where's the money coming from?

[handmade34]

https://inequality.org/great-divide/a-buyback-for-our-future/?source=newsletter

If top U.S. Corporations can afford to spend over $5 Trillion buying back their own shares of stock, how can the United States not afford a New Green Deal???


...let’s buy back our future.

[empedocles]

1. Driving up stock prices/averages is great support for traitortrump

[Hoyt]

2. Well to be fair, that $5 Trillion is since 2007, 12+ years ago. So we're talking less than

Last edited Mon Apr 1, 2019, 08:44 PM - Edit history (1)

$450 Billion a year (which a portion of that is returned in tax revenue, other investments, etc.). $450 Billion a year doesn't even cover the annual deficit in those years. In some years -- particularly trump years -- it doesn't even cover half the Deficit. So, it's not like the mother lode has been discovered.

To be clear, I'm not against the Green New Deal. I just like to be careful about where the revenue source comes from, because there are other things competing for that money too.

That $450 Billion annually -- if the government took it all -- would be another tax, and not just a tax on the wealthy. Lots of people -- who aren't in the top 25th -- or even 50th —percentile own stocks. Taxes do need to be increased. But whatever the magic number is where taxes can be increased, we keep spending it over and over for New Deals for healthcare, education, jobs training, infrastructure, Social Security, etc. Those are things we also need.

[JayhawkSD]

3. Well, the resolution now before the House costs nothing.

It is merely a statement that the government should do something and some rather vaguely worded statements about what it should do. It does not specify any action that actually is to be taken by the government.

You can read it for yourself. "Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal..."

It's actually twice removed from specifying real action. First in merely stating that it is "the sense of the House," and second in stating that "it is the duty of the Federal Government" without demanding that the government fulfill that duty.