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Study Finds Trump Tax Cuts Failed to Do Anything But Give Rich People Money

MTAtech said:
Most of those who are rich were born already wealthy.
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What gave you that idea? Did you make it up or has someone been feeding you a line?

It depends on where you draw lines, but most rich people started middle class. The very wealthiest--Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison--were born middle class or barely wealthy. The youngest billionaire, Kylie Jenner, is self made.
 
Conservative said:
I really suggest a civics class because you apparently have no understanding of how the Senate works and the control they have
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Conservative said:
spending authority granted by the Democratic Controlled Congress?
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Republicans led the House for two years at the start of Trumps term.
Trump could have changed spending under a Republican House, and a Republican Senate, it's not necessary that during his term as President he go through a Democratic congress.

If you want to correct yourself, do so.
If you'd like to show how I'm wrong, please do.

Otherwise, don't post.
 
Conservative said:
He signed the budget in March 2009 thus took over GM, bailed out AIG, had an Afghanistan supplemental, didn't create the promised jobs and recycled TARP which you still refuse to acknowledge. Bush submitted a budget, it was rejected by Congress. Take a civics class
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Obama didn't have a budget 6 out of 8 years when republicans controlled the house.
 
Mach said:
Republicans led the House for two years at the start of Trumps term.
Trump could have changed spending under a Republican House, and a Republican Senate, it's not necessary that during his term as President he go through a Democratic congress.

If you want to correct yourself, do so.
If you'd like to show how I'm wrong, please do.

Otherwise, don't post.
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Yes they did but it wasn't Trump spending that was the problem it is entitlement and debt service. Post the data to support your claims. I gave you the link to the 2018 budget which of course you ignored just like you ignore all the official data and buy what you are being told. You post the official data or don't post at all
 
MTAtech said:
The ‘Self-Made’ Myth: Our Hallucinating Rich - Inequality.org
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I thought someone was feeding you a line of BS. You just confirmed it.

They are making the definition of rich so high that even the very wealthy don't qualify. Forget 1%ers. Th Forbes 400 is 1% of 1% of 1%. Even then, the bulk of them started outside the rarified heights the article chooses to call rich. If you take a more reasonable definition of rich, say the 1%ers, the large majority come from families outside the top 10%.

If you want to read something useful (practical) about wealth, try The Millionaire Next Door
The Millionaire Next Door - Wikipedia
 
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Conservative said:
Most of the garbage comes from civics challenged individuals who read headlines and not the article. That Projected deficit INCLUDED TARP which was a loan that was repaid back in 2009 but never used to reduce the deficit as good little liberal minions buy the rhetoric and ignore the facts. Bush had ZERO spending authority past March 2009 and you want to blame him for all the spending and none of the revenue, typical liberalism. Keep buying what the left tells you and keep letting them make a fool out of you.

there was NO Bush approved budget for 2009 so if you can find one, post a link and I will admit when wrong, something you will never do. In fact if you find a Congressional approved 2009 budget for Bush, I will leave this forum and you will be hero getting rid of another conservative. Here is what happened, Bush submitted a budget and it was REJECTED, he therefore operated on Continuing resolutions based upon 2008 spending until Obama signed the total budget in March 2009. You buy rhetoric and ignore the facts
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This financial analyst knows a lot more than you do, with your sorry, biased, GW-BUSH-HAD-A-GREAT-ECONOMY lies. The date was before Obama'a inauguration, and here are the opening statements.

Last Updated: January 7, 2009: 5:00 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. budget deficit in 2009 is projected to spike to a record $1.2 trillion, or 8.3% of gross domestic product, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

The dramatic jump to the highest-ever deficit in dollar terms compares to a $455 billion deficit in fiscal year 2008 and $161 billion in 2007.

And let's not forget that GW Bush inherited a Budget Surplus.
 
MTAtech said:
And I’ll ask again, since most federal spending is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense and interest on the debt. How do you “redirect” Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense and interest on the debt?

We can do that to defense, but there rest aren’t the discretionary budget.

What specifically would you consider we don’t need and send it off to what you think we do need?

From an economic standpoint, spending is spending?
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You look at those programs, find things we dont need right now, and redirect the taxes into programs we do need right now. Its not about spending in a recession, its about spending it right. We dont need to fund shrimp on a treadmill for 500k to 3 mil. Maybe we cut that research during a recession and redirect the money to a jobs program instead.
 
jonny5 said:
You look at those programs, find things we dont need right now, and redirect the taxes into programs we do need right now. Its not about spending in a recession, its about spending it right. We dont need to fund shrimp on a treadmill for 500k to 3 mil. Maybe we cut that research during a recession and redirect the money to a jobs program instead.
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As I've said many times, your federal government, in terms of spending, is an insurance company with an army. That's where the vast amount of federal spending resides, in five areas: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense and interest on the debt. Stuff like shrimp studies, at $500,000, amount to a rounding error on a rounding error in terms of the federal budget of four trillion dollars. It just isn't what your government does on any scale and cutting it is unnoticeable. So, if someone is talking about reducing federal spending to lower debt, they are either talking about cutting the big five or they have no idea what they are talking about.
 
jonny5 said:
You look at those programs, find things we dont need right now, and redirect the taxes into programs we do need right now. Its not about spending in a recession, its about spending it right. We dont need to fund shrimp on a treadmill for 500k to 3 mil. Maybe we cut that research during a recession and redirect the money to a jobs program instead.
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So you want to move money that employs researchers to a jobs program that employs somebody else?

You guys like to poke fun at goofy-looking things like that, but those research projects are very useful. They aren't studying shrimp, they are studying locomotion, or musculature, or something that you can't fully comprehend. Research is how we find cures for cancer.

$1 million given to a research lab is $1 million that goes right into the economy, employing people. When you cut SS, Medicare, education, you name it, you are cutting somebody's income.
 
JohnfrmClevelan said:
So you want to move money that employs researchers to a jobs program that employs somebody else?

You guys like to poke fun at goofy-looking things like that, but those research projects are very useful. They aren't studying shrimp, they are studying locomotion, or musculature, or something that you can't fully comprehend. Research is how we find cures for cancer.

$1 million given to a research lab is $1 million that goes right into the economy, employing people. When you cut SS, Medicare, education, you name it, you are cutting somebody's income.
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I can fully comprehend that during a recession when we are 10 trillion in debt, and have a 800bn deficit, that we can do without shrimp research, in favor of additional spending on social services.
 
jonny5 said:
I can fully comprehend that during a recession when we are 10 trillion in debt, and have a 800bn deficit, that we can do without shrimp research, in favor of additional spending on social services.
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You still don't get it, and that's obvious from your answer.

It's not shrimp research, it's just research. And the thing about de-funding research is that it does damage that can't be undone. When you lose funding, you lose your lab. Your lab techs need to find other positions, which are hard to find because, well, there's not nearly enough research funding as it is. And that Ph.D. that lost their lab? They have to start over, working in somebody else's lab for less money, because you can't get a grant without a place to do your research. A lot of Ph.D.'s end up finding a whole new career when they lose funding, which is a waste of their education. It's a horribly cutthroat bit of the labor market that the bean counters don't understand.

Essentially, when you suggest that we cut research funding to pay for social programs, you are suggesting we dismantle a working Mercedes to provide spare parts for a Chevy. That's why smart politicians are so resistant to cutting funding for almost anything.

And the kicker is, you can't even demonstrate that debt and deficits are harmful in the first place, let alone more harmful than budget cuts certainly are.
 
jonny5 said:
I can fully comprehend that during a recession when we are 10 trillion in debt, and have a 800bn deficit, that we can do without shrimp research, in favor of additional spending on social services.
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The problem with your line of reasoning is a fixation on reducing the deficit during times of recession. Those are exactly the times when deficits are far less important than employing people, so that their spending ends up stimulating the economy enough to bring the unemployed back to work.

As JohnfrmClevelan wrote, cutting person "A" from the payroll so that you can hire "B" does nothing to stimulate the economy. It merely shifts employment. You should want to hire both "A" and "B."
 
JohnfrmClevelan said:
You still don't get it, and that's obvious from your answer.

It's not shrimp research, it's just research. And the thing about de-funding research is that it does damage that can't be undone. When you lose funding, you lose your lab. Your lab techs need to find other positions, which are hard to find because, well, there's not nearly enough research funding as it is. And that Ph.D. that lost their lab? They have to start over, working in somebody else's lab for less money, because you can't get a grant without a place to do your research. A lot of Ph.D.'s end up finding a whole new career when they lose funding, which is a waste of their education. It's a horribly cutthroat bit of the labor market that the bean counters don't understand.

Essentially, when you suggest that we cut research funding to pay for social programs, you are suggesting we dismantle a working Mercedes to provide spare parts for a Chevy. That's why smart politicians are so resistant to cutting funding for almost anything.

And the kicker is, you can't even demonstrate that debt and deficits are harmful in the first place, let alone more harmful than budget cuts certainly are.
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mkay.
 
MTAtech said:
The problem with your line of reasoning is a fixation on reducing the deficit during times of recession. Those are exactly the times when deficits are far less important than employing people, so that their spending ends up stimulating the economy enough to bring the unemployed back to work.

As JohnfrmClevelan wrote, cutting person "A" from the payroll so that you can hire "B" does nothing to stimulate the economy. It merely shifts employment. You should want to hire both "A" and "B."
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I didnt say reduce the deficit. I said instead of increasing it as Obama did, you shift money from things with lower priority.
 
jonny5 said:
I didnt say reduce the deficit. I said instead of increasing it as Obama did, you shift money from things with lower priority.
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When the purpose of stimulus is to add money to the economy -- to use government spending to replace the drop in private spending, shifting government spending from one area to another doesn't achieve the goal. Moreover, as I explained, there isn't hundreds of billions in discretionary spending to shift. Most federal spending is health programs, defense, retirement and interest.
 
More on the topic:

Trump's tax cut isn't giving the US economy the boost it needs


  • Benefits from what President Trump called “the biggest reform of all time” to the tax code have dwindled to a faint breeze just 20 months after its enactment.
  • Half of corporate chief financial officers surveyed by Duke University expect the economy to shrink by the second quarter of 2020. Two-thirds expect a recession by the end of next year.
  • Economists who have examined the impact of the law say it isn’t helping much with overall growth, business investment or worker pay. The strongest case for its economic benefits is that it remains too early to see them.
 
jonny5 said:
I didnt say reduce the deficit. I said instead of increasing it as Obama did, you shift money from things with lower priority.
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The only way that boosts aggregate demand (and therefore the economy) is if you shift money from rich savers to poorer spenders. trump did exactly the opposite.
 
JohnfrmClevelan said:
The only way that boosts aggregate demand (and therefore the economy) is if you shift money from rich savers to poorer spenders. trump did exactly the opposite.
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The post I answered was alternatives to adding massive debt in a recession. I answered that. Im not concerned with aggregate demand as the purpose of govt is not to steer the economy.
 
MTAtech said:
When the purpose of stimulus is to add money to the economy -- to use government spending to replace the drop in private spending, shifting government spending from one area to another doesn't achieve the goal. Moreover, as I explained, there isn't hundreds of billions in discretionary spending to shift. Most federal spending is health programs, defense, retirement and interest.
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And you can redirect spending within those programs too.
 
jonny5 said:
The post I answered was alternatives to adding massive debt in a recession. I answered that. Im not concerned with aggregate demand as the purpose of govt is not to steer the economy.
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Well, like it or not, it becomes a question of fighting a recession.

We have explained why a government should deficit spend in a recession. You have never explained why you think that the national debt is a problem.
 
jonny5 said:
And you can redirect spending within those programs too.
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That's the same kind of shift that you mentioned before, and we explained that it doesn't increase GDP. If the government shifts money from you to me, you spend less and I (hopefully) spend more.

(But if I'm rich, I won't spend it.)
 
jonny5 said:
And you can redirect spending within those programs too.
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During the last recession, there were two camps: one camp called for a very large fiscal expansion to keep the economy from falling into depression. The other camp worried about the burden that large budget deficits will place on future generations.

The first camp argued that under the conditions in 2008, there was no trade-off between what’s good in the short run and what’s good for the long run; strong fiscal expansion would actually enhance the economy’s long-run prospects.

The claim that budget deficits make the economy poorer in the long run is based on the belief that government borrowing “crowds out” private investment -- that the government, by issuing lots of debt, drives up interest rates, which makes businesses unwilling to spend on new plant and equipment, and that this in turn reduces the economy’s long-run rate of growth. Under normal circumstances there’s a lot to this argument. But circumstances during the recession were anything but normal. Consider what would happen had the Obama administration gave in to the deficit hawks and scaled back its fiscal plans? Would private investment increase? No. Without demand, business would have no need to ramp up investment.

The idea that tight fiscal policy when the economy is depressed actually reduces private investment is exactly what took place in 1937 when FDR mistakenly heeded the advice of his deficit hawks. The result was a return of the downturn.
 
JohnfrmClevelan said:
Well, like it or not, it becomes a question of fighting a recession.

We have explained why a government should deficit spend in a recession. You have never explained why you think that the national debt is a problem.
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Fact is there are two ways of getting out of a recession / depression that is spend your way out of it ( increase the deficit and debt or go into a war like WWII
and spending your way out of it to me seems better then going to war
Have a nice day
 
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