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How do we restore growth?

David_N

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This article has got me thinking.. How do you guys believe growth can be restored?
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2016/04/15-getting-past-slow-growth-dervis
Most economists nowadays are pessimistic about the world economy’s growth prospects. The World Bank has, yet again, downgraded its medium-term projections, and economists the world over are warning that we are facing a “new normal” of slower growth. Where there is less consensus—or so it seems—is in accounting for this weakness.
Almost three years ago, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers revived Alvin Hansen’s “secular stagnation” hypothesis, emphasizing demand-side constraints. By contrast, in Robert Gordon’s engaging and erudite book The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the focus is on long-term supply-side factors – in particular, the nature of innovation. Thomas Piketty, in his best-selling tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century, describes the rise of inequality that is resulting from low GDP growth. Joseph E. Stiglitz’s book Re-Writing the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity blames political choices for both slowing growth and rising inequality.
These accounts differ in emphasis, but they are not contradictory. On the contrary, while Summers, Gordon, Piketty, and Stiglitz each examines the issue from a different perspective, their ideas are complementary – and even mutually reinforcing.
Summers’s Keynesian argument is that the problem is a chronic aggregate-demand shortfall: Desired investment lags behind desired savings, even at near-zero nominal interest rates, resulting in a chronic liquidity trap. Today’s near-zero—even slightly negative—short-term policy interest rates do not mean that longer-term rates, which are more relevant to investment financing, have also hit zero. But the yield curve in the major advanced economies is very flat, with both real and nominal longer-term rates at historic lows.

The intertwined forces of chronic Keynesian imbalance, a slowdown in productivity growth, and a concentration of income at the top lead to a very subdued outlook for growth in median income. With expectations about the future being undermined by such deep-rooted and multifaceted forces, perhaps it should not be surprising that voters in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere are expressing anger toward the establishment.
Fortunately, there are reasons for hope. First, I do not share Gordon’s assessment of prospects for longer-term technological progress. I believe that, as the digital revolution and artificial intelligence restructure larger segments of economic activity, overall productivity growth may accelerate again, leading to higher expected returns and, therefore, more investment and faster growth. That in itself will not lead to a more balanced distribution of wealth or income, and it may not generate enough employment. But it could help create the political and fiscal space for inclusiveness-oriented policy reforms.

Second, developing and emerging economies still offer immediate opportunities for large high-return investments, which should be financed by what appears as excess global savings. With significant room to move toward the technology frontier, including in services, there are still plenty of opportunities for “catch-up” growth. Such investments would help close the global savings gap and generate positive feedback for advanced economies as well. To take advantage of these opportunities, however, regulatory and political uncertainty must be reduced and public-private partnerships in development finance must be scaled up within a framework that leads to inclusive benefits.
It is likely that continued rapid increases in prosperity are possible. Ultimately, however, political choices will determine whether the diffusion of artificial intelligence leads to widespread increases in median incomes or exacerbates polarization and inequality. Political will and powerful messaging will be needed to spur the ambitious social and economic reforms, together with the kind of international cooperation, that will be needed to take advantage of opportunities for inclusive growth.

Growing inequality, stupid political decisions, fear mongering over government debt, (all while private sector debt is ignored) stagnant wages, austerity measures, automation, a lack of aggregate demand... Things aren't looking to good. I find myself liking the authors outlook, although it will depend on governments making the right decisions. Countries need to focus on boosting demand, and tackling stagnant wages/inequality. What do you guys think?
 
What do you guys think?

At this point it means adopting policies that address our climate of a bubble and pop economic model. Said another way, look at economic and monetary policy in terms that lowers the amplitude of the economic cycle and looks towards sustainable but moderate economic growth over the longer term.

That means looking at things we ignore, and reevaluation of where we tax and spend.

It would be reasonable to reconsider running a military budget that is greater than the next 8-10 nations combined and look for opportunity to fund more infrastructure and technology projects as a means to impact our underline aggregate demand fault. Updating our nation, our means and methods of transpiration, our means and methods of information exchange and education all makes sense as a way to address aggregate demand concerns. It would also be reasonable to reconsider where our Federal Budget and State Budgets overlap and perhaps consider eliminating redundant departments in a complex exchange of function. It makes sense to consider how many levels of governance we need in the areas of Transportation, Health, Education, and Law Enforcement / Justice. In a similar condition it makes sense to reevaluate where we have funding into single departments with multiple agencies doing the same thing. For instance, where the Department of Health and Human Services has multiple sub-agencies dealing with AID related issues, or Autism research, or other various community outreach services. We end up forcing ourselves to newly balance general government spending just to spend against spending for economic and social impact. It may appear like austerity in some areas, but really we are talking about economic return on spending.

Boosting demand internationally is going to be complicated, if not impossible, to coordinate that way. There is no overriding authority where this can really be evaluated down to the monetary policy level without compromise of a nation's control over their own currency. Besides, the EU experiment is showing us with eloquent evidence that it is painful to set monetary policy standards across several nations with different factors that drive their own individual economic models and cycles. The needs of Greece's or Italy's economic model and cycle are never going to match that of Germany's (for example.)

We need to look at this as our own nation, and it may involve consideration of all the GDP math including Imports and Exports based on labor driven trade policy. That is not an argument to drop a bomb on our existing model, but it does mean evaluation of how much our services and consumer debt driven dominated economic model has impacted the realized bubble and pop effect we have clearly seen since the 1970's on repeat.

We have monetary policy room to address economic policy needs, but it is not a one way street. We have reason to evaluate existing spending mentality to see what could be economic spending policy.

I would even go so far as to say we have room in our tax code to simplify the mechanics, remove a great number of the imbalanced ways to reduce tax liability for corporate and individual, and still see a progressive taxation design that is not as high as some of our competition. We might be able to run a lower listed corporate tax rate and still see a reasonable realized tax rate if we did not create so much imbalance (and we might get some of that cash and organization back onshore in the process.)
 
Shy of increasing demand for US exports, which Orphanslug mentioned may be exceptionally difficult or even impossible just by governmental policy change (I mean really, we can't produce stuff cheaper unless we pay lower wages and get rid of environmental and worker protections), then the only thing we can do is to increase our internal demand.

This means that the worker/consumer class needs to have more (real) spending power. For this to happen, we need to change fiscal policy, however politics keeps the type of changes that we need from happening. The politics are partially driven by a desire for the opposing party to fail, and partially driven by an incorrect understanding of economics.

And we probably don't need huge changes, just some fine tuning, but fine tuning can't happen unless we have a consensus as to what to fine tune and which direction to tune it.

The biggest thing that we could do would be to have a more progressive income tax system. More progressive doesn't necessarily mean higher taxes and the word "progressive" isn't evil.
 
Eliminate corporate taxes.
End all payroll deductions (make people take ownership of the taxes they pay and their insurance costs).
Cut interest rates to businesses to the bone.
Increase consumer interest rates.
Cut all gov't spending that isn't EXPLICITLY described in the Constitution (if it's needed, amend the Constitution to reflect that need).

All of these are long term solutions, so I don't expect many liberals to understand them.
Eliminating corp. taxes and cutting corp. interest rates means that we become more competitive in the int'l marketplace, bringing more money into our country, creates more jobs, and accesses more resources.
Ending payroll deductions makes people think twice about the taxes they pay when paying them becomes an intentional act, instead of just a line on a paycheck - the same goes for ins. premiums.
Increasing consumer interest rates means more people will save to buy things, instead of borrowing. Which provides more money to spend, since there's less money going to banks in the form of interest.
 
Eliminate corporate taxes.

I'm not totally against lowering the corporate tax rate, but how does that increase demand?

End all payroll deductions (make people take ownership of the taxes they pay and their insurance costs)

And that's an interesting idea, but how does it increase demand?

Cut interest rates to businesses to the bone.

I totally agree. Maybe you haven't noticed, but I think we have already done that.

Increase consumer interest rates.

Retail interest rates are set by the private market via demand and competition levels. Regardless, I don't have a clue of why discouraging people from buying stuff would help our economy. Sounds quite counter productive to me.

Cut all gov't spending that isn't EXPLICITLY described in the Constitution (if it's needed, amend the Constitution to reflect that need).

Government spending is an addition to GDP, I don't know why you think shrinking GDP = Growth.

All of these are long term solutions, so I don't expect many liberals to understand them.

Oh, I understand perfectly. You live in opposite land, where low demand is good, because people don't really need jobs anyway.

Eliminating corp. taxes and cutting corp. interest rates means that we become more competitive in the int'l marketplace, bringing more money into our country, creates more jobs, and accesses more resources.

Can you tell me how exporting the production of American workers makes us richer? And why do we need foreign money, it doesn't spend at Walmart. I understand "more jobs", but wouldn't developing our internal market do the same thing?

Ending payroll deductions makes people think twice about the taxes they pay when paying them becomes an intentional act, instead of just a line on a paycheck - the same goes for ins. premiums.
Increasing consumer interest rates means more people will save to buy things, instead of borrowing. Which provides more money to spend, since there's less money going to banks in the form of interest.

So we would all have to write a check for our taxes? You don't think that every time we get a paycheck or a pay stub, and see all the deductions, that we aren't aware of our tax situation? Personally, I just prefer that we eliminate taxation on the worker/consumer class (roughly everyone who makes less than $400k/yr) - that way there would be no payroll deductions!.
 
This article has got me thinking.. How do you guys believe growth can be restored?
Getting past slow growth | Brookings Institution


Growing inequality, stupid political decisions, fear mongering over government debt, (all while private sector debt is ignored) stagnant wages, austerity measures, automation, a lack of aggregate demand... Things aren't looking to good. I find myself liking the authors outlook, although it will depend on governments making the right decisions. Countries need to focus on boosting demand, and tackling stagnant wages/inequality. What do you guys think?

We need a really big war just like in WW2.
 
At this point it means adopting policies that address our climate of a bubble and pop economic model. Said another way, look at economic and monetary policy in terms that lowers the amplitude of the economic cycle and looks towards sustainable but moderate economic growth over the longer term.

That means looking at things we ignore, and reevaluation of where we tax and spend.

It would be reasonable to reconsider running a military budget that is greater than the next 8-10 nations combined and look for opportunity to fund more infrastructure and technology projects as a means to impact our underline aggregate demand fault. Updating our nation, our means and methods of transpiration, our means and methods of information exchange and education all makes sense as a way to address aggregate demand concerns. It would also be reasonable to reconsider where our Federal Budget and State Budgets overlap and perhaps consider eliminating redundant departments in a complex exchange of function. It makes sense to consider how many levels of governance we need in the areas of Transportation, Health, Education, and Law Enforcement / Justice. In a similar condition it makes sense to reevaluate where we have funding into single departments with multiple agencies doing the same thing. For instance, where the Department of Health and Human Services has multiple sub-agencies dealing with AID related issues, or Autism research, or other various community outreach services. We end up forcing ourselves to newly balance general government spending just to spend against spending for economic and social impact. It may appear like austerity in some areas, but really we are talking about economic return on spending.

Boosting demand internationally is going to be complicated, if not impossible, to coordinate that way. There is no overriding authority where this can really be evaluated down to the monetary policy level without compromise of a nation's control over their own currency. Besides, the EU experiment is showing us with eloquent evidence that it is painful to set monetary policy standards across several nations with different factors that drive their own individual economic models and cycles. The needs of Greece's or Italy's economic model and cycle are never going to match that of Germany's (for example.)

We need to look at this as our own nation, and it may involve consideration of all the GDP math including Imports and Exports based on labor driven trade policy. That is not an argument to drop a bomb on our existing model, but it does mean evaluation of how much our services and consumer debt driven dominated economic model has impacted the realized bubble and pop effect we have clearly seen since the 1970's on repeat.

We have monetary policy room to address economic policy needs, but it is not a one way street. We have reason to evaluate existing spending mentality to see what could be economic spending policy.

I would even go so far as to say we have room in our tax code to simplify the mechanics, remove a great number of the imbalanced ways to reduce tax liability for corporate and individual, and still see a progressive taxation design that is not as high as some of our competition. We might be able to run a lower listed corporate tax rate and still see a reasonable realized tax rate if we did not create so much imbalance (and we might get some of that cash and organization back onshore in the process.)

That's what Jimmy Carter tried -- called butter -- and it did not work.

Reagan tried guns -- deficit military spending -- and it did work.

So what you have advocated is the opposite of what worked last time back in 1982.
 
Shy of increasing demand for US exports, which Orphanslug mentioned may be exceptionally difficult or even impossible just by governmental policy change (I mean really, we can't produce stuff cheaper unless we pay lower wages and get rid of environmental and worker protections), then the only thing we can do is to increase our internal demand.

This means that the worker/consumer class needs to have more (real) spending power. For this to happen, we need to change fiscal policy, however politics keeps the type of changes that we need from happening. The politics are partially driven by a desire for the opposing party to fail, and partially driven by an incorrect understanding of economics.

And we probably don't need huge changes, just some fine tuning, but fine tuning can't happen unless we have a consensus as to what to fine tune and which direction to tune it.

The biggest thing that we could do would be to have a more progressive income tax system. More progressive doesn't necessarily mean higher taxes and the word "progressive" isn't evil.

More tax cuts for the poor and middle class funded by more tax hikes on the rich should do it -- that's also Bernie's plan.
 
Eliminate corporate taxes.
End all payroll deductions (make people take ownership of the taxes they pay and their insurance costs).
Cut interest rates to businesses to the bone.
Increase consumer interest rates.
Cut all gov't spending that isn't EXPLICITLY described in the Constitution (if it's needed, amend the Constitution to reflect that need).

All of these are long term solutions, so I don't expect many liberals to understand them.
Eliminating corp. taxes and cutting corp. interest rates means that we become more competitive in the int'l marketplace, bringing more money into our country, creates more jobs, and accesses more resources.
Ending payroll deductions makes people think twice about the taxes they pay when paying them becomes an intentional act, instead of just a line on a paycheck - the same goes for ins. premiums.
Increasing consumer interest rates means more people will save to buy things, instead of borrowing. Which provides more money to spend, since there's less money going to banks in the form of interest.

ROTF.

I can tell you are good at bits and bytes.

Because you are not good at all at micro or macro econ. You probably do not even know what these words men.

:D
 
I'm not totally against lowering the corporate tax rate, but how does that increase demand?



And that's an interesting idea, but how does it increase demand?



I totally agree. Maybe you haven't noticed, but I think we have already done that.



Retail interest rates are set by the private market via demand and competition levels. Regardless, I don't have a clue of why discouraging people from buying stuff would help our economy. Sounds quite counter productive to me.



Government spending is an addition to GDP, I don't know why you think shrinking GDP = Growth.



Oh, I understand perfectly. You live in opposite land, where low demand is good, because people don't really need jobs anyway.



Can you tell me how exporting the production of American workers makes us richer? And why do we need foreign money, it doesn't spend at Walmart. I understand "more jobs", but wouldn't developing our internal market do the same thing?



So we would all have to write a check for our taxes? You don't think that every time we get a paycheck or a pay stub, and see all the deductions, that we aren't aware of our tax situation? Personally, I just prefer that we eliminate taxation on the worker/consumer class (roughly everyone who makes less than $400k/yr) - that way there would be no payroll deductions!.

You took his bait !!!

He has no idea what he is talking about and you took his bait !!!
 
ROTF.

I can tell you are good at bits and bytes.

Because you are not good at all at micro or macro econ. You probably do not even know what these words men.

:D

So instead of making even the most cursory effort to have a discussion, you revert to passive/aggressive insults to avoid the discussion. Let's look at just one of my ideas, shall we??
"Increase consumer interest rates"

My assertion is that by increasing consumer interest rates you discourage borrowing and increase saving. Over the long term , this means that more money gets put back into the economy since the saved money earns interest, resulting in more money to spend and less money aggregated in low resource utilizing bank's accounts. It does have a short term (5-10 years) effect of dampening growth, since you sill be taking money out of the demand side of the equation during that time, but as those savings mature, that money does get spent and there is more to spend, triggering more demand and more growth.

Now I fully expect more P/A insults and avoidance, but I'd love to be disappointed....
 
So instead of making even the most cursory effort to have a discussion, you revert to passive/aggressive insults to avoid the discussion. Let's look at just one of my ideas, shall we??
"Increase consumer interest rates"

My assertion is that by increasing consumer interest rates you discourage borrowing and increase saving. Over the long term , this means that more money gets put back into the economy since the saved money earns interest, resulting in more money to spend and less money aggregated in low resource utilizing bank's accounts. It does have a short term (5-10 years) effect of dampening growth, since you sill be taking money out of the demand side of the equation during that time, but as those savings mature, that money does get spent and there is more to spend, triggering more demand and more growth.

Now I fully expect more P/A insults and avoidance, but I'd love to be disappointed....

That's not it.

It would take me 3 years to teach you all the micro and macro econ that you would need to comprehend national economics.

I don't have 3 years.

You can't afford my charge rate.

My brother in law is just like you -- mouth opens wide -- foot goes in really deep.

Stick to bits and bytes.
 
That's not it.

It would take me 3 years to teach you all the micro and macro econ that you would need to comprehend national economics.

I don't have 3 years.

You can't afford my charge rate.

My brother in law is just like you -- mouth opens wide -- foot goes in really deep.

Stick to bits and bytes.

Well at least you didn't disappoint me... Just the same old P/A and left-handed insults without one single thought actually being offered up. Is it from a lack of thoughts or a lack of willingness to make the effort?? Well, now use the lame argument that I'm not smart enough to understand you, so you won't waste your time with me...
 
Well at least you didn't disappoint me... Just the same old P/A and left-handed insults without one single thought actually being offered up. Is it from a lack of thoughts or a lack of willingness to make the effort?? Well, now use the lame argument that I'm not smart enough to understand you, so you won't waste your time with me...

Correct. #3 above.
 
Limit the EPA's powers. I believe in a healthy environment, but some of the authority they have is beyond the constitutional measures.

Give a starting small businesses a much lower uniform tax rate in order to promote growth without regard to generated revenue for 3 years regardless of structure Sole proprietor, S corp.......etc. etc.

Make E-Verify a real working system, instead of the wink wink loophole that general contractors get away with by passing off the regulations to illegally manned sub crews that are taking over commercial and residential construction.

Major corporations get a lower overall tax rate, and tax initiatives for each person they hire full time above minimum wage.

Give larger tax breaks to companies and corporations that contribute to vocational training and troubled neighborhood training programs.


I can think of another 100 ideas.... but I suck at typing and need a beer.
 
My assertion is that by increasing consumer interest rates you discourage borrowing and increase saving.


You do realize that would mean less production today, and probably the loss of our housing and car industry, along with all their suppliers? Basically, you are writing a prescription for a recession.


Over the long term , this means that more money gets put back into the economy since the saved money earns interest, resulting in more money to spend and less money aggregated in low resource utilizing bank's accounts.


And where would this interest money come from? If suddenly most people were saving and not spending, what businesses would want to borrow money to expand? Businesses only expand when there is more demand than they can currently satisfy, yet you are suggesting curtailing demand. Exactly who would be borrowing? Why would banks pay ANY interest when they don't have any customers to lend to? And exactly how would you drive up consumer i-rates without also driving up business i-rates? You don't like the private market determining rates? You would prefer that guberment create price controls on interest? What are you, anti capitalist or something? You some type of danged commie?


It does have a short term (5-10 years) effect of dampening growth, since you sill be taking money out of the demand side of the equation during that time, but as those savings mature, that money does get spent and there is more to spend, triggering more demand and more growth.


Dampening growth? I would call it causing a depression. Yea, that's real smart, purposely cause a recession, so that we can experience a (relative) boom after the recession.


Now I fully expect more P/A insults and avoidance, but I'd love to be disappointed....


You won't be disappointed I'm sure. I've tried not to be insulting, but economics just doesn't seem to be your thing. Maybe you should stick to a topic that you can understand.
 
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Limit the EPA's powers. I believe in a healthy environment, but some of the authority they have is beyond the constitutional measures.

Give a starting small businesses a much lower uniform tax rate in order to promote growth without regard to generated revenue for 3 years regardless of structure Sole proprietor, S corp.......etc. etc.

Make E-Verify a real working system, instead of the wink wink loophole that general contractors get away with by passing off the regulations to illegally manned sub crews that are taking over commercial and residential construction.

Major corporations get a lower overall tax rate, and tax initiatives for each person they hire full time above minimum wage.

Give larger tax breaks to companies and corporations that contribute to vocational training and troubled neighborhood training programs.


I can think of another 100 ideas.... but I suck at typing and need a beer.

You do realize that most businesses pay no business income tax don't you? The only way that my corporate income taxes could be any lower would be if I got a check from the government. My business income is passed through to my personal taxes, so I suppose we could eliminate the income tax for everyone who owns a business. That would be sweet...for me. Would pretty much suck for everyone else.
 
Limit the EPA's powers. I believe in a healthy environment, but some of the authority they have is beyond the constitutional measures.

Give a starting small businesses a much lower uniform tax rate in order to promote growth without regard to generated revenue for 3 years regardless of structure Sole proprietor, S corp.......etc. etc.

Make E-Verify a real working system, instead of the wink wink loophole that general contractors get away with by passing off the regulations to illegally manned sub crews that are taking over commercial and residential construction.

Major corporations get a lower overall tax rate, and tax initiatives for each person they hire full time above minimum wage.

Give larger tax breaks to companies and corporations that contribute to vocational training and troubled neighborhood training programs.


I can think of another 100 ideas.... but I suck at typing and need a beer.

A lot of people agree with you that the EPA has grown too powerful. It is really hard to roll back Federal law however.

Small businesses already have lower corp tax rate so that one is already in effect.

Both the GOP and the DEM's agree that the US Federal corporate tax rate needs to be lowered from it's present 35% to either 20% or 25%. But because Boehner did not want BHO to look like he accomplished anything Boehner spent his whole career repealing ACA over and over again like a school boy masturbating. Then as you can see many morons go on the internet and in forums like this assert that BHO has not accomplished anything.

Hiring incentives for tax already exist at the state level rather than Federal.

Corporations should not be in the education nor social services professions. They exist to make profits, employ people, and pay taxes.
 
You do realize that most businesses pay no business income tax don't you? The only way that my corporate income taxes could be any lower would be if I got a check from the government. My business income is passed through to my personal taxes, so I suppose we could eliminate the income tax for everyone who owns a business. That would be sweet...for me. Would pretty much suck for everyone else.

Try being a sole proprietor and get back to me.

Try being S corp and get back to me.
 
Honestly, you guys are way over thinking and over complicating this stuff.

Sure, lower taxes would be great. But only because lower taxes can lead to higher levels of consumption. I really don't think that making our tax laws even more complicated by having more and more special deals for special folks is the most effective answer. Sometimes we just need the KISS method. If we are going to have tax reform, then let's just get rid of all the special deals (which only distort the market), and then lower the stated tax rates.

And if we had regulations that were strangling business, then we should get rid of those regulations, except for the ones that sucessfuly protect our consumers, workers, and environment. But that's pretty much nearly all of our regulations. Can anyone actually specify a regulation, other than obummercare, that isn't needed and is preventing economic growth? Anyone? Seems that we never actually know what these regulations are, we just know that they exist. So should we allow corporations to pollute our water supply, or is it just our air that we no longer care about?

Anywho, demand drives our economy. Increase demand, and our economy will grow. Decrease demand, and our economy will shrink. So what factors keep demand from growing? It's mostly the amount of money that we have in our pockets. Figure out how to put more money in peoples pockets, and our economic issues will resolve themselves. We have lots of businesses that would love to grow, if only there was ample demand. Economic growth is automatic when consumers are spending massive amounts of money.
 
You do realize that would mean less production today, and probably the loss of our housing and car industry, along with all their suppliers? Basically, you are writing a prescription for a recession.

I'm writing a prescription for a short term economic downturn with long term economic health to follow. As it is, we're getting short term growth that's leading to a long term economic downturn. There's NO doubt that pulling that kind of money out of the economy will hurt in the short term and we need to be ready for that, but we can't let it stop us from taking the steps we need to get to the goal of long term economic health. There are steps that can be taken to help get us over the hump, but we need to make sure that they have expiration dates, so that they don't become our new M.O.
 
Honestly, you guys are way over thinking and over complicating this stuff.

Sure, lower taxes would be great. But only because lower taxes can lead to higher levels of consumption. I really don't think that making our tax laws even more complicated by having more and more special deals for special folks is the most effective answer. Sometimes we just need the KISS method. If we are going to have tax reform, then let's just get rid of all the special deals (which only distort the market), and then lower the stated tax rates.

corporate taxes should be no higher than 15-20% with the only deductions allowed for non-executive pay, expansion and healthcare.
the more you invest in those things the less your tax bill is going to be.

And if we had regulations that were strangling business, then we should get rid of those regulations, except for the ones that sucessfuly protect our consumers, workers, and environment. But that's pretty much nearly all of our regulations. Can anyone actually specify a regulation, other than obummercare, that isn't needed and is preventing economic growth? Anyone? Seems that we never actually know what these regulations are, we just know that they exist. So should we allow corporations to pollute our water supply, or is it just our air that we no longer care about?

Obama has wracked up 172b dollar or so of in regulation costs to businesses and taxpayers. this is the opposite of promoting growth.
I am so sick of the damn air and water BS. come up with a better argument.

Anywho, demand drives our economy. Increase demand, and our economy will grow. Decrease demand, and our economy will shrink. So what factors keep demand from growing? It's mostly the amount of money that we have in our pockets. Figure out how to put more money in peoples pockets, and our economic issues will resolve themselves. We have lots of businesses that would love to grow, if only there was ample demand. Economic growth is automatic when consumers are spending massive amounts of money.

promote business expansion instead of reduction. allow businesses to bring money back to the US tax free as long as the use it to expand
or promote their employee's.

hmm all sorts of things could be done. your right it isn't hard, but then people lose the ability to pander about those evil corporations.
 
I'm writing a prescription for a short term economic downturn with long term economic health to follow. As it is, we're getting short term growth that's leading to a long term economic downturn.


??? We are in one of the longest economic expansions in US history! What are you talking about?
 
corporate taxes should be no higher than 15-20% with the only deductions allowed for non-executive pay, expansion and healthcare.
the more you invest in those things the less your tax bill is going to be.

Hey, I agree! Although I see things like pay and benefits and the cost of business expansion as already being legitimate businesses expenses that are already being taken, along with things like rent, depreciation, utilities, COG, advertising, etc


Obama has wracked up 172b dollar or so of in regulation costs to businesses and taxpayers. this is the opposite of promoting growth.
I am so sick of the damn air and water BS. come up with a better argument.

I would be convinced about "regulations" harming our economy, as long as someone could tell me what those regulations are. I've been asking this question for years, and no one has been able to actually tell me about any specific regulations that are unneeded and overly burdensome to business (other than Obummercare of course). Is it about the law that says that businesses have to have battery backup emergency exist lights? Is that the one? Or is it that one that doesn't allow managers to whip their employees with wet towels?


promote business expansion instead of reduction. allow businesses to bring money back to the US tax free as long as the use it to expand
or promote their employee's.

You may prove me wrong, but I think that most of the reason corporations don't "bring back money" has little to do with taxation, and almost everything to do with the fact that they don't really need the money in the US. Businesses only expand when they think that there is unfulfilled demand. Give business some reasons to think that demand is increasing, and they will expand. Tax cuts for the worker/consumer class would be a good start because that would be instant extra purchasing power in their pockets.
 
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