JennaBanks: Hmmm....while I disagree with MOST of what you said...
If I replied to you countering what you said, there's a good chance that this would happen.
JennaBanks: I can echo your sentiments about the impact of the recession on the economy and how raising taxes won't help. It will only make us clinch our pocketbooks closer, thus hurting the economy.
Yet, you expand calories talking about how people should "give back," especially the rich.
You also didn't argue for the need for spending cuts across the board. We could've frozen our budget at 2008 levels. We could've applied any excess revenue to paying down the debt.
JennaBanks: As far as rebates go, that was fiscally irresponsible.
No it wasn't. Rebates involve giving people back some of their tax money. The government uses it as a tool to try to jumpstart the economy. If that doesn't work, the government hopes to slow the slowdown.
What's fiscally irresponsible is increasing spending and borrowing. You failed to address that in your posts.
JennaBanks: And its funny, a republican giving handouts but when a democrat does it, the world is over. Its a handout, no matter how you slice it. Even though it came from our pockets originally,
You're comparing apples to oranges with that comment.
A handout is a check that the government gives to someone who didn't earn that money. A welfare check is an example... especially if the recipient is capable of standing on their own two feet but isn't. They may put some "conditions" on the person... like looking for a job... but the government is still paying them.
A rebate is that, a rebate.
You get that money back after you spent it. The government gave people a portion of their money back. If people didn't pay taxes, they didn't get a rebate check. If they paid taxes, they got a rebate... provided that what they got didn't exceed what they paid in taxes.
It's called a rebate, because you paid the money first... before getting some of your payment back. That's why manufacturers offer "rebates" for their merchandise that you buy. They give you some of your money back.
That's not how a handout works.
A rebate is a rebate, not a handout. They're two different things.
JennaBanks: it was money that the government didn't have to give back at all, as they usually don't.
Businesses have different fiscal years, and they pay taxes every quarter. So it works out that government collects tax revenue every month.
So, that money is there, it exists.
Again, a deficit means that the government is spending more money than what it takes in. A surplus is the government receiving more money than what it takes in. This is independent of the debt discussion. We've had that debt, and we never paid it off, not even in the 1990s.
Rebates represent one of the government expenditures. They could've compensated for that by cutting wasteful spending elsewhere. Instead of cutting wasteful spending, they borrowed more money.
That's a problem that you didn't argue against in that thread.
JennaBanks: Any money that they can suck out of your blood they take.
If you're talking about federal taxes, well, the Republicans are holding the line on refusing to raise taxes. The Democrats are fidgeting to raise our taxes.
On the state and local levels, well, that's a state by state case... or locality by locality case. I'll explain more of that down the road.
JennaBanks: It was a temporary boost, but not very strong of a temporary boost.
If you're talking about the Bush's initial efforts, you're wrong. His reducing tax rates helped improve the economy in the long run. The action of "giving the money back" is a one time deal to jumpstart the economy.
Every solution that congress and the president come up with is temporary. If you look at our history, you'd see that we never had a permanent economic solution. Temporary economic solutions are meant to cause something that lasts over the long term... in this case, get the economy to recover.
The rebates are a temporary action (jumpstart) to something that's hoped to be prolonged (economy boost).
JennaBanks: As gas prices soar, people are likely to use that money slowly, and to use it as much needed money. Even those who are more well-off feel the pinch at the gas tank....it is a very common concern, and we are aware of it daily as we go to work, school, and TRY to go on vacations during the summer, as gas prices will likely go past 4.00 per gallon this summer.
That affects the low income strata, and even the middle class to some extent. But that won't stop the richest Americans from filling their tanks. Heck, none of the service members I knew "skimmed" when it came to filling their gas tanks. They filled it to the top, and paid the price... however high it was.
If we're able to do this with a military salary, then people earning more than us were doing it as well.
I travelled from Kansas to Virginia this summer. Gas prices were similar to those we paid when we had this debate. The crowded urban centers showed that this price increase didn't seem to bother them. I didn't have a problem given my military salary.
On a side note, this article, from the date we had this debate, placed things in proper perspective:
http://www.slate.com/id/2191491/
JennaBanks: As far as the war goes, obviously I disagree.
The moment you mentioned having to pay for the "HUGE" war, I knew that we were going to disagree. Your trend, on Avenue-X, was liberal. I'm conservative. It's a given that we were going to disagree.
JennaBanks: But...we probably will be set back a few years by China. China may surpass us economicallly, which is scary. They are a communistic country, who refuses to change.
China isn't as cracked up as many people make it out to be.
First, China is where it's at now because of US and European consumer demands. Guaranteed, if the US and European economies crash, China's economy will crash.
Right now, they're riding on bubbles similar to the bubbles that popped in the US back in 2008. Wait till their bubble's pop. If they don't pop from internal pressure, it'll pop when our dollar's value collapses.
When our economy starts to really contract, we're going to really drop spending across the board. The Chinese economy is going to take a beating.
China will contract as fast as they grew. Japan will regain its place as Asia's largest economy. There's more going on with China right now that's waiting to wreck havoc on their economy.
They won't surpass us until they replace their communist government with a democratic one.
JennaBanks: That scares me a lot.
China won't pass us up economically. Their economic bubbles will pop when our last economic bubbles pop. They'll get the worse end of the deal.
Heck, they're putting us to shame when it comes to printing money.
Back in the 1980s, there was endless talk about Japan surpassing the United States economically. When was that supposed to happen? They were supposed to pass us up in the mid 1990s. That didn't happen.
We're going to see the same thing with China.
The media tried to showcase China's economy as being independent of the U.S. economy. If the U.S. economy were to go into recession, China will keep the world from suffering. Not true.
China's economy felt the impact of our recession. The Chinese went mad with printing money, and increasing government spending. Sound familiar?
The United States economy is still the world's economic engine.
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