Is Raising Revenue More Important Than Raising Tax Rates?

megaprogman said:

I disagree, it is not merely an economic act. It entirely depends on one's relationship with society and what they consider paying taxes to be. Personally, I don't mind higher tax rates for what I get. In parts of Europe, this is the prevailing attitude, for example.

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interesting. you don't take the deductions for which you qualify? if you get a refund check, you insist on sending it back?

I believe it is because there is no mechanism built into such a system to make sure that the right amounts of funds are going where it is needed. Simply saying "give to charity, its good for you" does nothing to address the problem from a numbers level. Therefore it is a side discussion. Its a dodge.

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charity we can absolutely discuss elsewhere, except I think to keep the point that when people are discussing the importance of ramping up social spending - they are talking about spending someone else's money. that's not a charitable decision, and it shouldn't be treated as one.

Well we don't exactly have free will now, we are subject to internal and external pressures, instincts, etc, but thats a side discussion I think. We like to pretend we do and I think we do over some aspects of our personalities.

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can we agree simply then that if our parents were to have preselected our personalities for us that we would have less.?

As am I cpwill. The idea of man being primarily self interested is very much in vogue and popular right now, but that doesn't necessarily mean it stands up to any sort of rigorous analysis

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it is, in fact, the basis not only of our system of governance, but the major portion of our economic system. considering that we are the most successful nation in history, and considering that systems built on competing notions (that man is happy to socialize his rewards) have fallen into the ash-heap of history, I would like to see some support for this claim. The entire discussion that we have just had concerning taxes v rates is in contradiction to the notion that humans economically interact as non-self-interested parties, seeking what is best for they and their families. The middle class man takes the mortgage interest deduction just as readily as a wealthy man takes a more exotic one - and for the same reason - they are seeking to minimize their tax exposure. They may even be all for paying higher rates in the abstract, but give even a spokesman for that cause, a cheerleader of it who stands to lose nothing that he needs a tax form and they will take all the exemptions, breaks, and credits they can qualify for.

Again, look at the attitudes of people not only in the US to get a more complete picture.

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Not only do people seek out and take massive amounts of deductions, credits, and whathaveyou every year, we also often underreport. the IRS estimates that waiters and other workers that rely on tips, for example, underreport their income by 84%. Tax evasion (not avoidance) in 2001 (the last year I could find a number) was estimated to be at 2.1% of GDP. Americans take every exemption and credit we can qualify for, and many of us take some that we don't - all in our effort to reduce our individual tax bill.

:lol: but we support raising taxes on other people, aiiieee :shakes head: Probably the same waiter who night after night reports that they got 3% in tips will go out and tell a pollster that the small business owner who reports his business income as personal and brings in $250K a year needs to have his taxes hiked so that he can "pay his fair share". That was certainly the attitude I had when I was a waiter, and I was underreporting my income. I had to do some growing up in order to realize how thuggish that attitude was.

cpwill said:

interesting. you don't take the deductions for which you qualify? if you get a refund check, you insist on sending it back?

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Sure I do, but as I mentioned before, putting in the forms into the tax software is one thing while going out of your way and changing your lifestyle for the purpose of reducing taxes is another. Even so, just because people cheat, we are simply supposed to excuse it? You may disagree, as you have, but the point still stands.

cpwill said:

charity we can absolutely discuss elsewhere, except I think to keep the point that when people are discussing the importance of ramping up social spending - they are talking about spending someone else's money. that's not a charitable decision, and it shouldn't be treated as one.

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I agree, the real decision is how society works best. The term charity refers to a very specific thing and may be one method of achieving it.

cpwill said:

can we agree simply then that if our parents were to have preselected our personalities for us that we would have less.?

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Actually it would be impossible to determine since mental stuff is hard to quantify or impossible to quantify in terms of more of less, plus the perception of a living person who was engineered would be that they are still themselves. Lastly, if a person was predisposed to something like depression and that aspect was removed, one could say that they would have more (whatever more is, I am assuming some sort of quality of life) So, objectively, I don't know if I can agree or disagree, because what you ask is not a simple question due to its ambiguity.

cpwill said:

it is, in fact, the basis not only of our system of governance, but the major portion of our economic system. considering that we are the most successful nation in history, and considering that systems built on competing notions (that man is happy to socialize his rewards) have fallen into the ash-heap of history, I would like to see some support for this claim. The entire discussion that we have just had concerning taxes v rates is in contradiction to the notion that humans economically interact as non-self-interested parties, seeking what is best for they and their families. The middle class man takes the mortgage interest deduction just as readily as a wealthy man takes a more exotic one - and for the same reason - they are seeking to minimize their tax exposure. They may even be all for paying higher rates in the abstract, but give even a spokesman for that cause, a cheerleader of it who stands to lose nothing that he needs a tax form and they will take all the exemptions, breaks, and credits they can qualify for.

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We are the most successful nation in history in some dimensions, we are middle of the road in others, and terrible at other things yet. Other countries, such as Norway or Germany, which are built on a different social model have greater accomplishments in some dimensions. So, I will have to disagree with your notion that we are the most successful. Different models of society are better and worse at different things. Much of it depends on culture and not governmental policy in fact.

cpwill said:

Not only do people seek out and take massive amounts of deductions, credits, and whathaveyou every year, we also often underreport. the IRS estimates that waiters and other workers that rely on tips, for example, underreport their income by 84%. Tax evasion (not avoidance) in 2001 (the last year I could find a number) was estimated to be at 2.1% of GDP. Americans take every exemption and credit we can qualify for, and many of us take some that we don't - all in our effort to reduce our individual tax bill.

:lol: but we support raising taxes on other people, aiiieee :shakes head: Probably the same waiter who night after night reports that they got 3% in tips will go out and tell a pollster that the small business owner who reports his business income as personal and brings in $250K a year needs to have his taxes hiked so that he can "pay his fair share". That was certainly the attitude I had when I was a waiter, and I was underreporting my income. I had to do some growing up in order to realize how thuggish that attitude was.

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:shrug: you may consider it thuggish, but really, the idea of people who benefit most from the system paying more into it makes sense for reasons I already mentioned.

cpwill said:

interesting. you don't take the deductions for which you qualify? if you get a refund check, you insist on sending it back?



charity we can absolutely discuss elsewhere, except I think to keep the point that when people are discussing the importance of ramping up social spending - they are talking about spending someone else's money. that's not a charitable decision, and it shouldn't be treated as one.



can we agree simply then that if our parents were to have preselected our personalities for us that we would have less.?



it is, in fact, the basis not only of our system of governance, but the major portion of our economic system. considering that we are the most successful nation in history, and considering that systems built on competing notions (that man is happy to socialize his rewards) have fallen into the ash-heap of history, I would like to see some support for this claim. The entire discussion that we have just had concerning taxes v rates is in contradiction to the notion that humans economically interact as non-self-interested parties, seeking what is best for they and their families. The middle class man takes the mortgage interest deduction just as readily as a wealthy man takes a more exotic one - and for the same reason - they are seeking to minimize their tax exposure. They may even be all for paying higher rates in the abstract, but give even a spokesman for that cause, a cheerleader of it who stands to lose nothing that he needs a tax form and they will take all the exemptions, breaks, and credits they can qualify for.



Not only do people seek out and take massive amounts of deductions, credits, and whathaveyou every year, we also often underreport. the IRS estimates that waiters and other workers that rely on tips, for example, underreport their income by 84%. Tax evasion (not avoidance) in 2001 (the last year I could find a number) was estimated to be at 2.1% of GDP. Americans take every exemption and credit we can qualify for, and many of us take some that we don't - all in our effort to reduce our individual tax bill.

:lol: but we support raising taxes on other people, aiiieee :shakes head: Probably the same waiter who night after night reports that they got 3% in tips will go out and tell a pollster that the small business owner who reports his business income as personal and brings in $250K a year needs to have his taxes hiked so that he can "pay his fair share". That was certainly the attitude I had when I was a waiter, and I was underreporting my income. I had to do some growing up in order to realize how thuggish that attitude was.

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back in the early 1990s I used to eat all the time at a chain restaurant-a TGIF in northern Cincinnati because I was dating a lady who worked there. Even after I was married, (not to the waitress) I was a regular and my wife and I went in right after the Clinton tax hikes had been imposed. Now I was a big tipper-20% minimum. Our waitress that day-I will call her "Amy" was going on and on about how great Clinton was. My wife-far more conservative than I am-asked "Amy" why Clinton was so great. "Amy" started gushing over the tax hikes. So I asked her how she was doing in terms of tips since the tax hikes.
She noted that her tips had gone down a bit-most of the clientele at that place at that time were small business owners. Now I left her a good tip but not as high as usual. The next time I came in one of my manager friends noted "Amy" was wondering why I tipped her a few bucks less than normal. The manager noted to her that when peoples' taxes go up they tend to cut back spending and tips are among the first thing to suffer.

HE also recommended that gushing about Clinton's tax hike was counterproductive if you were someone who depended upon the "rich" for your income. Just ask all the blue collar union workers who built Yachts what the clinton "luxury tax" hikes did for them

TurtleDude said:

before the 16th amendment the rich werent required to pay for freeloaders and others

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FALSE -

**Revenue act of 1861
**Wilson-Gormon Tariff 1894

the poor have a pretty good deal


they have the same voting and citizenship rights as the rich yet they don't even pay their share of the government

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So, donate your 'fortune' to charity and start living the good life...

right now the top 5% pay more of the federal income tax burden than the other 95%

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And they benefit more from all the things the U.S. government oversees and provides.

The super-wealthy have a greater interest in maintaining tax-funded support systems such as security of property rights, defense and infrastructure, as the top 1% have much more to lose if these fail than do the poor. Public investments in defense and foreign aid mainly support business assets abroad whose expropriation is a far greater risk than is the risk involving domestic investments.

In the U.S. market economy, the larger an investment is, the higher its rate of return. This is due to economies of scale and the increased range of investment opportunities.

Those who control greater amounts of capital within a society are able to participate more directly in shaping government policy, often in ways that further maximize their wealth.

right now the richest 1 percent of tax payers pay the highest proportion of the FIT than at anytime since welfare socialism started in the USA

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And they control more of the wealth do to the failure of trickle down economics...

the rich have always "won" the current system is distributing much of that winning to the losers

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You're talking about the Ayn Rand fantasy world where the successful people are exceptionally gifted creative individuals with a strong moral compass, and rest are either lazy or content to be a worker bee. However, in the real world, legions of lawyers go to work every year figuring out new ways to game the system. In the real world, not all wealthy people are exceptional creators/producers. Many fail upwards. Hedge funds, speculators produce nothing. In the real world, the 'invisible hand' has been hampered by politics, bail-outs, and subsidies.

Here is some reading for you:

Capital versus Talent
I believe there as a modern and very important battle being waged between capital – i.e. shareholders – and talent – i.e. senior and specialized executives – for the spoils of their joint activity. Before 1980, talent worked placidly for management without making huge demands of compensation. But then talent woke up and ever since has been working assiduously to take an ever-bigger piece of the economic pie, frustrating and angering capital.

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Essays and ideas on how we got started down this road where 'talent' in the corp. world began to believe they were entitled to something greater...whether they produced or not.

megaprogman said:

Sure I do, but as I mentioned before, putting in the forms into the tax software is one thing while going out of your way and changing your lifestyle for the purpose of reducing taxes is another.

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i don't see how it is - either way you are deliberately taking action to minimize your tax bill - you are acting economically, in ways that are designed to serve the best interest of you and your family.

Even so, just because people cheat, we are simply supposed to excuse it?

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not at all - but we should also design a system that reduces the incentive and ability to engage in tax fraud. That's one of the things I liked most about the Fair-Tax; in order to cheat (as opposed to our current system where you just have to write a different number on a piece of paper safe in your own room) you have to get Wal-Mart to sign on to engaging in criminal activity. Walmart isn't going to risk criminal investigation to save you $3.16 on a sweater.

I agree, the real decision is how society works best. The term charity refers to a very specific thing and may be one method of achieving it.

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well when organizing government the question is what works best - but I get leery when people start talking about organizing society for maximum efficiency. Individual Rights so often get tossed out the window when that occurs, and effects on individuals go right with it. Should we design a system for maximum efficiency if it also encourages what we would recognize as detrimental individual behavior? These are my twin critiques of our current welfare/tax structure - it is poorly designed to acheive it's stated goals, and it encourages what I would argue are harmful strategies and attitudes among us. It doesn't help the poor, but it does teach us that the way up is to take from others rather than self-reliance.

Actually it would be impossible to determine since mental stuff is hard to quantify or impossible to quantify in terms of more of less, plus the perception of a living person who was engineered would be that they are still themselves. Lastly, if a person was predisposed to something like depression and that aspect was removed, one could say that they would have more (whatever more is, I am assuming some sort of quality of life) So, objectively, I don't know if I can agree or disagree, because what you ask is not a simple question due to its ambiguity.

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man. i read that three times, and now I'm confused

but seriously, I can't accept Eugenics as a means of increasing human choice - it strikes me that it objectively gives one generation ( the "designer" generation ) all the choices and locks the rest of us into their model.

We are the most successful nation in history in some dimensions, we are middle of the road in others, and terrible at other things yet. Other countries, such as Norway or Germany, which are built on a different social model have greater accomplishments in some dimensions. So, I will have to disagree with your notion that we are the most successful.

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those other models have been able to survive and thrive because they have been fed and protected by our success. Without US Military expenditures, Germany spends her GDP over the last century protecting her border from the Soviet Union. And I would question what "other dimensions" you are referencing - I have heard it often claimed about healthcare, but I have yet to see a case made for that that can stand up to critique.

Different models of society are better and worse at different things. Much of it depends on culture and not governmental policy in fact.

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that is true, but I would argue that culture feeds into government policy.

you may consider it thuggish, but really, the idea of people who benefit most from the system paying more into it makes sense for reasons I already mentioned.

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I don't consider the notion of a progressive tax code thuggish. I claim that the model where the majority of us shift the burden of governing onto a minority, insist that they then also pay us a little extra off the top, and then castigate them for not "carrying their fair share" is thuggish.

Neither, the government needs to dramatically reduce spending, then it doesn't need extra revenue or increased taxes.

Cephus said:

Neither, the government needs to dramatically reduce spending,

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Reducing spending means losing jobs, but you know that, don't you. Less jobs or higher unemployment is the only way to beat Obama, especially since you Reps can't call him a ditherer or wimp anymore.

ricksfolly

ricksfolly said:

Reducing spending means losing jobs, but you know that, don't you. Less jobs or higher unemployment is the only way to beat Obama, especially since you Reps can't call him a ditherer or wimp anymore.

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How about less government freebies and forcing people who are sitting on their asses getting government handouts to get back to work? And yes, I can call Obama lots of things, most of which I can't post here.

cpwill said:

i don't see how it is - either way you are deliberately taking action to minimize your tax bill - you are acting economically, in ways that are designed to serve the best interest of you and your family.

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I firmly pointed it out, if you disagree, so be it. I guess we will have to disagree on this point.

cpwill said:

not at all - but we should also design a system that reduces the incentive and ability to engage in tax fraud. That's one of the things I liked most about the Fair-Tax; in order to cheat (as opposed to our current system where you just have to write a different number on a piece of paper safe in your own room) you have to get Wal-Mart to sign on to engaging in criminal activity. Walmart isn't going to risk criminal investigation to save you $3.16 on a sweater.

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A so-called fair tax system may do that, but if the initial design is flawed (by increasing taxes on those who cannot afford it), then it doesn't matter if it addresses a problem with the income tax.

cpwill said:

well when organizing government the question is what works best - but I get leery when people start talking about organizing society for maximum efficiency. Individual Rights so often get tossed out the window when that occurs, and effects on individuals go right with it. Should we design a system for maximum efficiency if it also encourages what we would recognize as detrimental individual behavior? These are my twin critiques of our current welfare/tax structure - it is poorly designed to acheive it's stated goals, and it encourages what I would argue are harmful strategies and attitudes among us. It doesn't help the poor, but it does teach us that the way up is to take from others rather than self-reliance.

Click to expand...

Moral systems come and go with time and there has yet to be one that is universal in that it solves all problems or even addresses all problems (the american conservative perspective leaves tons of problems unaddressed and instead seeks to minimize concern for them), this was the basis behind my in-vogue comment. In the end, there is only what works and what does not work.

cpwill said:

man. i read that three times, and now I'm confused

but seriously, I can't accept Eugenics as a means of increasing human choice - it strikes me that it objectively gives one generation ( the "designer" generation ) all the choices and locks the rest of us into their model.

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A model is going to happen either by biology or by design. In either case, we are trapped in a paradigm that is dictated by make up and experiences. If our make up is changed, then the basis in which we self judge also changes, which means that when we assess any value it will be dependent on who we are at that time.

Is a golden retriever less than a wolf? I am willing to bet the golden retriever is quite happy with his situation even though he is not hunting in a pack all the time because he has evolved through years of interaction with humans (which is eugenic). The retriever being happy with itself and its life is ultimately what matters to that dog. Both the wolf and the retriever are in a "model" as dictated by their make up, so if you want to go with something being locked in a model, then both are. Just as I am locked in a model and if man evolves into something else, it is that model, but in either case, it is locked and always will be.

Again, I am not advocating, but your concern does not address it very well. I know what you are trying to say in that what we are right now has an inherent rightness, but again, looking objectively, that idea is unsupported.

cpwill said:

those other models have been able to survive and thrive because they have been fed and protected by our success. Without US Military expenditures, Germany spends her GDP over the last century protecting her border from the Soviet Union. And I would question what "other dimensions" you are referencing - I have heard it often claimed about healthcare, but I have yet to see a case made for that that can stand up to critique.

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This warrants no other response, but :lol: The only real thing the US has contributed was the idea of democratic society (which is a good thing) through the first and second world war.

As for other dimensions, per capita income (us is not at the top), health care (many other countries have much better success rates and for lower costs), and

cpwill said:

that is true, but I would argue that culture feeds into government policy.

I don't consider the notion of a progressive tax code thuggish. I claim that the model where the majority of us shift the burden of governing onto a minority, insist that they then also pay us a little extra off the top, and then castigate them for not "carrying their fair share" is thuggish.

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The only reason the minority have to pay is because due to trickle down, incomes of regular people have not kept up as they should. I would prefer the 80s never happened and we would not even be having this discussion as people would be making their due.

hazlnut said:

FALSE -

**Revenue act of 1861
**Wilson-Gormon Tariff 1894



So, donate your 'fortune' to charity and start living the good life...



And they benefit more from all the things the U.S. government oversees and provides.

The super-wealthy have a greater interest in maintaining tax-funded support systems such as security of property rights, defense and infrastructure, as the top 1% have much more to lose if these fail than do the poor. Public investments in defense and foreign aid mainly support business assets abroad whose expropriation is a far greater risk than is the risk involving domestic investments.

In the U.S. market economy, the larger an investment is, the higher its rate of return. This is due to economies of scale and the increased range of investment opportunities.

Those who control greater amounts of capital within a society are able to participate more directly in shaping government policy, often in ways that further maximize their wealth.



And they control more of the wealth do to the failure of trickle down economics...



You're talking about the Ayn Rand fantasy world where the successful people are exceptionally gifted creative individuals with a strong moral compass, and rest are either lazy or content to be a worker bee. However, in the real world, legions of lawyers go to work every year figuring out new ways to game the system. In the real world, not all wealthy people are exceptional creators/producers. Many fail upwards. Hedge funds, speculators produce nothing. In the real world, the 'invisible hand' has been hampered by politics, bail-outs, and subsidies.

Here is some reading for you:



Essays and ideas on how we got started down this road where 'talent' in the corp. world began to believe they were entitled to something greater...whether they produced or not.

Click to expand...

IN your haste to try to score a point I don't see any evidence of income redistribution in those short lived 3% tax designed to pay for the war (RA 0f 1861) or the 2% income taxes designed to offset the lost of tariff revenues.

why do the parasite advocates constantly talk about the super wealthy when all the dems schemes are most vexatious to those who are merely upper middle class or at the bottom of the top taxpaying group?

you rant and rave about hedge fund managers yet how many hedge fund managers make up the top 2 percent that your socialist president wants to screw over?

ricksfolly said:

Reducing spending means losing jobs, but you know that, don't you. Less jobs or higher unemployment is the only way to beat Obama, especially since you Reps can't call him a ditherer or wimp anymore.

ricksfolly

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so your solution is more and more deficits. You really have no clue about what is happening

megaprogman said:

I firmly pointed it out, if you disagree, so be it. I guess we will have to disagree on this point.

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if you are taking steps to minimize your tax bill, then you are doing so because the rewards to you individually outweigh the costs of you doing so individually. People consider tax effects all the time - when they purchase a house, move to the city, or invest. Claiming that we can just pretend that they will pay higher rates happily "just because" when they have the opportunity not to is in contradiction to what we know of human behavior and the last several decades of experience. People interact with their tax bill in a fashion to reduce their individual exposure, and many are even willing to break the law to do so.

A so-called fair tax system may do that, but if the initial design is flawed (by increasing taxes on those who cannot afford it), then it doesn't matter if it addresses a problem with the income tax.

Moral systems come and go with time and there has yet to be one that is universal in that it solves all problems or even addresses all problems (the american conservative perspective leaves tons of problems unaddressed and instead seeks to minimize concern for them), this was the basis behind my in-vogue comment. In the end, there is only what works and what does not work.

A model is going to happen either by biology or by design. In either case, we are trapped in a paradigm that is dictated by make up and experiences. If our make up is changed, then the basis in which we self judge also changes, which means that when we assess any value it will be dependent on who we are at that time.

Is a golden retriever less than a wolf? I am willing to bet the golden retriever is quite happy with his situation even though he is not hunting in a pack all the time because he has evolved through years of interaction with humans (which is eugenic). The retriever being happy with itself and its life is ultimately what matters to that dog. Both the wolf and the retriever are in a "model" as dictated by their make up, so if you want to go with something being locked in a model, then both are. Just as I am locked in a model and if man evolves into something else, it is that model, but in either case, it is locked and always will be.

Again, I am not advocating, but your concern does not address it very well. I know what you are trying to say in that what we are right now has an inherent rightness, but again, looking objectively, that idea is unsupported.

This warrants no other response, but :lol: The only real thing the US has contributed was the idea of democratic society (which is a good thing) through the first and second world war.

As for other dimensions, per capita income (us is not at the top), health care (many other countries have much better success rates and for lower costs), and

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the obsessive debater in me wants to go through and answer these - and several are worth their own threads.

however, to refocus on taxes: you have never answered. Are tax revenues direct functions of tax rates? in a higher tax environment, will we bring in more tax revenues? have we seen higher revenues as a percent of our economy under previous, higher tax-rate structures?

The only reason the minority have to pay is because due to trickle down, incomes of regular people have not kept up as they should. I would prefer the 80s never happened and we would not even be having this discussion as people would be making their due.

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bollocks . the 80's saw a massive explosion of individual wealth. those who complain that the top incomes rose faster are missing the point - incomes rose and they rose across the board. we live better, richer, and wider lives now because of the economic recovery of the 80's, and the huge growth cycle it produced. I agree that we probably looked to slash lower quintile rates too much - but the notion that somehow people would be making "their fair due" of wages if only we were all poorer is misguided at best.

Cephus said:

Neither, the government needs to dramatically reduce spending, then it doesn't need extra revenue or increased taxes.

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That would actually make the need for extra revenue even higher. A dramatic decline in demand would boost unemployment causing automatic stabilizers to kick in resulting in even greater outflows at the same time tax revenue declines. Furthermore, the impact upon those with jobs would be to cut discretionary spending reducing taxes as well and leading to more job losses and even more automatic stabilizers.

obvious Child said:

That would actually make the need for extra revenue even higher. A dramatic decline in demand would boost unemployment

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interesting claim. is that what happened in the early 20's and after WWII, when the government cut spending?

cpwill said:

interesting claim. is that what happened in the early 20's and after WWII, when the government cut spending?

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Did you really say that? The difference between the 20s and late 1940s and today is there was a huge amount of wealth built up with massive deferred demand. There is no such pent up wealth and demand this time around.

Cpwill, that may have been the stupidest thing I've seen you say ever.

TurtleDude said:

IN your haste to try to score a point I don't see any evidence of income redistribution in those short lived 3% tax designed to pay for the war (RA 0f 1861) or the 2% income taxes designed to offset the lost of tariff revenues.

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Not about points, buddy, it was just showing everyone you didn't know what your were talking about...

why do the parasite advocates constantly talk about the super wealthy when all the dems schemes are most vexatious to those who are merely upper middle class or at the bottom of the top taxpaying group?

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Why do you avoid to addressing any of the points I made and default to your usual talking points?

you rant and rave about hedge fund managers yet how many hedge fund managers make up the top 2 percent that your socialist president wants to screw over?

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Saying the President is trying to 'screw over' someone is beyond stupid--an ignorant thought process that is dragging our country back to the brink.

And, again you seem incapable of understanding the issues -- hedge funds pay earn returns. Capital gains.

W. gave the managers a loophole tax break, alas, no more...

obvious Child said:

Did you really say that? The difference between the 20s and late 1940s and today is there was a huge amount of wealth built up with massive deferred demand. There is no such pent up wealth and demand this time around.

Cpwill, that may have been the stupidest thing I've seen you say ever.

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:lol: hilarious. you really can't draw a connection between the Government taking less money from the private sector, and the private sector having more money, can you?

Neither is exclusive from the other. If you raise taxes you're bound to increase revenues. There really aren't too many other ways to do it short of raising the interest rates on short-term investments, like mortgage and lending rates from the Treasury, but doing such would likely put our economy at greater risk. Raising interest rates would in all likelihood deter investments and we really don't want to do that in such a fragile economy.

Mayor Snorkum said:

Yes, of course, that's why JFK cut tax rates....clearly he wanted government revenues to go down.

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He did so by cutting corporate and income taxes and increasing payroll taxes using Keynesian economic reforms. It also helped that his Administration came into being at the height of the space race which helped the economy tremendously. This forging of a public-private partnership w/government brought about full employment (unemployment at or below 3% of GDP). As such, JFK could afford to put his tax policy in place and not have to worry about deferring additional revenue to social programs or increased government spending because the money was their via full employment by the nation's citizery.

Mayor Snorkum said:

Yeah. Right.

But not in the real world. Lowering the tax rates allows people to keep their money. When people have more money, they typically spend more. People (not governments) spending more money is what normal people call "economic growth". Economic growth expands the economy and results in....check this out...greater tax revenues.

(GASP!....)

Raising taxes, on the other hand. may or may not create a temporary spike in revenues.

Then revenues decline.

That's all there is to that.

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Your argument is for supply-side economics which don't work in a deep recession or depression nor when there is too much deregulation of industries because business as a whole has proven time and again that they can't police themselves. Supply-side economics only work IF a country has full-employment. When unemployment is high such as it is currently, you CANNOT generate revenue simply by "sliding the taxing responsibily to consumers". The reason for that is simple: Fewer workers equals less revenue generated. Even if you reduce the marginal tax rate on the middle-class that do still have jobs, you still don't have enough people earning a living wage to make up the difference of revenue lost. The only means to counter the lose is:

a) tax that section of wage earners that have "disposable income" and can afford the lose (the wealthy); or,

b) open new sources of employment, i.e., green jobs; or,

c) find new revenue streams, i.e., carbon tax (just an example based on what's been thrown out there to date; not saying I support such one way or another).

I think eventually, Congress including those stauch Conservatives, will come to realize they have no choice but to allow the Bush tax cuts on the rich to expire and free the middle-class for their economic burdens. The American people can't take much more of the economic burden. Most are stretched thin enough as it is as this report clearly illustrates.

Mayor Snorkum said:

When people have more money, they typically spend more. People (not governments) spending more money is what normal people call "economic growth". Economic growth expands the economy and results in....check this out...greater tax revenues.

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That may be true in normal times, but when unemployment is high, banks aren't lending, and no new jobs in sight, Government backed jobs is the only way to get things moving again, make people feel good about themselves, raise their expectations. No. not permanently, just until private Companies start hiring again.

ricksfolly

ricksfolly

obvious Child said:

Did you really say that? The difference between the 20s and late 1940s and today is there was a huge amount of wealth built up with massive deferred demand. There is no such pent up wealth and demand this time around.

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you know, it suddenly occurs to me. when we cut spending in the 40's after WWII, Keyensians screamed up and down that we were going to see massive losses to the economy; just like you are doing now.

Odd, isn't it, how the models are always wrong, yet they never get questioned? It's like a weird faith in the Omniscience of Government.

Objective Voice said:

Neither is exclusive from the other. If you raise taxes you're bound to increase revenues.

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since we have had much higher taxes in the past, and collected no more revenue, I'm going to have to ahead and say that no, we aren't.

you want to raise revenue? you gotta grow GDP.

Apparently, the Tea Party is willing to bend on the debt ceiling...

Tea Party Leader: We'll Take The Debt Ceiling Hike If You Put Gay Troops Back In The Closet

Ah, the real face of the Tea People, old time religion and homophobia...

given that the tea party has no leader, it doesn't surprise me they could find one saying something like this.

you may want to wander on over to the party platform forum, where Senate and House Republicans are both laying out what they are going to be actually demanding for the debt-ceiling.