God the Romney Campaign sucks…

Filed in National by on July 6, 2012

… they suck so much that they don’t even understand what a Venn Diagram is. Doesn’t every 12 year old get taught this?

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  1. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 8:01 am

    I don’t think the intended audience noticed any problem with these diagrams.

    Actually, Obama also fits into the intersection of “who signed the individual mandate” and “who opposed the individual mandate.”

    Romney’s message is difficult to pull off. The reason Obama didn’t get the economic results he promised is that he didn’t take the economic steps he promised (public option health care, and expire Bush tax cuts). But Romney opposes both these things, so he can’t attack Obama for not doing them. It’s a message that would have worked better for a hypothetical Obama primary opponent, not a GOPer.

    Romney can’t attack the major economic steps Obama took, because he agrees with them. So he is left with attacking the outcomes Obama promised (but failed to even try for).

  2. Rockland says:
    July 6, 2012 at 9:48 am

    News Flash Lib-Tards’ Job numbers show – 80,000 this month, adjusted 77,000 in May= 155,000 in 2 months. That is 1/2 the rate needed to keep up with population. Just dreadful. If the labor market had the same number of people as in Bush’s last year in office, unemployment would be over 11%. Obama’s killed the labor market, now the voters will end Obama’s presidency. Fair enough.

    One step closer to the door.

  3. Geezer says:
    July 6, 2012 at 10:05 am

    Funny you should mention Bush’s last year in office. Want to show the job numbers for that clusterfuck?

    What are you going to do when Obama wins? Move out of the country?

    All you have is hatred. It’s shallow, it’s obvious, and it’s all you’re capable of. That’s why the country is moving on from you assholes.

  4. Geezer says:
    July 6, 2012 at 10:07 am

    Puck: In what way would the public option affect the economy now, before the law takes effect?

  5. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 10:20 am

    Who said it wouldn’t have taken effect? Anyway, businesses are crying they can’t hire because they lack certainty, which an up-and-running public option would provide.

    A public option would end employer lock-in and give job mobility to millions of low-end workers, which would remove an artificial constraint from the market for wage labor. Jobs would turn over faster as employees became able to look for better work without fear of losing health care, and wages would be bid up.

    By providing competition, it would also instantly lower costs for private insurance and health care overall. Although I admit it might take a while to absorb laid-off insurance workers.

    I’m also firmly convinced that with a public option victory (or even a loss after a strong fight), Dems would have retained the House, and found the nerve to expire the tax cuts. Just my opinion; feel free to disagree.

  6. Geezer says:
    July 6, 2012 at 10:36 am

    The law was never going to take effect earlier than 2014. The “lack of certainty” argument is bullshit in the first place and so doesn’t matter; with or without public option, the GOP would still oppose it and want to repeal it, so still no certainty (which is how you can tell the argument is bullshit; there has never been a time in human history in which this idea of “certainty” in the business world has existed).

    Most low-end workers are not “locked in” to their typically shitty employer health plans, and so have plenty of mobility already.

    I assume you mean you want only the tax cuts on the rich to expire. If not, higher taxes would hurt, not help, the economy.

  7. xstryker says:
    July 6, 2012 at 10:42 am

    The GOP in congress killed Obama’s second job package last year. This is the result everyone predicted. The GOP wanted to crash the economy, so they did. Again. So when your wages stagnate, remember that the GOP is doing their best to stagnate the labor market (while keeping it easy to send jobs overseas).

  8. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 10:53 am

    I assume you mean you want only the tax cuts on the rich to expire. If not, higher taxes would hurt, not help, the economy.

    Really? We did OK with those same tax rates in the 1990s.

    Anyway, it’s a false dichotomy. The most important thing for the economy was and still is to expire the investment tax cuts and their job-killing effects. Compared to that, personal income tax cuts for rich or middle class are of far less concern.

    Yes, it would have been better to decouple and expire the cuts only for the rich, but Plan B should have been to expire them all, not to extend them all.

    I would rather have spent the last year fighting for restoring middle-class-only tax cuts than fighting for tax increases on the wealthy. I think that fight would have been won before April 15. And while all that was going on, businesses would be changing their behavior, starting to hire and re-invest rather than paying out dividends at the new 39% tax rate. All that in an environment of shrinking deficits and increasing consumer demand.

    Expiring the middle class tax cuts might have had some temporary effect on workers until jobs picked up, but not the apocalypse Democratic right/centrists like to invoke to excuse their pants-wetting at the thought of tax increases.

  9. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 11:10 am

    @xstryker – These days stimulus money doesn’t stay in the wage economy very long at all before it ends up in the pockets of the 1%. Corporations simply have too many blood funnels jammed into the pockets of the middle class. Expiring the tax cuts will fix the hole in the bucket; then stimulus might stick around long enough to be effective.

    It’s also questionable whether there are even enough middle-class consumers left (you know, the ones with disposable income) to start a demand-led recovery.

    Obama sucks at stimulus, and he sucks even worse at taking political credit for it.

    Bush did stimulus too, but instead of calling it deficit spending and stimulus, he called it a “tax rebate.” And he put a CHECK in your mailbox, along with a letter explaining exactly who gave it to you. Now that’s a dude who wanted to be re-elected.

  10. cassandra m says:
    July 6, 2012 at 11:21 am

    These days stimulus money doesn’t stay in the wage economy very long at all before it ends up in the pockets of the 1%.

    By this thinking there is no money that doesn’t stay in the wage economy.

    Have you taken a good look at the construction going on at the I95/SR7 interchange? There is money being spent on wages, equipment, materials and it all spirals outward in a fairly large multiplier effect. This is the kind of thing the GOP is killing — projects that add a great deal to a local economy.

    And this is just idiotic:
    Expiring the tax cuts will fix the hole in the bucket; then stimulus might stick around long enough to be effective.

    The deficits and debt don’t do anything to stimulus spending except give the GOP an excuse to not do it. You could get rid of the deficit and debt today and the GOP (and a few Dems) still won’t vote for stimulus.

  11. Geezer says:
    July 6, 2012 at 11:33 am

    Puck: I’m not giving you my opinion, but the opinion of most economists, even the “liberal” ones like Krugman. YOu’re just flying by the seat of your pants.

  12. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 11:34 am

    Since the Bush tax cuts were implemented we’ve had 3 major stimulus programs. Ask yourself where are all the jobs, and in whose pockets did the money end up. And in whose pockets did it NOT end up.

  13. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 11:37 am

    I’m not saying the expiration of middle class tax cuts wouldn’t temporarily hurt them to some extent. I’m just saying that extending the cuts on the rich hurts the middle class more, and hurts them for longer. Which is in fact happening (check today’s headlines).

  14. cassandra m says:
    July 6, 2012 at 11:59 am

    The Bush tax cuts ended up in the hands of the wealthy because that is the way those cuts were engineered.

    The Obama stimulus has mostly been weighted to people making less than 200, 250K AND there has been direct spending on real projects as well as support to states.

    The Obama stimulus worked to get the US out of technical recession. The stimulus that accompanied the extension of the Bush tax cuts certainly did not go to the 1% — it went to the unemployed and to people who pay SS taxes.

    Jobs are going to lag because 1) there still simply is not enough demand for most companies to get back into hiring and 2) because state governments continue to shed jobs (teachers, first responders) who don’t have a larger marketplace for their skills. The river of money that states are sending into private sector coffers under the guise of JOBS isn’t exactly producing those jobs.

  15. cassandra m says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:03 pm

    And Krugman points out that it is still the demand, stupid.

  16. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:16 pm

    Demand and hiring is a chicken and egg problem. We’ve tried the chicken (putting more money in the hands of the rich) – they kept it, and didn’t hire. We tried the egg (putting more money in the hands of the middle class) – the rich got that too and kept it, and they still didn’t hire.

    The only thing left to try is for the taxman to come after all those record corporate profits by raising the dividend tax (dividends are paid out of profits).

    What WON’T work is to sit around holding our breath waiting for demand to materialize.

    The Bush tax cuts ended up in the hands of the wealthy because that is the way those cuts were engineered.

    My point exactly.

    The Obama stimulus has mostly been weighted to people making less than 200, 250K AND there has been direct spending on real projects as well as support to states.

    Yes. But my point there is that every paycheck or benefit check people receive from an ARRA project is mostly used to pay household bills and therefore goes straight into the blood funnel of some large public corporation (utility, oil/energy company, bank, telecomm). Where it is promptly paid out to its investors as dividends and taxed at 15% instead of being used to hire another person. And hiring that new person is supposed to the point of stimulus.

    Stimulus is NOT supposed to be giving people more money to hand over to the rich.

    Corporations have record profits and aren’t hiring, because the tax incentive not to hire is too strong. But raising the tax on dividends to 39% would plug up that hole and cause the employer to seriously think about hiring that new person and pay 0% tax instead of 39%.

  17. cassandra m says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:25 pm

    So you didn’t even read the Krugman piece or the piece he links to.

    If there is no demand why be in business in the first place? If no one is buying groceries, your local food store won’t be in business. They can hire as many people as they want, but that doesn’t give consumers any more money to spend. Demand is the key to an economy that still relies on people to buy stuff to be healthy.

    A paycheck from an ARRA project does pay bills. It pays your mortgage, which helps to pay the people at mortgage companies and banks who process that. It pays for groceries, which pays the salaries for the folks who work at groceries stores and – further back — it pays for the people growing, processing, transporting that food. It pays for cars and gas and fixing your roof and clothes for your kids and all of the other things that you buy that need someone to provide that for you. That is what a multiplier effect is. Profits from selling food may end up in the hands of ADM, but there are other people getting wage paychecks who benefit.

    There is no tax incentive not to hire. No one is hiring because consumer demand is still weak, which can’t be wholly unexpected in a busted credit recession.

  18. Geezer says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:26 pm

    Puck: With all due respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m going to go ahead and stick with the experts, while you make up your own economic theories to go with Rusty’s made-up electoral map.

  19. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    Cassandra, nobody read the Krugman piece; your link is broken and doesn’t even contain a URL. I’m sure I’ve read it before anyway.

    I would like to hear how Geezer’s posse of economists explains where are all the jobs from past stimulus and where the money ended up today. Especially in the light of recent jobs reports including today’s, in the context of record corporate profits and shrinking consumer demand. Did you ever read what Krugman thinks about ARRA?

    The theory of stimulus is sound, but not when you are taxing investment income at 15%.

  20. cassandra_m says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:38 pm

    And the link is fixed. Krugman posted this up today. And your question for Geezer is pretty much answered in Krugman’s links.

    Krugman thinks the stimulus was too little, and had too many tax cuts.

  21. Geezer says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:47 pm

    What Cassandra said. We now know the hole in the economy was about $1.8 trillion. The $0.8 trillion stimulus contained only $0.4 trillion in actual stimulus. The rest was tax cuts and grants to state governments to save public-sector jobs, and so not actually “stimulus,” simply a way to stave off layoffs, many of which came when the stimulus money ran out.

    If you’re too busy to run the math, that means the stimulus was $1.4 trillion short of what was needed to restore the economy to full health.

  22. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:51 pm

    Krugman clearly phoned in today’s article from the beach. Basically he pointed to some other guy’s paper, then started saying the rules are different when you have a lot of debt, but didn’t really elaborate. Probably was checking out some girls and just trailed off. Krugman may have answered my questions somewhere, but not in this article.

  23. Geezer says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:55 pm

    Shorter Puck: I didn’t understand what he was talking about, and I didn’t click on the links, and I like my own theories better anyway.

  24. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    I know it suits you to pretend I am stupid, but I did read and (mostly) understand the clickthrough articles. None of them directly answered any of my questions. I get that ARRA wasn’t big enough, but it never will be, so time to move on to the next thing.

    And you proved my point: If the stimulus wasn’t enough, then why not plug the dividend hole to give it more hiring bang for the buck? 2010 would have been a great time to do that.

    Plugging the hole would let us do more with a smaller stimulus.

    Unless you are still clinging to the discredited theory that putting more money in the hands of the rich will somehow create jobs.

  25. cassandra_m says:
    July 6, 2012 at 1:55 pm

    why not plug the dividend hole to give it more hiring bang for the buck?

    Because dividends or no don’t mean anything when no one is buying enough stuff.

    And none of your questions got answered because tax policy has little to do with demand. Certainly not at the over-leveraged middle-class consumer level. Because clinging to the discredited theory that clawing back tax cuts will magically result in new hiring makes you an adherent to the discredited trickle down theory.

  26. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 2:05 pm

    “And none of your questions got answered because tax policy has little to do with demand.”

    I see you didn’t read or understand my earlier comments about the circular nature of hiring and demand. Tax policy can create demand, to the extent that it can cause employers to avoid taxes by hiring.

    In today’s economy you can’t give consumers enough money to create real demand, because they have to just immediately turn the money over to the 1%. Who aren’t going to hire or re-invest with it – they are just going to keep skimming profits as long as they are only taxed 15%.

    We are still living under the immortal Bush tax cuts, where everything is FUBAR and none of the usual stuff works. In the Bush economy, any money that changes hands just makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

    This will continue until someone changes the rules. If you keep doing the same thing, we should expect the same results. Demand isn’t going to suddenly appear by itself.

    You are not giving enough credit to how radical the changes in investment taxes were and how much damage they did to the whole playing field (which actually kicked in in 2003).

    Send someone a check and they pay their bills for a week. But give them a job, and they (hopefully) can pay their bills all year.

  27. cassandra_m says:
    July 6, 2012 at 2:14 pm

    Tax policy can create demand, to the extent that it can cause employers to avoid taxes by hiring.

    You keep claiming this and it is still a variant on the trickle down theory. I actually hire people and there are no new taxes that my employers could pay that will get them to hire more people. We hire more people because we have projects — demand — that need to be done. There are very few businesses who will hire people to just sit around with nothing to do — tax advantages or no. If you aren’t doing enough business to pass on the additional taxes you pay to your customers, you aren’t hiring anyone new.

    Best Buy isn’t going to hire more people — or stop shuttering stores — because they pay more taxes. They’ll hire more people and stop closing stores if people stop using them as a showroom for Amazon.com.

  28. puck says:
    July 6, 2012 at 2:20 pm

    Your anecdotal evidence about what your company would or would not do has little bearing on our largest employers and public companies, who think about this kind of stuff all the time. If investors started getting whacked at 39%, you bet they would be screaming for ways to get out from under it. The exec who came up with a plan to put the money into long-term growth of the company instead of short-term profits would be hailed as a savior.

  29. cassandra_m says:
    July 6, 2012 at 2:33 pm

    It doesn’t matter. Long term growth is still going to depend upon people buying stuff. Full stop. And if people are not buying anything, there won’t be long term growth, except in strategies for cash performance.

    What you don’t get is how the largest employers and public companies do make money.And they are plenty profitable now without hiring. That will be the same after new taxes. The profitability will decrease, but not the strategy to make money when no one is buying enough to sustain traditional business. You are talking about the same investors who spike up the price of a public company when they announce layoffs.

    You can dismiss the real world experience of people who actually make hiring decisions — and who were hiring people during the great recession — but what you never do is produce one single business executive who says that they’ll just hire more people if made to pay more taxes. So produce that person from a large or public company. I’ll wait.

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