Hillary Clinton's Economic Plan: Tax-And-Spend With A Vengeance

Investors Business Daily ^ | August 11, 2016 | Editorial

[expat_panama]

Election 2016: Hillary Clinton has big plans for the economy if she's elected president, as she made clear in her speech in economically troubled Warren, Mich., on Thursday. It's too bad that her big plans involve only big spending and big taxes, which will produce little if any economic growth.

Clinton's speech was framed around four questions. Which candidate has a plan to create good jobs? Who will ensure the top pay their "fair share" of taxes? Who will go to bat for families? And who can deliver results?

But her answer to every question was the same: more government spending...

Clinton's plan to create jobs, for example, is a $275 billion government works program dressed up as "rebuilding the nation's infrastructure." ...

She also says she'll increase...

Who will pay for all this? Easy, just tax businesses and the rich.

As we noted in this space recently, an independent review of Clinton's plan showed that it would be a fiscal disaster of historic proportions. The American Action Forum says her plan would hike taxes by $1.3 trillion, but boost spending by $3.5 trillion over the next decade, which would nearly double the national debt.

At one point in her speech, Clinton says "I happen to think we should be ambitious."

But her plan isn't ambitious. It is nothing more than tax-and-spend the likes of which the country has never seen -- one that would bankrupt the country and further wreck the economy.

[expat_panama]

...$275 billion government works program dressed up as "rebuilding the nation's infrastructure."

imho this is stupid, and it's why I disagree w/ folks who like T's offering twice as much.

[petercooper]

Rush was funny yesterday imitating Hillary giving the speech in that annoying monotone style.

[trebb]

imho this is stupid, and it's why I disagree w/ folks who like T's offering twice as much.

Trump's offering is predicated on revising the tax structure and spending money where it is intended to be spent, efficiently and within budget. Hillary's plan is to do what Obama did - tax more business types and divert the money to slush funds.

How can you disagree with the folks who prefer Trump's offering?

[rbg81]

The problem with spending Government money to stimulate the Economy is that as soon as the spicket is turned off, the jobs dry up and all you have is debt. It is also one of the least efficient/most expensive ways of creating jobs. Government stimulus seemed to work in WWII, only because the rest of the world was in ruins after the war and needed our stuff badly.

This phenomenon happens time and time again, but you don’t see the politicians deviate from this formula. Why? Because spending $$ is how they derive their power.

The current problem with the World Economy is that all the productive nations are “developed” and many of the emerging nations will never develop. So we are all trying to sell each other the same stuff and have largely reached a state of equilibrium, where growth will be weak at best, or negative at worst.

We need a real game changer—like the colonization of space to break out of the doldrums.

[jmaroneps37]

Her tv spot is cartoonish and designed to appeal to the morons she needs to vote for her. Exit tax? Really? That will be a one time cost of moving then it will be business as usual screwing America and American workers.

[expat_panama]

It's FRIDAAAAY!!! 

[that felt good]  So yesterday stocks popped up a half % in mediocre trade to all time highs while gold and silver are  slumping off a bit --now at $1,337.90 and $19.89.   Futures for today continue metals' nervousness -1.39% and stocks' pep +0.42%.

Number geeks flood warning

8:30 AM PPI
8:30 AM Core PPI
8:30 AM Retail Sales
8:30 AM Retail Sales ex-auto
10:00 AM Mich Sentiment
10:00 AM Mich Sentiment - Prelim
10:00 AM Business Inventories

And:

The Economic Fabric & Rising Recession Risks
Trump's Tax Brackets Not a Magic Cost Savings Bullet
Were Seasonal Adjustments Applied Fairly to Jobs Rpt.? - John Crudele
The Gigantic Importance of Supply Side Economics - Nathan Lewis,Forbes
Both Clinton and Trump Are Wrong About TPP - Daniel Griswold, MAT

[citizen]

How can you disagree with the folks who prefer Trump's offering?

How indeed? There's nothing wrong with infrastructure spending if it's properly and efficiently administered.
It is also necessary to even maintain a given level of prosperity, much less increase it.

[repentant_pundit]

We need a real game changer—like the colonization of space to break out of the doldrums.

Don't tell that to hilLiary...she'll just add it to her list of black hole govmint spending projects.

Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson are now competing on space travel, without taking a dime of tax money.

[expat_panama]

Tx for your explanation that you see it as "predicated on revising the tax structure and spending money where it is intended to be spent, efficiently and within budget"  and that pretty much matches up w/ our thread last week --Trump Just Promised To Double Down On Obama's Failed Stimulus.

While political ardor is all well and good for the faithful, Trump's half $T for roads'n'bridges will have to come out of this:

--and so far all I'm getting is that he's planning on increasing spending big time while his 'cuts' won't even hold a candle to the annual 10 baseline budget hike.

[expat_panama]

We need a real game changer—like the colonization of space...

I like that. 

Right now we already spend over $400B on roads'n'bridges and imho Hillary's wanting to add $275B or T's TWICE that is wrong.  NASA only gets $18B, how about adding a few hundred $B there maybe...

[rbg81]

I also believe, that, without some kind of frontier, humanity will stagnate. The only frontiers are space and the ocean floor.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Allowing the Bush Family and other RINOS to trash Reaganomics for 30 years has consequences.

[citizen]

I also believe, that, without some kind of frontier, humanity will stagnate.

Colonizing, terraforming & developing Mars and mining the asteroids should take centuries.

[bankwalker]

I think musk has taken a lot of tax money.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson are now competing on space travel, without taking a dime of tax money."

'Fraid not. Sure, there is "some" competition, but the source of the money is still largely from the fedgov....just by means of contracts and grants rather than directly via NASA. Many, many "dimes" of tax money are involved.

[expat_panama]

Colonizing, terraforming & developing Mars and mining the asteroids should take centuries.

There are lots of other things to do and ways to do it.  Consider--

After two more 2004 flights — one on Sept. 29 and another on Oct. 4 — the piloted vehicle won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for repeated flights in a privately developed reusable spacecraft. SpaceShipOne was a space plane designed and fabricated by Scaled Composites, a company owned by aerospace designer Burt Rutan.Oct 2, 2014

SpaceShipOne: The First Private Spacecraft | The Most ... - Space.com

--how much the private sector could do w/ a ten billion dollar prize.  While it cold literally move mountains into space, it would hardly be missed from our current candidates' half (Trump) or quarter (Hillary) $T for roads'n'bridges.

[rbg81]

I think that a lot of the nonsense we see today, including liberalism and the obsession with sexuality and gender, is the result of the lack of a real frontier.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Once the grid collapses, and Society with it, I will be Queen - baking my own bread, sewing my own clothes, fixing my own farm implements (bio-fuel powered, which I make myself), tending my small livestock, manning my secure perimeter and smiling, sittin’ here on my sack of veggie seeds. ;)

Seriously, I have NO answers for what ails us. All I know is that Mother Government is going to do the same sh#t over and over again, expecting different results.

The very definition of Insanity...

[9YearLurker]

Trump said this morning that a trillion won’t be enough for all the “infrastructure spending” we need.

[expat_panama]

REALLY??!