On last night’s Fox show (6/23/11), O’Reilly gave viewers a lesson in… well, something:
So why is this happening? Well, it all boils down to political philosophy. President Obama is a liberal guy who believes the feds should run the economic show, and he hired advisers who believe that as well. The administration then set out to fight the recession by spending government money, the so-called stimulus, and that ran up trillions of dollars of debt.
Historically, the way out of recessions is to give the private sector lower tax rates and reward businesses for hiring people. But the Obama administration has resisted that.
Even by Bill O’Reilly standards this is remarkably off-base. Obama’s liberalism aside (this is the guy who declared, “I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.”), who are his left-wing economic advisers? Larry Summers? Most assessments of the Obama team were that his picks were not “ideological”-– which was intended to reassure anyone worried about any drift to the left.
The stimulus package– a mix of spending and tax cuts– cost around $787 billion. The Congressional Budget Office estimates its 10-year cost to be slightly higher than that ($821 billion), which is still miles away from “trillions.” The deficit/debt problems that O’Reilly is concerned with are due primarily to the Bush tax cuts, the recession and the Iraq/Afghan wars. The spending associated with economic recovery plays a small role.
It is unclear where O’Reilly would get the idea that history tells us that lower corporate tax rates and slashing spending is the way out of a recession. I mean, it’s been tried, but I think the consensus is that the results weren’t all that great.
O’Reilly makes a mess of everything he discusses because he is an ignorant, right-wing moron. He is a typical right-winger in that his motto is, “Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
All O’Reilly is good for is chasing skirts around his office.
Dumb as a sack of doorknobs!
“O’Reilly has never been interested in facts. I mean, it’s not as if it’s a news show, right?
We tried starving our way out of a recession in 1929 and got the great depression.
Reich-wing ‘feed the wealthy’ strategy is discredited if we actually look at history.
Of course, the Repugs love a poverty stricken population which will work for
subsistence wages and make their rich bosses even richer. Now we tax the rich at
a lower rate than janitors and wonder why the wealthy are still complaining about
how badly the government is treating them.
Here and now is as good a place as any to look at the true historical facts economic facts, they are: it has recognized since the 1970’s, and reported in the media until now, that first “jobs” was the lagging category of the factors that forms an index within the indices that support and that has been said and written since the 1970’s. The right wing crocodile tears that are currently shed by O’Reilly, and others, really either do not understand this’ or that they can not tell the truth about it.
Furthermore, it has taken generally two-to-three times as long to recover job numbers it takes to lose them, and frequently three-to-five times as long. Bush lost 850,000 jobs the month that Obama took office alone, and several hundred thousand prior to that. We also must consider how unneeded much of our consumer spending really was: expensive (and often imported) cars,
vast quantities of U.S. and foreign oil, large quantities of fast food, very large houses (often with high energy requirements); big cars with big wheels and sometimes huge fuel consumption and huge homes with as huge a mortgage and at potentially high interest rates of interest are a formula for long standing economic crisis. It is now time to call the right wings bluff–in 2003 more children were found to have parents that had been Bankrupt than had been divorced–the causes were then linked to high housing cost due to a lack of affordable housing especially in areas with good schools (source: The Two Income Trap). Reporters and commentators should read Money From Whence It Came and Where it Went, John Kenneth Galbraith (Prof. Emer., Harvard) and The Zero Sum Game, Lester Thurow (Dean, Sloan Bus. School M.I.T.) retired. O’Rielly et al are fools or liars or both!
we have actually recovered well and fast considering the seeming scope of the disasters. This is particularly so, considering the somewhat unnecessary nature of much of consumer spending
that permeated the economy — consider the amount of money spent
Why is fair wasting time attacking this guy? Its obvious he has the iq of a backward child.
Anyone with a high school education shouldnt be able to take him seriously.
Still, hes funnier than the comedy channel. Mainly because he actually believes in what hes saying.
Fox News is a contradiction in terms…..
The IMF has long prescribed the same austerity measures to nations around the world that took the IMF’s aid along with their program for austerity when they found themselves in financial difficulties.
This used to happen serially in South America, until one nation there (I don’t recall if it was Brazil, Argentina or another country) figured out that every time they followed the IMF’s prescription for austerity, things only got worse. They ended up even more in debt to the IMF, with their economy in the dump. Finally, they refused the IMF’s money and advise, and instead they stimulated their economy. Before long their economy was back on its feet.
I personally think that America is pursuing austerity because wealthy sociopaths (some would say psychopaths) don’t bat an eye at the poor and middle class paying off the debts they incurred after they defrauded us into our deep recession. In past times they were callous enough to murder strikers and anyone that got in the way of their business. Why should we think they’ve become enlightened since then?
It’s always been the goal of the right to create poverty. They will not stop until the US is a third world country. Anyone who doesn’t see that just hasn’t been paying attention.
Austerity is next for us not them. They will use that as an “economic” reason to end Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid or privatize which will be the same thing.
To quote a great man….THERE YOU GO AGAIN.Cut taxes and the economy will grow for a simple reason. Government does not grow anything.Only the private sector does.if you believe raising taxes helps them to grow, you are stupid -or a liar.Bill O was 100% right.We hope to get the American people to vote this way next election.You must prove that raising taxes will help to recreate wealth.Good luck.See we lived through Reagan.We saw the explosion of money generated.We saw an economy on the brink spun around.We heard all these arguments then and discounted them.Electing Reagan once and then again.Now you stand up in the back of the room and in your milktoast voice say you have found a couple facts that say everything that happened……..didnt!Really save it.Meet you at the ballot box.
Obama just tapped the national reserve for political reasons. 30 million brls out of 700 million.Using it to manipulate the stock market.Only the 3rd time in history it has been tapped(gulf war and hurricane katrina)How about he allow DRILLING?
I suspect even BillO doesn’t believe in the tax-fairy, but he knows his rubes in the audience do, so he gladly peddles Murdochspeak for a paycheck.
Can there really be anyone out there who can’t grasp that raising taxes enables the government to create jobs and lower the national debt? Wow!
RB……the government does not create even one job.The government is a terrible steward of the countries wealth.Look at how well they have done.We all work every day to create the wealth.The government confiscates what it wants and in effect manages our money.Can you say 13 trillion dollar dept?anyone who is ready to allow a nanny state over personal freedoms had better lace their gloves up.the next election is just around the corner.we mean to beat the ugly out of you.
Read a book out now called reckless endangerment.It will teach you a thing or two or three about the meltdown.
Percy the left believes in a tax fairy.More like an avenging angel.Crush kill destroy.Take whatever and from whomever it wants.And the sheeple beg at its foot.Bill o knows the score thank God.
The government does not create even one job?
In 1982, Reagan raised taxes and the right assured Americans this would be a disaster. The right was wrong, and the economy quickly improved.
In 1993, Clinton raised taxes and the right was even more certain this would be a disaster. The right was wrong again, and we instead saw the longest and strongest sustained recovery in recent memory.
In 2001, Bush slashed taxes and the right swore up and down this would work wonders. The right was wrong again, and the Bush policy failed spectacularly in every possible way.
In 2009, Obama spent moderately to turn the economy around and the right predicted a disaster. The right was wrong, and conditions improved within months. The economy that had been in a tailspin, hemorrhaging jobs, began growing and creating jobs.
I can see why O’Reilly promotes this propaganda. He’s paid well for his services to his corporate masters. But I can’t make heads or tails of micheal e. Can anyone explain this man to me? Do you think he’s getting paid too to write what he writes here? Or do you think he really believes his own nonsense? I don’t know which is more screwed up. Either way I’m amazed that he continues to write to us. If he’s getting paid, someone is not getting much for their money. If this is all of his own volition, there can’t be much satisfaction in being continually shown to be wrong. Why do you think he keeps writing? Almost every comment here is from someone who sees right through him and understands perfectly how mixed up he is. No one, from what I can see, buys a line of it. And yet he keeps coming back. I don’t know the “blogosphere” well, but aren’t there sites where those who enjoy that particularly dark cave where he lives can talk to each other? Why does he write on this site? I mean, he clearly doesn’t read what FAIR writes, and his comments are not rational, let alone intelligent. He says things like, “There you go again,” with the apparent illusion that that means anything. I know it’s a quote from one of his heroes. I get that. But we see through that particular hero too, don’t we? I mean, I think most of the people who write here seem to. So how is it that he imagines that this is going to make any sort of impression on us? Or does he really not expect to make an impression on anyone? Do you think he’s just venting his spleen for his own amusement?
I’m sorry, michael, to be talking about you in the third person, but I have tried to talk to you and you don’t answer me directly and you don’t make any sense. And, frankly, I don’t believe anything you say anymore. I can’t even tell if you believe it yourself.
If this takes us too far from the topics at hand, I apologize, but I continue to be fascinated by people on the right, people like michael e., and I don’t get very far in my investigations. Am I expecting rationality where there is no hope for such a thing? But if there is no rational common ground, what’s the point in talking?
Doug W. – Your last two sentences pretty much sum it up. There are plenty of important mysteries/problems in life that demand attention and solutions – – – this is not one of them. I would suggest following the Internet admonition to DFTT and move on …
I’m sure you are right, Big Em. Thank you. I don’t know what DFTT means, but I know what move on means…
To michael e – I guess you don’t know your history well enough that President Roosevelt, in his New Deal proposal, that a federal agency was created to get people back to work. By 1939 it was renamed the Works Progress Administration. It employed millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which especially benefited rural and Western areas.
To quote RB “The government does not create even one job?”
Do your research and think again. The agency wasn’t needed by June 1943 due to high employment and the industry boom of World War II. We need another WPA now. Even Robert Reich, the political economist, is trying to convince the U.S. government of bringing back the WPA.
Historically, the way out of recession is the government directly and indirectly creates jobs. If lower taxes creates jobs, where are they now in this time of exceptionally low taxes, the lowest in the post WW II era?
Historically, the way out of recession is the government directly and indirectly creates jobs. If lower taxes creates jobs, where are they now in this time of exceptionally low taxes, the lowest in the post WW II era?
And since when does the government NOT create jobs? Government created the aerospace industry, founded RCA, brought electricity to the Tennessa Valley and the west, built the interstate highway system. The list goes on and on. Government has been creating jobs since it built the Cumberland Road, the first highway, in 1806.
Well, Big Em, what does “DFTT” stand for? I second your comments about Doug’s comments. It’s okay if “DFTT” is rude and obscene, too. I’m actually hoping it is.
The Urban Dictionary defines DFTT as “Don’t feed the trolls.” Ie. don’t respond to abusive or wrongheaded message board statements intended to provoke your response. The definition of a troll varies widely, but in Scandinavian folklore it could be an isolated, dim-witted monster that makes a nuisance of itself.
The term was aptly put by Big Em in response to a poorly reasoned, garbled, ungrammatical, and almost unintelligible posting here that has annoyed several contributors, and as a retired journalist who is concerned about the extent to which the Fourth Estate has abdicated its responsibilities to America in recent years, I regret that such Looney-Tunes have invaded the FAIR website.
Free speech is certainly worth the price, but, yes, DFTT and move on.
To all of you.The government does not create wealth.It does not create jobs.Not even one.The New deal lengthened the scope and depth of the great depression.It is economics101. Government takes in money. Hires one man to dig a hole.One to fill it.(old depression era joke)Since the governments only income is taxation they can hire workers only by shuffling the money around.Nothing is created in the sense of wealth.Most sane people know this.Anyone with a modem of intel or a brain cell firing understands the government as overlord of a population of serfs is not as good as a population of free men.Anyone except Dumbacrats that is.And those cellar dwellers on these blogs.But how can i get through to you?Your president has never created anything.He has never managed a budget on a popsicle stand.His whole experience is confiscating others money and hiring himself distributer en chief.He has never held a job in the private sector.Never. Well one day he said he worked at an I hop or something.Thats it.The head of our economy is a man with zero experience working in a free economy.
Put it this way.You make a hundred grand a year.I take it all and hire another person at 100 grand a year.So i spend your money and create a job.(Good work if you can get it.)It is so bloody counter intuitive that you have to be a slack jawed moron to believe in the farce that “I”(the government)has created anything.Yet that is the only way government hires workers.A shell game with other folks money.A redistribution yes….creation of wealth no.
michael e wrote: But how can i get through to you?
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I dunno… Maybe back up some of your numerous dodgy assertions with sources from time to time? Maybe if you were able to demonstrate that you aren’t just making crap up based on a preconceived idea of how the world oughta be. That’d be a start.
And by the way: if you’re gonna go around labelling people as morons and whatnot, you’d do well to avoid phrases like “modem of intel.” Glass houses and all that…
John of course there are books written on,and history’s lived,that point to the idea of free market economies with low taxation,and wide personal freedoms as being a fantastic model for our lives. Full of flaws … miles better than anything else. The other alternative is we elect people who have no experience in a free market; who’s only experience is in the confiscation of other folks money. They then spend wildly(just as i would do if i was spending your money)And refuse…… yes refuse to tell you what has happened to that money(auditing the fed). Today I found out we are footing 75% of the bill in Libya. With what money?We are effectively broke!And we have a government in place that thwarts our every ability to become energy independent.That sees the creation of profit and yes wealth as dirty ideals.That believes it can tax the wind and the trees to get us out of this mess.They act as if they find one wealthy man paying to little in taxes that they have solved the problem.What they dont tell you is if they took ALL the money from ALL the wealthy people it would do little to solve this problem.This is not a fiduciary problem.It is a spending problem.A problem this government I believe is ratcheting up to force higher taxation.At the cost of any resurgence in our economy.
Take a few minutes and look up Joe Biden’s promises about the amount of jobs that would be created as we flooded our world with cash. And remember all those shovel ready jobs promised ready to explode!It was the seminal moment for keynesian economic theorists.The ultimate liberal wet dream.All the money in the world thrown at the problem.John……..I truly can’t see anything was created.Except for debt .A complete flop.One month under Obama now equals 1 year plus under Bush in debt.13 trillion and counting.The only answer I hear is we did not spend enough.
John Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.Read Reckless endangerment .It is a concise explanation of the collapse most of which i agree with. Remember “the people” in micro economics is the country as a whole in the larger aspect.Ask any small businessman if you raise his taxes 10% will it help him.Of course the answer is no.Now ask the entity that takes his money the same, and of course the answer is yes.Now if the whole basis of this exchange is the creation of jobs(and today it is)which of these two sides will create more jobs with that 10% raise?
Sorry for the name calling
O’Reilly makes a mess out of the economic situation, and Obama makes a mess out of the presidency.
Hey, Michael, there’s a space bar right in the middle of your keyboard. Bottom row. It’s one of a number of things I don’t see how you could possibly miss.
Them commas and apostrophes and periods too, RB. And them nouns and verbs and facts too.
Gosh Tim and Rb thanks for bringing that to my attention. I should slow down a bit to make sure that i am clicking away correctly.I mean with all those libs out there checking punctuation. Did you hear many public schools are no longer teaching cursive?I mean what is the point. The computer cleans everything up right?Hey have you been listening lately to BAMS speeches?He said” ax “instead of ask twice. And yes he did say “breafast” instead of breakfast.In the past he was also caught saying “birfday”instead of birthday.Do you think you could get him to drop out due to his bad grammar?
Hey michael e,
When you go around calling people stupid and hurling other insults about their lack of intelligence, it seems pretty fair game to point out you don’t seem to grasp the basics of punctuation and syntax (to put it mildly). Suace for the goose is sauce for the gander, they say.
And pointing out that Obama makes mistakes– which it seems you’re doing in the most racist way possible, by the way– justifies nothing. OK, maybe you and the Pres. are both dumber than a bag of hammers. Happy now?
Sauce for the goose, that is…
[sigh] I’ll go now…