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Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108 mill

Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

I have written a great deal about this. I couldn't have found a better example of why it is important to adjust for inflation and population growth, both which tend to raise revenue regardless of tax policy. If one normalized for population growth and inflation, 2007 was about the same revenue as 2000. There is a burst in 2005 but economists attribute that to the housing bubble. Even with that, revenue didn't match 2000 revenue. Thus, we can conclude that reducing taxes in 2001 and 2003 did not increase government revenues although GDP did rise in each year. It's a zombie myth that lowering taxes pays for themselves and this proves it.

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Sorry - but if you believe that the US economy after 9/11 did not improve and grow as a result of the Bush era tax cuts that were fully implemented through 2003, and that they didn't assist in moving the US to virtual full employment levels in the 4.5 % unemployment range, then you must believe that there is zero that government can do to goose a stagnating or declining economy.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

There is lot's of blame to go around, but I would have to say that Bush was asleep at the wheel. If he didn't know what was going on in our economy, he should have known and he should have taken steps to prevent it or to at least lessen it.

I certainly wouldn't call a recession that was 80% during the Bush years the "Obama Recession" or the "Reagan Recession".

False.

Setting the Record Straight: Six Years of Unheeded Warnings for GSE Reform
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

What a germane rebuttal.

Actually, if this is meant to be sardonic and an attempt to deflect the message - I see a great deal of truth to the claim that Scott Walker is drawing fire, when Obama is orders of magnitude more guilty of the same accusation, yet is not covered with nearly the same vehemence.

What I took from the original story is that Walker cut $541 million in wasteful spending not just the $1.1 million default payment. That there is still a $283 million budget shortfall is what is driving this decision - not some great quid pro quo to donors. The erroneous claim that "privatizing everything" would lead to rewarding wealthy patrons and hurting the populace is diametrically opposite to truth. History always proves the opposite - despite heavy revisionist blathering by pseudo-intellectuals.

The Left loves to describe successful entrepreneurs as "Robber Barons" - but history actually shows the opposite. Look at the facts that we learned in the early Nineteenth century:
government monopolies were uncontested failures - Failures so severe that the populace rose up in anger, ended the political forces that fed them, and turned them over to successful entrepreneurs. The books all preached to the young that big government was the savior and Robber Barons the nemesis, when in all actuality, it was the opposite that held true.

What caused this was a reliance on the historical works of John L. and Barbara Hammond, who influenced all the school books that followed. They relied on the Sadler Report of 1832 that reported the Industrial Revolution was "crowded with overworked children", "hotbeds of putrid fever," and "monotonous toil in a hell of human cruelty." Charles Dickens' novels helped to codify this image.

Would modern day Liberals feel less secure promoting big government to solve social and economic problems, if they knew in their hearts that what they learned as children was a lie? An historical review by Dr. Burton W. Folsom points out that
Mr. Sadler, we know today, lied in his report. He was a member of Parliament and made up much of his report to gain support for a bill he wanted to see Parliament pass. Economist W. H. Hutt has described Sadler's falsification of evidence. Even Friedrich Engels, comrade of Karl Marx, concluded that "Sadler permitted himself to be betrayed by his noble enthusiasm into the most distorted and erroneous statements."

The history of our country is clear: It was the government that charged outrageous prices and tried to pawn off shoddy merchandise, while the private businesses that supplanted them did the job right, charged lower prices, and did it without government subsidies that kept the monopolies afloat.
Folsom said:
The school books give the impression that robber barons stepped in to exploit whatever they could, and were a negative point in history. The lesson the books should be teaching is that in the world of commerce, the profit motive, the structure of incentives. and the stifling tendencies of bureaucrats are such that those businesses run by entrepreneurs will consistently outperform those run by the government. Instead, the authors had a bias for a strong central government. When the authors were called on these reports, they agreed that they were not reporting fact, but incorrect, unsubstantiated ideology.

What we know today is that privatization works. It is crony capitalism that doesn't. Obama's new paradigm is resurrecting the old British failure of a "Dispensation bureaucracy" based on his executive decisions. It is not the initial Executive Order that will do the damage - but his administration's ability to offer waivers and exemptions to his sycophantic compatriots and letting their better competitors whither on the vine. Yesterday - Rush Limbaugh made a major effort to explain this.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

Sorry - but if you believe that the US economy after 9/11 did not improve and grow as a result of the Bush era tax cuts that were fully implemented through 2003, and that they didn't assist in moving the US to virtual full employment levels in the 4.5 % unemployment range, then you must believe that there is zero that government can do to goose a stagnating or declining economy.
What I believe is what the evidence suggests, namely, that there is no evidence that cutting taxes in 2001 and 2003 increased economic activity, let alone revenue. You are free to believe ideological myths, but don't think that the evidence backs up your myths. The recession after 9/11 was very short and tax-cuts wouldn't have time to influence the economy. Also remember that those tax-cuts were originally designed during the 2000 campaign to "return the surplus to the people." Obviously, the objective was to give tax-cuts and the reason followed.

As it was, economic activity and job creation were far better under Clinton, who raised taxes than Bush, who lowered taxes, which completely undercuts the theory that those tax-cuts performed miracles.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

...

As it was, economic activity and job creation were far better under Clinton, who raised taxes than Bush, who lowered taxes, which completely undercuts the theory that those tax-cuts performed miracles.

There you go with your silly facts again. Conservatives don't believe in facts, don't you know that?
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

What I believe is what the evidence suggests, namely, that there is no evidence that cutting taxes in 2001 and 2003 increased economic activity, let alone revenue. You are free to believe ideological myths, but don't think that the evidence backs up your myths. The recession after 9/11 was very short and tax-cuts wouldn't have time to influence the economy. Also remember that those tax-cuts were originally designed during the 2000 campaign to "return the surplus to the people." Obviously, the objective was to give tax-cuts and the reason followed.

As it was, economic activity and job creation were far better under Clinton, who raised taxes than Bush, who lowered taxes, which completely undercuts the theory that those tax-cuts performed miracles.

You can't have it both ways. You can't claim out of one side of your mouth that the Bush tax cuts were irrelevant because the housing boom increased revenue and out of the other side ignore that the housing bubble began in the latter stages of Clinton's first term, increasing into the Bush years, and increases in revenue on the Clinton side came out of the tech bubble which crashed in 2000 and saddled Bush with an economy that saw stock market losses surpassing $1 trillion and a significant downturn that coupled with 9/11 cratered the economy. The Bush tax cuts spurred economic growth and resulting increases in government revenue - believe it or not.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

So Bush tried but failed? Is that what you are suggesting?

That doesn't say much about his leadership ability. Maybe he wasn't "asleep at the wheel" then, he was just outright incompetent.

That's just totally dishonest and I presumed you were better than that. You know who controlled Congress and yet you claim Bush is incompetent. And you have the gall to claim Conservatives don't believe in facts.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

...The Bush tax cuts spurred economic growth and resulting increases in government revenue - believe it or not.

Lower taxes, particularly worker/consumer class tax cuts always spur economic growth, there's nothing to debate about that, however it's a tough argument to make to claim that all the economic growth was due to the tax cuts, or that the portion of growth due to the tax cuts was enough to increase the overall level of tax revenue.

Every president, regardless of whether they increase taxation, decrease it, or leave it alone, ends up with more revenue than when they took office. Obama did, W Bush did, Clinton did, GW Bush did, Reagan did, Carter did, Ford did, Nixon did, etc.

Correlation between changes in tax policy and economic growth obviously exists, but isn't clear at all as we also tend to have economic growth even after tax increases or status quo tax policy. It's impossible to claim that changes in taxation did this or that and actually be able to prove it beyond just theory.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

That's just totally dishonest and I presumed you were better than that. You know who controlled Congress and yet you claim Bush is incompetent. And you have the gall to claim Conservatives don't believe in facts.

Nothing dishonest at all. I claimed that Bush was asleep at the wheel, you proved me wrong, and you're link indicated that Bush tried to do something about the problem but failed.

The recession happened, either Bush failed to try to prevent it, or he failed in his attempt to prevent it. You can blame his failure to prevent it on dems, they certainly hold some blame, but you can't deny that if a president is ineffective, he is ineffective, and Bush obviously had a lack of leadership ability (as does Obama). Clinton and Reagan, were much better at working with congress and with the political opposition.

I don't praise people for effort, I praise them for success and achievement. Bush deserves no praise as he failed in preventing the Great Bush Recession.
 
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Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

Actually, if this is meant to be sardonic and an attempt to deflect the message - I see a great deal of truth to the claim that Scott Walker is drawing fire, when Obama is orders of magnitude more guilty of the same accusation, yet is not covered with nearly the same vehemence.

What I took from the original story is that Walker cut $541 million in wasteful spending not just the $1.1 million default payment. That there is still a $283 million budget shortfall is what is driving this decision - not some great quid pro quo to donors. The erroneous claim that "privatizing everything" would lead to rewarding wealthy patrons and hurting the populace is diametrically opposite to truth. History always proves the opposite - despite heavy revisionist blathering by pseudo-intellectuals.

The Left loves to describe successful entrepreneurs as "Robber Barons" - but history actually shows the opposite. Look at the facts that we learned in the early Nineteenth century:
government monopolies were uncontested failures - Failures so severe that the populace rose up in anger, ended the political forces that fed them, and turned them over to successful entrepreneurs. The books all preached to the young that big government was the savior and Robber Barons the nemesis, when in all actuality, it was the opposite that held true.

What caused this was a reliance on the historical works of John L. and Barbara Hammond, who influenced all the school books that followed. They relied on the Sadler Report of 1832 that reported the Industrial Revolution was "crowded with overworked children", "hotbeds of putrid fever," and "monotonous toil in a hell of human cruelty." Charles Dickens' novels helped to codify this image.

Would modern day Liberals feel less secure promoting big government to solve social and economic problems, if they knew in their hearts that what they learned as children was a lie? An historical review by Dr. Burton W. Folsom points out that

The history of our country is clear: It was the government that charged outrageous prices and tried to pawn off shoddy merchandise, while the private businesses that supplanted them did the job right, charged lower prices, and did it without government subsidies that kept the monopolies afloat.

What we know today is that privatization works. It is crony capitalism that doesn't. Obama's new paradigm is resurrecting the old British failure of a "Dispensation bureaucracy" based on his executive decisions. It is not the initial Executive Order that will do the damage - but his administration's ability to offer waivers and exemptions to his sycophantic compatriots and letting their better competitors whither on the vine. Yesterday - Rush Limbaugh made a major effort to explain this.

Excellent post!

See bold...In many if not most instances. Not all.

The left fails to understand the concept of "free" in free enterprise. We are dealing with a hundred year old defective concept of business, one somewhat true of the days when this failed philosophy/religion was conceived out of blatant class envy.

Because the entire ideology is based on a controlled economy, from setting minimum wages to "human engineering taxation" like Obamacare, they have no concept of the results of competition. Because they see government as a place to reward friends - see Obama's appointments - they do not 'get' how the private sector works. They, in fact, have not figured out that the US is mostly a service based economy, that a service based company is easy to start. In one year of Business administration they would learn that the key to profits is not screwing workers, but paying them well enough they stay with you, and the profit center is based entirely on being better than the other guys who are, in fact, attempting to hijack your customers on a daily basis.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

You can't have it both ways. You can't claim out of one side of your mouth that the Bush tax cuts were irrelevant because the housing boom increased revenue and out of the other side ignore that the housing bubble began in the latter stages of Clinton's first term, increasing into the Bush years, and increases in revenue on the Clinton side came out of the tech bubble which crashed in 2000 and saddled Bush with an economy that saw stock market losses surpassing $1 trillion and a significant downturn that coupled with 9/11 cratered the economy. The Bush tax cuts spurred economic growth and resulting increases in government revenue - believe it or not.
I guess you missed the point that I was making. You were contending that the Bush tax-cuts increased revenue. I showed how two other factors, inflation and population gains, were the cause of higher revenue, not the tax-cuts. When I factored out the effects of those two other factors, revenue in real, population adjusted terms, was still lower than 2000, the pre-tax-cut year. My only reference to the housing bubble was that even with the taxes on swapping houses during that period, revenue was still below 2000.

The overall point was that claiming that those tax-cuts made revenue grow is a zombie lie -- no matter how many times that assertion is killed, someone will get up and repeat it again.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

Excellent post!

See bold...In many if not most instances. Not all.

The left fails to understand the concept of "free" in free enterprise. We are dealing with a hundred year old defective concept of business, one somewhat true of the days when this failed philosophy/religion was conceived out of blatant class envy.

Because the entire ideology is based on a controlled economy, from setting minimum wages to "human engineering taxation" like Obamacare, they have no concept of the results of competition. Because they see government as a place to reward friends - see Obama's appointments - they do not 'get' how the private sector works. They, in fact, have not figured out that the US is mostly a service based economy, that a service based company is easy to start. In one year of Business administration they would learn that the key to profits is not screwing workers, but paying them well enough they stay with you, and the profit center is based entirely on being better than the other guys who are, in fact, attempting to hijack your customers on a daily basis.
While the right-wing pontificates about free enterprise (I guess they only believe the only businesses that should be regulated are abortion clinics) the idea that government shouldn't do anything to control business flies in the face of centuries of debate on the value of regulation.

Should restaurants be forced to comply with fire codes? Should drugs be tested for safety? Should food be inspected by the government? Government has the legitimate right to regulate the rules of the road for businesses. To think that anarchy is best for free enterprise is idiotic. Even Adam Smith, in the Wealth of Nations, recognized that government should regulate business.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

While the right-wing pontificates about free enterprise (I guess they only believe the only businesses that should be regulated are abortion clinics) the idea that government shouldn't do anything to control business flies in the face of centuries of debate on the value of regulation.

Should restaurants be forced to comply with fire codes? Should drugs be tested for safety? Should food be inspected by the government? Government has the legitimate right to regulate the rules of the road for businesses. To think that anarchy is best for free enterprise is idiotic. Even Adam Smith, in the Wealth of Nations, recognized that government should regulate business.

Well now we've left the debate entirely to focus one line.

Ahem, how do I put this.

A controlled economy is not mere regulation. Regulation is not a controlled economy

NO ONE and certainly not me has ever said there should be NO regulation.

And, abortion has nothing to do with this, that is neither, bur that sir is a social issue, but nice try on introducing a flame issue into economics, a typical socialist tactics.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

Once again, someone who thinks that tax cuts have no effect on the economy.

I didn't say that, not at all. It just depends on where the cuts are made and how the revenue (or profits) is (are) used.

These don't happen in a vacuum, they have an effect on the overall economy and it is a positive one, albeit a long term one. People ignore the long term effects of tax cuts only focus on one side of the equation CHOOSING to ignore the rest of the economic impact of cutting taxes.

What you're really arguing here is macro-economics (long-term economic outlook/impact) versus micro-economics (short-term economic outlook/impact).

Now, I'll probably be accused of saying that I think that taxes should be eliminated altogether (that's what usually happens in these kind of discussions), and that's not what I or almost any other person who supports tax cuts believe. Our tax base should be wide and shallow instead of the narrow and tall model that tax increase supporters want to see. We need the money in the economy, creating jobs, increasing the number of taxpayers and driving tax revenue through having a lot of taxpayers, instead of taxing fewer taxpayers even more.

I would agree with you. However, when we DON'T have that "increased number of taxpayers driving up tax revenue" through the labor force and yet what few laborers we do have continue to be squeezed even with a slow up-tic in inflationary cost on the one hand and made to bear the burden of heavier taxation as a percentage of their low wages on the other, it's difficult for the tax revenue to come in via the "multiplier effect" that is lamented by conservatives especially if the "trickle-down affect" that has been preached since the 80's never really comes to fruition. This "wide and shallow" net of taxation/tax collection you speak of is just another way of saying "catch as many tax payers you can" from the labor force to generate tax revenue, but "tax a few corporations and business owners as possible" so as not to adversely affect economic growth. In theory, it works only because our tax code is largely based on consumption on the "wide" end and keeping the U.S. dollar vibrant and strong on the "narrow" end. I'd be in full agreement with you if we had a vibrate labor force, but we don't. Ours has largely become a service-sector/finance-sector driven economy, not an industrial economy as it once was.

In any case, the dollar still remains relatively strong, but the amount of revenue collected can't keep up with the amount of spending, discretionary or otherwise. It's just not possible when there aren't enough jobs to go around, low-wage or otherwise.
 
Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

Actually, if this is meant to be sardonic and an attempt to deflect the message - I see a great deal of truth to the claim that Scott Walker is drawing fire, when Obama is orders of magnitude more guilty of the same accusation, yet is not covered with nearly the same vehemence.

What I took from the original story is that Walker cut $541 million in wasteful spending not just the $1.1 million default payment. That there is still a $283 million budget shortfall is what is driving this decision - not some great quid pro quo to donors. The erroneous claim that "privatizing everything" would lead to rewarding wealthy patrons and hurting the populace is diametrically opposite to truth. History always proves the opposite - despite heavy revisionist blathering by pseudo-intellectuals.

The Left loves to describe successful entrepreneurs as "Robber Barons" - but history actually shows the opposite. Look at the facts that we learned in the early Nineteenth century:
government monopolies were uncontested failures - Failures so severe that the populace rose up in anger, ended the political forces that fed them, and turned them over to successful entrepreneurs. The books all preached to the young that big government was the savior and Robber Barons the nemesis, when in all actuality, it was the opposite that held true.

What caused this was a reliance on the historical works of John L. and Barbara Hammond, who influenced all the school books that followed. They relied on the Sadler Report of 1832 that reported the Industrial Revolution was "crowded with overworked children", "hotbeds of putrid fever," and "monotonous toil in a hell of human cruelty." Charles Dickens' novels helped to codify this image.

Would modern day Liberals feel less secure promoting big government to solve social and economic problems, if they knew in their hearts that what they learned as children was a lie? An historical review by Dr. Burton W. Folsom points out that

The history of our country is clear: It was the government that charged outrageous prices and tried to pawn off shoddy merchandise, while the private businesses that supplanted them did the job right, charged lower prices, and did it without government subsidies that kept the monopolies afloat.

What we know today is that privatization works. It is crony capitalism that doesn't. Obama's new paradigm is resurrecting the old British failure of a "Dispensation bureaucracy" based on his executive decisions. It is not the initial Executive Order that will do the damage - but his administration's ability to offer waivers and exemptions to his sycophantic compatriots and letting their better competitors whither on the vine. Yesterday - Rush Limbaugh made a major effort to explain this.

Yours is an argument for pure capitalism. I recognize it for what it is - greed, not economic stability nor shared prosperity.

I'm in no way suggesting that every man should have the same equal share of the economic pie. Any man who works hard, is innovative and has demonstrated an ability to bring new ideas to the marketplace or even improve upon old ones to enriches the lives of his fellow man should be rewarded for doing so. That falls right in line with "work hard to fill a need". But the other side to this equation IS "shared sacrifice", not so much as in the sense that you give to everyone equally or that you reward those who are lazy and shiftless, but rather that you understand that those at the bottom (i.e., laborers) are sacrificing their time, their energy to produce a product or provide a service just as much as those who are using their minds and influence to keep the wheels of economic progress moving. Squeeze them too hard for profit's sake and you turn order into chaos. But re-enforce the ideal that their work is part of something bigger than themselves and people will work hard for you with the knowledge that their reward is both "shared profits" through fair wages and personal satisfaction for a job well done and a product or service well made or provided.
 
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Re: Scott Walker cut $541 million in taxes last year. Now his state will miss a $108

...
A controlled economy is not mere regulation. Regulation is not a controlled economy

NO ONE and certainly not me has ever said there should be NO regulation....

So everyone is in an agreement then. It's just a matter of degree.

I think part of the disconnect is that many libertarians will tend make up hypothetical examples of how an ideal libertarian world would work (if it existed), and forget to point out that they are just talking about theory and that they recognize that there is some need for some regulation. Others then look at the hypothetical examples, recognize that they don't work like that in the real world, and then assume that the libertarian was actually arguing against all regulations.

It's a communication issue for the most part.
 
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