we own family business and pay very competitive market wages ( as well as crazy business and family taxes)
Julia, with all due respect, and I do respect you, personally. If I am not mistaking, your family business was formed due to contracts from large institutions, with some of your professional connections. (I recall reading this a while back).
There is a huge difference between receiving a contract and fulfilling it, and a competitive day-to-day operations of a small, wild-roaming business that needs to get a capricious customer to spend his/hers own honestly earned money.

Julia, and if you pay high taxes - business and family - it just proves once again that when the politicians want to start taxing the rich and the corporations to pay for all the good, well-intentioned things, you and I and other not that rich but working people end up paying the higher taxes.. the rich and the corporations will find ways to avoid it.. it's just the way it is..there is nothing anyone can do about it unless they want to completely destroy the business sector in this country..just like when the AMT was instituted, it was intented to target the wealthiest in the country, but now millions of working people pay it (and every year that number goes up) because the politicians got addicted to the money and don't want to adjust it since they'll lose billions of dollars.. it just proves that it's better for the government not to grow and spend, but limit their spendings and let people live, start businesses, create jobs and it will actually help a lot of them..

There is a huge difference between receiving a contract and fulfillingit, and a competitive day-to-day operations of a small, wild-roamingbusiness that needs to get a capricious customer to spend his/hers own honestly earned money.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
what about not so honestly earned money? :-)

so then you of all people should have been supportive of thestimulus package which allowed many of your capricious customers keeptheir jobs and continue spending their "honestly earned" money at yourplace of business.

furthermore, it seems like you almost begrudge Julia her"connections"... I find this especially ironic because you yourself(and many others here) continuously write about the equal opportunitiesand the fairness of the free market... using your own argument, what's preventing you from establishing the same professional connections and forming a similar business?

Lina, do your hands get twisted when you type?
I don't know where you live, work and which human connections you keep, but one needs to live in a bunker 1,000 foot deep in the core of the earth to think that there are real people who benefited from Spendulus and have more spending money now, comparing to 2 years ago.

Должен извиниться перед Юлией Стайн, когда то давно я прочитал о её семейном бизнесе и сделал вывод что её профессия в комбинации с медицинским профилем их бизнеса должны быть связаны. Подтверждение старой американской фразы, "never ASSUME anything". I assumed and made an ass out of myself.

I live in the tri state area, have pretty much always worked in the financial sector, therefore I know of what I speak... that's why I can confidently say that I'm pretty sure that the people who got to keep their jobs benefited as didthe businesses that continued receiving their disposable income. maybe it's you who needs to get out into the real world every now and then. :)

I actually meant to say corporate bailout instead of the stimulus package (which is not without its merits) - if that makes any difference

Corporate bailouts is a form of statism. Just like in fashist Italy, itsn't it? Just think about it. Obama is all about crony capitalism.

I love this quote by Thomas Sowell:

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

the government will end up making money from the "bail out".. they actually already making money from it.. i think AIG and GM are the only 2major companies that have not paid back.
stimulus was just a huge load of pork :(