I got this in an email the other day and thought it was amusing…so, figured I’d post it here since there is no serious discussion going on, just another uninformed knee jerkage.
I love bar room economics and comic book style explanations…which seem to be the level that most threads are going these days on this board. Well…'cept from the other direction.
Enjoy!
-XT
You had me until the part he was beat up, you know, something silly like the rule of law many times prevents this (a system paid with the tab too), meanwhile leaving aside your comic book explanation, the current reality is that I see the many companies moving over seas are still sucking at the governments teat and taking the money that the other suckers paid. Of course since there is less of a rule of law out there they could be stoned to death overseas, a small price to pay in the short run for the comic guy it seems.
wow, that was really brilliant, xtisme :rolleyes:
Quick! Call the White House and let them know that Don Dodson is ready to help! He understands what’s really going on! :dubious:
:smack:
I know, I tried to acknowledge that fact with 6 figure parenthetical in my original post. I didn’t want details to get in the way of my rant.
Ah…you seem to be laboring under the mis-understanding of what I was posting there…and why. For the humor impaired this was what is commonly referred to as ‘a joke’.
But I thank you for kind words of my brilliance. I bask in the glow of your regard…and snort with mirth at the fact that you didn’t get it.
-XT
Wow, that was certified “uninformed knee jerkage” have you lost your mind too xtisme? 
On preview: but the joke is the current republican tactics, if you want to throw more examples of their silly ways of thinking be my guest.
I never had it to lose…
-XT
Just FTR, the guy mentioned on Snopes didn’t write the beer/tax thingy, and neither did the guy at UGA that the version xt got quoted:
I realize that the above is not really being considered, so I wanted to ask for a little more light on it. If that’s the case, what would be the effect?
Here’s the way I see it: the securities in question are risky (i.e., likely to contain many bad loans; part of what makes them risky are that the valuations are sketchy at best). By cutting the captial gains taxes only on these securities, they become more attractive to buyers. That is, the possible benefit becomes higher, which mitigates some of the risk.
And if these securities are bought, they would no longer be a drag on their current owners’ portfolios, thus putting the owners’ on more sound financial footing (i.e., hopefully freeing up some capital).
If I have that right, I’m not seeing why this is such a bad idea. Make the risk more palatable to some such that they willingly assume the burden, relieving the troubled institutions of some problems. Do I have that right?
What was the point of that link? Xtisme wasn’t pretending to have written it himself or anything like that, so why post a link to a page which only deals with the question of authorship?
Add in state tax and self-employment tax (for individuals like me), and you don’t have to be anywhere near $100K to be paying 30% taxes. Looking at last year’s tax return, the amount I paid in taxes was 34.7% of my adjusted gross income, and that number is nowhere near $100K.
Well, that’s funny. I took a whole darned degree in economics, passed all my courses, and don’t ever remember being taught either of these things.
Why in God’s name would an increase in investment necessarily lower the interest rate?
And since when did lowing the interest rate - which is up to the central bank, not the stock market - lower inflation? Historically, and logically by the way, the OPPOSITE is true; dropping the interest rate runs the risk of contributing to inflation, because it results in the creation of more money. Your cart is before your horse; if infation drops, then the central bank will (sometimes) lower interest rates accordingly, because presumably the risk of some inflation is mitigated.
Better yet, The Walking Dude, I’m a professional economist who’s published tax policy articles in good journals and taught public finance courses and… you know less than nothing.
There are economists who think that taxes on capital income should be lower than on other forms of income (I’m one of them, but I don’t buy the whole expenditure tax program - I’m a decoupling guy). But most economists think that capital gains should be taxed the same as other forms of capital income and that preferring capital gains to other forms of capital income is distorting and at best an entirely ineffective way of promoting economic growth.
Your other remarks lack sufficient coherence to qualify as even wrong.
Maybe instead of taxing capitol gains 15%, we should just pay them 5%?
Then everybody gets a share. Just like Milo said.
Fine, but you’re not stealing my bedsheet.
Now isn’t the best time to give scared investors any extra reasons to pull their money out of the stock market. I’m not in favor of a cut, but capital gains is scheduled to go up at the end of the year to 25%. Keep them at 15%.
Maybe WallyM7 did?
My problem with the “reduce capital gains tax and stimulate investment” argument (aside from the fact that obviously people do continue to invest when taxes are higher because what else are they going to do with their money?) is that so much of that money ends up in “financial services,” which is to say things that produce neither goods nor services nor create much of anything in the way of jobs. Like these default credit swaps. They add to the economy in bookkeeping money. But they don’t add anything real. And that’s so much of what investment is today. I wish there were a way of separating out investments that were attached to real stuff from investments that weren’t, but of course where you draw the line is extremely fuzzy.
In any case, there was no recession when Clinton was in office, and I don’t expect anything but bitching and moaning if the capital gains tax reverts to 2000 levels in 2009. Those with capital will continue investing that capital, because in general that pays better than stuffing it in a mattress. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll invest it in something tangible, like green energy.
Default credit swaps don’t create anything, but they don’t cost anything either.
I’m not trying to be pugnacious; I honestly don’t know the answer to this. How come the estimated value of these is $40-$70 trillion and it would appear that they are the primary thing that’s going down the tubes? Or at least so I recall from another thread, and it was backed up by a cite from at least one mainstream economist.