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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (645035)	2/9/2012 12:35:16 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1578576

Ezra Klein's Wonkbook Thursday, February 9, 2012 Early in the recession, the government's forecasts were far too optimistic. In 2009, for instance, the White House forecast that with or without the stimulus, unemployment would be back below seven percent by now. Now, however, their forecasts -- and those of many private-sector forecasters -- are beginning to look too pessimistic. The White House's most recent set of economic forecasts -- the one that will appear in Tuesday's budget -- used November's employment data to come up with a prediction for unemployment in 2012. That prediction is 8.8 percent. Unemployment, however, is already 8.3 percent. So barring an economic disaster, that prediction is pretty clearly wrong. Alan Krueger, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, told the New York Times that he now believes unemployment could be below eight percent a year from now. And he's not alone. Mark Zandi, head of Moody's Analytics, is now projecting 7.9 percent unemployment at the end of 2012. These aren't tremendously optimistic forecasts. As Calculated Risk notes, assuming no change in the labor-force participation right, you could get to 7.7 percent unemployment at the end of 2012 with monthly payroll growth of about 200,000. If monthly payroll growth was 250,000, you could get to 7.3 percent unemployment. Of course, that assumes monthly payroll growth will remain at the levels of December and January. But this isn't the first time we've had a few good months in a row. During the first four months of 2011, the economy added an average of 203,000 jobs a month. That's a higher average rate of job growth than we've seen over the last four months, but that recovery sputtered out. This one could, too. Which is why it would be wise for policymakers not to get complacent. In a perfect world, we wouldn't just smoothly extend the payroll tax cut and the unemployment benefits, but we would begin a large program of infrastructure investment, and we would pass a deficit-reduction package that began in 2014, and the Federal Reserve would step up with a bit more support for the economy. All of that would tell businesses and consumers that the political system is united in protecting and sustaining this recovery, and help convince them that this time, finally, the recovery might be real, and so they had better act quickly to take advantage of record-low interest rates, and to hire more workers to meet rising demand. The other option -- perhaps the more likely option -- is that Congress could imperil the recovery by failing to extend the payroll tax and the UI benefits, which could shave as much as a point off growth this year, and signaling it will fail to come to a deal on the Bush tax cuts and the sequester, which could shave even more than a point off growth next year. In that case, businesses and households would have every reason to expect the recovery is likely to sputter out again, and so they'll have every reason to refrain from hiring and investing, which will, in turn, assure the recovery sputters out again. If that happens, then maybe the administration's forecasts won't prove so pessimistic after all.

To: i-node who wrote (645035)	2/9/2012 12:35:36 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1578576

>> These people are not idiots.... Maybe not, but the suggestion that taxing the wealthy somehow makes it "sustainable" is idiotic. Intelligent people understand that taxing the wealthy is nothing more than symbolic; you can't raise enough money by doing it to make a dent in the deficit. You can make a dent when you are increasing the taxes on those who make $250K or more. The right has lost on this issue........it just doesn't know it yet.

To: i-node who wrote (645035)	2/9/2012 12:37:56 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578576

" taxing the wealthy is nothing more than symbolic; you can't raise enough money by doing it to make a dent in the deficit." What's wrong with this argument? That "taxing the wealthy" is SUPPOSED to, on it's OWN, end the deficit. It's NOT. But it could be PART of a solution. A part that would begin to correct the thirty years of throwing more money at the wealthy, unfairly, that began with Reagan.

To: i-node who wrote (645035)	2/9/2012 1:56:28 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1578576

Millionaire Investor Calls for Higher Taxes on the Rich Venture capitalist and entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has stern words for millionaires -- it's time to pay your fair share of taxes. The self-made millionaire, who sold his Internet media company aQuantive to Microsoft for $6.4 billion, tells Henry Blodget in the above video that he supports changes to the tax code. "People in the top 1 percent are paying historically low tax rates," he says. "That's simply an unsustainable way to run a capitalistic society." Hanauer admits he paid an 11 percent tax rate on an eight-figure income in 2010. He's one of several millionaires speaking out against what he feels is an outdated system that disproportionately benefits the rich at the country's -- and the middle class's -- expense. finance.yahoo.com