For a bunch of intellectual, well educated leftists, the use of ad hominem arguments shows significant weakness in your argument. I am no fan of Obama, but will not sink to calling him names when I can use effective arguments against his speeches and policies. Raising taxes during a recession on those that invest to promote growth, only suppresses growth. To think that your policies will not affect the habits of the people invested in companies seems naive. The bad part is that almost everyone is invested in the market. To ignore the affects of these policies as just “gyrations” puts almost everyone’s retirement at risk and is irresponsible.
Every person participating in this thread makes decisions in accordance to their own economic situation. A person who makes $30k a year cannot purchase a million dollar sports car, possibly not even a used rust bucket according to where they live. This is human nature and to ignore this effect is tantamount to incompetence or worse malice.
During the early 1990′s the Democrat Congress and then President Clinton raised taxes on domestically produced luxury boats. Did this reap a significant tax return? No, it cost tax revenues (I have a problem calling taxes revenues, but I have to keep it simple) it closed the domestic boat building industry eliminating thousands of jobs. No matter how hard you try, the rule of unintended consequences always catches up with you. There are more examples from the “Great Depression”. Unemployment after spending all of that money, make work projects and taxing the life out of the “rich” did not recover until WWII. Look it up the numbers do not lie.
So the final question is are we going down the right path? This path has failed every time it is attempted. It failed in the 1930′s, was a disaster in the 1970′s, and cost Japan a decade of malaise. So will we wake up before we loose a decade? Only time will tell.
At least Rush said what he meant and meant what he said. There was no “nuance” or position with an expiration date attached to his words. You can disagree with him, but he will still talk to you even on his radio show. The same cannot be said about Pelosi, Reid, or Obama. When Obama was talking to the Republicans and they made suggestions his response was “I won”. Given that response who is willing to talk to whom?
