2. "Higher taxes on the rich would hurt the economy and slow job growth. False." Same reason as #1! Liberals love to give credit to FDR for all of his great economic policies but they ignore the fact that WW II saved him from his own stupidity. Reich himself states, Yet the economy grew faster during those years than it has since. Post WW II boomed, including the Eisenhower years, because of pent-up consumer demand after WW II, not because of a low or high top marginal tax rate. Secondly, the National Federation of Independent Business puts the number of small business owners in the highest tax bracket at 14%, not the minuscule 2% claimed by Reich. Regardless, its a given that small businesses generate the bulk of jobs in todays economy. Why harass this viable source of jobs creation?
3. "Shrinking government generates more jobs. Wrong again." Reich totally misses the fact that the expense of teachers, fire fighters, police officers, government contractors, social-welfare workers, military personnel, bureaucrats, etc., are a negative drastic drain on our economy, especially when this sector has grown far faster than the private sector. The best thing that could happen to us taxpayers is to cut loose 700,000 bureaucrats Reich predicts as losses from the House GOP $61 billion in spending cuts.
4. Cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy. Untrue. Reich totally ignores the fact that profligate government spending has run up a $14+ trillion bill due payable by our grandkids. Somebody has got to bite the golden fleece bullet and cut these runaway spending budgets in order for the generations to come to have any semblance of an economic future. Now is the time to do it, before the libs run up even higher deficits for my grandkids to face. Id like for Reich to defend getting jobs and growth by the expense of the millions of dollars spent getting 15 jobs via most of these Green Jobs that Øbama's Energy Czar is foisting on us taxpayers.
5. Medicare and Medicaid are the major drivers of budget deficits. Wrong. I totally disagree with Reichs contention that drug companies and hospitals are the reasons for high health cost. Both Medicare and Medicaid are greatly abused; running to the ER for a hangnail or headache is not the way to lower health care cost. Until we make Americans accountable, involved in their own health care expenses and responsible for controlling their health care cost, medical cost is going to continue climbing astronomically. We need to outlaw defined benefit HealthCare plans and make defined contribution plans mandatory. This is the only way to stop abuse of healthcare; stop this seeking medical care with someone else having to pay their bills; namely me and ever other taxpayers for the Section 8 folks.
6. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Dont believe it. This Berkeley professor has to be the only semi-intelligent individual in America that doesnt understand that Social Security is the classic Ponzi scheme!
7. Its unfair that lower-income Americans dont pay income tax. Wrong. With 47% of Americans paying absolutely NO income tax (rebates, returns, deductions, etc allowed) they have NO skin in the game. Therefore, they have no reason NOT to milk the system because it cost them absolutely nothing. As with defined contribution healthcare plans, unless they pay some amount (even minuscule), there is no reason to economize.
Lastly, one has to expect this sort of liberal, socialistic, progressive thinking out of any professor at the UC-Berkeley.
Bull!! If your empty left pocket owes your empty right pocket $5000 you are still insolvent.
Ping.
Strawman argument. Employment and growth are the targets of trickle-down. We entered 90+ months of uninterrupted growth in GNP because of the Reagan tax cuts. And unemployment fell to the lowest (we were essentially at full-employment) because of the Reagan policies.
Clinton gets ZERO credit for the sustained growth in the 90s in my book as the Republic Contract With America was THE determining factor in that decade's economic well being.
Social Security is now largely funded with new Debt treasury bills. See
A Liberal Democrat explains the why the Social Security Trust Fund is safe(video)
Democrats and the Social Security Trust Fund Lie Exposed today
7. Its unfair that lower-income Americans dont pay income tax. Wrong. Theres nothing unfair about it. Lower-income Americans pay out a larger share of their paychecks in payroll taxes, sales taxes, user fees, and tolls than everyone else.
Payroll taxes are entitlement taxes like SS above. That doesnt pay for itself let alone all the other crap Democrats demand. The other half of Americans need to learn that government is NOT FREE.
Per 2., the economy was in decline after 1981 or at least a steeper decline. Didn’t seem that way, and Carter had 1 term and Reagan 2. We must have been really stupid back then since we obviously couldn’t tell the economy was worse.
Reich/Roubini are wrong. From Zero Hedge:
Retail sales DOWN 5% for September, media reports UP 1.1%.
http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/
Really sad that we are so focused on media cheerleading that we ignore the REAL numbers.
Anyone who would even listen to this demented midget is beyond convincing of anything.
Taxes on the rich are paid with funds that otherwise would have been saved and invested. These taxes reduce the demand for labor by business firms in comparison with what it would otherwise have been, and thus either the wage rates or the volume of employment that business firms can offer. For they deprive business firms of the funds with which to pay wages.
By the same token, they deprive business firms of the funds with which to buy capital goods. This, together with the greater spending for consumers' goods emanating from the government, as it spends the tax proceeds, cause the production of capital goods to drop relative to the production of consumer's goods. In addition, of course, they operate to reduce the degree of capital intensiveness in the economic system and thus is ability to implement technological advances.
These truths are discovered and demonstrated to be true by the process of reason and the process of deduction from elementary principles. The fact that empirical data show that the economy grew fast during those years of high taxes means that other positive economic forces were operating at the same time as the negative taxes on the rich which were able to overcome the negative effects of the taxes on the rich and were able to cause the economy to grow.This data does not falsify the basic principle about higher taxes harming the economy.
He also fails to mention that the US auto industry, due to the poor workmanship of its UAW built cars during the 70's and 80's, literally handed over half of its home market to foreign makes. If he is like most liberals I know, he himself drives a foreign car, yet blames Reagan and Bush for Americans losing their jobs.
This is as far as I got before I stopped because it indicates overwhelmingly that there is nothing in the piece worth reading or refuting. People who use logic like that cannot be refuted. They speak in non sequitur and false imputation. They do not and cannot reason. They string together phrases they have heard others use that do not relate to each other. These people cannot think as the more rational among us understand the process of thinking. They are immune to argument and "win" most arguments because they yell louder and and faster. It is harder to use or counter such a volume(both senses) of words when one is making logical argument.
Government is overhead. The purpose of America is individual liberty. Let’s keep the overhead as low as possible, OK?
Reich is a Marxist, and a pathological liar. He claimed many times on tv years ago that he was a PROFESSOR at Harvard, when he was a lowly “INSTRUCTOR” Harvard told Reich to cease & desist, or he would be fired!