The three most effective policies for stimulating the economy are all focused on low income or needy individuals: extending federal unemployment benefits, reducing the lowest tax bracket, and state aid (which is targetted at the needy).
Do you have anything to offer that includes getting people back on their feet and not just a handout? Is there anything in your plan that promotes people making their own way and not just taking from one group and giving it to another?
Do you have any data to support the idea that this plan would work?
You should see from my charts that the 'reducing the lowest tax bracket' has little to no effect.
Your system has been tried and has failed miserably. Paying people to not work is a ridiculous. Clinton signed welfare reform after vetoing it twice. Finally, Morris convinced Clinton that it would help his poll numbers so he got on board. It has gotten people back to work with great success and OFF the government dole.
Did you not learn ANYTHING from that?
1)
Handouts: I provided the policies most likely to get the economy moving again. If you have a problem with the moral righteousness of these policies, that's a different discussion. As far as economic stimulus policies, these are the best.
2)
Data: I provided the link to the economic study which included them, by Dr. Mark M. Zandi, Chief Economist, Economy.com, which is more sourcing than you ever do. I asked for a souce to back up an assertion you made earlier about "the porkiest congress of all" and you failed.
3)
Your charts prove that reducing the lowest tax bracket has no effect: No they don't. Or perhaps you can explain exactly how they do. While pondering your response please keep in mind that everyone who pays a dollar of federal income tax is in the lowest bracket, from you to Bill Gates. The difference is that Gates is also in the highest bracket. He's in all of them. But his
first $15,650 of taxable income is taxed at ten percent.
see? Now please, go ahead and explain how the charts (they are actually tables) you referenced, prove that reducing the lowest bracket from 15 to 10 percent has no stimulus effect.
4)
My system has failed miserably: Well, that's what this whole discussion was supposed to be about. What policies work best to stimulate an economy and which don't. I stated my position, provided both the theory and an economic paper to substantiate it. It can also be found in any basic Macroeconomic textbook you pull of the shelf. It's basic Keynsian economics, which has more or less guided economic policy since the Great Depression. Since its adoption by governments, the drastic swings from full-out growth to crippling depressions that previously had plagued capitalist economies have been significantly smoothed out. Monetary policy has also aided this effort.
The Bush years can be seen as a kind of experiment. For the first time since the Great Depression the standard responses to a recession were largely ignored in favor of tax cuts primarily for the rich. The results are not encouraging for the Bushies. This has been one of the weakest recoveries since WWII. In fact, it's now clear that much of what economic success we did have was the result of the housing bubble. Most forecasts I read predict that it will be five years or more before housing prices bottom out. This means that we will need to be especially careful in which policies we choose to get us out of a recession, employing our reasoning rather than invoking failed ideology.
