The Ideological Underpinnings of the Tax Rate Debate
Long-time readers know that I’ve bemoaned the lack of distinction between the phrases “tax cuts” or “tax increases,” and “tax rate cuts” or increases, in policy discussion. For over a decade now, we’ve been arguing about the “Bush tax cuts,” as though anyone knows whether they were tax cuts or not. As I explained here almost four years ago:
When a politician says that he’s going to either cut or increase your taxes, he is engaging, wittingly or not, in a conceit and a deceit. He says it as though he has the power to do any such thing, when in fact he does not. He has no power except to reduce or increase the rate at which you pay taxes, whether on property, income, or whatever.
…When the “cost” of a tax rate reduction is “scored” by the Congressional Budget Office, they do a “static” analysis, which means that they assume that the change in rates will have no influence on the behavior of the taxed, which is arrant nonsense. When a politician tells you that he knows how much revenue a tax change will result in, he is either lying or deluded.
So the president is at least one of those two (and they’re not mutually exclusive), because he said in his press conference a few days ago:
It’s — and, look, I’ve been living with this for a couple of years now. I know the math pretty well. And it’s — it really is arithmetic. It’s not calculus.
Leaving aside that it’s unlikely that the president has ever even taken calculus, let alone passed or excelled in it (we won’t know unless he finally releases his college transcripts), yes, Mr. President, it actually is calculus, and not just arithmetic.
For those who don’t know, calculus is a field of mathematics that analyzes (among other things) rates of change, and their effects. It recognizes that some things are a function of other things, and that changing the former will have an effect on the latter, and quantifies it (to the degree that the nature of the function is understood). That is, it analyzes phenomena that are dynamic, rather than static. For instance, gravity is a function of distance from the earth’s center, and if one assumes it is, instead, a constant all the way up into space, it guarantees that your rocket design will not deliver the planned payload. Of course, the president has never been purported to be a rocket scientist (except figuratively by his acolytes and operatives with bylines).
Unfortunately, economics is much more complicated than rocketry, because unlike the nature of gravity, output as an effect of input is often hotly disputed within the profession. One of the areas of dispute is the effect of tax rates on revenue. As noted above, the Congressional Budget Office statically “scores” a Congressional tax proposal on the assumption that changing tax rates doesn’t change behavior, and that future economic growth is not a function of them. We can say one thing for sure about this assumption: it is economic nonsense. But for them to do anything else requires making other assumptions whose bases will be politically disputatious.
But the good news is that, at least temporarily, the discussion has gotten beyond the demagogic “(Bush) tax cuts” and “(Bush) tax increases” that we’ve been hearing for almost a dozen years now, and that never really existed in any quantifiable way, and finally explicitly turned to what it was always really about — tax rates. And in so doing, it exposes the ideological underpinnings of the debate. On one side, we have the Republicans, whose primary concern is economic growth and debt/deficit reduction, and on the other, the Democrats, who seemingly lie awake at night worrying about income inequality. The big lie of the campaign was that the Republicans were opposed to increases in “revenues” (code word for soaking the rich), when the reality is that the Democrats don’t care as much about revenue as they do about “social justice,” as exemplified by the president’s Marxist remark during one of his primary debates in 2008 that he would increase the capital gains rate even if it reduced revenue, out of “fairness.” And so concerned is he about the debt, that he doesn’t even know how much it is.
– you for this.
I’ve been reading Eric Hobsbawm’s book on the Age of Revolution, and it is frightening to see how far anticapitalists like Hobsbawm have penetrated in the schools and throughout the media, following the Leninist line. It is my view that capitalism itself is on the line, that explains the last election. See http://clarespark.com/2012/11/07/capitalism-is-on-the-line/. If we were not so influenced by the “social justice” hatemongers, we might have a shot at uplifting ordinary people, but no, we don’t teach economics or competing theories of taxation. I am grateful for this article, and unimpressed by the hate contingent that sees economic liberalism and Adam Smith as enemies of “the People.”
Either fight to the extent the house of reps can, to include shutting down the government, or go off the cliff, and then vote present on any Obama proposals. The nation will come to its knees soon enough.
For now,until we can either impeach or wait out this communist in the white house;”social justice” will have to win out. Give them what they want,see how much they like it.
It is too late. There are no legal means for relief left. The theft of the 2012 election by the Marxists shows that they wouldn’t work anyway. By shoveling resources into a doomed Romney campaign, Rinced and dry made sure Dirty Harry was kept in power. The only strength the GOP has left is in the state legislature. Robert’s actions on Obamacare showed the Supreme Court will not act against a grab for power by the Feds.
Secession is the last hope for America.
I tend to agree . There is no way to compromise or reconcile our differences. How do freedom and liberty loving people compromise with creeping fascism. They don’t. I see the day when we split up much the same way the USSR did. The question is not if but when and how much blood will be shed in the process
And this former co-owner of a NY/NJ based corporate tax practice knows when tax hooey is being blown in her face.
And she also knows the radical, revolutionary leftist, Islamist score. As such, all their mathematical reconstruction aside, the end game is the DESTRUCTION of the US as a capital-based system, via a hyper-sized dependent class. And that is the long and short of it.
http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/07/barack-hussein-obamas-deconstruction-plans-green-wise-via-the-economy-disarming-the-citizens-via-gun-control-connecting-the-dots-addendum-to-the-second-term-plans-of-an-obama-presidency-c/
The rest is just smoke and mirrors, bastardized math beside the point!
What debate?
You don’t mean, do you, the posturing to the powers in the “honourable” Congress and controlling media. If not prating the party line no or dismissive attention is paid Willy Loman. The Tea Party new Speaker of the House J. Boehner courage or is the word integrity. Ah, but such words have no or only Humpty Dumpty meanings in this new world. This post-modern, post-racial, post whatever world. This politically correct world.
Twas ever thus, Mark Twain, “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress”.
We The People still live in that dream world/wonderland in which we actually believe our opinions desires and requirements have any influence on the actions of those we elect to “represent” us. Majority rules, the 49 percent who disagree must, MUST accept the dictates, the rules, constraints etc of 51 percent. It’s called democracy isn’t it? Or politics
Agreements made early on among the “representatives” to go along to get along, to not make waves, scratch mine I’ll scratch yours. Necessarily behind closed doors.
And we’re surprised? that we get what we get. Debate, counter-argument. Differences of methods and goals? in this Circus in which We The People are the clowns.
Good one.
Actually, there is a debate, and the title: “The Ideological Underpinnings of the Tax Rate Debate” sees the Ideological side, but gets it wrong–as usual with the “tax cuts for the rich will pay for themselves” crowd. They are economic cranks for believing that Bushy scam, and if the tax rates revert next year, and revenue increases, such will totally destroy their ideological nuttery with direct evidence. Grover Norquist looks to be especially sweating bullets on reality hitting next year. They are obsessed with not undermining their faith in “tax cuts for the rich” and that is why they sound especially fiscally insane these days. The other things to deny mathematical reality is to “blame” social security—which has been the “maker” paying for Republicrat boondoggles, or going full Rush Limbaugh and deny that there are tax “cuts” for the rich, and anyways, they pay for themselves. Then there is the ideological Ayn Randists, but they have separate economic defects that preceded the religious belief that “tax cuts for the rich will pay for themselves.” It is a disease closely related to the one wherein believers cannot conceive why voters would think Republican politicians are big spenders and fiscal crackpots.
One more example of the murky insanity:
“beyond the demagogic “(Bush) tax cuts” and “(Bush) tax increases” that we’ve been hearing for almost a dozen years now, and that never really existed in any quantifiable way, and finally explicitly turned to what it was always really about — tax rates.”
It literally does not make sense, except as projection of one’s own previous obsession, defending, and religious like belief in the idea that “tax cuts for the rich will pay for themselves.” It’s really about “tax rates.” Really, what was it before? Bushonomics is more stupefying than climate scientology.
What the President was not willing to say before the election he was nonetheless quite open in signing us up for. A No-Economic Growth-Post GDP Future lies at the heart of his education policies, his environmental policies, his judicial choices. That’s what the Belmont Challenge he had Holdren create is all about. It is what the UN-initiatives we are on board with are all about.
It’s all about levelling. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/morphing-the-common-core-into-a-new-rewritten-us-constitution-by-mandating-false-beliefs/ is based on his choice for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Goodwin Liu’s writing. Before his nomination and printed in the Yale Law Journal in 2006.
If the price for a government-led economy has historically been stagnancy, this reality has already been factored into the future vision. Americans are to learn to live with less and take their comfort in valuing the well-being of others. In an America where nurturing and monitoring Communitarian Values is the dominant purpose of K-12 and higher ed.
At least we finally get why everyone is now supposed to go to College. That’s after the remake of the nature of College quietly going on out of sight. Which is also why it was so important to get control over the federal student loan program as part of the Obamacare bill.
Fundamental Transformation was actually not just a political slogan. And the blueprints are around if we know where to look.
Thank you for a rational article Mr. Simberg. It will fall on deaf and dumb ears as the Commies and RINOs continue the same posturing and draining of the wallets of the working class. I would add that the “rich” (code for business people) and corporations are really just pass throughs for the soaking of people who buy their products, since any tax on goods or services is included in the price one pays for the goods or services. Therefore, the government is not only taxing your income, your home, your purchases as sales tax, but driving up the cost of everything in a Machiavellian scheme to get as much money out of you as they can get away with and pass on your hard earned money to their voters.
This article is wide of the mark.
Tax rate cuts were most beneficial back in the 1970s and 1980s when the highest marginal rate was as high as 70%. But now that the highest marginal rate is under 40%, the benefits of such cuts are no longer significant or relevant to the problems of today.
We are now on the opposite side of the Laffer Curve from where we were in the 1970s:
As Romney pointed out inartfully, and as we all know, we’ve now got tens of millions of Americans and lots of corporations that now pay no income tax at all, thanks to the previous tax rate cuts and other deductions built into the tax code. Further tax rate cuts can’t do a thing to incentivize them, because they’re already at zero.
Plus, the financial collapse resulted in tens of millions of American homeowners seeing the value of their homes collapse, leaving them upside-down on their mortgage debts and facing possible foreclosure. At the height of the recession, an amazing one-fourth of all the homes in America were in danger of foreclosure. Such homeowners aren’t going to be helped by tax rate cuts.
Conservatives need a more relevant message for today’s problems than just “cut taxes and drill.” And there are such new ideas coming from conservative thinkers at NRO and AEI and Heritage and elsewhere. Interesting ideas on how to help the struggling middle class, the blue-collar workers displaced by automation and outsourcing, the poor kids who can’t afford to go to college, etc.
The problem is, those new ideas have not yet percolated into the GOP base, which constantly looks to punish dissenters from “cut taxes and drill” as heresy against traditional dogma. Grover Norquist went so far as to demand that every single Republican lawmaker must take a pledge never to raise taxes, ever, for any reason, under any circumstance.
That has to stop. Ideological rigidity is not a sign of philosophical health; it’s a sign that the philosophy is dying. Grover Norquist is not the Conservative Pope, defining what “Official Conservatism” is while punishing heretics with excommunication.
Tax cuts are always good policy. Why? Because its our own damn money and not the criminals in the federal government! That’s the understanding that any free man has about the way this evil and out-of-control government works against us all. The Marxocrat enemy wants to make chattel slaves of every single one of us. This was once understood by the majority of the people of this country; no longer! We have now become no better than Soviet Russia and Communist China. As I’ve been posting practically every day since the election was stolen last November 6th and the Constitutional Republic of old was killed; the only thing left for those of us who do not want to be chattel slaves to the federal government is to begin the process of nullification and secession.
Right now, the U.S. Government–OUR government–is heading for bankruptcy owing to the fact that it spends far more money than it takes in.
Grover Norquist’s “starve the beast” theory has been tried, and it has clearly failed. Cutting taxes did NOT force the Government to cut spending. Instead, it kept right on spending and the deficit exploded, and the debt soared.
And here’s the reason: Once all those tax cuts and generous deductions and credits enabled tens of millions of Americans and scores of big corporations to pay little or no income tax at all, they no longer had any incentive to want the Government to stop spending. Now that they were paying no income tax, they were getting all those Government services and Government-built infrastructure “for free.” So why should they want to cut that back? They don’t have to pay for any of it.
Don’t you get it? The GOP helped to create that “47%” who don’t pay income tax, with all those tax cuts it advocated, including the earned income tax credit.
“Once all those tax cuts and generous deductions and credits enabled tens of millions of Americans and scores of big corporations to pay little or no income tax at all, they no longer had any incentive to want the Government to stop spending.”
What a bunch of tortured BS. Tax cuts from the 91% and 70% level were necessary to bring us back from the brink of complete socialism – a system known to fail every time. As someone above said, we should all chip in for common expenses but we start with the assumption that our property and our money belong to us.
Deductions were created as economic or social engineering mechanisms, each intended to encourage a behavior deemed beneficial to society. Now the Progressives talk about those who take them as criminals or tax cheats.
Lastly, corporations do not pay income taxes – their customers and employees pay them – a totally regressive tax if that worries you. Also, employees often lose their jobs under high taxation levels when foreign competitors undercut the company’s prices as it adjusts to give shareholders a reasonable return on investment.
Even if you have sound economic reasons for high taxes and big government (which you don’t), it is still not right and the rest of us have no moral or ethical (or legal for that matter) obligation to allow them to be visited upon us.
Two points, 1. We have “social justice.” It is called death. The same fate awaits us all. It doesn’t matter what kind of car you drive or your address. 2. The MSM has evolved into Pres 0bama’s, de facto, Basij.
excellent word choice, basij!
I going with Krugman on this. As sinz54 points out, our problem is that too many aren’t paying taxes. We need to broaden the tax base back to where it was in the 1950′s. That means getting rid of those “Hollywood Tax Cuts” that “The Professor” talks about plus getting rid of all those “non-profits” which are really just non-taxpaying entities. In the simpler world of tomorrow if you make money you pay taxes… period. No longer will the politicians get to decide which profits are “good profits” and thus tax-free and which are “bad profits” and deserving of confiscatory tax rates. The plan endorsed by the redistributionist Krugman actually eliminates the redistribution. Give him what he wants and watch him squeal.
The only way that we’re ever going to cut spending is to make people realize how much all that “free government stuff” costs. And the only way to do that is to tax them, and tax them, and tax them some more. Maybe then they’ll learn the high cost of free. Maybe then they’ll say “hey, it’s cheaper for me to take care of myself!”.
Social justice comes from wealth not poverty, look at Detroit.
“social justice is to ask the poor (losers) if the rich (successful) should pay more taxes”. The absurdity of this still takes my breath away. Most of these losers don’t even understand the difference between amount of tax paid and percentage of tax paid…
Very good.
One of the things that annoys me is that people look at things in isolation. The boom of the Eisenhower explains this well. People point at the things they want like the high taxes and strong unions, but not what else is going on in the world. Just like many say government spending and WWII ended the Great Depression but they ignore the low and declining standard of living for the majority of Americans during the war, save for politicians and war workers. The majority had no new appliances or cars and rationed quantities of lower quality food and clothing, etc.
The whole picture needs to be taken into account.
“economics is much more complicated than rocketry,…” partially because the study of economics necessarily comprises the study of taxpayers behavior. this is the fulcrum of the tax cut debate, but proponents of higher taxes ignore it.
it is human nature to maximize ones position in life, usually through accumulation of money, power, and material possessions. when government seeks to crimp that tendency, people respond by finding ways to subvert government. when taxes are raised on cigarettes, people buy them on the black market, thwarting venal bureaucrats and depriving government of predicted revenue increases. obamacare leads to mass layoffs. businesses move overseas. hence the dynamic nature of economics.
the democrats’ ideological zeal refuses to allow for resistance to their theories, whether due to arrogance or authoritarianism, or perhaps both. this willful blindness lies at the core of why socialism is a failure: it denies human nature by demanding that everyone work for an amorphous entity called “the state”, instead of allowing people to work for their own self-interests. when people are forced into a procrustean economic system, the ultimate result is a hobbled economy.
economics is pretty dry—i used my grad school macro text for many years as a cure for insomnia—but it is by nature non-ideological, like the other sciences.
unfortunately, as mr simberg ably postulates, this is no longer true.
“the Democrats, who seemingly lie awake at night worrying about income inequality”
the power players of the collective could care less about income inequality
what they care about is having their paws on the loot- as much of it as possible
“income inequality” are just the poll tested buzzwords which cover the true intent (theft) and triggers the “lowinformationvoterHALLIBURTONBUSHFAULT” pavlovian response to check “D” at the ballot box
this is similar to the “redistribution of wealth” canard where little if nothing is distributed and it is definitely not wealth
free market capitalism is the one system which tends to dilute the concentration of power- this is the sole reason why the collectivists are against it
Raise the tax rate on EVERYBODY (from Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to people on welfare and food stamps) to 91% of EVERY NICKEL THAT COMES THEIR WAY. No deductions for anything including food, mortgage interest or anything else. Then confiscate every nickel in everybody’s 401K’s and IRA’s. MAKE THE SACRIFICE “FAIR” FOR EVERY, SINGLE, MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD in this country. It’s SOCIAL JUSTICE don’t ya know that everybody pays their fair share. And when not another car, pickup, house, Iphone, Ipad or “Black Friday” 40″ flat screen tv is sold in this country because nobody has enough money to buy food or that evil electricity to run the lights in their house,ask the slugs who voted for b.”INSANE” obama if they are happy in their hope and change.
And at the end of it all, the national debt WOULD NOT decrease one single cent because the politicians would find a way to waste every dime (or divert it to their union buddies). Only when every ghetto-dweller, college student, college professor and all the rest of the communist bastids that voted for obama cannot find food to feed themselves will they get the message that elections have real consequences. Unfortunately, by then we will all be speaking either Russian or Chinese.
Taxes are the symptom. The problem is uncontrolled government spending. That Obama says the problem is the rich don’t pay their “fair share” is both a lie and a distraction. That we’re entitled to anything beyond what we produce ourselves is a lie. That we have any rights beyond those we’re willing to fight and if necessary give our lives for is also a lie. Right now 51% of the US live in a delusional state thinking they’ve been screwed by the other 49% because Obama and the Dems say so. When Bush left office, the feds spent $2 Trillion per year. Almost immediately Obama almost doubled it. With PPCA (aka Obamacare), more green regulations, bank regulations, etc. written by nameless faceless bureaucrats expect the fed spending to skyrocket (got to pay those 6 figure salaries to the army of fed regulators and enforcers we’re going to soon get). The interest on the debt already exceeds the Defense budget and will rapidly consume all fed income unless we stop adding to it and start to pay down the principal. Tax all you want, any way you want, the country will soon default on its debt unless fed spending is cut by at least 50% (back to 2008 levels as a minimum). Expect however the spending to increase, and eventually the fed will not be able to pay the interest on the debt, no one willing to loan them more money, and suddenly we’ll all look at those green pieces of paper called money as having the worth of a piece of toilet paper. Think Weimar Republic in the late 20s/early 30s, or Zimbabwe today. And of course the poor and those on fixed incomes will suffer the most and the soonest. God help us all.
It’s — and, look, I’ve been living with this for a couple of years now. I know the math pretty well. And it’s — it really is arithmetic. It’s not calculus.
Well, that’s good Barry, because you told Jay Leno in late October, shortly before the election…
“The math stuff I was fine with, up until 7th grade”, adding he was “pretty lost” after that.
Of course, in the other sense of the word, the current president’s real calculus is that he’ll be able to continue to wage class warfare, the economy will continue to be sick, he’ll continue to blame recalcitrant Republicans, and the media will help him in that endeavor.
True enough. Push to “tax the rich” in the name of “social justice”, even though the theoretical increases in revenue will barely dent each year’s $1+ trillion deficits.
A winning strategy, based on the millions of Americans who voted to re-select this admittedly innumerate guy.
This former rocket scientist and student of calculus agrees with you.
This 24/7 in-your-face Washington DC, this perpetual tension between Congress and the Executive over policy and procedure and philosophy of governance is beyond exasperating.
The power games are such that ALL of them seem to have forgotten they work for us. They must feel very left out, lonely and insignificant, unless they’re in front of the cameras, pumping their own version of perpetual verbiage versus the other guy’s version of perpetual verbiage.
Good government ain’t all that complicated, guys.
A presidency was never (ever) intended to consist of a single individual determined to force his personal ideology onto a people. We’ve seen the trait in past presidents, but this particular One™ seems to consist of little else.
And doesn’t care if the nation’s fiscal ruin is the price of his “success”.
Simberg, you and your self-serving, me-first Randian cronies lost. Not only have you lost the ideological debate, you’ve lost the common sense debate. Calculus aside, we have measurable data showing that prior to the implementation of the Bush tax cuts, (or rate decreases, or whatever war of semantics you folks are waging this week), we had great growth in the private sector, and a huge growth in the wealth share held by the middle class – you know, that group of folks which actually creates small businesses. In the decade following the implementation of the Bush tax rate cuts, the economy tanked, and wages and savings for the vast majority of Americans plummeted. What we saw was a huge transfer of middle class wealth to a tiny percentage of very wealthy individuals. Sure, that might sound great to someone like yourself, who makes his living supplicating himself before the feet of the wealthy, but for the rest of Americans, it is wholly apparent that trick-down economics is a massive failure, and that those who continue to push it are frauds.
Obama himself acknowledged that increasing taxes doesn’t and won’t necessarily increase revenue but needs to be done in the name of “fairness”.
For a good laugh, here’s what candidate Obama told Charlie Gibson, 2008;
You know, I believe in the principle that you pay as you go, and you don’t propose tax cuts unless you are closing other tax breaks for individuals. And you don’t increase spending unless you’re eliminating some spending or you’re finding some new revenue. That’s how we got an additional $4 trillion worth of debt under George Bush. That is helping to undermine our economy, and it’s going to change when I’m president of the United States.
Gee, we got $6 trillion worth of new debt in 4 years of Obama versus (his claim) $4 trillion in 8 years under GWB.
Walter J,
Playing fast and loose with the facts there aren’t you? The cuts came as a result of the economic impact from 9/11. The cuts didn’t cause the slowdown. As for the subsequent financial meltdown, the cause was all the bad mortgage loans the feds forced banks to make which were then bundled and sold as securities. You can blame lots of people for that one but the Dems get the lion’s share. Bush actually tried to head that problem off but Dodd and Franks wouldn’t have it. As for wealth transfer, Bush borrowed $500B/yr and we were rightly mad about that but Obama’s borrowing/printing money to the tune of over $1T/yr. You’re right there is a big wealth transfer out of the pockets of the middle class and it’s Obama who is doing it and bragging about it.
Logic and reason won’t work with Walter.
Next time you see him on here, it will be same-o, same-o.
Guaranteed.
The role of the Community Re-Investment Act (started under Carter, given teeth under Clinton) and the resulting corruption of loan practices precipitating the ’08 financial meltdown (“the mess” that poor little Barack keeps complaining he “inherited”) will never be acknowledged by people like Walter.
Hey Walter
Here’s candidate Obama making his “argument” for an increase in raising taxes on capital gains, even in the face of evidence that revenues go down
Dream on. One could as easily claim that the middle class grew in the 90′s because of Monica Lewinsky’s lips. At least that “data” has some basis in fact.
Wealth in the 1990′s actually increased because Reagan removed the chains that had nearly eliminated entrepreneurship by 1980, because of the elimination of the AT&T monopoly, because the regulators did not sufficiently protect IBM’s monopoly, because the Republicans staved off Hillary’s catastropic health care monstrosity and limited Bubba’s planned catastrophic tax increases, and because Clinton signed the republican’s capital gain rates cut. All of that fueled the computer/telecom revolution, which only happened because the marxists had no idea it was coming. Rest assured, they won’t be caught unaware again. Case in point, their current all-hands-on-deck effort to strangle wealth and innovation.
What increasing the upper tier of tax rates, in combination with regulatory straight jackets, will do is to drive the wealthiest individuals either underground (if they somehow still believe that the US is the safest place to live) or to other countries where they will be free to live as they want. The seventies will quickly return, which will (hopefully) be quickly followed by a counter-revolution, or (far more likely) a return to world-wide statism, aka, serfdom.
The idiot myth of “fairness” is also more complicated than “math”. To beleive that it will change anything, you also have to believe that redistributing money from people who have it today to people who don’t will somehow allow the wealth of the country to remain the same or even more ludicrously, grow. As if the people who have remained in poverty for decades despite the trillions that have already been redistributed to them will somehow turn into brilliant innovators because of the next trillion. The truth, as EVERYBODY knows is that redistribution destroys wealth, and also, at best, does nothing for the people getting the money, and at worst, destroys their live. If anyone can demonstrate the former, I’d like to hear about it. The latter is so manifest that every politician in the country knows it.
So all that ratcheting up income redistribution will do is to also ratchet up the demise of the most productive country in history.
Krugman, obama and the other marxits know that fully as well.
They know it so well that it is, in fact, the lynchpin of their plan.
Obama, I can believe, is doing it intentionally.
Krugman I think of as just plain nuts, a diehard, egotistical kind of nuts, rather than bent on destroying the economy. (I might be wrong about him, though.)
Of course, they both got Nobels (from the equally ideologically bent Swedish Academy) so apparently think they walk on water now, or, at least, that the stuff between their ears can’t possibly stink.
Krugman is a modern day court jester.
The old ones pretended to be fools while telling the king exactly what he wanted to hear. It was easy work.
Krugman pretends to be an eonomist while telling the marxists exactly what they want to hear. It’s easy work.
Being a court jester is very lucrative, then and now.
” . . . that redistributing money from people who have it today to people who don’t will somehow allow the wealth of the country to remain the same or even more ludicrously, grow.”
Swimming pool half empty? We’ll just pump water from the deep end over to the shallow end, and the pool will fill right back up. Never mind the leaky hose routed thru D.C.
People actually voted for that. How on earth did we acquire so many Stoopid people?
I guess you’ve never been told that the word “Marxist” doesn’t mean “somebody I don’t like.” Krugman may be right or wrong, but you have to be remarkably ignorant to think he’s a Marxist since his writings are very much in the economic mainstream, i.e. neoclassical, just like Friedman and most other economists.
What’s with the willful stupidity?
You are absolutely correct.
I don’t use the word marxist in the purest sense, as all of you fools demand when you have nothing else to say.
Your inane argument, among the thousands of inane things your kind asserts, is that if your opponents are not 100% precise in every detail of their argument (according to YOU, of course), then the argument must, per se, be entirely incorrect.
Krugman, quite oviously hates free market and freedom, just like all the other marxists in the sewer with him. Denying it just points out what a fool you are. He can gussy it up with all of the made up lies, convenient omissions, and statistical legerdemain that he wants, but he he’s simply a snivelling toady for his marxist masters. He sells himself himself for money…the most despicable kind of whore imaginable. Ordinary whores don’t harm anybody but themselves and their voluntary customers. Krugman is a million times more disgusting.
To say that you don’t use the word “Marxist” in its purest sense is pretty funny. I guess for you “up” can also be used to mean “down.” Or would it be also pedantic of me to complain about that?
I shouldn’t make assumptions and be do hard on you. Maybe English isn’t your native language or you’ve recently had a stroke.
I recommend starting here first! This what should be on the table without exception.
Military mystery: How many bases does the US have, anyway? By Gloria Shur BilchikPublished: January 24, 2011
http://www.occasionalplanet.org/2011/01/24/military-mystery-how-many-bases-does-the-us-have-anyway/
“there are more than 1,000 US military bases dotting the globe. To be specific, the most accurate count is 1,077. Unless it’s 1,088. Or, if you count differently, 1,169. Or even 1,180. Actually, the number might even be higher. Nobody knows for sure.”
I recommend starting with your “benfits”.
So…do we continue to use today’s bastardized version of Keynes? Or do we go full bore Austrian?
The problem is, the rest of the world has adopted some form of Keynes, so whathappens if one nation goes Austrian?
…’cause tax cuts, isolated from other ‘reforms’ in our laws and regulations, simply ain’t the answer, folks. imo, Nothing we’re doing is working. We’ve got to start over. For the last forty or fifty years, we’ve been treating the symptoms. We haven’t begun to fix the ‘disease.’
What most comments, including the author of the article, are suggesting is yet another treatment for one of the symptoms of the ‘disease’
Well, when the oil shocks and then the great recession of ’73 went down, the great bug out happened and South Vietnam went down tubes in ’75. All that’s happening now is a slow motion repeat of the seventies, only with the middle east instead of the far east. Basically it boils down choosing to either fund Big Bird or a girls school in Kabul. I think Big Bird won and returning to the moon was never really in the cards.
Absent wealth redistribution, capitalism just doesn’t work. Teddy Roosevelt, that notable red, understood that. Upping the tax rate on the rich isn’t enough, though. Government services like health care and education are at least as important if we aren’t going to turn into a banana republic.
Contemporary America has opted for private opulence and public squalor. Thing is, there’s a limit to how far you can go in that direction without creating a revolutionary situation. I don’t think we’ll have a revolution, however. I think that the pendulum has swung so far in the Conservative direction over the last 40 years that there is a great deal of built up momentum in the opposite direction. You can already see signs that even right-wing Congressmen are softening their positions on a host of issues because they absorbed the lesson of the last election: the blacks, Hispanics, young people, and working poor are going to vote. You can’t depend on lack of voter enthusiasm on the part of Democratic constituencies now that all these people are recognizing their power.
Throughout history there has never been a shortage of scumbags who will screw over everyone else in order (in their greedy stupidity) to seemingly advance their temporary situation. People like that are like vampires. Vampires and those like them need to be returned to the hell that spawned them.
That’s what is known as a false alternative. You are saying we have to spend 105% of revenue forever or we can’t have public schools. We’ve had public schools for going on a century.
Congratulations. Way to go endangering all the programs and people you profess to love by never allowing the smallest concession to reality.
The notion that a wealthy nation like ours can’t afford to provide decent services to its citizens is factually incorrect. It’s simply a question of finding a reasonable trade off between the public and the private. I don’t know where the ideal point of balance is or even if it makes sense to talk about such a point; but it’s pretty clear to me that the current situation is slanted far too much for the benefit of a tiny proportion of the population. I think the rich are fooling themselves if they think they can go on forever insulating themselves from a run-down nation in the comfort of their glamorous cysts of privilege. Nations decline when elites refuse to pay the freight.
The political outlook on this site reminds me of an old joke:
A man was on vacation with his wife in Atlantic City. She wanted to go shopping so he went off on his own and tried to pick up a prostitute. They couldn’t agree on the price. He wouldn’t offer her more than $20 so he eventually gave up and went back to his hotel. Later that day he was walking down boardwalk with his wife when he came upon the whore. She took one look at the wife and said, “See what you get for $20?”
Thing is, some of us don’t want to live in Mississippi or some other benighted conservative paradise with lousy schools and declining life expectancies. Civilization isn’t free or even cheap, but we can see what you get for @20.
Hey Republicans, let the top rate be whatever the Democrats want. Add the provision that the maximum deduction for foundations, estates, trusts, and endowments will be limited to $250,000. Watch the pigs squeal!!!
The per person burden of the US debt is over 50,000 dollars. each. the babies too.
Sorry rich dudes I just got over my guilt over unequal protection under the law. The big out I can see is no one really asked me about borrowing all that scratch in the first place. Possibly I can blame rich donors. In fact I am sure I can.
Aaah, the old republican chestnut about incremental changes in tax rates leading in reverse changes in revenue.
It’s a load of rubbish. Look at the historical data on CGT changes and revenue and you’ll see that while, yes, there have indeed been instances where an reduction in the rate was followed by an increase in revenue (and vice versa), in every significant case the rate change has FOLLOWED the established trend in revenue.
So yes, reagan cut the CGT rate and revenues went up … because they were going up anyway. The movements on wall street dwarfed the effect of CGT rate changes. I dare anyone here to find a significant instance of the theory espoused in that hothair.com link that actually played out in practice. In every significant case, the rate change followed the established revenue trend – the rate change itself had no visible impact. So claim otherwise is to believe a theory without evidence.
The standard conservative theory on income tax rates is just as silly.
Faith-based economics. It’s not calculus.
Well, I see those who think capitalism doesn’t work, the rich are screwing the rest of us, government forced individual wealth redistribution is the answer, government should provide all “essential” citizen services like free healthcare, and all endeavors by people living in the US should be adjusted by government to ensure equality of outcomes and conservatives live in a faith based fantasy world crowd have decided to join the discussion.
Here’s a few observations on your view of reality. Your “utopian beliefs” were tried and are still being tried around the world and history shows that hundreds of millions have died in slavery and misery as a result. But of course you think that you can do it better? Has it ever occurred to you that equality of outcome presupposes that we all want the same things when in fact our motivations and desires are not the same? I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, yet you want to give the government the power to restrict freedoms on a massive scale to get your utopia? Do you really think some politician knows or even really cares what you want or that he/she can deliver it? You’re right there are some who are living in a fantasy world and it’s not faith based conservatives. Wake up and smell what you’re shoveling!
WHAT exactly are FREE health care, food stamps, security, housing, schooling, entertainment and/or essential services?
The same as social justice, affirmative action, and sundry other pie in the sky
welfare promises from politicians whose stock in trade is lies, lies, and more lies?
For those FREE whatever to the politicians’ clients/vassals a serf class aka taxpayers is established. SOMEBODY has to pay sometime, somehow. In this “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave”?
And the fatal flaw in their grand scheme to reach their envisioned utopia is the assumption that the makers will simply continue to produce. Government projection models always make the mistake of assuming that if you change one variable the others remain constant. What really occurs is that the entire equation adjusts to respond to the change.
Investors and business folk are already adjusting to current and known changes in tax and regulations. They will always do their best to minimize the amount taken from them, to the point of closing no longer profitable endeavors and ultimately fleeing the governments which seek to rob them of their entire wealth.
The fairy story “The Goose and the Golden Eggs” is trite but does very well reflect our current condition. American business and financial ingenuity is the goose and their collective neck is on the chopping block. What follows will be vicious, cruel, and ugly. And every bit of it asked for by an ignorant and greedy voting public.
Men cannot be made equal except possibly “before the law” and there is no “equality before the law”, if there is no equality before the tax man.
This is a good article for those of us who are used to a cerebral challenge (an appeal to reason and intellect and not emotion). The problem is that most people do not follow this kind of argument – it is way over their heads. This has been one of the greatest flaws of the Republican attempts to win over people. This needs to be presented visually, using visual analogies that most voters can see and identify with. One website has an interesting approach to visualizing food stamps, world debt, US budget etc.(www.demonocracy.info). They give a good idea of visualization.The work of the Pixar films gives another idea of striking visuals. Combining these and developing stunning visuals will have far more impact than endless cerebral presentations – no matter how brilliant.
If the Republicans refuse to come down to the level of the naive, visually orientated voter they do not deserve to win. Perhaps they need to get their own house in order, all their politicians on board on the same side, and all enthused about clearly communicating sensible and workable alternatives to the wishful thinking of Democrats.They need visuals that will go viral and carry a clear message to the masses.
Bill Whittle has been trying to do just that, through his short videos.
Here’s a good one from last year: EAT THE RICH!
I always get a giggle out of that “social justice” nonsense. Don’t they realize? You can’t get social justice without sacrificing individual justice. (that ought to be a bumper sticker)
Economic IQ test: If the national debt doesn’t matter, then why are we still paying federal income taxes? Friday, November 23, 2012 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
http://www.naturalnews.com/038069_national_debt_income_tax_social_engineering.html
You guys have an incredible amount of nerve. Your presidents, Reagan and the two Bushes, created the deficit problem by cutting taxes on the upper brackets, fighting unnecessary wars, and refusing to do anything about America’s god awful health care system. During the time that was happening, you never complained about the deficit. Not a peep. Now the deficit is the end of the world. If Romney had won the election, I’m sure you’d have instantly forgotten the horrors of debt since his budget plan would have guaranteed increasing deficits for ever.
Inescapable conclusion: those of you who are not ignorant tools are world-class hypocrites.
It wasn’t their tax cuts. It was their spending that compounded the problems. How to regard Reagan is still dilemma in my mind because his spending was among the most atrocious of any administration; yet that very spending bankrupted the Soviet Military.
Jim H,
Wrong, wrong, wrong, but go ahead and accuse others of traits best applied to your side of this debate. Once more, the problem is not who and how we tax but runaway fed spending. The fed budget at the end of Bush’s term was $2T and Bush was running a $500B/yr deficit and we were mad about that. Your hero, Obama, immediately doubled fed spending to almost $4T and is running $1T/yr-$1.5T/yr deficits. Raise all the taxes you want, any way you want, unless the fed budget is reduced by at least 50%, the interest alone on the debt will soon consume the entire federal budget and then the entire production of the nation. Already, the interest on the debt, social security, and fed supplied healthcare EACH separately exceed the money spent on defense. Worse. all these entitlements are also rapidly climbing in costs. So go ahead, keep waving red herrings about those evil others, the capitalists and private businesses and their supporters. Go ahead and take all of their wealth and their businesses. In the end it won’t make any difference other than the speed at which we reach financial ruin and total economic collapse. I strongly urge you to curb your angry passions and reexamine the facts rather than the BS the current administration is peddling. You need to be part of the solution not part of the problem because everything you cherish is about to be destroyed. And our side is not the enemy. Think about it.
When economies crash, as they ours did at the end of the Bush administration, deficits automatically go up because less taxes are collected and more is spent on unemployment insurance and other programs that kick in by statute. Bottom line: blaming Obama for the increase in the deficit is just more evidence that you’re either unprincipled or willfully ignorant or, most likely, both.
By the way, it’s a useful exercise to look at the U.S. budget and figure out how you would cut it down by 50% Hint: you can’t.
Jim H,
Wrong again. When Bush cut taxes after 9/11, revenues went up. Further, revenues are and have been $2.5T during Obama’s first term. If fed spending had stayed at 2008 levels, there would be a $500B/yr surplus. But Obama immediately doubled fed spending to almost $4T, and increased the deficit to over $1T per year, which has not improved the economy. As for unemployment insurance, Obama changed the law to extend unemployment benefits when all historical evidence shows that just prolongs the time people live on the dole before they even try to start looking for work. As for the financial market meltdown, that was caused by the feds forcing banks to give out housing loans to unqualified borrowers. Bush actually tried to head the problem off but Dodd and Frank, both of whom were getting kickbacks from the hot real estate market wouldn’t let him. Not only did that cause housing prices to triple in a short period of time creating a market bubble that was going to collapse, taking both unqualified and qualified homeowners down, but the banks bundled these bad loans and resold them as securities. When the loans defaulted, the banks and big stock brokerages, fearing default on their bundled securities, as well as firms like AIG who sold insurance on those securities, went to Bush who gave them a big loan from the treasury. Obama, for his part again doubled down and gave the banks even bigger loans thus causing taxpayers to pay for the reckless and unsustainable business model that was caused by feds of both parties going back a couple of decades and by the financial markets. Both parties share blame but the Dems hold the lion’s share.
As for your challenge as to where to cut the fed budget, that’s easy. Just bring all spending back to 2008 levels in all categories. Next restructure all entitlement programs to make them sustainable within the fed budget. You may say healthcare is a right but it’s a fantasy if the way it’s structured and what’s covered costs more money than we all have. You might as well say everyone has a right to be cured from stage 4 pancreatic cancer, a laudable goal, but writing a law won’t save anybody today. As for social security, we have again a ponzi scheme where we’re paying out more than we take in. I would propose keeping social security as is for those 50 and older and restructure it for younger Americans to limit payouts to what’s paid in plus accrued interest.
As for the fed budget, I look at it daily, in detail. I also look at and listen to a wide variety of sources, as do many others on this site. Are we unprincipled and willfully ignorant? Sorry but you’re wrong. We all face the biggest crisis of our age. You too. We need you to be part of the solution not part of the problem. Calling us names and questioning our motives won’t change things. If you have ideas to share, do so. If you question facts, raise your objections in a respectful way. If we don’t find a way to rein in runaway fed spending, we are all going to suffer greatly. I assure you that Obama and his administration are not being truthful and are leading this great country to ruin. You can easily find the facts on government websites controlled by Obama and his administration. I hope you’re brave enough to look and really see where we’re headed.
Burkean simply uses a tactic well known among Creationists, the Gish gallop. He makes a tremendous number of statements, most of them false, all of them dubious. Just for starters, he resells the long-exploded idea that tax cuts pay for themselves. He talks about bank loans as if it were Obama and not Bush that bail out the banks. He talks about Social Security, using the old chestnut about Ponzi schemes, which would be irrelevant to the current situation even if it made any sense. After all, Social Security is still in surplus and has nothing to do with current deficits. He claims he knows how to cut the budget, but his suggested solution is just an arithmetic exercise, if that, since what he purposes is quite impossible, especially since conservatives would never, ever cut the defense budget if they could help it. (Talking about going back to 2008 ignores the fact that the population has grown by millions in the interim and there has also been a certain amount of inflation.)
Cheap answers.
Jim H,
I see you are only on this site to mock and belittle those you disagree with and have no intention to have an adult debate. Too bad. You can go crawl back under the rock you came from now. To paraphrase the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld, “No facts and no Truths for you!”