Tax Rebates
By Barry Ritholtz - February 24th, 2009, 4:00PM
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Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Makes political sense.
And, given the choice between a bank bailout and a tax rebate, I’ll take the latter (even if I don’t get any of the money).
February 24th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Hush, be quiet. The sheeple love them.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Love it! It also needs a third hand picking the pockets of babies in a nursery to close that $500 gap…
February 24th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I told a couple this morning in a refinance closing I was doing that they were just using money Uncle Sam borrowed at about 2% to pay him back at about 5.75%. And they’ll be paying back the 2% money, as well. I guess Fannie and Freddie and others get to split the 3.75% difference between what the money cost the feds and what it was finally lent out to the taxpayer/borrowers.
Of course rebates don’t make sense, but then, neither does anything else these days.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
In rebuttal, I choose this comment I just read on the NYTimes:
“Let’s try big government. Big Business hasn’t worked at all.”
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/02/25/us/politics/24web-sanger.html#postComment
February 24th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
More Escher !!!
Tomorrow is the one with the big carp underneath the oak leaves.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Big Business/Big Government—it’s the same beast with one heart, one head, one prick.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
As Anglachel (who quotes you) puts it, there’s class bias everywhere in all of the bailout/stimulus proposals being put out by this Administration. http://anglachelg.blogspot.com/2009/02/sacred-cows.html
I always thought that this election was about class, not race, and I am growing even more concerned that what will happen (if things get worse before they get better — the likely scenario) will be a heating up of class warfare misconstrued by the media as race warfare. How can the white working class not be upset when a black president is screwing them? It doesn’t matter that the handouts are going to white bankers. Witness the “southern strategy” we see with various southern politicians (Jindal, Shelby, Barbour) vocally opposing Obama in one form or another, or even cries of racism against the Santelli CNBC tea party rant. This wouldn’t have racial overtones if Obama were white, of course — but the fact is that he is, and the fact is that the screwing of the working class will never be a narrative that gains a foothold.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
….the fact is that I hoped that his candidacy would transcend race and it turns out it is going to be divisive because of the anti-working-class bias in these bills.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Class warfare can never be misconstrued as race warfare.
It’s so easy to tell the difference.
cf. Soweto, 1976.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
hrobbins,
don’t worry too much about ‘unruly mobs’, see: “What has Raytheon, the USA company that made radar equipment for yachts, got in common with sci-fi riot control?
Two years ago the UK Ministry of Defence’s Strategic Trends depicted an alarming futuristic scenario in which middle-class radicals could engage in revolutionary activity with violent ‘flashmobs’, threatening the authorities with lawless disorder.
There are growing signs that these predictions may turn true. Remember the Greek riots following the police shooting of a teenager? Recently, police confronted demonstrators protesting deteriorating economic conditions and political corruption in Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria. There have been smaller demonstrations in Spain, Turkey, Denmark and Italy.
‘These disturbances are another consequence of the bursting of the speculative capitalist bubble and the illusion of unlimited prosperity that once sustained it,’ says journalist Matthew Carr.
The US military sees the modern city as the battleground of the 21st century. Now it’s reported that the Pentagon is experimenting with an array of weapons, including the Active Denial System (ADS), a microwave ‘ray gun’ designed by Raytheon, which directs unbearable heat on the skin from a 2km distance and is specifically designed for crowd dispersal…”
http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/auto/newsdesk/20090119232711ymnews.html
and, if that’s not impressive enough, fret not, your tax-dollars have been well, and truly, spent, there’s ‘plenny more where that came from’..
http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=web&fr=h&q=Active+Denial+Systems
February 24th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
SARAH WAS RIGHT ON>>>>
“But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed … when the roar of the crowd fades away … when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot – what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger … take more of your money … give you more orders from Washington … and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world.”
I can’t wait for the speech tonight… and I do hOPe that President OBAMA doesn’t take us down the dirt road to poverty.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
legalize heroin – make it cheap enough that it is basically free, then the unwashed, unholy, unenlightened masses will be happy living in cardboard boxes so long as they can get their fix. Just pay people with heroin, they will work their asses off as long as you control the supply, throw them a candy bar every now and you are golden.
On the other hand Champions League Football has restarted today…football is the opiate of the masses
February 24th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
articpup,
this: “the dirt road to poverty”, is aka: “The Road to Serfdom”
for graphically-oriented friends, here’s a version in pictures:
http://mises.org/books/TRTS/
and an art. from Reason, before the “T” suffixed their Title:
“…The famous Socialist Calculation Controversy was prompted by the Austrian critique of central planning. From the 1920s until the ’40s, Hayek and his countryman Ludwig von Mises argued that socialism was bound to fail as an economic system because only free markets–powered by individuals wheeling and dealing in their own interest–could generate the information necessary to intelligently coordinate social behavior. In other words, freedom is a necessary input into a prosperous economy. But even as Hayek’s elegant essay extolling market prices as the signals of a rational economy was hailed as a seminal contribution upon its publication in the American Economic Review in 1945, shrewd socialist theorists proved to the satisfaction of their peers that central planning could be streamlined so as to solve, with really big computers, the very information problem that F. A. Hagek had so courteously exposed…”
http://www.reason.com/news/show/33304.html
now heard: “but, we have More info, and, soon, even more, and faster computers, that’ll be faster yet…”
February 24th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
BTW, there have been 2 notable attempts at Big Government:
1. The USSR. Substandard quality of life since government removes incentive for free enterprise.
2. The Dritte Reich. Hitler offered jobs to all of the out of work Germans; ended reparations and inflation from too much money creation due to reparations.
yes, let’s try big government because the last 2 big ones were so close to perfection.
Tyranny of the masses!
February 24th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Champions League Football- soccer? I don’t know anybody who watches that.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
As for tax rebates: circle jerk.
Cuck Ponzi: We have the biggest government ever, and it got that way under Bush. If you want a small government with a powerful military, you should give Myanmar a try.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Chuck Ponzi Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
“yes, let’s try big government because the last 2 big ones were so close to perfection.”
……..The combined federal and state budgets of this country are around $4.5 trillion. Leaving aside that in 1939 most Germans were fairly happy with the guy with a moustache, I’m willing to bet that by some considerable margin this exceeds the budget in inflation adjusted dollars of Germany in that year………when are you guys going to get beyond the bumper stickers and realize this isn’t 1939 in either Germany or the USSR……it’s the USA in 2009……
February 24th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
otto-
So . . . what is your point?
February 24th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
call me ahab Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
otto-
So . . . what is your point
……my point is that in the context of 2009 America which has total govt spending exceeding by several times that of any other sovereign state in the world, we spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined for example, ranting on about Nazi Germany and small govt is somewhere in a spectrum between disconnected and deranged.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
……..And did the “bank nationalization” frenzy start to abate today…..which is a much more relevant question!!
February 24th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
It’s been a while since I’ve read a set of comments this idiotic. What looney bin did they let you all out of?
February 24th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
@ otto-
the banks will be nationalized is some fashion- you already know that. They are insolvent. The hamster wheel that is “credit and spend” is hopefully broken forever. The American economy will contract until the leverage has been shaken out of the system. It couldn’t go on forever. It has been one big credit induced spending binge. There is no way anyone cannot agree with that.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
franklin411:
if you are asking that question, you might be on the inside looking out.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
call me ahab Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
“the banks will be nationalized is some fashion- you already know that.”
Depends what you mean by nationalized……my sense as I said is that nationalization as defined by BR receded somewhat as an option today…it may come back… but the tide definitely ebbed somewhat….As for the rest you’re just stating truisms except as to credit and spend…….I can absolutely predict with total certainty that credit and spend will be back since it’s essentially how modern economies function.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Barry,
This is 0ff topic but I believe it is one of the most Big Picture items I’ve read in quite some time. I don’t often agree with Mauldin but his posting of the McCully and especially the Volker speech is a “must read” for anyone who wants to look at real world, rather pie in the sky, solutions to our current plight.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article9070.html
February 24th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Escher rocks; as well as Champion Soccer league. Since moving in October and getting Verizon FIOS TV, I watch Fox Soccer Channel each night after my wife falls a sleep on the couch. The game is impressive; when there is actual talent on the field. Manchester United and Inter Milan are the best teams in their respective country leagues. The banking situation in Europe; scares me more than our own. We only have to get 3 federal agencies to work together; not dozens of country agencies. Shorting the euro looks like a slam dunk.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
“…since it’s essentially how modern economies function.”
The premise in this statement is that “modern economies” are inherently of the type we would see in the US. Are “modern economies” required? What the fuck is a “modern” economy? Is it a bunch of twinkie-sated, marginally diabetic, fat-assed, video-game-playing, ne’er-do-wells, waiting on on the next word out of Steve Jobs’ mouth to determine the next life-changing electronic trinket they should spend their welfare/trust fund/disability check on? Well if that’s your definition, then we’ve got it in spades.
If that’s a “modern economy”, I think I’d rather prefer an agrarian or hunter/gatherer economy to our modern one. Perhaps once we realize that “credit and spend” is not the route to happiness or wealth, we’ll reject this “modern economy” for the fraud that it is.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
“after my wife falls a sleep on the couch”
Is your wife named “Stephanie”, too? Mine never makes it past 8:00.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Actually Heather, and normally she has on some crazy “reality” show, Big red neck wedding, Top Chef, Wives of 90210, or NY, or Atlanta… and is out by 8:30 easily. I catch up on the blogs and then switch once the “deep breathing” begins:)
February 24th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
On rebates:
So many gimmicks and shell games, so little time.
When a bar allows free entrance and two drinks to women, is that a rebate too? The women get the drinks, the atmosphere, some harmless flirtation and the bar gets a rep as a meat joint so business is good. Wrer the Pennsylvania judges getting rebates when they jailed juveniles on minor offenses in order to provide a profit to a private prison? Did the prison officals’ practice of placing rock piles or loose bricks near large plate glass windows encourage the local youth to engage in vandalism? We goota fill those empty cells somehow, you know,
In the 1980s, some US Treasury employees sued the US government for double and distoted taxation. They claimed that the 7% withheld for retirement was taxed at too high a rate because when they eventually retired, their pension would be lower than their current wages. In addition, the taxing of their pension until they exhausted their career withholdings was illegal because it had already been taxed. It went to the Supreme Court. They lost. Our government does what it can get away with. We are the only ones, by our buying and selling habits, that can control it.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
“We are the only ones, by our buying and selling habits, that can control it.” –AGG
“Elections are not, merely, Quadrennial affairs, nor bi-ennial, or, even, Annual ones. They occur Every Day. The way we choose to spend, or invest, our ‘Dollars’, informs our days, and shapes the very ‘morrow we’ll trod.”
“Our government does what it can get away with.”
AGG,
that is the Tusk Man has recieved from the Beast– that is any Government he has ever found.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/found
February 24th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
“: If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime. In fact, the recovery plan provides a tax cut — that’s right, a tax cut — for 95 percent of working families. And these checks are on the way. ”
And Obama plans on hiring a wave of migrant workers to help harvest our immense forests of national money trees.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Barry, when does “sense” mean anything? It’s FAIR. C’mon Barry, don’t tell me you have NO contact with gender studies professors whatsoever? I can’t count how many textbooks there are devoted solely to rationalizing that picture.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
This is how the rich pigs would like us to think it will work. The fact is that everybody gets the check in equal amounts. However if we can get the tax system fixed it is not the regular person sending the money back to the IRS, it is the rich pigs who have been feasting on us all. John Q and 98 of his friends, as well as Mr. Pig, all get $3000. At payback time Mr. Pig gets a bill for $250,000 whereas John Q and his friends have to pay about $500. That is redistribution of wealth at its very best. The rich pigs who crushed the unions so they could suck all the wealth created into their own pockets have to get it one way or the other. Unless we save the middle class there will be no difference between south and north america. The only difference is a big wealthy consumer middle class, without it we become a banana republic.