What ceiling?

[jreeves]

When Bush was elected he had a golden opportunity to address deficit spending and what did he do? He gave his people - the sponges on America - more money and more money led to greed and greed led to .... no need to continue. But think for a moment, would it have been possible for Bush to do the right thing and support a balanced budget and sensible regulatory policy. Please think about that for a bit. And realize I know Bush is not in charge - thank gawd - but we did not arrive here by magic. Oh that each president could have what dopey W had.


"There is no historical evidence that tax cuts spur economic growth. The highest period of growth in U.S. history (1933-1973) also saw its highest tax rates on the rich: 70 to 91 percent. During this period, the general tax rate climbed as well, but it reached a plateau in 1969, and growth slowed down five years later. Almost all rich nations have higher general taxes than the U.S., and they are growing faster as well."

Tax cuts spur economic growth
The Idolatry of Ideology-Why Tax Cuts Hurt the Economy by Russ Beaton


The Conservative Nanny State

"On moral grounds, then, we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners. In the United States, even a flat tax of 70 percent would support all governmental programs (about half the total tax) and allow payment, with the remainder, of a patrimony of about $8,000 per annum per inhabitant, or $25,000 for a family of three. This would generously leave with the original recipients of the income about three times what, according to my rough guess, they had earned."

UBI and the Flat Tax


Myth: The rich get rich because of their merit.

The rich get rich because of their merit.

Obama's deficit spending should be excused because of Bush's deficits.....Here watch...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5yxFtTwDcc&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - The National Debt Road Trip[/ame]

 

[jreeves]

"There is no historical evidence that tax cuts spur economic growth. The highest period of growth in U.S. history (1933-1973) also saw its highest tax rates on the rich: 70 to 91 percent. During this period, the general tax rate climbed as well, but it reached a plateau in 1969, and growth slowed down five years later. Almost all rich nations have higher general taxes than the U.S., and they are growing faster as well."

A few facts on this
In 1933 the nation was in the midst of the great depression, so naturally by climbing out of the Depression there was economic growth.
1941-1945 saw a wartime economy, which again spurs growth.
1946 to ~1966 saw easy US dominance of markets because we were the only major industrialized nation not gutted by WWII.

Most of the other rich nations use protectionist tariffs to help keep industry in their country. Perhaps, rather than high taxes, that is their source of growth. Except for one thing - which particular countries have higher taxes and faster growth?

Less spending is better than more taxes, particularly since taxes hit the worker hardest and spending benefits the non-worker most.

Growth isn't a virtue in and of itself.

I agree we should restrict economic growth so that everyone can be destitute.

 

[Zander]

I have the perfect solution!!! Let's start a massive government entitlement program!!!

 

[Polk]

Growth isn't a virtue in and of itself.

I agree we should restrict economic growth so that everyone can be destitute.

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that growth is only useful to the extend it's broad-based. Let's take a look at a hypothetical country of 100 people.

The following is the baseline scenario. Assume that wages are reflective of outputs in this nation (something which, in general, is true). If everyone in this nation makes 100 dollars of output, the total output in the economy is 10,000 dollars.

Now take two scenarios:

In case A, output growth is 5% a year divided equally among everyone. After one year, the new total output is 10,500 and each person makes 105 dollars.

In case B, output growth is 10%, but all the growth goes to one person. After one year in this case, total output is 11,000, with 99 people making 100 dollars and one person making 1,100.

In fact, you could reduce the income of the bottom 99 to 95 dollars each in case B while having the top person's income growth by 1,000, the result is almost everyone is worse off, but case B would result in a higher growth rate (5.05 percent instead of only 5 percent).

Which case is better? Your overemphasis on growth would lead to the conclusion that case B is better, but I doubt most people would agree with that conclusion.

 

[Annie]

When Bush was elected he had a golden opportunity to address deficit spending and what did he do? He gave his people - the sponges on America - more money and more money led to greed and greed led to .... no need to continue. But think for a moment, would it have been possible for Bush to do the right thing and support a balanced budget and sensible regulatory policy. Please think about that for a bit. And realize I know Bush is not in charge - thank gawd - but we did not arrive here by magic. Oh that each president could have what dopey W had.


"There is no historical evidence that tax cuts spur economic growth. The highest period of growth in U.S. history (1933-1973) also saw its highest tax rates on the rich: 70 to 91 percent. During this period, the general tax rate climbed as well, but it reached a plateau in 1969, and growth slowed down five years later. Almost all rich nations have higher general taxes than the U.S., and they are growing faster as well."

Tax cuts spur economic growth
The Idolatry of Ideology-Why Tax Cuts Hurt the Economy by Russ Beaton


The Conservative Nanny State

"On moral grounds, then, we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners. In the United States, even a flat tax of 70 percent would support all governmental programs (about half the total tax) and allow payment, with the remainder, of a patrimony of about $8,000 per annum per inhabitant, or $25,000 for a family of three. This would generously leave with the original recipients of the income about three times what, according to my rough guess, they had earned."

UBI and the Flat Tax


Myth: The rich get rich because of their merit.

The rich get rich because of their merit.

Wow, 13 posts to say, "Bush did..." while talking about today's debt ceiling.

 

[The Rabbi]

Growth isn't a virtue in and of itself.

I agree we should restrict economic growth so that everyone can be destitute.

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that growth is only useful to the extend it's broad-based. Let's take a look at a hypothetical country of 100 people.

The following is the baseline scenario. Assume that wages are reflective of outputs in this nation (something which, in general, is true). If everyone in this nation makes 100 dollars of output, the total output in the economy is 10,000 dollars.

Now take two scenarios:

In case A, output growth is 5% a year divided equally among everyone. After one year, the new total output is 10,500 and each person makes 105 dollars.

In case B, output growth is 10%, but all the growth goes to one person. After one year in this case, total output is 11,000, with 99 people making 100 dollars and one person making 1,100.

In fact, you could reduce the income of the bottom 99 to 95 dollars each in case B while having the top person's income growth by 1,000, the result is almost everyone is worse off, but case B would result in a higher growth rate (5.05 percent instead of only 5 percent).

Which case is better? Your overemphasis on growth would lead to the conclusion that case B is better, but I doubt most people would agree with that conclusion.

As usual you are not thinking beyond stage one. What happens to the money the person at the top made? Presumably at leasts ome of it will get spent with the other 99 people.
So you have created a scenario that doesn't exist.
Your solution will be to kill the one person and distribute his money to the other 99. Hail, Obamanomics.

 

[Polk]

Maybe it does, maybe it does, but such cases do exist in the real world (though not to that degree). Also, since when have I suggested killing anyone?

 

[The Rabbi]

Maybe it does, maybe it does, but such cases do exist in the real world (though not to that degree). Also, since when have I suggested killing anyone?

No, no cases like that exist in the real world. Other than in 3rd world countries controlled by dictators and their favorites.

 

[Polk]

Maybe it does, maybe it does, but such cases do exist in the real world (though not to that degree). Also, since when have I suggested killing anyone?

No, no cases like that exist in the real world. Other than in 3rd world countries controlled by dictators and their favorites.

It happens in the developed world too. The United States ranks around the same as Kenya and Nigeria on measures of income distribution.

 

[The Rabbi]

Maybe it does, maybe it does, but such cases do exist in the real world (though not to that degree). Also, since when have I suggested killing anyone?

No, no cases like that exist in the real world. Other than in 3rd world countries controlled by dictators and their favorites.

It happens in the developed world too. The United States ranks around the same as Kenya and Nigeria on measures of income distribution.

So?

 

[jreeves]

Maybe it does, maybe it does, but such cases do exist in the real world (though not to that degree). Also, since when have I suggested killing anyone?

No, no cases like that exist in the real world. Other than in 3rd world countries controlled by dictators and their favorites.

It happens in the developed world too. The United States ranks around the same as Kenya and Nigeria on measures of income distribution.

Nineteen Neglected Consequences of Income Redistribution: Publications: The Independent Institute
Neglected Consequences

1. Taxes for the purpose of income redistribution discourage the taxpayers from earning taxable income or raising the value of taxable property through investment. People who stand to lose part of their earnings respond to the altered personal payoff. As a result, they produce fewer goods and services and accumulate less wealth than they otherwise would. Hence the society is poorer, both now and later.

2. Transfer payments discourage the recipients from earning income now and from investing in their potential to earn future income. People respond to a reduced cost of idleness by choosing to be idle more often. When they can get current income without earning it, they exert less effort to earn income. When they expect to get future income without earning it, they invest less in education, training, job experience, personal health, migration, and other forms of human capital that enhance their potential to earn income in the future. Hence the society is even poorer, both now and later, than it would have been merely because taxes discourage current production and investment by the taxpayers who fund the transfers.

3. Recipients of transfers tend to become less self-reliant and more dependent on government payments. When people can get support without exercising their own abilities to discover and respond to opportunities for earning income, those abilities atrophy. People forget—or never learn in the first place—how to help themselves, and eventually some of them simply accept their helplessness. It is no accident that both material privation and lassitude distinguish individuals accustomed to living on payments such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

4. Recipients of transfers set a bad example for others, including their children, other relatives, and friends, who see that one can receive goods, services, or money from the government without earning them. The onlookers easily adopt an attitude that they, too, are entitled to such transfers. They have fewer examples of hardworking, self-reliant people in their families or neighborhoods. Hence a culture of dependency on government transfers can become pervasive when many people in a neighborhood rely on such transfers for life’s essentials or—where the recipients are better off—its comforts.

5. Because some transfers are more generous than others, some classes of recipients come to resent the “injustice” of the distribution of the largess. Hence arise political conflicts. Representatives of discontented groups politicize the determination of the amounts to be transferred and engage in continual jockeying to increase certain kinds of transfers, at the expense of others if necessary. Note, for example, the ceaseless activities of the American Association of Retired Persons, perhaps the most powerful lobby in Washington, striving to increase old-age pensions and Medicare benefits, or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, seeking to increase transfers that benefit blacks in particular. Such political maneuvering creates or exacerbates conflicts among groups defined by their eligibility to receive particular kinds of transfers: old against young, black against white, rural against urban, female against male, Northern against Southern, homeowner against renter, and so forth without visible limit. Society becomes more contentious.

6. Just as recipients engage in internecine warfare, so do taxpayers, who resent disproportionate burdens in funding the transfers. For instance, young people now learn that their Social Security taxes are going straight into the pockets of retired people who as a group are better off. Young taxpayers also learn that they probably will never recoup their own contributions, unlike the present-day elderly, who have realized an extraordinarily high effective rate of return on their contributions. (Currently the average married couple gets back everything ever paid in, with interest, in just over four years. )4 Black Social Security taxpayers learn that, because of their lower life expectancy, they cannot expect to receive as much retirement income as the average white person can expect. Taxpayers who consider themselves disproportionately burdened grow to resent their exploitation by the tax-and-transfer system. Therefore they give more support to politicians who promise to defend their pocketbooks against legislative marauders, and they strive harder to avoid or evade taxes.

7. As a result of the preceding two consequences, the entire society grows more divided and pugnacious. Less and less does the society constitute a genuine community. Rather, it becomes balkanized into bellicose subgroups regarding one another as oppressors and oppressed. People lose their sense of belonging to a common political community with collective interests and joint responsibilities. Instead, fellow citizens regard each other as either patsies or moochers and feel personal hostility toward those who appear to be net gainers from the system. Some actually come to hate the perceived moochers. Witness the palpable hostility when shoppers paying cash wait in the check-out line at the grocery store while someone uses food stamps to make purchases.

8. Among the recipients of transfers, self-help institutions languish. In olden days the burden of caring for the less fortunate outside the family was borne mainly by friends and neighbors acting jointly through churches, lodges, unions, clubs, and other voluntary associations. When individuals can receive assistance directly from the government, competing private associations tend to wither and eventually die—at least their functions as helping institutions disappear. When they are gone, people who need help have nowhere to turn except to the government, which is unfortunate in many ways, because what the government does is not really the same. Nor is it as effective, especially in the long run, when private associations have much greater success in making sure that people who recover their capacities then resume taking care of themselves.

An observer noted that in the aftermath of the big Los Angeles earthquake, “Thousands of forlorn, atomized individuals did nothing but wait for a centralized savior, the federal government. America has been diminished by a system of compulsory compassion that simply wants true communities out of the way so that altruism can be left to the experts.”5

9. Just as self-help institutions wither among the needy, so do charitable institutions among those who are better off. When government agencies stand ready to attend to every conceivable problem in society, people whose sensibilities incline them toward helping the less fortunate have less incentive to organize themselves for doing so. It is easy to say, “I pay my taxes, and plenty of them. Let the government take care of the problem.” If one contributes charitably, it is as if one were paying twice to accomplish the same objective. Hence, government transfers crowd out private transfers. Coercion, in the form of the tax system, displaces the voluntary provision of assistance, and private charitable institutions wane.

10. As citizens drop out of their involvement in charitable and helping institutions, letting the government take over, they become less self-directing and more accepting of all kinds of government activity. So when someone proposes that the government undertake a function previously carried out exclusively within the private sphere, people are not shocked; they are not even very suspicious of the government’s ability to carry out the task. After all, governments now do all sorts of things, from socializing preschoolers to feeding the poor to insuring the medical expenses of the elderly. So what if the government takes on still another responsibility? What was once a prevailing suspicion of the enlargement of government becomes a resignation to or an acceptance of its continuing expansion into new areas.

In the nineteenth century, opponents of proposed new government programs would commonly protest: “The government has no business doing that.” Nowadays we rarely hear anyone oppose a government initiative on these grounds. That there is a private sphere into which government ought never to intrude has become a nearly extinct species of thought as governments have spread their programs and activities, not to mention their regulations of “private” life, into almost every cranny of society.


Every year we as a country spend more and more on means tested welfare for what, an unchanged poverty rate?

Historical Poverty Tables

 

[Mr. Peepers]

Lmao, comparing a country who has a population of 4.5 million with a country who has well over 300 million people.

What does that matter? If anything, we'd have millions and millions more coming into the coffers than THEY do, right? They could definitely teach us a thing or two about efficiency and common sense when it comes to fiscal matters and general welfare? If Americans are such inventive, creative people, why not implement real, common sense changes on a larger scale? You're saying we can't? Boy, since you're so worried about spending money, I'll bet you wish we had all that money that we, the taxpayers, wasted on Iraq back right about now... and corporate welfare monies. Or is that okay because both are in the interest of corporatists (republicans)?

 

[Polk]

No, no cases like that exist in the real world. Other than in 3rd world countries controlled by dictators and their favorites.

It happens in the developed world too. The United States ranks around the same as Kenya and Nigeria on measures of income distribution.

So?

Typical conservative response. "Who cares if the nation is slipping to third world status for most of it's people, as long as the megawealthy can afford another yacht."

 

[Annie]

It happens in the developed world too. The United States ranks around the same as Kenya and Nigeria on measures of income distribution.

So?

Typical conservative response. "Who cares if the nation is slipping to third world status for most of it's people, as long as the megawealthy can afford another yacht."

Typical liberal response, 'income redistribution' will make things 'fair.'

 

[Mr. Peepers]

Typical liberal response, 'income redistribution' will make things 'fair.'

I get to keep less of my money that I bring in than a millionaire does. How is that fair? Isn't that reverse income redistribution? All wealth is funneled right to the top - that is what is happening now.

 

[Annie]

Typical liberal response, 'income redistribution' will make things 'fair.'

I get to keep less of my money that I bring in than a millionaire does. How is that fair? Isn't that reverse income redistribution? All wealth is funneled right to the top - that is what is happening now.

What do you mean?

 

[Polk]

Typical liberal response, 'income redistribution' will make things 'fair.'

I get to keep less of my money that I bring in than a millionaire does. How is that fair? Isn't that reverse income redistribution? All wealth is funneled right to the top - that is what is happening now.

What do you mean?

If you make 100,000 dollars from working, you get taxed at 28 percent.
If you make 100,000 from capital gains, it only gets taxed at 15 percent.

 

[Polk]

So?

Typical conservative response. "Who cares if the nation is slipping to third world status for most of it's people, as long as the megawealthy can afford another yacht."

Typical liberal response, 'income redistribution' will make things 'fair.'

Who is calling for income redistribution? Another red herring.

 

[Annie]

Typical conservative response. "Who cares if the nation is slipping to third world status for most of it's people, as long as the megawealthy can afford another yacht."

Typical liberal response, 'income redistribution' will make things 'fair.'

Who is calling for income redistribution? Another red herring.

Umm, you. http://www.usmessageboard.com/1719291-post33.html

It happens in the developed world too. The United States ranks around the same as Kenya and Nigeria on measures of income distribution.

So?

Typical conservative response. "Who cares if the nation is slipping to third world status for most of it's people, as long as the megawealthy can afford another yacht."

 

[Zander]

I get to keep less of my money that I bring in than a millionaire does. How is that fair? Isn't that reverse income redistribution? All wealth is funneled right to the top - that is what is happening now.

What do you mean?

If you make 100,000 dollars from working, you get taxed at 28 percent.
If you make 100,000 from capital gains, it only gets taxed at 15 percent.

Try 30% minimum for Capital gains and going higher. Why? The initial capital was already taxed at anywhere from 15--45% to begin with. It is a classic example of double taxation.