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No tax increase to the wealthy means no welfare to the middle class and poor. HmmmmmmQuote:
Originally Posted by dragonrider
I guess Obama will get a pass an all his promises. LOL, this dude hasn't even taken office yet and your giving him excuses for not living up to his word?;)Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonrider
Have a good one!:s4:
I wasn't aware he actually made any campaign promises regarding decriminalizing weed. He didn't, did he?Quote:
Originally Posted by Psycho4Bud
canada has inflation, very loose credit policies such as fractional reserve banking, & incredibly fraudulent stock market, bond, and derivitive policies and the subprime crisis only nicked our banking system...our economy wasn't affected much either: we're losing some growth due to the recession in the usa (our biggest trading partner) but our economy probably won't go into a recession...canada has more bank regulation and as a result, the best banking system in the world:
Canada rated world's soundest bank system: survey | Reuters
bad lending practices on the part of the banks caused the current economic crisis: bad mortgages and bad mortgage back securities...regulation will reduce that risk significantly
the economy will rebound with or without government intervention, but the government has a role to play in mitigating the effects on poor people, and rebuilding a strong middle class...up here in soviet canuckistan, almost two thirds of the social programs go to the middle class...even millionaires get handouts from the government...i know that is considered evil socialism in some parts of the usa, but without government programs, the canadian middle class would have shrunk by about 6 percentage points between 1980 - 2000...instead, our middle class grew by 4 percentage points during the same period
Canada: The rise of the middle class
The secrets of Canada's world-leading middle-class success
DOUG SAUNDERS
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
August 4, 2007 at 12:00 AM EDT
LONDON ?? This long weekend, as Canadian highways fill with lakeside-bound cars and airports with resort-bound families, it is hard to believe that we are anything but a middle-class nation.
After years of full employment and impressive economic growth, you'd think the entire country had been elevated into the secure world of home ownership, retirement savings and weekends on the dock. There's some truth to this vision ?? but it's a lot stranger than you'd think.
The middle class, around the world, is in trouble. As my articles from India in the past two weeks have shown, poor countries are seeing stunning growth without producing the sort of big, sustainable middle class that leads to peace and long-term stability. There are too many barriers to prevent people from leaving poverty.
But what about countries such as ours, which have had big middle classes for decades? Here, we see a surprising version of the same effect ?? with notable exceptions. A comprehensive look at the workings of the world's middle class has just been published by Steven Pressman, an economist at Monmouth University in New Jersey. In his The Decline of the Middle Class: An International Perspective, Canada plays a fascinating role.
From 1980 to 2000, a period of explosive economic growth and expanding wealth, most major Western nations actually saw their middle classes shrink in size. The middle-income ranks (earning 75 to 125 per cent of the median income) in Britain shrank by 4.5 percentage points; in Sweden by 7.1 points; and in the U.S. by 2.4 points. These numbers represent tens of millions of people.
Were all these people disappearing from the middle class because they got rich? Or had they failed to find a place on the economic escalator and slipped to the ground floor?
??There was both upward and downward mobility,? Mr. Pressman told me, ??but downward mobility exceeded upward mobility by around two to one.?
But there are exceptions to this trend. Switzerland's and Germany's middle classes stayed roughly the same size. And two countries ?? Norway and Canada ?? saw their middle classes grow substantially. In Canada, it grew to 37 per cent of the population from 33 per cent, the equivalent of a whole mid-sized province joining the station-wagon brigade, moving Canada into the league of Scandinavian nations in the size of its middle class.
Some of this came from wealthier Canadians being humbled: During the same 20 years, the upper class shrank by 1.9 percentage points, to 33.3 per cent of the population. But more came from poor families moving up. Canada is a middle-class success story, especially compared with the slouching United States. But the story doesn't end there.
Mr. Pressman set out to learn what is making the middle class collapse in many countries but expand in others. Some have attributed these changes to an aging population, the number of working women or divorce rates. He used statistical methods to remove age and gender from the picture, but the patterns remained the same.
Then he looked at unemployment: Were countries with rising employment rates experiencing a growing middle class? Nope. Britain has far lower unemployment than Canada, but a shrinking middle class: ??While jobs were being added, households were not moving into the middle class.? In the Netherlands, unemployment fell dramatically, but the middle class declined.
Then Mr. Pressman took his data and subtracted everything except salary and wage earnings. That is, he looked at what would be happening if people lived off only the money paid by their employers.
Suddenly, everything changed. Canada's great middle-class boom turned into an enormous decline: If people were forced to live off their earnings alone, our middle class would have shrunk by a staggering six percentage points. The same was true in Germany. In Britain, the middle class would have contracted even more dramatically.
What had Mr. Pressman subtracted? In short, government: All the handouts, tax benefits, subsidies and rebates that transfer money into middle-class pockets (not including pensions). Without government help, Canada's middle class would be endangered.
In a modern economy, Mr. Pressman told me, ??I am not sure that the middle class can be self-sustaining. It seems to require active government policies. The market tends to produce great inequalities in income; these inequalities seem greater in a global economy.? Contrary to earlier economic belief, the countries that are most competitive in a globalized economy are those with the most robust tax-and-spend programs. But they have to be aimed at the right places.
Many Canadian families wouldn't be middle-class if it weren't for government handouts. One key example is the thousands of dollars that Ottawa reimburses parents for child-care expenses each year: Without it, many women wouldn't be able to work, so their families would be deprived of one income and may slide into the lower-class bracket. Tax-funded aid for education savings, first-time home buying, retirement savings plans and medical coverage add up: If you gave up all these breaks, would you still be in the middle class?
I compared these findings to information on the money governments actually spend on different classes and got a surprising result: The countries doing well are the ones that don't just help out the middle class, but do so at the expense of the poor.
Canada hands a comparatively paltry 22 per cent of its spending to the poorest three-10ths of the population and a generous 64 per cent to the middle four-10ths, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Germany, one of the few other countries with a non-shrinking middle, gives only 22.3 per cent to the poor.
Compare that with Britain, whose Labour government spent the 1990s changing social programs so that the money went to the poor rather than the middle class; in Britain today, 34.7 per cent of social spending goes to the lowest-income third ?? and yet the British middle class has shrunk. In Sweden, where almost 30 per cent of spending goes to the poor, the middle class was clobbered.
It may be that traditional welfare-state programs do more to keep people in poverty than to guide them out ?? a criticism that has been levelled from both the left and the right. Or perhaps there's a new sub-class of ??precarious? casual workers, who never are quite poor enough to qualify for welfare or prosperous enough to earn the state benefits of the comfortable middle. Such workers, key to our new national wealth, could be in serious trouble.
Herein lies the paradox of the modern middle class: Its existence is reliant on a thriving and open market economy, but its size and sustainability are equally dependent on the tax-and-spend mechanisms of the modern welfare state ?? which, it turns out, are even more important in globalized, high-competition economies.
The countries that are doing best are those that spend serious money on cultivating and maintaining a middle class. Many poor countries, despite having developed booming economies during the past 15 years, fail to join the middle-class club because they can't afford to erect government-supported stepladders to success. And countries such as Canada, which can and do spend that money, have done the best at surviving the social turmoil of our age.
For the first time since his presidential bid began, the Obama Campaign has clarified the Senator's position on marijuana: stop arresting people for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonrider
The announcement comes as a bit of a surprise after Obama recently raised his hand in opposition to marijuana decrim at a recent democratic debate. Seeking to paint him as a flip-flopper, The Washington Times dug up footage of a 2004 appearance in which Obama said this:
"I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws," Mr. Obama told an audience during a debate at Northwestern University in 2004.
Barack Obama Comes Out in Favor of Marijuana Decriminalization [Updated] | Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)
He is all things to everyone with a need....now it's time to walk the walk.:D
Have a good one!:s4:
great news!
thats what bill clinton said AFTER he moved out of the white house...at least obama got the timing right
obama must be talking about federal arrests only...how many people get popped by the feds for pot? is it a lot?
He's NOW responsible for the federal law aspect of it. Laws here after arrest are broken down into City, State, and Federal offenses. Doesn't matter who does the bust, it's under what statute your prosecuted due to amount.Quote:
Originally Posted by maladroit
As for Clinton, we saw one of the largest increases on the war on drugs during his terms.
Have a good one!:s4:
If MJ was made leagle and sold in stores run by the state or the federal government I believe the United States could indeed pay off it's debt within ten years mabe sooner.
Say a 25% tax even. So if an 1/8 cost you 40 in the federal store afetr taxes you would be paying 50 for the 1/8.
plus the government would be better able to handle distribution and access.
While states would still benifit from fines due to neglegent use such as DUID.
Just like they do for Alcohol, public intox....driving under influance ect.
Now both sides win.
maladroit youre contradicting yourself.. how do they have loose credit policies, fraudulent stock, bond, and derivitive pol. but you're saying that here in the US bad mortgage and bad mortgage back securities hurt us.. loose credit policies cause bad mortgages.. stocks, bonds and derivitives are the securities so that means that it has bad mortgage backed securities also.
anyway the reason it probably didnt hit yall as bad is because you all have a strong middle class but I dont care how much regulation you have.. if Canada has everything you named, your system will be hit to it will just take longer....
When they gave up the last bail out of 700 billion to the banks they exec's sqandered it and horded it. If he or they wanted to really pump up the ecconomy they should ofdevided it equilly and given every tax paying american $250,000. Hell Thats enough to pay off my house, pay off all those bad credit accounts, buy a truck, puchase land in the mountains go on vacation.Quote:
Originally Posted by marijuanaisgr8
You know why they didnt do that...... Because they wanted to line their fat cat friends wallets and PHUC the working man!
And If obama wanted to kick the ecconomy in the ass he would do the same and have this countries ecconomy back on track in 4 months.
Hell I might even open a business and create a few jobs!
What he will do iscrash the old monitary system then usher in the one allready designed.......called the Amero for the North American Union.
Google it.
I already know about the Amero it's no secret... and the fact of the matter is that you cant fix economic problems with more inflation.. you can only plug up the leaks until the water overflows has no where to go and pops the leaks out again. So there is no type of economic stimilus that will work no matter how much it is. But yea Im a firm believer that the dollar is going to crash so Im just waiting!!!