It’s about who has more left over after the taxes are paid. Look at the economy under Eisenhower. The top tax rate was something like 90%. We still had millionares. No rich person was made poor.
Look at it since Reagan cut that in half. Case closed.
Either you agree that the Bush tax cuts helped all taxpaying Americans or you don’t. If you don’t, then we’re done because I’ve already proven in this thread that they did and you are unable to accept facts.
If you do, then we are in agreement.
PS Do you even know what you’re talking about when you discuss the Reagan tax cuts? During the 80s (and early 90s), the share of tax burden carried by the lowest 50% of income earners went down almost every year.
To be specific
Yup, Reagan was all about helping the little guy, as we can see.
At the risk of hijacking this thread, let me say that the “tautology”
“Natter natter natter. Tax cuts are always gooo-oood.”
is one of the many reasons it’s frustrating to debate with Beck-Limbaughists, Palin-Baggers and the Cheney-Rove crowd.
One wonders why you guys don’t advocate the abolition of all taxes? For that matter, why not institute a Negative 10% flat tax? Someone who earns $50,000 gets a $5000 check from the IRS. A $Million earner gets $100,000.
Doesn’t make sense? Obviously not! But neither do 90% of the blurtings from “your side of the aisle.”
Hope this helps.
Funny how all that economic conservative/tea party vitriol against loading our children with generations worth of debt goes out the window when it is tax cuts themselves that lead directly to huge deficits.
Towards the end of his life, when asked what his greatest regret was, Hoover said that it was taking Mellon’s advice. And government spending is only a small part of what needed to be done in 1929.
What Hoover signally failed to do was to do what had been standard practice by every central bank since 1825 when the Bank of England bought bonds and other assets for cash and greatly expanded the money supply after the canal bubble burst. Canals had promised to be a “transport superhighway” that would mean English businesses linked by canals to British ports could vastly increase their business by taking advantage of the new technology to sell around the country, export etc. Basically the early nineteenth century version of pets.com et al. Plus ça change and all that.
The bubble burst and for the first time in history, a central bank (they hadn’t been around too long) intervened in the market. It worked really well and was standard practice after that, the evolution of central banks and their newfangled interventionist ways ending the previous couple of centuries of almost constant market panics, breakdowns, cessation of trade etc.
The mechanism of using the wider banking system via the central bank to bail the system out was even standard pratice in America too, the government authorising JP Morgan to act as America’s central bank in the panics of 1893 and 1907. They just didn’t do it in 1929.
And please don’t forget that Republicans voted AGAINST the Biggest Tax Cut EVER.
If this were reversed, the Fox Fiends would have parroted it so often that it would be a Top-40 music hit, and nothing else would be under discussion on TV. Instead, judging by this thread … Americans don’t even know that
Republicans voted against the Biggest Tax Cut EVER.
No, it doesn’t. Your Chewbacca offense contributes nothing.
More like denial, as in ignoring what your W2/paycheck stub is telling you and instead believing the PWRRLASVVM’s when they say that Obama actually increased your taxes. To ignore reality to that extent takes some doing.
Why is that what it’s about? We all live in the same society. We all have the same rights. We all have one vote. If you want more money after taxes are taken out, make more money. Find a way to become more productive. Even if the tax was flat, someone making $300,000 is paying ten times more than someone making $30,000. All for the same rights and privileges. While their is an inequity in the contribution to the societal kitty, at least there’s an underlying fairness to it. Once you exacerbate the inequity by making the rate progressive, any sense of fairness is out the window. Why should one person work 2-3 days a week to satisfy his contribution amount and someone else have to work 1 day?
My question is pretty simple but I don’t know if it can actually be answered. A tax CUT would be lowering the amount of taxes that one pays as opposed to receiving money never paid into the tax system (or completely returned at the end of the year). For instance, if Obama proposed to give all people with zero tax liability a $1000 rebate then the actual taxes cut would equal zero.
The tax cut contained in the stimulus gave a rebate of up to $800 to all families. I believe at the time somewhere around 40% of households had a negative tax liability. For these people the tax “cut” was merely extra money being given to them by the government and I don’t think it should be counted as a “cut” in taxes. I can’t find the numbers for the Bush tax cuts but I think there was also a rebate given to those with a negative tax liability.
Not sure what side of the aisle you seem to think I am, but you seem to suffer from a few misconceptions. Just because someone doesn’t think that 100% taxation/pure socialism makes sense doesn’t mean that the right answer is 0% taxation, or for that matter, the inverse… Talk about logical fallacies…
But back to the matter at hand:
I was originally brought into this conversation because you said that the Bush tax cuts were ‘aimed at the super-rich’, which I’ve shown you is clearly incorrect. I’m waiting for you to man up and retract your statement.
Do tax cuts lead to huge deficits any more or less than big spending?
Let me answer that for you: no.
You are welcome.
Let me answer that alternatively: yes. Tax cuts, especially those aimed at the rich lead to the stagnation of the economy as more and more money ends up locked into a smaller and smaller class of people. Big spending helps the economy to a greater or lesser degree (depending on what is spent on) because that’s what the economy is; money being spent, and things being done with it. And we live in a country where much government work has already been neglected thanks to the Republican focus on not letting the government work, and only spending in the most useless possible ways.
[quote=“Mr_Smashy, post:31, topic:554443”]
I’m looking for a solid cite (this isn’t one- but it references the statement and I trust the site) - but, at the time the tax cuts were proposed and passed, Bush said that “by far, the vast majority of the help goes to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder”.
This was not true - something like 50% went to the top 2%. Now, that’s because they do have that much of the income (and even more of the cap gains and interest income which also received new lower rates) - but it’s a pretty fair statement that the cuts were aimed at the super-rich (or, if not aimed there, that’s certainly where most of the benefit went).
Joe
That’s a question and answer in a vacuum, though. Obviously anything in the federal budget has the capacity to increase the deficit. The argument right now is specifically about tax cuts on not just the top earners, but only the top earnings of the top earners, because it is those tax cuts in particular which, in the grand scheme of federal spending, are amongst the most easily realized savings.
We can’t, for better or worse, cut the military budget. We can’t, for better or worse, cut entitlement programs that are already operating in the margins – especially at a time when so many Americans are suffering.
1 in 7 American families are living below the poverty line, and we’re arguing about ratcheting up the taxes on earnings over $250,000 a year. 99% of Americans manage to live on less than $250,000 a year. Most are living on about 1/5 of that. And we’re not talking about confiscating every penny earned over that amount, we’re talking about a 4.5% increase. It amounts to $50,000 more for someone who earns a million dollars and the number of people that this is going to effect is roughly the population of the greater Pittsburgh area.
One day someone will explain the compulsion for people who will never be affected in any substantial way (if at all) by turning back these cuts to be the most vociferous opponents of doing so.
So the 700 billion we would get by raising the rate on the top 2% back to Clinton era levels (which were half of Eisenhower era levels) would be meaningless?
They benefitted the “super rich” much more than anyone else.
You have often posted in these forums positions that are so 180 degrees from reality that sometimes I think you are either deliberately trying to whoosh people or you are really a Rovian plant trying to make liberals look incredibly niave.
For example, you’ve stated (at least, I think it was you, might have been Dio) that all media is actually conservative (in a discussion regarding Fox News vs CNN, CBS, etc). I guess you think they are from your POV, but as another poster once cleverly said on these boards, when you are in Hawaii, even California looks East…
Saying that tax cuts (instead of increases) lead to the stagnation of the economy flies in the face of what every economist right of Mother Jones would say is CW. Hell, even 31 Democrats are supposedly begging Pelosi not to hammer the economy by rescinding the tax cuts at this point, due to the damage that the increased taxes will have on our fragile economy
The more money Government takes out of the economy, the less that a more-efficient private sector can put it to good use.
Why do you support tax cuts when clearly they were not linked to spending cuts?
Fiscal “conservatives” can say “but-but-but-but I woulda LIKED for the spending cuts to have happened, but they didn’t, so don’t blame me for supporting tax cuts!”
Well, yes, I AM blaming you. (“You” meaning fiscal “conservatives” generally.) “You” threw your support behind deficit-raising tax cuts and tried to sell the American people a pig in a poke that spending cuts would come if we all just wished hard enough. Whether that pie-in-the-sky promise was made through deceit or foolishness is up for debate, but clearly the American people were sold a bill of goods: “We’re returning more of YOUR money to YOU, the taxpayer! We’ll figure out how to pay for it in 10 years…”
It is completely disingenuous for fiscal “conservatives” to praise tax cuts that worsened the deficit for a decade (or perhaps more, depending on what Congress does in the next few months) and hide behind a fig leaf of “coulda-shoulda-woulda” spending cuts that never materialized.
And let’s just remember who got rid of the PAYGO rule that required balancing tax cuts with spending cuts, or spending increases with tax increases: fiscal “conservatives.” And let’s remember who complained when Obama proposed to reinstate those rules: fiscal “conservatives.”
Don’t be silly; it is America that is very, very, far to the right, not I who is far to the left. America is freakishly far to the right, bordering on the theocratically fascistic.
So what? The Democrats are a collection of good little right wing corporatists. They are like the Republicans primary concerned with shoveling more money to the rich, regardless of the consequences.
The private sector isn’t more efficient; it is simply better at some things, worse at others. The less money the government takes out, the more jobs that only the government is interested in doing will be left undone, the more the debt will grow, and the more unbalanced the country will become towards the extremely wealthy,.