Small Business Owner: Tax Cuts Don't Create Jobs

[Sandy]

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opi ... or-664828/

Keith has been pretty on target with similar stuff, in his graphs and charts. This is an op-ed piece in today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette that, along with the evidence in hand, pretty much refutes the Republican position on tax cuts for the wealthy, and what is "fair."

[Dave Roberts]

Very well-written article with premises that are hard to argue. Of course, Republican orthodoxy is not about facts. It's about putting a pledge to a lobbyist, Grover Norquist, above the voices of the people.

[Haruo]

Whatever the outcome of the end of this year, fiscally, I think the Republicans are going to have a hard time keeping Congress in 2014.

[Tim Bonney]

[Haruo]

But it does matter how it's distributed. If it's 98% in 100 districts and 48% in the other 335, then the GOP will still have a veto-proof majority.

[Haruo]

I just made those percentages up; not saying such a distribution could or would average out to 60% nationwide.

And each congressman has to decide for herself where the line is drawn between representing the wants and/or needs of (a majority of) her constituents and those of the nation as a whole.

[ET]

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

I think she's done a good job of distinguishing between the image of "small business" that the Republicans want to create, and the kind of small business that will benefit from the tax cuts, as opposed to the benefits small business owners will receive under the Democrat proposal.

The bottom line is that we had tax cuts, under Bush, and not only did they not stimulate the economy, the cost of them helped to cause its collapse. Corporate profits reached record highs in the past two years, but because of the loopholes, and the existing regulations, that neither put a dent in the deficit nor created jobs. It didn't dent the deficit because revenue that normally would have been collected in taxes was instead directed to corporate profits, and jobs were created for Indonesia, India, and even in some cases, China. The fact that Republican lawmakers seem stuck on avoiding, at all costs, restoring a tax rate that was in place when the economy was soaring, is an indication that most of them have been bought and paid for by the lobbyists and corporate interests. Even with the cataract of money they invested in attempting to turn the election their way, the American people know what is going on, and voted accordingly. If we go over the proverbial "fiscal cliff," the Democrats will simply propose a tax cut bill for those earning less than $250,000 and if the Republicans won't go along with that, they can kiss their control of the House goodbye in 2014. I think that's in the cards, anyway.

ET can cite all of the information he collects from Fox News, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Coulter and the other extremists. He is wrong on this one.

[Dave Roberts]

The thing that bothers me most about the last decade of government spending was the asssumption that we could fight foreign wars and give tax cuts at the same time. That seems to me the major cause of the flood of deficit spending. It is bad economics proven by both Republican and Democrat Administrations in the past. For WWI, Woodrow Wilson proposed and Congress raised taxes to pay for the war. For WWII, Franklin Roosevelt proposed and Congress concurred with raised taxes to pay for the war. During Korea, there were tax increases. Eisenhower increased taxes for the ships and planes needed for the Cold War. Johnson added to the tax burden to help pay for Vietnam.

Are we somehow so disconnected from national tax policy that we just didn't get it that fighting wars demands sacrifice from the populace. Someone has to pay for them, and frankly I would rather tax policy reflected that than asking my grandchildren to be saddled with the debt of period of 2002-2012 when we postponed paying for any of our military adventure. Social Security and Medicare are not the main drivers of deficit spending. How Congress gets out of this one will be interesting, but I haven't heard an honest answer about war expenditures from either party.

[ET]

[ET]

[ET]

[ET]

[KeithE]

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: Among other things Keith reports "Unemployment down to 7.7% announced today." NOTE: That is still 3.7 above the top edge of what is considered " normal unemployment" which has a narrow range of 3.7 to 4.0 . And it is only 2.4 down from the High of 10.1 . Keep in mind that this comes at a time of the year that due to seasonal hiring, the unemployment rate traditionally takes a slight dip. However any drop down to 4.0 is a bit better news than if it it stayed stagnant or went up.

[KeithE]

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: Keith when using data furnished by others you need to use their data, not your own approximations. 1.9 millon jobs is 200,000 short of 2 million. And having worked directly with 4 federal jobs programs I can tell you that Politicians know or truly care little about creating jobs other than the votes influenced their way by the rhetoric around the adoption of the legislation.

Each Program that I worked with stated that employers where not allowed to use the program to replace jobs where employees had been laid off. Yet employers where quite creative in restructuring the workforce so as to claim a job was new when in fact recent or current employees had skills and knowledge gained in their job that where needed in the "New Job", but they where laid off and lower salaried employes hired. In other cases the "new job" was one that they needed to create to stay competitive in their industry and would have been forced to do so with or with out Government assistance. Tons of money was spent to assist the "Hard core unemployed" to to get a GED certificate which would enhance their employ-ability , for the most part they ended up in jobs hat did not really require the sills and knowledge gained in the process of getting a HS Diploma. Oh! it did create some jobs for "teachers" who may or many not have been qualified for jobs in the local schools. Others where trained for jobs that where becoming obsolete ie; telegraph operator and stenographer. Or fields already over crowded such as cosmologist. It was this constant reinventing the wheel to to create jobs programs W/O answering the needs of the chronically unemployed that enticed me into early retirement. As I have said before on these boards the greatest success story that I saw in On the JOB under the Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) was one where a young man was trained to engrave tombstones. After a few years the employer sold him the business for a song. He kept up with new technology and machinery development. A few years ago he sold the business to three young men that he had taken under his wing w/o Government assistance. Again for far less than the business was worth.

And Keith are you saying that the creation of 2 million new jobs would soon reduce unemployment to 1.9? (Present 7.7- 5.8 = 1.9) Responsible economist will tell you that such would create a whole new set of labor problems and inflation. The rule of thumb is that we can not let the average unemployment rate go below 3.6 without setting off an upward spiral of inflation as companies are forced to compete more vigorously for employes. Rather than just a pipe dream "Full Employment" or any where real close, would be a nightmare.

[KeithE]

[ET]

[Sandy]

Actually, there are about 5 million more Americans working now than there were at the bottom of the Bush recession, which extended a little more than a year into Obama's first term. Statistically, to be fair, it took a while to reverse the job loss trend that occurred under Bush administration policy.

Corporate profits have been at record levels over the past two years, and as hard as some companies are trying to hold out, competition and growth will force those who want to continue to compete to hire the personnel they need to run their company. There's no better sign that job growth is coming than the stock market, and corporate profits.

It's coming. There are a lot of places around the country where the same thing is happening that is now occurring in Pittsburgh.
http://news.yahoo.com/pittsburgh-wester ... 00768.html

[Stephen Fox]