Comments on: The Best of CBPP Graphs: Guideposts on the Road Back to Factville

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:23:07 +0000

Is there such a thing a republican economics. Isnt that a little like saying Marxist Biology?

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:21:56 +0000

If you take the point to its limits anyone can see that high taxation kills jobs. I doubt you need to be told explicitly.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:48:21 +0000

There’s a reason why the right uses the same arguments over and over. I wonder what it could be. And sympathy isn’t the best determiner of who should get what. I;m sure your sympathies lie in different places than say Malcom X’s. Ghandi’s, Your mom’s. So Boo Hoo isnt the best of policy drivers.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:45:00 +0000

Interesting Stuff. Hope you and your wife enjoyed the lunch

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:41:41 +0000

whats the point?

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:55:44 +0000

Where do I start?
Hmm…. currently most German and French banks are in a bad place. They have loaned money to other countries (Greece, Spain, etc.) and citizens in those countries that can now no longer pay their debts. In addition, since the Euro was all one currency, Greece borrowed money from other places are far too low a rate (Since Germany was using the same currency, the rate was closer to Germany’s than what Greece’s economic prospects indicated).

Essentially this is a form of mercantilism. Germany has enjoyed extremely high GDP/growth/wages for the last 15 years thanks to the Euro. But now the bill is due. Greece, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, and Spain are basically insolvent/bankrupt. If Greece defaults (which they almost have to – that or live in abject poverty for a generation or two as slaves to the German bankers), then the euro tanks, then half the banks in Germany and France fail, then badness happens and we’ll see how good Germany’s economy looks then.

Without the artificial purchasing power granted to southern europe to buy northern european goods, the numbers cited in the article would never have happened. (The proof that this was artificial is the simple fact that southern europe can’t pay their bills. )

Similarly, attempting to compare numbers between various countries (like #3, etc.) is problematic without figuring out how to deal with structural differences in the economies. For example: A huge percentage of Norway’s wealth is derived from north sea oil production. How big? by one estimate, 25% of norway GDP is from oil. For comparison, about 3% of the United States GDP is from oil. Can you really compare those economies? Not with the simplistic numbers shown above, IMO.

#9 – Since the government arbitrarily sets the amount they will reimburse for various medical procedures under medicare, any attempt to claim it is more efficient is self-serving. “See, we reduced how much we spent because by law we can set the rate and make the doctor accept it.” Problem: more and more doctors are opting out of medicare for the simple reason that they can’t afford to be in it. When medicare reimbursements increase by 0 to 2%, but rent, electricity, supplies, labor, etc., increase by 1 to 5%, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that at some point, you can’t afford to help the old people any more.

etc.
etc.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:52:32 +0000

Looking at the last charts, it appears NAFTA and outsourcing are the biggest driver of pay reduction and the subsequent issues not the tax hikes or cuts. This makes sense, since if the US outsourced 85% of industrial production to Asia, India, Mexico, etc, this would be a strong effect.

So I say that NAFTA was the root cause of most of the loss of pay, and no tax hike or cut can overcome the loss of over 20 Million, Low, Med, and High Tech job losses. Put another way, Millions working at Wall Mart and Flipping Burgers is going to improve our standard of living.

By: jerkyEd

jerkyEd — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:45:45 +0000

What else happened at about the time FDR passed and Truman’s first years as President? Any guesses????
Funny how FDR haters cherry-pick their lessons from history.

By: jerkyEd

jerkyEd — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:39:42 +0000

None of the economic-libs I know and read claim tax increases will help create jobs. It is that tax cuts will cost more jobs! It is the economic-cons who are hell-bent on balancing federal budgets that would be best served by tax increases.

By: R

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 22:53:03 +0000

This is kind of a ridiculous pseudo-scientific response. So, without further ado:
This is most decidedly untrue. This is not the case of some entrepreneur scrimping and saving and then one year “monetizing” it and then going back to begging in the street. That is absurd. Here, we can see that almost 70% of the top 1% are in managerial, white-collar or otherwise professional workers (http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/20/news/economy/occupy_wall_street_income/index.htm). You could argue that lawyers and medical professionals are “entrepreneurs”, but most really aren’t. Also, from a guy who I really don’t like, but his stats I do believe are true (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/282503/who-s-top-1-percent-thomas-sowell?pg=2), we have an analysis that tracks income over time of the same taxpayers, so the top 1% in 1995 made 25% LESS in 2005. Pretty big huh? So they went from making ~350K to 260K. Boo hoo.

Oh and the lower quintiles have outspent their income on CREDIT, which is what accounts for that (not some black market economy blather you’re touting – do you think all poor people sell drugs?). You can argue that’s their fault, but much more likely that they were spending on credit for basic necessities (e.g., education, medical attention) that had increasingly become out of their reach.

Anyways. Not enough time to do it all, but, irony aside, this is all the same tired right-republican talking points.