Republicans to Unemployed: DROP DEAD!

Please keep your rants to real estate..

that's quite funny coming from the #1 political poster on SE. I'm back to counter all of your libertarian nonsense.

I saw on Bloomberg this morning about this bill. The additional costs to the deficit will "only" be a few billions. Given how much debt this country already accumulated and most importantly, the support to the unemployed and underemployed, what is the big deal?

You have to view this as a pozi scheme, the US and other developed nations will NEVER be able to pay back all the debt. Why not help the people who may need it most?

Since it's only a few billion , why can't Nancy Pelois and Harry Reid find some programs to cut in exchange?

Yep....let's have that same, stupid endless argument while millions have no money for next week. Brilliant.

sounds good. Let's start with Michele Bachmann's family farm subsidy.

"Since it's only a few billion , why can't Nancy Pelois and Harry Reid find some programs to cut in exchange?"

Why didn't the Republicans find programs to cut when they passed TARP, the tax cuts, and Medicare Part D?

I agree with the President.

http://bailoutnation.net/book/

Can someone please post the "entitlement" section of the law. I can't find the laws that state that the govt. is responsible to provide everything for everyone.

Why not let the govt. pay for my house, my food, my education. It has to end somewhere.....

Given the multiplier effect(1.6, right) , why not give everyone a million dollars. We'll have the economy growing and the debt paid off in no time at all.

The govt. has the repsonsibility to provide for the "health and welfare" of the country. It's right there in the Constitution.

You linked to a site with a Roubini quote, but, funy thing is, he agrees that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/07/jon-stewart-enlists-nouri_n_637521.html

"Let's start with Michele Bachmann's family farm subsidy."

oh, I love Bachmann. Without her, MSNBC would have to shut down. We can also raise a lot of money through the tan tax, which went into effect last week. We can raise at least $2 billion, just from John Boehner and the cast of Jersey Shore alone!

Is that "health and welfare" of the country, OR, is that giving endless amounts of free money to the unemployed, at the expense of the employed.

I don't see anywhere that the Constitution says, we must endlessly provide for the unemployed.

How long can our govt. subsidize all of OUR unemployed, AND, the millions of illegals in our country?

Can liberals come up with any argument other than two wrongs make a right? If you want to extend unemployment benefits, cut something else. What is so hard to understand? We will all be far worse off if the government keeps spending more and more money that it doesn't have.

That's the beauty part ... if it doesn't have, it can always get -- from you. So stop whining, LICcomm.

The govt. has the repsonsibility to provide for the "health and welfare" of the country. It's right there in the Constitution

No the preamble says
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America

Wiki immediately says
The Preamble serves solely as an introduction, and does not assign powers to the federal government,[2] nor does it provide specific limitations on government action. Due to the Preamble's limited nature, no court has ever utilized it as a decisive factor in case adjudication,[3] except as regards frivolous litigation

love when people quote the consitution....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLjNJI54GMM

> Can liberals come up with any argument other than two wrongs make a right? If you want to extend unemployment benefits, cut something else. What is so hard to understand? We will all be far worse off if the government keeps spending more and more money that it doesn't have.

Cut the war spendings, I am not to keen about spending a lot on the unemployment, but it would be cheaper then to spend on the employment then continue to spend on useless wars.

Illegals shouldn't be getting our money, but that's a different discussion.

Uh mistyped my post:

It would be to cheaper to spend on the unemployment then the wars.

or draft the unemployed....

Comparing war expenses to unemployment expenses is ridiculous. Nobody wants to go to war.

Yes, let's cut war-spending so all of our young Americans are put in more danger. That makes sense.

>Yes, let's cut war-spending so all of our young Americans are put in more danger. That makes sense.

What do you mean? Pull them out?! Useless wars are useless. It would be cheaper to pay off the afghan warlords directly then do so indirectly (through the contractors).

>Comparing war expenses to unemployment expenses is ridiculous. Nobody wants to go to war.

Yes, but heard otherwise for the last 10 years. Obama/Bush really love wars.

Times have changed. Liberals now support wars. At least in Afghanistan.

> or draft the unemployed....

Yes, and have a revolt on your hands... Do you think they wouldn't revolt?

>Times have changed. Liberals now support wars. At least in Afghanistan.

I am not a demo/rep... I am a fiscal conservative.

"I am a fiscal conservative"
... then you're a Democrat.

Was watching an old episode of Madmen. Kennedy was the rich kid. Nixon came from hardship. it's easy to be liberal when you don't have to work for money.

"Kennedy was the rich kid. Nixon came from hardship. it's easy to be liberal when you don't have to work for money."

Great job cherry picking. What about Obama? Did he come from a rich family? Did the Bush have to work for everything? Plenty of liberals were born poor.

"it's easy to be liberal when you don't have to work for money."

It's easy to be a conservative when you don't have to work for money. It's also easy to be a sack of potatoes. I'm sure there's a point in there somewhere.

"Nobody wants to go to war."

Except the military industrial complex.

"Yes, let's cut war-spending so all of our young Americans are put in more danger. That makes sense."

Yes, closing military bases in Germany, Japan, and England will make us less safe. Because, we all know that these countries are falt out dangerous.

Do you even think before you talk, or do you just read the day's talking points?

"Liberals now support wars. At least in Afghanistan."

This liberal does not support the Afghan war. There are plenty of others who oppose the war, like Alan Grasyon, sponsor of "The War is Making You Poor Act."

I can't wait until Grasyon's bill comes up fopr a vote. This way we will see what Republicans care more about: Tax cuts or funding the military industrial complex:

Next year's budget allocates $159,000,000,000 to perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's enough money to eliminate federal income taxes for the first $35,000 of every American's income. Beyond that, leaves over $15 billion to cut the deficit.

And that's what this bill does. It eliminates separate funding for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and eliminates federal income taxes for everyone's first $35,000 of income ($70,000 for couples). Plus it pays down the national debt.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/the-war-is-making-you-poo_b_585343.html

Paul Krugman writes:

There’s now a lot of talk about the fact that U.S. corporations are sitting on a lot of cash, but not spending it. I don’t find that particularly puzzling: with huge excess capacity, why invest in building even more capacity. But almost everyone seems to agree that if we could somehow get businesses to spend some of that cash, it would create jobs.

Which then raises the question: how can you believe that, and not also believe that if the U.S. government were to borrow some of the cash corporations aren’t spending, and spend it on, say, public works, this would also create jobs?....

I have never seen a coherent objection to this line of argument.

A coherent objection to this line of argument might be the following: If the government borrowed the money to spend, it would need to eventually pay the money back. That means higher future taxes, on top of the future tax increases that President Obama already will need to impose to finance his spending plans. Higher future taxes reduce demand today for at least a couple reasons. First, there are Ricardian effects to the extent that consumers take future taxes into account when calculating their permanent income. Second, those future taxes are not likely to be lump-sum but will be distortionary; it is plausible that at least some of those future tax distortions may adversely affect the incentive to invest today.

That is, businesses may be reluctant to invest in an economy that they expect to be distorted by historically unprecedented levels of taxation in the future. The more the government borrows, the higher taxes will need to go, the more distorted the future economy will be, and the less attractive is investment today.

I am pretty sure Paul would not find this line of argument persuasive. As far as I can tell from reading his commentary over the years, he does not believe that the distortionary effects of taxes are particularly large and so they do not figure much into his policy analysis. But many other economists (and I suspect many stimulus-skeptics like the tea-partiers) believe that taxes have significant incentive effects and can prevent the economy from reaching its full potential. Their argument seems logically coherent, even if it relies on a different set of parameter values for the relevant elasticities than Paul believes to be true.

Addendum: In another post, Paul plots investment and the output gap, points out the well-known fact that investment is highly procyclical, and then concludes that investment is down because the economy is weak. I wish figuring out cause-and-effect were so easy!

When I first learned Keynesian economics, the causation was often taken to go in the other direction: Animal spirits drove investment, which in turn drove the business cycle. Unfortunately, eyeballing time series rarely tells us what causes what. Correlation is not causation, even in the blogosphere.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/

"But many other economists (and I suspect many stimulus-skeptics like the tea-partiers) believe that taxes have significant incentive effects and can prevent the economy from reaching its full potential."

So your putting the teabaggers on the same level as a Nobel Prize winning economist? WOW, that is amazing.

"Yep....let's have that same, stupid endless argument ..."

Let's do it. Your turn columbiacounty!

"Let's do it."

... keep your vulgar and sad copulation fantasies to yourself. Entirely.

Score one for alanhart.

Pfft! Not that I'm keeping score but that's easily his 53rd point this month alone. He has mastered the art of being snarky without being passive aggressive or vulgar.
(yeah, that's a hint)

Pres, you really aren't this dense are you? Mankiw is a highly-regarded economist and Harvard professor. Krugman won the Nobel because the committee loved giving the award to whoever was anti-George Bush, and Krugman is high-profile because of his NY Times column. Krugman's expertise is international trade. He has been skewered by serious economists on this deficient macro theories.