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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 536 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 237 of 536:
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Oct 30 19:55 UTC 2003 |
re #231: Excellent. Now that all our economic problems are solved,
it must be time to lower taxes again!
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klg
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response 238 of 536:
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Oct 30 20:01 UTC 2003 |
Mr. mcnally-
You seem to have it backwards. As we are seeing demonstrated, tax
reduction solves economic problems. Not the other way around.
Mr. scott-
It is a well-established principle that employment is a lagging
economic indicator. The jobs picture will surely keep improving.
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mcnally
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response 239 of 536:
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Oct 30 20:37 UTC 2003 |
If there's a problem with the policy I mockingly put forth,
that's because I was sarcastically stating the Bush
administration's apparent reasoning on tax policy.
I happen to agree with you that their logic is pretty backwards
but I'm frankly surprised to see you admit it on the record..
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tod
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response 240 of 536:
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Oct 30 22:36 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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richard
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response 241 of 536:
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Oct 31 02:36 UTC 2003 |
#231-- an economic "recovery" on paper doesn't mean anything to
voters. What has happened is that companies have shed so many jobs and
laid so many people off, and downsized so much, that they aren't
bleeding as much and their bottom lines are looking better. But that
doesn't translate into jobs. If they add jobs, the bottom line will
look worse again.
So it isn't about how the economy looks "on paper", its how the economy
looks to the average working person. The fact that fortune 500 CEO's
ad their accounts are breathing easier doesn't mean much to the rest of
us. The jobs aren't there.
And you can't call an economy healthy anyway when we are running a huge
national defecit, a defecit that was all but paid down by the end of
the Clinton years. The economy was healthier before Clinton left
office than it is now and thats a fact. These last hard years have
been during the BUSH administration and thats what the voters will
remember. Voters, the majority of whom, voted against Bush last time
anyway. Or did you forget that Bush LOST the popular vote in this
country in 2000.
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bru
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response 242 of 536:
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Oct 31 10:05 UTC 2003 |
a nearly 7% growth rate is the highest in nearly 20 years. Cars and housing
sales at record highs and an increase in exports. Hopefully the jobs will
follow.
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keesan
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response 243 of 536:
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Oct 31 10:50 UTC 2003 |
Housing sales are due to low interest rates which are due to a poor economy.
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gull
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response 244 of 536:
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Oct 31 13:53 UTC 2003 |
I'm glad the economy is improving, and I hope the job market gets better
too. But I'm not holding my breath. There are still massive layoffs
and cutbacks going on. Compuware recently cut some salaries by as much
as 50%.
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goose
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response 245 of 536:
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Oct 31 14:22 UTC 2003 |
50%? I find that a little hard to believe.
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jp2
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response 246 of 536:
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Oct 31 14:50 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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richard
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response 247 of 536:
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Oct 31 17:39 UTC 2003 |
jp2, Bush lost the popular vote. That is a fact. Since he lost the popular
vote, that means more people voted AGAINST Bush-- meaning didn't vote for
him-- than voted for him. More,
even if its one person more, is a majority. In this case it was actually
several million more people who voted for Gore than for Bush. Bush won the
electoral college, he lost the popular vote. Those are the facts JP2
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mcnally
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response 248 of 536:
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Oct 31 17:50 UTC 2003 |
Jamie is being deliberately disingenuous by being ambiguous in his
use of the phrase "voters". It's true for several reasons that a
majority of potential voters didn't vote against Bush. The first,
of course, is that in our system you don't cast votes *against*
people, you cast votes for them (or for an elector who is supposed
to vote for them.) The second is that given the huge number of
potential voters who chose not to vote, neither major party candidate
had a majority of voters who voted against them (or rather, for their
opponent.)
He also deliberately confutes the terms "deficit" and "debt", which
would be a curious oversight for one who seizes any opportunity to
accuse the rest of us of ignorance while lecturing on trivial details
of the structure of the federal reserve system, were it not so
obviously a deliberate attempt to invent a pretext to attack Richard..
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jp2
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response 249 of 536:
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Oct 31 18:12 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 250 of 536:
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Oct 31 19:04 UTC 2003 |
Re #245: Most of the workforce is facing 6%-10% cuts, but salespeople who
aren't meeting their quotas are getting a 50% cut, according to the article
I saw. To me it sounds like a way to reduce workforce size without overtly
laying people off.
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drew
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response 251 of 536:
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Oct 31 20:59 UTC 2003 |
Jp2 is *partly* right in #246.
There has never been a truely balanced budget in decades, when you take *all*
government output and input into account; and the economy started tanking as
early as *1997*. What looked like a good economy was dot.com mania and Y2K
hype, neither of which produced anything of value.
However, deficit spending cannot be good for much of anything, as it erodes
the purchasing power of money.
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mcnally
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response 252 of 536:
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Oct 31 21:05 UTC 2003 |
re #249:
> Must you ruin my fun?
Must? No, it just turns out that ruining your fun *is* my fun.
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jp2
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response 253 of 536:
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Oct 31 21:10 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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other
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response 254 of 536:
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Nov 2 05:50 UTC 2003 |
Richard does a fairly good job of providing pretexts all on his
own...
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russ
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response 255 of 536:
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Nov 2 21:16 UTC 2003 |
Re #231:
Richard, you're completely wrong about the Clinton deficits.
The deficit was still there, just masked by factors including:
1.) The dot-bomb bubble, and
2.) The hidden "off budget" deficits, like Medicare.
If you add the mounting unfunded liabilities in programs like
Medicare and Social Security, and also add the unfunded mandates
in programs like Medicaid and special-ed which push costs down
to the states, the deficit would have been roaring along during
the entire period 1993-2000.
Right now, it looks to me like Dean *might* be the only candidate
ready to restructure those programs so they don't kill us. We
need something like a statutory limit on the fraction of the
populace which is allowed to be retired, with the retirement age
going up automatically as people live longer. We need similar
measures in other mandates so that costs are contained, and that
includes all costs of things promised but not yet paid for.
(Only a Republican could go to Communist China; it will probably
take a Democrat to fix the errors of the New Deal and Great Society.)
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rcurl
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response 256 of 536:
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Nov 3 06:59 UTC 2003 |
You cannot raise the retirement age unless you also reduce ageism and
increase health support for the elderly. It should be kept in mind
that *nothing* has been done to stop aging. Only early death and
late illnesses have been reduced. People age as they have since man
evolved.
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polygon
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response 257 of 536:
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Nov 3 13:02 UTC 2003 |
Agreed with Russ that the federal budget surplus didn't really exist.
However, it's also true that the deficit, no matter how measured, declined
substantially in 1993-2000.
Richard is also incorrect in saying that Gore got "several million" more
popular votes than GWB. The actual margin was about half a million.
America would be better off if the generally accepted retirement age were
70 instead of 65.
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gull
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response 258 of 536:
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Nov 3 14:07 UTC 2003 |
Technology fields are particularly rife with ageism, from what I've
seen. Older people with good skills go unemployed, while the companies
complain about labor shortages and ask the government to allow more visas.
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polygon
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response 259 of 536:
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Nov 3 15:05 UTC 2003 |
Re 258. I almost brought that up, but I was in a hurry.
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klg
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response 260 of 536:
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Nov 3 17:31 UTC 2003 |
Mr. richard-
You truly are getting tiresome with this "popular vote" obsession.
When presidential candidates run their campaigns they are likely to be
aware of the rules of the game and adjust their strategies
accordingly. You seem to make as much sense as a football fan who
would contend that his team won the game because it accumulated greater
total yardage than the opposition, despite the incidental detail that
it was outscored. The strategy ought to be based on scoring points,
not simply gaining yardage. Despite your constant complaints, yards
don't matter; points do.
klg
We read that Karmanos is taking a 69% pay cut. Is he trying to get rid
of himself?
We wonder how one would keep older employees in physically demanding
occupations in the workforce - as well as those in jobs requiring fine
motor coordination as the effects if aging become apparent. Raise your
hand if you wish to be a passenger on an airplane with a 70 year old
pilot.
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tod
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response 261 of 536:
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Nov 3 17:57 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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