People even considering voting for Obama again is a joke. I'm not sure if he even has one accomplishment (running up trillions in debt doesn't count)
Yeah, because Obama hasn't accomplished
a single thing. And as I've already mentioned, Obama's contributions to the debt are less than $1 billion, and much of it was necessary for economic recovery. You're probably one of those people who thinks the stimulus was unneeded or a failure. Had we had a president with that kind of attitude, things would have gotten a lot worse.
Blahkamehameha, I'm not sure you can even credit Obama for taking out Osama either depending on who you believe besides just what the mainstream media reported.
Obama made all the major decisions involving both the finding and killing of Osama Bin Laden. The military did a great job, too. None of what the Bush administration "accomplished" helped with the killing of Osama.
in response to smile: Indeed. You do know small businesses make up the backbone of America's economy right? Obama's admininstration (and senate) have smothered small business growth, and gave them a very uncertain future with the ominous obamacare.
Yeah, because the Small Business Act, raising investments in small business, giving more tax credits to small businesses, and allowing the effects of Obama Care on small business to be tax deductible: That's smothering small business growth.
I'm not sure if you understand things correctly. Government spending needs to be reduced, not have more income to fuel it. Tax cuts will help economy big time as long as nonsense government spending is cut.
Tax less, spend less benefits everyone.
Good thing Obama's task force in figuring out a way to reduce the deficit includes spending cuts. Most rational people agree that the deficit problem is both a revenue problem (tax cuts on the rich that weren't paid for) and a spending problem. If the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire now, by 2050, the debt would be roughly a third of what it will be if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to stay in place.
As I've already mentioned, spending isn't inherently bad. I agree that things can be trimmed a little bit. But Ron Paul's $1 trillion in cuts to the federal government would strike a crippling blow to the economy and is impractical.
This has to be dealt with, even if it makes our lives less comfortable. Ron Paul is spot on on this subject, I wish I could support him if he wasn't whacky on other issues.
Ron Paul is wacky on all the issues (except maybe military cuts). His cuts to the federal government would instantly cause another recession. Ron Paul thinks it is not the government's place to do things like make sure companies are not destroying the environment or to make sure schools are getting the funding they need. If it were up to Ron Paul, pretty much everything would be privatized. When you say the above things need to be reworked, Ron Paul would destroy most of them. No one should be taking Ron Paul seriously. In all honesty, he's probably the worst candidate in this election.
When you say there has been private sector job growth and obamacare will be a magical happy thing for our drowning in debt country, you need to have facts to back these statements up. I doubt you even bothered watching the video I posted. It's only 3 minutes long, you might learn something rather than blindly supporting a president because he's the cool guy everyone likes.
Hopefully back on topic, for those of you yet to vote, it's best to go with the guy you feel is best capable to take steps into the right direction for a change, whether you like him or not. Even if he's old and ugly, the majority of us will never get the chance to hang out with them, so don't vote based on likability.
There has been private sector job growth. Obama Care is paid for and does not contribute to the debt. The chart discussed above shows that initial unemployment has gotten better, which means the economy has gotten better, and you can see the causal relationship the stimulus had on initial unemployment getting better. You are correct that it does not show total unemployment. However, I posted a chart with total unemployment and each and every way unemployment is measured (including those who have been out of work for awhile and would not show up on the initial unemployment chart), and all those numbers are down as well as a result of the stimulus.
Basic economics: supply and demand. Conservatives think tax cuts for the wealthy will increase jobs. The logic here is that the wealthy will use their extra money to invest in more jobs. People get jobs, they get paid as that new tax money "trickles down" to them, and the wealthy make a profit. All this is accomplished by merely removing taxes, which means the problem is solved by actually removing government involvement. However, this entire thing is flawed.
The real way you increase jobs is to focus on demand, not supply. The above scenario assumes that tax breaks for the rich will allow them to increase their supply, sell more of whatever, and be able to hire more workers to sell whatever. However, the economy is bad because there is a lack of spending going on. If I own a bookstore in a horrible economy and receive tax cuts, I am not going to use that extra money to hire more workers; I'm going to pocket that money. Hiring more workers in an economy where I require less workers means just throwing the money away. I would hire more workers and see no positive change in my profit.
By focusing on demand, what the stimulus does, is how you make more jobs, which all the data shows is what happened. If, instead, I give tax cuts to the poor and to the middle class (the stimulus was the largest tax cut to the middle class in the history of this country), the middle class is going to use that extra money to go out and buy things. Businesses make more of a profit, they hire workers to keep up with the new demand, and the economy wheel starts turning again. In fact, tax cuts to people who need money the most, like people who are out of the job, spend that money rather quickly, and we actually see more of a return in the economy per dollar than how much we actually put in in the form of tax cuts/unemployment benefits.
The stimulus did all that. The numbers show that it had a positive effect. It could have done better. Reputable economists agree that the economy was worse than we thought it was, and even then they were saying that the stimulus should have been bigger. To say that unemployment is not better is a flat-out lie. People need to do some more research.
