, reduce overall investiture). While there are some problems with the recommendations, they are neither Keynesian nor particularly problematic in any sense you think. As for creating disincentives to work, that's already the province of government policy. We currently have some 5 million Americans on extremely long term unemployment; these people will never hold a paying job again in their lives. Your chance at future employment drops geometrically every week after 13 weeks of collecting unemployment benefits.

Currency and money are not synonymous. I don't know how many times I have to tell you that, but they aren't. Money is a thing independent of the currencies made available by various administrative entities. So, if you want your statement to be true, you have to concede that the Wester Empire enslaves it populations in the most insidious manner possible.

This wouldn't create jobs at all. In fact, every time this has been tried, it's proven to decrease jobs, drive up the cost of goods, and marginalize the economic force actual people can exert in the world. More to the point, if it were true, we'd actually be far along on the way to a sound economy. Importing goods should be more expensive in every respect when compared to producing goods domestically. There's nothing man-made on this planet the U.S. cannot produce faster, better and more efficiently than every other country on the planet.

You mean China, which is experiencing real growth both financially and economically, using conservative economic policies works? There's all sorts of political problems with their system, but they have a freer economy than the United States, and that's rather ironic. Sure, there are all sorts of "western" human rights violations going on and rampant pollution, but that's because the "people" own the "means of production". Of course, if that's not sardonic enough for you, let me make it clear: the average Chinese citizen has more economic freedom than you do, Xeq.

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Congress also employed two other independent commissions to make recommendations, the most conservative of which advocated only two income tax brackets - 15% and 23%, and having everyone in the US fall in one or the other. They also advocated eliminating the AMT and virtually all tax breaks and credits. That was what I was referring to. I know Obama's official commission did not go this far. I just found it funny because this commission also claimed that this change would increase revenue by $6 trillion.



I'm pretty sure I lack the ability to understand how you came to this conclusion. China ranks pretty low on the Index of Economic Freedom and other such indices, even the libertarian CATO Institute ranks China significantly lower than the US on their Economic Freedom of the World. It's pretty clear to me that China is basing its growth on a protectionist/mercantilist policy that aims to maximize exports and minimize imports. Chinese citizens are barred from importing more than a specified amount annually, (it was around the equivalent of $10,000 last I read) and tariffs on foreign goods are huge unless the foreign entity works through a Chinese company. The example most people here are familiar with is World of Warcraft, Blizzard only makes a tiny fraction off Chinese customers than they do off American customers because they are forced to sublicense the game to a Chinese company which keeps most of the profits. China's government makes damn sure that their money can't leave the country. It's pretty effective in increasing their growth, but you sure as hell can't call it "freedom" when the government is telling the citizens what they can and can't buy. Along the same lines, capital gains tax is also much, much higher for foreign entities in China than it is for the Chinese. I'm just saying we need to do the same, tell the companies that are shipping jobs to East Asia that they need to hire Americans or get out.

But where is the break on that stance? Do you tell Coca Cola, hire more americans or get out of the US? Or does it come down to being a pyrric victory?

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

History has shown us that the most stable growth economy includes a monster marginal tax burden on the wealthy with loopholes based on business expansion and hiring more employees. It isn't that they are taking home more of their money, they just spend it on making themselves even wealthier(huh?) and they don't pay taxes on the money they reinvest in the economy. Lower tax rates mean they save more of their wealth (taking money out of circulation basically), or spend it on things they want to (luxuries, bigger homes, selfish bastards) instead of things that are good for the economy.

Taking the level of income those marginal rates and loopholes affected then to today's wealthy, and you would probably be looking at somewhere around $5 million annual income to qualify for the largest marginal tax burden and loopholes. That isn't anywhere near as low as today's thieves want to take it.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones