Well, the theory is that people are incentivized more in regards to their marginal rate more than the total amount of tax they are paying. E.g., if they know that on the next dollar that they earn, they are only going to pay 28% tax rather than 35% tax, then they will be more motivated to earn more. So, it is not just the total amount of money they are left with after taxes but also how that would change if they earned, say, another $10000. (I was going to say $1000, but I realized that’s just like a penny in Romneyland.)
I’m not saying I agree with the supply side claims, which I don’t think there is much economic evidence to support (at least of having a very big effect), but in theory jiggling the tax structure around in this way could incentivize people differently.
Besides which, it seems to me that if we really want to give people incentives, we should really target the incentives to what we want. If we want people to “create jobs” then give them a direct incentive to hire people, rather than throwing tax breaks or vague incentives at them and hoping that they might use some of it to do something we find socially useful.
No…That is what Romney SAYS he wants to do (now). There is no evidence of what he actually wants to do…And, there is every evidence that he will come up “studies” by a bunch of shills (most of which weren’t studies but opinion pieces and some that apparently didn’t conclude what he claimed they did) to support the idea that he is doing that, while respectable tax policy experts know that the actual effects will be a hug windfall for the rich plus an increase in the deficit.
If you have negative credibility then you damned well better be specific.
Romney’s claim during the debate about pre-existing conditions was false.
Oh, and the [claim](Mitt Romney culled statistics from a small subset of loan guarantee recipients to come up with his claim Wednesday night that “about half” of the renewable energy companies backed by the Obama administration “have gone out of business.” As POLITICO and other fact-checkers quickly pointed out, Romney’s numbers from the first presidential debate are not correct. Not even close. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82031.html#ixzz28Nzbf5CL) about “green” energy companies going out of business? He got that wrong too.
Can Romney ever open his mouth without lies coming out?
I don’t have time to research it at work - but I thought (as you seem to be alluding to) that this theory had been pretty much debunked and discredited - that the tax rate has very little to do with how “motivated” people are to work
I’ve been planning to vote third party for President (I live in a solid ‘red’ state), and neither candidate did anything to change my mind.
In my view, there was no clear winner. Romney had better stage presence and tenacity, but also shook the Etch-A-Sketch vigorously and was quite pushy with the so-called moderator. I concur with other posts that Obama was passive and detached, although he was at least consistent with his campaign messaging of the past several months. The liberal talking heads seem to be too critical of Obama.
Apparently, AARP was not happy with the name drop on support of ‘Obamacare’. Romney’s taking a lot of heat today for his targeting of Big Bird.
I gotta wonder about this whole winning thing. How are we determining that? Is it something visual, and because I heard it on radio I don’t see it? Is it a chimpanzee thing, like dominant and submissive postures, who displayed the best hooting? Because its a debate, a conflict of sorts, do we judge by who is most aggressive?
Romney delivered a gift-wrapped box of sound bites for the Obama team to pour over, it was an abundance of mendacity, an avalanche of horseshit. Why rebut him now when you can simply display the stupid over and over, at your leisure?
Mittens gonna fire Big Bird? Now there’s a gift that will keep on giving. And all the lies with dollar signs, $716 billion dollars from Medicare, $90 billion on green energy, half the companies going broke… Too specific, Mittens, too specific! Good liars give details, but really good liars don’t. People will check, Willard.
You think you had a good night? You know who had a great night? The guys who get paid to write the copy for the attack ads about you. For them, you were Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny, all rolled up into one.
Maddow made an interesting point on her show tonight–if you go back to 1976 there are seven debates where an incumbent president went up against his challenger for the first time. The record for the incumbents, according to consensus at the time? 1-6. Bill Clinton pretty easily bested Bob Dole in that first debate, but otherwise the incumbents come up short. Even in 1984, before his legendary spanking, Walter Mondale bested Reagan in their first debate.
This makes sense to me. The incumbent has the disadvantage of having reality on his side, while the challenger can lob missiles from that magical land where everything is perfect.
This same thought crossed my mind as well. Sometimes, I thought I could see Obama thinking how naive or jejune Mitt was appearing to him, behind those pinched lips and clenched tongue. A very different Obama than we saw four years earlier.
I don’t care who “won” this debate, or the future ones, it just seemed he was pulling his punches to get a feel for his opponent this round.
Simple - base on this debate, and this debate alone, I would be voting for Mitt.
I am just hoping that his lies, position changes and misrepresentations in the debates can be used effectively by the Obama campaign to get more traction in the coming days etc, than trying to combat them on the spot otherwise would have done.
