Quantum Windbag
Gold Member
- May 9, 2010
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How about some honesty about taxes? Taxes are at their lowest level in over 60 years; that is a fact. Statutory tax rates are not equal to the effective tax rates, so quit acting like they are and that we are overtaxed. It's pure BS.
Are Taxes in the U.S. High or Low?
Bruce Bartlett: Are Taxes in the U.S. High or Low? - NYTimes.comBruce Bartlett has served as an economic adviser in the White House, the Treasury Department and Congress.
Historically, the term tax rate has meant the average or effective tax rate that is, taxes as a share of income. The broadest measure of the tax rate is total federal revenues divided by the gross domestic product.
By this measure, federal taxes are at their lowest level in more than 60 years. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal taxes would consume just 14.8 percent of G.D.P. this year. The last year in which revenues were lower was 1950, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
The postwar annual average is about 18.5 percent of G.D.P. Revenues averaged 18.2 percent of G.D.P. during Ronald Reagans administration; the lowest percentage during that administration was 17.3 percent of G.D.P. in 1984.
In short, by the broadest measure of the tax rate, the current level is unusually low and has been for some time. Revenues were 14.9 percent of G.D.P. in both 2009 and 2010.
Yet if one listens to Republicans, one would think that taxes have never been higher, that an excessive tax burden is the most important constraint holding back economic growth and that a big tax cut is exactly what the economy needs to get growing again.
That is not a fact.
In 1950 the tax revenue was about 371 billion dollars in 2005 dollars. Today it takes the government about 2 months to collect that much money, and just over a month to spend it.
Those are facts, Bartlett's interpretation of those facts is delusional and serves the position that government has a revenue problem, not a spending one. It also serves the idea that government is somehow more worthy of our money than we are.