Its all about chasing shadows.
By that I mean latching on to this or that latest, most innovative idea that some self styled money making guru has put out in the hope it’ll go viral and make them a lot of money off the backs of all the headless chickens who will follow them blindly down a blind alley. Its a shame but a truism nonetheless that people will follow where someone they see as an expert leads. Even if they lead them to certain disaster, which is what most of the gurus tend to do to their flocks.
The trick is to recognize a shadow when you see it!

http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com

Its all about chasing shadows.
By that I mean latching on to this or that latest, most innovative idea that some self styled money making guru has put out in the hope it’ll go viral and make them a lot of money off the backs of all the headless chickens who will follow them blindly down a blind alley. Its a shame but a truism nonetheless that people will follow where someone they see as an expert leads. Even if they lead them to certain disaster, which is what most of the gurus tend to do to their flocks.
The trick is to recognize a shadow when you see it!

http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com

So, yes, things got very bad over the course of 12-18 months but then by the end of 1983, everything was turning rosy again. This compares to activities that government often undertakes that make it sound like they are doing a lot, but ultimately just prolongs the pain.

There is a great YouTube clip on the 1920 or 1921 recession (that most have never heard of) that I think features Tom Woods. Look it up and watch that. We all know about the “great depression” because Hoover and then FDR took actions that just made it worse and made it last longer than it should have – we still feel the economic pinch from FDRs programs today and those, combined with Johnson's will ultimately be our undoing I fear as the debts mount and cannot be paid.

It's also worth noting that free trade in the correct sense is difficult to work when you are not competitive from a tax or labor perspective. Another example of where politicians get in the middle of what should be a free market economy and try and tinker with it in ways that create distortions and uncompetitive biases. None are so omniscient that they can centrally direct economic activity and it is sheer arrogance to presume one (person or group) can.

What is government going to do with the money? Build a bomb to blow something up overseas that then has to rebuilt using more tax money? Transfer the money to someone who might spend it, but has no interest or ability to use that money in ways that generate ongoing economic activity? Maybe use it to buy off a foreign dictator?

Cutting taxes does indeed stimulate jobs; but, you can't look at that by itself, you must consider the whole economic picture. Amount of regulation, level of government spending, peaks and troughs in the business cycle, value of currency, levels of employment.

Certainly increasing taxes does not create jobs, factories, new inventions or an incentive for anyone to headquarter their company in a region where the taxes have been increased or are high.

Also, considering the economic consequences of cheap exports, there is a whole discussion we could have on this topic; but …

Someone buying a $499 50-inch flat screen might not have bought one at all at $1099. So, somewhere, some store employees, wholesalers, shipping folks, etc… made some kind of money.

And for those who would have spent $1099 on one, they now have $600 more to spend in the economy on other things. Even if they blow it on Starbucks coffee somewhere, it generates additional economic activity.

We absolutely need to make more things in America; but, until we get massive restructuring of the tax codes, get our currency stable, cut red tape and government intervention in the economy it is going to be difficult. We currently sport the 2nd highest corporate tax rates in the developed world (corporations don't pay taxes, you know, they just collect them from ordinary people in the prices of what they sell).

America is no longer so far ahead of everyone else that we can succeed 'despite ourselves' … we must be competitive in the market for factories and labor.

BUT, the politics of tax cuts needs to end as well. Sure, a 10% cut on somebody making $30,000 a year is only $3,000 when a 1% cut on somebody making $500,000 a year is $5,000 but that doesn't make it fair to call the cuts “for the rich” as often happens. And, besides, that $5,000 a rich person saves is used to either (1) create economic activity directly, (2) invest in companies that hope to grow and create jobs or (3) is saved in a bank which provides funds that can be lent to start up businesses or to people who are buying a house or a car [also known as "spending by other means"].

There also has to be an acknowledgement that government can't provide everything to everybody. In fact, it is often quite harmful when it tries to do this [great example is how medical care costs more than twice as much as it should due to government intervention in the marketplace, which causes people to call for government to fix the problem it created and it will then try to do so and make things even worse]. Or how about the dept of Energy and their $20+ billion a year budget and 11,000 employees – all working, supposedly, to get us off of foreign oil since the Carter administration. At what point do we say “FAIL” and try a different approach?

Unless someone wants to cite a source to refute those numbers or my recollection of them, I'll simply concur that getting out of Afghanistan and eliminating duplicative military spending is a necessity. However, the elephant that is now in the room is our entitlement spending: present, future, and what's being proposed and debated this very hour. It is also not affordable.