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Obama's plans will fail

We've become an economy of sellers, consumers, and spenders, not producers and savers. If that trend doesn't change, we face a disasterous future.

We export more than we import. Our three largest exports to China: Electrical equipment, nuclear equipment, metals -- oh, and jobs.

Create jobs through tax credits, don't give us money to spend on foreign goods.

This is typical of conservatives. Businesses have been given tax credits after tax credits and they have done nothing to produce jobs or to help the economy. Besides, did you even listen to his speech. He is giving tax credits to businesses, just not in the way conservatives want him to. It's still the old "trickle down" attitude the conservatives still have that doesn't work. Tax credits to businesses where the rich in a second hand way benefit. I am with our new president elect. NO MORE! You conservatives have had your chance. It hasn't worked, it's gotten us into this mess. Besides, the analogy to Hitler is not only insulting it's downright disgusting! This letter writer should be ashamed of himself! Sour grapes is all it is!

Why does the DN print this drivel? DN editors, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Two paths of capitalizing/investment. One is to conintue spending on credit. The other is to spend on savings.

Spending on credit is unsustainable. It will ultimately lead to complete collapse in the long run.

Spending on savings is sustainable and will ultimately lead to prosperity.

Spending on credit, while harmful in the long run is easy right now. It is the path of least resistance and makes us feel good today.

Spending on savings is a tough pill to swallow in the short term. It will ensure a contraction in the economy both in consumer spending and job growth.

So we can do what is easy now and ensure economic collapse in the long run. Or...

We can do what is tough now but ensure long term economic viability.

This is really easy. Of course, we do what is easy in the short term, devil may care about what happens to our future. That is the motto of Washington DC. We have officially adopted the motto of the 60's hippie generation: If it feels good, do it!

The most basic economic lessons tell us Obama's plan won't work, just like Bush's didn't.

This is like the old story about the salesperson who is losing money on every sale but insists they will somehow miraculously make it up on volume!

Bush did his stimulous plan and here we are. Now if we will only spend more it will magically work this time.

The economy is wisely contracting as tens of millions of people are forced to live within their means. They are adjusting spending and in time will go back to the malls. This time more things will be bought with saved money, not money promised for the future.

We are watching reality tell us that Keynes was wrong. The hall mark of Keynesian economics is that of defecit spending. We hear this in the easier to understand version: Debt doesn't matter.

Tell that to the world right now!

The only people who really believe debt doesn't matter are either bankers who make money off of debt, or politicians at every level who get political clout off of debt.

Like a dog to its vomit!

how can anyone continue to advocate for trickle down economics given it has failed complete time and again.how can anyone continue to advocate for trickle down economics given it has failed complete time and again.

The old trickle down theory is based on the notion that you must not tax or regulate the wealthy for fear it will inhibit job growth and largess by the rich. Mexico seems to have it's share of super wealthy people and they don't have all the dreaded regulations, and taxes, that conservatives love to wring their hands over. Check out how things are working out down south of the border!

I ask: can there be trickle up economics? No you can't get from those who don't have.

Businesses need to have incentives to continue to stay in business.

Example, I went in to purchase a new truck at the end of 2008, I was told that if I purchased said truck before the end of the year I would be able to write-off $20,000 in taxes for my business. But, if I waited to purchase in 2009 I could only write off $6000. Why the difference? is this what we can look foreward to in the comming Obama administration? I hope not.

Obama's plans will fail as opposed to Bush's plans. Bush's plan have been specatular successes. Nobodies been better than Bush and planning then implementing those plans. And the people he's had lead those plans: even better!

Why are people aleady blaming Obama? He hasn't even taken office yet, and he's getting the blame that they should be giving the current president.

I understand that the DN is a conservative newspaper, but must we print these kind of articles nearly every day? By printing these articles it appears that the DN is trying to sabotage the new presidency. Honestly, no one knows whether he will fail. Quite frankly, I hope Obama doesn't.

It's funny how conservatives like to blame Congress for the state that we're in. They completely ignore that it was Bush's policies that got us here.
Why is Obama's policies supposedly more important or influential than Bush's now? If Obama fails, can we just blame Congress as Conservatives do?

People I guess forget, for 6 out of 8 years, Bush had a Conservative controlled Congress. He passed through whatever he wanted. Including tax cuts, which HAVE NOT benefited "Joe Sixpack" and "Hockey Mom."

We've had 8 years of proven FAILED policy. Allow now, Obama do try and fix the blunders and mistakes of the President that clearly deserves such a low approval rating.

The funny thing is that many liberals complain about the $500 billion spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, those same liberals are telling us that we are going to have multi year trillion dollar deficits.

The letter writer is wrong, Obama's plan is not like Hitler's (at least not yet). Obama is following FDR's plans, which, depending on what you read, lengthened the Great Depression by 7 years.

Given the choice between something that might work (Obama's plan) and something I know doesn't work (failed Republican policies), I'll take the possibility of success over the guarantee of failure every time.

Glad we have the drolls of highly educated on this paper and blog contributing to their own dismay. What would any President do without the throng of Nobel Prize economists at their sides. If I were President, I would definitely check here first, just in case the 180 IQs haven't thought of something.

Giving more taxe credits to business is like giving 250 billion dollars to the banks to make loans, no loans were made and business has not created new jobs. Teh government needs to put money directly into the economy. Government spending is what brought us out of the great deppression unfortunatly it was spent on armaments not infrastructure.

Yes! We need _more_ tax cuts for corporations because the government has such a huge unspent surplus, all of our nation's highways, waterways, seaports, airports and bridges are in tip-top condition, and because cutting corporate taxes has worked out so well for this country during the last eight years.

Oh... wait a minute...

Never mind.

Gee, its to bad the letter writter did not use his powers of looking into the future eight years ago.
Look what his ideas have done to America.

Obama's plan will fail, but I cannot relate a better plan. I am just a grumpy old man.

the analysis in the letter is flawed.

Sending stimulus checks to taxpayers won't work - because most taxpayers will use them to pay existing debts and bills rather than spending them to create demand. The bailout of the banking industry might have worked if our economy wasn't in a liquidity trap where interest rates are at or near 0%. Banks have money - they aren't loaning it out since there's no money to be made at 0%.

Tax cuts and other incentives for businesses to invest won't work since demand is insufficient to purchase the products businesses are already making. Put it another way: the inventory of unsold new cars sitting on lots is already huge, so why add more new cars no one is going to buy? Automakers aren't going to build new plants to build new cars when they can't sell the cars they've already built. It's the same for every industry.

Obama's plan may not work. If it doesn't, though, it's not because he's moving away from the disastrous trickle-down theories that have characterized conservatism since Reagan. It's because Bush and Paulsen have finally done the job Bush was elected to do, and destroyed our economy permanently.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that's what we're going to find out over the next few years.