Seems like elucidator addresses some of the concerns with that OP/ED piece, but it also bears reminding that 2003 was about the time we finally recovered from the 2001 recession. Yes, the recession ended in 2001 but the recovery didn’t really hit until 2003 or 2004.
Also, no indexing on inflation. Or for GDP.
So, a 4 year window to measure the increase in tax revenues but only in the recovery after a recession and with no adjustment for inflation or size of the overall economy?
You have a funny way of showing “independent” thoughts on the links between tax cuts and revenue growth.
No, you don’t understand. TAX CUTS INCREASE REVENUE. Always. There are no exceptions. It doesn’t matter what happened in any year, tax cuts increase revenue. They do. Really. Don’t question it or you’re out of the Tea Party!
Here, let’s look at what some people are complaining about.
According to the Citizens for Tax Justice, between 2001 and 2010 the Bush Tax Cuts resulted in a “loss” of $2.1T dollars in revenue ($2.4T with interest). So that’s between $210B and $240B lost per year. Guess how long it takes for the government to spend an upwards of $240B? The revenues you’re arguing about are chump change.
If the Bush tax cuts are left to expire (i.e. congress does nothing) then the CBO forecasts revenue to match spending. If the tax cuts are extended you have a big deficit problem.
See page 20 (PDF page 20, the page number on the document is page 6) of this report by the CBO made several weeks ago. (Note it is a 108 page PDF so kind of large).
So yeah, revenues are a big problem. We could use less spending too. The military and the wars would be a great place to start chopping.
You could damn well bet that if I said that someone in Great Debates had no integrity because of his view on a political issue, a moderator would step in and tell me to tone down the personal attacks.
Just because you weasel-worded your comment not to apply to a particular person doesn’t mean it isn’t an ad hominem.
Fine. If $240 billion a year is chump change, then surely you can’t be in favor of any spending cut of a similar amount. Right?
Because the wealthiest people/companies are individuals. Some will create jobs, some will worry if the goverment will change the rule next year so they’ll stash the money for future needs.
An unstated assumption is that someone making say $10 million won’t make $11 million if he could unless he is taxed less on that next million than he is taxed on the last one. When I’ve mentioned this before someone always throws up some contrived example on the extremes (one recent one was would you work overtime for less per hour than you make regularly). I’m skeptical. I think in a free market, if there is money to be made then someone will take that opportunity. I’ll concede that when you start talking about tax rates out of the range of anything in the US over the last 40 years you can get into fringe territory but the discussion is usually about changing taxes from what they were under Bush to what they were under Clinton.
A year or two ago the GOP produced some paper that said 85% tax cuts and 15% revenue increases was actually the perfect economic stimulus. Obama’s original proposal was something like 87 13 and this was suddenly unacceptable. Even the Economist rightly callrd the GOP as being completely full of shit on this one:
Since then we’ve had the Reid plan which offers all spending cuts and no increased taxes. The GOP turned that down too.
In various polls on how the debt ceiling bill should break down, the American public favour a fairly balanced mix of spending cuts and tax increases. The Dems’ various solutions all feature a balance that is far to the right (too much spending cuts versus revenue increases) than the polls show Americans want. The GOP proposals are obviously far righter.
Both sides have not dug in ideologocally. The Dems have moved further and further towards the GOP position and the GOP have moved further and further to a more extreme position than their original position. Your post is absolute nonsense and the various people calling your other posts in this thread absolute nonsense are absolutely right.
I think I showed very independent thoughts, to use your colloquialism. Go back and read what I said again. Were the increased federal revenues due to spurred economic growth post 2003 tax cuts? Maybe, at least part of them. And I gave other possible reasons too. The point is, nobody knows for sure what would have happened, and I’m willing to concede that it’s possible that the cuts aren’t the entire story.
It would be nice if some of the uber lefties here would actually think for themselves, for a change, and realize that the laffer curve actually exists and that tax cuts do spur economic development (usually by creating jobs).
The theory goes that if you give rich people more money they will invest in new factories and such and hire people which will improve the economy (trickle-down economics).
The problem is no one is going to build a new Widget factory if no one will buy those widgets. It is a chicken-and-egg thing. Companies will not hire workers if there is no demand for the company’s products. There will be no demand for the company’s products if everyone has no job and cannot afford those products.
In short you need to spur demand before supply will catch up. Demand has to come first.
Historically the rich save the money they get in a tax cut which means the economy and demand slow down.
How about looking at the actual evidence of the past decade? The Bush tax cuts and deregul;ation gave us the lowest rates on business and the wealthy ever and the lease regulation. Bush freed the markets and allowed the invisible hand to do its work! How did that work out exactly? He became the only prosedent to create a negative number of jobs (tax raiser Clinton produced 22 million), he created record deficits, had the worst average yearly economic growth of any postwar president and deregulated his way to the biggest financial and economic meltdown since the Depression.