If I were writing that piece

Here is an interesting way to deal numbers, with the complete post to be read from the link:

Obama taxes us into recession  (Mish’s musings)

Withheld income and employment taxes have been running about 8.3% higher year over year, comparing the same 33 business days between Tuesday, January 8 and Monday, February 25.

Regardless, there is no doubt that the Obama Administration has taxed us into a recession. Congratulations.

Lifted from several e-mails in response to the link being sent:

Ken Houghton:    If I were writing that piece, it would be about how the cuts in taxes last year are the only thing that allowed people to pretend we were in a recovery, which has otherwise been jobless. (Check out YoY for 2009 to 2010 or 2010 to 2011.) Krugman is probably right not to dismiss out of hand the idea that you can sustain economic growth with a plutocracy, but it’s not at all an even odds bet.

Personal income was just released; down 3%.

The game with numbers was to treat the employer side of SocSec tax as if it would otherwise be circulating. It’s more accurate to think of that as I than C. (I would argue all of SocSec payments are I–a “forced savings” program, as it were–but that’s a sidebar.)

And we know that those monies were not being reinvested last year. (See Steve Roth’s post a couple of days ago.). Will be interesting if we see Excess Reserves start to fall when those tax payments all come due.

And a sad thank you, Mike. You and I may have improved our lot last year, but that was the exception, not the rule, and not without painful transition.

How we call extended joblessness and growth based on consuming savings a “recovery” befuddles me.

Dale Coberly: As I may have tediously tried to point out elsewhere, rescinding the tax holiday is not a tax raise.. it is the end of a government “stimulus” funded by borrowing, unnecessarily attached to the payroll tax for devious political purposes. the SS “tax” is always circulating… it goes to benefits to the otherwise poor elderly who spend it right away. unless you are going to fund those benefits by borrowing or taxing the rich, reducing the payroll tax would reduce “circulating” by the extent to which people “saved” that money for their eventual retirement… assuming they could find a way to “save” it, given the fact that no one is “investing.” i guess we could go back to gold coins buried in jars in the backyard. that should be good for the economy.