An Article Posits Why Taxes Need Recalibration

[jackstar7]

Reasons tax policy should change

From the opening (not including the lead):

For the past decade, we have doubled down on this theory of supply-side economics with the tax cuts sponsored by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003, which President Obama has agreed to continue for two years.

You would think that whether this grand experiment worked would be settled after three decades. You would think the practitioners of the dismal science of economics would look at their demand curves and the data on incomes and taxes and pronounce a verdict, the way Galileo and Copernicus did when they showed that geocentrism was a fantasy because Earth revolves around the sun (known as heliocentrism). But economics is not like that. It is not like physics with its laws and arithmetic with its absolute values.

Tax policy is something the framers left to politics. And in politics, the facts often matter less than who has the biggest bullhorn.

The Mad Men who once ran campaigns featuring doctors extolling the health benefits of smoking are now busy marketing the dogma that tax cuts mean broad prosperity, no matter what the facts show.

Feel free to repost this thread with your own commentary in the OP.

-Schadenfroh (AT Mod)

 

[fskimospy]

If conservative tax policy has failed, it's only because it hasn't been conservative enough.

If there's a common steam of thought in the right wing of America today, it's that. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. We're always just one tax cut for the rich away from prosperity.

 

[manimal]

there should be a nice state funeral with all the followers in attendance. At the funeral crisis counselors should be present as well since reality and fantasy have blurred for too long not to be serious emotional issues.


Goodbye trickle down economics. We wont miss that voodoo that you do....

 

[brencat]

The problem is the choice we're presented with. It's either cut taxes/deficits don't matter or 'flat tax' with a max rate of 25%, or 50%+ in total tax burden with cap & trade driving up utility bills & gasoline at $6/gallon like in Europe.

NEITHER alternative is good. What makes sense to me as I've stated numerous times will NEVER be proposed by either party:

5 - 6 additional marginal rates at the truly high end ($750k+) and a phase-out of the 15% cap gains tax on investment income at some (reasonably high) level of total annual income so that the insane pay packages for CEOs and ball-players will stop and the idle rich living off the coupons of their massive investment portfolios will pay at least a reasonable effective rate of tax that is closer to what people on high cash salaries pay.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

If conservative tax policy has failed, it's only because it hasn't been conservative enough.

If there's a common steam of thought in the right wing of America today, it's that. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. We're always just one tax cut for the rich away from prosperity.

If the welfare state has failed, its only because it wasn't generous enough.

 

[fskimospy]

If the welfare state has failed, its only because it wasn't generous enough.

But the welfare state hasn't failed? In fact its the model in use by every industrialized nation on earth?

Also, I can point you to lots of cases where people and democratic leadership who endorse specific programs have admitted that they aren't working correctly, but in recent years I would have quite a tough time finding conservatives calling for additional regulations where the free market has failed, or ones that admit trickle down economics are a load of shit.

To be fair I'm sure they are out there, but uncommon.