What would stimulate the Economy more: Increasing Food Stamps/Extending Unemployment or Investment T

Gross domestic product (GDP), the standard measure of economic growth, increased at an annual average rate of 2.6 percent from 2001 through 2006--the latest year available. This ranks the George W. Bush administration 6th out of seven administrations since 1960 in terms of economic growth (counting the Kennedy/Johnson and Nixon/Ford years as one administration each). Only the administration of Bush%26#039;s father had slower annual growth. As economist Dean Baker noted (Beat the Press, 1/28/08), the statistics for each administration are:

Kennedy-Johnson -- 5.2%

Nixon-Ford -- 2.7%

Carter -- 3.4%

Reagan -- 3.4%

Bush I --1.9%

Clinton -- 3.6%

Bush II --2.6%

What would stimulate the Economy more: Increasing Food Stamps/Extending Unemployment or Investment Tax Cuts?child tax credit

Because a recession is caused by too little spending, then increasing food stamps and extending unemployment will cause an immediate rise in spending. Investment tax credits will cause a lot people to purchase assets - which is no help at all, or expand capacity - which is not a help either. In fact, businesses will likely not invest much if they see we are in a recession.

By the way, those stats are kind of silly. You really want to see how GDP behaved under these people. This will show it rose remarkably under Kennedy, Clinton and Carter (although we got stagflation), and although rose some among the other presidents, they also experienced one or two recessions.

What would stimulate the Economy more: Increasing Food Stamps/Extending Unemployment or Investment Tax Cuts?

loan

Investment tax cuts

www.isnrblog.com|||I would say out of your choices extending unemployment. People without jobs have no money to put back into the economy. I think implementing freeze or cap on gas prices temporarily would stimulate the economy more than anything else possibly could. It%26#039;s $2.77 now, put the cap @$2.00. People would buy full tanks of gas. They would go out %26amp; drive. When they are away from home they spend money.

Regarding the grants for the children in inner city school districts. I actually like this idea. My children attend a poor school district that doesnt meet standards for academics or safety. We can%26#039;t afford to send them to a private school. This grant would help children get the education they deserve.|||This will happen if the tax cuts expire. Not a very bright future for tax payers.

Tax rates will rise substantially in each tax bracket, some by 450 basis points;

Low-income taxpayers will see the 10-percent tax bracket disappear, and they will have to pay taxes at the 15-percent rate;

Married taxpayers will see the marriage penalty return;

Taxpayers with children will lose 50 percent of their child tax credits;

Taxes on dividends will increase beginning on January 1, 2009;

Taxes on capital gains will increase, also beginning on January 1, 2009; and

Federal death taxes will come back to life in 2011, after fading down to nothing in 2010.|||You can%26#039;t Pay people%26#039;s way out of poverty.

We have %26quot;invested%26quot; billions and billions of dollars over the last forty years in the fight against poverty. And yet, we still have roughly the same percentage of the US population living in poverty (about 10%)

It seems obvious to me. If I give you $20.00 (or $200.00) you will spend it, and you will be no better off.

If I give an employer a $200.00 tax break for employing you, then you will earn fifty times more than that $200.00. (or more).

There is still a duty, on the part of any job seeker, to have some kind of employable skills. If you have zero qualifications for anything higher than fast food jobs, then its up to you to do something about that and stop blaming the government.

BTW, Congress writes all the laws and approves the budgets. The Democrats control Congress. That means that Congress must think the same way the President does, or they would not supply him with bills to sign.|||Two bad choices. It%26#039;s pretty clear, though, that investment causes wealth, and if you have to funnel money one way or the other, the investment tax cuts are clearly the way to go.

(This would be on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Comparing $300 million of one with $3 billion of the other is comparing apples and oranges.)

A better choice would be to hold taxes where they are, and cut back on government spending. That doesn%26#039;t necessarily mean making people starve, but it does mean eliminating waste...and there%26#039;s plenty of that in the federal government!

I%26#039;d start with the Department of Education. It%26#039;s amazing how counterproductive a lot of the spending in that department is. You%26#039;d think they%26#039;d want to make us smarter, not dumber.|||All three of them would work better than the tax rebate planed, which is estimated to actually increase spending by only 1/3 of the amount of the tax break. I doubt if any of them could be reasonably funded at a 100 billion.

The total outlay for food stamp program is about 30 billion so to put an additional 100 billion into the program would increase payments by a factor of 4. Given that much money on a temporary basis many recipients would save some of the windfall.

Extending and increasing unemployment benefits would in-part replace money from savings that the unemployed might otherwise spend but if it also eased the fear of unemployment, causing people who are working will save less as a precaution it might increase spending more than the government outlays to fund it. During the last recession the government outlay to fund an extension was less than 20 billion so such a program could not absorb 100 bilion in one year.

Temporarily investment tax credits will give tax breaks to spending that will occur any way, but it will also cause companies to buy now instead of later when the economy picks up and their investment is not needed to enhance economic activity. If the credit would cover 1/3 of the amount spent an increase in investment spending at least by 30% be needed to get full value from the stimulus, but only 10% would be needed to be better that what is being proposed.|||Like trying to stimulate anyone who has just had twenty orgasms,there comes a point when not only is any stimulation completely futile but is totally counter-productive.

Even any cursory knowledge of the facts as they exist today shows clearly that absolutely no stimulation should be done and in effect the economy needs desperately to be left to RECOVER .

The most serious but as yet un-realized problem (by WE THE PEOPLE ) with the US economy is that both individuals and governments have ballooned their DEBT especially in the past seven years.

http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/de...

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/12/03/us....

The average American is drowning in personal debt .THEY HAVE NO MORE MONEY !!!!.

Ignorant and irresponsible citizens and politicians want/need to PRETEND everything is OK but it isn%26#039;t.

Citizens would never elect a politician who told them the truth and as a result they get exactly the government and politicians they DESERVE.

Politicians KNOW this about voters and eventhough they know it is wrong,they will go along with this insane money give away for the ordinary voter like some spoilt little kid really believes that %26quot;money grows on trees %26quot;.

So these little children will get their FREE MONEY .

These spoilt little American voters have no idea of WHO OWNS AMERICA and like all little children who do not want to hear anything bad,these irresponsible brats just don%26#039;t want to know .

HERE ARE THE FACTS CHILDREN !!!!!

http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/vie...

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/consi...

China could literally bankrupt America by dumping their US assets (bonds etc) .

Even if all households were given a thousand dollars,that money would in many cases just go into buying more junk putting consumers even deeper in debt and astronomically alooning the US debt especially if the war monger Bush%26#039;s tax cuts are made permanent.

The net result of all this is what we all really know and that is as this house of cards collapses under it%26#039;s own debt,the rich and affluent will be relatively okay while the rest of us panhandle like our grandparents did in the 30s.

Already the huge population of baby boomers are retiring further ballooning the national debt as monies must be found to finance these obligations.

Yea,now tell yourselves this will never happen and just go out their and pick some money off that tree .