This is from the NYTimes so you will have to register if you haven’t already.
So we can’t see the positive effects because we haven’t advanced enough??
Does that make any sense?
It’s pure poppycock. More drivel from the Bush administration.
It’s more likely we can’t see the positive effects because there aren’t any.
Oops…wrong forum…my bad guys.
Please mods either close this and I’ll post there after you do or move it for me.
My humblest apologies.
errr…that would be to great debates.
Good grief. Can’t the government afford an economist capable of coming up with a more plausible rationale than that? I mean, economists are supposed to be expert in explaining why the current economic indicators demonstrate that their predictions were correct, even though it may not seem so to the untrained eye. But to just say so…that’s just lame…
Off to GD.
Tinkerbelle will die if you don’t believe. So its your fault.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.
Worst. President. Ever.
I’m accused of being a “Bush beater,” but honestly, what has the guy done for us? He has led the US into another Vietnam. He’s created the largest budget deficit EVER. Finally, he lets a madman run amok without even a policy towards his actions, North Korea. The guy isnt even running his own administration.
Not to mention that I can’t find a job because of Bush. 20% Unemployment among 16-19 year olds, is ridiculous. I wish I could vote him out of office.
Gah, back to the OP, the trickle down effect seems to be ineffective in recession eras, because the people who received Bush’s generous tax cuts have taken it upon themselves to store their cache in banks until the economy turns around. So much for Bush’s great “salvation” for the economy.
Someone ought to tell him but it’s difficult to get an email through these days.
I am somewhat isolated from economic problems because I am retired. I had heard the stats on unemployment, but it really didn’t hit home until seeing how many of you have lost your jobs or are having trouble finding work.
Meanwhile, where’s Ken Lay these days?
Now, I’m no defender of the Bush administration, but this reminds me of a classic economic tract by Frederic Bastiat. The idea is that the benefits of a government service are generally far more visible than the costs of the taxes used to pay for that service. The benefits are seen, but the costs are not seen, because they consist of the benefits that would have accrued from economic transactions that people would have participated in had they not needed to give up their money to taxation. This can lead officials to systematically overestimate the net benefits of government spending.
In general, it will be difficult to see the benefits of tax cuts because we do not know exactly what economic transactions take place that would not have taken place had taxes not been cut. When evaluating the results of a government program, economists can see the direct consequences of the expenditure. When evaluating the results of a tax cut, economists need to rely on predictive models to guess what would have happened had the cut not been enacted. As a result, it will always be difficult to measure all the benefits of a reduction in the tax burden.
While I agree with this specific statement, I believe that taken as a whole the mentioned testimony of administration budget director Joshua Bolten was highly disingenuous. In the article quoted, he stated that, as concerns the deficit, Bush’s tax cuts are not a problem but rather are “part of the solution.” This implies that he believes cutting taxes will reduce the deficit, which in turn implies the cuts must pay for themselves by increasing rather than reducing the government’s tax income. This implication is strengthened by his assertion that “[h]ad Congress not enacted the president’s three tax relief packages, the economy would be substantially weaker than it is.”
However, when questioned, he explicitly denied that he was saying the cuts would pay for themselves. This is not surprising, as such an idea, popular during the Reagan era, has long been discredited by economists. However, I have seen many statements by administration officials and conservative commentators which suggest they still believe reducing taxes will increase government income, despite a lack of evidence to support this view. I suspect Mr. Bolten may have been deliberately attempting to create this impression despite being careful not to state it explicitly.