Ask Me Help Desk - It's UNEMPLOYMENT, Stupid. NOT the debt.

It's UNEMPLOYMENT, Stupid. NOT the debt.

Hello:

I'm a businessman. You want a businessman running things don't you? Let's say I'm running a store that's not doing very well, and, I owe a lot of money, too. Is it better to let some of my GOOD people go, and stop advertising, and stop fixing my broken floor, so I can reduce my debt? Or would it be better to INVEST in my employees, fix the broken floor, and give the place a good paint job too?

It'll be much easier to pay the debt WHEN those investments pay off. No? Certainly, if I let the place go to hell, I'll have NO customers..

What's wrong the above?

excon

Quote:

Originally Posted by excon

What's wrong the above?

excon

Nothing. For you. Passing out an unaccountable few hundred billion here and there and everywhere by the Feds and taking care of Julia cradle to grave is just driving us "Forward" over a cliff.

Hello Steve:

Apparently, you didn't understand what I said. Otherwise, you'd see that if it's GOOD for ME to do that, it's good for the country to do it too..

excon

No, I got it fine. YOU don't have nearly the bureaucracy and can't print money you don't have. I'd give you much higher odds of being successful at it than the feds. Nearly a trillion later and unemployment is still over 8 percent. What makes you think the same people can do better with a do-over?

Quote:

Originally Posted by speechlesstx

What makes you think the same people can do better with a do-over?

Hello again, Steve:

It's not a do over. It's a do more. Because, I invested four years ago, has NOTHING to do with my need to invest NOW. You really SHOULD leave business to businessmen.

But, I see that you're not listening, or interested. All you got is right wing talking points.. To you, I'm talking about writing checks to all comers and even to some who didn't come.

excon

I got no talking points, we don't have the money to pay for liberal pipe dreams and no paltry Buffet tax is going to do anything but make some libs feel better about themselves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by speechlesstx

we don't have the money to pay for liberal pipe dreams

Hello again, Steve:

Couple things.

We DO have the money. I understand that you don't KNOW that. You're constrained within the parameters of your right wing talking points. They don't allow you to think outside the box. After all, you think hiring teachers and fixing bridges are liberal pipe dreams.

Does anybody want to talk about SOLVING our problems here??

excon

No, we don't have the money.

U.S. Debt clock

Quote:

Originally Posted by speechlesstx

No, we don't have the money.

Hello again:

True, we don't HAVE the money. My store above doesn't HAVE the money either. Apparently you think it's fine that I borrow some, but our government shouldn't. I KNOW you think we're TOOOOO much in debt... But, THAT'S a right wing talking point, and patently NOT TRUE.

Is there ANYBODY out there who understands what money is or what to do with it?? I thought right wingers understood the free market. I thought you wanted a guy at the helm with business acumen. No, huh?

excon

Libs think if they spend a gazillion dollars we don't have and drag everyone down to the same level we'll have this utopia. What we'll have is Greece and everyone demanding where their Obama money is.

Hello Steve

Quote:

Originally Posted by speechlesstx

Libs think if they spend a gazillion

Right wing talking point.

Quote:

we'll have this utopia.

Talking point.

Quote:

What we'll have is Greece

Fox talking point.

Quote:

demanding where their Obama money is.

Republican talking point.

Is there ANYBODY out there who wants to SOLVE our problems?

Excon

[QUOTE=excon;3105909]Me: Libs think if they spend a gazillion

Quote:

Right wing talking point.

Nope, Krugmanomics.

Me: we'll have this utopia.

Quote:

Talking point.

Julia, again. By the way did you notice he quit taking care of Julia after retirement? No promises the death panel will cover her treatments, eh?

Me: What we'll have is Greece

Quote:

Fox talking point.

Cato Institute

Me: demanding where their Obama money is.

Quote:

Republican talking point

.

Do I want to solve this? Yes, get the government out of the way and stop coddling everyone.

P.S. We need someone inspiring and no, Romney isn't very inspiring, but Democrats are depressing - always telling us how bad things are, how we can't make without their help, how we're all victims, blah, blah, blah. And instead of giving businesses incentives they want to tax more, regulate more, just go out and crucify the first few guys you see and everyone will fall in line. How is that helpful?

P.P.S. Cabinets Gone Wild

Quote:

By Victor Davis Hanson

We've had some unusual Cabinet secretaries in past administrations -- Earl Butz, John Mitchell and James Watt come to mind -- but never anything quite like the present bunch.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has overseen some $5 trillion in new debt. To help pay for it, he wants the rich -- the top 1 percent already contributes more in income taxes than does the bottom 90 percent -- to pay more for what he calls "the privilege of being an American." Geithner, whose department oversees the IRS, should have taken his own advice: As a rich American one-percenter, he once failed to pay his own self-employment taxes, and improperly claimed his children's camp costs as a dependent-care deduction.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has pulled off the near impossible: At a time when the known gas and oil reserves of the United States on public lands have soared, he has cut back on federal leasing of them to just about 2 percent of available offshore lands and 6 percent of onshore. Meanwhile, huge new amounts of oil are now found on private lands despite, not because of, the Interior Department. When he was a U.S. senator, Salazar claimed that even $10-a-gallon gas would not change his mind about voting to increase offshore drilling. And although he controls the leases of the richest oil and gas reserves in the Western world, he just recently shrugged that no one knew whether gas would hit $9 a gallon.

Then there is the even stranger case of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department helped oversee millions in bad loans to green companies like Solyndra, First Solar and Solar Trust of America -- the Teapot Dome scandals of our times. Chu once infamously quipped before assuming office that he wanted U.S. gas prices to reach European levels. Apparently Chu wanted to force less fossil-fuel burning -- although he later confessed that he does not drive a car.

Chu also once warned that the California's Central Valley agriculture might disappear due to global warming. True, it could decline, but more likely due to the Obama administration's decision to divert irrigation water in hopes of helping out the 3-inch San Francisco Delta smelt. Chu should realize that private-sector California farmers create thousands of jobs, while his own Cabinet's Solyndra-like projects have done precisely the opposite.

Attorney General Eric Holder dropped charges against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation. That may explain why he said nothing when the same group put out a dead-or-alive bounty poster on George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting case. Holder's department is suing the state of Arizona for passing a law to enforce the largely unenforced federal immigration law. Holder suggested that the Arizona law was racially inspired even as he admitted that he had never read it. Holder has praised the race-baiting Al Sharpton for his "partnership" and called the country "cowards" for not holding a national conversation on race on his terms. The attorney general has referred to African-Americans as "my people," and he has characterized congressional oversight of his office's failure to rein in the Fast and Furious scandal as racially motivated attacks on himself.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis just tried -- and failed -- to draft a proposal prohibiting kids under 18 from working "in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials," even on family farms. And she wanted to turn over some farm training programs now run by the Future Farmers of America and the 4-H to the government. Most Americans raised on a farm believe that the times spent doing chores with their parents, siblings, and neighbors were the most important and rewarding years of their lives.

Yet more worrisome, Solis is selective in her enforcement. She envisions new rules for businesses, but she first should have ensured that her family had followed old ones. When Solis was nominated, it was learned that her husband had several tax liens against his business, some of them 16 years old. And not long ago, Solis' department posted a video advising illegal aliens to call her office if they felt they were treated unfairly by employers. Abusing workers is wrong, but then so is entering and residing in the United States illegally -- as a Cabinet official should know.

The common theme with these Cabinet secretaries is loud, uninformed rhetoric; a lack of practical experience; a certain utopian zealotry -- and an expectation that there are rules for government grandees and quite different ones for the rest of us.

What he said.

Quote:

Originally Posted by excon

Hello again, Steve:

Couple things.

We DO have the money. I understand that you don't KNOW that. You're constrained within the parameters of your right wing talking points. They don't allow you to think outside the box. After all, you think hiring teachers and fixing bridges are liberal pipe dreams.

Does anybody want to talk about SOLVING our problems here????

excon

I will take a stab at the solution. When we were in the 80's and the recession was hitting hard we had a situation. The company I worked for worked in co-operation with unemployment and everyone stayed working. It was a better decision then just sending people home. How it worked was you still qualified for your benefit but you still worked. When the work load fell below 40 hours per week (1 or 2 day layoff) then you were paid unemployment for those days. No waiting period no strings. When the economy bounced back everyone was still in place and everyone thrived after learning to live on less but still stay afloat.

It made a big difference. As opposed to today's times of mass layoffs and closings where you jump economic brackets so quick there is a major tendency to sink rather then swim.

So your answer is put everyone on parttime work, you forget that the basic problem is you have exported your jobs to other places in exchange for lower prices and no amount of parttime work will compensate for the difference in wages. Your government needs to give incentives to industry to reestablish itsself in your own nation and that will mean you will have to make massive productivity gains or pay third world wages. You have managed to retain certain industries, auto, aircraft, arms you need to work harder at saving other industries

Personally I think protectionism wasn't as big a problem as it was made out to be

Hello again,

Industry is a problem unto its own. I'm simply talking about hiring BACK all the teachers, and hiring builders to fix roads and bridges.. Ok, we could rehire a few firemen and cops too. That, alone, would drop the unemployment rate a full point.

That's are our seed corn.

excon

Quote:

Originally Posted by paraclete

so your answer is put everyone on parttime work, you forget that the basic problem is you have exported your jobs to other places in exchange for lower prices and no amount of parttime work will compensate for the difference in wages. Your government needs to give incentives to industry to reestablish itsself in your own nation and that will mean you will have to make massive productivity gains or pay third world wages. you have managed to retain certain industries, auto, aircraft, arms you need to work harder at saving other industries

personally I think protectionism wasn't as big a problem as it was made out to be

I didn't say put everyone on part time. You just try to be flexible with the industries that are having the trouble. That way they can make more money then just unemployment and the economy can recover faster. There are always going to be industries that will fall in the wake of progress but it is a way to deal with the situation rather then upset the balance of an entire economy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by califdadof3

I didnt say put everyone on part time. You just try to be flexible with the industries that are having the trouble. That way they can make more money then just unemployment and the economy can recover faster. There are always going to be industries that will fall in the wake of progress but it is a way to deal with the situation rather then upset the balance of an entire economy.

The key to recovery is an increase in orders, no amount of keeping staff can help if there are no orders. Reality is you can paint so many rocks white and that goes for maintenance in factories too before you just have to close the doors because it just isn't efficient to run plants half speed or a couple of days a week. . The same can be said for roads and bridges. What you say is great but it should have been thought about before NAFTA, etc. What you are paying now is the price of imperialism, the price of influence pendling and it is much harder to undo than to put in place. We went though it here although on a smaller scale and there is a lot of retraining and a lot of letting go to be done. In fact we are still doing it thirty years on. Whole industries just vanish and people over a certain age may never be employed again. Now I know you have seen it for different reasons like the gulf shrimp and fishing industry, its gone and it won't be back in a generation and it takes a government to buy those people out and retrain them not have them put to sea a couple of days a week for a subsistence income.

You see the balance of the economy was upset by the greed of a few bankers, and when the bubble burst it took the whole economy with it, now there is no money for investment and no orders to get the whole thing started again and no money to pay the workers. It might take a reversal of policy to kick start the economy again but who is brave enough to do it

Quote:

Originally Posted by speechlesstx

What he said.

Hello again, Steve:

What THIS says.

excon

Come on ex, I've mentioned that piece of nanny state propaganda enough times, including the very first response to THIS post. You can't fix things with cartoons and clichés. Besides, under Obama this is more like the real Julia.

P.S. What she said.