History Is Repeating Itself, And Republicans Need To Learn Before We Hit 23% Unemployment Again
We’ve been told by Republicans for at least the last 30 years, since Reagan became President and even before that, that cutting taxes will create jobs, so I have a history lesson for you. Which Republican made the following statement:
“Nothing is more important than balancing the budget with the least increase in taxes. The Federal Government should be in such position that it will need issue no securities which increase the public debt after the beginning of the next fiscal year, July 1. That is vital to the still further promotion of employment and agriculture. It gives positive assurance to business and industry that the Government will keep out of the money market and allow industry and agriculture to borrow the monies required for the conduct of business.”
Not John Boehner or Mitch McConnell
Not Michele Bachmann or Paul Ryan
Hell, not even the demagogue of the trickle-down economics theory, Ronald Reagan, is the person who made this statement.
President Herbert Hoover (R)
This statement was made by President Herbert Hoover, less than 5 months before Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated him in the 1932 election.
At the time approximately 1 in 4 Americans was unemployed, with the unemployment rate officially at 23.6%. In rural farm areas and the most poverty stricken areas people were driving what was referred to as a “Hoover cart”, named after President Hoover, which was essentially a car pulled by a horse or mule.
Americans are constantly told by Republicans that the best way to balance the budget and stimulate job growth is to lower taxes, but looking at history it is not hard to see that their theory doesn’t work.
Hopefully Republicans will learn before the next time the unemployment rate gets to over 20%.
10:48 am
one on the latest polls (quinnappiac?) shows that Americans still blame the Bush admin for our current problems by
a factor of 2 to 1 over Obama.
When corp. taxes were high, the corps. re-invested profits into their business to avoid paying higher taxes.
Investment meant more jobs created, which created more money in the economy, more spending, more demand and more
profits for corps. Simple. It worked because they had incentives to cut their taxes by re-investing profits.
With lower taxes, there is no incentive to re-invest. Just take the money and put it offshore in the Cayman’s
or Panama, when that trade deal goes thru. No taxes paid. Or invest overseas and still get off scott free.
Simple, but does not create jobs here or grow an economy at all. Higher taxes is key, plus going after offshore
accounts and cutting all tax loopholes. Repatriating overseas money will not help, either, for the same reasons.
12:02 pm
President Palin will cut taxes even more, really control govt spending and have the budget balanced in her 1st year. The remaining 7 years will see surpluses that will surpass Clinton’s surplus. She will do it with less taxes than Dubya and she will have the national debt driven down to ZERO!
12:06 pm
You’re an excellent comedian!!!
10:24 am
the delusion of the Tea-baggers is truly astonishing! Tax cutting has never decreased unemployment or stimulated the economy. Allone has to do, is take a look at our history. FDR raised taxes on the rich in the depths of the depression, and the country rebounded. When FDR listened to the tax cut ‘geniuses’ and allowed tax cuts on the rich, the economy started sinking. fortunately, he reinstated the taxes, and the US climbed out of the depression. Flash forward to today. Obama’s stimulus plan was working, slowly. The economy was rebounding, unemployment retreating. The moment the stimulus money stopped, so did the economy, and unemployment retreated. Look to data and facts, not myths and rumors. No surprise the comment above came from the party of “I Don’t Believe In Science”!!!
9:27 am
Here is why Republicans never learn about taxes…..
The city received $111 million in stimulus under American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) approved by the Congress more than year ago.
“I’m disappointed that we’ve only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million,” says Wendy Greuel, the city’s controller, while releasing an audit report.
“With our local unemployment rate over 12% we need to do a better job cutting red tape and putting Angelenos back to work,” she added.
According to the report, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works generated only 45.46 jobs (the fraction of a job created or retained correlates to the number of actual hours of work) after receiving $70.65 million, while the target was 238 jobs.
Similarly, the city’s department of transportation, armed with a $40.8 million fund, created only 9 jobs in place of an expected 26 jobs.
So………………………. as you can see…. this is why Republicans and other sane thinkers would prefer the money stays in private hands.
Google was funded with $500,000 from an investor…
Apple Computer was funded with $250,000 bank loan….
Yahoo! was funded with 3 million when they were seeking additional venture capital……
So……. let’s do the math:
114 million = 55 government created jobs (no new business, no new venture, no new anything).
$3.75 million in the greedy billionaires hands = Google + Apple + Yahoo!….. successful international businesses creating 100,000 plus high paying jobs, providing great consumer products and revolutionizing business and the lives of everyone on planet earth.
Yeah…. I’m sold. We should have taken that $3.75 million and instead created 1 and 1/2 mediocre government jobs in Los Angeles.
12:49 pm
“So……. let’s do the math”
I don’t know why nobody has thought about this… With that $111 million we could have had 222 new Googles! Ah, let the wealth just shower down.
Unfortunately it’s not that simple.
11:39 am
You mean as opposed to the God knows how many billion dollars that US companies earn every year and then ship jobs overseas more then they create here?
Oh yeah…lets trust our money to the rich and powerful who have been ******* over the rest of us by shipping our jobs overseas so they can pay themselves ever higher salaries. Good idea.
Tell me John…what exact drug have you been ingesting that made you so damn gullible that you’re so willing to kiss the fat asses of the rich?
6:39 am
You should have mentioned the Hoovervilles.
4:18 am
Hate to say it, because it’s an extreme option, but it sounds like a bit of old fashioned Protectionism might be called for here. Maybe it is time to tie tax cuts and breaks for corporations to keeping jobs here in America. Want cheap labor overseas? Okay, you’re paying higher taxes then. Open up manufacturing plants here and bring working wages a family can live on home to America, and your company gets tax breaks.
Extreme, I know, but an option to be considered.
5:22 pm
It’s all about greed. And actually, if you want to look even farther back, you would find the same statement from 1880s Gilded Era politicians. It’s all about greed. These despicable people use the same concepts and even the same phrasing through the years because it apparently fools enough people to do the job. The people who believe it are ignorant; the people who use the philosophy of greed to promote their personal lifestyles and psychopathic personalities are too dumb/lazy to come up with something new. IT’S ALL ABOUT GREED. GET IT!
4:54 pm
“Although the economy grows in response to tax reductions (because of higher consumption in the short run and improved incentives in the long run), it is unlikely to grow so much that lost tax revenue is completely recovered by the higher level of economic activity.”~ The 2003 Economic Report of the President during Bush’s first term stated (pp. 57-58)
Will these fkn republican trolls never, ever stop?
4:11 pm
Where is the information to support the premise of this “article?”
Why did we have record federal tax revenue after tax cuts in 2003? Why does the Obama administration believe tax cuts spur growth?
How can anyone deny that more money in the hands of people and businesses is a good thing for the economy?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704421104575464012356644550.html
7:12 pm
It’s easy to see why that doen’t work.
Somewhere down the line the businesses and people that benefit from the tax cuts have also inherited incetives, via additional tax cuts, to move their businesses overseas. Over there they enjoy very cheap labor.
All the extra money that gets channeled to those companies and/or people goes right into CEO’s and stock holder’s pockets, not back to he American People (the real one’s, not just the extreme elite).
Plus, didn’t you read the arcticle? I guess not.
11:21 am
On the contrary, history shows that it DOES work. Tax cuts help the economy and increases hurt it, because businesses and people pay taxes with money that could be better used in the economy. Democrats are the jackasses who spend like there’s no tomorrow. GWB left a 4 billion dollar deficit, tat’s true. Obama has added TRILLIONS to it many times over and now someone else has to clean it up. The Dems keep denying a problem exists. Don’t take my word for it. Learn about the Laffer curve. All economists are aware of it, and it proves just how much tax cuts can improve the amount of revenue the government will get. I’m done with this stupid article and the people who actually think Obama is some kind of messiah. He’s not. Not even close!
12:17 am
Of course Obama believes that crock of shit, just like he believes in a hybrid of the Romney and McCain non-solutions to the health insurance racket.
9:36 am
Where is the information? The information is the great depression and it’s grip on the world until the massive spending and taxation caused by WWII. No facts or figures need be displayed here. The big picture of history repeating itself mirroring the ineffective policies of the 1880s. Greed is not good. American’s help each other, we pitch in in times of trouble. We don’t hoard, paranoid that someone is trying to take all our stuff. We just go out and get more stuff.
4:05 pm
Republicans don’t learn – it’s why they vote down funding for education. They already know it all, whether it’s true or not. FACTS ARE ANATHEMA TO THE GOP! Pure and simple. The more you prove them wrong, the more they deny, and the Faux Followers just put their paws over their eyes and ears.
You can’t teach the unteachable. You can’t explain to the ignorant. You can’t get blood out of a stone. And you can’t appease the greed of the wealthy.
When the poor are seen as ‘greedy’, it’s usually because they NEED it. Will any one of you Faux-watching igoranuses explain to me how you can justify the NEED for a billionaire to hoard even MORE money?
History is a fable agreed upon (unless the GOP rewrites it, as they are doing in Texas and the South.) Remember, we are only ONE generation from total reversal, denial and undoing of of all that has been learned over the centuries.
The ultimate history lesson the Repugs want us to forget: Magna Carta. (According to current revisionist Southern GOP history, Magna Carta was Jimmy’s wife…)
4:01 pm
when will they ever learn?…..NEVER. remember their IDIOTS.not able to learn
4:50 pm
they’re
11:07 am
“their idiots”? You must be an idiot if you think that is even close to correct. It’s They’re idiots! You idiot.
2:10 pm
History is supposed to be something we learn from, yet we just keep by-passing the lessons or ignoring them all together. If we look back, our debt has always doubled under Republican policies.
8:32 pm
Yep! The Republicans screw it up and the Democrats have to come along and fix it. I’m not sure we can do it this time. GW got it more screwed up than it has ever been. If we don’t do something to make these companies bring our jobs back to this country we are in deep crap. I think we should triple tax everything they import back in to this country. That would raise a lot of money to handle the debt GW created!
5:25 am
Both parties are equally corrupted but the Democrats realize they have a role to play and they play it well most of the time.
11:12 am
Economists agree that the Taft-Hartley act caused the great depression. President Taft wanted to raise the tax on the wealthy to 55% which caused the great depression. What did Obama want to do during his campaign?? Oh, yeah. He wanted to raise the tax on the wealthy to 55%. Now who is it that is unwilling to learn from history? Mr. Dumbama himself.