The Real Mitt Romney

[BigV]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Agreed. Both supply (companies investing) and demand (customers spending) are important but I would argue that the supply side is not as widely recognized today so needs to be emphasized more.

I do want to make the point that in response to an increase in demand, companies can increase supply in two ways: hiring more workers or making their current workers more efficient. Historically, technology moved slow enough that increasing productivity wasn't an option but I think we are approaching the threshold where it may be cheaper (in general) for companies to increase supply by simply increasing productivity, not the amount of workers. I think this, along with technology allowing lower skilled workers to replace higher skilled workers (think manager positions), explains much of our current economic "recovery".

--snip

this.

Originally Posted by glatt

Stormie is correct. The myth that the Republicans are pushing this election is that small businesses are the job creators. That's not true. Businesses are reactionary. They get busy and they hire more help. They get busy when the consumers start buying their product or service more. Consumers buy more when they have more money to spend, (or feel like they have more money to spend and are willing to charge it.)

--snip--

The most effective way to stimulate the economy is to get consumers to start spending.

this.

Originally Posted by Stormieweather

You need more customers in order to expand. Businesses don't just expand because they have extra money, they expand because demand is higher for their product/service (and they can't squeeze any more out of their current resources).

And that means more cash is needed in the consumer's pocket. In most cases, small business customers are the middle class. Give the middle class more cash and they will buy more with it which will give small businesses reason to expand.

--snip

this.

Originally Posted by Flint

But we're talking about small businesses--think Hank Hill's boss on King of the Hill. Buck Strickland wants to make more money to spend on gambling and hookers. He can't increase his margin, so to make more he has to get bigger. He has to add customers, he has to increase capacity, and he ends up needing another truck driver to make those extra deliveries.

Let me ask you a question Flint, regarding supply and demand in our economy at this time. Buck Strickland aside for the moment, do you think the current limit on our economic growth is related to--in any way--insufficient supply? Like, there's not enough stuff out there to buy? Empty store shelves, stores that could sell it if only they had it? Not enough propane, anywhere??

I'll tell you what it looks like from here, in my house, and in the economic lives of everyone I know. We're all spending *as fast as we can*. There is plenty of supply, there's plenty of demand, what there isn't is plenty of money. The balance of money has tipped dramatically toward businesses and away from workers, spenders, buyers, customers.

[piercehawkeye45]

Big_V. This lecture by Elizabeth Warren (1998) may interest you. It talks about why the middle class does not have enough money to spend. It is long, 1 hour, but extremely informative. The first 10 minutes are introductions so that can be skipped.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Flint

The way I understood it is because the rate is lower.

this is the core problem I have understanding Romney's tax plan. He says reduce rates, reduce deductions, revenue neutral. Where is this "more money" coming from?

[BigV]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

BigV, follow the link for the answer.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...ssible/263541/

Edit: A second article:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...-tax-plan.html

Basically, you assume unrealistic job growth or you change the definition of the middle class...

ph45! I have neglected to thank you for this *extremely informative post*. Thank you. They are good articles, no crap, lots of detail well explained.

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Big_V. This lecture by Elizabeth Warren (1998) may interest you. It talks about why the middle class does not have enough money to spend. It is long, 1 hour, but extremely informative. The first 10 minutes are introductions so that can be skipped.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

have started the vid, but it's gonna be preempted by the debate. I'll report later though. thanks.

[Adak]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

MUCH LESS left than a liberal.
Center to center right. It's hard to think of something he's proposed or done that wasn't proposed or done by the moderate Republicans of yesteryear. The Overton window strategy has worked; Obama's a big disappointment to liberals, but he'll get the votes because in every way Obama failed them, Romney's worse.

Obama has stated that under his system of cap and trade, our electric rates "would necessarily skyrocket". He wants to also run all our coal fired electric power plants so "they would go bankrupt".

I call that VERY liberal.

But today, we have YET ANOTHER stimulus money being flushed down the shitter, to the tune of 249 Million Dollars!

Let's hear it for Obama's stimulus plan!!

Battery maker A123 files for bankruptcy protection

By TOM KRISHER, AP Auto Writer – 5 hours ago

DETROIT (AP) — After years of struggling in the nascent market for electric cars, battery maker A123 Systems Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday.

The filing drew criticism from Republicans who claim the Obama administration has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on alternative energy companies like A123.

The company received a $249 million Department of Energy grant three years ago with high hopes that it would help foster a U.S. battery industry. At the time, the country was far behind the world leaders, Korea and China.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...6f9fb2b7fac279

WHEN, WHEN, WHEN, will Obama stop flushing our money, down the toilet, by the hundreds of millions of dollars?

[Happy Monkey]

Cap and trade was a Republican invention.

Want to try again?

[DanaC]

Adak, you can call it what you will. That doesn't change what it is, or isn't.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by Ibby

I could keep going for an hour ....

Not only could I spend a full hour listing bullet points - i could write for an hour each about each of them. Why can't that ever be something I do?

Here's something I posted on my tumblr as a slightly but only slightly tongue-in-cheek post at 3:30 in the morning, when i should be sleeping so I can do my homework in the morning but instead I'm drinking a tripel ale and tequila. and smoking up. My middle school ex I've been skypefucking with the last few weeks is texting flirtily with me again but very slowly while she writes her thoreau essay due tomorrow and, well, i'm not going to sleep until I know if she's gonna take a study break.

So, instead, I'm listening to the first four Ramones albums [Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket to Russia, Road to Ruin] in chronological order and indulging vices - i think im going to have a cigar in a minute - and #nightblogging on tumblr.

Originally Posted by Ibby

the vast majority of jobs worked by American workers are jobs that don’t “come home” with you.
When your shift or your day or your hours finish, you clock out and go home. Or, you get salary plus overtime, and you get paid extra in bonuses or manager’s raises or OT or whatever for time you spend outside of work doing work-related things, or your salary reflects your complicated and demanding schedule.

Why are the only major, inevitable exceptions to this…. Teaching and being a student?

Students do homework. Teachers spend time out of class grading and preparing and everything else. Arguably teachers SHOULD BE and in theory (but not practice) ARE paid a salary that takes out-of-class time into account.

Why are students, for 12-16-20+ years, educated in a way that assumes so much extra time outside of class - especially in high school/college/beyond - writing essays and doing homework, when that is NOT at ALL a skill applicable to working life in general, and not useful to the vast majority of the potential workforce, leaving especially those who can’t afford higher education in a situation where public education yet again fails to adequately prepare them for working life, reenforcing systemic patterns of disadvantage that add to the problem of vast numbers of people being unemployed and underemployed while major corporations sit on vast reserves of money?

TAGS:
#[ibby] really really does not like doing her homework #[ibby] would rather rant about our education/employment problem than actually do homework #this is nearly a standard 250-word page long thats a LOT for a 3:30am post #imagine if i cared even half as much about doing homework as about ranting on tumblr #nightblogging

[Ibby]

oh my god i sound like tw on drugs what is going on?
also i'm loving this Deadpool-style two-voice commentary agh somebody make me go to bed i have class tomorrow

[Adak]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Cap and trade was a Republican invention.

Want to try again?

Oh, I'm sure a national tax on a product of any kind, is a Republican invention, because we WANT the government to get more of our money.

You sure know your Conservative ideas, don't you?

Are you drinking, smoking some wacky tobacky, or what?

[Ibby]

No, really, dude. Cap and trade was the CONSERVATIVE response to a FLAT CAP on emissions! Cap and trade was not the deal between two parties, or a liberal idea - it was a REPUBLICAN plan built of a compromise between free-market Ayn Rand lunatics who wanted to seem to want a market alternative, hence the TRADE part of Cap and Trade, and the INSANE FRINGE - that now DOMINATES the republican party - that denies the proof of wide-scale climate change and didn't see why caps should be there in the first place and wanted to subvert them as much as possible.

Learn your modern fucking political history, you idiotic shill.

Originally Posted by Adak

Are you drinking, smoking some wacky tobacky, or what?

I'm doing both, and I'm STILL right. And I dunno how old you are, but I'd guess by your get-off-my-lawn embarrassing-older-relative political positions that compared to you, i'm just a kid. and I'm STILL RIGHT.

why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling donut?

[Adak]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Adak, you can call it what you will. That doesn't change what it is, or isn't.

I will certainly agree.

And what we have here, is 3 1/2 years of failed fiscal policies.

If Obama could have gotten his fiscal policies smartened up, he'd be a shoe-in for re-election. But now? It will be a very close race.

The races in the House of Rep. and the Senate, will also be very important. If I have to listen to Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, I'll be investing in earplugs and noise cancelling headphones.

I believe they could use Pelosi for gentle coercion, down at Gitmo. A few hours listening to her gobbletygook, and they'll be jumping at the chance of confessing their crimes, just to make that irritating sound of her voice, stop.

[Ibby]

because the current house isn't a textbook case of failed leadership or anything.
Clinton/Pelosi 2016 #misandry 4 lyf #fuckthepatriarchy #fuckthekyriarchy

[Ibby]

Both the in the House in DC and in republican state houses across the country the focus has been jobs jobs jobs by which they mean ABORTION. There have been more anti-abortion bills introduced this session than in ANY other session in the HISTORY of our nation. If that isn't an utter failure of national leadership and policy I don't know what is. On the other hand, landmark reforms of health care, fair pay, non-discrimination, and, from the end of the recession, the sharpest rise in private sector job growth since the WPA and the War on Poverty without growing government jobs sounds like Obama knows what's right for this country.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Adak

Oh, I'm sure a national tax on a product of any kind, is a Republican invention, because we WANT the government to get more of our money.

Yes. C. Boyden Gray, a Reagan and GHW Bush lawyer, first signed into law by GHW Bush.