US Income Inequality: Top !% Take Home 24% of US Income

[boedicca]

Translation: Unwarranted tax breaks are those which go to anyone who doesn't support the Progressive Agenda.

 

[MikeK]

America is a 3rd world country?

On behalf of all proud Americans, either rich, poor somewhere in the middle;


FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!!

That kind of ad hominem nonsense is analogous to a hat with tea bags hanging over a dumb smile.

If you have a coherent argument to the topic commentary let's see what it is. Otherwise you've very loudly said absolutely nothing.

 

[The Rabbi]

America is a 3rd world country?

On behalf of all proud Americans, either rich, poor somewhere in the middle;


FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!!

That kind of ad hominem nonsense is analogous to a hat with tea bags hanging over a dumb smile.

If you have a coherent argument to the topic commentary let's see what it is. Otherwise you've very loudly said absolutely nothing.

And consider that he still managed to be more coherent than you.

 

[Two Thumbs]

America is a 3rd world country?

On behalf of all proud Americans, either rich, poor somewhere in the middle;


FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!!

That kind of ad hominem nonsense is analogous to a hat with tea bags hanging over a dumb smile.

If you have a coherent argument to the topic commentary let's see what it is. Otherwise you've very loudly said absolutely nothing.

So let me see if I can understand your fucking insanity. I don't speak moron so let me know if I'm off.

Some fucking asshole calls America a 3rd world country and your whiney crybaby fucktard ass gets bent out of shape?

Keep in mind, I was speaking for PROUD Americans. Not fucknuts like yourself and Jillian.

 

[kiwiman127]

Actually high income earners will pay more under the plan. And there is no slack since everyone pays the same. But don't let facts get in the way of your delusions. Again.

Do tell....Rabbi

How are people who used to pay 36% on the majority of their income and now paying only 15% end up paying more?

Who is going to make up for the loss in revenue?

Let me guess

.



Not lost revenue. More revenue. Simple. More money in the hands of the private sector means more productivity,more consumerism, more jobs. That equals more revenue for the government. And sadly, more money for them to spend on useless shit.
Remember this. I know it is difficult for you. It's OUR money.

So you're claiming tax cuts pay for themselves, correct? According to the Treasury Department and the CBO, tax cuts don't pay for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit since they were enacted.
Go to this link; Treasury Dynamic Scoring Analysis Refutes Claims by Supporters of the Tax Cuts — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
It refers to a report by the Treasury Department issued in 2006
Also, "It's OUR money." And the National Debt is OUR debt which was brought to us by Reagan, George HW, Clinton, GWB and now Obama.

 

[Foxfyre]

Do tell....Rabbi

How are people who used to pay 36% on the majority of their income and now paying only 15% end up paying more?

Who is going to make up for the loss in revenue?

Let me guess

.



Not lost revenue. More revenue. Simple. More money in the hands of the private sector means more productivity,more consumerism, more jobs. That equals more revenue for the government. And sadly, more money for them to spend on useless shit.
Remember this. I know it is difficult for you. It's OUR money.

So you're claiming tax cuts pay for themselves, correct? According to the Treasury Department and the CBO, tax cuts don't pay for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit since they were enacted.
Go to this link; Treasury Dynamic Scoring Analysis Refutes Claims by Supporters of the Tax Cuts — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
It refers to a report by the Treasury Department issued in 2006
Also, "It's OUR money." And the National Debt is OUR debt which was brought to us by Reagan, George HW, Clinton, GWB and now Obama.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities bills itself as a non partisan think tank, but in truth never met a leftist position it didn't like. So we are compelled to take the assessemnt of one of theirs with at least a few grains of salt.

Consider this from the Heritage Foundation

The tax cuts of the 1920s
Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent.

According to then-Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon:

The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.

The Kennedy tax cuts
President Hoover dramatically increased tax rates in the 1930s and President Roosevelt compounded the damage by pushing marginal tax rates to more than 90 percent. Recognizing that high tax rates were hindering the economy, President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).

According to President John F. Kennedy:

Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now
The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates | The Heritage Foundation

And this:

There was no year of the Bush administration in which one year's budget was less than the year before, yet the deficits were steadily coming down and, if the housing bubble had not burst in mid 2008, that trend would have balanced the budget within a year or two.

The Bush tax cuts INCREASED revenues dramatically as any even cursory glance over of the treasury revenues will show.

What makes deficits and increases the national debt is spending more than we take in, and not the amount of taxes that we collect.

 

[rightwinger]

.



Not lost revenue. More revenue. Simple. More money in the hands of the private sector means more productivity,more consumerism, more jobs. That equals more revenue for the government. And sadly, more money for them to spend on useless shit.
Remember this. I know it is difficult for you. It's OUR money.

So you're claiming tax cuts pay for themselves, correct? According to the Treasury Department and the CBO, tax cuts don't pay for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit since they were enacted.
Go to this link; Treasury Dynamic Scoring Analysis Refutes Claims by Supporters of the Tax Cuts — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
It refers to a report by the Treasury Department issued in 2006
Also, "It's OUR money." And the National Debt is OUR debt which was brought to us by Reagan, George HW, Clinton, GWB and now Obama.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities bills itself as a non partisan think tank, but in truth never met a leftist position it didn't like. So we are compelled to take the assessemnt of one of theirs with at least a few grains of salt.

Consider this from the Heritage Foundation

The tax cuts of the 1920s
Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent.

According to then-Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon:

The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.

The Kennedy tax cuts
President Hoover dramatically increased tax rates in the 1930s and President Roosevelt compounded the damage by pushing marginal tax rates to more than 90 percent. Recognizing that high tax rates were hindering the economy, President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).

According to President John F. Kennedy:

Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now
The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates | The Heritage Foundation

And this:

There was no year of the Bush administration in which one year's budget was less than the year before, yet the deficits were steadily coming down and, if the housing bubble had not burst in mid 2008, that trend would have balanced the budget within a year or two.

The Bush tax cuts INCREASED revenues dramatically as any even cursory glance over of the treasury revenues will show.

What makes deficits and increases the national debt is spending more than we take in, and not the amount of taxes that we collect.

Total Trickle Down nonsense.... The Bush taxcuts, along with two unfunded wars led to $5 trillion in debt. Bush benefitted for a short time from a rising economy before his voodoo economics caught up to him
We all paid a price

 

[The Rabbi]

Do tell....Rabbi

How are people who used to pay 36% on the majority of their income and now paying only 15% end up paying more?

Who is going to make up for the loss in revenue?

Let me guess

.



Not lost revenue. More revenue. Simple. More money in the hands of the private sector means more productivity,more consumerism, more jobs. That equals more revenue for the government. And sadly, more money for them to spend on useless shit.
Remember this. I know it is difficult for you. It's OUR money.

So you're claiming tax cuts pay for themselves, correct? According to the Treasury Department and the CBO, tax cuts don't pay for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit since they were enacted.
Go to this link; Treasury Dynamic Scoring Analysis Refutes Claims by Supporters of the Tax Cuts — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
It refers to a report by the Treasury Department issued in 2006

Can you actually read or do you just search for terms like "tax cut failure" and post whatever dreck you find?
Not every tax cut produces more revenue. Only those that affect behavior at the margin, like cap gains, do so. Obama's giveaways to car buyers and home buyers did nothing.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That qualifies the US as a third world nation.

U.S. Income Inequality: Top 1 Percent Take Home 24 Percent Of U.S. Income

The New York Times:

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

What do you propose to remedy this? Should we put all the wealth in the hands of the government the way Venezuela is doing, making everyone poor, or should we simply start handing out checks to equalize everyone's income?

We can start by revoking unwarranted tax breaks that did nothing to help the country except add $2trillion to our debt

Most of those "unwarranted" tax breaks went to people earning less than $200,000 a year.

 

[Foxfyre]

So you're claiming tax cuts pay for themselves, correct? According to the Treasury Department and the CBO, tax cuts don't pay for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit since they were enacted.
Go to this link; Treasury Dynamic Scoring Analysis Refutes Claims by Supporters of the Tax Cuts — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
It refers to a report by the Treasury Department issued in 2006
Also, "It's OUR money." And the National Debt is OUR debt which was brought to us by Reagan, George HW, Clinton, GWB and now Obama.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities bills itself as a non partisan think tank, but in truth never met a leftist position it didn't like. So we are compelled to take the assessemnt of one of theirs with at least a few grains of salt.

Consider this from the Heritage Foundation

The tax cuts of the 1920s
Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent.

According to then-Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon:

The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.

The Kennedy tax cuts
President Hoover dramatically increased tax rates in the 1930s and President Roosevelt compounded the damage by pushing marginal tax rates to more than 90 percent. Recognizing that high tax rates were hindering the economy, President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).

According to President John F. Kennedy:

Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now
The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates | The Heritage Foundation

And this:

There was no year of the Bush administration in which one year's budget was less than the year before, yet the deficits were steadily coming down and, if the housing bubble had not burst in mid 2008, that trend would have balanced the budget within a year or two.

The Bush tax cuts INCREASED revenues dramatically as any even cursory glance over of the treasury revenues will show.

What makes deficits and increases the national debt is spending more than we take in, and not the amount of taxes that we collect.

Total Trickle Down nonsense.... The Bush taxcuts, along with two unfunded wars led to $5 trillion in debt. Bush benefitted for a short time from a rising economy before his voodoo economics caught up to him
We all paid a price

The discussion in the Heritage Foundation piece and the evidence shown in the graph are not fabricated and have not been disputed by ANYBODY since the numbers are right there in the record to check. It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'trickle down' or any other silly theory. The fact is Bush submitted a budget much smaller than what Congress passed every single year of his presidency. And no budget was smaller than the one before and still the deficits were coming down dramatically despite increases in ALL spending and financing two wars that were still going. Even the 2008 budget would have been smaller than or no larger than 2007 despite a developing recession except for TARP.

So don't tell me that tax revenues were the problem. They weren't.

No tax cuts will increase productivity and treasury revenues indefinitely and they do have to be done with some care and intelligence which the Bush tax cuts were. After two or three years the increased revenues will level off and stop rising...BUT....historically the level of productivity will then be at a higher permanent level than it was before.

Even Democrats the first 60 years or so of the 20th Century understood this principle. Read Kennedy's comments again. He was telling it like it is.

There were no diminished revenues due to the Bush tax cuts. There was too much spending in excess of the revenues which is why we voted out the GOP in 2006.

Who spends the people's money more efficiently and effectively? The people? Or the government?

 

[thereisnospoon]

That qualifies the US as a third world nation.

U.S. Income Inequality: Top 1 Percent Take Home 24 Percent Of U.S. Income

The New York Times:

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

What do you propose to remedy this? Should we put all the wealth in the hands of the government the way Venezuela is doing, making everyone poor, or should we simply start handing out checks to equalize everyone's income?

We can start by revoking unwarranted tax breaks that did nothing to help the country except add $2trillion to our debt

Wrong..The federal government SPENT $2 trillion more than it should have.
Question for you to answer. And this is the poly reply I will consider valid...
Why is it no one in government or the main stream media ever concerns itself with how a TAX INCREASE would be paid for?
High taxes do nothing but feed an overstuffed out of control spending bunch of politicians and bureaucrats.
Oh wait... I am wrong.. High taxes also kill economic growth.
Slapping high earners with confiscatory taxes does not put one thin dime in anyone's pocket. High taxes is make the producers miserable and freeloaders ecstatic
You support confiscatory taxes. That makes you a freeloader.... or a glutton for punishment.

 

[kiwiman127]

.



Not lost revenue. More revenue. Simple. More money in the hands of the private sector means more productivity,more consumerism, more jobs. That equals more revenue for the government. And sadly, more money for them to spend on useless shit.
Remember this. I know it is difficult for you. It's OUR money.

So you're claiming tax cuts pay for themselves, correct? According to the Treasury Department and the CBO, tax cuts don't pay for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit since they were enacted.
Go to this link; Treasury Dynamic Scoring Analysis Refutes Claims by Supporters of the Tax Cuts — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
It refers to a report by the Treasury Department issued in 2006
Also, "It's OUR money." And the National Debt is OUR debt which was brought to us by Reagan, George HW, Clinton, GWB and now Obama.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities bills itself as a non partisan think tank, but in truth never met a leftist position it didn't like. So we are compelled to take the assessemnt of one of theirs with at least a few grains of salt.

Consider this from the Heritage Foundation

The tax cuts of the 1920s
Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent.

According to then-Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon:

The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.

The Kennedy tax cuts
President Hoover dramatically increased tax rates in the 1930s and President Roosevelt compounded the damage by pushing marginal tax rates to more than 90 percent. Recognizing that high tax rates were hindering the economy, President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).

According to President John F. Kennedy:

Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now
The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates | The Heritage Foundation

And this:

There was no year of the Bush administration in which one year's budget was less than the year before, yet the deficits were steadily coming down and, if the housing bubble had not burst in mid 2008, that trend would have balanced the budget within a year or two.

The Bush tax cuts INCREASED revenues dramatically as any even cursory glance over of the treasury revenues will show.

What makes deficits and increases the national debt is spending more than we take in, and not the amount of taxes that we collect.

Oh yeah the Heritage Foundation, who claimed wages weren't flat because wages hadn't gone down (?) in one of their stunning reports. But as a non-partisan, I have no problem with some of their work.
Secondly, if you took the time to go to the link, you'd see that Center on Budget and Policy used GWB's own Treasury Department's numbers and opinions.
Finally, yes I know that the Center on Budget and Policy is left leaning, but when the GOP controlled Congress they sure liked to have them testify on economic matters.
Finally, yes I know the Bushies had good revenues but it didn't stop the tax cuts from causing deficits.

 

[thereisnospoon]

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities bills itself as a non partisan think tank, but in truth never met a leftist position it didn't like. So we are compelled to take the assessemnt of one of theirs with at least a few grains of salt.

Consider this from the Heritage Foundation



And this:

There was no year of the Bush administration in which one year's budget was less than the year before, yet the deficits were steadily coming down and, if the housing bubble had not burst in mid 2008, that trend would have balanced the budget within a year or two.

The Bush tax cuts INCREASED revenues dramatically as any even cursory glance over of the treasury revenues will show.

What makes deficits and increases the national debt is spending more than we take in, and not the amount of taxes that we collect.

Total Trickle Down nonsense.... The Bush taxcuts, along with two unfunded wars led to $5 trillion in debt. Bush benefitted for a short time from a rising economy before his voodoo economics caught up to him
We all paid a price

The discussion in the Heritage Foundation piece and the evidence shown in the graph are not fabricated and have not been disputed by ANYBODY since the numbers are right there in the record to check. It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'trickle down' or any other silly theory. The fact is Bush submitted a budget much smaller than what Congress passed every single year of his presidency. And no budget was smaller than the one before and still the deficits were coming down dramatically despite increases in ALL spending and financing two wars that were still going. Even the 2008 budget would have been smaller than or no larger than 2007 despite a developing recession except for TARP.

So don't tell me that tax revenues were the problem. They weren't.

No tax cuts will increase productivity and treasury revenues indefinitely and they do have to be done with some care and intelligence which the Bush tax cuts were. After two or three years the increased revenues will level off and stop rising...BUT....historically the level of productivity will then be at a higher permanent level than it was before.

Even Democrats the first 60 years or so of the 20th Century understood this principle. Read Kennedy's comments again. He was telling it like it is.

There were no diminished revenues due to the Bush tax cuts. There was too much spending in excess of the revenues which is why we voted out the GOP in 2006.

Who spends the people's money more efficiently and effectively? The people? Or the government?

It is a waste of time trying to convince a liberal that even democrats of the past understood that by lowering taxes and requisite spending reductions, government will realize an increase in revenue.
To libes the very mention of fiscal responsibility makes their blood boil.

 

[kiwiman127]

To continue on with the above post:
Back to ArticleClick to PrintThursday, Dec. 06, 2007
Tax Cuts Don't Boost Revenues
By Justin Fox

If there's one thing that Republican politicians agree on, it's that slashing taxes brings the government more money. "You cut taxes, and the tax revenues increase," President Bush said in a speech last year. Keeping taxes low, Vice President Dick Cheney explained in a recent interview, "does produce more revenue for the Federal Government." Presidential candidate John McCain declared in March that "tax cuts ... as we all know, increase revenues." His rival Rudy Giuliani couldn't agree more. "I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues," he intones in a new TV ad.

If there's one thing that economists agree on, it's that these claims are false. We're not talking just ivory-tower lefties. Virtually every economics Ph.D. who has worked in a prominent role in the Bush Administration acknowledges that the tax cuts enacted during the past six years have not paid for themselves--and were never intended to. Harvard professor Greg Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005, even devotes a section of his best-selling economics textbook to debunking the claim that tax cuts increase revenues.The yawning chasm between Republican rhetoric on taxes and even informed conservative opinion is maddening to those of wonkish bent. Pointing it out has become an opinion-column staple. But none of these screeds seem to have altered the political debate. So rather than write yet another, I decided to find out what Arthur Laffer thought.

Laffer is a bona fide economist with a doctorate from Stanford. He's also largely responsible for the Republican belief that tax cuts pay for themselves. Now 67, Laffer runs economic-consulting and money-management firms in Nashville. About the best I could get out of him on the question of whether the Bush tax cuts have paid for themselves was "I don't know." But that's only part of the story.

It's a saga that began in a bar near the White House on a December afternoon in 1974. Huddled at a meeting arranged by Wall Street Journal editorial writer Jude Wanniski were Cheney, then the deputy chief of staff to Republican President Gerald Ford, and Laffer, who was teaching at the University of Chicago's business school after a stint in the Nixon White House. In trying to explain to Cheney why a tax hike mooted by the President might not be such a great idea, Laffer drew a chart on a napkin that showed government revenues increasing as the tax rate moved up from 0% but then turning around and heading back toward zero as it neared 100%.

The idea that high tax rates brought diminishing returns was not controversial or even new--Laffer traces it to 14th century Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun. But few economists in the 1970s even considered that real-world tax rates could be on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. Laffer thought they might be, and Wanniski argued on the Journal's editorial page and elsewhere that they almost certainly were. The claim became a key plank of Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 campaign for President.

And how did things work out? Laffer is convinced that the reduction of the top tax rate from 70% to 28% during the Reagan years paid for itself--in part by encouraging the rich to stop finagling--and the evidence mostly backs him up. "You find these enormous responses in the upper brackets," Laffer says. "These guys fire their lawyers and accountants and actually pay their taxes. Yay! Isn't that what we want them to do?"

But Reagan's tax cuts for the nonrich were big money losers, and it took the fiscal discipline of Bill Clinton to mop up the resulting red ink. Laffer gushes with praise for Clinton, but he's also a fan of Clinton's successor. "What Clinton did was, he gave Bush the fiscal flexibility to do what was right," Laffer says. In the face of the recession and terrorist attacks of 2001, Bush "needed to stimulate the economy and spend for defense, and Clinton gave him the ability to do that."

In other words, the Bush tax cuts were meant to create big deficits. But Laffer's O.K. with that. "The Laffer Curve should not be the reason you raise or lower taxes," he says. Perhaps not, but it does make for great campaign promises.
Tax Cuts Don't Boost Revenues -- Printout -- TIME

 

[rightwinger]

What do you propose to remedy this? Should we put all the wealth in the hands of the government the way Venezuela is doing, making everyone poor, or should we simply start handing out checks to equalize everyone's income?

We can start by revoking unwarranted tax breaks that did nothing to help the country except add $2trillion to our debt

Wrong..The federal government SPENT $2 trillion more than it should have.
Question for you to answer. And this is the poly reply I will consider valid...
Why is it no one in government or the main stream media ever concerns itself with how a TAX INCREASE would be paid for?
High taxes do nothing but feed an overstuffed out of control spending bunch of politicians and bureaucrats.
Oh wait... I am wrong.. High taxes also kill economic growth.
Slapping high earners with confiscatory taxes does not put one thin dime in anyone's pocket. High taxes is make the producers miserable and freeloaders ecstatic
You support confiscatory taxes. That makes you a freeloader.... or a glutton for punishment.

How about we don't cut taxes until we have identified comparable spending cuts first?

This GOP....cut taxes and hope for a miracle nonsense hasn't worked in 30 years

 

[kiwiman127]

.



Not lost revenue. More revenue. Simple. More money in the hands of the private sector means more productivity,more consumerism, more jobs. That equals more revenue for the government. And sadly, more money for them to spend on useless shit.
Remember this. I know it is difficult for you. It's OUR money.

So you're claiming tax cuts pay for themselves, correct? According to the Treasury Department and the CBO, tax cuts don't pay for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit since they were enacted.
Go to this link; Treasury Dynamic Scoring Analysis Refutes Claims by Supporters of the Tax Cuts — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
It refers to a report by the Treasury Department issued in 2006

Can you actually read or do you just search for terms like "tax cut failure" and post whatever dreck you find?
Not every tax cut produces more revenue. Only those that affect behavior at the margin, like cap gains, do so. Obama's giveaways to car buyers and home buyers did nothing.

I hate to burst your bubble but I agree with "Obama's giveaways to car buyers and home buyers did nothing". I'm not exactly a liberal, but I'm also not a conservative who uses unfounded talking points.
My posts declaring the tax cuts don't pay for themselves use a GOP Administration numbers and data. Bush Administration economists agree, tax cuts don't generate revenue. All I get back are opinions.

 

[thereisnospoon]

We can start by revoking unwarranted tax breaks that did nothing to help the country except add $2trillion to our debt

Wrong..The federal government SPENT $2 trillion more than it should have.
Question for you to answer. And this is the poly reply I will consider valid...
Why is it no one in government or the main stream media ever concerns itself with how a TAX INCREASE would be paid for?
High taxes do nothing but feed an overstuffed out of control spending bunch of politicians and bureaucrats.
Oh wait... I am wrong.. High taxes also kill economic growth.
Slapping high earners with confiscatory taxes does not put one thin dime in anyone's pocket. High taxes is make the producers miserable and freeloaders ecstatic
You support confiscatory taxes. That makes you a freeloader.... or a glutton for punishment.

How about we don't cut taxes until we have identified comparable spending cuts first?

This GOP....cut taxes and hope for a miracle nonsense hasn't worked in 30 years

Tax cuts are the only way to FORCE fiscal responsibility.

 

[The Rabbi]

We can start by revoking unwarranted tax breaks that did nothing to help the country except add $2trillion to our debt

Wrong..The federal government SPENT $2 trillion more than it should have.
Question for you to answer. And this is the poly reply I will consider valid...
Why is it no one in government or the main stream media ever concerns itself with how a TAX INCREASE would be paid for?
High taxes do nothing but feed an overstuffed out of control spending bunch of politicians and bureaucrats.
Oh wait... I am wrong.. High taxes also kill economic growth.
Slapping high earners with confiscatory taxes does not put one thin dime in anyone's pocket. High taxes is make the producers miserable and freeloaders ecstatic
You support confiscatory taxes. That makes you a freeloader.... or a glutton for punishment.

How about we don't cut taxes until we have identified comparable spending cuts first?

This GOP....cut taxes and hope for a miracle nonsense hasn't worked in 30 years

I'm still waiting to hear which tax breaks are "unwarranted." Or was that just rhetorical?

 

[Foxfyre]

So you're claiming tax cuts pay for themselves, correct? According to the Treasury Department and the CBO, tax cuts don't pay for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit since they were enacted.
Go to this link; Treasury Dynamic Scoring Analysis Refutes Claims by Supporters of the Tax Cuts — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
It refers to a report by the Treasury Department issued in 2006
Also, "It's OUR money." And the National Debt is OUR debt which was brought to us by Reagan, George HW, Clinton, GWB and now Obama.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities bills itself as a non partisan think tank, but in truth never met a leftist position it didn't like. So we are compelled to take the assessemnt of one of theirs with at least a few grains of salt.

Consider this from the Heritage Foundation

The tax cuts of the 1920s
Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent.

According to then-Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon:

The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.

The Kennedy tax cuts
President Hoover dramatically increased tax rates in the 1930s and President Roosevelt compounded the damage by pushing marginal tax rates to more than 90 percent. Recognizing that high tax rates were hindering the economy, President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).

According to President John F. Kennedy:

Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now
The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates | The Heritage Foundation

And this:

There was no year of the Bush administration in which one year's budget was less than the year before, yet the deficits were steadily coming down and, if the housing bubble had not burst in mid 2008, that trend would have balanced the budget within a year or two.

The Bush tax cuts INCREASED revenues dramatically as any even cursory glance over of the treasury revenues will show.

What makes deficits and increases the national debt is spending more than we take in, and not the amount of taxes that we collect.

Oh yeah the Heritage Foundation, who claimed wages weren't flat because wages hadn't gone down (?) in one of their stunning reports. But as a non-partisan, I have no problem with some of their work.
Secondly, if you took the time to go to the link, you'd see that Center on Budget and Policy used GWB's own Treasury Department's numbers and opinions.
Finally, yes I know that the Center on Budget and Policy is left leaning, but when the GOP controlled Congress they sure liked to have then testify on economic matters.
Finally, yes I know the Bushies had good revenues but it didn't stop the tax cuts from causing deficits.

I have no quarrel with the numbers used. I have a quarrel with the interpretation of the numbers used. For every source you find that claims the Bush tax cuts reduced revenues, you can find two others that dispute that. Don't go with what I say. Check it out.

The fact is you won't find ANY year of the Bush presidency in which the revenues were less than the year before.

But additions to the debt are telling. You'll notice that even when we had a so called 'surplus' at the end of the Clinton presidency, the debt was still going up. So it really wasn't a surplus was it.

But because the GOP didn't demonstrate fiscal responsibility in the Bush administration--nobody could convince us they HAD to spend all that money--we voted them out in 2006. Obama ran on a campaign of fiscal accountability which earned him and the Democrats gains in 2008.

Counting 350 billion of TARP, during the eight years of the Bush administration, the national debt increased 4,229.2 trillion and the deficits were coming down.

Counting the other 350 billion of TARP, during the first two years of the Obama administration, the national debt has increased 3,256.6 trillion with trillion or near trillion dollar deficits projected as far as the eye can see.

Until the government learns not to spend us into oblivion I don't want to give them one additonal red cent and thereby only encourage them to spend more. The government will spend every penny it collects and then some. They need to learn not to do that.

 

[The Rabbi]

So you're claiming tax cuts pay for themselves, correct? According to the Treasury Department and the CBO, tax cuts don't pay for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit since they were enacted.
Go to this link; Treasury Dynamic Scoring Analysis Refutes Claims by Supporters of the Tax Cuts — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
It refers to a report by the Treasury Department issued in 2006

Can you actually read or do you just search for terms like "tax cut failure" and post whatever dreck you find?
Not every tax cut produces more revenue. Only those that affect behavior at the margin, like cap gains, do so. Obama's giveaways to car buyers and home buyers did nothing.

I hate to burst your bubble but I agree with "Obama's giveaways to car buyers and home buyers did nothing". I'm not exactly a liberal, but I'm also not a conservative who uses unfounded talking points.
My posts declaring the tax cuts don't pay for themselves use a GOP Administration numbers and data. Bush Administration economists agree, tax cuts don't generate revenue. All I get back are opinions.

You have gotten back facts and arguments. That you choose to ignore them is your problem.
Saying "tax cuts don't generate revenue" is like saying "medicine doesn't cure illness." In some cases it does, in some it doesn't.

And since you quote Greg Mankiw, here he is saying virtually the opposite of what you say:
Greg Mankiw's Blog: The Growth Effects of Tax Policy

Random Observations for Students of Economics
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
The Growth Effects of Tax Policy
From today's Wall Street Journal:

Dynamic Analysis
By Robert Carroll and N. Gregory Mankiw

Does tax relief mean more economic growth? Many people believe the answer is yes, and now they get strong support from the staff of the U.S. Treasury.

Most press reports on the Mid-Session Review of the federal budget, released by the Bush administration a couple of weeks ago, focused on the good news about expanding tax revenues and the shrinking budget deficit. But for tax-policy geeks, the most intriguing part of the report was an easily overlooked box on page 3: "A Dynamic Analysis of Permanent Extension of the President's Tax Relief." Over the past six months, the Treasury Department staff has been studying the dynamic effects of tax cuts on the economy. The results of this analysis, previewed in this box, were released yesterday in more complete form (available at U.S. Treasury - Office of Tax Policy).

A bit of background: Most official analysis of tax policy is based on what economists call "static assumptions." While many microeconomic behavioral responses are included, the future path of macroeconomic variables such as the capital stock and GNP are assumed to stay the same, regardless of tax policy. This approach is not realistic, but it has been the tradition in tax analysis mainly because it is simple and convenient.

In his 2007 budget, President Bush directed the Treasury staff to develop a dynamic analysis of tax policy, and we are now reaping the fruits of those efforts. The staff uses a model that does not consider the short-run effects of tax policy on the business cycle, but instead focuses on its longer run effects on economic growth through the incentives to work, save and invest, and to allocate capital among competing uses.

The Treasury report describes what will happen to the economy if the tax relief of the past few years is made permanent, compared to the alternative scenario of reverting back to the tax code as it was in 2000. Specifically, the report analyzes the effects of lower taxes on dividends and capital gains, the effects of lower taxes on ordinary income, and the extension of other tax cuts, including the new 10% bracket, the expanded child credit and marriage-penalty relief. Here are three main lessons.

Lesson No. 1: Lower tax rates lead to a more prosperous economy.

According to the Treasury analysis, a permanent extension of the recent tax cuts leads to a long-run increase in the capital stock of 2.3%, and a long-run increase in GNP of 0.7%. In today's economy, such a GNP expansion would mean an extra $90 billion a year that the nation can spend on consumer goods to raise living standards, or capital goods to maintain prosperity. More than two-thirds of this expansion occurs within 10 year