President Romney

[Little_Miss_1565]

Well, my mom hasn't been able to find a job for much longer than a year and is now trying to shortsell her house (which she may not even be able to do since the market is still so bad where she lives), and my father's in bankruptcy and may not emerge from it until retirement, if he's able to retire at all. (Which is the main reason I'm working 60+ hours a week, as my youngest sister is still in college.)

Despite all this, I know President Obama had zero to do with my family's predicament, nor is he the reason I was laid off from my corporate job a few years ago forcing me to work from 7 AM to 1 AM in shitty low-paying part time jobs every day until I found permanent work again after several months. Unemployment benefits wouldn't even cover my rent, so that wasn't an option.

I get that you and your family are in a lot of pain. I don't know the exact nature of your pain, as I'm not you. But your family is not the only one in this sort of a situation, and it's natural to wonder why this horrible thing is happening. But I think the GOP is using this fear against people to get the Executive Branch back, even though it's their policies that caused this whole mess and are the reason why Obama's efforts haven't gone far enough.

[WebDudette]

I was raised watching Fox News because my dad found it humorous.

A friend of mine told me he might vote Romney/Ryan. He thinks Ryan's plan to cut corporate taxes is a good idea because if the companies pay less tax they'll send less jobs over seas. Yeah, I am sure that's what they'll do.

[Little_Miss_1565]

The only thing that would cause a corporation not to send jobs overseas would be a penalty (monetary) on them sending jobs overseas. Corporations are out to make money, not create American jobs. If they can make more money by outsourcing, they'll do that, no matter what their tax bill is.

That said, I would support a lowered corporate tax rate as a reward for job creation.

[Godxilla]

I think that we all agree that more jobs need to be made in the US. But what really needs to happen is a tariff. A tariff so fierce and heavy that businesses would be broke if they tried sending jobs overseas. Like the rates of the 1900s. Look those up. THAT is the solution.

[OC HAU]

How in the hell do you pay down the national debt using funds that were borrowed in the first place? Makes no sense.

Cutting military funding is a slippery slope. There are bad people that want to harm the US.

Alright, so he'd have to cut from non-borrowed money, I guess you don't have the whole army borrowed. *where are my economic advisors?*

Yeah, let's slip into another war.

[WebDudette]

A penalty/reward system sounds good to me. However, simply cutting taxes isn't going to encourage anyone to create more American job opportunities, they will just use the extra money to hire more overseas workers. I'm not sure why he thinks they would do anything different.

[Little_Miss_1565]

Pretty sure they don't think it would do anything different and they just want people to support their kicking back money to their donors.

I really wish George Carlin was still alive. I would love to hear him get fired up about both sides of the aisle.

[_Lost_]

Gas prices...doubled. Housing values...down 35%.

Just to be clear, in '05, I was paying nearly four bucks a gallon for regular. In '09, I was paying less than $2.50.

The housing market's devaluing is due ENTIRELY to companies lending money to people who can't come even close to being able to afford that mortgage in flexible rate loans that make your payments start cheap and then gradually get more and more expensive to make up for the initially low payments, thus causing mass foreclosures. If there are lots and lots of extra houses on the market, their value goes down. How did Obama cause any of that? These poor lending practices had been getting worse and worse for more than a decade. Then the bubble burst. Happens.

[Godxilla]

You are lucky, Lost. Two bucks fifty? Wow.

[Little_Miss_1565]

No president can control the price of gas. They can have a short-term effect on it by releasing barrels from the strategic oil reserve, but that's about it. War in the middle east has an effect on the price of gas, naturally, as does refinery fires (which is what has been causing gas to be so expensive on the west coast lately).

Presidents definitely can empower or disempower regulatory commissions overseeing bank lending processes, though. Predatory lending and falsifying documents to give loans to people who would otherwise never qualify for them? Goddamn right it's going to crash the market. Now otherwise well-qualified people can't even get loans because no one wants to take on any risk, since they nearly tanked the entire economy by taking on entirely too much risk.