In one post you're saying revenue is only a function of GDP, but in this block you're saying it isn't a function of GDP at all, it is a function of the size of government.
Revenue is
primarily a function of GDP, however, it is also a function of the
relative size of government. you can tell because both have direct effects - though size's effect is inverse. Growth obviously does the same - though direction can exacerbate both those factors. Tax rates appear to have
no direct effect on revenue, as they can swing wildly without significantly altering the amount of money coming in. the largest drop in revenue collection (from 2006-2008) occurred without a single tax rate changing, while the largest drop in tax rates (1982-1986) appears to have produced relatively stable revenue collection.
Revenue = gdp * tax rate.
if that were true, then lowering the tax rates would result in an equal and direct lowering of revenue. instead, we have repeatedly seen the
opposite; from Kennedy, to Reagan, to Clinton, to Bush.
We dropped the tax rates like crazy, forcing deficit spending and forcing our safety net to fall far behind the rest of the first world. As a result, the foundations of our society started to fall apart. Investment far outstripped consumption, so the market corrected.
I would like you to explain how lower taxes destroyed savings?
We've been around 20% several times. 1945, 1969, 1981, and 2000.
in
1965 Revenue was 19.7% of GDP
... of course, that was after
Kennedy had lowered the tax rates.... and so achieving that high would have been impossible under your "revenue = GDP * rate" theory. In 1981 it was 19.6% of GDP, and in 2000 it hit 20.6% after Clinton....
cut taxes.
What are you talking about? You are saying that not being super rich is "acting stupidly"?
no, i'm saying that the behaviors that usually cause people to be poor are "acting stupidly". not finishing high school. having kids before you are married. getting hooked on government benefits. choosing not to work full time.
Using silly characterizations to depict the middle class as greedy while fetishizing the rich is obviously silly
i'm not fetishizing anybody. but the middle class (and lower class) in America
did spend the last couple of decades
stupidly consuming it's way into the problems that it is in now.
[quote Obviously the rich top that chart a million times over.[/quote]
really? my college roomate was a multi-millionaire. when we moved out in town together, he slept on a mattress on the floor, same as me.
If middle class people in the US still got the same slice of the GDP that they got in the 60s the median household income in the US would be over $140k/year. Instead it is $44k.
so? why should I care what people who make more than me get, so long as what I am getting has increased?
That's the cost of this process of shoveling money into the pockets of the rich you are defending- about $100k per year per household.
wrong, for the simple reason that we would have been unlikely to have grown to this point by now. equitable redistribution of income around the globe has not exactly tended to produce vibrant, powerful, rapidly growing economies.
To respond to that situation by trying to demonize the middle class as being stupid for wanting to at least preserve their current quality of life is disgusting to me.
i'm not demonizing the middle class. i'm attacking American instant-gratification, shop-till-you-drop, i-have-to-live-like-the-people-on-reality-TV, if-it-feels-good-do-it, take-no-thought-for-the-future, living-in-debt-is-just-fine, and if-I-don't-take-care-of-myself-I-am-owed-a-lifestyle-by-others
culture. It's not only wrecked us
recently it threatens to wreck us
permanently.