Why Republicans don't trust Democrats and their budgeting

Great Debates
161

Yep, we can leave it to others. We can leave it to the people who pull you apart in nearly every thread you post in for cherry-picking, manipulation of data, etc. etc. That’s why your opinion doesn’t carry any weight here. And you’re only annoyed at me because I pointed out the truth about libertarians.

I’m absolutely fine with markets, I don’t hate them at all. What I think is clear as day except to the unfortunately ideologically blinded is that unregulated markets, especially financial markets, are a bad idea, and that these markets need to be regulated by the government. And in general you need to regulate industry, otherwise the market discovers cheap drywall from China but then it goes and poisons the people who install it, or cheap toys from Asia that poision…

Or no regulation of offshore drilling that causes slight environmental problems, or no regulation of the financial industry that causes global economic meltdowns…

Bur actual sensibly-regulated markets I’m fine with. Much better than any alternative.

162

Hate to break the news to you, Sam, but:

Libertarians are the most affluent group in Pew’s political typology.

163

No matter what reason libertarians give you for being libertarian, no matter what income group they fall in, the sorry truth about libertarians is that their number one reason for being libertarian is that they hate the idea of paying taxes. Their entire ideology flows from this one issue.

164

‘Combatant’? ‘Wars’? Wow, that’s awfully violent rhetoric. Didn’t you get the memo about the narrative? Only evil tea baggers use rhetoric like that. Next you’ll be telling me that I’m in your ‘crosshairs’.

Seriously, you need to lighten up. This isn’t a war, and we’re not combatants. It’s a philosophical debate about how best to run government, and regardless of who wins here or at the polls, the streets are not going to run red with the blood of the capitalists or the workers.

As opposed to my opponent, who made a factual assertion that he didn’t know was true, and who didn’t have any cites at all. I provide a valid cite that still contains valid data (albeit secondary because it doesn’t break down conservative/liberal into Democrat/Republican, but which still offers valid evidence for the debate), and the entire conversation suddenly veers away from my opponent’s completely uncited statement and into a discussion of not just my cite, but my posting style, honesty, yada yada. Par for the course around here.

But then, I guess if this is a war and we’re combatants, any strategy will do so long as you win, right?

You mean giving ground when my opponent has a point, and not dogmatically stamping my feet and demanding I’m correct or engaging in sophistry? Yeah, that’s kind of a habit with me. I guess it’s a weakness for a ‘warrior’, though. It opens my flank to attack or something. I should do like most of you and just keep obfuscating or changing the subject or attacking my opponent’s character or hurling vague accusations of past dishonesty in attempt to discredit anything they say. Then I’d be properly engaged in ‘battle’.

Or, you know, I could simply attempt to debate with more reasonable people in a civilized manner.

I understand them fine. I do, however, make mistakes on occasion, unlike the perfect liberals on this board who never have. I guess the lesson here is to never admit it.

What a load of nonsense. If you can’t see the difference between potential methodological flaws of a general survey and the obvious built-in bias of sampling a very specific, selected group of people (people coming out of voting booths), then I don’t know what to tell you. And by the way, we still have no evidence that Pew was wrong in their methodology or conclusions, and they’re still a respected polling firm.

All we know for sure is that their definition of ‘libertarian’ is perhaps more expansive than some, and that they broke groups up into ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ instead of ‘Republican’ and Democrat’, and while there is considerable overlap between those groups and the respective political parties, there is also a fair area of divergence. So while we cannot call their results conclusive with respect to Democrats and Republicans, we can offer it as partial evidence. That makes it still a valid cite - just not one that can be called conclusive. Just as YOUR cite is valid as partial evidence, but is not conclusive because the subset of the population that votes, and the methodology of exit polls, has not been established as providing a representative sample.

And let’s not forget that this all started to refute the statement that libertarians are mostly people who are at least upper-middle class. A statement that still has not been cited, and for which my own cite still good evidence against. Because even if the Pew poll has an expansive definition of libertarian, it’s a definition that’s in fairly wide use. And the numbers they show for income are SO FAR from China Guy’s assertion that it would take a major skewing to find another definition of libertarian that meets the requirement of the majority of them being at least upper middle class.

But I forgot - you’re not debating fairly. You’re engaging in ‘battle’, so all tactics are in play. I’ll remember that in the future.

165

What, so now their definition of Libertarian is okay with you? My cite of the same group, using the same definition, was unfair and dishonest and sloppy, but when you think their data now supports your point of view they become a valid cite?

And speaking of dishonest and sloppy, I hope everyone sees what you did there - you changed the question to fit the data. The assertion in dispute was that ‘most libertarians are at least upper middle class’. It was NOT that they were the most affluent group. I guess I should thank you - your cite shows that I was correct and China Guy was wrong.

I hope in the future you will be more careful about reading the thread and understanding exactly what the argument is before responding to it.

By the way, did you notice that ‘solid liberals’ were the second-most affluent group, and only three percentage points behind the libertarians? The bastards.

166

No, I’m not saying it supports my position. I’m saying that it doesn’t support yours.

It’s really simple, Sam. If you were relying on testimony by Bonzo the Clown to support your argument, I could point out that Bonzo wasn’t a very reliable source. But if Bonzo reassessed his position and was now directly contradicting your thesis, I would not be contradicting my low regard for Bonzo as a source to point out that even Bonzo was no longer supporting your argument. I don’t care if Bonzo’s good or bad anymore - he simply doesn’t support your case, and you have one less source to cite.

In this case, that takes you from 1 down to 0.

Oops.

Look, I shouldn’t even have to say any of this, should I? There’s a reason why I get increasingly exasperated with you lately.

‘I hope everyone sees what you did’ ?? Oh, Lordy.

He’s repressing me! Come see the violence inherent in the system!!

Let 'em see. :smiley:

‘Upper middle class’ doesn’t have a rigorous definition, but ‘the most affluent group’ pretty much has to be mostly above average, income-wise. Nitpicking this angle is…well, pretty desperate nitpicking. And rather absurd at that.

Whatever, dude. It appears you’re straining real hard just to convince yourself.

And your point is??

167

Cite?

Among all libertarians I know, this isn’t even remotely true. In my experience, it’s more true of hard-core conservatives. Libertarians are more animated by issues of personal freedom, regulation, and state intrusion in their lives. The only reason they think taxes are too high is because they think government is too big.

Pick up a copy of Reason some time, and go look at the type of articles in it. Chances are you’ll see a lot of critiques of regulation, perhaps some attacks on Republicans for anti-gay and pro-war sentiments, and occasionally an argument against higher taxes. But the center of gravity is definitely not around taxes. On the other hand, if you read a conservative magazine like Human events or National Review, taxes are much more front-and-center.

Personally, I’ve never had a problem with the taxes I pay, and I’ve never voted for a candidate primarily based on a promise to lower my own taxes. I don’t advocate for tax cuts now, either. In fact, I’ve consistently said that taxes need to be raised - but that spending needs to be cut more. I was highly supportive of Canada’s strategy to reduce our own budget deficit and debt - a strategy that employed both tax increases and spending cuts, carried out by the Liberal party.

You might want to look at RTFirefly’s latest Pew Report, which shows that Libertarians are much more willing to accept tax increases to fix the deficit than are staunch conservatives, and they’re not that far off the population average.

The real outlier in the Pew Poll is group known as ‘solid liberals’ (i.e. YOU and the majority of people on this board. Every other group in the poll thinks that government needs to be cut, but only 38% of solid liberals do. Most people do not think that raising taxes should be the primary means of fixing the deficit, but 66% of solid liberals do.

By the way, if you’re going to play the, "you’re only in it for your own self-interest’ card, I have to point out that the ‘solid liberals’ are by far the largest group who think that the deficit should be fixed by raising taxes instead of cutting spending, and they’re also by far the largest group that says they would be personally hurt financially if the government cut spending.

So from now on, maybe I should respond to any argument about the size of government by saying something like, “In my experience, all liberals care about is saving their cushy government payoffs. The selfish bastards.”. After all, that’s what you’re imply about libertarians.

For myself, after reading that latest survey I’m glad to be in the group called ‘libertarians’ because they come across as the most reasonable bunch of the whole lot. They’re secular, relatively happy, among the least partisan, they’re not anti-immigration, they’re more balanced in where they get their news than Republicans, they more socially accepting of alternative lifestyles, and they’re mostly professional types and business owners who believe that you get ahead through hard work and study, and not by getting the government to clear a path for you.

And, Libertarians throw the best parties. Everyone knows that.

168

Except that bonzo says no such thing. The original Pew report I cited also showed libertarians had the largest group above 75K. But it was only a third of them. Now it’s 39%. Still a long way from ‘most’.

Look, I shouldn’t even have to say any of this, should I? There’s a reason why I get increasingly exasperated with you lately.

You accuse me of overreacting - by overreacting? My point was that you changed the argument to fit the data. I never disputed that there were wealthy libertarians. I disputed that MOST libertarians were ‘at least’ upper middle class.

No, it’s not. It’s important because the implicit criticism in China Guy’s statement was that libertarians are the way they are because they don’t need the government’s help, or because they’re worried that the government will come after their own money, or that they’re greedy. My rebuttal was that most libertarians aren’t rich, and that plenty of them are poor or middle class. They aren’t motivated by personal greed - they’re motivated by a desire to be left alone regardless of their financial status.

Now, if the majority of libertarians are NOT in the upper classes, that’s an important thing to know. It’s not trivial or nitpicky. It says much about the mindset of a libertarian.

169

:rolleyes:

Ever hear of ‘analogy’ or ‘metaphor’?

Look, I’m not arguing with him. I’m arguing with you.

‘I shoudn’t have to defend the position I’ve taken because another poster’s argument is even weaker than mine’ doesn’t exactly cut it around here.

No, I mean citing stuff that you haven’t read well enough to understand that it doesn’t support your argument the way you think it does. Yes, that is a recurring habit with you lately.

You mean like what you just said about how you were really right because Pew just said libertarians were the most affluent group, but it didn’t say they were mostly upper middle class?

Can’t think of a better example of ‘demanding I’m correct’ and ‘engaging in sophistry.’

The thing is, all you did was show that there was the potential for nonresponse bias in the exit polls. You didn’t produce a shred of evidence that any of the sources of potential bias you mentioned were actually amounting to anything.

Now you’re just saying the ‘built-in’ bias was ‘obvious.’

Which means you’re citing your own judgment.

Not a good cite. Sorry.

170

I believe the more time-honored phrasing for this is, “I know you are, but what am I?” :wink:

171

You’ve never been highly supportive of any tax increases. You’ve been cheerleading for tax cuts during the Bush administration and now you’re claiming that you’re actually for tax increases despite post after post after post talking about how government needs to be shrunk. You’ve also posted endlessly about how supply side tax cuts are good for the economy yet now you’re claiming that you’re OK with tax increases. There’s more nonsense in this post than I have time to bother with but safe to say it doesn’t exactly correspond with what you normally post.

172

Cite?

There is no reason to believe it has to be either-or.

You do understand that economic conditions can and do change, don’t you?

Or perhaps you didn’t read very closely.

Regards,
Shodan

173

Government does need to be shrunk. That doesn’t mean I oppose tax increases. If you bothered actually reading what I wrote instead of skimming it for soundbites you can attack, you might have a slightly more sophisticated view of my opinions.

For example, I have repeatedly said that supply-side economics is valuable in the sense of removing barriers to business and job creation, it’s a separate issue from whether tax cuts will increase revenue irrespective of the current tax situation. I have said that it’s my belief that at current tax rates, a tax cut will NOT increase revenue.

I’ve also said that the laffer curve and supply-side tax cuts are more complex than just saying, “Cut taxes and revenue will go up.” There’s a long, variable time component involved. If a tax cut increases economic growth, then eventually tax revenues will return to and then exceed the baseline value. The question is how long it will take, and how much revenue will be lost in the meantime, and whether you can afford to do that.

The Bush tax cuts dropped revenue by more than 3% of GDP. However, revenues recovered within a few years back to just 1% of GDP lower than their original value. Unfortunately, spending was not cut but was increased, leading to deficits that created a permanent debt-servicing cost. I was in favor of the Bush tax cuts under the assumption that his promise to cut spending would also occur. If you go back and look, you’ll see I jumped off the bandwagon when they didn’t.

For instance, look at this table. In 2001, individual taxes were 9.7% of GDP. By 2004 they had declined to 6.9% of GDP, probably mostly due to the Bush tax cuts. But just before the crash in 2008 they had climbed back up to 8.4% of GDP. Had there not been a crash, it’s entirely possible that individual taxes as a percentage of GDP would be near or higher than their pre-cut values. And if tax cuts cause additional GDP growth, this could very well result in more goverment revenue. Unfortunately, there are many confounding variables and trying to attribute cause and effect to phenomenon that take years to show up is very difficult.

There’s another very interesting finding in that table, however: Individual taxes as a percentage of GDP have been remarkably stable in the modern era, despite numerous changes to tax rates, both up and down. The same is true of corporate taxes and overall tax receipts. In fact, if you plot tax receipts against economic growth, you’ll find that there is a greater correlation between tax revenue as a percentage of GDP and GDP change than there is between tax receipts and the tax rate.

One implication of this is that the best way to increase government revenue is to maximize economic growth. If you attempt to raise taxes to raise revenue, you may just wind up decreasing growth and reducing government revenue.

HOWEVER… There is one big exception, and it’s one I’ve mentioned many times on this board. A key finding of the Romer/Romer paper was that tax increases that are used to pay down the deficit do NOT reduce growth. They also found that large deficits are growth inhibitors. Therefore, it’s perfectly consistent to advocate for tax increases as a pro-growth tactic, so long as those tax increases are actually used to pay down the deficit.

There are a lot of conservatives/libertarians who believe this, but the other problem we have is that we’ve been burned by government promises. The ‘gang of six’ deal that was cut during the Reagan administration is a good example: The deal was a compromise - raise taxes, and we’ll also cut spending. The tax increases were immediate, but the spending cuts were delayed for several years into the future. Of course, they never happened. Because once you raise taxes and get a temporary revenue boost, the political will to cut spending evaporates. So all you get for your tax increase is bigger government and ultimately an even bigger debt.

So cutting to the chase: I would support tax increases in the U.S., but only if they are co-located with spending cuts. In other words, the cuts have to come before, or at the same time as the tax increase. And future spending increases have to be curtailed so that the tax increase/spending cut regime doesn’t just go for a few years until the deficit comes down slightly, which then triggers a boom in government spending.

Historically, taxes have hovered around 18-20% of GDP. I think a reasonable policy would be to peg government spending to a number around there, then start a round of spending cuts and tax increases that aim to bring taxes back to say 19% of GDP and spending down to 20% of GDP. Then I’d peg spending growth to GDP growth - 1%, so that as the economy grows the government slowly drops to maybe 19% of GDP, and the extra tax revenue would be used to pay down the debt.

Once the debt is paid down, taxes could then be cut back to match government spending, and government spending could be raised a bit to peg GDP growth, maintaining a balanced budget. As the debt is paid down, debt servicing costs would be lowered, and the savings could be split 50/50 between new government services and tax cuts. The ultimate goal is a government spending around 18% of GDP, taxes around 18% of GDP. Because the government would no longer have hundreds of billions in debt servicing costs, this would allow actual government services to still grow at a rate slightly higher than inflation.

That’s my position. There are no supply-side tax cuts, no fuzzy math. Just sound financial management, based around the principle of respecting the historical data and recognizing that ultimately growth helps people more than bigger government does, so a smaller government, higher growth model is better than one with bigger government and lower growth.

On the other hand, liberals don’t want to shrink government, even though it’s consuming about 5% of GDP more than the government has ever been able to collect with taxes. They think they can just pile on higher taxes and everything will be fine. They also want more regulations and more restrictions on businesses. They think that they can get away with this because government spending will create a magic multiplier that will make it all work out. That’s the real fuzzy math, and it’s an assertion that has no historical basis in fact.

174

So you support tax increases in Canada to pay for, amongst other things, socialised healthcare, but you also support shrinking government. And you agree that tax cuts don’t increase revenues but then you make a bs case that they just, you know, might do somehow. Basically a huge post about how you want to see the tax cuts you allegedly supported back in the 1990s. Then you pick 18% of GDP as a figure you think would be good but there’s actually no evidence of this at all*, picking a number like this makes you more of a numerologist than somebody with a serious opinion.

And liberals realise that governments are going to have to spend more over the next decades to pay for ageing populations. It’s inevitable, no matter what you hope to see happen over the next few years. And the evidence shows quite clearly that governments running healthcare etc. are far more efficient than letting the private sector do it.

  • Yes you’re going to tell me that the evidence of OECD or similar shows that low rates of taxation produce bigger growth, but that’s based on studies of countries like former eastern European countries whose economies grew massively after liberalisation with very small ongoing welfare/healthcare costs. Looking at actual mature industrial economys there’s no real pattern of anything re. tax rates.
175

IYHO.

176

When one is considering what to do about a ratio that isn’t in its usual range, one should consider the behavior of both the numerator and the denominator in determining why this is so before deciding how to get the ratio back in its usual range.

It’s the attack of the 50-foot strawman!

RUN AWAAAAAYYYY!!!

177

Where did I say that I support tax increases in Canada to support increased social programs? I supported tax increases in Canada when we had an out-of-control deficit and a debt that was 70% of GDP. And I only supported them because we had a 7-1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases, and reduced the size of our government from 53% of GDP to 35% of GDP. A move which, by the way, strengthened our economy, increased the value of our dollar by 20%, and prepared us to weather the 2008 recession better than any other country in the G8.

We do not need to raise taxes now because our growing economy is going to result in a budget surplus again within 2-3 years, and our debt is now at 30% of GDP. Our current deficit is below the rate of GDP growth, so it is sustainable.

So stop putting words in my mouth.

Sigh. I said that IF tax cuts increase revenue, it’s not going to happen overnight because the mechanism for increasing revenue is that tax cuts increase economic growth, resulting in a bigger pie for everyone, including the government. But I also said that tax cuts will not necessarily grow the economy, because the Romer/Romer paper showed that debt is at least as growth-inhibiting as tax increases. Therefore, cutting taxes will not grow the economy if the result is to increase the debt. Likewise, tax increases will not shrink the economy if the money is used to pay off the debt.

This is different than the Laffer curve argument. It’s possible to be on the high side of the Laffer curve where you would expect tax cuts to increase revenue, and still not increase revenue if the short term effect is to blow up the debt such that it adds more drag to the economy.

In short, it’s a complex issue with a lot of correlated factors, and right now it seems to me that the debt is the#1 issue and needs to be dealt with in a serious way, and that means both tax increases and spending cuts.

Jesus, would you please read my posts more carefully? I didn’t pick the number out of the ether - I used the historical number for the U.S.'s ability to raise tax revenue. It has remained within 2-3 percentage points of 18% of GDP throughout the modern era, and the fluctuations have had more to the do with the business cycle than with tax rates. Therefore, it seems reasonable to say that government spending should also be in this range to be sustainable.

No, it shows no such thing. And no, it’s not inevitable that government has to pay more. For example, you can means-test social security and medicare. I’d think Liberals would be all for that, since it’s a progressive solution. It’s what we did in Canada, and our retirement system is fully funded.

Have a look at Canada’s experience with big government, and what happened to our economy and standard of living when we reduced it dramatically. You can look at New Zealand’s experience while you’re at it.

178

I read your post quite carefully.

Again, I’d suggest that when considering a ratio, one must consider both changes to the numerator and changes to the denominator. Otherwise, you have no idea WTF you’re really proposing to do if you’re proposing to base policy on the ratio, or proposing to limit the fluctuations in the ratio itself.

Yeah, I know - arithmetic has a liberal bias. :rolleyes:

179

No, but bullshit does.

Regards,
Shodan

180

Instead of tossing around grade 6 arithmetic as some sort of liberal profundity, why don’t you get specific and make an actual argument so we can debate it?