I don’t see why you find it strange. There is a large respectable literature on income inequality in the United States and I don’t think anyone would disagree with the idea that the fact that the share of income that goes to the top 1% has grown in the last 20 years is one measure of growing inequality. Or, is even discussion these things considered to be “extreme left wing dogma”? Perhaps the word “inequality” must be banned from our lexicon? Apparently, we are already not allowed to discuss the distributional aspects of Bush’s tax cuts since any such discussion seems to be dubbed “class warfare”.
Also, I think we are confusing things here. The idea that economics is not necessarily a zero-sum game does not mean there are not trade-offs between different groups, especially at the margin. Are you claiming that the policies chosen by, say, Reagan or Bush are a universal optimum in the sense that everyone is better off than they would be if we pursue some alternate policy? That is a very strong assumption indeed and yet it seems to be the implicit assumption of those who believe that we should not discuss the relative gains of different income groups under various policies. Otherwise, why would this not be open for discussion?
Okay. Better yet, let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past…Unfortunately, I seem to be a few years too late on that, but at least we could try to undo some of the damage.
Bollocks again. You were making an observation about economics being a zero-sum game, *not * foreign policy. Perhaps we can take the extreme lameness of that reply as a concession.
You have not, and you have left others unaddressed, but that’s understandable.
A most unusual occurrence, but, if you say so.
Perhaps because you were excoriating socialists and communists, none of whom had been at issue until you mentioned them. I already pointed out that you had conflated everyone to the left of Reagan, and you still seem not to understand.
That’s the result of your limiting all of your previous subject matter to that very topic. If you meant to address something else, you should have done so - and still may.
Bollocks again. That was a diatribe blaming, again, everyone left of Reagan for not understanding his transcendent brilliance. If you had meant an actual question, out of a real attempt to understand a view that you do not hold, it would have been written very differently, not with a plea toward “moving my liberal heart”. You do show enough command of English to know that. The Rune Bollocks Score is still rising.
Combined with a mention of how much of the world did not and does not agree with your blanket worship.
More so than your continued bollocking.
You claim honest interest, however dubiously at this point? Okay. Your premise is assumed, not a given. Certainly not everyone (the implied term) thought the same, as the people of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Angola would tell you (and if those aren’t in the group you’ve slapped the name “communist” on, you’ll need to define who you do mean), so you need to clarify your “fact” there.
That said, it certainly would vary by country. For those who saw their own government as the oppressor but organic to the country, mainly the Warsaw Pact bloc, anyone else with the power and perceived interest to change their condition would look pretty good, wouldn’t they? For those in countries where the oppressive government looked like a creature of Washington, or was kept in power through the common expedient of calling themselves “anticommunist” and automatically getting arms and money and training in torture methods etc., the obvious sentiment would be the opposite, wouldn’t it? But the ones being oppressed shouldn’t be expected to care which label their oppressors are using.
If you can find a good cite from anyone outside the Warsaw Pact bloc who worshiped Reagan in the way you claim, let’s have it. But no more bollocking from you, please - we deal in facts here.
Oh, so that means I’m not allowed to bring up Reagan’s support of oppressive right-wing despots?
I don’t know what you are asking. With your previous statement, “funny how the most oppressed people always also tend to be the most pro-American”, you so blithely implied that Reagan was the champion on oppressed people the world over, but when we point out that Reagan in fact supported some of the very same evil despots that he was supposedly decrying, you get red in the face because we’re not “answering your question”. WTF?
The answer to your question is, your one anecdote notwithstanding: No, Reagan was not the champion of the oppressed the world over. In fact, he supported oppression in many cases. And no, I don’t think Reagan single-handedly toppled the Soviet Empire. That’s just utter bullshit.
No. That is why that sentence started with the words, “My guess…” After that sentence there were other sentences that noted the comparison we did make with the 1990s using the CBO data and noting my general impressions of past decades. Along these lines though, here is a PDF paper that talks about the U-shaped nature of income inequality in the 1900s in the U.S. See, in particular the figures showing the income shares of the top 10%, 1%, and 0.01%.
Well, the CBO used the phrase, “it partly offset the tax cuts enacted in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, many of which had not fully taken effect.” One can quibble whether something that “partly offset[s]” tax cuts amounts to a “reversal” or not, but I think one is getting a bit nitpicky. I would be very happy if President Bush were to largely offset his tax cuts, whether this is decided to amount to a “reversal” in your mind’s eye or not.
Just to make it clear, let’s compare what Krugman said and what CBO said:
Krugman: “The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton’s 1993 tax increase.”
CBO: “The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act was enacted into law on September 3. It partly offset the tax cuts enacted in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, many of which had not fully taken effect … JCT estimated that the tax increases offset about two-thirds of the reductions in corporate taxes in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. Over half of the revenue increase in TEFRA-82 was estimated to have come from corporations, and individual income taxes accounted for most of the rest.”
So, in short, no (modulo the still-unresolved issue of whether the rollback was about a third or not), I don’t see how Krugman overstated the point at all.
I was in fact making an observation that economics not being a zero-sum game. But since I’m apparently incomprehensible I suppose you’re excused for your lame reading ability.
You must suffer from a condition of extreme selective reading since you apparently completely missed my first post #145 which contained only one small sentence on tax, #160 (was a reply to that small part in #145), #166 (apparently incomprehensible, only the first part was about tax), #197 (wasn’t about tax at all), #210 (asking for a reply on something not tax), #218 (asking for a reply on something not tax), #220 (begging for a reply on this something not tax).
Really this is getting quite ridiculous. I have made myself quite clear on what I’m trying to bring up (the repeated use of Eastern Europe and Soviet perhaps could be a clue), and everybody is just doing their damnest not to address it. When back bring better excuses.
Did I say that? No, what it means is that I was interested in your opinion on those oppressive left-wing despots, a thing you’re apparently quite unwilling to fulfill. But don’t worry I’ve given up on a simple answer to a straightforward question by now. Though I’m forced to conclude it’s because it does not match preconceived ideas. Finding it difficult to look outside that box are you?
I won’t bother to go back and reread it anymore because it’s quite clear that you’re not really interested in a debate and are never gonna come with a straight answer anyway. But if you bother I’m sure you’d find that that particular sentence followed right after a paragraph on eastern Europe and the Soviet, hinting at where it was directed, probably it was in parentheses, which should give you a clue that it was perhaps not the most important thing in the post, that it was in fact mostly just a bit of fun.
Not my question since I nowhere said he was.
Undoubtedly
Neither do I, nobody does. In fact I already in my first post explicidly said so.
Indeed, but since no one has said so I don’t know who this is addressed to.
Do tell if you find something to be incomprehensible.
I agree it is a quibble. But here is the point of my quibbling.
I agree with your sentiments the way you expressed them here. That is, if we could find a way to balance the budget without necessarily “reversing” the recent tax cuts, I would be in favor of that as well. When you and Krugman concentrate on the class warfare aspect of this topic (saying things like “We must reverse the tax cuts for the rich”) you interfere with the debate needed on the topic. That is, such statements (and this quote is a paraphrase, not actually attributable to anyone) may be factually correct from a certain point of view. However, they do not seem to engender rational debate on fiscal policy.
And less I am accused of pickin on you alone, I’d like to point out that the continual harping of conservatives on the idea that GDP growth alone will offset any and all tax cuts accomplishes the same thing. It takes two sides to have a rational debate. Either side can sabbatoge it. I think what we have now is a situation where both sides are actively sabbatoging the debate in order to reduce it to soundbites with which to gain power.
So, I’m sorry for nitpicking you, jshore. But I have found that you are better than the hyperbole you sometimes seem to pander to.
Straighforward, my ass. You are incapable of saying anything in a straightforward manner. Your question is asinine. It is nonsensical. What is my opinion of left-wing despots? I think they are despots. I am against brutal left-wing dictators. Does that help? Is there some reason we need to pursue the obvious here? I don’t know how else to put this:
YOUR QUESTION IS UNCLEAR. I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS YOU ARE ASKING. I AM NOT REFUSING TO ANSWER, I SIMPLY DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT TYPE OF ANSWER YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.
It’s not my fault that you cannot express yourself clearly in English.
Get over yourself. :rolleyes:
Geez, could you be more of a boor?
Oh, it was all a joke, huh? Give me a break. :rolleyes:
So jshore successfully demolished your whining accusation that Krugman “As usual… overstates the point.” Yet you go on to sneeringly imply that jshore somehow “panders” to hyperbole.
The only hyperbole here is yours. And I’m not quite sure why jshore panders to it. I won’t.
As I understand this argument, you’re saying that some group “X” received tax cuts, and you’re in favor of balancing the budget not by reversing the tax cuts on group “X”, but by increasing taxes on the group “not X”. Yet you fail to advance any reason why this should be so, whilst at the same time asserting that other people are interfering with “rational debate”, because you deem their arguments to be “class warfare”.
Just as Clinton will be remembered as the worst President in history (at least, I hope he will. I’d hate to think we’ll ever get a worse fuckup in the Oval Office.), Reagan will be remembered as one of the best.
He brought down the USSR and ended the Cold War. His economics brought about one of the longest economic booms in our history. Iran/Contra may not have been his smartest move, but I think it was planned and executed without his knowledge, that he only found out about it afterwards. I/C is the only reason I would grade him as an A instead of an A+ President.
Well waddya know. I call bullshit, and bullshit obediently comes.
That’s a good point. It’s the other side of the fiscal equation. But as I said, I’m only guessing at what pervert’s solution is about. That’s assuming that he actually has one, and isn’t just whining for the sake of whining.
Knock it off. You said that first, then said you were mixing in foreign policy, now you’re back to this.
You asked a “question” which was a simple rant, it was addressed respectfully, more so than it deserved, and you’re pouting that the target of your rant didn’t humbly accept its factuality. You might have read it and responded with something other than this little whine.
If you have a point, make it and stick with it. You do have enough command of English to do so.
jshore certainly showed that Krugman’s claim that the 1982 tax bill increased revenues. But I never disagreed with this point. My disagreement was with the characterization of this as proof that Reagan had “reversed” his ideals in some way. I made a comparison before between the legal tax rate and the effective tax rate this way
The point being that while Reagan did reverse the trend towards loss of revenue caused by his 1981 bill (and the economy), he did not reverse his adherence to the principles of lower taxes. That is, he did not return to the pre Reagan regime of outrageously high tax rates except in a very superficial sense.
Let me explain what I mean by “pandering to hyperbole”. Refering to the increase in revenue during the 80s as tax increases in the same sense as the tax bill of 1980 is called a tax cut tends to confuse the issue. Adding rhetoric about policy “reversals” only compounds the problem. It implies there was a change in principle when there was not. It focusses the argument on this reversal of principle rather than the economic or political issues. In other words, it turns a debate about tax policy into an argument about Reagan’s integrity and by extension conservative integrity in general.
Having said that, allow me to appologize for any sort of sneering attitude which came accross in my posts. I am sorry for any offence. It was truly unintended. I was having fun with some of them, but I did not intend to belittle any of the contributions made by others.
If I may, allow me to appologize to jshore in particular. On review, I seem to have overstate his tendency to hyperboly. He seems unusually (for this board) willing to incorporate new things he learns into his arguments. If I have left the impression that he is unusually or inappropriately (in any sense) partisan, I appologize.
<I reserve the right to lambast Krugman ;)>
jshore said it best
I almost deleted this part of the post. I am going to leave it in as it is, possibly, an example of what I was talking about above. Please read it that way and not as any sort of attack against Desmostylus personally.
Not exactly. We were talking about the differences between taxes and revenue. It is possible to lower taxes (I.E. tax rates) and at the same time raise revenues. This is because the economy in general and tax laws in particular are extremely complex.
This does not, necessarily, imply that the taxes are paid by other groups of people. If the tax rates are lowered while loopholes are closed, for instance, it may be possible to raise revenue from the same people who had been targeted by the high rates. It may even be possible to raise more revenue than before.
To be honest, I had a hard time understanding what you are saying here. Then I realized that you were saying that I had “fail[ed] to advance any reason why [the budget should be balanced with tax increases on groups other than those who recently enjoyed tax cuts]”. The reason why I did not advance any evidence for this argument is that I did not make it. My point, in fact, about class warfare hyperbole was that the argument you advance by changing my argument in this was, tends to drown out what could otherwise be a usefule debate. When a conservative suggests that tax cuts might be a good idea, all that is heard is that he wants rich people to pay less taxes while poor people pay more.
Allow me to draw a parallel which gores your ox to make the point. I hope you can identify with it. If not, please feel free to ignore it.
Whenever a liberal suggests that the government should do something about a particular social problem, conservatives often trot out the “nanny state” jibe. That is, they make the assertion that any desire to increase the role of the government in daily life is necessarily a desire to have the government control all of daily life. They then procede to demolish this ideology. I’m sure you’ve rankled at being called a communist for espousing liberal views.
This to me is quite analogous to the liberal chant that conservatives are pro rich and anti poor. Neither attack is true in any meaningful sense. And, both arguments contribute to a derth of rational debate in this country.
What does it mean to me? It means exactly what you said. Next inane question, please.
Is that your only point? That “some” Eastern block people held Reagan in high regard? So fucking what? What does that prove, other than each individual has his own opinion? You keep stomping your feet and shouting that nobody will answer your “question”, but you have yet to make a coherent point. And if anyone presents anything to contradict what you are implying, you go right back to the foot stomping about your stupid “question”. It’s like debating with a petulant child.
Better yet, let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past…Unfortunately, I seem to be a few years too late on that, but at least we could try to undo some of the damage.