Bernie’s Matching Funds…Woo Hoo

5 Responses to Bernie’s Matching Funds…Woo Hoo

1. Harold says:

   Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 5:25 pm

   Really, how , on who and for what? However, you don’t need to explain from whom!

   Reply
2. Tina says:

   Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 8:44 pm

   Sorry Harold, I posted this just as my day ended at work…no time to flesh it out.

   Policy is never specifically spelled out in a campaign but this is what the article reports:

   His agenda includes an estimated $15 trillion for a government-run health-care program that covers every American, plus large sums to rebuild roads and bridges, expand Social Security and make tuition free at public colleges.

   To pay for it, Mr. Sanders, a Vermont independent running for the Democratic nomination, has so far detailed tax increases that could bring in as much as $6.5 trillion over 10 years, according to his staff.

   Bernie Sanders is another divisive class envy guy yammering on about unfairness. He can’t wait to redistribute wealth. He actually believes that consuming mass amounts from the rich in taxes along with government spending will grow the economy. (Haven’t we tried this before?) Like all central planners he believes he can fix everybody’s problems. Most people just want an opportunity to be the hero of their own story.

   Mr Sanders won’t give us much opportunity (Except for the union guys that get the roads and bridges work), in fact, if the economy doesn’t collapse, we might see another great depression.

   His 12 step plan can be viewed at the link in the paragraph above. Warning, the 12 are filled with misinformation, lots of “we must” ideas with few solutions, and lots and lots of pixie dust.

   The Sanders tax plan is here.

   Reply
   • Chris says:

     Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 7:13 am

     Tina: “He actually believes that consuming mass amounts from the rich in taxes along with government spending will grow the economy. (Haven’t we tried this before?)”

     Yes, in the late 40s and 50s, a period of huge and unprecedented economic growth.

     (Yes, circumstances were different due to WWII, but it has worked in the past.)

     Reply
     • Tina says:

       Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 10:32 am

       Chris you’ve made this claim many times before. I pointed to the obvious differences in circumstances of those times; apparently you have decided it doesn’t matter and government spending and high tax on the rich is the way to go.

       When I wrote, “Haven’t we tried this before?) I was referring to the past seven years of government spending and relying on the rich and growing debt to “fund” the spending. it’s been a colossal bust.

       To rebut his time I decided to seek out more information on the subject and found the following from Cecil Bohanon at the Mercatus Center:

       The standard thinking of the day was that the United States would sink into a deep depression at the war’s end. Paul Samuelson, a future Nobel Prize winner, wrote in 1943 that upon cessation of hostilities and demobilization “some ten million men will be thrown on the labor market.”[3] He warned that unless wartime controls were extended there would be “the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.”[4] Another future Nobel laureate, Gunnar Myrdal, predicted that postwar economic turmoil would be so severe that it would generate an “epidemic of violence.”[5]

       This, of course, reflects a world view that sees aggregate demand as the prime driver of the economy. If government stops employing soldiers and armament factory workers, for example, their incomes evaporate and spending will decline. This will further depress consumption spending and private investment spending, sending the economy into a downward spiral of epic proportions. But nothing of the sort actually happened after World War II.

       In 1944, government spending at all levels accounted for 55 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). By 1947, government spending had dropped 75 percent in real terms, or from 55 percent of GDP to just over 16 percent of GDP.[6] Over roughly the same period, federal tax revenues fell by only around 11 percent.[7] Yet this “destimulation” did not result in a collapse of consumption spending or private investment. Real consumption rose by 22 percent between 1944 and 1947, and spending on durable goods more than doubled in real terms. Gross private investment rose by 223 percent in real terms, with a whopping six-fold real increase in residential- housing expenditures.[8]

       The private economy boomed as the government sector stopped buying munitions and hiring soldiers. Factories that had once made bombs now made toasters, and toaster sales were rising. On paper, measured GDP did drop after the war: It was 13 percent lower in 1947 than in 1944. But this was a GDP accounting quirk, not an indication of a stalled private economy or of economic hardship. A prewar appliance factory converted to munitions production, when sold to the government for $10 million in 1944, added $10 million to measured GDP. The same factory converted back to civilian production might make a million toasters in 1947 that sold for $8 million—adding only $8 million to GDP. Americans surely saw the necessity for making bombs in 1944, but just as surely are better off when those resources are used to make toasters. More to the point, growth in private spending continued unabated despite a bean-counting decline in GDP.

       As figure 1 shows, between 1944 and 1947 private spending grew rapidly as public spending cratered. There was a massive, swift, and beneficial switch from a wartime economy to peacetime prosperity; resources flowed quickly and efficiently from public uses to private ones.

       Just as important, the double-digit unemployment rates that had bedeviled the prewar economy did not return. Between mid-1945 and mid-1947, over 20 million people were released from the armed forces and related employment, but nonmilitary-related civilian employment rose by 16 million. This was described by President Truman as the “swiftest and most gigantic change-over that any nation has made from war to peace.”[9] The unemployment rate rose from 1.9 percent to just 3.9 percent. As economist Robert Higgs points out, “It was no miracle to herd 12 million men into the armed forces and attract millions of men and women to work in munitions plants during the war. The real miracle was to reallocate a third of the total labor force to serving private consumers and investors in just two years.”[10]

       The American people couldn’t wait to invest, innovate, risk, and work to build a new future for themselves. The American “can do” spirit took over to produce a boom.

       Chris I invite you to open yourself to getting the miracle of self reliance and cooperation that men and women who want to build something for themselves naturally pursue. Americans are a gritty lot and it has made our nation prosperous under both Democrat and Republican presidents since WWII.

       Unfortunately for the last fifty to sixty years those who prefer government control and the power of the few have managed to convince young Americans that central planning works. It works alright, as it has under Obama and Carter. We either have massive inflation (Carter) or a fed that artificially controls inflation (Obama-lesson learned?) and a saggy, stumble bumble economy barely getting by. The people most hurt in both cases are the middle class and the poor…the very people that the left claims to care about so much.

       I hope you will read the entire article. The section following the above addresses the “REASONS FOR THE POSTWAR MIRACLE,” that is very informative.

       See also here to see the slow steady march of central planning that is responsible for you and I to have less opportunity and lowered our personal purchasing power.

       Reply
3. Tina says:

   Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 10:11 pm

   Investors.com:

   conomy: After six-plus years of President Obama’s big-spending, tax-raising policies, middle-class families have seen their incomes decline and more families have fallen into poverty, Census data show.

   The Census Bureau’s latest annual report on income and poverty in America shows that there was little to cheer about in 2014.

   Median family income dropped slightly to $53,657, down from the year before. Every income group suffered losses, with the lowest fifth of households dropping close to 1%.

   The overall poverty number barely budged. But it climbed by almost 600,000 among blacks in 2014, more than half of whom were under age 18. …

   … despite more than six years of economic “recovery,” the middle class is, incredibly, worse off than at the end of the Great Recession.

   From 2009 to 2014, real median household income dropped by more than $1,000 — or 2.3% — to $53,657. (And that decline would likely have been steeper if not for a 2013 change in the way the Census does its annual survey.)

   Obama’s economy has been particularly harsh on those already at the bottom. Census data show that the bottom fifth of households saw their average income fall by 8% from 2009 to 2014.

   Democrats and their media suck ups owe Ronald Reagan a HUGE apology! HUGE!!!

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