Taxing those who make money

[Truthmatters]

They believe anything their controlers tell them to think.

 

[The Rabbi]

jmminnee cricket Rabbi...do you believe the crap out of your mouth? So you do not believe consumer spending has anything to do with our economic growth????

It is the result of economic expansion, not the cause of it.
We have had two experiments with "tax rebates", on eunder carter and one under Bush. Please find me an economist who says they were effective at doing anything other than getting votes.
I'd suggest going and getting some education on economics before you post again.

 

[uscitizen]

LMAO. That was priceless.

so we just have to wait for this "economic expansion" thing to happen. Problem solved.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Qhy would I want to do that? The CBO is notoriously untrustworthy, having scored the Bush dividend cuts as costing the gov't money when in fact it brought in far more than the old tax had.
But what does that have to do with the claim that Obama's tax cuts are worthless?

Bush's tax cuts resulted in lower revenues.

Facts aren't your friend, cocksucker.

Prove me wrong.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Qhy would I want to do that? The CBO is notoriously untrustworthy, having scored the Bush dividend cuts as costing the gov't money when in fact it brought in far more than the old tax had.
But what does that have to do with the claim that Obama's tax cuts are worthless?

Bush's tax cuts resulted in lower revenues.

As usual, you're wrong.

http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/js3039.htm

Bush cut taxes in 2001 you dunce.

lol, where do the smart conservatives post. I have to find that site. This level is boring me.

 

[NYcarbineer]

The current administration's tax policy has been a net cut in taxes. What the FUCK are you jabbering about?

No, what the fuck are YOU jabbering about? This administration has raised taxes, and proposes even more tax increases.
And whatever taxes they have cut are not serving to make anyone more productive, or to change the incentive to save and invest--unless the change is to discourage them.

Your say-so is useless. Why don't you go ahead and prove that this administration has raised more taxes than it has cut?

Did Rabbi post this yet? Did I miss it?

 

[The Rabbi]

No, what the fuck are YOU jabbering about? This administration has raised taxes, and proposes even more tax increases.
And whatever taxes they have cut are not serving to make anyone more productive, or to change the incentive to save and invest--unless the change is to discourage them.

Your say-so is useless. Why don't you go ahead and prove that this administration has raised more taxes than it has cut?

Did Rabbi post this yet? Did I miss it?

No, I havent responded to your strawman argument. Nor do I plan to. When you get a class in remedial reading so you can understand what is posted then we can talk.
As it is you have no grasp of the points being made. You are simply beclowning yourself here.

 

[The Rabbi]

LMAO. That was priceless.

so we just have to wait for this "economic expansion" thing to happen. Problem solved.

All you have to do is sit around and watch soap operas and eat Cheetos. Stick to what you know.

 

[Truthmatters]

John W. Snow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

a partisan who now works for a corp in China

 

[The Rabbi]

Snow is not a "partisan." He is a Republican and former Treasury Secretary. He also never admitted to cheating on his taxes, which makes him compare unfavorably to Obama's appointees.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

And if your incentives punish productive people then they will stop being productive.

You're right. My wife and I will both quit our jobs if they raise taxes, because we don't need money to live.



The rich have the luxury of being able to quit their jobs if the tax rates get too high for them. The poor and middle class, on the other hand, are forced to work that much harder when taxes go up for them, to make up the lost income.

For every CEO that retires a year early because tax rates went up, there is someone chomping at the bit behind him to start their career as a CEO 1 year earlier.

It isn't church-mouse poor grad students vs super wealthy.
There is a lot in between. Most millionaire live in middle class neighborhoods and drive American cars that are 5 years old (check The Millionaire Next Door). They aren't living hand to mouth. But they can structure their time and actvities to take advantage of tax laws. They will try to push compensation into the future. And sometimes that means working less. When they work less, everyone who is dependent on the economic activity they generate gets less too.
Unless you want to posit that people do not respond to incentives (making you the biggest fool on this site) you will have to admit that taxes are disincentive to produce at the top levels. And thsoe are the levels where wealth is generated for others.

What happened to the economy when Clinton raised taxes?

 

[SpidermanTuba]

30% in income tax is outrageous!

Compared to WHAT? Bulgaria? Americans enjoy some of the lowest tax rates in the industrialized world, you're full of crap.

 

[MIPS]

The poor and lower middle class spoend a far higher percentage of their income back into the economy thus growing it than high incomes ones do.

Yet another dumbshit who thinks the economy grows by consumer spending. Newsflash: It doesnt.

This was debunked right after WW2 by Hazlett in Economics in One Lesson. I'd recommend looking at the book before you post again.
He presents the case of two brothers. Their father dies and leaves each one a huge amount of money.
Brother #1 goes on a spending spree. He takes lavish vacations, buys expensive cars every two years, gives big tips everywhere he goes.
Brother #2 is frugal. He invests his money. He buys real estate. He lives not like a pauper but frugally enough.
So which one is responsible for stimulating the economy? Brother #1, right? Wrong.
After 20 years Brother #1 is bankrupt. All his tipping and new cars are gone.
Brother #2 continues with his investments, hiring people to manage them, hiring people to maintain his properties, etc.
So Brother #2 is the one stimulating the economy. Brother #1 is stimulating nothing in the long run.

Nice to see somebody that has read Hazlett, great book.

However I think you're wasting time your Rabbi, these progressive drones are economic illiterates that will never understand that real economic growth comes from savings and not consumption no matter how succinct the explanation.

 

[MIPS]

30% in income tax is outrageous!

Compared to WHAT? Bulgaria? Americans enjoy some of the lowest tax rates in the industrialized world, you're full of crap.

Depends on where you live, U.S./NY City (i.e. if you live in NYC) ranks #21, U.S./Illinois #35, #44 U.S/Texas (if you live in Texas) and #48 Overall out of 65 countries for tax burden (i.e. "Misery Index") based on rankings derived from Forbes Data for 2009...

Tax Burden by Country - Country Ranks 2009

 

[Munin]

The poor and lower middle class spoend a far higher percentage of their income back into the economy thus growing it than high incomes ones do.

Yet another dumbshit who thinks the economy grows by consumer spending. Newsflash: It doesnt.

This was debunked right after WW2 by Hazlett in Economics in One Lesson. I'd recommend looking at the book before you post again.
He presents the case of two brothers. Their father dies and leaves each one a huge amount of money.
Brother #1 goes on a spending spree. He takes lavish vacations, buys expensive cars every two years, gives big tips everywhere he goes.
Brother #2 is frugal. He invests his money. He buys real estate. He lives not like a pauper but frugally enough.
So which one is responsible for stimulating the economy? Brother #1, right? Wrong.
After 20 years Brother #1 is bankrupt. All his tipping and new cars are gone.
Brother #2 continues with his investments, hiring people to manage them, hiring people to maintain his properties, etc.
So Brother #2 is the one stimulating the economy. Brother #1 is stimulating nothing in the long run.

It appears to me that you re the one who doesn't understand economics, maybe you should read some more books

The economy does not equal 1 person, so if one person goes broke it does not mean that economy goes broke and the money dissapears: money only dissapears in other situations (which I won't explain in this post).

You don't realise: spending = consuming = investing

Brother #1 and #2 are both investing, I m not saying that they both make good investments for their own: but this is what they are doing.

Brother #1 will have spend/invested all his money in cars, vacation, ... , this means that the people who receive his money can invest it in their companies (expand, hire new people, ...). This will stimulate the economy, since the economy is not equal to the financial situation of Brother #1.

Imagine that there is a brother #3 who does nothing with his money, uses it to put in his socks or swim in it (yes he is a bit nuts). This #3 would probably have done nothing to stimulate the economy.

 

[Munin]

Newsflash: some news about one of the best presidents of the USA: RONALD REAGAN.

...

This hasn't stopped recent contemporary conservative biographers from claiming otherwise. "He said he would cut the budget, and he did," declares Peggy Noonan in When Character Was King. In fact, the budget grew significantly under Reagan. All he managed to do was moderately slow its rate of growth. What's more, the number of workers on the federal payroll rose by 61,000 under Reagan. (By comparison, under Clinton, the number fell by 373,000.)

Reagan also vastly expanded one of the largest federal domestic programs, Social Security. Before becoming president, he had often openly mused, much to the alarm of his politically sensitive staff, about restructuring Social Security to allow individuals to opt out of the system--an antecedent of today's privatization plans. At the start of his administration, with Social Security teetering on the brink of insolvency, Reagan attempted to push through immediate draconian cuts to the program. But the Senate unanimously rebuked his plan, and the GOP lost 26 House seats in the 1982 midterm elections, largely as a result of this overreach.


The following year, Reagan made one of the greatest ideological about-faces in the history of the presidency, agreeing to a $165 billion bailout of Social Security. In almost every way, the bailout flew in the face of conservative ideology. It dramatically increased payroll taxes on employees and employers, brought a whole new class of recipients--new federal workers--into the system, and, for the first time, taxed Social Security benefits, and did so in the most liberal way: only those of upper-income recipients. (As an added affront to conservatives, the tax wasn't indexed to inflation, meaning that more and more people have gradually had to pay it over time.)

By expanding rather than scaling back entitlements, Reagan--and Newt Gingrich after him--demonstrated that conservatives could not and would not launch a frontal assault on Social Security, effectively conceding that these cherished New Deal programs were central features of the American polity.

It's conservative lore that Reagan the icon cut taxes, while George H.W. Bush the renegade raised them. As Stockman recalls, "No one was authorized to talk about tax increases on Ronald Reagan's watch, no matter what kind of tax, no matter how justified it was." Yet raising taxes is exactly what Reagan did. He did not always instigate those hikes or agree to them willingly--but he signed off on them. One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year's reduction. (In a bizarre bit of self-deception, Reagan, who never came to terms with this episode of ideological apostasy, persuaded himself that the three-year, $100 billion tax hike--the largest since World War II--was actually "tax reform" that closed loopholes in his earlier cut and therefore didn't count as raising taxes.)

Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives--and probably cost Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection--Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84.

This record flummoxes the best efforts of today's Reagan hagiographers to explain away. Peter Wallison, for instance, after proclaiming that Reagan "stayed the course against changes in his economic plan," later dismisses the president's tax increases as "a modest rollback" that "seems to have been the result" of his accepting a Democratic promise to cut spending by twice that amount. (Whatever happened to "Trust, but verify"?)

Reagan continued these "modest rollbacks" in his second term. The historic Tax Reform Act of 1986, though it achieved the supply side goal of lowering individual income tax rates, was a startlingly progressive reform. The plan imposed the largest corporate tax increase in history--an act utterly unimaginable for any conservative to support today. Just two years after declaring, "there is no justification" for taxing corporate income, Reagan raised corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years and closed corporate tax loopholes worth about $300 billion over that same period. In addition to broadening the tax base, the plan increased standard deductions and personal exemptions to the point that no family with an income below the poverty line would have to pay federal income tax. Even at the time, conservatives within Reagan's administration were aghast. According to Wall Street Journal reporters Jeffrey Birnbaum and Alan Murray, whose book Showdown at Gucci Gulch chronicles the 1986 measure, "the conservative president's support for an effort once considered the bastion of liberals carried tremendous symbolic significance." When Reagan's conservative acting chief economic adviser, William Niskanen, was apprised of the plan he replied, "Walter Mondale would have been proud."

These evident lapses in conservative ideology are a fact that some liberals have a much less difficult time coming to terms with than conservatives. "There were two Reagans," says Robert J. McIntyre, director of the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice, who was instrumental in the 1986 act, "the good one and the bad one. Liberals and conservatives wouldn't agree on which is which, but they would have to agree that Reagan completely flipped after 1981. If you like one, you can't like the other."

But no one shared, or even understood until late in the game, Reagan's desire for total disarmament. "My dream," he later wrote in his memoirs, "became a world free of nuclear weapons." This vision stemmed from the president's belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war--and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons.

Reagan's human rights policy may have been inconsistent and hypocritical. But the very fact that he had one transformed the politics of human rights. With dissidents from Andrei Sakarov to Vaclav Havel testifying to the power of his words in sustaining their movements, it became impossible for conservatives to deny the usefulness of such commitments as a component of American foreign policy. Today, there are almost as many human rights proponents on the right side of the aisle in Congress as on the left.

Many of Reagan's actions that wound up furthering liberal ends were to some extent the result of the normal compromises of political office. The fact that his conservative biographers don't see fit to acknowledge these deviations is a clue that their aim is something besides an accurate depiction of the life and achievements of the 40th president. When conservatives mythologize the Reagan presidency as the golden era of conservatism, it's not Reagan that they're mythologizing, but conservatism.

The great success of Reagan's 1980 campaign was that it united the disparate strands of the conservative movement: supply-siders, libertarians, religious conservatives, foreign policy hawks, and big business. The fact that Reagan's presidency didn't accomplish anything approaching its seismic promise--the size of government grew, abortion remained legal, and entitlements still abounded--is one that his partisan biographers elide by focusing on what Reagan believed and said rather than on what he actually did. The imaginary Reagan who inhabits these books embodies the ideas on which all these groups can agree. His shining example helps maintain the coalition while putting pressure on current GOP politicians to hew to the hard-right ideal.

The real Reagan, on the other hand, would bring discord to the current conservative agenda. If you believe, as conservatives now do, that raising taxes is always wrong, then it's hard to admit that Reagan himself did so repeatedly. If you argue that the relative tax burden on low-income workers is too light, as the Bush administration does, then it does not pay to dwell on the fact that Reagan himself helped lighten that burden. If you insist, as many hardliners now do, that America is dangerously soft on communist China, then it is best to ignore Reagan's own softening toward the Soviet Union. As with other conservative media efforts--Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel, The Washington Times--the purpose of the Reagan legacy project is not to deliver accuracy, but enhance political leverage.

But, as Reagan himself liked to cite from John Adams, facts are stubborn things. And the fact is that Reagan, whether out of wisdom or because he was forced, made significant compromises with the left. Had he not saved Social Security, relented on his tax cut, and negotiated with the Soviets, he'd have been a less popular, and lesser, president. An honest portrait of Reagan's presidency would not diminish his memory, but enlarge it.

"Reagan's Liberal Legacy" by Joshua Green

Maybe if you look at the policy, you could see 2 people doing the same things (only reagan seemed to be better at implementing them)

 

[The Rabbi]

The poor and lower middle class spoend a far higher percentage of their income back into the economy thus growing it than high incomes ones do.

Yet another dumbshit who thinks the economy grows by consumer spending. Newsflash: It doesnt.

This was debunked right after WW2 by Hazlett in Economics in One Lesson. I'd recommend looking at the book before you post again.
He presents the case of two brothers. Their father dies and leaves each one a huge amount of money.
Brother #1 goes on a spending spree. He takes lavish vacations, buys expensive cars every two years, gives big tips everywhere he goes.
Brother #2 is frugal. He invests his money. He buys real estate. He lives not like a pauper but frugally enough.
So which one is responsible for stimulating the economy? Brother #1, right? Wrong.
After 20 years Brother #1 is bankrupt. All his tipping and new cars are gone.
Brother #2 continues with his investments, hiring people to manage them, hiring people to maintain his properties, etc.
So Brother #2 is the one stimulating the economy. Brother #1 is stimulating nothing in the long run.

It appears to me that you re the one who doesn't understand economics, maybe you should read some more books

The economy does not equal 1 person, so if one person goes broke it does not mean that economy goes broke and the money dissapears: money only dissapears in other situations (which I won't explain in this post).

You don't realise: spending = consuming = investing

Brother #1 and #2 are both investing, I m not saying that they both make good investments for their own: but this is what they are doing.

Brother #1 will have spend/invested all his money in cars, vacation, ... , this means that the people who receive his money can invest it in their companies (expand, hire new people, ...). This will stimulate the economy, since the economy is not equal to the financial situation of Brother #1.

Imagine that there is a brother #3 who does nothing with his money, uses it to put in his socks or swim in it (yes he is a bit nuts). This #3 would probably have done nothing to stimulate the economy.

You are an ignoramus of the first order. Consuming and investing are not the same thing. They are in fact diametrically opposite things!
You still seem to believe that spending money on consumer goods is what stimulates the economy. How many times does it have to be demonstrated that this is patently false? A washing machine eventually wears out. Where is the economic gain when a consumer purchases one? It generates no money on its own.
And your Brother #3 is totally inapt. Show me one person who keeps all his money in a mattress. Even if there is one person, statistically it is insignificant.
People have this idea that "the rich" are unproductive. They are the most productive members of society.

 

[Munin]

You are an ignoramus of the first order. Consuming and investing are not the same thing. They are in fact diametrically opposite things!
You still seem to believe that spending money on consumer goods is what stimulates the economy. How many times does it have to be demonstrated that this is patently false? A washing machine eventually wears out. Where is the economic gain when a consumer purchases one? It generates no money on its own.
And your Brother #3 is totally inapt. Show me one person who keeps all his money in a mattress. Even if there is one person, statistically it is insignificant.
People have this idea that "the rich" are unproductive. They are the most productive members of society.

Still persistent I see , let me continue to prove you wrong then:

Buying a washing machine will provide profit for the company you buy it from, many people buying washing machines will generate a lot of profits for companies. These profits can be used to expand the companies that sell & produce them (more jobs). And when a washing machine wears out, you need to buy a new one or get it fixed (this will increase the prosperity of companies that provide services for washing machines or sell/produce them).

A washing machine on itself is also a very economically good product: it increases effeciency (people who buy washing machines have more time to do other things: f.e. working), people with washing machines will be able to work longer (because they spend less time washing clothes) => working longer at a factory will create more products for the company that produce & sell them and the worker will also earn more money to spend (possibly on another washing machine ). Conclusion this investment does not generate money directly, but it does provide you with the means to create make that extra money: time. And as an economist you can say "time = money" (at least if you re a guy who likes to work for his money).


Not all rich are economically unproductive (just like not all workers are unproductive), many rich people have invested their money in companies (or also run them) that provide services/consumergoods and jobs. So no, I don't have a hate for the rich and do not want the rich to be punished. But this doesn't mean that when you re forced to make a choice between the rich, the middle class and the poor that it will be in the best intrest for the economy to choose for the rich.

About #3: what if he owns 10 billion US $, will he still be statistically insignificant?

 

[DiamondDave]

You're right. My wife and I will both quit our jobs if they raise taxes, because we don't need money to live.



The rich have the luxury of being able to quit their jobs if the tax rates get too high for them. The poor and middle class, on the other hand, are forced to work that much harder when taxes go up for them, to make up the lost income.

For every CEO that retires a year early because tax rates went up, there is someone chomping at the bit behind him to start their career as a CEO 1 year earlier.

It isn't church-mouse poor grad students vs super wealthy.
There is a lot in between. Most millionaire live in middle class neighborhoods and drive American cars that are 5 years old (check The Millionaire Next Door). They aren't living hand to mouth. But they can structure their time and actvities to take advantage of tax laws. They will try to push compensation into the future. And sometimes that means working less. When they work less, everyone who is dependent on the economic activity they generate gets less too.
Unless you want to posit that people do not respond to incentives (making you the biggest fool on this site) you will have to admit that taxes are disincentive to produce at the top levels. And thsoe are the levels where wealth is generated for others.

What happened to the economy when Clinton raised taxes?

You TRULY think that it was the raising of the taxes that boosted the economy??

What a truly revisionist history writer you are...

 

[NYcarbineer]

Your say-so is useless. Why don't you go ahead and prove that this administration has raised more taxes than it has cut?

Did Rabbi post this yet? Did I miss it?

No, I havent responded to your strawman argument. Nor do I plan to. When you get a class in remedial reading so you can understand what is posted then we can talk.
As it is you have no grasp of the points being made. You are simply beclowning yourself here.

So my point stands. President Obama has CUT taxes, he has not raised taxes.