Has Republican Congress finally learned they'll need to constructively work with President Clinton?

[glenn1]

According to the CBO the net effect of Obama's tax provisions is to increase taxes on the top 1% to what they were before President Reagan. Since you seemed to think Reagan's tax cuts were 'significant', presumably you think Obama rolling back both Reagan's and Bush II's tax cuts for the rich is historic? The table is on page 4 and it was the most recent projection I could find. Rates were projected to be 33%, which is approximately equal to the proportion of income they paid before Reagan.

So a 'rounding error'? Hardly.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/f.../49440-Distribution-of-Income-and-Taxes-2.pdf

I respect people who deal in facts.

Fskimospy can feel free to believe whatever he wants. I prefer actual facts, like the most recently available figures from the IRS (see link and image below). Facts like that actual taxes paid by the rich are nowhere near the levels he thinks they are; they aren't even back to the Clinton era much less back to Reagan era. But more power to him that he thinks the rich are being soaked, they probably appreciate him thinking that as they go to exercise a few million more stock options after lunch and close a factory or two for a palate cleanser.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/13intop400.pdf

 

[fskimospy]

Fskimospy can feel free to believe whatever he wants. I prefer actual facts, like the most recently available figures from the IRS (see link and image below). Facts like that actual taxes paid by the rich are nowhere near the levels he thinks they are; they aren't even back to the Clinton era much less back to Reagan era. But more power to him that he thinks the rich are being soaked, they probably appreciate him thinking that as they go to exercise a few million more stock options after lunch and close a factory or two for a palate cleanser.

Even your link, despite describing a different cohort and not including the same years as mine did shows a six percentage point bump in a single year, making it the largest tax increase in your whole sample by far.

 

[antihelten]

Your threshold for significant isn't very high then. Basically he reset marginal top rates to the Clinton levels (from lowered levels which would have expired anyway with the Bush tax cuts) and locked in a lot of the Bush tax cuts. If you want to call the payroll tax increases related to Obamacare "significant" be my guest, but I'd use that term for changes that actually are significant like Reagan reducing the top rate from 70% to 28%. Obama's tax increases aren't even a rounding error in comparison. Besides if a single digit percentage increase in nominal tax rates is the cost to achieve a parabolic increase in income share then that's a worthy tradeoff.

You might want to be a bit more careful with who you quote,since Douglas Holtz-Eakin apparently doesn't understand how to calculate changes over time.

Basically he calculated the change over 3 years for G.H.W. Bush and over 7 years for Clinton and G. W. Bush, instead of the full 4 and 8 years that they actually served. In other words he counts from 1989 to 1992 for G.H.W. Bush, 1993 to 2000 for Clinton, 2001 to 2008 for G.W. Bush and 2009 until 2013 for Obama, this means that he completely misses any changes from 1992 to 1993, 2000 to 2001 and from 2008 to 2009.

Correcting for this error gives you this:

The massive increase under Clinton has nothing to due with any of his policies or any real change in GINI, but is due to the fact that the Census Bureau significantly changed their survey methods between 1992 and 1993, which on it's own resulted in a 4.8% increase in GINI. If we adjust for this change (by raising all the pre-1993 numbers by 4.8%), then the numbers look like this:

Which basically means that there isn't any clear trend what so ever.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Maybe next time you could display the data in a Pareto chart making it easier for people to grasp.

 

[glenn1]

Even your link, despite describing a different cohort and not including the same years as mine did shows a six percentage point bump in a single year, making it the largest tax increase in your whole sample by far.

I'd still define significant differently than you, such as raising payroll taxes for the middle class and poor from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent or almost 50% and thus an order of magnitude larger than the increases on the rich. Plus that's a tax they always pay unlike the rich who can time when they declare their earnings to large extent.

 

[antihelten]

Maybe next time you could display the data in a Pareto chart making it easier for people to grasp.

Not the prettiest Pareto chart in the world (excel kind of sucks for this), but I hope it will suffice:

 

[Jhhnn]

You might want to be a bit more careful with who you quote,since Douglas Holtz-Eakin apparently doesn't understand how to calculate changes over time.

Basically he calculated the change over 3 years for G.H.W. Bush and over 7 years for Clinton and G. W. Bush, instead of the full 4 and 8 years that they actually served. In other words he counts from 1989 to 1992 for G.H.W. Bush, 1993 to 2000 for Clinton, 2001 to 2008 for G.W. Bush and 2009 until 2013 for Obama, this means that he completely misses any changes from 1992 to 1993, 2000 to 2001 and from 2008 to 2009.

Correcting for this error gives you this:

The massive increase under Clinton has nothing to due with any of his policies or any real change in GINI, but is due to the fact that the Census Bureau significantly changed their survey methods between 1992 and 1993, which on it's own resulted in a 4.8% increase in GINI. If we adjust for this change (by raising all the pre-1993 numbers by 4.8%), then the numbers look like this:

Which basically means that there isn't any clear trend what so ever.

Thanks for that. I think that 1 clear trend does emerge, that GINI is increasing, something we'd do well to reverse if we want egalitarian democracy to have meaning.

 

[Jhhnn]

I'd still define significant differently than you, such as raising payroll taxes for the middle class and poor from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent or almost 50% and thus an order of magnitude larger than the increases on the rich. Plus that's a tax they always pay unlike the rich who can time when they declare their earnings to large extent.

Bullshit. Payroll taxes were temporarily reduced during the depths of the Repub policy induced Great Recession. Those cuts were never intended to be permanent.

 

[fskimospy]

I'd still define significant differently than you, such as raising payroll taxes for the middle class and poor from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent or almost 50% and thus an order of magnitude larger than the increases on the rich. Plus that's a tax they always pay unlike the rich who can time when they declare their earnings to large extent.

Except that never happened of course, which kind of puts a hole in your theory.

Obama temporarily cut payroll taxes from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent from 2009 through 2012 and then (as per statute) they returned to their previous value. If you paid $100 in taxes last year and then I gave you a special tax exemption this year so you only had to pay $50, when it went back up to your previous rate next year as part of our original deal would you say I doubled your taxes? Absolutely not. (edited because I can't do maths)

Nice try with that one, but no.

 

[antihelten]

Thanks for that. I think that 1 clear trend does emerge, that GINI is increasing, something we'd do well to reverse if we want egalitarian democracy to have meaning.

That's certainly true, although it's worth noting that we are only talking about a 7% increase from 1988 until 2015, or about 0.25% per year (from a coefficient of 0.447 to 0.479). Although given that the US already has quite a high GINI coefficient, any increase is arguably problematic, seeing as the trend should preferably be in the opposite direction.

 

[dead_smiley]

We have much more tax revenue than we have ever had. The problem is rampant spending.

Sent from my overpriced smartphone

 

[Puffnstuff]

Not the prettiest Pareto chart in the world (excel kind of sucks for this), but I hope it will suffice:

Thank you sir this allows people to clearly establish a trend in the data. I like the Pareto in excel as chart tools allows you to angle it for added depth which works well for columns of low value that might otherwise be lost.