Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Kevin_Kennedy wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------
The first, for me, would be to reign in the American empire around the world. Do we need troops in over 130 countries? No. They all come home, including Iraq and Afghanistan. No policing the world, no nation building, and no preemptive war. No foreign aid to nations such as Israel that are far too dependent on it. Then I'd start cutting unnecessary parts of the government itself. Dept. of Education would be one of them, off the top of my head. The IRS would be abolished as well, while I'd work very hard to have the 16th Amendment repealed.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Now, weren't some of those things recommended by Ralph Nader and Ron Paul. But the people weren't interested in that; they have consistently voted for economic devastation instead.
And there will always be an internal revenue service, whether named IRS, or whatever. There is a taxing system inherent in the Constitution, and collection of taxes is inherent within the taxing system.
If you're going to cut taxes you've got to cut government spending. It's a win win situation, if done correctly.
And yet we've never done it.
And yet we've never done it.
I don't care what Laffer has said. The facts of the matter are that presidents Kennedy, Reagan and Bush, and the Republican Contract with America all proved that lowering taxes stimulates the economy. That's the evidence...
We did it right after WWII, when nearly two-thirds of the federal budget was cut. That's what finally put us back on the road to economic normalcy after 17 years of depression and shortages.
editec wrote:
-----------------------------------------------------------
We could always go back to limiting what the government takes in to tariffs. Our government essantially survived on revenues from tariffs for over 100 years. There really were no personal incomes taxes (with a brief exception for very very wealthy people during the civil war) until the early XXth century.
-----------------------------------------------------------
But that wasn't what the people have voted for, now was it?
We did it right after WWII, when nearly two-thirds of the federal budget was cut. That's what finally put us back on the road to economic normalcy after 17 years of depression and shortages.
The debt did not increase because of lowered taxes. Govenrment revenues went up. Increased spending caused the deficits and resulting debt.Did lowering taxes or the resulting debt stimulate the economy? The evidence is that borrow and spend works but is a lousy way to build an economy...
This is a straw man. TEFRA was a broad set of taxes and closing of loop holes and amounted to only a fraction compared to the taxes that were reduced. In short much of the revenues that had previously come through income taxes shifted to the TEFRA taxes and increased because of the economic stimulation from the net tax cuts.Gord wrote:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The facts of the matter are that presidents Kennedy, Reagan and Bush, and the Republican Contract with America all proved that lowering taxes stimulates the economy. That's the evidence...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The fact is, under the Reagan Administration, this country had the greatest tax increase this nation had known up to that time under TEFRA.
We didn't cut taxes after WWII and the reduction in spending was due to the ending of the war and nothing more.
Against GDP taxes and spending were higher after then before the war.
This realization on the part of macroeconomists comes in the form of an article in the August 2004 Journal of Political Economy entitled "New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis," by UCLA economists Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian. This is a big deal, since the JPE is arguably the top academic economics journal in the world.
...
This last conclusionthat the abandonment of FDR's policies "coincided" with the recovery of the 1940s is very well documented by another author who is also ignored by Cole and Ohanian, Robert Higgs. In "Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War" (Independent Review, Spring 1997), Higgs showed that it was the relative neutering of New Deal policies, along with a reduction (in absolute dollars) of the federal budget from $98.4 billion in 1945 to $33 billion in 1948, that brought forth the economic recovery. Private-sector production increased by almost one-third in 1946 alone, as private capital investment increased for the first time in eighteen years.
Of course the top rate on taxation was 90% in those days, too, wasn't it?
In fact we never stopped spending money after WWII, we just kept spending it and paying as we went along.
The difference now is that our government spends too much money on guns and butter, but borrows to do so so that the people don't complain about it.
Sure. You're as ignorant in this topic as you were the last one. How's that?
The debt did not increase because of lowered taxes. Govenrment revenues went up. Increased spending caused the deficits and resulting debt.
We cut spending after WWII. I'm not sure about taxes.
And yes of course the reduction in spending was due to the end of WWII. The point still stands: when government spending is high--for welfare or warfare--it starves the private sector for resources, and it doesn't matter much whether the revenues come from taxes, or borrowing, or inflation.
No they weren't.
Yes, I think so. Of course as I've pointed out repeatedly, that 90% is somewhat misleading, and full of loopholes.
If you think that (for example) the heirs of Rockefeller or Henry Ford were actually paying 90% of their wealth ...
each year...well, I've got a bridge to sell you. (If they had been paying 90% each year, obviously they would be completely broke by now.)
No, total spending went down after WWII
It started going back up during Vietnam. Then the next big burst was during the Reagan years. The Clinton years were relatively restrained, and the Bush years weren't. Hmm, I'm beginning to notice a pattern here....
Yep. And we've convinced ourselves that borrowing will effect our children only, and will have no effect on today's economy. Meanwhile nobody can figure out why virtually everything not outsourced to china is becoming so unaffordable--education, health care, housing, energy.
Yes, I think so. Of course as I've pointed out repeatedly, that 90% is somewhat misleading, and full of loopholes.
If you think that (for example) the heirs of Rockefeller or Henry Ford were actually paying 90% of their wealth each year...well, I've got a bridge to sell you. (If they had been paying 90% each year, obviously they would be completely broke by now.)
No, total spending went down after WWII. It started going back up during Vietnam. Then the next big burst was during the Reagan years. The Clinton years were relatively restrained, and the Bush years weren't. Hmm, I'm beginning to notice a pattern here...
Look at
page 23
What ever claim you are trying to make there is no precedence for it historically. You are making an assumption and nothing more...
