10 Comments

• 1. Glenn D'Abreo  |  March 24th, 2008 at 10:51 am

  Why can’t McCain just say what ordinary people understand. Remember the trickle down economics explanation about how every $10 earned becomes $25 because each person earning it saves some and spend the rest. We need to hear that again. Cutting taxes creates more disposable income. Dukakis said that the Republicans wanted to cut taxes to the wealthy and he asked what good that would do. He asked if the wealthy need to hire more pool boys. That is just what they need to do. Give them more disposable income and they will hire me to fix their computers and build them new ones.
  Get down to basics….why is less government better. There isn’t an American out their who doesn’t want to make his own decisions. Frame it correctly and they will get it.

  Talk about the pride of being able to and wanting to provide for your own family.

  We just haven;t sold the Republican idea in common every-day, every-American terms…

  John needs to start doing that now…..right now…

• 2. Don Jones  |  March 24th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

  Does anyone realize the math that goes through one’s head while driving a fighter plane in combat?
  None you say? Well there is plenty but you do not have time to think about your calculations.

  Not germain you say? Anything anyone skilled in econonomics can do, the McCain Brain can do.
  Don Jones
  MyManJohn.com

• 3. Almiranta  |  March 24th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

  Please. Please please please PLEASE let’s start talking about facts and issues for a change.

  I’ve been waiting for Republicans to start explaining things better. Maybe now……

• 4. congressive  |  March 25th, 2008 at 1:36 am

  “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” McCain says. “I’ve got Greenspan’s book.”

• 5. GRW3  |  March 25th, 2008 at 11:01 am

  New Commercial “Both of my potential opponents have already voted to raise taxes!” (they made time to be in the senate before the Easter recess, McCain voted no) “Increased Taxes in a struggling economy is like throwing a drowning man an anvil.” “Why is it the Government never has to tighten it’s belt”

  When asked about his vote against the Bush Tax cuts say “I remind you that I did so because I wanted guaranteed restraint to new spending. I was afraid that the Congress would just spend any revenue gains and more. Well the people did their part, worked hard and provided us with more revenue but Congress dropped the ball. Even with the change in leadership the ball is still on the ground. The people punished the Republicans in 2006 but I urge them not to punish themselves in ‘08.”

• 6. congressive  |  March 26th, 2008 at 4:56 am

  McCain has already proposed a middle class tax hike, by taxing employer-paid medical insurance as regular income.

  This would result in an additional $3000 tax bill for someone making $100K a year with employer-paid medical insurance.

  He’s planning to rebate a little of it, but premiums are skyrocketing, while his rebate offer is flat.

  Why does this NOT resonate with Republicans, if eliminating a tax break is the same thing as raising taxes? This is, indeed, throwing the drowning middle class an anvil.

  It blows my mind. Reagan raises taxes on the UNEMPLOYED, Bush “Read My Lips” Sr holds the record for all-time-tax-hike, and McCain plans to hike ‘em again, but somehow the Dems are tax hike demons, all while a Republican president with a Republican House and Senate drove the budget to all-time, sky high levels.

  Apparently you CAN be fooled again. And again.

• 7. Randy Mott  |  March 26th, 2008 at 7:11 am

  BASIC FACTS

  Republicans need to keep their heads in the election and not fall victim to the Chicken Little nonsense. The basic position of the U.S. economy is good to excellent. Cyclical adjustments are normal and, in the end, healthy.

  Don’t let the Democrats demogod the facts.

  “If US manufacturing is stronger than many Americans believe, China poses a weaker challenge than is often supposed. Its output is still less than half that of the US – and many of its industries are suffering a severe profits squeeze. Indeed, to call China a manufacturing economy is something of a misnomer. In reality, it is the world’s biggest final assembly shop, with minimal local value-added. …[China’s] output is still less than half that of the US.” Guy de Jonquières in the Financial Times April 3, 2006.
  While the percent of the US labor market represented by manufacturing jobs has been declining since 1947 (47 years before NAFTA), the number of manufacturing jobs has averaged a growth rate of 0.1% since 1947. Strauss, supra. The services sector has grown by five-fold over this period, but these are added jobs, not jobs “lost” from manufacturing. Id.
  Manufacturing output since 1947 has gone up five fold as well with only a small increase in the number of workers employed. Wm. Strauss, Sr. Economists, Federal Reserve Bank Chicago, “The Disappearance of Manufacturing?” Purdue U. conference, May 2006: http://www.purdue.edu/dp/amap/presentations/Strauss_Summit.pdf For the last fifty years, manufacturing output has grown by 3.7% a year. Strauss, supra. U.S. manufacturing productivity has grown faster that our GDP growth (which is itself a modern economic miracle). Strauss, supra.
  Manufacturing output in 2006 is 16% higher than the end of 2001 and is the highest in US history. Strauss, supra. Disruptions in manufacturing employment in the last several years are mainly linked to 9-11 and energy price impacts. Historical ups and downs also have reflected short-term impacts: but the long-term trend is undeniable as is the underlying strength of U.S. manufacturing.
  China and Japan have both experienced more manufacturing job losses from 1995 to 2002 than the United States. Strauss, supra. These losses in China are continuing at a faster rate than the US. http://evop.blogspot.com/2006/04/manufacturing-jobs-data-usa-and-china.html See also Bloomberg Financial, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&sid=aRI4bAft7Xw4&refer=columnist_baum
  “… Chinese competition has claimed some US manufacturing jobs. But Oxford Economics puts the losses from 2000 to 2010 as low as 500,000 – no more than the US labour force sheds each week. Their disappearance is also partly a statistical illusion. Many manufacturing jobs are actually in services, such as finance and marketing, which yield far higher returns.” Guy de Jonquières in the Financial Times April 3, 2006.
  The increases in manufacturing have been the direct result of productivity increases that have far outstripped Japan and Europe. The productivity gap over with Europe is growing. See “The EU Productivity Bust,” http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2005/05/the_eu_producti.html The EU has conferences and resolutions on it, but it is still getting to be a bigger problem for them (the so-called “Lisbon” process). Europe seems stuck on the proposition that the government can create wealth. All the studies show it is not true. The government must take money from the economy (the profitable parts) to have money to spend. The switch over normally is very dysfunctional from an economic point of view. Plus you add government overhead on all parts of the transaction. Japan’s productivity growth slowed down in the 1990s. Link: www.banque-france.fr/gb/publications/ner/1-111.htm
  ” Japan’s productivity resumed growth, but is still. $7.21 per hour less than the
  European Union and. $10.46 behind the United States. ” Link: www.ggdc.net/pub/performance_2003.pdf
  The per capita real disposable income in the United States is growing at the highest long-term rate in the world (from $10,000 in 1960 to $27,000 in 2004). Strauss, supra. China’s is $500! The US share of world GDP in 2006 is 27% and China’s is 3.1%. http://www.ism.ws/files/ISMReport/JPMorgan/JPMorganMfg090106.pdf#search=%22us%20china%20manufacturing%20output%20report%22

  NAFTA has also not had any of the detrimental effects predicted by Perot and the labor unions. “In fact, in the first eight years of NAFTA, manufacturing output in the United States rose at an annual average rate of 3.7 percent, 50 percent faster than during the eight years before enactment of NAFTA. ” Griswold, Cato Institute: http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/FTBs/FTB-001.html
  There has been no major US re-investment in manufacturing plants in Mexcio after NAFTA: ” In the eight years after the implementation of NAFTA, from 1994 through 2001, U.S. manufacturing companies invested an average of $2.2 billion a year in factories in Mexico. [4] That is a mere 1 percent of the $200 billion invested in manufacturing each year in the domestic U.S. economy.[5] ” Griswold, Cato Institute, supra.
  The assumptions of the Left that government spending can provide an alternative to private sector growth are largely delusions. Government expeditures are all at the bottom of the list in terms of economic stimulation. Even labor intensive highway building has a dubious net effect on jobs. The money to do the government stuff has to come from the economy- parts of it actually profitable in fact. The overall benefit is negligble and often negative in terms of general economic effects.
  “The insidious notion persists that government job creation actually generates an increase in employment. According to this view, if construction companies increase employment by 100,000 jobs due to a $3 billion government spending program to finance highway construction, then employment is 100,000 jobs ahead of what it might be in the absence of the program.” Why Government Can’t Create Jobs October 1993 by Mark Ahlseen, Associate Professor of Economics at King College [“Interestingly, from 1960 to 1988 there has been a positive, and statistically significant, correlation between public aid (as a percentage of GNP) and the unemployment rate. Conventional wisdom would have the public believe that as government “invests” in people the unemployment rate decreases.”]

  The Congressional Budget Office reviewed multiple studies and found no significant jobs creation effects from Federal Government infrastructure spending:

  “The available information suggests three conclusions: some
  investments in public infrastructure can be justified by
  their benefits to the economy, but their supply is limited;
  some (perhaps substantial) portion of federal spending on
  infrastructure displaces state and local spending; and on
  balance, available studies do not support the claim that
  increases in federal infrastructure spending would increase
  economic growth.” Cited by Utt, supra.

  International studies in dozens of countries have shown a negative correlation between government expenditures and GDP growth. Marcelo Soto, “Capital Flows and Growth in Developing Countries: Recent Empirical Evidence,” OECD Technical Paper 160, Paris July 2000. An empirical study of data from 44 developing nations for the period 1986-1997 showed higher government consumption has reduced GNP growth.
  “[T]here is substantial crowding out of private spending by government spending.…[P]ermanent changes in government spending lead to a negative wealth effect.” Shaghil Ahmed, “Temporary and Permanent Government Spending in an Open Economy,” Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 17, No. 2 (March 1986), pp. 197–224.
  Some government spending enhances growth, but the level is only what is needed for basic services, roads, schools, etc. Many studies showed that a curve exists where a point is reached that government spending increases actually caused major negative economic impacts. “This analysis validates the classical supply-side paradigm and shows that maximum productivity growth occurs when government expenditures repre­sent about 20% of GDP.” E. A. Peden , “Productivity in the United States and Its Relationship to Government Activity: An Analysis of 57 Years, 1929–1986,” Public Choice, Vol. 69 (1991), pp. 153–173.
  The old Keynesian idea that “demand” simulation via public transfer payments was an effective tool for long-term economic growth has been soundly refuted. Even Keynes at the time argued it was only a temporary solution for periods of economic downturns. But now we know that the basic math is wrong, including the Phillips Curve.
  Government intervention in the labor market - the hallmark of European politics - is extremely counter-productive. Standardization of unemployment rate calculations does not substantially eliminate the gap between the U.S. and Europe. “The standardized rates, as currently published by the three organizations that make comparisons outside of Europe (BLS, OECD, and ILO), all show a similar result: a significant gap in unemployment rates between the United States, on the one hand, and Canada and Europe, on the other.” Constance Sorrentino, “International unemployment rates: how comparable are they?” BLS Monthly Labor review, June 200: http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2000/06/art1full.pdf
  2. European sources widely and long acknowledge that their employment rates are lower and that their labor market needs reform to provide a more adaptive system closer to the United States. See The OECD Jobs Study: http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/201/PDF/Article02.pdf
  The IMF in its 2005 assessment of the EU: “The real problem is the sluggishness and partial nature of structural reform, which increasingly undermines the prosperity of the Europe of tomorrow.” In particular, their 2005 assessment focuses on employment problems in the EU: “At the top of the list of fundamental, long-term issues is the labor market. Employment rates have remained low for three long decades. Currently, almost one in ten people in the labor force cannot find a job. Among the young, the ratio is twice as high. Unemployment is leading many people to question the benefits of a more integrated world economy. This is tearing at the fabric of European Union.”
  Link: http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2005/101905e.htm
  The IMF in 2005 singled out high minimum wages in Europe as a source of persistent unemployment: “Governments also need to reduce the costs of job creation. High minimum wages are an obstacle to employment in many countries.” Id.
  The European Central Bank’s 2004 report: “… what we need is both higher productivity growth and higher employment creation. What is needed for these objectives to be achieved are economic reforms that ensure that capital, labour and product market rigidities will be substantially lowered. ” Specifically, ” the high level of average unemployment and the relatively low average employment rate in the euro area, which in 2002 was still around 62%, compared for example to the United States with almost 75%, indicate that much more needs to be done.” Id. One ECB recommendation, gearing wages to productivity: ” a sufficient degree of wage differentiation to ensure that wages reflect divergent productivity growth .” Id.
  http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2004/html/sp040126_1.en.html
  Finally, the Council of Europe in 2005 passed Resolution 1423 : “The need for structural reform is particularly pronounced in a number of major economies in the eurozone, whose current economic recovery is due almost exclusively to an increase in exports toward faster-growing non-European economies rather than to domestic demand, and whose capacity for growth is constrained by rigidities in the markets for labour, production and services to a level insufficient to reduce unemployment, or even stop it from growing. The Parliamentary Assembly notes that little progress has been reached on the Lisbon Agenda (2000), in which the European Union’s member states vowed to turn the area into the most competitive world region by 2010.” Parlimentary Assembly, Council of Europe: http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/AdoptedText/TA05/ERES1423.htm

• 8. KMorrison  |  March 26th, 2008 at 8:33 am

  Health Care is the prefect example of why people need to understand Republican ecenomic better. The Democrats are putting forth single payer plans that would cost the government a fortune, and therefor cost the people a fortune. It is presented as free health care for everyone, but nothing is free, and the result of ‘free insurance’ would be harmful to the economy and would likely lower the quality of care. The McCain plan is to lower the inflation associated with health care making it affordable to more people and so that the tax rebate offered will cover more than just a little bit of the cost of insurance.

• 9. Typical White Person  |  March 26th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

  Broder, whatever McCain does would not be as damaging as the Marxism that both Barry and Hill offer. Maybe you want the gummint to do your bidding; most of us here don’t…

• 10. TimG  |  April 4th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

  McCain has specifically expressed he does not know much about economics and it shows with his understanding of the Public Campgin Finance troubles and his constant call for unconstitutional wars that are funded purely by deficit. The GOP should be ashamed of propping up this liberty imposter.