I made it up and I'm a pathetic liar. Honestly I made a bad assumption, and I apologize for putting words in your mouth. I lumped you together with conservatives who praise the Bush "tax cuts" and dismiss the stimulus bill tax provisions as "tax credits", both of which in my view are the same thing. I've heard so many people say that lately that I used poor judgment. It does seem that you are against the stimulus bill as a whole based on your posts, but perhaps you liked the tax provisions in it.
I still maintain that you are being hypocritical, or at least unwilling to answer direct questions about why you've had a change of heart regarding the Bush tax cuts. And that is something that I am certain I didn't make up, as you yourself admitted that
"they didn't help matters much." You've also said that it's
important to think about what we leave for the next generation to clean up. You are in here advocating for a policy that you yourself don't believe worked!
So we've got that going for us, which is nice.
Best I can tell, you are advocating maintaining the same tax rate for the lower and middle classes, while restoring them to previous levels for the upper class. I'm sure most on the left would agree with that type of policy, however I'm not entirely sure such a proposal would work out to be budget neutral.
Logically, I cannot see how you can call something a tax cut without decreasing government spending to cover lost revenues. While it's true that a tax cut
may eventually increase government revenues, history has shown us that it is impossible to predict if it will or does actually occur. Quite simply there are to many unknowns and by the time we do know the answer, we are usually in the middle of a new crisis. Simply put, there is no way to be close to anything resembling an accurate projection of a tax cuts impact on the budget because the economy is way too complex. Therefore, in my view, it's not a tax cut unless it's covered from a budget perspective on day 1 with concrete numbers, not predictions based in fantasy. That means its accompanies by an immediate reduction in spending. I consider this to be "fiscally responsible" and anything else to be...less so.
Put another way, I see the federal government borrowing money to give a tax cut as philosophically the same thing as an individual paying only interest on their loans. In this case, the loan was the tax bill, and since the Bush tax cuts occurred we've put nothing on the principal.
Continuing to expand the deficit to fund these tax cuts may provide some short term relief, but ultimately they will be harmful to the country when the bill comes due. In my opinion, our government will need both drastic spending cuts and tax increases in order to become fiscally neutral. Trying to do one without the other will just create a day of reckoning, when we face not just a prolonged recession, but total economic collapse. This isn't entirely the fault of Democrats and Republicans, I lay equal blame on a citizenry that believes it can have huge government programs and a small tax burden.
I do not see how anything I just said qualifies for dementia, and as someone who is expected to be an expert in Mental Health, I'm going to stick by that
We simply have different definitions of what a "tax cut" is. As others have mentioned, there is a lot more to tax policy than the income tax rate. The income tax % is in many ways a distraction. Lastly, I'll say this. I would support borrowing money to temporarily lower the payroll tax, as the stimulus bill did, more than a bill like Bush's tax cuts. The payroll tax reduction puts money into peoples pockets immediately, where as we need to pray/hope that the other one trickles down. They both may be economically stimulative, but one would happen quicker.
You've yet to address anything I've said since that initial post, so I await your response.
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