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Economists: Stimulus Not Working, Obama Must Rein in Spending

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Hmmmm....100 "prominent" economists eh? Where the h e double hockeysticks were these idiots when the greed-machine aka the american economy was barreling full speed ahead into the shoal of the last economic collapse???? I'm sure they were all busy pulling their mountainous pay cheques out of the sweet academic postings and think-tank positions, and of course wringing their last bit of dough out of the economy as it ground itself into the iceberg....all of them knowing full well what was coming. So we should listen to these fools?
And concerning the administrations approach in this situation, whining about it is ludicrous. Pushing an economy of this scale and complexity out of the bushes and back onto the tracks after a collapse of this magnitude is by nature going to be a long haul. Not something that can be conveniently corrected in short order. Patience would be the order of the day.

A McBay of ON. of NY 5:44PM September 17, 2010

g.c of FL: Why do you assume that people who get unemployment aren't using that money to feed their families while they look for a new job? Why would anyone go to Disney Land while out of a job? You make no sense. A few people may just take the money and run, but I believe that most Americans do the right thing and believe in hard work. I guess you believe Americans are lazy and just look for hand outs. Sad.

John Henry of AL 6:18PM August 31, 2010

I traded in my nursing shoes for boots to help my husband land survey.
Business was good until this year, and we thought it was bad last year! Oh yes, it can get worse and I believe its only going to get worse until the Obama administration learns how to handle money.
I have been watching how to spend money since I was a kid mainly due to the fact that my father lived during the Great Depression. That man taught me plenty about being stingy, but what I didn't realize as a children, over 50 years ago, that he had a darn good reason. He would give my mom the same amount of money each week for groceries, who does that? If I walked downtown to pay the bills he wanted every cent back in change. He would only pay for a car with cash and if he didn't have the money, he didn't buy one, and he darn sure knew how to make one last too! I ended up keeping my first car, a Toyota Camry, 13 years, and I thought he was crazy for keeping a car 7-8 years!
My husband and I go out to work, mostly survey in subdivisions, most look like ghost towns from the old westerns I watched on TV as a kid. They are grown up with weeds, the windows are bare and just unkept.
We somehow need to get people to want to go back to work.
You see, its easy having the unemployment check come in every month on time! People don't want to work anymore because they don't have to work, the government will pay them to sit at home and go to Disney World just fine! Do you know how much Disney World tickets costs? I heard that from my dentist this morning who was complaining about his college educated brother who worked at a bank that went under. He told his brother, the dentist, "its not bad receiving unemployment."
And they are liking that!
Hello Obama administration! How blind can you be up there in Washington?
You guys/gals have so much money you don't have any idea how we little people down here, who have to work and sweat and climb fenses, and dig holes to look for property corners have to work to make our meager two cents.
Its time you looked around to really see and notice we have a big problem and paying people unemployment checks on a montly basis is only making it worse.
The White House really does have their head in the sand!
I could do a better job at regulating where the money goes, because I would let them all bomb, the rich CEOs are especially sickening. They have no clue either. The bad part is, you all are making your big money while you spend our little money.
Stop giving out free rides!
Why doesn't the presidential job prereq include a coarse gruling of questions like anyone who wants to be on the Supreme Court?

g.c. of FL 4:28PM June 30, 2010

I traded in my nursing shoes for boots to help my husband land survey.
Business was good until this year, and we thought it was bad last year! Oh yes, it can get worse and I believe its only going to get worse until the Obama administration learns how to handle money.
I have been watching how to spend money since I was a kid mainly due to the fact that my father lived during the Great Depression. That man taught me plenty about being stingy, but what I didn't realize as a children, over 50 years ago, that he had a darn good reason. He would give my mom the same amount of money each week for groceries, who does that? If I walked downtown to pay the bills he wanted every cent back in change. He would only pay for a car with cash and if he didn't have the money, he didn't buy one, and he darn sure knew how to make one last too! I ended up keeping my first car, a Toyota Camry, 13 years, and I thought he was crazy for keeping a car 7-8 years!
My husband and I go out to work, mostly survey in subdivisions, most look like ghost towns from the old westerns I watched on TV as a kid. They are grown up with weeds, the windows are bare and just unkept.
We somehow need to get people to want to go back to work.
You see, its easy having the unemployment check come in every month on time! People don't want to work anymore because they don't have to work, the government will pay them to sit at home and go to Disney World just fine! Do you know how much Disney World tickets costs? I heard that from my dentist this morning who was complaining about his college educated brother who worked at a bank that went under. He told his brother, the dentist, "its not bad receiving unemployment."
And they are liking that!
Hello Obama administration! How blind can you be up there in Washington?
You guys/gals have so much money you don't have any idea how we little people down here, who have to work and sweat and climb fenses, and dig holes to look for property corners have to work to make our meager two cents.
Its time you looked around to really see and notice we have a big problem and paying people unemployment checks on a montly basis is only making it worse.
The White House really does have their head in the sand!
I could do a better job at regulating where the money goes, because I would let them all bomb, the rich CEOs are especially sickening. They have no clue either. The bad part is, you all are making your big money while you spend our little money.
Stop giving out free rides!
Why doesn't the presidential job prereq include a coarse gruling of questions like anyone who wants to be on the Supreme Court?

g.c. of FL 4:24PM June 30, 2010

President Obama added $1.5trillion a year to make $3 trillion in debt in two years for his “stimulus plan” which increased unemployment from 8% to 10%! Why didn’t it work? Congress PAYS people to be unemployed. Why work?
To pay for this debt alone in the same amount of time, your taxes must increase to 250% of it’s current level. According to the IRS, the entire revenue stream of the US is $1 trillion; and the Adjusted Gross Income (1040 line 32) for every person in America added together is $8 trillion.
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/08fallbulintax.pdf
Your Net Income is usually half or less of Gross Income. If you subtract the $1trillion you pay in taxes, everyone has $3 trillion left to run their lives with. Do the math. To pay back to extra $1.5 trillion, we must add it to the current tax revenue of $1 trillion each year to get 2.5 trillion:
$2.5 trillion needed/ $1 trillion currently being paid = 250% current tax rate. Increasing the taxes this much will make it harder for employers to hire new employees or even to keep all of their workers.
Doesn’t government already take enough out of your check for taxes? If they triple that rate, what will we have left to pay for ‘trivial’ things like house notes, utilities, clothes, food, and gas? The politicians don’t care how it affects you. They want the votes extending these unemployment benefits bring them. Are you going to take it lying down?? Won’t you SAY anything? The people who have been getting a free ride for the past two years are complaining loudly. They want more of your money. Why not say, “Go BACK to your old job. Don’t destroy mine.” ?

TC of GA 3:26AM June 18, 2010

Congress is causing our high unemployment.
1. OBama repealed the Section 179 investment expense deduction. This credit lets small-businesses expense the first year, instead of 5 to 30 years. Then they can expand and hire new employees.
2. Increasing unemployment benefits from two months to two years forced my state to sharply increase unemployment-insurance rates; employers can’t hire new workers: it’s too expensive.
Third, why work when unemployment benefits pay as much as a job? An auto-body owner said his best employees won't return because they made the same money on unemployment A private placement agency’s owner told me he’d been embarrassed by applicants refusing job offers in line with their former wages because they made as much unemployed..
This two-year unemployment benefit makes a profession out of doing nothing

Cas of GA 3:21AM June 18, 2010

Please put out YOUR weed and quit deflecting and twisting.
Some federal income tax paid numbers from 2007
Top 1 % of earners paid 40.42 %
Top 5 % piad 60.63 %
Top 10 % paid 71.22 %
Top 25 % paid 86.59 %
Top 50 % paid 97.11 %
Bottom 50 % paid 2.89 % and most got a rebate
Seeing how you think you have all the answers and numbers, everyone elses are missleading or wrong, can't wait for a reply.
By the way, with the Bush tax cuts set to expire in Jan.2011, do you expect an economic turn around, more jobs and investment ? Along with other tax increases Obama has planned, will things turn around ?
Please try to keep it to a yes or no answer, yes tax increases will help, no they won't help.

Hunter of WI 10:54PM June 15, 2010

Dumb dumb they are paying more taxes because they are more willing to invest with tax cuts. Re-read Kennedy quote. I am not comparing them to the poor. Get real. Kennedy quote alone makes you state stupid.
Govenment revenue increases when rich get tax cut.
I have never seen a guy give so much data without links.

Bill Hedges of MO 10:06PM June 15, 2010

First of all, the CBO study that you quoted gave meaningless and misleading information. The share of total income tax paid by any one particular income fractile makes no difference especially when income taxes are dropping like a stone for the rich. Of course the rich pay a larger share of the total income taxes collected by the federal government; they have all the income!! Over the past thirty years the real rate of income growth for the middle class has stagnated while the real rate of income growth from the upper 1% has quadrupled. Even with declining tax rates logic dictates that they will end up paying a larger share of the total federal tax revenues collected. This misleading nonsense has been echoed by every right wing pundit from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News. It is nonsense. It is meaningless.
The important thing is that the effective rate of taxation for the rich has declined markedly. The top 1% of households control 24% of the income, 36% of the wealth and pay an effective rate of taxation of about 31% on their income, far less than they did before 1980. Their rate of income growth has increased as their effective rate of taxation has decreased. Also, the top 20% of income earners pay an effective rate of taxation of 25% while their income increased nearly 154%. The effective rates have been dropping overall. Also, cuts in the top bracket and capital gains have been highest, while payroll taxes have gone up. These are born heaviest by the poor and middle class. They pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.

steve of IL 12:00PM June 15, 2010

2010
“Lying About Bush's Tax Cuts”
“Two of the most oft-cited objections to the Bush tax cuts by the left are that it helped only the rich and it was largely responsible for the federal deficit at the end of the Bush presidency. Instead, it is true that if the current administration allows any or all of the Bush tax cuts to expire, economic growth will be slowed and tax revenue could actually decrease, perpetuating our deficit dilemma.”
“The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 broadly lowered income, capital gains, dividends, and estate taxes. Fanning the lie that only the rich benefited, liberal economists Peter Orszag and William Gale described the Bush tax cuts as reverse-government redistribution of wealth, "[shifting] the burden of taxation away from upper-income, capital-owning households and toward the wage-earning households of the lower and middle classes." This criticism stuck so well that it is difficult to find a liberal today who doesn't believe that these tax relief measures were anything more than "tax cuts for the rich."
“But the data does not support this conclusion. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Bush tax cuts actually shifted the total tax burden farther toward the rich so that in 2000-2004, total income tax paid by the top 40% of income-earners grew by 4.6% to 99.1% of the total.”
“This shift may have occurred because as the wealthy (who are arguably the most industrious and productive citizens) are better-incentivized to be industrious and productive through lower taxes, they create higher incomes for themselves and end up paying more taxes. The Bush tax cuts did shift the tax burden, but not in the direction most liberals think.”
“The second major misconception spread by the left about the Bush tax cuts is that the lower tax rates caused the federal deficit woes we face today. Keeping with the party line of blaming the previous administration for all of today's problems, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) quipped in a news conference on January 8 of this year: "Let me just say that the tax cuts at the high end ... have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit." Of course, the Speaker would have us believe that overspending has nothing to do with our deficit.”
“In fact, the Bush tax cuts actually increased government revenue.”
“If policymakers intend cigarette taxes to discourage smoking, then they should know that high investment taxes will discourage investment and income taxes will discourage work. Lowering taxes encourages people to engage in the given behavior, which expands the base and replenishes some or all of the lost revenue. This is the "feedback effect" of a tax cut.”
“The bottom line is that tax policy has far-reaching effects, and for decades, liberals have refused to acknowledge them. The dire consequences of higher tax burdens in times of economic weakness were made most clear when FDR raised taxes in 1937, causing a double-dip in GDP that prolonged the Great Depression. If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, recovery from the current crisis will likely be prolonged, and we will have no one to blame but ourselves for not observing the lessons of history“.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/lying_about_bushs_tax_cuts.html

Bill Hedges of MO 2:20AM June 15, 2010