Why does it matter whether tax cuts increase revenue? Increasing revenue is never a stated reason to cut taxes beforehand. It’s a (highly dubious) claim used to defend them after the fact.
Well, ideally to close the deficit – you need to increase revenues or decrease costs. People argue over whether raising/lowering/not touching taxes would help this.
Sure, but nobody ever suggests cutting taxes as a means to reduce deficits with a straight face.
I hear from conservatives, though, that cutting taxes allows firms to invest and hire people, spurring growth and therefore tax revenue that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.
My question is when this is true and when it’s false. What happens when you give breaks to the rich? Do they typically just hoard it and not actually hire people?
On the other hand, I see how a higher tax rate would stimulate growth because a firm would rather hire people than send that profit off as tax revenue.
A lot of people do.
The problem is, the empirical evidence is contradictory, as discussed upthread. And while raising taxes would almost certainly cost jobs, would lowering them create jobs, thereby stimulating economic investment and paying of taxes and increased GDP and motherhood/apple pie, etc etc.
Here’s is a righty’s view of why.
The problem is, as always, that correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation. For those who don’t want to delve into the whitepaper
And under Reagan
And under JFK
Job growth happens when someone thinks there is a long term need to hire more people. Short term needs can be met via temp employees and/or overtime for existing employees.
Anything that generates that confidence will help the job situation. The government saying that they are going to commit to “X” project over the next “Y” years stimulates job growth because people believe the government will spend money. A one-time infusion of cash won’t help as much because everyone knows it is one-time.
Like the Laffer curve, this is less relevent at the extremes (i.e. no benefit to taxing at 100% and spending it all via government programs).
Expectations are a significant factor and up to a point a self-fulfiling prophecy. If everyone thinks things are improving, they get a little more free with their cash and thing do get better. If everyone thiks things are getting worse, people tighten up with the cash and things get worse.
The one thing I’m sure about is that anyone who thinks they know the one thing to solve the problem, they are wrong!
In other threads I’ve used the pseudo-calculus analogy to making partial derivative decisions to multi-variable problems. You are wrong because you are assuming those other moving parts aren’t moving.
they seem to have run out of water and have postponed the vote to send out for evian.
Cite?
Everything I’ve read says that plans put forward by the Democrats and the Republicans are quite similar. The sticking points are:
a. The Democrats want some revenue increases (tax loopholes sealed and/or tax cuts repealed). This ship founders on the Tea Party rocks.
b. The Democrats want to borrow enough to get us through the next election. The Republicans, for pretty obvious reasons, want to do this again in six months or so.
As I recall, Obama originally looked for a “grand” deal that would have cut $4 trillion or so over 10 years. This would have involved some politically damaging (to Obama) cuts in entitlements. It would have conceded quite a bit of ground to the Republicans. But it failed, primarily due to points a and b above, even though the revenue increases were quite modest.
This argument clearly isn’t about the deficit. Point a is about ideology over any other practical consideration. And, most saliently, point b is about getting Obama out of office at any cost.
The tl;dr Your “Dems think this is too much” is nonsense.
http://news.yahoo.com/republicans-delay-vote-boehner-debt-bill-213952900.html
I was just about to post this. Agreed, Boehner is a few votes short.
While I agree with much of that, another Republican sticking point is that they think the Democrat’s ‘cuts’ aren’t specific enough and will not happen. They want more concrete cuts and some hard caps to force the cuts to happen.
I said that I blame both parties. I believe that Nate Silver has a chart that shows each plan with their projected “cuts” for each year. The first five years under both plans are a joke. Very minimal cuts. Both plans have ridiculous numbers of cuts occurring in 2019 and 2020. Eight and nine years from now. These cuts will never be seen; they are an absolute phantom.
Nobody, except for the tea party, is demanding that the government take some real action.
And what’s wrong with doing this again before the election when more people are watching? If there is some calculus that such a thing would hurt Obama, then maybe he needs to be (politically) hurt.
So, you are saying that the Dems are holding the nation hostage over allowing a vote on the balanced budget amendment, and having to face the voters after a fresh choice to let the country implode?
Looks like the Dems, while asking Wu to resign, aren’t pushing the issue until the debt limit vote is taken - this way Boehner needs 217 not 216 to get it passed. Pretty cynical if you ask me, if a 56-yr old man needs to leave because he was banging the teenage daughter of a buddy (“it was consensual”), then he needs to leave. But accusing a politician of being cynical is like accusing a shark of being bloodthirsty.
Edit to add: for those who are interested in who is voting no
Because it introduces uncertainty into the world economy that will cost American companies, consumers, and taxpayers billions of dollars, and weaken economic recovery. That one reason is good enough to justify doing this as rarely as possible.
Pass Cut, Cap, and Balance. No more uncertainty.
Pass a clean debt ceiling increase for the next 18 months. No more uncertainty.
Mr. Smashy: There are 240 GOP members of the House, correct? If he loses 23 votes, that puts it at 218-217 against. He can only afford 22 “no” votes. Is is my math wrong, or is someone absent?
Let’s see who blinks first. 
[QUOTE=jtagain]
Mr. Smashy: There are 240 GOP members of the House, correct? If he loses 23 votes, that puts it at 218-217 against. He can only afford 22 “no” votes. Or is my math wrong, or is someone absent.
[/QUOTE]
I think there are two vacancies.
As per this, you are correct
240 Republicans
193 Democrats
0 Independents
2 Vacancies
So I guess the vacancies are coming into play?
Think about it; which party in Congress has the most to lose?