sactoking
Diamond Member
- Sep 24, 2007
- 7,581
- 2,814
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Am I reading this right? Anti-Bushies complain that the debt has increased $3,700,000,000,000 in 7 years like it's the end of the world. Obama's 'wonderful' plan increases the deficit 89% as much as Bush and it will only take 57% as long to do it?
Step away from the partisan rhetoric for a second: The "Bull-in-a-china-shop" you complain about could be considered FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE compared to the other option.
(I don't endorse either candidate, but just wanted to point out the apparent hypocrisy here)
- Aug 23, 2003
- 25,375
- 142
- 116
You're not reading it right. The estimates are over 10 years; $4.5 trillion for McCain, $3.3 trillion for Obama.
Bush is at $3.7 trillion for 7 years, which equals $5.3 trillion extrapolated over 10 years.
Would you prefer the more scientific of "Reducing taxes for the top 1% in the country". Or is just the idea that offends you? Since if its just the idea, your no better than anyone else.
2Xtreme21
Diamond Member
- Jun 13, 2004
- 7,044
- 0
- 0
Unfortunately, we have to pony up and pay off the $9.4 trillion debt this wonderful administration got us in. I'm pissed that both candidates want to expand that deficit all for the sake of getting elected. Though I guess you can thank your current Idiot in Chief for that.
Hey I've got an idea. Since we can't reverse time and we're already raping Iraq for all its worth, why not give the riches we're already acquiring to the American people? That would sure put a dent in it... and maybe give some of us some kind of inkling as to why we're still fucking there.
Hey I've got an idea. Since we can't reverse time and we're already raping Iraq for all its worth, why not give the riches we're already acquiring to the American people? That would sure put a dent in it... and maybe give some of us some kind of inkling as to why we're still fucking there.
You will have to convince the holder of those fortunes. You know Halliburton, KBR, and other now foreign corporations!
From genx87-
Reading comprehension, please. Obama's plan also increases EIC payouts, which supplement extremely low working family incomes. They're also an indirect subsidy to low paying employers, as well.
The short-sightedness of many posters never ceases to amaze me- this isn't about just the Bush taxcuts, it's also about all the taxcuts that have primarily benefitted those at the top and particularly those at the very top beginning in the Reagan era.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/250.html
Reference charts 5 and 8, and the fact that taxes are actually regressive in the top 1%. Taxrates for the top 1% have fallen by 1/3, and their share of income increased 2-1/2X over 25 years... while most everybody else lost in that regard, with the bottom 50% actually losing purchasing power due to inflation...
The top 1% didn't appear to have any trouble making ends meet in 1980, so their situation today is clearly no more desperate... And Obama's plan, raising taxes for those incomes above $600K, would not increase taxes at all for many at the lower end of the top 1%... Those affected would still be paying a lower rate than the top 1% of 1980...
Pretty rough, huh?
My only problem with it is in cutting taxes for those of us in the upper 80-99% or so of incomes. For example, the wife and I, with 2 children, paid $10K in federal income tax on just over $100K of AGI. We're not quite in the top 10%. That's slightly above the average rate for our income, and I certainly don't feel like the taxman was pounding us hard, at all... Frankly, I'd be thrilled to death to pay 30% on $600K, as would any American not completely spoiled by wealth or out of their anti-tax minds...
Reading comprehension, please. Obama's plan also increases EIC payouts, which supplement extremely low working family incomes. They're also an indirect subsidy to low paying employers, as well.
The short-sightedness of many posters never ceases to amaze me- this isn't about just the Bush taxcuts, it's also about all the taxcuts that have primarily benefitted those at the top and particularly those at the very top beginning in the Reagan era.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/250.html
Reference charts 5 and 8, and the fact that taxes are actually regressive in the top 1%. Taxrates for the top 1% have fallen by 1/3, and their share of income increased 2-1/2X over 25 years... while most everybody else lost in that regard, with the bottom 50% actually losing purchasing power due to inflation...
The top 1% didn't appear to have any trouble making ends meet in 1980, so their situation today is clearly no more desperate... And Obama's plan, raising taxes for those incomes above $600K, would not increase taxes at all for many at the lower end of the top 1%... Those affected would still be paying a lower rate than the top 1% of 1980...
Pretty rough, huh?
My only problem with it is in cutting taxes for those of us in the upper 80-99% or so of incomes. For example, the wife and I, with 2 children, paid $10K in federal income tax on just over $100K of AGI. We're not quite in the top 10%. That's slightly above the average rate for our income, and I certainly don't feel like the taxman was pounding us hard, at all... Frankly, I'd be thrilled to death to pay 30% on $600K, as would any American not completely spoiled by wealth or out of their anti-tax minds...
no tax cut will ever lead to a large enough increase in taxable income to offset the amount of the taxcut. The only possiblity under which that could occur would be if the cuts triggered inflation and subsequent bracket creep.
Hogwash. I'd be thrilled to death to pay much less...as little as I can legally get away with in fact. Why put a number on it? Why 30%? The gov't is taking your money that you rightfully earned and redistributing it. Now I agree some services are needed, but 30% is a bit effing much. It has nothing to do with being spoiled by wealth. It's about keeping as much of what is yours.
funny, what i've read you seem to have a pretty naive understanding of economics, as well as the facts.
The government provides the very mechanisms that allow you to earn money and own property. I don't think 30% is very much to ask when someone has received so much through government action.
30% is about what the Obama plan would demand of those making $600K and above, brencat. Still less than they'd have paid in 1980.
Myself? Hey, under the proposed scenario, my takehome pay would increase by ~4X- only self-important fools with a twisted sense of entitlement would whine about such a vast increase, dwelling on what they'd lost in taxes rather than what they'd gained...
Riiiiight, I make a living in finance and economics, and I'm the naive one about economics :roll:
Wow, all these researchers and economic analysts have tried for decades to figure it out, but you already have the answer! Why didn't you say so, you could have saved all those economists a lot of analysis!
You do your user ID justice......
Has nothing to do with the "idea". If I start an article on drilling ANWR by saying "we'll examine both sides of the issue, the pro-energy side and the anti-progress side", would it not be reasonable to assume that what follows is simple ideology and not an objective analysis?
When you hear blah blah blah "more tax cuts for the rich", it means you're hearing ideology, not real analysis.
If the top 1% in terms of income get 30% of the tax cuts, is that disproportionate? Maybe, maybe not. If that 1% is paying 40% of the total taxes, then getting 30% of the cuts is not disproportionate. If the 1% is paying 20% of total taxes, then getting 30% of the cuts is disproportionate. As usual, nothing is a simple as a political soundbyte wants you to think it is.
I don't believe it has so much to do with the amount that Bush has increased the debt although that is most certainly a good chunk of the pie. The other big chunk has to do with how poorly that borrowed money has been spent. Let's face it. Most Americans agree that over the course of the past 8 years this country has gone downhill for many reasons. I would have hoped that borrowing an additional 3.7 trillion would have prevented a lot of that from happening.
Heh. And when I hear the supersonic whine from the kind of spin in your last paragraph, I know for sure it's more of the same ideological drivel used to sucker the public for the last 30 years...
And the economists, researchers, etc that you reference have merely been shills in support of an ideology of illusion made possible only by huge and ongoing governmental debt acquisition. The charts and figures I linked above speak for themselves. There's no trickle down in trickledown economics except from the perps pissing down our collective leg as they tell us it's raining...
The Laffer curve is a laugh as applied to American incomes, and the notion that cutting taxrates will somehow miraculously increase revenue has been discredited every time taxes have been cut w/o the much-promised result ever occurring. One step forward, two steps back, spinning the step forward as "progress".
Ultimately, what's been proven is that the only people who benefit from taxcuts are those who receive them.
Interesting that you think of my position as "ideological drivel" since I haven't even identified my position on the tax cuts. All I said was that just by the terminology used one can tell the following is not going to be objective analysis, I said nothing about the actual merits of the tax cuts.
That sounds a lot like those who seek to discredit global warming science. You believe all economic researchers and analysts all over the world have entered into some vast conspiracy pact? Really? Of course not. That's why you have bunch of different analysis and different results, and there is no conclusive answer. For example, in the numbers you linked to, there is an implicit assumption that all other factors remain equal over time so effects of tax decreases can be easily measured by using resulting aggregate numbers for those years. It's not that simple.
Yeh, riight, PokerGuy. Name an occasion when cutting top echelon tax rates actually increased revenue enough to offset the losses from the lower rate and the borrowing necessary to provide the proper illusion, cover the difference. Trickledown won't sell w/o huge permanent and ongoing deficits- the effects would be entirely too obvious.
I realize that you haven't actually offered an opinion, but attacking the source and then obfuscating and distracting are time-honored traditions from those supporting the anti-tax flimflam artists... WTF does global warming have to do with any of this, anyway?
I realize that you haven't actually offered an opinion, but attacking the source and then obfuscating and distracting are time-honored traditions from those supporting the anti-tax flimflam artists... WTF does global warming have to do with any of this, anyway?
I personally <hint: this is an opinion> don't much see the logical reason for lowering taxes for the top 1% income earners, because the slight increase in their retained income will likely not be spent into the economy as quickly as a decrease in the tax rate of another income group. You're making assumptions, there is no conclusive evidence that cutting tax rates works or does not work. Given that you can't isolate the variables, I'd say its a very difficult thing to do.
Not obfuscating or distracting anything, the source is clearly biased, as evidenced by the type of language used. As such, it's not more believable or credible than anyone else's conjecture or opinion.
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
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There is definitely some debate among economists of what the effects of tax cuts are on the economy and the federal budget, but politicians on the right regularly misrepresent even the conservative (academic) view.
To establish a baseline, take a sampling of (mostly) conservative economists' views (compilation, but individual sources are linked):
"The consensus view is that tax cuts indeed influence national income, but not to the extent that they are fully self-financing."
"Republican candidates are fond of saying we should cut tax rates because doing so would incentivize more rapid economic growth (true) and raise tax revenue (wishful thinking)."
- Gregory Mankiw - Chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers 2003-2005
"No thoughtful person believes that this possible offset more than compensated for the first effect for these tax cuts. Not a single one."
- Andrew Samwick - Chief Economist on Bush's Council of Economic Advisers 2003-2004
"Tax cuts that reduce marginal tax rates will likely improve the efficiency of the economy and boost overall economic activity. Because they increase economic activity, cuts in marginal tax rates typically lead to revenue losses that are smaller than implied by so-called static analyses, which hold economic activity constant. However, under normal conditions, tax cuts do not wholly pay for themselves."
- Henry Paulson - Bush's Current Treasury Secretary
"Will the tax cuts pay for themselves? As a general rule, we do not think tax cuts pay for themselves. Certainly, the data [we have] presented above do not support this claim."
- Edward Lazear - Current Chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers
"The general view is tax cuts don't pay for themselves."
- Ben Bernanke - Chairman of the Federal Reserve
"It is very rare, and very few economists believe that you can cut taxes and you will get the same amount of revenues. But it is also the case that if you cut taxes, you will not lose all the revenue that is implicit in the so-called static analysis."
- Alan Greenspan - Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, 1987-2006
"If there's one thing that economists agree on, it's that these claims are false. We're not talking just ivory-tower lefties. Virtually every economics Ph.D. who has worked in a prominent role in the Bush Administration acknowledges that the tax cuts enacted during the past six years have not paid for themselves--and were never intended to."
- Justin Fox - Business and economics columnist at Time Magazine, formerly at Fortune
To establish a baseline, take a sampling of (mostly) conservative economists' views (compilation, but individual sources are linked):
"The consensus view is that tax cuts indeed influence national income, but not to the extent that they are fully self-financing."
"Republican candidates are fond of saying we should cut tax rates because doing so would incentivize more rapid economic growth (true) and raise tax revenue (wishful thinking)."
- Gregory Mankiw - Chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers 2003-2005
"No thoughtful person believes that this possible offset more than compensated for the first effect for these tax cuts. Not a single one."
- Andrew Samwick - Chief Economist on Bush's Council of Economic Advisers 2003-2004
"Tax cuts that reduce marginal tax rates will likely improve the efficiency of the economy and boost overall economic activity. Because they increase economic activity, cuts in marginal tax rates typically lead to revenue losses that are smaller than implied by so-called static analyses, which hold economic activity constant. However, under normal conditions, tax cuts do not wholly pay for themselves."
- Henry Paulson - Bush's Current Treasury Secretary
"Will the tax cuts pay for themselves? As a general rule, we do not think tax cuts pay for themselves. Certainly, the data [we have] presented above do not support this claim."
- Edward Lazear - Current Chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers
"The general view is tax cuts don't pay for themselves."
- Ben Bernanke - Chairman of the Federal Reserve
"It is very rare, and very few economists believe that you can cut taxes and you will get the same amount of revenues. But it is also the case that if you cut taxes, you will not lose all the revenue that is implicit in the so-called static analysis."
- Alan Greenspan - Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, 1987-2006
"If there's one thing that economists agree on, it's that these claims are false. We're not talking just ivory-tower lefties. Virtually every economics Ph.D. who has worked in a prominent role in the Bush Administration acknowledges that the tax cuts enacted during the past six years have not paid for themselves--and were never intended to."
- Justin Fox - Business and economics columnist at Time Magazine, formerly at Fortune
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