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- fk
Very funny!!!
Sad the
15 hours 1 min ago - Hey, how about we get rid of
16 hours 45 min ago - Love it retweeted, & shared.
17 hours 14 min ago - I hadn't even heard about
17 hours 38 min ago - Just in time for all you
20 hours 41 min ago - What I meant by the first
1 day 16 min ago - Of course, the rich are
1 day 1 hour ago - So, you shouldn't divide
1 day 16 hours ago - Horsecrap. The market moves
1 day 21 hours ago - Those tax hikes we had in
2 days 1 hour ago
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Comments
We'll all be working
We'll all be working full-time for the government soon. But, wasn't that the plan all along? Sigh.
You'd have preferred a $1.9
You'd have preferred a $1.9 trillion deficit?
Perhaps Newly Frugal Guy used his X-ray vision to notice how perilously close to collapse the USD is.
Never you worry. When the US fails to turn over its short-term treasury debt in 2012 and declares sovereign default, making each and every dollar worth exactly zero, I'm sure you'll find comfort in blaming GWB for that too.
...Instead of the balls-out awful GWB clone you elected to perpetuate Bush's wars, tax policies, and bailoutism; and whose spending policies are making GWB look like Hetty Green.
Why not increase taxes? I
Why not increase taxes? I guess Americans are just too used to low taxes. When Americans complain of high taxes, most of us north of the border get a good laugh from it.
Raise taxes and say goodbye
Raise taxes and say goodbye to the few jobs left
Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.
The jobs are leaving anyway,
The jobs are leaving anyway, because the people who consider businesses/corporations their constituents see no problem with making it easy and/or profitable for said constituents to send our jobs overseas. And they're not coming back, because those people have had too much free rein for too long.
Ah, a fellow
Ah, a fellow Canuck.
Increased taxation is an inevitability but it means absolutely jack in light of the US spending. The US 2010 budget is 3.55 trillion.
Not good enough for Mr. Fiore. It should be four trillion! Or nine trillion! Who cares about the currency collapsing? Who cares if the money creates jobs with zero economic utility? Who cares if it's used to pull ahead infrastructure projects and defer the problem? Who cares about inflation, which hurts the poor far more than the rich?
The only bit of sanity in this whole cartoon is the jab against US defence spending--the biggest pork-barrel waste of them all.
Regarding taxes: American taxes are only marginally less than our own. They have 'hidden' taxes. Levies on CDs, groceries, furniture, cars. Most districts get up to an 18% cut of music, movies, entertainment. Quite a few cities, such as Chicago, have hefty city sales taxes (like a municipal version of HST here).
Property transfer tax in the US is 30% higher than the average in Canada. The US still has the 'death tax', where everything inherited by your children is taxed (again) at a rate of nearly 50% in some brackets. US citizens pay through the nose for health insurance.
In real terms, the US is nearly as bad as Canada taxation-wise. And although raising taxes a bit seems prudent, remember that it drives corporations offshore. It drives money to more tax-friendly economies. In some cases, it's trying to draw blood from a stone.
Spending is the key. The problem doesn't have a hope of being solved unless editorialists like Mr. Fiore stop stupidifying people with tenets of Keynesian socialism.
Slash the defence budget? Great.
Spend your way back to prosperity? It does not work. It never has. It never will.
"Keynesian socialism?" There
"Keynesian socialism?"
There are people who need a review of Economics. You, sir, need to take it in the first place.
"Spend your way back to prosperity? It does not work. It never has. It never will."
So the US spent nothing during WWII. We never ran up massive federal debt. And Keynes was wrong, spending during wartime bankrupts the nation and does -not- cause an economic boom.
Ok! Suit yourself. The rest of us who enjoyed ECON101 are having a delightful titter at your post.
> There are people who need
> There are people who need a review of Economics.
Expansion of credit followed by government spending to promote industrial growth, presuming economic utility exceeds the cost of the stimulus.
Nice idea. Doesn't work. Titter all you like, or come up with a specific criticism.
> nd Keynes was wrong, spending during wartime bankrupts the nation and does -not- cause an economic boom.
WWII was what dragged the US out of the recession, along with the concomitant industry/manufacturing boom.
The time-adjusted cost of FDR's New Deal was between 350-500 billion over four years.
Roughly what the Treasury pumped out in the first three months during the current recession. Less than a third of the current deficit. Less than a tenth of the government's real deficit when Freddie/Fannie are included. Less than a fiftieth of the total toxic debt that the Fed will have 'eaten' by the end of 2012.
> The rest of us who enjoyed ECON101 are having a delightful titter at your post.
Perhaps you should have audited 'Debate 101', wherein one learns to stop tittering, and to present an actual counterargument. :)
An interesting reply. I did
An interesting reply. I did look into some of those taxes and I can see how the margins are closer (if not very close in certain instances).
I also agree with the defence budget. WHOLY! Why don't more Americans, (especially Conservatives) complain louder? Do they have a hand in the perverbial money pot?
Why not pool a portion of that revenue into a genuine, multilateral diplomatic power? Surely there wouldn't be such a market for terrorists if the US was involved in more 04 Philippines Tsunami relief efforts and Haiti efforts then Iraq/Afghanistan efforts!?
Also...
If a consumer credit economy does not work then what will? In a global world where someone is willing to work for a wage you are not, how will you survive?
Sigh* Mark sure gets lots of
Sigh* Mark sure gets lots of good material for his cartoons Sigh*
Seems to me this is just too easy!
Fellow cartoonist? :-)
Fellow cartoonist? :-)
NAFTA only applies to trade
NAFTA only applies to trade with Mexico and Canada. While free trade with Mexico definitely hurt our economy and lost us jobs it didn't do the same in respect to Canada. Free trade agreements can be great things as long as both countries are on an even footing as far as wages and workers rights. As far as the idea that THIS administration tripling the national deficit that is simply not true. Two of the major programs that have increased our deficit came from the last administration, namely the bank and insurance bailouts. The recovery act has proven to at least be effective in reducing the number of jobs lost and economists from both sides agree with this. The republicans had 8 years to show that their ideas were better and would work and what did that get us? The nations largest mortgage providers and banks going under because of deregulation and sketchy lending practices as well as record high oil prices and subsequently the nations largest auto makers also going under. I won't even go into how the environment has been affected or how strained our relations around the world have become.
I would look myself in the
I would look myself in the mirror and realize that the current administration has TRIPLED our national defecit in one year. I sincerely wish that this one-term President would become suddenly frugal. Meanwhile, 100% of American's taxes are going up with the expiration of tax cuts that actually put money in our pocket to spend the way that we see fit - and not some consensus, pork laden clearly out of control political process.
... And your mirror must be
... And your mirror must be warped into some pseudo-ideology distortion effect, because you'd be wrong. Fault probably lies with the viewer, however... who sees what they want to see.
I didn't know jobs came from
I didn't know jobs came from government programs. Government has no money of its own. Deficits have to be paid by people with productive jobs. The Zimbabwe government printed and spent like crazy and all that happened was rampant inflation and nearly universal unemployment. The shelves emptied and infrastructure collapsed.
Every dollar spent by the government is a dollar stolen from the private sector. Why is government deficit spending better than private deficit spending? I noticed the planet Spend-Thrift was a wasteland. Private sector debt and government debt both have to be paid. Either a private citizen or company goes bankrupt or the whole country does. For a country, it is either default, or inflation. There are no other options.
But I agree with you that the Republicans are no better than the Democrats and the hypocrisy is in being "newly-frugal" is obvious particlarly since government is immune from the education that comes from experience.
There are many instances in
There are many instances in history, including American history, when government spending kicks-started the economy. For better for for worse, remember WWII?
The trick is, it must be done correctly (see other comment).
You didn't know jobs came
You didn't know jobs came from government programs? So I would assume you have never heard of defense spending. Any government program that feeds money into sectors of our economy inteliignetly has the potential to create jobs. For instance, if we improve crumbling infrastructure we not only spend money that needs to be spent but create work in the construction industry to implement it. However if we hand out billions with no strings attached to banks and large financial institutions we just see the top dogs get bigger bonuses. Government programs can also take away jobs. Programs like NAFTA have outsourced most of our industry to foreign countries like China and India who now build the things we could have paid people here a decent wage to make. Thereby shrinking our economy and ballooning our trade deficit which up until the policy was put in place was a surplus. So in short, yes, government can do much to make or break the economy of our country and the jobs made available to us.
Very funny
Very funny
Newly-Frugal Guy is back!
Newly-Frugal Guy is back! What would you do if you were Newly-Frugal Guy?
-MF
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