Comments on: Pork & Pet Projects

Declan McCullagh Ladles Out The Lard In The Stimulus Package

[ubrew12]

Article: "Tax cuts are more promising, in part because they bypass the industrial policymakers of the nation''s capital"

I would definitely spend MY tax cuts on wind power, NASA and the National Science Foudation, border policemen, and shipyard upgrading.


If it weren''t for the $300 billion cost of paying the INTEREST on the Reagan/Bush debt every year, no one west of the Mississippi River would have to pay any taxes at all. That pays, essentially, for nothing. It pays for Ronald Reagans and GW Bush''s reelections.

Tax cuts don''t necessarily lead to tax savings.

[ioweign]

The Bush tax cuts amounted to how much ??

[matuliska]

This article is largely relying on the logic fallacy of "Appeal to Riducule". It makes fun of parts of the bill (calling them handouts, referring to crime investigators as "live high on the hog", putting into quotes certain words to de-emphasize them). It does not explain why these programs would not create jobs or help the economy. If we need to spend money to restart our economy, wouldn''t we want it spent on our law enforcement, our education, and our infrastructure? And as has been clearly pointed out in many sources, most people who get tax money back from a stimulus bill will put it into savings, or pay down debt. Thus create little to no job growth with it. Yes, I would like to not pay any taxes. But that''s not really the goal, now is it? The goal is to create jobs, and all the things ridiculed in this article do just that.

[taxguydave]

Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. The only song in the right-wing repertoire of economics.

Nobody likes paying taxes, myself included. But you can''t run a first world country on third world tax revenues. Our corporate taxes, once you get past the rate tables, are among the lowest in the world. Business entities pay a lower share of the tax burden here than in any other developed nation.

You mention the interstate highway system. By current definitions, the entire project would have been labeled "pork". But it provided unprecedented economic stimulus. Business developments like "just in time" inventories would be impossible without it.