Kings Island and Mason go to war over admission and parking taxes

C'mon, LK. Everybody knows that Walmart is the epitome of evil and mistreats their employees. I heard they keep them in small cages and don't let them see the light of day. No wait, that's chicken farms.

RatherGoodBear said:
Daemon, do you even read your own posts before hitting the submit button? You're the one who said to increase taxes on the top 1% and give that money to the lower classes so they will spend it and get the economy moving again.

Yeah, I did, which is not even remotely the same as:

RatherGoodBear said:

If the argument is that we have all these programs we're trying to fund, deficits we have to payoff, etc., and we need to get more revenue, the idea that you'll collect enough from the top 1% to cover all of that, it's incorrect.

See that? Getting the economy pumping again isn't the same as solving every financial problem on Earth, and making puppies even cuter. I'll give you benefit of the doubt and assume you just don't know what a straw man is. Google it.

If our Federal government had a clue about how to get the economy moving, the first thing they would do would be to cease all debate about any changes whatsoever to the health care system, as the uncertainty about what Congress is eventually going to come up with has employers more scared than the probability of higher premiums in the near term. The second thing they should have done was to scrap the "stimulus package" and instead simply issue a one-time $800 across-the-board tax credit and instruct employers to not collect that first $800 in Federal taxes accordingly. It would have been the same "cost" but it would have actually put the money into the economy immediately instead of funneling it through a bunch of make-work programs many of which still haven't started yet, and most of which won't actually put any more money into the economy.

I guess those freeway noise walls are pretty, though...

Anyway, to get back on topic...there isn't a lot they can do about an admission tax, but if the parking tax passes, I think Kings Island's response ought to be to make parking "free". Heck, I am surprised that Kings Island didn't do that years ago anyway, given their heavy reliance on season passes, most of which include parking...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Yes, but the federal government already tried that with Bush's first $600/person stimulus. Remember those checks we got? But what was found was that instead of spending that money, most consumers either used it to pay down debt or prop up savings -- neither of which helped the economy in the short term. Which is why Obama structured his stimulus as a reduced withholding for taxes spread over a period of some months, so that consumers were more likely to spend those little dribs and drabs rather than hoard them. (I still haven't heard how well this theory worked.)

Ensign Smith said:
(I still haven't heard how well this theory worked.)

I think you probably have your answer right there.

And Gonchar scores... :)

Given the nature of the financial crisis that hit last fall, if enough Americans had taken money to pay down debt or prop up savings (or catch up on debt payments) we might have been able to spare ourselves a few trillion dollars worth of bank bailouts.

Okay, not really. But still...it really doesn't matter what the consumer does with his money so long as he does *something* with it. Stuffing it into a mattress won't do anybody much good, but otherwise, whether it is saved, invested, or spent, it still makes it into the economy. You do understand that when you deposit cash into your savings account it doesn't just sit there, right?

Also, the tax withholding changes that were made this year did not include any change in tax rates, which means that for most of us it means a smaller refund check or a larger tax bill next Spring. Most of the actual funds spent in the stimulus package seem to have gone to green-lighting a bunch of highway projects, many of them of dubious value. While that keeps some well-paid construction workers employed, it really is a pretty narrow chunk of the total economy, and certainly not the part that has shed the most workers....

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The government needs to spend more money it doesn't have/can't afford to make up for money consumers don't have/can't afford that consumers are no longer spending. :)

Ensign Smith said:
Yes, but the federal government already tried that with Bush's first $600/person stimulus. Remember those checks we got?

No, because I apparently made too much money to get one.

The key thing to economic stimulation is that money spent toward it actually results in commerce. Tax breaks/refunds/rebates don't guarantee this in any way, and in a down economy in particular, individuals are more likely to save, pay bills or just get by with that money, as was the case last time. Spending on specific projects helps get around that, but the projects also need to have some kind of trickle-down good to them.

Lord Gonchar said:

Ensign Smith said:
(I still haven't heard how well this theory worked.)

I think you probably have your answer right there.

Serves me right for leaving one hanging out over the plate.... ;)

Dave: in a normal banking world, money going into savings gets pumped back into investment and loans to businesses. It need not be mentioned, however, that the banking world of 2009 is not a 'normal' one by any stretch of the imagination.

How many people were laid off since the second rebate went into effect, and therefore have no withholding to be reduced, or at least not the full amount originally intended?

While I believe we sorely need to update/replace the infrastructure in this country, even without it being part of a stimulus package, a lot of what I saw being done was cosmetic at best. A lot of roads were re-paved. I talked with a friend who's a roadway engineer, and he said there was no design involved, basically a paving contractor would go out, mill down a few miles of existing road, and they'd pave it over.

So there'd be around 20 people involved in a project lasting maybe a month. I'd also see the same company's vehicles doing several different projects over the course of the summer. Driving past them to work, I'd recognize the flag people, and the lady with the long frizzy hair who ran one of the rollers. I wondered if those same 20 people got counted over and over as "saved" or "created" jobs every time they paved a different stretch of road.

They did a story about this up here in Seattle recently, and the contractors that they talked to came to similar conclusions, that it's stuff that would get done anyway. But they also say that if the recovery/investment funds weren't there, the state would likely not do the projects at all, meaning the contractors would have no work. So yeah, I think a lot of this stuff maintains more than it leads to recovery.

Don't forget that virtually every drop of asphalt, and most of the cement, used in those projects is produced in the U.S. So there is an add-on effect of asphalt, cement, and other related industries receiving work as well. Though I do agree that in a lot of those projects, it was more a matter of preserving existing jobs rather than generating new ones.

Wow, you guys give Politico a run for its money :-). While I'm uneasy about making China our primary bondholders, I really think the stimulus was needed. Who knows what kind of downturn would have ensued if nothing was done. .

We should be more concerned about how much our debt is (and will become) than we are who holds it. And if things don't get better when you spend a lot of money, the next best thing is to say things would have been worse had you not done so.

Most economists have been saying the stimulus package was far too small from the very beginning.

Far too small for what?

I think the "stimulus package," was a big mistake in the first place. It's pushed our country deeper in debt. How are we gonna paythis off without screwing everybody over?

Dj, I think you're playing the "straw man" now. ;)

Oh, without *any* action by the Federal government, there is almost universal consensus among economists that we'd have soup lines and 20+% unemployment. That being said, we certainly could have directed the bailouts and stimulus money a little better.

I'm not going to pretend to have read everything above - but one glance at the auto industry is enough to see that for an entire generation (that's 25 years, folks), the US manufacturers had basically abandoned the idea of building cars "people" wanted in favor of building cars CEOs wanted. I'd have ended up giving them money...AFTER they'd showed a commitment to looking forward to electric, flex-fuel, 40mpg cars, etc.

^ Here's what I want in a car: Something I can actully work on and FIX myself. I don't need a frickin' navigation system, leather, and power-folding seats!

I'm still bummed that Ford's gonna discontinue the Ranger.

There does appear to be a consensus among economists that there had to be some kind of stimulus. Politicians and other idealists who don't agree are certainly welcome to their opposing opinion, but they're not economists.

And people worry too much about who owns our debt, particularly that it's China. Keep in mind that we're the ones who buy all of their crap. They have just as much an interest in our economy as we do.