I am self employed. I have employees. To keep an experienced, cohesive unit for the next upswing, paying them comes first. If there is money left over after paying the expenses, I get paid. I hire enough staff to handle the business I have. If I make a profit, I pay income taxes - the lower my tax rate, the more I have to spend on myself.
Conservatives have argued for 3 decades that cutting taxes is the solution to everything from unemployment to bunions - at one point, they argued that we needed to lower taxes because we were paying off the national debt too fast, and that was supposed to be a bad thing [that was during the Clinton administration]. As a life long Republican, they lost me on that one - I thought we were only supposed to have debt to fund defense or stimulate the economy, otherwise it was good to get rid of it.
If I hear one more politician claim that cutting taxes results in employers creating jobs, I may climb a watch tower and start picking off people. Cut General Motors' corporate taxes? How many jobs does that create? [Oh, right, it's broke so it doesn't pay any] Cut Jay Leno's taxes, and he buys more antique cars, not hire more employees for the Tonight Show.
Cut my taxes, I don't create any jobs. Maybe I'll buy an Italian suit, a Toyota, a Sony widescreen, or go to Europe for two weeks. If I made a lot of money, cutting my taxes might cause me to buy a $500,000 yacht, a Ferrari, or a villa in Tuscany. Not too many jobs created in this country, even incidentally, from those purchases. If my taxes are cut, any jobs I help create are incidental and accidental.
Give me more clients who can afford to pay my retainer, and I just might have to expand my staff to handle the work. If there are no new clients, I don't make a profit, so cutting my taxes doesn't help anyone - no profit, no taxes - basic rule of economics. Give me customers with money, and I'll figure out how many people to hire. If there's profit, I'll pay the taxes and spend [or invest or save] the excess.
How the right wing of my party has convinced so many people to the contrary is beyond me. It's become a bromide of "truthiness." Educate children and take care of their health - somewhere down the road, they will make good, productive employees who will stimulate the economy, as I did. Fix health care so I can continue to provide good health care to my employees. Extend unemployment compensation when there are no jobs - the money gets spent at the gas station, McDonald's, pays rent locally, groceries, and generates more jobs - in most cases, the money gets spent as soon as it's collected, so it improves the business of others - they in turn can improve the business of others, and so on.
Put more cash in at the top, and it sits there. Give Ted Turner another $1,000,000, and he'll buy more acreage - how does that stimulate anything other than a warm feeling for Ted? Enough of Voodoo Economics. Let's get real, and get this economy going.
One other little tidbit: There's a commercial running that tries to put government expenditures into perspective: It claims the bailout is the equivalent of spending $1 million dollars a day since the birth of Christ - sure sound's like a big number. Here's another way of looking at it. Congress just approved an $800 billion dollar bailout. Yes that is a lot of money too, but it's barely twice the market capitalization of Exxon-Mobil. The stimulus package costs twice the worth of a single US company - maybe not such a bad investment if you look at it in those terms. And Exxon isn't the most valuable, it's just one I looked at out of curiosity.
