"Republicans" Explain Romney's plan to a liberal (Page 2)

How much of that is this president's policies and how much is the grid lock in DC between the House and Senate actually allows the country to have some certainty and proceed with investments knowing the law won't change on them midstream?  Gridlock is certainty that things won't change afterall.

If that's the case, we should reelect everyone so that we can keep the current gridlock so we'll keep our 0.1-2% growth going.

Investors can deal with knowing the current situation when it's crappy.  They just don't like an uncertain situation at all.

I'm not a Republican or Conservative, so take my response with a grain of salt...

BOTH parties will talk about "tax cuts to create jobs".  But tax cuts have NEVER equalled lower unemployment.  Just because a business's taxes are lower, it's nowhere near enough to spur expanding the workforce.  So what is?  INCREASED DEMAND!

We're a consumer-spending-based economy.  Lower taxes and for most people who aren't in debt, will spend more.  If enough people get tax cuts and that money is enough for the bathroom remodeling desires they've wanted for several years, then Mr. Plumber may find himself with 5 new jobs a month...  Enough to hire on another plumber to handle the workload.

As to your second part, the deficit - you CAN'T.  Balancing the budget and reducing the deficit is ONLY accomplished by...

1. Cutting government spending (But that means laying off government workers.  And it often means cutting contracts to private business that pay employees.  Can't forget that.)  Tough to do now in this economy.  But you have to start somewhere.  While I support the Affordable Healthcare Act and disagree with Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare - at least he HAS a plan and is willing to talk about what it might take to reign in the big government bills.  Gotta have it on the table.
2. An improved economy in which more people work and pay taxes.  Great, but it takes time and is mostly driven by market forces and much less by government intervention.  The President can't just CREATE jobs unless they increase spending (stimulus).  But that's counter to #1.  This one will take time to work itself out and the government needs to take a role to ensure that such crashes don't happen again (see below).
3. Raising taxes on some or all people that pay taxes.  Sure this can happen quickly, but obviously some people aren't going to like it.  And honestly, it's not a very big dent in the overall deficit.

Plain and simple - It takes a combination of all three and a lot of time.  As Romney talks about doing just #1 and #2, it's not enough, he wouldn't have the direct control and ability to make it happen, and the numbers don't add up.  Obama talks about #1 over the long-run (that's OK), but he doesn't talk about the job losses as a result of #1.  He talks about #2, but it's not the only answer (that's OK).  He talks about #3 for the wealthiest, but that's just poltical pandering unless you're willing to go back to the 70% tax rate range of the 1940's and 50's.  So in the end, NEITHER candidate can seriously do something about the deficit in the coming 4 years.  It'll take more time than that.

As to #2 above (regulation):  I see the economy as a pendulum that naturally swings back and forth from normal market forces.  It goes one way, it goes the other.  What should government regulations do?  Basically put a stopper at either end of the pendulum so that it doesn't swing too wildly one way or the other.  Prevent the "bubbles" (dot-com, housing) and the crashes.  I DIDN'T say being a rail along the sides of the pendulum or artificially push it one way or the other.  Just be a stopper at either end.

The private finance/mortgage/housing sector is mostly to blame for the housing crash.  But the government was there all along, artifically pushing the pendulum too far to one side.  "The American Dream".  The government as far back as Bush 1 and Clinton was pushing people into private home ownership.  Let's face it, some people aren't meant to own a home.  There's nothing wrong with renting.  They pushed and with deregulations and weak oversight, you wind up with banking executives pressured to do unethical and illegal acts.

When you push a pendulum very far to one side, it's going to swing down hard and fast over to the other side.

Too many people think the President has this magic wand that they can wave to create jobs, lower gas prices at the pump, make people healthier, balance the budget, and fix all of your personal problems, worries and woes.  Sorry, but the POTS can't do ANY of that!

Riddle me this..

Today I am supposed to by $6 in tax, but due to $2 in tax deductions I only have to pay $4.

Mitts plan is to reduce my tax burden and eliminate my tax deduction.  As a result, the new math is I only have to pay $4 in tax and have no deductions. 

Can anyone explain what I am missing. 

Sounds like it to me, it will just be easier to file taxes and less forms to fill out, as I wont have to search for the appropriate deductions. 

Bill Gross isn't a fan.

http://www.pimco.com/EN/Insights/Pages/Time-To-Vote.aspx

ETA: I do think Ben is an idiot. How can you miss the housing bubble when you are the head of the Fed? The evidence was everywhere, many people were screaming about it and he has no idea. 

Dodd-Frank sucks because nobody has any idea what is in it.  Not even Dodd or Frank.  They were smoking medicinal marijuana when they wrote that piece of stuff.

I think the problem with 0.1-2% growth is that it allows other countries to catch-up to us (which I don't like) and it means our unemployment stays high for a long time (which nobody likes).

This is my take on it, Romney thinks the government would,,,,, well let me back up, first to correct something you said, Romney want's to decrease the tax rate, NOT tax revenue. Now back to that, Romney has been accused of shipping jobs over seas and not paying enough income tax. I would say he understands better than most why jobs are moving from the USA to overseas, several reasons, costs, regulations and uncertainty. Jobs and money are like water and electricity, they will flow to the path of least resistance. Understanding what caused him to ship some jobs overseas he knows the reasons why and will attempt to lower costs of doing business in the USA and get regulations to be more predictable and have a little more common senses than they have currently.

I believe the USA taxes business more than most other countries, if we continue to increase our business taxes we will get a bigger piece or percentage of a shrinking market, not really a good thing, if we lower business tax rates and make the USA more business friendly regulation wise we can get more revenue with a smaller rate via an increasing market.

Which is better and this is debatable but an analogy of what I think Mitt will attempt to do. Would you rather get 1 piece out of 8 from 10 apple pies or 3/4 of a piece from 20 pies.

Will this work, I don't know but I'm pretty sure if we continue to increase the tax rate and pile on more regulations onto business we will see more business move out of the USA.

If most Congresspeople were honest...  "I read the summary the lobbyist from my biggest financial industry campaign contributor gave me."

and there lies the answer.  we have discussed QE here on COJ before.  I really don't think we are all that far apart as far as how it should work.  However, I see it far to risky to keep printing money in hope of kick-starting the economy.  To this point, QE has not helped the employment picture at all. You mentioned in an earlier post that GDP is growing (slowly).  That may be, though our debt is growing at a much greater rate.  The thing is with QE is that we are really going to know if it worked...but we sure will know when it fails!

The Laffer Curve - The correlation between tax rates and government revenue generated at each tax rate is a curve where both a 0% tax rate and a 100% tax rate generates no government revenue.  

Romney and almost all Conservative believe that the American tax rate is on the right side of the curve which means that a lower tax rates stimulates more economic growth and therefore there is more income to tax which generates more revenue to the government.

Liberals in general are Keynsians and believe that the Laffer Curve is voodoo economic.

Actually, Obama's plan for growing jobs is simple to understand.

Increase government spending.  Hire more government employees.

This can have an immediate effect on the economy.

Downside is that someone has to pay for this.

Thank you this was the article I was looking for all day.

edited for spelling

Thank you this was the article I was looking for all day.

edited for spelling

GNP went up with Reagan.  But this was the beginning of the separation of the wealthiest incomes from the poorest in the US.

It NEVER trickled down.

"This can have an immediate effect on the economy."

I am guessing you mean it has a positive effect. 

That would mean that if the government hired every unemployed person to spend all day digging ditches and then filling them that would also have an immediate positive effect on the economy.

The total economy is like a pool filled with water. If I take a cup of water from the deep end and dump it in the shallow end, the shallow end doesn't become deeper nor is there more water in the pool. Dumping water from one end of the pool to the other is in essence Obama's economic plan.

No.  I would say that Obama has spent 4 years stopping the decline and has actually reversed it, albeit slowly. 

Sarcasm aside, if you disagree you're ignoring reality.

Yep and number of people on food stamps proves it!