7 biggest economic lies by Robert Reich

[75th]

Unbelievable that this guys is actually a professor at one of the top universities and was our labor secretary. I guess you have to have some socialist beliefs to be Secretary of Labor.

Youre so way off base in so many of your replies I dont even know where to begin.

1. Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else. Baloney. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both sliced taxes on the rich and what happened? Most Americans’ wages (measured by the real median wage) began flattening under Reagan and have dropped since George W. Bush. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

Is it poor people who are creating jobs?

No, but the rich arent either. This is a consumer based recession. More consumers = more demand. Giving tax breaks to the rich doesnt help. According to the CBO, cutting the payroll tax would be more than twice as effective for stimulating demand and, therefore, creating jobs than a tax cut for the wealthy.

2. Higher taxes on the rich would hurt the economy and slow job growth. False. From the end of World War II until 1981, the richest Americans faced a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent or above. Under Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, the top taxes on the very rich were far higher than they’ve been since. Yet the economy grew faster during those years than it has since. (Don’t believe small businesses would be hurt by a higher marginal tax; fewer than 2 percent of small business owners are in the highest tax bracket.)

We live in different times with a more mobil economy. Impose a 91% tax rate right now and watch the mass exodus of rich people from the US. Fuck even Warren Buffet would haul ass.

15 yrs ago if you lived overseas, you did not get the news, newspaper, sports scores or any food you cared for. Today you can live in Singapore, have less crime rate, lower taxes, read the USA today, follow your sports on the internet while drinking a Starbucks coffee every morning.

Wake up - that had to be the most antiquated argument I have ever read.

I dont think anybody is proposing a 91% tax. The uneducated are shitting bricks about simply raising the rates 4% higher than they are right now. A 4% increase in the top marginal tax rate wont send anybody anywhere.

3. Shrinking government generates more jobs. Wrong again. It means fewer government workers – everyone from teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and social workers at the state and local levels to safety inspectors and military personnel at the federal. And fewer government contractors, who would employ fewer private-sector workers. According to Moody’s economist Mark Zandi (a campaign advisor to John McCain), the $61 billion in spending cuts proposed by the House GOP will cost the economy 700,000 jobs this year and next.

Governments have never been a more efficient supplier of jobs. See comunist expirements.

lol @ jumping from government created jobs all the way to communism.

4. Cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy. Untrue. With so many Americans out of work, budget cuts now will shrink the economy. They’ll increase unemployment and reduce tax revenues. That will worsen the ratio of the debt to the total economy. The first priority must be getting jobs and growth back by boosting the economy. Only then, when jobs and growth are returning vigorously, should we turn to cutting the deficit.

Almost all enonomic theories would say this is correct and it is probably true right now as well. But if you look at the top American corportations, they are in really good shape, growing revenue, earnings and flush with cash. Why are they not expanding and hiring?

They are absolutely terrified about the US deficit and who is going to pay for it. Saving cash for when the tax man comes.

Thats so full of shit its laughable. Companies arent hiring because people arent spending money. Why? Because people dont have money to spend. Why? Because housing crashed, and the vast majority of industries in the US are tied in some way, shape, or form to housing...hence people lost their jobs. Cue the negative feedback loop of a consumer driven recession.

Only those who dont know any better are concerned about the deficit in the short term. What are Treasury bond rates at? I rest my case.

I am not totally for cutting budgets immediately but a balanced budget amendment would do more for job growth than ANY jobs program the government can put together.

LMAO. Id love to hear a rational justification for that.

5. Medicare and Medicaid are the major drivers of budget deficits. Wrong. Medicare and Medicaid spending is rising quickly, to be sure. But that’s because the nation’s health-care costs are rising so fast. One of the best ways of slowing these costs is to use Medicare and Medicaid’s bargaining power over drug companies and hospitals to reduce costs, and to move from a fee-for-service system to a fee-for-healthy outcomes system. And since Medicare has far lower administrative costs than private health insurers, we should make Medicare available to everyone.

Wrong again - both are going up so fast because they are being abused by both hospitals and patients. You can't keep spending $500k on the last two weeks of a terminally ill patient and you can't keep providing EVERYONE that walks into an emergency room with medical care.

Agree on the former, not on the latter.

6. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Don’t believe it. Social Security is solvent for the next 26 years. It could be solvent for the next century if we raised the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. That ceiling is now $106,800.

If we raise the ceiling, won't that also raise the payments to the people paying in more? Or do you now just get to keep paying in lots more social security but get the same benefits? Problem with social security is we are living so much longer - have to adjust for our current life spans.

I agree.

 

[mrplunkey]

... I had a conversation with a washington lobbyist a little over a year ago and

... then ordered my pilot to make an emergency landing with my Gulfstream 650 at Tiffany's in Paris to buy my supermodel girlfriend some extra bling for her Chihuahua.

 

[ledhead]

Wow. Nicely said.

The sad thing is, the US still has advantages. But we can't seem to keep from shooting ourselves in the foot with regulation, taxes and lawsuits.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act should be repealed. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should be hung for treason because they are the reason for the tight regulation. The EPA should have minimal say about the environment, the EPA gives the tree-huggers too much ammo. Therefore, that hinders us from digging for our own energy. Global Warming is a complete fallacy, it is complete junk science. Eliminate the special tax-exempt status granted to enviromental groups, since they are not nonpartisan charitable foundations. Eliminate special stautory authority granting environmental groups standing to bring lawsuits on behalf of the public, since their main objective is to spread Marxism through litigation.

Eliminate the progresive income tax, replace it witha flat income tax or national sales tax for the purpose to redistribute wealth. Eliminate the corporate income tax, for it is nothing more than a double taxation on shareholders and consumers, and hinders wealth and job creation. Eliminate the death tax, for it denies citizens the right to confer the material value they have created during their lives to whomever they wish, including their family.

Limit federal spending each year to less than twenty percent of the GDP.. I am playing Devil's Advocate here, eliminate the Federal Department of Education, since education is basically a state and local function, and give me a Nobel Prize for another brilliant plan...

 

[75th]

You're an idiot.

 

[miplank]

Lol

 

[Lestat]

lol @ refusing emergency medical services to anyone in need of them. Its tough to take anything you say seriously after something like that. I consider that on par with refusing to put someone's house out that is on fire, or responding to a 911 call for anything remotely serious.

 

[redsamurai]

This whole post is rife with un educated spoon fed narrative rambling. Congratulations on being able to regurgitate boiler plate narratives. Without govt regulation we'd still be sujected to massive amounts of mercury in our drinking water, which is fine we get all the mercury now that we can handle in seafood. I used to be a co owner of a business that operated in road coating materials and I can tell you unequivocably that without the EPA there would still be the nastiest of solvents, like styrenes, leaching from roads into sewage and ground water. People forget so easily and quickly what business's were getting away with in decades past and would not have stopped doing if it weren't for the govt tellin em to stop coating the populace with carcinogens. Sorry but the free market woudln't have handled that one.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act should be repealed. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should be hung for treason because they are the reason for the tight regulation. The EPA should have minimal say about the environment, the EPA gives the tree-huggers too much ammo. Therefore, that hinders us from digging for our own energy. Global Warming is a complete fallacy, it is complete junk science. Eliminate the special tax-exempt status granted to enviromental groups, since they are not nonpartisan charitable foundations. Eliminate special stautory authority granting environmental groups standing to bring lawsuits on behalf of the public, since their main objective is to spread Marxism through litigation.

Eliminate the progresive income tax, replace it witha flat income tax or national sales tax for the purpose to redistribute wealth. Eliminate the corporate income tax, for it is nothing more than a double taxation on shareholders and consumers, and hinders wealth and job creation. Eliminate the death tax, for it denies citizens the right to confer the material value they have created during their lives to whomever they wish, including their family.

Limit federal spending each year to less than twenty percent of the GDP.. I am playing Devil's Advocate here, eliminate the Federal Department of Education, since education is basically a state and local function, and give me a Nobel Prize for another brilliant plan...

 

[PICK3]

This whole post is rife with un educated spoon fed narrative rambling. Congratulations on being able to regurgitate boiler plate narratives. Without govt regulation we'd still be sujected to massive amounts of mercury in our drinking water, which is fine we get all the mercury now that we can handle in seafood. I used to be a co owner of a business that operated in road coating materials and I can tell you unequivocably that without the EPA there would still be the nastiest of solvents, like styrenes, leaching from roads into sewage and ground water. People forget so easily and quickly what business's were getting away with in decades past and would not have stopped doing if it weren't for the govt tellin em to stop coating the populace with carcinogens. Sorry but the free market woudln't have handled that one.

RS is right! We need moar govmint intervention!

 

[redsamurai]

ideally we don't need any form of government cause people would have this overwhelming urge to not be assholes. Unfortunately we are too rife with assholes so some sort of convening authority over the market is necessary.

 

[PICK3]

... then ordered my pilot to make an emergency landing with my Gulfstream 650 at Tiffany's in Paris to buy my supermodel girlfriend some extra bling for her Chihuahua.

then you stopped over at your own private island where exotic native girls were fetched and bathed before joining in?