Posted on 01/07/2014 10:15:02 PM PST by Olog-hai
Republicans are in a pickle. The Senate is voting today to extend emergency unemployment insurance benefits. Democrats are talking up a sharp rise in the federal minimum wage. Most Republicans oppose those ideas, but they still want to show that they care about reducing poverty. What can they do? [ ]
Broadly there are two poverty problems in the United States. One is a cyclical trend: The labor market has been slack for the last five years, leaving many people involuntarily unemployed and limiting workers ability to bargain for higher wages. The other is secular: Labors share of national income is declining, wages are rising more slowly for low-skilled workers than high-skilled ones, and rises in family income at the bottom have come primarily through fiscal transfers, not wages.
These problems require different solutions, and Republican ideas dont address either. On the cyclical side, Republicans favor a variety of policies that would make the unemployed and marginally employed worse off. They want to cut government benefits to the poor: they oppose extension of emergency Unemployment Insurance benefits, they want modest cuts to food stamps, they want to repeal the Medicaid expansion. Of course, Republicans dont want the poor to live off government benefits; they want them to get jobs. Unfortunately, Republicans also oppose macroeconomic policies to promote full employment, such as deficit spending, infrastructure investment, and monetary stimulus.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
you don’t end poverty by forcing millions of people onto the dole and into lives of destitute dependency
(the answer to poverty is to end the Obama regime’s anti-jobs policies so that the economy can turn around and start recovering again, creating new jobs for all those who wish to end their own poverty and get ahead with their lives)
[I am allowing that there ARE some people with serious disabilities and that we will continue to help them no matter which party is in power. I am speaking instead to the millions of Americans who can, and who may want to...work and make good lives for themselves...]
You can’t use Karl Marx’s ideas to help the middle class.
You-can’t-do-it.
Of COURSE not! Marx DETESTED the middle class (Bourgeoisie) !
These problems require different solutions, and Republican ideas dont address either.
Correct on the first part. Head up his progressive arse on the second part.
Problem: "The labor market has been slack for the last five years". Translation: there aren't enough jobs. The major contributor to the lack of jobs for the last five year is the policy set enacted by the party in charge for the last five years. Obamacare is a job killer. An unaccountable EPA is a job killer. A hostile energy policy is a job killer. Over-regulation is a job killer. Uncertainty surrounding the overall economic policy of an incompetent president is a job killer.
Solution: Repeal Obamacare. Lower taxes on business. Reduce the hidden tax on small business by shedding needless regulations.
Problem: "Wages are rising more slowly for low skilled workers...". That's because we have so many low skilled workers. Each one willing to work for less than the next. And they are streaming across the border daily, incentivized by weak illegal immigration enforcement, welfare handouts, in-state tuition, sanctuary cities, etc.
Solution: Seal the border. Make U.S. citizenship a prerequisite to receiving ANY type of government assistance. Large numbers of illegal immigrants will self-deport.
Modern Keynesian do not practice what they preach. The last true K POTUS was Eisenhower. Here is how K suppose to work. Gov goes into deficit spending to meet a contingency such as depression or war. Once situation stabilizes and recover, the extra tax revenues generated are used to pay down and eliminate the debt. Eisenhower kept the US out of major wars and paid down the US WW2 debt and handed JFK a financially strong US in 1960’s. Do Dems pay down debt, do GOP avoid wars? One wants utopia and the other wants empire. Both parties are a disaster to US middle class. Tea Party, Libertarian, Constitution and America First is the only path to US Renaissance. God gave Americans two great barrier oceans, no hostile power on our borders and a land rich with resources. Stay within it and we will have peace and prosperity thru strength. Leave it and butt into overseas affairs will only drain our treasury and bleed our youth.
Unfortunately, I have to agree. What it SHOULD be is: cut taxes by 15%, spending by 50%, and regulation by 90%, but I haven't heard anything like any of that.
The problem with the Democrat anti-poverty agenda is that it creates more poverty.
Even if you eliminate taxes and regs, corporate America is lead by CEO’s who have no loyalty to their country. You do not make your nation wealthy and powerful by going overseas and teach China and India how to do technical work that American college grads can do. Just the act of teaching overseas workers to close the tech gap, causing umemployment in US which corporate America dumps on US taxpayers is bull shit. It is one thing the corporation is losing profits and forced to do this, but it is another when corporations are making record profits, but the CEO and his exec inner circle want more. Consequences are for all to see. US college IT grads cannot get jobs, Chinese military closes weapons tech gap, and Dem socialist demagoguery gains traction on desperate unemployed workers. All for what, so CEO can make more and more and more that they cannot even spend in 100 lifetimes?!!!! Even worst when the CEO screws up, he gets a Federal bailout. Isn’t the US a wonderful country?!!!! Enemy to America is big gov and big business. The next time Wall Street crashes the US economy, I don’t want fines, I want the CEO personal wealth and his life for the mess. One thing about the Communist Chinese (something we can learn from China), if their bankers pulled a 2008, many of them would be lined up in front of a firing squad. Family must pay for the bullet before the corpse is released for burial.
What they call “anti-poverty” is really pro big government.
Nobody said to keep the cronyist corporate bailout system in place after taxes and regulations are slashed.
It’s up to the poor to better themselves.
If they don’t they can just stay poor and I won’t give them one cent unless forced by government!!!
The Senate is voting today to extend emergency unemployment insurance benefits. Democrats are talking up a sharp rise in the federal minimum wage. Most Republicans oppose those ideas, but they still want to show that they care about reducing poverty
I am confused. What do the first two sentences have to do with the third sentence? Neither the extension of unemployment comp nor a rise in the minumun wage will have any effct on the reducing poverty. In fact the loss of jobs due to the rise in a minumum wage will likely increase poverty. As for the unemploymebnt ext, that is only offred because of all the jobs lost under Obama care. Trying to buy back votes.....
The problem with American Poverty is that it does not exist.
Your average poor person in America has it better than most kings and queens in the past. They sleep in warmer houses, on better beds, have 24 hour a day entertainment pumped into their residences, have better food, have better modes of transportation, better toilets, better clothes, cleaner underwear and to top it off, probably nobody is trying to assassinate them or poison them.
On top of everything else, they don’t have to live in constant fear of smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, and barbarians constantly trying to break down their gates.
In early America, most regular citizens lived like Les Stroud, foraging for food or going without. Throughout history the only people who were as well fed as America’s poor people, were kings and queens. And like Kings and Queens, they got their sustenance from the purses of people who had to work hard for what they made in order to feed those who had no use for hard work.
Now we want to extend unemployment benefits to those who refuse to work and to require employers to pay more to those who have no ambition beyond working a minimum wage job as a lifetime career choice.
The poor in America today have it better than the filthy rich had it just a few hundred years in the past.
Yeah it does exist, it’s get the forking government out of the way of business so the economy can be good again.
And BTW the rats had total control from 1913-18, 1933-46 1949-52, 1961-68, 1977-80, 1993-94, and 2009-10. And they did jack shite to end poverty any of those times, so they should STFU. They want poor people’s votes, period, after that they can starve for all they care.
Most "Keynesians" never read the final chapter of his books.
OK, spend now to increase the velocity of money in a crisis, like the Depression or WWII, but when the crisis is OVER, you STOP spending and PAY OFF the debt incurred.
Most "Keynesians" don't understand their own philosophy.
Keynes wasn't a commie, he understood that you can't just spend money infinitely.
Eventually the piper MUST be paid, and the piper is simply a product of simple math.
We are living in the end times, where the piper is by necessity asking for his dough back, and instead of correcting the problem, we are doubling down on stupidity.
BTW, whoever wrote the article for Business Insider is a nincompoop.
If Obama's policies are all that and a bag of chips, there shouldn't be a NEED for extension of unemployment benefits, should there?
Well yes; their efforts were geared towards increasing poverty (especially of character) so that they could increase their control.
That would be its virtue, were it true.
Feed the rich and obese to the poor and starving.
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