You are absolutely right.
So why do you keep campaigning against your principles?
Because the Democrats don’t stand for them either since rejecting Clintonism.
Anyway, Sanders now definitely outperforming Clinton against Republicans:
Um … saywha? Not responsive in any case.
Obama has not been a good President on the deficit, and Democrats reject paying for any spending unless it’s with taxes on the rich, which they’d do even if they didn’t want to spend it. Which they’ve done in their minds several times over. Bernie Sanders is under the impression he can get $2 trillion a year just from the rich.
Got a cite for this? The numbers I’ve seen showed the deficit going down each year he’s been in office.
IIRC, Sanders and most Democrats also support raising or eliminating the cap on social security taxes, raising taxes on corporations and dividends, instituting things like cap and trade, and other possible revenue increasers besides a simple increase of the top income tax brackets.
That’s due to Congress, who he’s fought on reduced spending every step of the way.
Which doesn’t raise nearly as much as they claim, although they are clever enough to not directly say that they can pay for all their promises that way.
Eliminating the cap on SS taxes almost saves SS. At this point, it still takes a little more.
Raising taxes on corporations won’t raise too much given that almost any economist will tell you that corporate taxes are too high and not enough companies pay the tax as a result. We need corporate tax reform, not a corporate tax increase. Sanders’ plan to make foreign corporations pay taxes on foreign earnings is just claptrap and would have a similar effect to Smoot-Hawley.
Dividend taxes going back to normal wouldn’t raise much.
Cap and trade is a big revenue raiser if it doesn’t work. If it does work, then that’s fantastic for the climate but doesn’t do much to pay for new spending. That’s why cap and trade should be earmarked solely for deficit reduction if we’re being responsible ,or at least use it for climate related projects. Perhaps disaster relief?
The best revenue is in the top tax brackets(at least the best politically possible revenue). At best, you could probably get another $250 billion/yr out of that. I’ll be generous and give you another $50 billion for the other stuff(minus the SS tax, since that would be solely for SS). Nice work, the deficit went down significantly. Still no money for new spending.
He can take credit for the budget bills he signs. Every President doesn’t get the exact budget they want – there’s always negotiation. Part of the reason he signed those budgets was because at least he could claim he played a part in reducing the deficit.
Sure, it’s politics. But it’s always politics.
We could make big cuts to the military to free up money; we could further make public health care, similar to other countries’ systems, which spend far, far less per capita than we do; with a significantly higher minimum wage, that might result in far more people actually rising above the minimum tax bracket, increasing revenue; we could charge undocumented immigrants to stay here legally (and combine more open borders with charging them money to come legally); and more. With a little creativity, we can find more money for needed spending.
There won’t be military cuts as long as Putin is acting like Mussolini.
No question though, there are ways to raise more money, but that requires a more creative approach than what Sanders is advocating. Perhaps if he actually researched what Scandinavian countries do. His spending plans are Scandinavian, but his tax plan is classic USA: tax the rich only, spare the middle class, tax corporations on foreign earnings. The Scandi countries tax the middle class heavily and corporations pay lower rates than they do here and no taxes on foreign earnings.
Denmark-22%
Finland-20%
Norway-27%
Sweden-22%
Plus they have VATs, which is a REALLY good way to raise money.
Yet, oddly enough, Denmark gets rated as the *happiest *country in the world. They don’t seem even to be aware of how much they’re suffering under the yoke of a bloated government.
Whyzat, yathink?
With a 22% corporate tax rate, no wonder they are happy.
A lot of people still have cable, especially for broadband internet.
Good post overall, but this - a lot of Republicans are social conservatives even if they aren’t economic conservatives. That word applies to a much broader set of topics than just money.
And if they want to run for President, they can put it on their resume, too. Being a Presidential adviser at that level is an inside player on policy discussions. They may not have official authority to direct others, but they have a strong awareness of the issues and highest level policy discussions to evaluate all the factors in the conversations.
VP’s are put in charge of things, just like Hillary was put in charge of the Health Care planning.
Did Bill Gates’ wife want to be CEO?
Being married but uninvolved in a power player’s work is different than being an active adviser. Hillary was an active and involved member of Bill’s team all the way back to his first run for Governor of Arkansas.
It’s still an attack if you highlight the worst elements of the other person’s comments that stick out at greatest odds with your population. Using the fact that they two compare themselves is the glue that makes the attack stick.
That’s okay, the SuperPAC can run all the negative ads it wants and it’s not Hillary running them. Plausible deniability.
Agreed. The Clintons are known for they overly lawyerly approach to answering questions. Just look at Bill’s response to the Monica question - “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Or his pot response - “I tried it, but I did not inhale.”
It’s the hyper parsing of terms that annoys many of their supporters, nevermind their detractors.
Which gets you in trouble even when you’re being sincere. Clinton actually didn’t inhale because he’s allergic to smoke. He nearly asphyxiated on that joint.
Candidates that talk straight are doing well in this cycle. This is just not the year for a typical politician.
Peter Beinart on the key difference between Sanders and Clinton: Sanders is an insurrectionist, Clinton is an incrementalist.
I’m an incrementalist myself, although it seems most Republicans are insurrectionists these days.
Good insight.
I will point out that at the debate Bernie displayed the ability to understand what the Black issue with “Black Lives Matter” is about. Actually, all of them seemed to pick up on the root of the issue. Anyway, Bernie accepted the slogan and explained where the position is coming from.
The richest 1% of Americans have had in recent years a combined gross annual income of about 7.5 trillion, ballpark. (That’s from memory and may be off a smidge either way.)
A marginal capital gains tax rise of 30 points (not really out of line when you consider how absurdly low the top rate on unearned income has been for an era of very low inflation) presumably would raise almost all of that $2 trillion.
Or, if you prefer, the richest 20% of Americans have a combined gross annual income of about 12 trillion. Tax rises on upper marginal incomes and capital gains of around 15 to 20 points should cover most of it pretty easily.
So it’s actually very doable. You just have to be willing to raise taxes, not even to Harry Truman levels, just to something like Jimmy Carter levels.
Your math is way off. The top 1% take just under 20% of the national income annually:
In 2013, the US total personal income was $13.4 trillion.
20% of that is $2.6 trillion. You’d need to take the bulk of the top 1%'s money, which is simply not possible with Canada neighboring us and charging their top 1% only 29%.
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html
Realistically, we can raise a hundred billion or so more off the rich. If you want real revenue, there’s no alternative to taxing the middle class more. A lot more. As in a VAT, social insurance taxes on top of the payroll taxes, and higher income tax rates. Sanders says he wants a Scandi-style system. But why is he shying away from Scandi-style taxation? It seems there are limits even to his courage.
:shrug: OK, never mind. We’ll just have to tax net worth. That’s probably more morally sound, anyway.
You can do that, but again, the revenue you’ll get will be limited due to the limits of being able to tax wealth.
Wealth taxes average 0.5-2% and generally account for about 1-2 percentage points of revenue. So I’ll be generous and give a Sanders wealth tax $75 billion/yr. So we’re up to $200 billion per year.
If you want real money you’re going to have to do a VAT. There’s just no way around that. Almost all countries with big welfare states have VATs. What makes Sanders think we can avoid one?
cough It’s regressive. cough
The whole soak the billionaire class and reduce inequality message crumbles if he tries to fund it with a regressive tax system.