Layoffs

[Timber Loftis]

Just heard that my firm laid off upwards of 40 secretaries today. Sorry to point this out, but a lawyer is absolutely useless without a secretary. The guy who bills time out at $250/hr. is not economically viable without a secretary to do the numerous time-consuming things (filing, mailing, word processing, time-keeping, etc) that are essential to a professional office.

Things are tough all over. Mr. President -- the clue phone is ringing. It might not be the red-colored secure line from Rummie's office, but it is just as important.

[harleyquinn]

I completely agree with you TL. My mother was the secratery for 3 lawyers at a firm for 10 years. They never would have been able to get anything done with out her. Sorry for those ppl who just lost their job and sorry for you who's job will be that much more difficult for it

Talk to Congress not the President TL. He has a proposal out, the people in the Senate have to figure out how to make it work. (by the way, Large Tax cuts in a slow economy have always worked to stimulate the economy every time it was done.) And deficits aren't all that bad if they aren't out of control. I read somewhere once that listed deficit spending was a marvelous tool of modern economics....I think it was in a history class [img]smile.gif[/img]

I would also like to mention, that the government doesnt produce new jobs or economic growth...that is private industry that does those things...it is governments job in these cases to remove hinderences to industry.

Edit: As for being Useless without your secretary....I would say less than cost effective without the secretary [img]smile.gif[/img] But wether you call them secretary's or administrative assistants....they are important.

[ 05-07-2003, 01:26 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[Timber Loftis]

Upwards of 5 trillion *is* out of control - and that's the President's proposed debt at the end of his 10 year projection. Even at a 1% loan, that's $50 billion per year in interest alone. $50 billion: that's the cost to run a four week war in Iraq, btw.

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Upwards of 5 trillion *is* out of control - and that's the President's proposed debt at the end of his 10 year projection. Even at a 1% loan, that's $50 billion per year in interest alone. $50 billion: that's the cost to run a four week war in Iraq, btw.

Yer starting to foam at the mouth guy [img]smile.gif[/img] Slow down...take deep breaths. Accounting is a highly manipulable study and the numbers like statistics can say whatever the person doing the study wants them to..... We arent in danger of going aground. Most of the "professional" money types are saying a tax cut would be a good thing and a period of deficits won't kill us.....at least that is what I hear. I have also noted that other than NOT giving tax cuts....the other party doesnt have a plan for doing anything for the economy....except spend more and run up deficits [img]smile.gif[/img] (Can you say free prescription medicine for everyone?)

[Sir Taliesin]

Should have laid the lawyers off and kept the secretaries!
Of course the firm stands less of a chance of being sued from the secretaries, than they do from the lawyers! Sorry TL, I just couldn't resist!!!

[Seraph]

Most of the "professional" money types are saying a tax cut would be a good thing and a period of deficits won't kill us.....at least that is what I hear.

Well, then I would suggest that you?re probably spending too much time listening to politicians, and not enough time to real economists. I personally haven't talked to a single economist that was able to come up with a defendable explanation of why the current plan is good. A deficit spending (the Bush) plan does have its uses, but its limited to situations where the US is trying not only to help itself, but other places out of the slump. This is why WWII got the US out of the great depression. Tax cuts outside of this have a nasty tendency to put the economy into inflation mode. Such as what happened durring the "stagflation" era, or when Regan decided to cut taxes (the latter example also shows a good example of monatary and fiscal policy working against each other. The Fed was doing its best to prevent the economy from hitting inflation, and the cost was the increadibly high intrest rates of the early 80s).

The proper thing to do in the current economy is to try to stablize things and make buisness confident enough that it can start investing again. The intrest rate is so low at this point that there is no reason for a company not to invest, except for fear of what might happen in the future. If buisness will start investing again, then the economy will grow. The problem right now isn't people, its buisness, and I haven't seen one attempt to help buisnesses that came close to something like attacking Iraq, and no one seems to be sure if thats the end. There are not many companies that are going to invest when they are not sure whats going to happen a year from now.

Originally posted by Seraph: quote: Most of the "professional" money types are saying a tax cut would be a good thing and a period of deficits won't kill us.....at least that is what I hear.

Well, then I would suggest that you?re probably spending too much time listening to politicians, and not enough time to real economists. I personally haven't talked to a single economist that was able to come up with a defendable explanation of why the current plan is good. A deficit spending (the Bush) plan does have its uses, but its limited to situations where the US is trying not only to help itself, but other places out of the slump. This is why WWII got the US out of the great depression. Tax cuts outside of this have a nasty tendency to put the economy into inflation mode. Such as what happened durring the "stagflation" era, or when Regan decided to cut taxes (the latter example also shows a good example of monatary and fiscal policy working against each other. The Fed was doing its best to prevent the economy from hitting inflation, and the cost was the increadibly high intrest rates of the early 80s).

The proper thing to do in the current economy is to try to stablize things and make buisness confident enough that it can start investing again. The intrest rate is so low at this point that there is no reason for a company not to invest, except for fear of what might happen in the future. If buisness will start investing again, then the economy will grow. The problem right now isn't people, its buisness, and I haven't seen one attempt to help buisnesses that came close to something like attacking Iraq, and no one seems to be sure if thats the end. There are not many companies that are going to invest when they are not sure whats going to happen a year from now. [/QUOTE] In another subject you might be right Seraph..but in this case the economists I talked to aren't politicians [img]smile.gif[/img] They are college professors who do not run for office [img]smile.gif[/img] Stagflation happend during a period of extremely high interest rates and high taxes...it was as someone else posted an anomaly and can't be used as a base model. In the Reagan era The amount of money that came into the government due to the tax cuts and the resulting economic growth saw huge deficits mostly due to increased spending by congress...the more moeny they took in...the more they wanted to spend. Anyway..this could get debated for ever and I didn't really want to start this all over again....

[Seraph]

In another subject you might be right Seraph..but in this case the economists I talked to aren't politicians They are college professors who do not run for office

Not running for office, and not pushing a political agenda are very different things. I've found that a solid majority of college professors are pushing some sort of agenda in their class. I currently have a very socialist economics professor, I'd probably have to be on drugs in order to think he wasn't pushing an agenda.

On a different topic, can you put me in touch with some of these professors? I've yet to find an economist that held the position that the tax cuts were the correct option.

Stagflation happened during a period of extremely high interest rates and high taxes...it was as someone else posted an anomaly and can't be used as a base model.

Stagflation wasn't an anomaly.
Friedman predicted "stagflation" with high unemployment and inflation at the same time in his 1968 Presidential Address. He was widely considered a nut, but the years that followed showed him right. He eventually received a Nobel Prize for what he did. The cause of Stagflation was a belief that the Phillips curve worked over a wide range of situations. The Keynesian economists took something that was a poorly understood, and assumed that it would cover a wide variety of situations. Unfortunately it didn't and they pushed the country right into "stagflation".

In the Reagan era The amount of money that came into the government due to the tax cuts and the resulting economic growth saw huge deficits mostly due to increased spending by congress...the more money they took in...the more they wanted to spend.

I was referring to the 7% interest rates that Reagan caused. Reagan managed to push the economy up to the point where the Fed basically had two options. Option 1 was to do nothing and destroy any creditability it had. Option 2 was to clamp down on the money supply and bring the economy back to a normal level. I'd be very suprised if you could find a measurable minority of economists that think that the supply side economics of the early Reagan administration were a good idea. It?s generally a bad idea to use fiscal policy to totally undermine what the Fed is attempting to do. In this case the Fed was trying to avoid inflation, Reagan pushed the economy to go faster, the Fed had to try harder. The result was that the economy basically went nowhere, except that there were very high interest rates which made businesses not want to invest (actually, the math actually suggests they would want to un-invest which is basically what they did, shrinking inventories are a big sign that there?s a problem with business confidence).


The US unemployment rate is around 6%, which is high, but it?s not awful (full employment is around 4%). Using tax cuts it would be very easy to over-stimulate the economy into an inflationary state (ala Reagan). Its very hard to do this by increasing buisness confidence.

LoL Seraph, as I said..this can be debated adnauseum...and has been on several occasions...I'll give in gracefully and agree to disagree [img]smile.gif[/img]