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SC allows Texas to use New Voter ID Law

=JasperL;1063905817]Well, heck, I guess to solve our current deficit, we just need to keep cutting tax rates till we close the shortfall. :shock::lamo
Well, son. It would help if the idiots in congress (on both sides) and the idiot in the white house would curb pork barrel spending as well. Tax cuts increase revenue.....however when congress continues to spend a dollar and a half for every new dollar in revenue.....we will continue to have deficits. I don't know if you are just playing dumb or you are really that poor in math skills. The rest of your post was just lame taunts.
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As I said, the GOP fiscal platform has as a cornerstone, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Tax Santa Clause!" That's a big reason why I'm not a republican and don't use the 'conservative' label.

Tax cuts do not raise revenue. Believing that is believing in fiscal magic, fairy tales. It's not a basis for running a country.
 
JasperL said:
=JasperL;1063905817]Well, heck, I guess to solve our current deficit, we just need to keep cutting tax rates till we close the shortfall. :shock::lamo

As I said, the GOP fiscal platform has as a cornerstone, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Tax Santa Clause!" That's a big reason why I'm not a republican and don't use the 'conservative' label.

Tax cuts do not raise revenue. Believing that is believing in fiscal magic, fairy tales. It's not a basis for running a country.
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Do Tax Cuts Increase Government Revenue? - Forbes

www.forbes.com/sites/.../do-tax-cuts-increase-government-revenu...Forbes


Oct 15, 2012 - Tax cuts lead to increased government revenue...and this article proves it!

 
Setting tax rates is lot like setting prices for retail goods.
Set them too high, and you lose customers and therefore revenue. Set them too low, and you have too thin of a profit margin and therefore lose revenue.
Set taxes too high, and the incentive is to avoid paying them. Moreover, it discourages investment and enterprise, thus lowering revenues.
Set taxes too low, and you don't have enough to operate the government.

So, the question becomes, what is the best tax rate?
It is not, the lower the tax rate the better. If that were so, then the best tax rate would be zero.
 
Fenton said:
I was standing in line listening to the low information voters behind me talking about how excited they were about Wendy Davis.

I realized how important my vote was.

Its wipes out at least one of their misinformed decisions completely.
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What would it be worth to you if you knew wiggle your nose and no other party would ever be in competition with your own? Or that there was only one political ideology....yours. Do you think that such a government created out of that single ideology would always serve the best interests of the people it governed? Would your rights and general welfare always be protected? Would your life flourish more?

If you could make a wish today that every person who was in opposition to your fundamental beliefs in all aspects of your life (government, religion, etc.) would instantly disappear...would you make that wish?
 
JasperL said:
I notice your evidence for "those few" without proper ID is nothing.

It's one thing to reject evidence in favor of better or more convincing evidence, but quite another to reject studies presented in court, etc. for "my gut tells me."
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Even Texas' government data says there are more than a "few" that lack restricted, now-required ID's


After a year of outreach campaigns, snazzy ads and high-profile federal court fights, an estimated 600,000 to 744,980 Texas voters may still lack government-issued photo IDs now required under state law, according to Texas Secretary of State data and expert reports submitted by the U.S. Department of Justice in related litigation.

Voters without proper IDs more likely in minority neighborhoods, reports find - Houston Chronicle
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Jack Hays said:
Do Tax Cuts Increase Government Revenue? - Forbes

Page Not Found - Debate Politics Forumstax-cuts-increase-government-revenu...Forbes


Oct 15, 2012 - Tax cuts lead to increased government revenue...and this article proves it!
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Sorry Jack but that's gets an F- in any serious economics class. It's a shame a supposedly 'serious' magazine like Forbes would print such obvious propaganda, but this is the kind of obvious hackery Laffer Curve proponents have to resort to to 'prove' their belief in a Tax Santa Clause. Some (a partial list) obvious problems:

1) The high INDIVIDUAL tax rates in the period up through Reagan applied to a tiny sliver of earners - less than 1%, but the graph includes revenue from income taxes below that max rate, what the other 99% paid, payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, excise taxes and all other government receipts. If you want to see what happened to individual income taxes, analyze individual income taxes.
2) It ignores inflation.
3) Ignores population growth.
4) Ignores the normal economic growth that has occurred regardless of tax rates.
5) Ignores interest rate changes
6) Ignores changes to the tax base - loophole closures and what not.
7) Finally, the question isn't whether revenues following tax rates will, ignoring all the above, increase or decrease revenues over some period, it's whether tax cuts raise more money than what would be collected without the rate cuts. As I've pointed out elsewhere, GDP grew about 33% under both Reagan and Clinton. Real tax revenues grew about 20% under Reagan (less than GDP growth) but 47% under Clinton, or 2.5 times the growth under Reagan. Clinton RAISED rates, Reagan cut them.
 
JasperL said:
Sorry Jack but that's gets an F- in any serious economics class. It's a shame a supposedly 'serious' magazine like Forbes would print such obvious propaganda, but this is the kind of obvious hackery Laffer Curve proponents have to resort to to 'prove' their belief in a Tax Santa Clause. Some (a partial list) obvious problems:

1) The high INDIVIDUAL tax rates in the period up through Reagan applied to a tiny sliver of earners - less than 1%, but the graph includes revenue from income taxes below that max rate, what the other 99% paid, payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, excise taxes and all other government receipts. If you want to see what happened to individual income taxes, analyze individual income taxes.
2) It ignores inflation.
3) Ignores population growth.
4) Ignores the normal economic growth that has occurred regardless of tax rates.
5) Ignores interest rate changes
6) Ignores changes to the tax base - loophole closures and what not.
7) Finally, the question isn't whether revenues following tax rates will, ignoring all the above, increase or decrease revenues over some period, it's whether tax cuts raise more money than what would be collected without the rate cuts. As I've pointed out elsewhere, GDP grew about 33% under both Reagan and Clinton. Real tax revenues grew about 20% under Reagan (less than GDP growth) but 47% under Clinton, or 2.5 times the growth under Reagan. Clinton RAISED rates, Reagan cut them.
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#1 is just special pleading. The rates are the rates. #2 through #6 apply to all surveys all the time: inflation, population growth, economic growth, interest rate changes and tax base changes are constants regardless of tax regime. As for #7, Clinton reaped the benefit of the holiday from history bequeathed to him by RWR via Cold War victory. Post #328 is sensible.
 
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JasperL said:
Right, you are worried about my margin of error based in multiple estimates presented in courts, subject to discovery, cross examination, etc., and so you adopt an estimate based on nothing. Explain that logic for me.
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News flash......nobody is going to take numbers with a plus or minus error of 33% seriously.
 
JasperL said:
Well, I have, and what I believe about the tax system is based on the evidence. I presented some of it above. What part did I get wrong?
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Basic math. It's my bet that you let computer programs similar to TurboTax do the work for you. Most people who do taxes as a business have much greater accounting skills then you are showing.
 
JasperL said:
Right, G and T are independent variables. D is the dependent variable, which is affected by BOTH G AND T.

Point in English is deficits are, according to math, affected by spending levels and tax revenues.

And I was responding to this false, but commonly accepted right wing talking point: "And you can stop trying to connect the deficit to [tax cuts]." GOPers cut taxes, revenues drop, they are too chicken s**t to cut spending, run up deficits, then tell their followers that the deficits had NOTHING to do with the tax cuts, deficits are caused by too much spending....
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You are not even attempting to use basic math. Let me simply it for you. Let's say I get a tax cut that gives me 10% more income. That's 10% more disposable income. If I increase my spending 20%, I am going to end up with more debt despite the the increase in disposable income. My additional spending would be the problem. Not the tax cut. The same goes with the government. You cannot blame the tax cut for higher deficits. The JFK, Reagan, and Bush(W) tax cuts all resulted in an increase in tax revenue. Therefore the tax cuts did not cause higher deficits. Increased government spending did. I really should not have to explain it to you.
 
ObamacareFail said:
You are not even attempting to use basic math. Let me simply it for you. Let's say I get a tax cut that gives me 10% more income. That's 10% more disposable income. If I increase my spending 20%, I am going to end up with more debt despite the the increase in disposable income. My additional spending would be the problem. Not the tax cut. The same goes with the government. You cannot blame the tax cut for higher deficits. The JFK, Reagan, and Bush(W) tax cuts all resulted in an increase in tax revenue. Therefore the tax cuts did not cause higher deficits. Increased government spending did. I really should not have to explain it to you.
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Then why is there a lot of money out in the Cayman Islands, not in the United States.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Do we want them going to the Republican party?
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I think it's pretty obvious that most illicit votes go to the Democrats. Generally, Democrats simply have no morals. They are just plain evil. Lying, murdering and cheating has been their game ever since the institution of the party.
 
Muhammed said:
I think it's pretty obvious that most illicit votes go to the Democrats. Generally, Democrats simply have no morals. They are just plain evil. Lying, murdering and cheating has been their game ever since the institution of the party.
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Just because most prison inmates are Democrats doesn't mean that all Democrats are dishonest.

Of course I could be wrong.
 
Jack Hays said:
#1 is just special pleading. The rates are the rates. #2 through #6 apply to all surveys all the time: inflation, population growth, economic growth, interest rate changes and tax base changes are constants regardless of tax regime. As for #7, Clinton reaped the benefit of the holiday from history bequeathed to him by RWR via Cold War victory.
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It's not special pleading. The dependent variable in this "analysis" is total nominal Federal revenues (individual income taxes + corporate income taxes + payroll taxes + excise taxes + other Federal receipts). It's just illegitimate to have as your ONLY independent variable the highest tax rate on a small sliver of individuals. We would expect that the rate change on 1% of individuals would affect only taxes paid by 1% of individuals. Why would changes in tax rates on Buffett affect payroll taxes? Or the taxes paid by the median worker, or any worker not subject to the top rates. In fact we could lower tax rates on the 1%, raise them on everyone else, and the tax revenues on higher rates on the bottom 99% would be counted, by this hack analysis, as due to the rate drop on the 1%. It's bogus. It gets an F-.

I'll just address 6 - changes to the tax base. Tax revenues = Tax Rate X Tax base. If you want to explain changes in Tax Revenues, it's NOT OK to ignore changes in the Base. FICA ends a little over 100k. If we eliminate the cap, we'll see a large increase in payroll taxes and total tax collections in that graph above, and it will have NOTHING to do with the top marginal income tax rate. Ignoring the base means F-.

Besides, the premise here is simple. The downside to more spending - e.g. to pay for a war - is MORE TAX CUTS!!! YEAH!!! It's gutless and cowardly and reckless for the GOP to sell that free lunch nonsense as serious fiscal policy. It tells the GOP base that there are no tough choices in government. Tax cuts have no downside. You can't really believe that.....
 
JasperL said:
It's not special pleading. The dependent variable in this "analysis" is total nominal Federal revenues (individual income taxes + corporate income taxes + payroll taxes + excise taxes + other Federal receipts). It's just illegitimate to have as your ONLY independent variable the highest tax rate on a small sliver of individuals. We would expect that the rate change on 1% of individuals would affect only taxes paid by 1% of individuals. Why would changes in tax rates on Buffett affect payroll taxes? Or the taxes paid by the median worker, or any worker not subject to the top rates. In fact we could lower tax rates on the 1%, raise them on everyone else, and the tax revenues on higher rates on the bottom 99% would be counted, by this hack analysis, as due to the rate drop on the 1%. It's bogus. It gets an F-.

I'll just address 6 - changes to the tax base. Tax revenues = Tax Rate X Tax base. If you want to explain changes in Tax Revenues, it's NOT OK to ignore changes in the Base. FICA ends a little over 100k. If we eliminate the cap, we'll see a large increase in payroll taxes and total tax collections in that graph above, and it will have NOTHING to do with the top marginal income tax rate. Ignoring the base means F-.

Besides, the premise here is simple. The downside to more spending - e.g. to pay for a war - is MORE TAX CUTS!!! YEAH!!! It's gutless and cowardly and reckless for the GOP to sell that free lunch nonsense as serious fiscal policy. It tells the GOP base that there are no tough choices in government. Tax cuts have no downside. You can't really believe that.....
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The top rate is the top rate; that's what the discussion is about. The GWB tax cut was not sold to pay for a war, but rather to share with the people the surplus created by the Clinton tax increase. I happen to agree with you about war funding. All US wars have been funded by deficit financing, so I have no problem there, but there should have been a "war tax" increase for both revenue and to impart a sense of shared sacrifice.
 
Muhammed said:
I think it's pretty obvious that most illicit votes go to the Democrats. Generally, Democrats simply have no morals. They are just plain evil. Lying, murdering and cheating has been their game ever since the institution of the party.
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nothing partisan here, folks. Keep moving, nothing to see here, nope, partisanship is dead.
 
JasperL said:
It's not special pleading. The dependent variable in this "analysis" is total nominal Federal revenues (individual income taxes + corporate income taxes + payroll taxes + excise taxes + other Federal receipts). It's just illegitimate to have as your ONLY independent variable the highest tax rate on a small sliver of individuals. We would expect that the rate change on 1% of individuals would affect only taxes paid by 1% of individuals. Why would changes in tax rates on Buffett affect payroll taxes? Or the taxes paid by the median worker, or any worker not subject to the top rates. In fact we could lower tax rates on the 1%, raise them on everyone else, and the tax revenues on higher rates on the bottom 99% would be counted, by this hack analysis, as due to the rate drop on the 1%. It's bogus. It gets an F-.

I'll just address 6 - changes to the tax base. Tax revenues = Tax Rate X Tax base. If you want to explain changes in Tax Revenues, it's NOT OK to ignore changes in the Base. FICA ends a little over 100k. If we eliminate the cap, we'll see a large increase in payroll taxes and total tax collections in that graph above, and it will have NOTHING to do with the top marginal income tax rate. Ignoring the base means F-.

Besides, the premise here is simple. The downside to more spending - e.g. to pay for a war - is MORE TAX CUTS!!! YEAH!!! It's gutless and cowardly and reckless for the GOP to sell that free lunch nonsense as serious fiscal policy. It tells the GOP base that there are no tough choices in government. Tax cuts have no downside. You can't really believe that.....
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Yes, tax cuts have a downside for liberals. Putting more money into the hands of the people always scares the hell out of liberals as there is no need for liberals when there is less dependence on liberalism because of big govt.
 
Jack Hays said:
The top rate is the top rate; that's what the discussion is about. The GWB tax cut was not sold to pay for a war, but rather to share with the people the surplus created by the Clinton tax increase. I happen to agree with you about war funding. All US wars have been funded by deficit financing, so I have no problem there, but there should have been a "war tax" increase for both revenue and to impart a sense of shared sacrifice.
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You know, I never hear any liberal talking about spending less or the fact that SS and Medicare were robbed to pay for the Vietnam War and continued well into the 80's. I never hear any liberal talk about the 3.9 trillion dollar budget Obama has proposed or the fact that there will never be enough money to fund the liberal spending appetite. It is amazing to me that since Obama took office the debt increased over 7 trillion dollars with very little of that due to the wars. Just goes to show how little liberals truly know.
 
Jack Hays said:
The top rate is the top rate; that's what the discussion is about.
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Yes, but if you want to conclude something about the relationship between rates and revenues, you can't put ONE rate on the INCOME of ONE PERCENT of INDIVIDUALS on one side of the equation and on the other total all taxes, including all individual taxes, payroll taxes. It's hackery at its finest.

The GWB tax cut was not sold to pay for a war, but rather to share with the people the surplus created by the Clinton tax increase.
[/QUOTE

Correct, the tax rate cuts were intended and did reduce tax revenues, reduce the surplus! No one said when Bush cut taxes that we'd expect to run HIGHER SURPLUSES!

I happen to agree with you about war funding. All US wars have been funded by deficit financing, so I have no problem there, but there should have been a "war tax" increase for both revenue and to impart a sense of shared sacrifice.
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Again, you're agreeing with me. The tax rate increase would have paid for some of the war - aka, raised tax revenues. BTW, I especially agree with shared sacrifice. It's easy to support a war in Iraq fought by other people's children, and 'paid for' with two rounds of tax CUTS. You put a yellow sticker on your car, "Support the Troops!!" and you're done....
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JasperL said:
Yes, but if you want to conclude something about the relationship between rates and revenues, you can't put ONE rate on the INCOME of ONE PERCENT of INDIVIDUALS on one side of the equation and on the other total all taxes, including all individual taxes, payroll taxes. It's hackery at its finest.

The GWB tax cut was not sold to pay for a war, but rather to share with the people the surplus created by the Clinton tax increase.
[/QUOTE

Correct, the tax rate cuts were intended and did reduce tax revenues, reduce the surplus! No one said when Bush cut taxes that we'd expect to run HIGHER SURPLUSES!



Again, you're agreeing with me. The tax rate increase would have paid for some of the war - aka, raised tax revenues. BTW, I especially agree with shared sacrifice. It's easy to support a war in Iraq fought by other people's children, and 'paid for' with two rounds of tax CUTS. You put a yellow sticker on your car, "Support the Troops!!" and you're done....
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I was referring to the war in Afghanistan, but the same applies for Iraq. Of course I can put the top rate on one side and all revenues on the other. The top rate is the top rate.
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If conservatives and libertarians showed half as much interest in solving climate change as voter fraud, we'd be a prosperous, carbon-neutral nation by the year 2020.

Inb4 the deniers say that such a goal is impossible.
 
Phys251 said:
If conservatives and libertarians showed half as much interest in solving climate change as voter fraud, we'd be a prosperous, carbon-neutral nation by the year 2020.

Inb4 the deniers say that such a goal is impossible.
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Climate change is not a problem.
 
Jack Hays said:
Of course I can put the top rate on one side and all revenues on the other. The top rate is the top rate.
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You can, but you're not proving a thing.

The top rate only affects a small part of total revenues. Let's do some math. The top 1% pay about 33% of individual INCOME taxes now, and about 20% in 1980. A lot of that tax is capital gains, which was only taxed at the top rate for a couple of years under Reagan, so isn't affected by the top marginal rate. And the 1% starts at around $350k, but the top bracket now only applies to income over about $450k. So there are a lot of 1%ers who don't pay the top rate. But let's say that 25% of personal income is subject to the highest rate. It's lower than that, but we'll go with that number. In 1980 it couldn't have been higher than 15%.

Individual income taxes are about 45% of collections. So of that, about 11% (.25 X 45) is subject to the top rate. Again, that's too high, because even 1%ers have a lot of income taxed at lower rates - 0 to about $450k - and we're assuming ALL their income is subject to the top rate.

So on the left hand side you have total revenues (the dependent variable) and on the right side (independent variable) you have ONE rate that at the very most affects 11% of total revenues. So 89% of revenues is completely unaffected your ONE independent variable, changes in that top rate. Now why would anyone do a serious analysis and use an independent variable that AT BEST, would explain only 11% of changes in the dependent variable (if tax rates explained 100% of the changes in revenues - which is ludicrous)? No economist would, such an analysis would be laughed out of any room.

The TL/DR version of that above is at best the analysis shows a correlation. And of course correlation =/= causation. My favorite correlation is GOP/Democratic Presidents and economic growth.

Presidents and growth: Timing is everything | The Economist

“SINCE 1961…the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24,” said Bill Clinton in 2012. “In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66m private-sector jobs. So what’s the jobs score? Republicans 24m, Democrats 42[m].” In the two years since, Barack Obama has increased the Democrats’ lead by close to 5m. [Democrats 47m, Republicans 24]

Since the second world war the economy has done better under Democratic presidents, who have overseen more job creation and higher stockmarket returns than Republican leaders. During this time the economy has grown about 1.8 percentage points faster [not quite DOUBLE] when a Democrat occupies the White House
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Based on this, why would anyone ever vote for a Republican POTUS? It's clear I've just proved that the economy, stock market, GDP growth and jobs all do better when Democrats are in charge! QED.

And the truth is my conclusion is more defensible (read the article for details) than the hackery Forbes published.
 
Conservative said:
Yes, tax cuts have a downside for liberals. Putting more money into the hands of the people always scares the hell out of liberals as there is no need for liberals when there is less dependence on liberalism because of big govt.
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Yeah, OK, you don't like liberals. Understood.

The point is there is no Tax Santa Clause, and a party that relies on one as a foundation of its fiscal policy shouldn't be taken seriously, so I don't.
 
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