'Self-Described Fiscal Conservatives Cannot Be Taken Seriously'

The New York Times:

There are three main views of the financial crisis and the most recent recession. In the first two views, the debate over the fiscal deficit is quite separate from what happened in the crisis. But in the third view, the financial crisis and likelihood of fiscal austerity are closely linked.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[Impaler]

09:52 PM on 08/29/2010

The Tea Party Movement is voting out non-conservatives of both party's so perhaps a little less hand wringing, Bush bashing, and join us in reforming America for the better, not worse. If we don't perhaps a new banks in a double wides will serve Americans in the double wides.

[GeoNorth]

05:34 PM on 08/29/2010

The motto of the fiscally conservative right is "I got mine. Screw you".

[Danielle Burke]

04:41 PM on 08/29/2010

Ron Paul is one of the few Republicans who is truly fiscally conservative.

[darcdante]

05:58 PM on 08/29/2010

Truth. Very few Republicans are, or have been, fiscally conservative. The Tea Party seeks to change this; we'll see how successful they are. After all, Republicans have been promising smaller Government for decades without delivering.

[Bat Wrangler]

04:39 PM on 08/29/2010

Republicans were only 'fiscally conservative' when they were trying to win the House for the first time in 40 years, back in the 90's. Once they came to power it was spend, spend, spend. Compassionate conservatism is nothing more than big government/big lobbyist/big corporate welfare Republicanism. The by-product of this is our current Bush Depression.

[samtee]

05:38 PM on 08/29/2010

Imagine what it's going to look like with Obama's spending.

[scorpioman]

07:50 PM on 08/29/2010

did you not hear about pay-go?

[thepoliticalcat]

03:10 PM on 08/29/2010

Republicans are only "fiscal conservatives" when it comes to the poor, the working class, and the middle class. When it comes to the wealthy, they're willing to spend like drunken sailors in a h0orhouse.

[schatsie]

08:17 PM on 08/29/2010

Bingo, directly from Free Lunch....you cannot imagine how much in deferred taxes that the Wealthy OWE....and do they pay interest, are you kidding me, taxes and interest and penalties are for the little people.....

[wikwox]

02:56 PM on 08/29/2010

Not for one minute do I believe Republicans are now "fiscally conservative", they will never give up the Tax Cut Mantra now matter how many times it's proven a fraud.

[GeoNorth]

05:37 PM on 08/29/2010

I get a kick outta how they say that we need to keep the Bush tax cuts because without them, there will be no new jobs. In the last ten years of the cuts, there were no new jobs. as a matter of fact, they shipped what we had overseas. So why would renewing the Bush tax cuts work now?

[darcdante]

06:06 PM on 08/29/2010

The Bush tax cuts were for individuals. America has an extremely high corporate tax rate. Though we often focus on individual tax rates, the better idea might be to raise those but cut corporate tax rates. I admit this is a somewhat scary prospect at first glance, but the high tax rate is why we're losing jobs to other nations.

Individual tax cuts are more popular because they're immediately seen in paychecks, but corporate tax cuts are likely to create more American jobs.

[merinoo]

06:08 PM on 08/29/2010

The last decade, we were in a huge bubble that created many, many jobs....Of course, many were still outsourced, but to say there were no jobs created is dead wrong.

[SpencersMom]

02:30 PM on 08/29/2010

Where were these so-called fiscal conservatives during the Bush years? Where was the outcry over $500 billion deficits year after year? Where were the "balanced budget at all costs" crowd then? Who wasn't aware that the costs of both wars were being carried off the books?

Who didn't see the economy ready to crumble when, in less than 30 years, the American economy has been turned upside down, 1 in 6 manufacturing jobs lost in the last 10 year, and healthcare + financial services comprise nearly 50% of GDP?

America cannot continue the reckless tax cuts for the most wealthy. We cannot continue to allow corporations and individuals to shelter income overseas to avoid paying taxes here.

Bush's tax cuts have been in place for 10 years - where are the jobs that tax cuts create? Over in China and India, while those who ship the jobs out of the country pocket the additional profits.

The time for free rides and deregulation is over, or it really will be over for America.

PEACE

[Danielle Burke]

04:44 PM on 08/29/2010

Ron Paul was there and spoke out against Bush and the Republicans.

[econ1]

06:24 PM on 08/29/2010

A significant number of independent fiscal conservatives were so upset with Bush and the spending of Congress that they voted for change.

[SamEllison]

09:02 PM on 08/29/2010

I think he was doing the bong thing back then,
or skipping class, stuff like that.....

[Dan1902]

02:15 PM on 08/29/2010

To be "Fiscally Conservative" in the 21st Century is to be blinded by greed with antipathy towards those in need,and in a death race to the bottom-line!!!

[merinoo]

06:10 PM on 08/29/2010

Are you voluntarily donating more than you owe in taxes every year?

[schatsie]

08:21 PM on 08/29/2010

donating, you mean those donations that require a 40% kickback that is financed by us working class slobs....Too cheap to even donate without getting a tax kickback....

[den1953]

01:24 PM on 08/29/2010

How far is corporate America willing to wreck our nation, enough to put there own bottom line at risk?

[emicscram]

01:28 PM on 08/29/2010

They're behaving exactly as addicts often do.

[Sinister Minister]

01:39 PM on 08/29/2010

Addicts is the appropriate term. Research has shown that the exact same chemical response in the brain can be obtained from acquisition of money as from taking addictive drugs.

[den1953]

01:40 PM on 08/29/2010

Fanned and yes indeed they are addicts and they can mask as world economists now more profit at some point the chickens do come home to roost trouble is will there be enough of the home left!

[thepoliticalcat]

03:13 PM on 08/29/2010

Corporate "America" is not "America" at all. Most corporations are now global, and they really could not care less if America crumbled into dust tomorrow, as long as their sales stay steady.

[ThoughtShaman]

01:15 PM on 08/29/2010

To finish up my earlier post,

In essence, I am advocating a form of "egalitarian capitalism." While, capital (primarily in private hands) still controls the means of production, in the context of an organization we must treat labor that contributes to the generation of revenus and profits as the equivalent of capital for the purposes of wealth distribution.

Fixing the ration to about 12-16:1 is a way of achieving it.

[ThoughtShaman]

01:20 PM on 08/29/2010

Just to provide continuity, I summarize my earlier post.

In several of my comments on HuffPo (and elseshere) in the past, I pointed out that we ought to regulate the total compensation ratio for the highest and lowest paying jobs within an organization to 12-16:1. That means that the highest paid person (say the CEO) can make only 12-16 times what the lowest paid worker makes.

This simple law will reduce all kinds of complexity in the tax code, and distribute the wealth more evenly.

The fundamental principle behind fixing the compensation ratio is to acknowledge that most people never make money by themselves, but cooperatively with others.

Another way to look at this 12:16:1 ratio is extending the family concept to the commercial organization. Most states have and enforce community property laws for spouses. Even if one spouse does not work in the job market, he/she is entitled to half the other spouses earnings. The rationale is that without one spouse helping out, the other spouse would not be able to bring in the same amount of earnings. The same concept can apply to a commerical organization as well by treating it as an extended family unit. Without all the workers doing their part, the total revenues of the organization, and thus, the profits would be lower. In this paradigm, it makes no sense as for executives to grab the lions share of the profits while not proportionately sharing it with those who helped generate it.

[schatsie]

08:23 PM on 08/29/2010

We can do that by taxing the rich at 95%.... but that would have to include taxing capital gains as income when they are over 100 grand per year.....

[ThoughtShaman]

01:11 PM on 08/29/2010

In several of my comments on HuffPo (and elseshere) in the past, I pointed out that we ought to regulate the total compensation ratio for the highest and lowest paying jobs within an organization to 12-16:1. That means that the highest paid person (say the CEO) can make only 12-16 times what the lowest paid worker makes.

This simple law will reduce all kinds of complexity in the tax code, and distribute the wealth more evenly.

The fundamental principle behind this fixing of compensation ratio is an acknowledgement that most people never make money by themselves, rather they make it cooperatively with others in the organization.

Another way to look at this 12-16:1 ratio is extending the family concept to the commercial organization. Most states have and enforce community property laws for spouses. Even if one spouse does not work in the job market, he/she is entitled to half the other spouses earnings. The rationale is that without one spouse helping out, the other spouse would not be able to bring in the same amount of earnings. The same concept can apply to a commerical organization as well by treating it as an extended family unit. Without all the workers doing their part, the total revenues of the organization, and thus, the profits would be lower. In this paradigm, it makes no sense as for executives to grab the lions share of the profits while not proportionately sharing it with those who helped generate it.

[oldngrumpy]

02:19 PM on 08/29/2010

Your concept would lead us to a more sustainable "resource based" economy where the ownership of natural resources and the infrastructure are acknowledged as "public" and have a value to business. The "labor based" economy we have been suffering under is nothing but a form of slavery where one starts with nothing and must beg the corporate structure for jobs that allow one to purchase back resources that should have belonged to him in the first place.

The entire system, as it exists now, should be scrapped at this juncture in our history. The opportunity to make large and sweeping changes in a corrupt system will never be better than it is presently. Americans are adrift, looking for someone who will depart from the status quo. Their dissatisfaction with the present administration and congress stems from it's lack of desire to take decisive action to secure our financial future. They see a confused and desperate government that doesn't "get it". Their ire would have been just as focused upon conservatives, had they been in a majority and offered the same results.

[Y3rMawm]

03:30 PM on 08/29/2010

Agree that income distribution is out of whack, but such a system as you describe, would cause Capital to flee so fast, that it will make your head spin. Those who would otherwise risk their own capital to create a business, thus jobs, will go elsewhere.

You are better of looking at the government regulation, which acts as barriers to entry, starts us down the road to monopoly. Let's also review the regulations which encourages spending money, rather than saving it. This profligacy translates in to resource consumption which will not sustain itself.

[ThoughtShaman]

04:59 PM on 08/29/2010

1. The system will do nothing to 70% of the jobs, as most jobs are in small businesses. Most small businesses do not exceed the ratio anyway.

2. The rest of the 30% - to replace the capital that might flee is not going to be any worse than the cyclical transfer of wealth through debt that we continually feed the large institutions every time we bail them out once every 15 years or so via the engineered boom-bust cycle.

3. Regulation suffers from the fact that it is impossible to cover every loophole. Further, we end up in the endless cycle of too much or too little regulation as situations change.

4. The only other way is to increase taxes on the high end of the scale to 90% or so like it was several decades ago. This, however, leads to more lobbying and special interest groups to create tax loopholes, which is similar to the current system. Eventually, someone will come up with a loophole to convince congress to lower the tax rates and we end up exactly where we are today.

No - we have to solve the source of the problem. Most people never make money by themselves. No one I know buys a GM product because Jack Welch is the CEO. It is high time we acknowledged it and formalized the ratio as part of the corporate charter.

[cybersense]

11:02 AM on 08/29/2010

I was on a "town hall" site. One poster said he was giving back the extra money from social security for 2009 because they didn't believe they should pay higher taxes. Does that make sense? This was about "the poster taxes". Just what kind of protest is that? Funny.

[blizb]

10:46 AM on 08/29/2010

The so-called fiscal conservatives did not save the economy.

So what success can they claim??

They supported the worst economic policies in our history resulting in a total collapse and claim they have the answers.

What a load of garbage they spew.

They did nothing to protest Bush and the bad economic policies and they did nothing to support keeping jobs in America.

If they could profit from anything, any way possible then that is what they went after, "a profit for me only" policy, to our total economic destruction.

Bush and Cheney spent like there was no end even creating another entire government department like Homeland Security and that still did not secure our borders after 9/11.

What accomplishment can these hypocritical "fiscal conservatives" claim?

NOTHING.

Clinton was the one who balanced the budget, left a surplus and a great job market.
Bush & the GOP were the ones who did not maintain the balanced budget, spent a surplus of over 200 Billion Dollars, and left us with no economy and no jobs.

[merinoo]

06:23 PM on 08/29/2010

Clinton got lucky because social security brought in more money than it put out. BTW - The job market was tanking when he left office.

Bush (Paulson, really) created a bubble that almost lasted throughout his whole administration.

Obama, hired Geithner, who continued the fraud to this day.

Sensing a pattern yet?

[cybersense]

10:46 AM on 08/29/2010

If you look at tax cuts as discounts in a business, you could no longer offer them if they did not bring in more business. This is why they are offered in the first place. Most people do not understand that if you make over a certain amount - you do not pay into social security. You still pay into medicare, but not social security. If you allow discounts on something that doesn't bring in more revenues to substain your business, you would in fact, quit offering them. You would have to find what part of your business could bring in the best revenues as well. To maintain your business through a tenuous economy - you would have to have sometype of new investment, or loan. You would not cut the part of your business that could diversify and bring in different methods of income. These people who are not offering idea's to do any of this with our own economy are not good business people. If you want to maintain or grow, you would cut revenues to do so.

[cybersense]

10:47 AM on 08/29/2010

correction: "you would NOT cut revenues to do so".

[oldngrumpy]

02:27 PM on 08/29/2010

Running America "like a business" has been a Republican mantra for over 30 years, but every time they win a majority or the Executive they act like frat boys with daddy's credit card. Bush was likely the one who ran the government like a business. Just like all the other businesses he bankrupted and embezelled.

[cybersense]

02:36 PM on 08/29/2010

exactly. Of course, I was speaking of true business, and not a corrupt one. (grin)

Look, sometimes people try too hard and make all of this too confusing. It is an important consideration to look at this in a very real way.

[phread]

10:34 AM on 08/29/2010

* Republican supply-side economic policies are about to take us over a cliff and there are no longer sane voices in the GOP to stop it. “Republicans have no interest in doing anything sensible,”f. And when the Democrats under the Clinton administration created a healthy sound surplus, the Republicans pissed it away as soon as they regained power.

* Republicans are hypocritical when it comes to their deficit concerns. “But no, it is not deficits themselves that worry Republicans, but rather how they are caused: deficits caused by tax cuts are fine; but spending increases brought in by Democrats are diabolical, unless on the military."

* The stimulus bill was too small to have a true stimulative effect on our economy. And the U.S. desperately needs more stimulus, NOT more tax cuts. “In any case, the stimulus was certainly too small, not too large.” ... “across-the-board tax cuts are an extremely inefficient way of providing it.”

* Republican tax-cutting policies have developed into a familiar scam. They cut taxes and the deficit explodes. Republicans then start screeching they need to cut social welfare programs to reduce the deficit, as evidenced by the recent fight over paying for the extension of emergency unemployment benefits. Suddenly, the deficit matters to the GOP when it involves spending money on poor people. And then they cut taxes some more.

http://chattahbox.com/business/2010/07/26/financial-times-dangerous-gop-supply-side-tax-cuts-will-destroy-america/