President Eisenhower would strongly disagree ... at least that's how I interpret his words for his first book on the White House years.Quote:
Originally Posted by surasak
In my opinion lower taxes should stimulate the economy at least in theory.
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President Eisenhower would strongly disagree ... at least that's how I interpret his words for his first book on the White House years.Quote:
Originally Posted by surasak
In my opinion lower taxes should stimulate the economy at least in theory.
I've said many times I reject the notion of income taxes completely.
The 2006 Nobel Prize winner for Economics even won his prize on the notion (among several that led to his prize) that lower taxes don't generate long term job growth...it's a short term political fix designed to fool the people...in the end inflation rears its ugly head if the taxes are lowered permanently.
Better be careful what I say ... Eisenhower also believed he could do things to affect the economy ... but Milkman is trying to teach me that Presidents don't have that power.Quote:
Originally Posted by surasak
Legally they don't much power over economic affairs aside from submitting the budget or proposing legislation. An executive executes...that is, you give them something to do and they are supposed to do it. But the Office of the President is like a bully pulpit: what cannot be achieved through direct power can be achieved through indirect power.
Confidence. Popularity. Being Presidential. A President can make people feel good about themselves simply by being a strong and charismatic leader who displays a strong sense of accomplishment, pride, the willingness to 'connect' with the majority of the people (which can indirectly translate into a more confident public more willing to spend money). The actions of a President can have a profound impact on the public mood which in turns affects people's perception of whether or not the country is moving in the right direction or not. If a President were making speeches to make people feel good then a good speaker could elevate the mood of the country.
Take the past several Presidents: Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush. Of those 5 which ones would you rank as Presidential and which ones would you not rank as Presidential? If I had to rank them it would be Reagan, Clinton, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr - Carter tied for last. The news conference today was a disaster. That was not a person who looked, acted, or behaved Presidential. And if people were watching it would make them feel bad, feel depressed, like the country wad definately moving in the wrong direction.
Hey surasak ... or is it Milkman ? Recommend you read Eiesenhower's two books on his White House years ... maybe you'll change your opinion.Quote:
Originally Posted by surasak
Have any President's written scholarly type books about their White House years since Ike ? I'm pretty sure nothing that would be considered appropriate for research has come out of Reagan, Bush 1 or Clinton ... what about Nixon or Carter ?
oh oh, SK read ONE book about Eiesenhower, and he is showing off
Thank god, he didn't read more or he would be posting everywhere :D
I don't care about this concept. It's never mattered to me because I value experiences more than number and $$. I've been hearing it since I was 12 years old from my teachers in public high school about earning less like it's some kind of gloom and doom, and it isn't.
Anyway, here's an article about the "strongest economy in the world."
Quote:
Making less than dad did
Report reveals that American men in their 30s earn less than their fathers did, as family income growth decelerates.
By David Ellis, CNNMoney.com staff writer
May 25 2007: 6:52 PM EDT
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- American men in their 30s are earning less than their father's generation did, challenging a long-held belief that each generation will be better off than the one that preceded it, according to a new study published Friday.
The report, the first in an ongoing 18-month study on economic mobility in the United States, also revealed that the income growth of the median American household is declining.
The study was produced by a handful of politically diverse think tanks including the Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Urban Institute. It looked at income levels of American men in their 30s, which can be a good indicator of lifetime income.
Entire & Link: Standing in the shadow of dad's salary - May. 25, 2007
That's because all the economic growth is on paper. Much of it will be wiped out if house prices continue to decline.
There are plenty of jobs at Wal-Mart but the massive numbers of high paying manufacturing jobs (which were a result of America's involvement in WW I & II) are now gone.
Watch the free fall once the world realizes that the US is hollow inside.
Look at the very last place in the current account balance here:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2187rank.html
Not exactly:Quote:
Originally Posted by surasak
Edmund Phelps, a professor at Columbia University, has won the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics. He was awarded the prize for work he did in the 1960s on the tradeoffs between economic objectives such as controling inflation and unemployment. He challenged conventional wisdom that over the long term, governments can control the unemployment rate, for example, by accepting a higher inflation rate.
NPR : American Wins 2006 Nobel Prize for Economics
WASHINGTON — Columbia University professor Edmund Phelps on Monday won the 2006 Nobel prize in economics for pioneering work on the relationship between employment and inflation, which has influenced [jewish controlled] central banks around the world.
Phelps, 73, is the first solo winner of the $1.37 million prize since 1999. He is also the sixth U.S. citizen to win a Nobel this year. So far, Americans have swept the Nobel prizes that have been announced.
During the 1960s, Phelps built on what is known as the Phillips Curve, which held that when unemployment fell, there was a one-time rise in the rate of inflation.
Phelps felt that view didn't take into account the fact that consumers and businesses operate with incomplete information. He theorized that inflation depends on unemployment and expectations for future inflation.
As a consequence, the long-run rate of unemployment is not affected by inflation but only by the functioning of the labor market. Cutting interest rates or taxes to stimulate employment works temporarily, but can lead to higher inflation.
Further, policies that promote low inflation today will produce lower inflation expectations, aiding policymaking in the future. Phelps also looked at economic trade-offs, showing that deferring consumption in the short run to fund research, education and other business investment can improve economic conditions in the longer run.
USATODAY.com - Columbia University's Phelps gets Nobel in economics
Lower taxes or no taxes keeps money in the hands of those who earn it. How can that not lead to long term job growth? People spend their own money much more efficiently than governments.
What leads to higher inflation is an inflated money supply, which is a function of the Federal Reserve exclusively. Taxes suck money from productive members to unproductive and wasteful government boon doggles, such as the Iraq war. Yes, weapons manufacturers make record profits, but hardly good in the long run to be dependent upon war to keep the economy going.
When I toured the Summer Cottages of the wealthy in Rhode Island the tour guide keep emphasizing that these homes were built before the income tax of 1913.
The income tax is needed to pay for the Federal Reserve Act and the money needed to pay the interest on the money the government borrows from the private corporation - the Fed.
The Fed collateralizes in loans by the nation's income tax collected by the government.
The idea that lower income tax is "a short term political fix designed to fool the people...in the end inflation rears its ugly head if the taxes are lowered permanently." Is complete
:bsflag:
Another article:
Link: Generational income gains slow - Stocks & Economy - MSNBC.comQuote:
A generation ago, American men in their thirties had median annual incomes of about $40,000 compared with men of the same age who now make about $35,000 a year, adjusted for inflation. That’s a 12.5 percent drop between 1974 and 2004, according to the report from the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project.
To be sure, household incomes rose during the same period, but only because there are more full-time working women, the report said.
....The report also found that many countries, including Denmark, Norway, Finland and Canada, offer far more economic mobility than in the United States when measuring by the income differences between generations.
....Of course, the men who run American companies don’t have too much to complain about. CEO pay increased to 262 times the average worker’s pay in 2005 from 35 times in 1978, according to the report’s analysis of Congressional Budget Office statistics.
....U.S. inflation-adjusted household incomes rose only 9 percent from 1974 to 2004 — a severe slowdown when compared with the 32 percent increase from 1964 to 1994.
Going back to 1820, per capita gross domestic product in the United States has grown an average of 52 percent for each 30-year generation, according to the report. But since 1973, median family income has grown only 0.6 percent per year, a rate that produces just a 17 percent increase over a generation.
Here's a list of the Current Account Deficit.
Guess who's last?
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2187rank.html
^^ Glad you presented a dose of reality here. You have to be deluded with that steady stream of bullsh*t from Washington to think that the average American family is better off than it was 35 years ago. Family incomes are up because of the increase in hours worked per family - mothers and teenagers are forced into the workplace to make ends meet. GNP is up mainly due to immigration - when you add 2% to the population every year, you have the illusion of a 'growing economy'. And finally, if there is any growth in real wealth, almost all of it is at the top 2% of the population. If you lived during the 1960's and early 70's, your intuition should tell you that the average American family had a better quality of life and worked fewer hours.
In all fairness, it should be added that a lot of middle class financial misery is due to stupid spending habits. People who max out their credit cards and buy gas-guzzling SUVs and large McMansion houses that they can't afford have it coming. It still doesn't minimize the fact that for the average working stiff, the economy have been getting worse for decades.
You know, they could let the dollar slide...while taking their dollars and moving them overseas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Milkman
When the account is due, revalue the dollar, bring the foreign currency back, and make a killing.
^ This article might be related to what you're mention here, Sura. (I'm not sure, though.) I want to learn more about this. Any books, links?
Here's an article below about the US dollar and Oil (oil bourse I believe.) This article does relate to the condition of the U.S. dollar. Biased or innacurate, I don't know:
Entire & Link: The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse | EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil News ClearinghouseQuote:
In 1971, as it became clearer and clearer that the U.S Government would not be able to buy back its dollars in gold, it made in 1972-73 an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars for its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and also accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil countries, it had the reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. Because the world needed ever increasing quantities of oil at ever increasing oil prices, the world�s demand for dollars could only increase. Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil.
The economic essence of this arrangement was that the dollar was now backed by oil. As long as that was the case, the world had to accumulate increasing amounts of dollars, because they needed those dollars to buy oil. As long as the dollar was the only acceptable payment for oil, its dominance in the world was assured, and the American Empire could continue to tax the rest of the world. If, for any reason, the dollar lost its oil backing, the American Empire would cease to exist. Thus, Imperial survival dictated that oil be sold only for dollars. It also dictated that oil reserves were spread around various sovereign states that weren�t strong enough, politically or militarily, to demand payment for oil in something else. If someone demanded a different payment, he had to be convinced, either by political pressure or military means, to change his mind.
The man that actually did demand Euro for his oil was Saddam Hussein in 2000. At first, his demand was met with ridicule, later with neglect, but as it became clearer that he meant business, political pressure was exerted to change his mind. When other countries, like Iran, wanted payment in other currencies, most notably Euro and Yen, the danger to the dollar was clear and present, and a punitive action was in order. Bush�s Shock-and-Awe in Iraq was not about Saddam�s nuclear capabilities, about defending human rights, about spreading democracy, or even about seizing oil fields; it was about defending the dollar, ergo the American Empire. It was about setting an example that anyone who demanded payment in currencies other than U.S. Dollars would be likewise punished.
.....Economically speaking, in order for an empire to initiate and conduct a war, its benefits must outweigh its military and social costs. Benefits from Iraqi oil fields are hardly worth the long-term, multi-year military cost. Instead, Bush must have went into Iraq to defend his Empire. Indeed, this is the case: two months after the United States invaded Iraq, the Oil for Food Program was terminated, the Iraqi Euro accounts were switched back to dollars, and oil was sold once again only for U.S. dollars. No longer could the world buy oil from Iraq with Euro. Global dollar supremacy was once again restored. Bush descended victoriously from a fighter jet and declared the mission accomplished�he had successfully defended the U.S. dollar, and thus the American Empire.
This is what I worry about. Getting old in the US.
Entire & Link: Boomers going bankrupt at faster rate - Retirement - MSNBC.comQuote:
Baby boomers going bankrupt at faster rate
April, 27, 2007
Americans over 55 squeezed by mortgage debt, higher health care costs
....Senior researcher Jose Garcia, who examines consumer finance trends at New York-based Demos, said rising costs for housing and health care, especially prescription drugs, have made older Americans more dependent on credit. This, in turn, makes them more vulnerable to financial rough spots.
Americans over the age of 55 are filing for bankruptcy at a faster rate than the general population as growing mortgage debt and higher health care costs make them more vulnerable, a new study shows.
The trend of rising bankruptcies among older Americans is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, according to the study’s authors, John Golmant and Tom Ulrich, researchers at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Americas economy is the most dynamic in the world but in a few years it will no longer be the largest. When Sepos can no longer boast of "being number one" I expect a large wave of anti-Chinese sentiment. Remember America needs hate figures to function...
UK is noted also.
.............................
Link: Madeleine Bunting: The middle classes have discovered they've been duped by the super-rich | | Guardian Unlimited BusinessQuote:
It's the struggle to scrape together the half a million required for a modest south-east house with some cash spare to pay the childcare; the scramble for a half-decent school; the prospect of pathetic pensions; and the impossibility of easing their own children's university debts, let alone their entry into the London housing market. These last, assistance to the next generation, were key to how the middle class reproduced itself so successfully - but no longer.
Never have the middle classes looked so rich on paper - house values topping a million - and felt so poor. As Lloyd Evans put it in a Spectator column last month after buying his first house: "In theory, we're halfway to being millionaires. Yet we don't have a car, we can barely afford a holiday, and when we go for a drink, we sit on the green outside the pub, quaffing Tesco £2.99 Frascati to save money."
What's slowly dawning on middle England is that they've been duped: they were sold a line - a "fair deal for hard-working families"; meanwhile, another very different scenario was unfolding.
The charge sheet is being assembled. A super-elite rachets up social comparisons, leaving everyone lower down the pecking order disgruntled - the US economist Robert Frank argues that the relationship between inequality and lower rates of happiness is now well established. His new book, Falling Behind, examines the phenomenon in the US, where the middle classes are now working harder than ever to pay exorbitant mortgages on incomes that have stagnated while the wealth of the super-rich has ballooned. "Richistan" is another country, argues a Wall Street reporter assigned to cover the subject full-time in 2003: private banking, private planes, private health and education. And it's a country stuffed full of absurd opulence - watches worth hundreds of thousands, but hey, why stop at one, what about a "watch wardrobe"?
and not only that but that the "American Dream" is just a big fucking fraud
Pension plans linked to bogus hedge funds are now a major issue for the American economy. However as much as I despise the entity that is America it has the most robust economy in the world. Its mixture of economic liberalism and barrel of a gun imperialism garantees its success.
The Worldwide Crack Up Boom, According to Ludwig Von Mises
Housing's 'softened much more than is being reported'
O.C. real estate consultant John Burns says: "The housing market has softened much more than is being reported. We have been advising our retainer clients for more than one year about misleading national sales information, both with the Existing Home Sales and New Home Sales data. We are now going public with our concerns because we are concerned that policy makers are relying on national data to conclude that the housing market correction has not been severe."
OCRegister blog: Lansner on Real Estate - post: Housing's 'softened much more than is being reported'
The latest data on housing sales showed that the inventory of unsold homes climbed to 4.4 million in May, yet another record. The current inventory would be more than a full year of housing sales in the mid-nineties, before the housing bubble began to take off. There is also a record inventory of new homes for sale. Economists usually expect that excess supply leads to a drop in prices, and in this case, there is a considerable excess supply of houses.
Will Your House Do the NASDAQ Meltdown?
Savings rate hits 47-year low
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story...4790%2C00.html
Strongest economy in the world? :rofl:
In terms of wealth disparity, the UK resembles the US more and more. There is an increasing trend of middle class resentment in the UK that I am not sure existes in the US. But it is ironic that so many middle class Brit's, affluent on paper and probably considered rich in most countries, actually have very little disposable income. No wonder so many of them are seeing the light and moving overseas, leaving the Urban poor, working classes and the Rich to enjoy the English climate.
This from The Guardian-
The death of deference
When the Mail trains its guns on the super-rich, you can see how widely resentment has spread
John Harris
Saturday June 30, 2007
The Guardian
By mid morning, the newsstands made for a strange spectacle. Quoting the private equity king and Gordon Brown confidant Ronald Cohen, the Daily Mail's splash was "Wealth divide 'could lead to rioting'". Soon enough, the London Evening Standard was turning up the volume: "Super-rich pay no income tax", said its front page, straplined, "Revealed: how loopholes rob Britain of £2bn".
At the luxurious end of the magazine racks, meanwhile, there lay more intrigue. In Tatler, editor Geordie Greig wrote a three-page polemic bemoaning what he called the superclass, "overtaking you in the race for the best schools, [and] overpaying for the house you presumed was yours". And another rabble-rousing flourish: "That old sense of living in a country where fair play and an honest day's work led people to feel they could get what they strove for has been destroyed by dizzying extremes in wealth." To the barricades then, Jocasta!
One could fantasise about the arrival of social democracy in the Kensington offices of Associated Newspapers or in the polo fields of the home counties, but let's be sensible. In both cases, just below the surface lurks a sniffy xenophobia related to that ugly part of white London's collective psyche that used to bubble up in hostile murmurings about "rich Arabs" and reflective of the idea that wealth in non-British hands makes for unedifying scenes. Russians in particular are routinely portrayed as being venal and vulgar; the kind of people who, to quote a Tatler anecdote, will pay £145m for a £95m yacht with a grunt of "I like it and I wannit". Moreover, whatever your nationality, to be female and moneyed is to run the risk of real hatred. In late 2006, for instance, a piece in the Mail focused on "the obscenely lavish lifestyles of the women married to the City's new super-rich", pouring forth its ire under the lovely headline "So rich you want to slap them".
That said, strip out the prejudice and you can make out something more interesting - and perhaps politically seismic. The Mail, I would wager, is running pieces on the super-rich not only to channel the very metropolitan fury of its staff but also because they chime with economic resentments felt in middle England, and not just among the middle classes. There, millions are uneasy about an unresolved contradiction of the Thatcher legacy: the letting loose of a no-holds-barred City culture and the spread of popular affluence were always going to collide. Put another way, if the Mail's property-owning democracy includes both hedge fund player and plumber, hadn't they better be seen to play by the same rules?
The former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore last week made his own contribution to the brouhaha, concluding that ensuring the super-rich pay their way via the tax system was not a sensible option, but encouraging them to ape the philanthropy of the 19th century nobility might be. "It is interesting," he said, "that the Victorian lower middle classes started to christen their children with the names of the great English aristocratic families - Stanley, Russell, Howard, Percy." Doing so, he claimed, was a matter of the kind of "respect and social aspiration" that would be reawakened if the rich made a few more charitable donations. "It would be a sign that our modern aristocracy of wealth was succeeding if people started calling their children Cohen, Branson, Green or Buffini," said Moore.
Who wouldn't smirk at that kind of guff? Moore's "respect and social aspiration" is what most of us would identify as dull deference - at an all-time low, thankfully, and threatened with extinction by an upward-focused egalitarianism that few saw coming. [email protected]
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The death of deference
BIS warns of Great Depression dangers from credit spree
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 9:02am BST 25/06/2007
The Bank for International Settlements, the world's most prestigious financial body, has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fuelled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy more vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump than generally understood.
Money | Telegraph
Something may be brewing.
Entire & Link: Is Economy Facing Widening Credit Squeeze? - Newsweek Business - MSNBC.comQuote:
Widening Credit Squeeze?
With the home-mortgage crunch roiling stock markets, economists are beginning to worry about America’s credit-card debt.
By Susanna Schrobsdorff
Newsweek
Updated: 1:03 p.m. PT Aug 9, 2007
Aug. 9, 2007 - Kristin Schantz, a 26-year-old manager for a human-resources company in Kenosha, Wis., got some unpleasant news in the mail last week. In a form letter, Capital One told her the interest rate on her credit card was about to almost double—she’d been bumped up from a fixed 8.9 percent rate to a "variable rate that equals the prime rate plus 6.9 percent"—or about 15.8 percent. Schantz, who says she’s “never late with payments,” is irate. The letter blamed rising interest rates across the economy for the decision.
For now, consumers can dump Capital One and move their balances to other credit cards with better rates—as Schantz has done. But because Capital One is the largest independent issuer of credit cards, its move may signal that similar rate increases are on the way from other credit-card providers. “It could definitely be a harbinger of things to come,” says Aaron Smith, a senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “They may have assumed more risk than other companies—but I would be very surprised if it was an isolated move.”
That raises an important question: is Cap One’s rate increase the start of a widening credit squeeze? If so, it would be a direct result of the home-mortgage crunch, currently roiling financial markets worldwide. “We’re not in the same world as we were five or six months ago,” says Keith Leggett, senior economist at the American Bankers Association. “There is a growing risk aversion among market participants.”
As home prices across the United States have stagnated or fallen and consumers have tapped out the equity in their homes, banks have gotten more cautious about lending and have tightened their standards for new mortgages and home-equity loans. As a result, more Americans are shifting debt onto credit cards. This week, the Federal Reserve said non-real estate consumer-credit usage rose at about twice the rate than economists had predicted for June. And revolving credit usage (which includes credit-card debt) was up by 8.7 percent at an annual rate for the month. That boost helped bring total consumer credit, both revolving and not revolving (like auto loans), to a record $2.459 trillion.