Newsweek Study: If GOP policies were adopted, we'd be much worse off economically!

kpete

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Sun Aug-29-10 09:54 AM
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Newsweek Study: If GOP policies were adopted, we'd be much worse off economically!

Edited on Sun Aug-29-10 09:54 AM by kpete

What they found was that if the GOP was free to apply the policies they have proposed, we would have 2.3 to something like 3.3 Million fewer jobs and a $371 Billion bigger national debt!

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They also take down that conflating thing the GOP does non-stop, where they claim if the top tax rate is raised to 39%, it will be a jobs killer. What the CBO found is that only 2% of small business owners fall into the over $250,000 a year income level. So NO! Taxing them will NOT impact small business job creation.

http://www.newsweek.com/...

Here is a slice of the assessment:

On jobs, it's a similar story. So far, Republicans have only said they'd do�or that they would've done�two large-scale things the Democrats haven't: (1) scrap the stimulus, and (2) extend the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 so as not to (in Boehner's words) "impose job-killing tax hikes on families and small businesses."

How would these measures affect employment? Regarding the stimulus, the answer is pretty clear. In a report out this week, the CBO estimates that between 1.4 million and 3.3 million fewer people would be employed right now if the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had never made it through Congress. Split the difference, and the pro-stimulus Obama moves ahead of the anti-stimulus GOP by about 2.35 million jobs. (A more dramatic estimate by the economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi puts the number at 2.7 million, but we'll stick with the CBO stats for now.)

The effect of tax cuts on job creation is a little trickier to tally. Extending all of them, according to the CBO, would lower unemployment by 0.3 to 0.8 percent over the next year or so; extending them solely for people making less than $250,000 would produce a somewhat smaller effect, for a difference of roughly 200,000 to 500,000 people. The problem, as economist William G. Gale of the Brookings Institution has noted, is that "of 11 potential stimulus policies the CBO recently examined, an extension of all of the Bush tax cuts ties for lowest bang for the buck." In fact, he continues, "letting the high-income tax cuts expire and using the money for aid to the states, extensions of unemployment insurance benefits, tax credits favoring job creation ... would have about three times the impact ... as continuing the Bush tax cuts."

In addition, it's unlikely that extending the cuts for the richest Americans would have much of an effect on small-business hiring, which is a claim that Republicans make with some regularity. Why? Because of the taxpayers that report running small businesses on their taxes, only 2 percent fall into the top two income brackets.* The other 98 percent of small-business owners make less than $250,000 a year and wouldn't pay higher taxes under Obama's plan.

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more:
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/08/26/on-jobs-and-deficits-republicans-are-worse-than-obama.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/8/29/897179/-Newsweek-Study:-If-GOP-policies-were-adopted,-wed-be-much-worse-off-economically!