It didn't go down on my house. I read that the city still needs the taxes. It makes sense.

"At the time, our forecast seemed reasonable," Vice President Joe Biden's top economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, said Monday, explaining that the White House underestimated the scope of the recession. "Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090609/D98MRQU80.html


This says it all.

I have said on this board from the very beginning, that forecasting economic growth, years in advance is irresponsible. Their numbers were absurd and they knew it. We are marching toward total financial ruin.

Obama said it was going to get worse before it got better.

He said Americans were going to have to hunker down and ride it out.

He is not a miracle worker and we all know that, or at least those of us living in reality do.

Obama did what the financial wizards told him to do to stave off a depression. So if we do not go into a full blown depression it worked. The economy takes years to recover, ten or more if the past is any reference but the financial advisors were trying to make it so we do not have to suffer that long.

There were no quarentees only the hope that being proactive would make a difference.

many economists disagreed with the stimulus package as well.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/mar2009/db2009038_985205.htm

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_090213.htm

Many agreed with it too.

Maybe there was no right or wrong way then.

you are right about those that agreed or disagreed, but time will tell abot the wrong or right way.

I do believe some of the earmarks could be put to better use

((( Rose )))


#1,000,001 that Texas women are cool



They have their own spurs

I agree, the bailouts were just a huge robbery of the people.

However i disagree about the benefits of the people getting this money.

Lets say every household is bringing in about $50,000 a year, and we gave them all an extra $50,000 for this year. You would have a huge spending spree that would take place, and yes, this would stimulate the economy. Problem is the more people spend, the less goods there are to go around. The less goods there are, the more they cost. When the money is gone, you would have the price of food, and other products nearly double, and next year you would not have the money to cover these expenses.

They should have given tax breaks instead of a "stimulus".

shooter




tax breaks for the people (as fran said) get offest with the taxes on other things...therefore not really tax breaks

I wish i had this blind faith... But until then i shall continue to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

I don't think it's blind faith, Drivin. I see it as common sense.
There are no guarantees and we are hoping that being proactive will make a difference. It does take time.

There is a flaw in your logic there.

The more the people buy, the more the factories have to make, the more workers they gonna need, the more people gonna be employed, demand increases, so will the the loans and the number of businesses trying to outsell each other and so on.
Capitalism thrives on by the spending power of the customer.

Take away the spending power and the entire thing collapses. That's what's going on now.

There is no limit what the people would buy..only the limit of their budget and limit of availability. If there is a company making Blue-Ray players and he runs out , someone will jump in to sell blue-ray players. Then if there is a 3rd one, he wants to sell it cheaper to have a buyers and the 4th one might not sell it cheaper but a better quality one. It's an endless cycle, but it cannot survive and all these 4 companies will go bankrupt if the people aren't buying any blue-ray dvd players whatsoever.

I understand what you are saying. You are correct, i gave a simple explanation to a complex system. Spending power is an important part of the system. But where you and i disagree, is the basis for this system. You say money is the basis, where i say capital is.

For starters money is worth nothing by itself. All it does is represent barter potential. It's a way to save essentially.

When you increase the amount of money in circulation without increasing the capital you are doing nothing but taxing the citizens that use this currency. Meaning, until production increases all this money you gave people will do nothing accept make everything more expensive.

You are right, production may increase as a result, but it won't so much as this spending ability is temporary. Demand will go down as soon as this money runs out, and you will find businesses hesitant to expand when they anticipate a spending decrease after this money is gone. That is, of course, the end result. Since stimulus packages are artificial, the affects it has are artificial, and thus you have a short term fix to a long term problem.

I think the problem we have at hand is the fact that the majority of americans spend 50 to 90% of their income, based on tax bracket, on taxes. If we could balance a budget, we could let people keep more of their own money, which they would in turn use to purchase capital, increasing business profits. This would be a long term solution for a long term problem.

Mathmatically, stimulus packages don't work. It doesn't matter what you do with them. The market is to large and powerful for the government to control. This is one of the big reasons there is a push for globalization. If the entire world were controlled by one government it would be easier to control the market.

My theory, is instead of attempting to control the market, we embrace it. If we stopped trying to set artificial prices, and started embracing production, we would have an increase in capital. Capital is, after all, the true wealth of the system. Money is nothing without capital.