By E. Thomas McClanahan, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
White House economist Christina Romer was on TV today, saying the administration wouldn't rule out a second stimulus package. A second stimulus? Whoa. That's exactly what the country doesn't need.
Former Clinton Treasury man Roger Altman had a troubling piece the other day in The Wall Street Journal, saying that quite soon we'll be facing a big tax increase.
The budget deficit and the national debt is increasing so rapidly, he wrote, that perhaps as early as next year Main Street and the financial markets will "exert irrestible pressure to reduce the deficit."
His prediction had a chilling plausibility -- even moreso if you consider the extra debt that would be loaded on with another stimulus package full of wasteful pork like the last one. Even more troubling was Altman's preferred levy: A European-style value-added tax.
That would be the perfect capstone to accompany President Obama's mad drive to replicate the massive tax-and-regulatory structures that have made the European economy so sluggish for the last few decades. An apt word was coined to describe the overall problem: eurosclerosis. Europe built a welfare state it cannot financially support, and its costs and rules suffocate economic dynamism.
In 2005, a writer in The Times of London noted that in Europe, "unemployment has been stuck between 8 and 11 percent since 1991 and growth has reached 3 percent only once in those 14 years."
We are now headed down the same path, thanks to the fiscal recklessness of this administration. A second stimulus, indeed. These people have to be stopped.









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Tom vs Nobel Laureates and Warren Buffet
Nobel laureates in economic science and the most successful investor in US financial history believe that this stimulus is needed. What is your level of training in economics and in finance? Should your opinions be believed or even warrant attention when you use virtually no US economic data? Let me suggest that you are the one that is nuts as are some readers who consider your unsupported opinions credible. Prove me wrong. What are your economic credentials? Are they better than those mentioned above? What data are you using?
I believe
.... a few people have asked for a source of the 45 mil without insurance claim and not once has Interface provided it. Nor has anyone else.
They just go run and hide or repeat it again.
Jenn
They just go run and hide or repeat it again.
The information I was using came from the WSJ, I have the article saved, but on my work computer which I won't have access to until Monday. However this is pretty close to what the WSJ had, I believe the base of the information is from the Census Bureau:
http://www.factcheck.org/politics/the_real_uninsured.html
The number of people who are uninsured and cannot afford it is much smaller than 45 million.
FactCheck.org
They just go run and hide or repeat it again.
The information I was using came from the WSJ, I have the article saved, but on my work computer which I won't have access to until Monday. However this is pretty close to what the WSJ had, I believe the base of the information is from the Census Bureau:
http://www.factcheck.org/politics/the_real_uninsured.html
The number of people who are uninsured and cannot afford it is much smaller than 45 million.
I find this to be a credible source. The only problem is that it hardly makes your case.
I will concede that slightly over 5 million may be undocumented immigrants who seek emergency treatment (they are not seeking preventative or traditional healthcare).
However, with more than 7 Million that have lost their jobs in the past year, these numbers will increase significantly.
I'm sure someone like jenniferm can take comfort in the fact that some of those uninsured seeking care, were dirty, undocumented immigrants who should have been denied compassionate care to begin with.
Nice.
I find this to be a credible source. The only I'm sure someone like jenniferm can take comfort in the fact that some of those uninsured seeking care, were dirty, undocumented immigrants who should have been denied compassionate care to begin with.
Really? Have I written that--or even implied anything on the cleanliness of an "undocumented" immigrant. Because I don't think I did.
I simply asked for a count on the number of illegal immigrants included in the 40+ mil number--yeah, that certainly translates into what you wrote. Good grief.
If the only way you can make your point is by making up something that I didn't write, then YOU GO GIRL!
Vegas2112 is taking over for Interface
I find this to be a credible source. The only I'm sure someone like jenniferm can take comfort in the fact that some of those uninsured seeking care, were dirty, undocumented immigrants who should have been denied compassionate care to begin with.
Really? Have I written that--or even implied anything on the cleanliness of an "undocumented" immigrant. Because I don't think I did.
I simply asked for a count on the number of illegal immigrants included in the 40+ mil number--yeah, that certainly translates into what you wrote. Good grief.
If the only way you can make your point is by making up something that I didn't write, then YOU GO GIRL!
Have you noticed that Vegas2112 has taken over for Interface as the insulter of the group? She's had several of her posts deleted already on just this thread alone. If she can't logically argue a point she starts with the potty mouth. So sad.
vegas...
illegal aliens should be shown compassion by putting them on a bus or boat for home... Not by taking my money and giving them healthcare!!!
Nobel economist Paul Krugman
in February predicted the need for more stimulus to pull the economy out of the Bush recession:
For while Mr. Obama got more or less what he asked for, he almost certainly didn’t ask for enough. We’re probably facing the worst slump since the Great Depression. The Congressional Budget Office, not usually given to hyperbole, predicts that over the next three years there will be a $2.9 trillion gap between what the economy could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough to bridge that chasm.
Officially, the administration insists that the plan is adequate to the economy’s need. But few economists agree. And it’s widely believed that political considerations led to a plan that was weaker and contains more tax cuts than it should have — that Mr. Obama compromised in advance in the hope of gaining broad bipartisan support. We’ve just seen how well that worked.
Now, the chances that the fiscal stimulus will prove adequate would be higher if it were accompanied by an effective financial rescue, one that would unfreeze the credit markets and get money moving again. But the long-awaited announcement of the Obama administration’s plans on that front, which also came this week, landed with a dull thud.
The plan sketched out by Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, wasn’t bad, exactly. What it was, instead, was vague. It left everyone trying to figure out where the administration was really going. Will those public-private partnerships end up being a covert way to bail out bankers at taxpayers’ expense? Or will the required “stress test” act as a back-door route to temporary bank nationalization (the solution favored by a growing number of economists, myself included)? Nobody knows.
Over all, the effect was to kick the can down the road. And that’s not good enough. So far the Obama administration’s response to the economic crisis is all too reminiscent of Japan in the 1990s: a fiscal expansion large enough to avert the worst, but not enough to kick-start recovery; support for the banking system, but a reluctance to force banks to face up to their losses. It’s early days yet, but we’re falling behind the curve.
And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach — a feeling that America just isn’t rising to the greatest economic challenge in 70 years. The best may not lack all conviction, but they seem alarmingly willing to settle for half-measures. And the worst are, as ever, full of passionate intensity, oblivious to the grotesque failure of their doctrine in practice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/opinion/13krugman.html
Second?
or is this the 3rd? I've lost track. I guess that depends on what you called TARP under "W".
It's the third.
The first was under W and had at least had the benefit of returning money to people who actually paid income taxes.
Obama just can't seem to keep his hands off of my bank account, or yours, or anybody elses for that matter.
If you want to see the economy improve, drop Cap and Tax, drop government run healthcare, and implement an immediate one to two year moratorium on all personal income taxes (including capital gains), and drop the corporate tax and corporate capital gains tax to something like 5% for the same amount of time. It will be significantly cheaper than the porkulus and will very likely WORK!
Given that Warren Buffett is warning people to hide their money in their mattress we'd better do something different soon.
er, you know...
you do know, don't you, that no one's proposing "government run healthcare"?
What's on the table is an alternative to private insurance to ensure that the 46 million uninsured Americans have access to affordable health insurance.
Ya, right
you do know, don't you, that no one's proposing "government run healthcare"?
What's on the table is an alternative to private insurance to ensure that the 46 million uninsured Americans have access to affordable health insurance.
I keep hearing you say that and quoting that debunked 46 million uninsured Americans figure. But constantly saying it doesn't make it true. Sorry, try again.
Debunked by whom?
you do know, don't you, that no one's proposing "government run healthcare"?
What's on the table is an alternative to private insurance to ensure that the 46 million uninsured Americans have access to affordable health insurance.
I keep hearing you say that and quoting that debunked 46 million uninsured Americans figure. But constantly saying it doesn't make it true. Sorry, try again.
You?
Are you some renowned economist posing as an anonymous poster? You can try and wish away the numbers if you like but the the truth is irrelevant to what you may or may not think and believe. Sorry, Try again.
Debunked by better
Are you some renowned economist posing as an anonymous poster? You can try and wish away the numbers if you like but the the truth is irrelevant to what you may or may not think and believe. Sorry, Try again.
Sorry but just try a little search and you will find tons of debunking. So your fake outrage here will be ignored. Thank you for playing. Please come again.
Your credibility could hardly be lower riki
Are you some renowned economist posing as an anonymous poster? You can try and wish away the numbers if you like but the the truth is irrelevant to what you may or may not think and believe. Sorry, Try again.
Sorry but just try a little search and you will find tons of debunking. So your fake outrage here will be ignored. Thank you for playing. Please come again.
Can you address the previous question about who your sources are?
Sadly, not
Are you some renowned economist posing as an anonymous poster? You can try and wish away the numbers if you like but the the truth is irrelevant to what you may or may not think and believe. Sorry, Try again.
Sorry but just try a little search and you will find tons of debunking. So your fake outrage here will be ignored. Thank you for playing. Please come again.
It is obvious that you have nothing. You are parroting idiots who, while they may be much more intelligent than you, are intellectually dishonest.
Can you address the previous question about who your sources are?
I think you are full of crap [And there you go again with that potty mouth] and wouldn't spend a single minute trying to look for something that has never been asserted by anyone credible before.
I'm not going to do your work for you. And obviously you've not been reading this site for the past few days because it was all layed out for you. But then my guess is you are one of those nice Socialists who have no logic and want the government to run your life for you. Good luck with that.