The Republicans always use the excuse that we have to give the rich huge tax cuts because they are the "job creators." Of course, the reality is that giving tax cuts to the rich is the very worst way of getting more money into the economy. The multiplier effect for tax cuts for the wealthy is the lowest of almost any stimulative program the government can try.
Plus, if they are creating jobs, it isn't here. The money is flowing out of the country and into developing markets at an incredible rate. Between 2002 and 2008, the Bush tax cuts equaled $1.3 trillion. The amount of money leaving the United States in the form of investment in developing countries in that same time period -- $1.9 trillion. It can be argued that all of the tax cuts to the rich went out of the country and then some (of course, it's a little more complicated than that but obviously a huge portion of the extra money went into investment abroad).
So, if jobs are being created through tax cuts it's probably in Shanghai or Mumbai. So, the Republican answer now is to give ... more tax cuts to the rich. They want to give $700 billion in tax cuts to the top bracket over the next ten years. I have a revolutionary idea instead.
How about instead of giving the money to the rich and hoping that they create jobs, we just create the jobs! Imagine what we could build and how much good we could do for the country if we used that extra $700 billion to actually hire people directly. Imagine how many jobs that could create.
It might be worth it if we just hired people to do what would otherwise be volunteer work. It might be worth it if we just built a whole new green energy sector. It might be worth it if we just hired an enormous number of teachers to give our kids the best education in the world. It might be worth it if we hired so many more cops to protect our streets or firemen to protect our neighborhoods. Or doctors to treat our sick. Or people to take care of the elderly or disabled. Or people to take care of our kids while we worked. Or people to build our bridges and our roads. Or just about anything else you can imagine.
Imagine. $700 billion set aside just to hire people. To hire Americans. Or we can go with the Republican plan of giving it all to the rich and hoping they create jobs at some point and hoping that those jobs are here in America. You be the judge.
Follow Cenk Uygur on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks
We won't change this economy unless we spend more money on the future -the Children if you can catch them when they are young... Likend to having a puppy....I know I have a dog. Dog and Children need rules disapline, and love... and to be in a loving caring home. I met some Russian women that told me "Men are like dogs - you teach them sit, stay, fetch! Funny but true. If we could only go back to the problem before trying to solve the outcome! I think the White House is sitting there just verbally masterbating! They have a happy ending ... but we sit in this Movie - "LIFE" with our rolls being non-speaking only to be used and abursed for $$$$
To reach the young voter the media will want to address subjects they (young people) are interested in.
For instance, For mostly young men the media (TV and mainstream internet news sites) can get involved in the world of e-sports (competitive gaming). Yah i know...the parents wouldn't like that blah blah. But if you want to grab their attention that would be a great start. There is a huge community ready to go if givin the chance. There is too much to say in order to make all the points to support this. The best contact I know in the gaming community is the teamliquid website.
Music is another subject of course, they are already established but media outlets can improve to reach more young people.
For young women interests, I may not be much help. But I do find on youtube that cosmetic videos get lots of interest.
If media provides information on a constant basis of subjects of interest to them, they will reach much more of the younger audience. These are simple suggestions on how to get younger people interested in visiting sites like HP or possibly a tv program.
I was a mechanical engineering student in the '80s. At that time ANYBODY could, by developing a machine or writing software, start a new company. A massive wave of new technology (e.g. computers and all the other hardware that interface computers to machinery) was suddenly available to ANYBODY. As a result, hundreds of thousands of new companies sprung from the ground up. Suddenly, new products, produced by new manufacturing processes, appeared everywhere Tens of thousands of software companies appeared, many of which were manufacturing related (e.g. CAD/CAM/CAE software... which is what I specialized in).
All will agree that this wave of new technology brought with it HUGE opportunity and wealth. So where did it all go? According to this person it's all still there for the taking. NOT TRUE.
By the mid-'90s, I saw clearly that the Finance Elite and their cronies in Washington were intent on vacuuming up ALL the wealth and opportunity. By the end of the tech bubble bust, they had totally succeeded.
How did they do it? The same way they now own most of the residential homes in the U.S.... they printed HUGE amounts of counterfeit money (i.e. loans out of thin air via their banks) which they used to buy-up (merge and acquire) EVERYTHING.
The anti-business US government atmosphere and attitude that has been created by both major political parties in the last few decades is also a factor in addition to the economical cost reasons to locate new jobs overseas instead of in the USA.
These Free Trade laws make creating jobs in the USA un-economical.
Labor and environmental costs are almost always many times less expensive in foreign nations due to various US government laws.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/18/alan-grayson-five-things-_n_785657.html
Almost all thinking people by now have caught on to the complete dogpooh that "trickle down economics" is. It's been debunked by objective evidence for well over 20years. For Republican Congresspeople to peddle variations of it today really shows their utter contempt for the intelligence and stand-and-fight instincts of average American people. They figure they'd get away with it, and incredibly they DO. In France, or Greece, or some other older countries, there'd be urban riots and demonstrations by hundred of thousands to millions in the streets.
Curiously, in America today, amidst real unemployment approaching upper teens, Congress voted down unemployment payments. Burgeoning home mortgage foreclosures anticipated in millions are ignored by Congress and President Obama. Congress Republicans openly despise and sabotage President Obama, and the President openly yields and disparages the "professional left" for balking at this situation in despair. If anyone predicted 2years ago it would come to this, few would have believed it.
Cenk, don't ask for opinions, sound Paul Revere's alarm. It's not about jobs. You're seeing disintegration of national will to exercise righteous power and resist evil.
My natural reaction to this article... none of this 'get back to work' talk will accomplish anything until the corporate/government crime is stopped and the criminals go to jail. Dylan is trying to be 'constructive' but I think he's mistaken to not continue to point out that the central cause of the U.S.'s economic crisis is fraud perpetrated by the top-most executives in our corporations and governments.
Our corporations and governments are being looted, plain and simple. Until we all understand that (that our wealth is trickling upward) there's no point in talking about how the criminals should be running our corporations and our governments.
I think Dylan/Cenk will agree... William K Black (the lead investigator/prosecutor who put over a thousand criminals in jail after the S&L crisis) is the man we need to lead us out of this nightmare.
Dylan... you guys keep the focus on stopping the criminals... let's throw the criminals in jail first... and then we'll all get to work cleaning up the mess.