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figured you were not up to comprehending the point i was making
here's a clue. i am typing it slowly, so keep up:
many who benefit from government assistance do so thru no fault of their own. they may be too young, too feeble, too sick, too mentally challenged, too whatever to pay their own way. yet you ignore them and their plight when you fashion the most simplistic solution to allow them to feed/clothe/house themselves ... by building a new stretch of I-85 between spartanburg and greenville. as if that would be something the very young, the very old, and the very infirm would be able to do. your "solution" could only be found workable by simple minds
i used the road building example you offeredAnd you use a narrow example,
ashamed for not wanting to eliminate government assistance for those who need it thru no fault of their own. never... and extremes of the system to give all of the others in the majority a pass for grafting every single one of us....And all to lock them into the plantation of poverty for their vote...You should be ashamed...
i used the road building example you offered
now it seems you finally agree it was a stupid suggestion
ashamed for not wanting to eliminate government assistance for those who need it thru no fault of their own. never
I don't mean to interject myself, but I believe justabubba's point was that so many who are on government assistance are NOT able bodied.Road building was but one thing able bodied people collecting welfare could do to earn their benefits
Of course, California also leads the country in millionaires.
Which States Have the Most Millionaires?*|*Reboot Illinois
Given that fact, perhaps I can interpret your post as a concern about income inequality?
I don't mean to interject myself, but I believe justabubba's point was that so many who are on government assistance are NOT able bodied.
"many who benefit from government assistance do so thru no fault of their own. they may be too young, too feeble, too sick, too mentally challenged, too whatever to pay their own way."
I think he's trying to say that providing jobs to able bodied people to make them work for their benefits (an idea I've always liked too) is impractical for so many on government assistance because the reason they are on government assistance is because they are not able bodied.
Justabubba can correct me if I misunderstood him, but that's the way I took what he was saying. Thought it might clear up some confusion.
Umm...I think he said the same thing multiple times. Maybe it wasn't in the nicest way possible, but his point (that there are people who are not able to work for government assistance) was the same in every post.That's fine Sly, and I'd agree if it were put that way...But it wasn't...Bubba just wanted to come in and **** all over the discussion where myself and some more liberal than I members might show some kind of agreement, and parade his usual arrogant crap instead of being civil to someone that disagrees with him.
No, obviously not. And I don't think he would either. But his point, I believe, is that a large percentage of them simply cannot work, which is why they are on assistance in the first place.There are quite a lot of people I could imagine that would not qualify to work for their benefits, and shouldn't. This could be determined by medical, or psychological doc's...But, we now have some 47 million people + on some kind of subsidy from the taxpayer, surely you don't believe that they are ALL unqualified to earn their benefit do you?
Policy Basics: Introduction to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — Center on Budget and Policy PrioritiesThe number of SNAP households that have earnings while participating in SNAP has more than tripled — from about 2 million in 2000 to about 6.9 million in 2012.
...
Most SNAP recipients who can work do so. Among SNAP households with at least one working-age, non-disabled adult, more than half work while receiving SNAP — and more than 80 percent work in the year prior to or the year after receiving SNAP. The rates are even higher for families with children. (About two-thirds of SNAP recipients are not expected to work, primarily because they are children, elderly, or disabled.)
...
Obviously those of us who work do not want to pay for those who can work but choose not to, but it really doesn't happen as often as one might think.
this is not how demand works
you mistake it for supply side economics
To an extent, yes. However, there is no lack of companies willing to create things that people want, the profit motive is very powerful, and it exists regardless of anything else, as long as we allow private ownership of the means of production (and last time I checked, we do).
Production is the natural result of demand. it's like almost automatically going to happen, as long as demand is realized. Someone orders something, and it's produced. someone purchases something off the shelf, and a replacement is produced.
However, demand is created when people who want things have the means to actually purchase those things. Regardless of how much the owners of the means of production desire to produce, they will not produce more than their customers can actually afford to purchase. So customers with a buck in their pocket is a prerequisite for production to exist.
If you made widgets, and you were only able to sell 100 widgets a day, would you produce any more than that? Would you desire to fill up warehouses with excess widgets?
...
What stimulates the economy is making something available the is so necessary that it forces people to find a way to buy it, but is not something being currently purchased. The PC is the best example because nobody had one and suddenly everybody had to have one....
While that may have been true for the PC, generally these innovative new products are replacing other products. What we end up with is a shift in demand, much more so than the creation of additional demand. Yes, there is lot's of demand for smart phones that didn't exist before apple invented the iphone, however because of the smartphone, demand for calculators, computers, home phones, watches, clocks, notepads, stationary, pens, PDAs, pedometers, stand alone GPS systems, sterios, walkmen, flashlights, etc has declined. We simply shifted demand from one set of products to that new inovative product.
The net increase in aggregate demand due to the smartphone is probably zero.
Demand, for everything other than high end luxury products is limited by the worker-consumer class'es ability to purchase more. When incomes aren't increasing, the consumer class can't buy more, regardless of how cool or innovative new products are, they will just shift demand from current products to those new products, and our economy is no better off.
That's the reason that it's important that incomes at every income level increase as fast our our per work hour productivity increases. If incomes don't increase just as fast, then we end up with demand lagging behind productivity, thus we have a weaker job market, more unemployment, even lower wages, lower business profits, more people on welfare, etc.
Your observation about the shift of sales from one product to another is probably very accurate.
Why would people buy something more with the extra money? Why would the shift in sales from one product to a different product not also apply here? It seems likely that the extra money spending would manifest in a better grade of hamburger or steak as opposed to the lower grade of hamburger. Maybe going to Steak house instead of a Pancake house.
If your idea is correct and will produce additional sales and therefore fire up the economy, why not allow projects like the Keystone Pipeline to employ people and thereby drive more money into the economy, increase the tax revenues and do so with no expense to government in any way?
Sure, additional money in the hands of the consumer would result in upgrades of products.
In some cases it would also result in the purchase of additional products. Unless one is uber rich, most of us have to make choices in how we spend our money. So maybe I have to make a choice this week between a new TV or new carpet in my bedroom. If I had more money (bigger paycheck), then maybe I could afford both.
Other than increased demand, the only other thing that the worker-consumer class could do with bigger paychecks is to save and invest and certainly some of us would also do that.
So now imagine an increase in spending combined with an increase in savings and investment. Is that not the perfect recipe for a great economy?
That's why I am constantly advocating for middle class tax cuts. Reducing the rate of the bottom three income tax brackets by 5% could easily create a one or two percent increase in GDP (resulting in a "normal" 3+% growth rate), which would result in a sub 5% unemployment rate.
I'm all for the Keystone Pipeline, and I suspect that Obama will approve it before he leaves office as surely he doesn't want to go down in history as the POTUS that held up progress. However, I'm not convinced that it's going to create a lot of new jobs long term. Seems to me that it's more about making the transportation of the oil more efficient - meaning not having to rely as much on human labor to transport it.
I'm also not real supportive of the idea that we should start exporting oil. Seems to me that long term, like generations from now, we may be better off if we use up other nations natural resources first, than to export all of ours.
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