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Tax cuts bring back American jobs and help make America great again.

Bullseye said:
Biggest problem is some shallow thinkers expect instantaneous results. The tax plan has been in effect a whooping five months now. We saw some raises, bonuses and benefits upgrades. More to come.
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The results are close to instantaneous...lower taxes, lower revenue...

U.S. first-quarter growth trimmed on weak consumer spending | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...immed-on-weak-consumer-spending-idUSKCN1IV1L5

2 days ago - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. economic growth slowed slightly more than initially thought in the first quarter as consumer spending rose at its ...
An increase in gas prices easily outpaces the benefits of the tax bill for lower-income Americans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...s-of-the-tax-bill-for-lower-income-americans/
May 22, 2018 - The increase under Trump has been more significant during the past few weeks. ... But the benefits of the federal tax cuts to the lowest-income ...
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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-24/it-s-nothing-but-lucky-7s-for-bond-traders
It's Nothing But Lucky 7s for Bond Traders
The seven-year Treasury itch leads market commentary.
by Robert Burgess
‎May‎ ‎24‎, ‎2018‎ ‎
.....
Normally sleepy affairs, bond auctions have taken on more importance with the U.S. in the midst of doubling its borrowing to $1 trillion this year to pay for a growing federal budget deficit. Also, the Federal Reserve is not only raising interest rates, but it's also shrinking its holdings of debt securities....
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Numbers that will eventually silence Trump/GOP fairy tale believers
https://treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current
Debt05302018.jpg

DebtObama092917.jpg

DebtObama093016.jpg


Oil, price per bbl.:
Crude Oil Prices - 70 Year Historical Chart | MacroTrends
TrumpOilPrice053118.jpg
 
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Jobs report for May bring a lot of good news

The unemployment rate edged down to 3.8 percent in May, and the number of unemployed persons
declined to 6.1 million. Over the year, the unemployment rate was down by 0.5 percentage point,
and the number of unemployed persons declined by 772,000.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.5 percent), Blacks
(5.9 percent), and Asians (2.1 percent) decreased in May. The jobless rates for adult women
(3.3 percent), teenagers (12.8 percent), Whites (3.5 percent), and Hispanics (4.9 percent)
changed little over the month.
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Dittohead not! said:
anyway, that's the theory:
In September, while attempting to garner support for the Republicans massive tax overhaul, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) visited a Harley Davidson plant in his home state of Wisconsin. “Tax reform can put American manufacturers and American companies like Harley-Davidson on a much better footing to compete in the global economy and keep jobs in America,” he said.

Harley-Davidson announced that it would be laying off 800 of the company’s employees and closing down its Kansas City plant entirely, shifting it’s operations to York, Pennsylvania, with a net loss of 350 jobs.

Harley-Davidson noted that it would be opening another facility in Bangkok, Thailand. According to Michael Pflughoeft, a spokesman for the company, the decision was “separate and unrelated” to the Kansas City plant closing.
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link
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Tax reform may do that; however, "tax cuts" and "tax reform" are two different things. Tax reform may or may not include reductions in tax rates; however, reductions in tax rates do not, in and of themselves, constitute tax reform. All dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs. So it is with tax cuts and tax reform.

As for whether supply side economics actually produces a net increase in GDP, well, there's plenty of research on that matter.
 
Xelor said:
Tax reform may do that; however, "tax cuts" and "tax reform" are two different things. Tax reform may or may not include reductions in tax rates; however, reductions in tax rates do not, in and of themselves, constitute tax reform. All dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs. So it is with tax cuts and tax reform.

As for whether supply side economics actually produces a net increase in GDP, well, there's plenty of research on that matter.
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Not sure just what your point is. Maybe tax reform as opposed to tax cuts would have saved the Harley factory?
 
Dittohead not! said:
anyway, that's the theory:
In September, while attempting to garner support for the Republicans massive tax overhaul, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) visited a Harley Davidson plant in his home state of Wisconsin. “Tax reform can put American manufacturers and American companies like Harley-Davidson on a much better footing to compete in the global economy and keep jobs in America,” he said.

Harley-Davidson announced that it would be laying off 800 of the company’s employees and closing down its Kansas City plant entirely, shifting it’s operations to York, Pennsylvania, with a net loss of 350 jobs.

Harley-Davidson noted that it would be opening another facility in Bangkok, Thailand. According to Michael Pflughoeft, a spokesman for the company, the decision was “separate and unrelated” to the Kansas City plant closing.
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link​
Xelor said:
Tax reform may do that; however, "tax cuts" and "tax reform" are two different things. Tax reform may or may not include reductions in tax rates; however, reductions in tax rates do not, in and of themselves, constitute tax reform. All dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs. So it is with tax cuts and tax reform.

As for whether supply side economics actually produces a net increase in GDP, well, there's plenty of research on that matter.

Dittohead not! said:
Not sure just what your point is. Maybe tax reform as opposed to tax cuts would have saved the Harley factory?
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The point of my remark is that while it's possible that tax reform may have produced the result Rep. Ryan noted, what was delivered was not tax reform but rather tax cuts; thus the prospect of achieving the outcome Ryan noted is unlikely to materialize. My remark about supply side economics and the corresponding link refers to the fact that "plenty of research" has shown the insufficiency of tax cuts to produce the results Ryan noted.
 
Dittohead not! said:
According to right wing pundits anyway.
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You know, one thing that astounds the bejesus out of me is why folks, so-called "regular folks," persist in framing fiscal/tax/economic matters in terms of political ideologies. All such things, most especially taxation, has long been well understood by economists, and with the advent and wide availability of supercomputer-enabled modelling capabilities, those understandings have been become vastly more comprehensively understood in terms of nature and extent. Despite that being the case, "regular folks" continue to allow politicians to guide the discussion about fiscal/tax policy in terms of "right wing" and "left wing" or "this or that" party or some other ideological bent. Quite simply, such matters need not at all be any more political than decisions about how to fix a broken bone.

Fiscal/tax policy solution approaches used to, prior to the maturation of empirical economics, need to be a political matter. These days, they need not be. Quite literally, we are at the point where an economy and economic policies can be explicitly and comprehensively managed to ensure that we don't again experience material downturns, but only if the management actions are not "half-stepped." "Half-stepping" being the main reason "nothing" ever actually works as advertised. Think of the kid who had braces and then didn't wear his/her retainer, and you'll know exactly what I mean.
 
Xelor said:
You know, one thing that astounds the bejesus out of me is why folks, so-called "regular folks," persist in framing fiscal/tax/economic matters in terms of political ideologies. All such things, most especially taxation, has long been well understood by economists, and with the advent and wide availability of supercomputer-enabled modelling capabilities, those understandings have been become vastly more comprehensively understood in terms of nature and extent. Despite that being the case, "regular folks" continue to allow politicians to guide the discussion about fiscal/tax policy in terms of "right wing" and "left wing" or "this or that" party or some other ideological bent. Quite simply, such matters need not at all be any more political than decisions about how to fix a broken bone.

Fiscal/tax policy solution approaches used to, prior to the maturation of empirical economics, need to be a political matter. These days, they need not be. Quite literally, we are at the point where an economy and economic policies can be explicitly and comprehensively managed to ensure that we don't again experience material downturns, but only if the management actions are not "half-stepped." "Half-stepping" being the main reason "nothing" ever actually works as advertised. Think of the kid who had braces and then didn't wear his/her retainer, and you'll know exactly what I mean.
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Why do "regular folks" persist in framing fiscal/tax/economic matters in terms of political ideologies? Because the conventional wisdom is that "liberals," which has so many meanings as to be meaningless, like to "tax and spend" according to the "conservatives", which is yet another term with so many meanings as to be meaningless. Conservatives, on the other hand, favor "trickle down" economics because they like to give "tax breaks to the rich," according to the "liberals."

It's bumper sticker ideological politics vs. the science of economics. Since few people understand economics, they favor ideologies. Liberals, after all, are "baby killers," which has absolutely nothing to do with economics or taxation, but it's all a part of what is seen as "liberalism."
 
Dittohead not! said:
Why do "regular folks" persist in framing fiscal/tax/economic matters in terms of political ideologies? Because the conventional wisdom is that "liberals," which has so many meanings as to be meaningless, like to "tax and spend" according to the "conservatives", which is yet another term with so many meanings as to be meaningless. Conservatives, on the other hand, favor "trickle down" economics because they like to give "tax breaks to the rich," according to the "liberals."

It's bumper sticker ideological politics vs. the science of economics. Since few people understand economics, they favor ideologies. Liberals, after all, are "baby killers," which has absolutely nothing to do with economics or taxation, but it's all a part of what is seen as "liberalism."
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Red text: Yes, I guess that's what it is. Sad because econ isn't really all that hard to "get."
 
Bullseye said:
Nope, didn't say that. The effects of the tax bill is not a one time, instantaneous event.

But, yes, the current rise is due to one thing the current administration did - it got elected and rid the White House of the anti-business, anti-success driven Obamanomics of the past eight years. :mrgreen:
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Yet job creation was actually slower in 2017 than in 2016. I suspect that would have happened regardless of who was elected president.

So far, all that has happened is our economy has more or less remained on the same track it was during the Obama years. That's not impressive evidence of anything.
 
imagep said:
Yet job creation was actually slower in 2017 than in 2016. I suspect that would have happened regardless of who was elected president.
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Only if that President happened to get a tax revision passed in 2017 that went into effect in 2018,

imagep said:
So far, all that has happened is our economy has more or less remained on the same track it was during the Obama years. That's not impressive evidence of anything.
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Nor are your powers of observation. How many companies gave employees raises, bonues, and improved benefits packages under Obama?
 
danielpalos said:
Because we have political parties, not economic parties.
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I am quite confident even fewer people understand politics and governance. Ask yourself how many people finish high school or a baccalaureate degree without reading Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, the Bible, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Marx, and Nietzsche? To wit, how many people do you presume have read the tip of the iceberg of political principles?

Of course, not having read any of the noted authors/texts doesn't stop people from expressing loud and strong normative views about governance, politics, the polity, and jurisprudence. As a result of our having a of politically poorly founded populace, where do we as a nation today quite literally find ourselves? Here....

The-Cave.jpg
 
Xelor said:
Red text: Yes, I guess that's what it is. Sad because econ isn't really all that hard to "get."
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Economics IS hard to get. The problem is that most people think economics is "just common sense". It's not common sense at all, it's a learned subject. Most people have never taken an economics class, and if they did, it was most likely taught by a high school PE teacher who has never taken a class in economics.
 
Bullseye said:
Only if that President happened to get a tax revision passed in 2017 that went into effect in 2018,

Nor are your powers of observation. How many companies gave employees raises, bonues, and improved benefits packages under Obama?
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Lot's of companies gave employee raises, bonuses and improved benefits under Obama. They just didn't issue press releases about it.
 
imagep said:
Economics IS hard to get. The problem is that most people think economics is "just common sense". It's not common sense at all, it's a learned subject. Most people have never taken an economics class, and if they did, it was most likely taught by a high school PE teacher who has never taken a class in economics.
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I agree that it's not "just common sense." And the extent of economics one needs to adequately comprehend "everyday" public policy -- mostly principles and a touch of intermediate macro and micro -- isn't hard. As a major, yes, it's a hard major (or graduate program, for that matter), mainly because all its concepts are related, interact with one another and one must be quite good at discerning which one(s) predominates in any given situation, and most especially (during one's study of the subject) in the exam questions professors pose. Many an econ student stumbles because they want to think about the outliers and exceptions, about what they'd do, or what someone might do, and they tend to be adept at conjuring such notions, but the discipline is about the norms of behavior, namely rational behavior in the face of scarcity. The rational part is another difficulty for not a lot of folks actually are.
 
imagep said:
Economics IS hard to get. The problem is that most people think economics is "just common sense". It's not common sense at all, it's a learned subject. Most people have never taken an economics class, and if they did, it was most likely taught by a high school PE teacher who has never taken a class in economics.
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Not only that, but if you lined all of the experts in economics up end to end, they would all point in different directions.
 
Dittohead not! said:
anyway, that's the theory:
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Yeah, well, so much for theory.

Here's mine. Put taxation back up to into the nineties (percent) and use the additional income to give our children free Tertiary Education - because that is where the rest of the developed/developing world has gone.

If we want to compete in this Brave New World of the Information Age - and as regards educational attainment, we are no longer competing - we need that level of post-secondary education to do so ...
 
Dittohead not! said:
So, when the economy in general is up, it is not due to the tax cuts, nor is it due to anything that the current administration has done.
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Not unless the trend that existed before the change, changes. Six months after the tax cut went into effect, the stock market is slightly lower than it was just prior to the cut. Job creation throughout the Trump administration has remained at roughly the same level it was during Obama's last few years. the Workforce Participation Rate is actually slightly lower now than when Trump took office.

There is absolutely not one shred of evidence that the Trump presidency has improve our economy beyond that it would have been if Obama was elected to a third term.
 
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