Republicans & Conservatives Archives

I think their would be an increase in foreign investment in the US once Bush is gone, itself increasing a demand for more workers. Right now the US Trade Deficit is at near record levels, i.e NOBODY IS BUYING OUR PRODUCTS! Just another side effect of a “your with us or against us” policy! No man is an island and likewise no country can truly be self-sufficient. What would Wal-Mart do if they couldn’t get cheap Chinese products?!

Which reminds of another thing: Why is Cuban communism considered a “bad thing”, but Chinese communism is perfectly acceptable? Does communisms proximity to our shores determine its severity? Just asking.

What everyone including Bush and Kerry are missing is that the tax cuts over the last three years are in large part responsible for the jobless recovery and it has nothing to do with outsourcing or immigrant labor, although they play a part.

The fact of the matter is a huge amount of those tax cuts went to the wealthy, and the wealthy turned around and invested it at a time when interest rates were dropping precipitously. This means corporations had access to dirt cheap capital and reduced tax burdens, which they did what with? Can you guess? They invested in their own capital equipment for manufacturing, assembly, and efficiency improvements. We know this not only by their books, but, by the dramatic productivity increases we are seeing as production ramps up.

Get it? The tax cuts funded replacing human workers with equipment that could work longer and cheaper and just as reliably and as smart as the humans those machines replaced. These corporations aren’t hiring as demand for their products increases because they replaced their laid off workers with machine upgrades and replacements that can meet current and future demand without a single cent increase in health care benefits, pension plan contributions, or employer savings contributions.

By all means, we need to make these tax cuts PERMANENT ! I mean really, somebody is getting fooled more than once and twice around here.

Foreign investors may or may not base their decisions on whether they like the President or not. It’s more likely though that they base their decisions on what kind of return they expect to get on their investment.

No man is an island and likewise no country can truly be self-sufficient. What would Wal-Mart do if they couldn’t get cheap Chinese products?!

I assume they would buy their products from whom they can and price them to make a profit. That’s the whole point of free markets. Who is harmed if cheap chinese products are not available? Answer: The consumer.

The market is not a bureaucracy. It’s every individual and company participating in voluntary trransactions. Each making choices according to what’s right for them in each transaction. Effect of the weak dollar on trade deficits.

There is no connection between trade deficits and industrial decline. From 1992 and 1997, the U.S. trade deficit almost tripled, while at the same time U.S. industrial production increased by 24 percent and manufacturing output by 27 percent. Trade deficits do not cost jobs. In fact rising trade deficits correlate with falling unemployment rates. Far from being a drag on economic growth, the U.S. economy has actually grown faster in years in which the trade deficit has been rising than in years in which the deficit has shrunk. Trade deficits may even be good news for the economy because they signal global investor confidence in the United States and rising purchasing power among domestic consumers.

What matters to the economy is not the difference between imports and exports but the extent to which Americans are free to benefit from the efficiencies, opportunities and consumer choice created in an economy open to world trade.
—Daniel Griswold—

I certainly don’t think that China’s communism is any better or worse than Cuba’s.

These questions are certainly the ones that will shape our country for generation to come.

I thing rather “than tax cut good or bad” the question is where are the jobs going! Some one has to be making our stuff.

The answer is two fold: Productive increases and trade deficits.

Tax cuts are like spitting at a river. The huge volume of jobs going to china and the every increasing productivity gains are the issues. Just go through and Wal-Mart and tell me what percent of the merchandise is MADE IN THE USA.

The battle for jobs is really the battle for currency valuation. The Asian countries are buying dollars like crazy. Because if you don’t their exports will be to expensive. This is just another form of government subsidy. If china doesn’t agree to float their currency I think we should start a tariff war. After all they are already fighting, while we just stand here and take it on the chin.

The Wall Street Journal (on-line costs $, so I have no link) quotes a former Reagan economic advisor as saying that, if re-elected, Bush will raise taxes, or at least, he should have to. The Journal points out that Bush’s own budget says the budget is unsastainable and, interestingly, that after ‘81, Reagan raised taxes.

For what’s it worth, that’s what the Journal said.

There’s choice, Eric, and then there’s choice. Some choices are necessary for one’s health. You pay the water bill, pay for food, and if you can, you pay for medical attention. You can’t not make these choices, and your level of income affects a number of the qualities that your choices have. other things, like cars, clothes and grooming products are necessary for those who are working. Families increase the costs.

There’s choice, but as some point, the circumstances of the choice become coercive. The lower the income, the more coercive the choices. You don’t choose to eat Ramen noodles, you have to. You don’t put yourself into debt getting a new car because You want a new one, you do it because you need it.

This is the trap that your supply side people underestimate. They underestimate the sheer, inhuman amount of effort it takes to overcome poverty in many communities.

When Walmart demolishes the competition and then raises prices again, what do you think happens to those who don’t have reasonable alternatives in terms of price? Again, conditions become coercive. Wal-Mart, not the market forces, now determine price and quality.

When China allows it’s citizens to be plunged into wage slavery, the system itself will supress their natural competitive and survival instincts, which will have them demanding better wages, working conditions, and benefits. Conditions are definitely coercive. China’s ill-gotten labor advantage also constitutes a kind of coercion for our economy, using our competitive tendencies against us.

It all comes down to a critical question: what defines a free market- the degree of libertarianism, or the absence of unfairly coercive practices on both the Government, and the business side of things?

What makes a free market what is is, in my opinion is the lack of coercive practices. Microsoft engaged in such practices using their monopoly position in PC operating systems to make sure their office programs, their utilities and knickknacks, and their internet software become the norm. By being able to bundle that software, they destroyed many markets before they had the chance to be created. by extention they bypassed the economic and practical pressures of competition, which might have worked to increase innovation, and keep prices down. But hey, we got to let the business people do what they want.

That’s supply-sider’s version of the free market: unrestrained business practices. But we’ve seen what those do, what those lead to. Anytime you fail to set rules and limits for the economic game, our society suffers for it in lost wealth and corporate earnings.

What’s more, it encourages the kind of esoteric business practices that focus attention more on the numbers and their manipulation than on real world services and goods.

Let us compare the market to an online multiplayer game like Counterstrike. In those games, the people compete to see who can defeat the other person in battle. But occasionally, you get a camper. That person will set themselves up on a perch with a sniping weapon, and will start picking off opponents. It irritates the hell out of people, especially when they look to have a fair fight, not some rigged, arbitrary situation where they never have a chance. So, online gamers often choose to strongly discourage campers. Why? Because even though killing and competing are the name of the game, there’s also a wish to keep to the original purpose of playing the game: enjoying oneself. It’s not enjoyable to die again and again, without the chance to fight back.

Similarly, in an economy, we don’t want to have to fight the “campers” of the business community to maintain our stake in things. We don’t want the system overwhelmed by it’s participants, but instead, shaped by it.

This just in: The Economist says that the tax cuts were a terrible way to create jobs. it says only a few hundred thousand jobs have been created, with all the tax cuts.

It goes on to say that you could have paid, with the money provided by that tax cut, a year’s average wage (average for all Americans, rich and poor) to 2.5 million people to dig holes and then pay that same salary to 2.5 million others to fill them in. Five million jobs with that money, and all we had to do was give it directly to them.

I doubt they’re suggesting that as a serious policy, but they are challenging the assertion that the tax cuts are worth much salt.

This from one of the leading Supply-side publications in the world. When the supply- siders start telling you the tax cuts aren’t working, it’s time to listen.

Why is it that no one is willing to admit to the real problem here? America and american’s have climbed to the top through overconsumption of goods. Blah, blah, blah, tax cuts bad, tax cuts good—really it doesn’t matter because ultimately our spoiled rotten, materialistic, profit above human rights and welfare (i.e. China), fat, bloated, unhealthy, polluting country is going to implode. My hope is that someone, some party in political power will begin to discuss how our government doesn’t need to rape, pillage and subjugate the rest of world’s population into forced labor to provide 2.3 SUV’s to the families in the U.S. And that just because we live in a powerful and influential country doesn’t mean we have been issued entitlement 3,000sq. ft. homes and disposible everything as our “outraged” middle class thinks we should. Maybe, just maybe if we as Americans could take a look at our lives in terms of quality as opposed to quantity (of material goods), we would find that our economy and our GNP doesn’t really need to increase by 8% every year to sustain and nourish its citizens. Or is that too much to ask of Americans? If it is, than I guess we can just go back to arguing about taxes and cheap trade until we consume our way out of existance.

Stephen, Dave,

Government does not create jobs, the people do.

Let’s talk freedom and choice.

Dave, I’m sorry. When you mention the coercive nature of choices I could not help but remember a gem of an essay I read in In These Times.

…freedom is in its very notion “formal,” so that “actual freedom” equals the lack of freedom.

…In short, Lenin’s point is not to limit freedom of choice, but to maintain the fundamental Choice—when Lenin asks about the role of a freedom within the class struggle, what he is asking is precisely: “Does this freedom contribute to or constrain the fundamental revolutionary Choice?”

Are we talking about maintaining the ‘fundamental revolutionary choice’ here?

I understand the feeling of having few choices. I have been there. I felt frustrated. I felt desperate at times. I ate beans and rice for weeks. Back then I was still paying taxes! Imagine that. The idea that across the board tax cuts is pandering to the rich is a farce. Kerry and Edwards are talking about only giving a tax cut to corporations. Where is your outrage?

Aren’t we really talking about how resources should be allocated? Isn’t that the fundamental difference here? Greedy corporations don’t use the money wisely and their coercive and unrestrained business practices create monopolies. But when the policy advocated is to put rich politicians in control of that money. (The right ones, mind you.) Forgive me for being a little sceptical of the idea.

The only monopolies which last are the ones set up by governments. Coercion is force or the threat of force. I do not fear a Microsoft monopoly. Nor a Walmart. If walmart can do it so can I. Sam Walton looked around and said, wow, I can do something no one else has done before, and do it for less!

Though it’s hard to believe today, discount retailing was a controversial concept when it began to gain ground in the ’50s at stores such as Ann & Hope, which opened in a reclaimed mill in Cumberland, R.I.

Traditional retailers hated it, and so did manufacturers; it threatened their control of the marketplace.

…Once committed to discounting, Walton began a crusade that lasted the rest of his life: to drive costs out of the merchandising system wherever they lay — in the stores, in the manufacturers’ profit margins and with the middleman — all in the service of driving prices down, down, down.
Time.com - Sam Walton

The more economic decisions made ‘collectively’ to keep out the ‘campers’ the more corruption and the less innovation there will be. Existing business with less foresight and even less gumption will lobby to protect their business. The campers are the ones who create jobs and create better standards of living for all of us.

If we start debating about whether ‘actual’ freedom equals the lack of freedom what we are really talking about is protecting someone’s right to resist change. Once the automobile is invented, let us not talk about protecting wagon wheelwright jobs. If someone can do it cheaper or easier let us not insist on doing it the hard way just for the sake of revolutionary choice.

Once we discard the freedom of individual choice especially in economics, we head down a slippery slope that leads to a little more tinkering and a little more control. Until we discard the entire system and proclaim capitalism and democracy a failure.

…This, also, is the reason why, today, “democracy” is more and more a false issue, a notion so discredited by its predominant use that, perhaps, one should take the risk of abandoning it to the enemy. Where, how, by whom are the key decisions concerning global social issues made? Are they made in the public space, through the engaged participation of the majority? If the answer is yes, it is of secondary importance if the state has a one-party system. If the answer is no, it is of secondary importance if we have parliamentary democracy and freedom of individual choices. In These Times.

Eric, why do you repeat Bush’s rhetoric, repeat it long enough and you will believe it. Government has and can create jobs. It is amazing. We tax payers sit here year after year paying the salaries, health insurance, and pension benefits OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE’S and you want to tout some worn out completely false phrase such as: Governement does not create jobs, People do. I don’t apply to the people to hire in to the CIA or FBI, I apply to the U.S. government for the job.

Don’t believe your leader’s lies, or at least don’t repeat them in public - the President looks foolish enough for such obviously false statements.

Guys, all of these arguments… My head is swimming!

For me it comes down to the simple fact that we are a free society. That means, as a consumer, I am free to buy the goods and services of anyone whom I choose to do business with. For private corporations the same holds true. If they, management and stockholders, want to buy cheap steel from Japan, what role does government have in that transaction? If WalMart buys cheap goods from China, what say should government have?

The only leverage government has in the game is its tax code, and tax credits are already taken into account by every corporation when determining their plant location. These credits come from State and local governments as driven by numerous economic development programs, and I do not think the Federal government can add any additional incentive to the equation. If they do, then all you will hear is the charge of “corporate welfare.”

The other technique is to tax imported goods. Hec even GWB tried this one with imported steel. At best it is a short term solution to aid in restructuring of an industry, similar to bankruptcy. The fact remains that taxing imported goods raises market costs for the goods (even for the domestic supply). This increased cost of goods gets passed on to the consumer.

I could see a national “Buy American” campaign as promoted by the President. Voluntary of course, but as leader of the country it might have an impact for a short period of time. WalMart tried a Buy American campaign themselves with limited success.

One last thing, aren’t productivity gains, and corresponding job losses, a good thing, especially when in about ten years there will be far less of us “productive workers” trying to produce goods and services for of all of the retirees? It seems to me that some of this job loss is natural given that there are fewer workers coming into the system when compared to the number exiting.

Well this stuff is certainly confusing and impossible to prove. Regardless of your argument or ideological leaning. Economists have been trying for years to create a computer simulation that works. The weather forecasters have had more success than the economists.

But rising population, rising trade deficits and rising productivity is still setting in the room like a 500 pound gorilla. Nothing anyone has done or even suggested seems to even address the problem of to many people and not enough jobs.

All anyone seems to want to do is use the situation to push un-provable and useless ideologies.

I don’t apply to the people to hire in to the CIA or FBI, I apply to the U.S. government for the job.

I don’t believe any of the Democratic candidates have mentioned their plan to hire several million more government employees to ‘create jobs’.

Since you mentioned it, it is relevant to the discussion. The job creation/destruction process has a definate purpose and I touched upon it in my last comment. Jobs lost are lost for a reason.

Productivity.
200 years ago 98 percent of the American population was employed in agriculture. Virtually all of the population was involved in growing enough food to feed 100% of the population. Today it is less than 2%. That is a massive job loss!

In many countries in Africa this is still the case. We are better off as a result of the loss of these agricultural jobs. Better productivity allows those people to be employed doing something else. No one is starving in the US today. In fact we have an obesity crisis.

Job loss due to productivity is a good thing. Losing a job is not the end of the world. It sucks. But it has been the best thing in the world for me - several times!

What does government produce? More importantly when are there ever government layoffs because of changing conditions or rising productivity? Never. The government grows and may or may not be doing productive work. Yet it’s funding is not voluntary - it is coercive.

We taxpayers sit here year after year paying more and more for less.

“200 years ago 98 percent of the American population was employed in agriculture. Virtually all of the population was involved in growing enough food to feed 100% of the population. Today it is less than 2%. That is a massive job loss!”

Yes productivity is a wonderful thing, as long as you like working at Burger King for minimum wage.

The agriculture jobs loss during the last 200 years were absorbed by the creation of a new industries (cars, radios, railroads, television). The jobs loss in the 70’s to Japan (cars, radios, ships, television) were absorbed by the hi-tech industry (computer, programming). Maybe we need a new industrial sector, widgets anyone?

You know my last post got me thinking (even if everyone else was uninspired). I think this country need a system similar to the national weather services. Were several economic computer models are created and tested against each with the results posted on the web.

The way to finally end this debate is to create a government sponsored competition to find a decent way of predicting what our actions will do.

Is anything like that already going on? Anybody got an good web links?

In the end it has been the emergence of new industries that has saved our collective butts.
So here is a solution that will make both liberal and conservative happy.

Zero taxation on emerging industries!

All alternative energy industries would be completely exempt from taxation for the next 15 to 20 years. Solar, wind, electric cars, turkey guts to oil (this one actually exists) all would be massively encouraged to expand and create new jobs.

The liberals will get to save the planet, the conservatives can have less taxes.

ouchmyhead,

I agree in part. I think the majority of economists today practice a science of Ecomonics that is slightly more advanced than the science of medicine of the 1700’s. When they were still bleeding patients to relieve ‘pressures’ on the body.

Although I attribute a large part of the confusion to the failure to purge the unscientific and discredited memes of Karl Marx from our collective consciousness.

But there is a school of economics which has as one of it’s tenets that models cannot describe economics. It’s the Austrian school of economics founded by Ludvig Von Mises.

I don’t claim to be an economist but it seems to me that computer models would need to have to accurately predict the future in order to prove that the model is correct. Either that or it becomes mere interpretation of data from the past. “See, it happened exactly as I say it should have!” And so much of the dynamic aspect of markets are the emergence of new industries. New products, new inventions, new technologies, new business models.

Another reason why it is so difficult for monolithic organizations to keep up. (Incl. government and corporations.) That’s why it should be more Laissez Faire than not. Less freedom = less innovation. Not monopoly as so many insist.

Freedom is good but only within limits. I grew up in a region of the country that had been strip mined for coal and iron in the in the early part of the 20th century. It left the area an acid tainted, deforested, toxic waste dump for hundreds of miles. Nothing would grow in the soil, the river was dead and ran orange every spring from mine acid. Even when the area was actively mined the worker were just slaves who owed the company more at the end of the day than they earned. Laissez Faire for my grand parents and the generations that followed was another word for hell.

Funny how my own personnel history affects my world view.

jessica had it right, our problem is over consumption not taxes, but that is not going to change as long as the U.S.A. is the richest and strongest country on earth, I really beleave the USA will not eleaveate any deficit problems until we, as a country, learn how to spend and consume more efficiantly.

It would indeed be ironic if overconsuption makes us strong and rich but will usher us into non-existance.

…how our government doesn’t need to rape, pillage and subjugate the rest of world’s population into forced labor to provide 2.3 SUV’s to the families in the U.S.

You mean that in a figurative sense, right?

…maybe if we as Americans could take a look at our lives in terms of quality as opposed to quantity (of material goods), we would find that our economy and our GNP doesn’t really need to increase by 8% every year to sustain and nourish its citizens.

I look at my washing machine in terms of quality of life. I’d hate to go back to washing by hand. Same goes for most of my other overconsuption.

Or is that too much to ask of Americans? If it is, than I guess we can just go back to arguing about taxes and cheap trade until we consume our way out of existance.

Yes, it is too much to ask. I, for one, look forward to the impending overconsuption crises.

As Thomas Jefferson once wrote regarding the “general Welfare” clause:

To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
US Treasury

Eric, in far too many cases today, the poor have “exercised equal industry and skill” in their area of knowledge and expertise and are nonetheless poor or jobless. My cousin with a high school diploma and of 48 years, was laid off as night maintenance at a loading dock in Detroit. He had worked for them for over 18 years. He got a great recommendation from his boss, and had become the night shift leader. In fact, it was his very skill and industry that cost him his job. The company hired a younger person to take his place at about 70% of what they were paying my cousin.

Captialism also punishes industry and skill when it is replaceable at a lower cost.

Eric, to paraphrase the bible on this, the economy was made for man, not man for the economy. The free market economy’s like a highway system. You’re free to go anywhere you like, but there are rules to how you use the system, and safeguards that are put in place to lessen the damage when things inevitably go wrong. Play things too freely, and the consequences can be lethal. Try and control things the wrong way, and you might end up making things worse or more unstable.

What’s to be done then? Lawmakers must be observant, and willing to hold their opinions tentatively. The open society works not because human beings get wiser without the aid of authoritarian forces, but because the authorities themselves have to debate the wisdom of the things they do. It is not a good idea to hold any sort of dogmatic view above reproach. Any practice, regulatory or deregulatory, must be put to the test, and thrown to the side if it does not do the trick.

A bad regulation can be like bend in the road that turns at too great a rate for the posted speed limit. People are forced to slow down or are taken by their momenteum off the roador afoul of the guard rails. Accidents and malfunctions are insured. If in practice, a regulation snarls things up more than it smooths them out, that can be problematic.

Unwise deregulation can be like a bridge that has no guardrails, a road without drainage ditches, or one without speed limits and lane demarcations. Accidents happen, preventable problems occur, and all these things serve to have a chilling effect of the efficient transportaion of people on that road. When the system does not address worrisome, repetitive, or fundamentally destructive problems, that too slows down the system.

In the end, the system has to be an emergent and tentative result of the interaction of free agents with an environment of proper safeguards, preparations and prohibitions, and all policy must address the balance between them, and not mindless pick the interest of one over the other every time.

First, the economy grows in the long run, as both our population expands and productive technology improves. Our tax base, of course, grows along with the economy, so if the tax rate remains the same — say, 18 percent — then absolute tax collections grow as the economy grows.

Second, when comparing tax collections across the years, it is important to distinguish between current and constant dollars. Comparing tax collections in current dollars is deceptive, because inflation gives a false picture of tax growth. Economists use constant dollars instead, which account for inflation.

Third, tax collections generally fall during a recession, and rise during a recovery. That is because during a recession, there are more unemployed people who do not pay taxes. During a recovery, tax collections increase as more people go to work. Since World War II, we’ve had only seven years in which the economy shrank, so growth is the norm for both our economy and our tax base.

However, there is an opposite effect at work here also. During a recession, the government spends more because of the greater need for unemployment and welfare benefits, as well as counter-cyclical Keynesian spending. During a recovery, the government doesn’t need to spend as much on these things, and as a result it can afford to lower its tax rates.

Stephen, your highway analogy is excellent. Just as an accident on one highway may require that traffic be routed to another highway for a short period of time to keep traffic flowing, so too, will we see fits and starts in the economy -however, on a monthly or even annual basis, it is not necessary to alter the arteries of the economy. On a longer term basis however, anywhere from 3 to 10 years depending on stability, it would be appropriate for a time to inject supply side dynamics and infusions to help bring about stability, and under other circumstances we will need to stimulate demand by a various mechanisms such as min. wage, benefits, transfer payments, or consumer side tax cuts.

Precisely as you stated, one ideology perpetually applied will fail, for no other reason than it will throw the economy out of balance. Balance is something political ideologues abhor since it provides neither side room to critizize nor dominate the “We know better than they do” rhetoric. Political differentiation is not facilitated by balanced economic practices, which may be the reason we rarely find our economy in balance for very long and certainly not across a change of party in the White House.

Balance is only a problem if one sees things on a political spectrum. I believe the real arrangements of structure and power in politics are much more complicate, much less a product of abstract thought. What I’m trying to say is that in the real world we often have more choices than we percieve. It’s why, time and time again, we are surprised as to what works and doesn’t work.

On the whole I would agree with the highway anology. I am not trying to say that regulation should be nonexistant. In fact as I have often said, capitalism requires regulation. It requires a government which has a trustworthy hall of records full of the deeds to property. It requires a government that complaintants can go to to resolve disputes. That punishes those who lie, cheat, steal, kill, hurt, defraud, or sell their Enron stock while they’re telling their employees to hold on to it.

I think the difference lies in how we are defining regulation and it’s limits. If we do not agree on a concept which will limit regulation, then there can never be balance.

I am reading a book by Hernando De Soto, called The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. In it he details the difficulties of businesses in third world countries. In essence, getting a business licence is virtually impossible without good connections and money. If you tried to get a business licence or a building permit the honest way in Peru for instance, it could actually take 10 years or more!

So an entrepenuer doesn’t get a license, he just goes into business but is unable to do many of the things a business needs to do to expand and be profitable. No credit, no deeds on property etc. and always watching out for the authorities.

To make a long story short, DeSoto’s premise is that the process of ‘capitalising’ property is the key. That is, recording and legitimising deeds for property, allowing the extralegal agreements of the people be legal.

Having that balance, which is based on the idea that the people are in control. Not a paternal government. Usually these are the rich, the ruling class excluding others from their enclave in the mistaken belief that they are keeping themselves rich, when in reality they are devaluing their riches and foregoing the profit which their society could have added.

Their goverments have taken too much responsibility and control of the economy and thereby have strangled the prosperity that could have been theirs. This is not a modern problem, it is an ancient one.

If in practice, a regulation snarls things up more than it smooths them out, that can be problematic.

We have a failure right now in California. And the problem is not that employers are getting away with too much or that they’re not regulated enough. In fact it’s the opposite.

Do we need laws forcing employers to pay $4.00 an hour per worker for workman’s comp insurance?

You may well ask yourself, where did the jobs go? Or why it might make sense to fire higher paid employees to hire lower paid ones.

Yet all too often I hear Democrat assemblymen pushing bills that would outlaw ‘bigbox’ stores. AKA Walmart. Now what kind of economic policy is that?

Unwise deregulation can be like a bridge that has no guardrails, a road without drainage ditches, or one without speed limits and lane demarcations.

I agree, but deregulation happens a lot less frequently than do the regulations.

My question is, where will they draw the line? Based upon what principle will they finally say, “That is one step too far?” or “We’re sorry, we wasted your tax dollars let’s defund this program.”

…the best place to look is California, where Dems took control of all three branches of government in 1998 and do not face filibusters, except on budget and tax issues where the GOP maintains a veto…

So what’s been the result in California? An overflow of groundbreaking legislation on behalf of unions, the environment, abortion rights, gay rights, consumers and renters….
NathanNewman

Funny, I don’t see business owners on that list. (Employers, I should say.)

The point is that government is not there to micromanage business. It’s job should be making and enforcing the broad rules necessary for people to have fair contractual relations. It definately should not be favoring one business over the other.

The regulation I am thinking of pertains to the framework within which we do business. And by ‘doing business’ I include employees as contractors basically. I have always had the idea that as an employee, I am a business. I am contracting my labor on a short or long term basis.

…in the real world we often have more choices than we percieve. It’s why, time and time again, we are surprised as to what works and doesn’t work.

100% agreement. That is why government should have a boundary of how far they can micromanage. When we can agree on that boundary we will have true bipartisanship.

In short its our money, not the Governments. Any cut in taxes well stimulate growth.

For an over view on “Outsourcing” that everyone is crying about read this essay (PDF):
http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/kirkegaard0204.pdf

Many conservatives and libertarians have argued that the government has no right to tax their money; they earned it, and the government has no right to “steal” it.

However, these individuals could not have made a dime on the free market without any of the following government supports of the free market:

Printing the very dollar bills with which people trade.
Public roads.
Rural electrification.
Government subsidized telephone wiring.
Satellite communications.
Police protection.
Military protection.
A criminal justice system.
Fire protection.
Paramedic protection.
An educated workforce.
An immunized workforce.
Protection against plagues by the Centers for Disease Control.
Public-funded business loans, foreclosure loans and subsidies.
Protection from business fraud and unfair business practices.
The protection of intellectual property through patents and copyrights.
Student loans.
Government funded research and development.
National Academy of Sciences.
Economic data collected and analyzed by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Prevention of depressions by Keynesian policies at the Fed (successful for six decades now).
Dollars protected from inflation by the Fed.
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Public libraries.
Cooperative Extension Service (vital for agriculture)
National Biological Service.
National Weather Service
Public job training.

“Why shouldn’t the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.”

Edward Albert Filene (1869-1937)

Prevention of depressions by Keynesian policies at the Fed (successful for six decades now).

I take it then that you have no problem with Bush’s deficit spending policies then?

Many of the things on your list are necessary. Government is necessary. No one is argueing that. I’m trying to argue that government should be limited to just those things which are in fact necessary.

To say that somehow government ‘owns everything’ or is owed everything for what it does is wrong.

It’s circular argument like saying that since the people own the government, and the government is the people, that the government owns the people.

Else there is no meaning to individual rights. And no limitation to government’s power.

The servant becomes the master.

7 Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8 Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’
Luke 17:7-10

I agree that the government is not there to micromanage business, but I think that what there needs to be out there is a proper, well regulated playing field.

Everybody who goes into business takes on certain risks in doing so. Agreed? But they only agree to certain risks. Other risks, they assume, are not fair game. If a company hires hitmen to go after stockholders who criticize them, that is an extreme example of a risk such a stockholder does not agree to take on.

When your stockholder signs on, they also do not do so with an idea that their fellow stockholders in management and the executive offices will decieve them and hide losses that adversely effect earnings, stock prices, and other economic indicators. This is what happened at Enron and what could only happen because deregulation allowed it.

When you put your money into a bank, or give it to a stockbroker, you do so on the idea that the bank will loan out your money to companies wisely, base on their ability to pay back, and that the stockbroker will sell stock to you that isn’t set to lose money. But that gets complicated when the people making the loan, and determining the company’s ability to pay back (the capital invested in the company’s stock) are one and the same. That could only happen with Worldcom because regulations did not prevent Citigroup (a combination bank, insurance company and stockbroker) from engaging in such an incestuous business practice.

Residents in a town do not accept serious health problems as a given in welcoming industry into their community.

Businesses should not parasitize the interests of the public, and should not be allowed to by law. The economy is made for man, not man for the economy, and if the economy is causing unnecessary suffering, or is spiralling into dysfunctional bad habits like child labor, sweatshop conditions, and non-living wages, we should act to curtail them.