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1. Jeff S said on April 19, 2008 at 12:55 am

   I’m not a defender of the secretive Bush regime, but the tax cut correlation is not proven (in that article at least). Taxing the middle class a tiny bit brings in a zillion times more revenue than taxing the rich a moderate amount. There are also deadweight losses to take into account (I’m not entirely sure with high incomes, but the the net surplus losses could defeat the purpose of taxing all together). Wealth redistribution is a double edged sword. It can be good or bad.

   Anyways, look at the big changes in costs since Bush administration hit office. Look at crude oil and healthcare costs. These are like the main input costs for most businesses. When when your costs approaches revenue everyday, you can’t afford to give your employees raise, let alone pay yourself more or invest in new capital. Now combine this with inflation and a transitional economy. Capitalism is slowly leveling the playing field globally. Why do you think so many Americans are pissed off. With all this extra variables and factors, a two percent dip is practically stagnant considering what’s going on.

   A better indicator of if we’re in the dumps is unemployment. Nationally we’re doing just fine. Anything less (at least 1-2% lower), it would be approaching inflationary rates. I know this sounds cruel as Michigan is really in the dumps, but our economy is at nearly full employment. If you look at GDP, it was almost flat zero in terms of growth. This is attributed to the volatile investment sector panicking and speculating everyday over the housing crisis. These are temporary spikes. Investment has started pick up lately. I personally attribute this to fact that we don’t have a solid economic infrastructure. We have not really invested in future capital, technology, etc. It just seems like we’re always milking everything of it’s worth and then we move on and freak out when we run out and then we find something new…it’s a vicious circle.

   Have you looked at what people are buying since the media has informed us we’re in a economic disaster, they’re mostly buying only the essentially shit (food, gas, bills, education, etc). Call me cruel, sure there are some who can’t buy this, but this is a relative much smaller problem than the way it’s been reported. If we were all truly hurting, we would not been enjoying our fast broadband internet connections and discussing this issues on a blog. We’d start searching for second job or fighting over scraps of meat in the wild. Anyways, back to what I was saying. The fact that our economy is going to hell because people are cutting back on buying extra shit is a problem in itself. 90 years ago it was considered absurd to buy anything that you didn’t absolutely need. We’re operating on a historically robust, but increasingly shaky infrastructure.

   I do however agree with the war stuff. It’s fair to say that the war is debatable that’s it’s good or bad. Unfortunately, the goal posts are moved everyday and there are no clear cut goals, as well as no real apparent gains to American interests at this moment. Regardless of how this issue is solved, everyone agrees that the region must be stable as we need sweet crude (and not just for our cars. No hybrid/hydrogen/electric/bicycle counterpoints will work here). If only we could be honest that it’s about oil and not WMD’s, Alqaeda, and other bull shit. It’s cruel, but it’s the truth. Anyways, I don’t think we’re getting our money’s worth. We’re fiscally irresponsible and are not calculating the costs correctly. Three Trillion Dollar makes that obviously clear. Military spending does not include social security benefits, workers comp, healthcare, and the slew of other social entitlement programs that will be absolutely exhausted way beyond exhausted.

2. Randy Bishop said on April 22, 2008 at 9:59 pm

   I don’t believe you really touched the third point of “The 3 biggest hits to the economy.” That being:

   Bushites have finished off the deregulation of banking that began in earnest during Bill Clinton’s presidency. This ideological madness has caused the collapse of investment funds, banks, and the stock value of corporations that depend on them (which is to say most of Wall Street and much of the financial world), as well as a steep decline in the value of most homes in America and a sharp rise in the cost of living in them.

   Sure you can say as long as people aren’t “fighting over scraps of meat in the wild” and have a job we’re doing just fine. Which is true to a point. But at the same time, I’m guessing you’re looking at it through middle-class lenses. What of the five million more Americans that have fallen into poverty since 2001? You know, the ones not able to defend themselves on blogs.

   Military spending does not include social security benefits, workers comp, healthcare, and the slew of other social entitlement programs that will be absolutely exhausted way beyond exhausted.

   No, but military spending does include 54% of all income tax paid to the federal government.