Much agreement….the second stimulus should be called ‘health-care for all Americans’.

Krugman said the same a week ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07…..ugman.html

O.K., Thursday’s jobs report settles it. We’re going to need a bigger stimulus. But does the president know that?

But yesterday Hale “bonddad” Stewart declared: “The Economic Free Fall is Over”: http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..ll-is-Over

[…]

2.) There’s been a great deal of debate about employment centered on whether or not the unemployment rate a leading or coincident indicator. As I demonstrate in this article in all expansions save one since WWII the year over year percentage change in GDP has increased before the unemployment rate has dropped. While the past is not a guarantee of future performance, that’s one heck of a track record for an economic indicator. In short, the unemployment rate lags GDP growth over 80% of the time. The rate of establishment job growth is thought of as a coincident indicator — that is the number of people on payrolls increases and decreases with overall economic growth. However, this number has developed a lagging quality over the last few expansions meaning the recession could technically end and we could still experience job losses. […]

Stewart provides a detailed argument involving lots of charts and history.

Note that it is not impossible that they are both correct; perhaps the necessary federal stimulus was forthcoming in all but one of the recessions Stewart cites.

I don’t see the conflict. Bonddad can be read to support the notion of a large public works/jobs program, to deal with “lagging” re-employment. As log as we’re 5-6 percent over full employment, you either have to have massive safety-net expenditures or put poeple to work doing useful stuff that needs to be done and that won’t get done otherwise. The second choice is obviously better. That was part of Galbraith’s argument in “No Return to Normal”

Having Universal Healthcare for all Americans would require the creation of a LOT of jobs, administrative as well as in direct medical services.

Why do our leaders fail to see the obvious?/rhetorical question.

I think they all see this, which is why the Repugs and their LapDogs are opposed to it.

Health Care reform and the shift to Green Energy are parts of the stimulus to grow the economy and once implemented, will severely reduce donations to the Repug/BlueDog coalition.

If the stimulus investments have the effect of lowering the cost of doing business in the future, they still make sense. And unlike using military spending as a stimulus, investments in infrastructure (and healthcare and education are part of the business infrastructure) can lower the cost of doing business.

And lowering the cost of doing business can create more sustained growth without major monetary actions by the Fed.

Mr. Buffett

Will you back these needed changes?

- Lift the cap on Social Security taxes

- roll back the IRS tax code to one in place during the Eisenhower years – 91% for incomes over $400,000.

You know, it really is all about the numbers, as Paul Krugman pointed out last winter when the first stimnulus bill went down. There is a huge output gap the difference between the level of GDP at full employment and the actual an projected levels under the current spending structure). The needed demand doesn’t come out of nowhere, and certainly not out of the cash that went to shore up banks’ balance sheets. Buffett lives by the numbers. It’s not rocket science any more, and hasn’t been for 60 years. People have got to stop praying for miracles. What’s needed is more aggregate demand, and the only place it can currently come from is more government spending. Even spending entirely covered by taxes would benefit demand, as you get dollar for dollar extra spendingt (nothing goes into saving). Buffett is just saying the obvious — that the emperor has no clothes.

Warren Buffet: Economy Needs Another Stimulus to Get It Up

we still need the first stimulous, what was “called” a stimulous was paying back gambling debts of banksters

obama better learn fast, we need jobs, we need job programs, he needs to invest in alternative fuel jobs, infrastructure jobs, cooling the planet jobs

investments that leave us with a product rather then gifts that leave us broke and nothing to show for it

He made need a whole bottle of pills for that last one.

But notice that the House folks are considering a 4% tax surcharge on incomes over $200-250,000 as a way to pay for expanding insurance coverage and access to Medicair. It’s a start, and a revenue source they should have been tapping all along.

Dean Baker makes a related point at Beat the Press:

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/b…..arithmetic

here’s what most people don’t understand about a progressive tax and must be included in every discussion concerning that tax;

once you reach the next plateu of said progression, that does NOT mean you are taxed at a higher rate, it only means THAT PORTION is taxed at the higher rate

thus, EVERYONE pays the same percentage, those making 50,000 pay the same rate for that 50,000 as those making 50 million

that’s a point that is never made and needs to

the other point is the fact that the lower and middle class spend a far higher portion of their wage and that spending is re-taxed multitudes to sales, local and useage fees, those who spend only fractions of their salary are not retaxed on the portion not spent to taxable goods

that means that in fact, even with progressive taxes the wealthy STILL don’t pay their fair percentage to tax

a VERY important discussion hub that always rounds eyes when I point it out

here’s a great point I love to make to those who think there should be a “flat tax”

I respond, “I agree, so long as you mean the percentage of all taxes needs to be equal, since those in middle to lower class get taxed more, if we could work out a system where services and goods are billed to the fed instead of to the local community, then government costs would be billed back to everyone at an equal rate, that would represent what is really a flat tax, however the flat tax the wealthy proposes would mean the middle class and lower class winds up paying an exponentially higher percentage of their wage to taxes then the wealthy and of course that’s not a “flat tax” at all

It would be a start to reintroduce sanity into our tax code. As with global warming, where the melting of the ice caps increases exponentially with increasing temperatures, the misery index increases exponentially as the proportion of income concentrated at the top increases.

What I don’t get is, what is more stimulus spending supposed to stimulate?

The buying of crap we don’t need? On credit?

The creation of new and well-paying jobs? Where — in the manufacturing sector? (ha, ha.) At McDonalds?

The creation of construction jobs? Maybe on on a short-term (repair-the-bridge) basis.

the creation of jobs should of course be the infrastructure but mostly new industry here in the states and funding for bringing old industry back to the states

the new industry here in the states should mean alternative fuel, cooling the planet and a few other things that keep well paying living wage jobs here

Mr. Buffett has been a strong advocate for raising taxes for the richest 1-2% of Murkans, although I don’t know if he would support such a large tax increase.

Past economic recoveries were cemented by consumers who still had jobs being encouraged by easy monetary policy to borrow & spend. Not so sure that will happen this time around, in which case any nascent recovery would falter. The consumer spending of the first quarter was spurred by tax cuts, while the personal savings rate rose.

but there’s the problem that wouldn’t be a “tax increase”, it would be reclaiming bad tax investments

removing give aways and gifts that prove counter productive should never be called tax increases since they are not, they are addressing investments that proved couldn’t support themselves

tax deductions are always marketed as an economic stimulous, when we prove the revers that “stimulous” must be reversed

by the way;

there are in fact tax deductions that are stimulous but these deductions are target marketed not universally applied

for instance, if an industry needs development and won’t without tax relief we can remove certain taxes till that industry is thriving however for this to be a positive investment that relief must be reclaimed when the industry demonstrates the industry can now pay it’s own bills without the rest of us helping through our tax reduction

taxes are concieved to fund programs we voted for, if we can demonstrate those programs are not wanted anymore or easily funded without taxes that’s when we reduce taxes permanently

Along these lines, an interesting piece by (I know, I know) Joe Klein on Obama, the domestic agenda, and the tax code:

http://www.time.com/time/natio…..08,00.html

Agree, but I’ll believe in these things when I see them.

Buffett may be the world’s richest man but he is far from being the world’s greatest macroeconomist or even a particularly good one. He is talking a second stimulus now and everyone goes ooh, wow. But we were talking about a much larger first stimulus 6 months ago in February when the stimulus was being debated. Also what Buffett may consider a good stimulus may not reflect what the real economy needs. Finally, I don’t remember him being a vocal critic of all the bailouts going to Wall Street. Indeed early on he made a big investment in Goldman. Just because the pirates act nice to you one day does not mean they don’t intend to rob you the next.

Or we could open a third front in the ”war on terror.”

I know which option Washington would prefer.

I like how almost every article or blog post I read about Warren Buffett fails to spell his surname consistently throughout the entire article.

Only 50 billion of the huge stimulus plan has been spent so far. Most of that was transfer payments to state and local govt. to help them balance their budgets. Some of the local govts have put the money in a rainy day fund.

Obama may have been naive in how he approached this stimulus package and has allowed it to move way too slowly.

It may have been a mistake to let congress turn this into a wish list for campaign contributors.

The jury is still out on Obama- but he had better act quickly to spend the money that has already been authorized or the jury will come back with a verdict that will doom his presidency.

If he doesn’t show progress on the economy, he probably has little leverage with health care.

It’s a real shame.

The jury is still out on Obama

If he doesn’t show progress on the economy, he probably has little leverage with health care.

The jury has been in on Obama for sometime. He has been remarkably consistent in his conservatism. He and the Congress are busy negotiating over which crap, business friendly healthcare plan to adopt. Under those circumstances, I’m not sure what “leverage” means. Healthcare or more accurately insurance welfare looks to be a done deal by the fall say September or October. The current position at the White House is to take a wait and see attitude toward the first stimulus at least until then. So healthcare will be done by the time he even thinks about moving on the economy.

I should add that there is only a very far outside chance (meaning probability very, very low) that enough progressives in the House will vote with Republicans to scuttle healthcare altogether. The likelihood is that Obama will strip off what progressives he needs (as he has done on other issues) to get a bill through.

The government has (and is) wasting too much money already on trying to stimulate the economy. The market can take care of things but the government will not let it work. Artifically low interest rates, printing money like there’s no tomorrow…..it will all prove to be futile.
But of course the socialists love it.
To quote Thomas Paine:
That government is best which governs least. Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Further on into the article we find the following: “Indeed, new reports show the money from President Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package is potentially being doled out unevenly. An analysis from the New York Times shows rural areas are receiving a disproportionate amount of funds for transportation projects.

“Two-thirds of the country lives in large metropolitan areas, home to the nation’s worst traffic jams and some of its oldest roads and bridges,” the Times reports. “But cities and their surrounding regions are getting far less than two-thirds of federal transportation stimulus money.”

Additionally, USA Today reports that counties that supported Mr. Obama in the presidential election have so far received twice as much money per person from the stimulus package as those that supported Republican John McCain ” We have bankrupted this economy and a second stimulus run by the same people will accelerate the decline. Stop the madness!

Exactly. Even Roubini thinks we’re pretty close to bottoming out — his main worry is that oil prices might start marching upwards again, which would trigger a round of inflation that would jeopardize the whole ball of wax. But since the last big oil price spike’s been shown to be the work of one UK trader, oil prices have dropped a tad from where they were a month ago.

Uh, antoin: The states that got the stimulus money are the ones responsible for divvying it up, not Obama. Remember all those Republican governors of red states like Alaska and South Carolina who have been rejecting stimulus money — or trying to reject it?

And so far, the stimulus has cost much less than Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and the wars he started, which Obama now must wind down.

Sorry to disagree Warren, but we don’t need it. We have two stimuli in the pipeline. Let them work. It takes time and patience. Americans’ predisposition for quick fix needs discipline. Overcorrection is NOT the answer. Our debt and our waistlines are too big and need to go on a diet.

wouldn’t effect him he takes a minimal salary I think around 100k. The real take away is he/Berkshire would make out like a bandit with another stimulus. He’s already done real well on the bank bailout with the sweet deal he got from Goldman- aka thieving weasels. That’s not to say it isn’t needed.

Time to wind down the wars and cut the pentagon budget. According to notmypriorities.org more than half of the budget goes to the pentagon and Iraq.

We could use a good portion of that money to fund universal health care at home and education and infrastructure. Instead, private contractors like Cheney’s old firm were reaping huge profits poured into their offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands.

That’s where Tom Paine would be, rabble-rousing to change the status quo.

the “stimulous in the pipe line” can’t work, it’s not a stimulous it’s a gift to the thiefs that stole the money in the first place

“letting them work” is the method to get us deeper into this depression

those assets needed to be invested into jobs and future industry, not into banks who want to be casinos

the only way to get this economy out of this depression is to get some help wanted signs out there, nothing else is going to do

we need to stimulate the middle class NOT the investment class