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< we have very concrete examples of transitions from centralized systems to radically privatized ones all over south america, and literally every one of them, from bolivia to argentina to chile, experienced a dramatic period of economic downturn that left large segments of the populations in complete and utter poverty.
Have you been taking lessons from Obama, with The Big Lie Theory of Argument.There are no South American economies that have been radically privatized. Furthermore, when Chile eliminated their socialized retirement and allowed private investment, their economy grew faster than the rest of SA for years. And not by a little, by a lot. I don't know where you are getting your data. Castro's Big Book on Economics? The Compiled Lies of Socialist Supporters?History does not support your views, not even a little.
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it was a pretty bad economic decision to free the slaves, henry. the government ain't always supposed to act with only balance sheets in mind.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you trying to prove that, when government screws things up, sometimes it takes a war to make them fix it? Slavery was a LAW, a bad law. It was the government NOT doing the one thing it is supposed to do, which is protect our rights. Are you saying that the fact that it took 90 years for the government to fix such an egregious failure to support human rights is a sign that we should now trust it to "invest" $10,000 of every man, woman, and child's money (most of which happens to be "invested" in Democratic campaign contributors)?
keynes was a pretty smart economist, and he was all for stuff like the new deal. just because friedman became all the rage in an influential american economics school doesn't mean that he's automatically right thereby. keynesian economics is still far more influential worldwide than radical free marketeering.
Keynes was very smart, and he asked the right questions. He just didn't have a century of data, and came to the exactly opposite conclusion compared to how reality works. And he forgot one, teeny tiny little problem with his theory: every dollar the government "invests" is a dollar that came from a more highly valued use somewhere else in the economy. It is impossible to create wealth by moving money from high-value uses to low-value uses.
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This is just a total, outright lie. The exact opposite is true. Unless you can provide a theoretical reason why this would be true, you're just blowing smoke. All data points otherwise, as a look at socialist countries vs capitalist countries shows. The leaders in socialist countries live in mansions, the other 99% live in mud huts.In capitalist countries, the leaders live in mansions, 98% live in nice houses, and 1% lives in crappy houses that the people in the mud huts would give their left arm for.It is impossible for money to become increasingly concentrated in a free market society. A few moments thought about money flow in a capitalist economy will demonstrate why. If you can't figure it out, I can step you through ti.
for all your accusations of my being a naive idealist, this sort of stuff strikes me as profoundly hypocritical. you don't know about the shantytowns in pinochet's chile? or do you just choose to ignore them?you don't know about similar povery levels in bolivia and argentina post-chicago boys intervention there? i mean, you're the one that led me to start reading about the history of south america, and it's become quite clear to me in so doing that this sort of capitalist utopia you like to hold up down there simply never existed. for all the glowing things you say about chile's "economic revolution" or whatever you want to call it, i could find you just as many documents that show that the denationalizing of all their industries put tens of thousands into poverty.like i said, it's a matter of being honest about all the consequences of acting a certain way and conducting the debate in the realm of the real world. there are pluses and minuses to the keynesian approach, just as there are to friedman's. most americans realize this, and that is why we have some degree of regulation in most industries, and why we have some nationalized programs and some without central control. it's a matter of balance, henry. if we go too far to the left, we have communist russia. if we go too far to the right, we fall victim to corporatism and labor abuses. history has taught us both of these things, and to suggest that we can just run full tilt toward the deregulation of private business and labor practice is no less absurd than suggesting that stalin was a pretty great guy.as to your heritage foundation graphs of data points, you've shown them to me before, and i debunked them before, fairly quickly as i recall--this "economic freedom" thing they try to quantify is utterly ridiculous, imo, and they don't even begin to take the availability of resources, post-colonial detritus, etc. into account in their analysis. in any case, for every heritage foundation abstract you can find, i can offer one from the brookings institute, which, it's perhaps worth mentioning, has more cache in both academic and political circles than the heritage foundation, not that that really matters in terms of how the debate plays out.
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What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you trying to prove that, when government screws things up, sometimes it takes a war to make them fix it? Slavery was a LAW, a bad law. It was the government NOT doing the one thing it is supposed to do, which is protect our rights. Are you saying that the fact that it took 90 years for the government to fix such an egregious failure to support human rights is a sign that we should now trust it to "invest" $10,000 of every man, woman, and child's money (most of which happens to be "invested" in Democratic campaign contributors)?
i'm trying to illustrate that the government doesn't always only care about money, and that that's a good thing. don't overextend the analogy, please.
Keynes was very smart, and he asked the right questions. He just didn't have a century of data, and came to the exactly opposite conclusion compared to how reality works. And he forgot one, teeny tiny little problem with his theory: every dollar the government "invests" is a dollar that came from a more highly valued use somewhere else in the economy. It is impossible to create wealth by moving money from high-value uses to low-value uses.
your suggestion that government use of funds is somehow essentially less valuable than private use thereof is without theoretical ground of any kind. if you want to say that it's grounded in history, then, well, i can go back to the library and direct you to the south american historical accounts that i sought out last year at your suggestion, the best of which i encountered was economic genocide in chile: [some subtitle] by andre gunder frank (this one i remember), when i'm not so busy (try august).
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perhaps "sacrifice" is a bit too strong, but yes, literally every economist understands that the stimulus package isn't intended to be some sort of far-reaching economic policy. it's something that's done in the short term to make the huge swings of the market be a bit less severe. the problem that conservatives generally have when it comes to market regulation is that they somehow forget that when the economy tanks like this, and unemployment hits 10% or higher, etc., it's the poor people that get hit first and hardest--just because the more affluent among us don't get to the point where they're not eating to make sure their kids can doesn't mean that some parents aren't being forced to make that choice, no matter how hardworking they are. and sure, billionaires might lose hundreds of millions of dollars when the stock market crashes, but what matters more to the country as a whole is the actual, physical well-being of the literally millions of people that are losing their jobs, being foreclosed upon (though there there's probably more blame to go on the homeowner), and yes, literally straight up dying sometimes. what the stimulus package intends to do is have the government in a sense bail out those who have lost their jobs. sure, there is some extra shit in there that shouldn't be, and i hope that goes away, but the basic idea is that the government creates jobs in a very direct way--and yes, at our grandkids' expense, to some extent, although the livelihood of a lot of those grandkids depends on us doing something right now, as well--so that the people looking for work right now aren't stuck in abject poverty until things straighten out.it's very, very well documented that the "more free" a market is, the greater stratification of wealth exists under such a system, and the greater amplitude of the natural fluctuations that occur within it. we have very concrete examples of transitions from centralized systems to radically privatized ones all over south america, and literally every one of them, from bolivia to argentina to chile, experienced a dramatic period of economic downturn that left large segments of the populations in complete and utter poverty. some of those countries righted themselves afterward to some extent, but not in every case. regardless, the reason for using centralized funds is to infuse job growth in the short term and thus avoid those devastating periods while minimizing the long term effects of doing so. no one WANTS to have to stimulate the economy--the point of contention is whether the taking on of more national debt is worth the short term benefits. to the extent that the lower classes of society are losing jobs at nearly record numbers with no sign of stopping, the general liberal position isn't "omg spending money is fun!" but rather "we need to do something so that we don't have a class of millions of americans living farther below the poverty line than they already do." you can cast the issue as "liberals like to spend taxpayer money" or "liberals are just sentimental idiots" or whatever you want, just like you can cast conservatives as bible thumping backwoodsmen, but that's outright dishonest and doesn't do the country or intellectualism a lick of good. the way political debate is undertaken in this country today is a direct assault on the principles on which the US was founded, and simpletons like glen beck, who someone quoted above, spit in the face of madison, franklin, jefferson, washington, et al every time they open their mouths.
you have a lot here, will try to break it down 1. what the stimulus package was intended for and what it has become are not the same...like it or not it is a long term far reaching economic policy...that is my problem. It will never go away. As far as 10 years goes just stop...and even if it is 10 years that is better then 30 or 50 or 100 years which is what we are talking about.2. I have posted here countless times the first to be hit and hit the hardest are the poor. You will get no arguement from me. The fact of the matter is that the way to help them and and country is not continue welfare as a way of life and means of income. I have no problem with help but we have lost our way with what is help and what is a way of life.3. if it was a stimulus I may be able to agree with that, the reality is that is not what we have. We have HUGE amounts of PORK / WASTE that over the long term will crush many times over the small amount of stimulus we are talking about. The government doesn't create jobs...they tax them!! How is the PORK going to be paid for? By long term taxes of course which are going to be felt the hardest by whom...the very people that you attempting to help (very typical for democrats)4. OMG...this is one of the dumber things you have ever typed. The names you posted above led the creation of the government to let people be free. Almost everything Washington has become goes against what the country was started on...Washington DC NEVER was intended to be the social center of our Nation. It is my opinion that Washington, Jefferson etc would be appalled at what our government has become and more inclinded to lead a revolution then to be a part of it.There are thousands of quotes, letters, documents from the time periodd stating that big government is the problem. I don't need to post them or provide links for that...OMG just WOW.
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Have you been taking lessons from Obama, with The Big Lie Theory of Argument.There are no South American economies that have been radically privatized. Furthermore, when Chile eliminated their socialized retirement and allowed private investment, their economy grew faster than the rest of SA for years. And not by a little, by a lot. I don't know where you are getting your data. Castro's Big Book on Economics? The Compiled Lies of Socialist Supporters?History does not support your views, not even a little.
Well said
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you don't know about the shantytowns in pinochet's chile?
When you start with 99% of your country living in shantytowns, and after 10 years it drops to 60%, is that success or failure?
you don't know about similar povery levels in bolivia and argentina post-chicago boys intervention there?
Economic freedom ranking for Bolivia: 130Economic freedom ranking for Argentina: 138Thank you for making my point. Neither of these countries had any meaningful move to free markets, they are both still socialist banana republics.
if we go too far to the right, we fall victim to corporatism and labor abuses.
This is a frequent strawman for the left, nobody is arguing for *no* regulation. What we argue against is the harmful crony capitalism and socialism of leftist wet dreams embodied in the Obama Great Second Depression Bill of 2009.
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I guess what's driving me a little nuts lately is the dishonesty of the whole thing. This isn't the worst recession since the 30's. It's barely the worst since the early 80's. Yet we are being lead to believe that something must be done right now, which generally is a sales tactic used by those who don't want you to look at alternatives. Every time you turn around the "leaders" in place use verbage designed to scare the shit out of you, which those of you who support said new leaders/leader HATED from the Bush administration... yet it's the new administrations favorite tool so far. This bill is clearly not designed to fix anything, it's designed to spend a ton of money on projects that Dems have wanted to for a long, long time. I don't think it's even designed to get anyone re-elected, it's just an opportunity to spend, plain and simple. And this is just the start. We haven't even approached budget issues yet.

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your suggestion that government use of funds is somehow essentially less valuable than private use thereof is without theoretical ground of any kind.
No theoretical ground? How about "people wouldn't voluntarily send their money to be spent on Bridges to Nowhere? Give 100 people a breakdown of what the money in the Obama Plan For A Second Great Depression Bill is being spent on, and ask them how many of those things they would voluntarily purchase given their portion of the cash and what portion of the reward they expect to get from it.There is no theoretical ground, and much historical ground, to believe that central planners are horrible at picking economically valued products. Are you really going to claim that central planners worldwide have a good success record?
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I guess what's driving me a little nuts lately is the dishonesty of the whole thing. This isn't the worst recession since the 30's. It's barely the worst since the early 80's. Yet we are being lead to believe that something must be done right now, which generally is a sales tactic used by those who don't want you to look at alternatives. Every time you turn around the "leaders" in place use verbage designed to scare the shit out of you, which those of you who support said new leaders/leader HATED from the Bush administration... yet it's the new administrations favorite tool so far. This bill is clearly not designed to fix anything, it's designed to spend a ton of money on projects that Dems have wanted to for a long, long time. I don't think it's even designed to get anyone re-elected, it's just an opportunity to spend, plain and simple. And this is just the start. We haven't even approached budget issues yet.
Dick Cheney himself said this was the worst/craziest economic crisis he had seen in decades. No one really agrees with the first three lines you wrote not even the most die hard of conservatives, Darth Cheney.
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No. Because he knows it's a pile, and he needs to be able to point fingers back come re-election. If it's so much awesomeness he should be selling it like that, but instead it's doom and gloom and outright lies. Mostly, though, it's gotta be quick because people are learning what it's about and they support it to the tune of 30% and fading fast.
This is just your take on the situation not a statement of fact. It is no more AND no less plausible than what I said.Please, oh please, stop trying to pass off your "take" on things as fact.
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What would it take to get you to drive this nice shiny stimulus bill home today?You know, I had three other legislators in here just yesterday trying to buy this thing.... if I were you I'd act now.What? No, don't worry about that, if there's a problem, we'll fix it later. We stand by what we sell you.

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Dick Cheney himself said this was the worst/craziest economic crisis he had seen in decades. No one really agrees with the first three lines you wrote not even the most die hard of conservatives, Darth Cheney.
I don't give a shit whether you/they agree or not the numbers at this point do not lie. This is NOT the worst recession since the great depression.
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This is just your take on the situation not a statement of fact. It is no more AND no less plausible than what I said.Please, oh please, stop trying to pass off your "take" on things as fact.
You would have to be an idiot to not see what I said as fact. Enter: You. Nuff said.
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What would it take to get you to drive this nice shiny stimulus bill home today?You know, I had three other legislators in here just yesterday trying to buy this thing.... if I were you I'd act now.What? No, don't worry about that, if there's a problem, we'll fix it later. We stand by what we sell you.
The audacity of it is what's laughable- Obama crowing because he has it down(in his head) to 800 billion. **** it, make it 900. The amount is not the issue, it's where it's targeted. This will stimulate the economy as much as demanding that we buy 900 billion dollars in gummy bears. Give everyone a tax cut today, give americans money they earned, and watch the economy turn, just like that. It's so simple it's ****ing disgusting, but there is no power in that, there is no ownership in that.
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I don't give a shit whether you/they agree or not the numbers at this point do not lie. This is NOT the worst recession since the great depression.
Well we're in the middle of things and the job losses are accelerating so for you to say this isn't the worst recession in the last 50 years is premature.http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090206/...ness/us_economy
American employers slashed 598,000 jobs in January; most since 1974 By Jeannine Aversa, The Associated PressWASHINGTON - Recession-battered American employers eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since late 1974, and catapulted the unemployment rate to 7.6 per cent. Friday's grim figures were further proof that the U.S. job climate is deteriorating at an alarming clip with no end in sight. The Labour Department's report showed the terrible toll the drawn-out recession is having on workers and companies. It also puts more pressure on President Barack Obama to revive the economy. The latest net job losses were far worse than the 524,000 that economists had expected. And the department said job reductions in November and December were deeper than previously reported. With cost-cutting employers in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate bolted to 7.6 per cent in January, the highest since September 1992. The increase in the jobless rate from 7.2 per cent in December also was worse than the 7.5 per cent rate economists expected. All told, the economy has lost 3.6 million jobs since the start of the recession in December 2007 - about half of them in the past three months. Factories slashed 207,000 jobs in January, the largest one-month drop since October 1982, partly reflecting heavy losses at plants making autos and parts. Construction companies got rid of 111,000 jobs. Professional and business services chopped 121,000, retailers eliminated 45,000, and leisure and hospitality operators axed 28,000. Those reductions swamped employment gains in education and health services, as well as in the government. Employers are slashing payrolls and turning to other ways to cut costs - including trimming workers' hours, freezing wages or cutting pay - to cope with shrinking appetites from customers in the U.S. and overseas. The average work week in January stayed at 33.3 hours, matching the record low set in December. With no place to go, the number of jobless workers climbed to 11.6 million. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed has increased by 4.1 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.7 percentage points. Job hunters also are facing longer searches for work. The average time it took an unemployed person to find any job - full-or part-time - rose to 19.8 weeks in January, compared with 17.5 weeks a year ago.
And it's not just the US that is suffering. Every country is having a tough time. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/090206/...omy_jobs_canada
Canada January job losses biggest on record By Louise EganOTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada suffered its worst job losses in over three decades in January as the recession forced employers to cut a record 129,000 workers and pushed the unemployment rate to 7.2 percent from 6.6 percent in December.The report by Statistics Canada showed the biggest monthly downturn in employment since the federal agency began using its current methodology in 1976. It also showed record job losses in the manufacturing sector."I can't see one glimmer of hope in this report when we dig beneath the headlines," said Derek Holt, economist at Scotia Capital."The optimists are just taking body blows all over the place here," he said.The Canadian dollar fell immediately after the report to C$1.2506 to the U.S. dollar, or 79.96 U.S. cents, from C$1.2415, or 80.55 U.S. cents, earlier.The monthly drop in employment, far worse than expected, single-handedly wiped out the net job gain in 2008 of less than 100,000. Canada has shed 213,000 jobs since October.Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast a job loss of 40,000 and an unemployment rate of 6.8 percent.The monthly decline was also bigger than any seen in the previous economic troughs of the 1980s and 1990s, Statscan said. That raised fears this recession will be deeper and more protracted than policy-makers have predicted and that the Bank of Canada will be compelled to cut rates further from their 50-year low of 1 percent."Everybody is prepared for a pretty weak first quarter, but these numbers are probably surprising the more bearish views," said Craig Wright, chief economist at the Royal Bank of Canada.Many economists disagree with the Bank of Canada's projection that the economy will recover more quickly than in past recessions, with growth returning in the third quarter. Last month it projected the economy would shrink 4.8 percent in the first quarter after contracting 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.Canada's job numbers preceded a U.S. report showing the most severe job losses there in 34 years.Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, said Canada was in for more carnage in the labor market in coming months."This is the start of a wave of job losses that will likely extend through the first half of this year," he said.Canadian companies have been announcing massive layoffs on an almost daily basis. Montreal-based aircraft maker Bombardier was the latest, saying on Thursday it would cut more than 1,300 jobs due to a softening market for business jets.The dramatic downturn in January affected full-time and part-time employees and was spread across the private and public sectors.The last time the unemployment rate hit 7.2 percent was in November 2004.Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had hinted on Thursday the report would be grim, saying the job numbers would be "very regrettable" and that there was a risk that Canada's recession would get much worse.Manufacturing, highly sensitive to U.S. demand, was the worst hit in January. The sector lost just over 100,000 jobs due largely to troubles in the auto sector.The average hourly wage of permanent employees, however, rose in the month to 4.7 percent from 4.5 percent in December.(Additional reporting by Toronto Treasury Desk; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson)
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You would have to be an idiot to not see what I said as fact. Enter: You. Nuff said.
No, I would have to agree with your point of view and think the worst of Obama to not see what you said as fact.You also cant prove any of that so pretending that anybody should be able to see it is ridiculous. You cant disprove my explanation as implausible so you call me names. Which is fine...I really would not want a narrow-minded, racist, bible-thumper thinking highly of my intelligence because if they did I was probably doing something wrong. You just become more and more useless every day.
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Give everyone a tax cut today, give americans money they earned, and watch the economy turn, just like that. It's so simple it's ****ing disgusting, but there is no power in that, there is no ownership in that.
LOL. oh god. We just had 8 years of aggressive tax cuts. Your solution is more tax cuts? Thats the magic wand.Man, now I know why you are so religious. Your powers of belief are incredible. In your mind, 2000-2008 never happened. Lets just keep doing what we did the last 8 years and everything will be fine. The stimulus bill is typical Washington crap but it is much better than the GOP option #1: "give everyone tax cuts and watch things magically fix." Talk about belief in a higher power.Now, the bipartisan housing stimulus bill could be promising.
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LMD is sorta of correct. This is not the worst we have seen since the depression, but it is very similar to the early 70's and early 80's and it has the potential to be much worse.Historical Unemployemnt Rates
so the current problems are similar to the two worst financial periods since the Great Depression AND they have the potential to be much worse.thats one way to use the word sorta. he accused politicians of doing something NOT designed to get them re-elected! if nothing else, that should disqualify him from being taken seriously.
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LOL. oh god. We just had 8 years of aggressive tax cuts. Your solution is more tax cuts? Thats the magic wand.Man, now I know why you are so religious. Your powers of belief are incredible. In your mind, 2000-2008 never happened. Lets just keep doing what we did the last 8 years and everything will be fine. The stimulus bill is typical Washington crap but it is much better than the GOP option #1: "give everyone tax cuts and watch things magically fix." Talk about belief in a higher power.Now, the bipartisan housing stimulus bill could be promising.
We are mostly in this mess because of the Senate banking committee's everyody deserves a house plan.We are unable to snap out of it because of Congress's spending like drunken sailors for the last 20 years.We are being led by people that don't pay their taxes, take bribes as a rule, and generally don't believe the laws apply tho them.And you look to these guys to bail us out?Next you'll point to tiny South American's countries with almost zero similarities and declare them perfect models for our future.If spending money is the cure, then Bush would have made us disease free
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We just had 8 years of aggressive tax cuts.
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about the United States. What country are you talking about?
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I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about the United States. What country are you talking about?
los Estados Unidos. The Bush tax cuts were quite aggressive compared to the last 20-30 years. If you are arguing that they could have been more aggressive, thats fine. Anything could always be more aggressive.
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LOL. oh god. We just had 8 years of aggressive tax cuts. Your solution is more tax cuts? Thats the magic wand.Man, now I know why you are so religious. Your powers of belief are incredible. In your mind, 2000-2008 never happened. Lets just keep doing what we did the last 8 years and everything will be fine. The stimulus bill is typical Washington crap but it is much better than the GOP option #1: "give everyone tax cuts and watch things magically fix." Talk about belief in a higher power.Now, the bipartisan housing stimulus bill could be promising.
Because tax cuts are how we arrived where we are at. It's not about a higher power- if everyone in the middle class suddenly had an extra 10,000 what would happen? This is simple, basic, rudimentary, the ultimate in just as low as you can go if I have 1 dollar and now I have 10 what do I have? It's basic spending power, and the question is who do you want to have that power? Meanwhile, Obama is on T.V. right now talking as negatively as possible. His rhetoric is inexcusable at best.
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los Estados Unidos. The Bush tax cuts were quite aggressive compared to the last 20-30 years. If you are arguing that they could have been more aggressive, thats fine. Anything could always be more aggressive.
Yeah, they weren't all that aggressive, meaning, alot more can be done to he downside. Lets put it this way- if Obama cut the corporate tax rate to 12% and lowered income tax rates and capital gains I would have no problem with the spending plan, because people would spend alot more money, taxes would be collected, the economy would be stimulated and the sheer numbers could pay for his ridiculous spending bill- you could even have prosperity. The spending bill in and of itself leads to dependance, and nothing else.
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