Tax Cuts Steal Democracy

[The Derp]

Tax Cuts do a lot of things; increase deficits, explode debts, hurt wage growth...but in concert with unlimited campaign contributions, they actually steal our democracy. The average politician spends about 80% of their time raising money. And from whom are they generally raising the most money? From wealthy donors. And what benefits wealthy donors? Tax cuts. Here are some handy charts showing the extent of the theft of wealth and democracy by the 1% and their Conservative and Neo-Liberal enablers. Since the Reagan tax cuts, working people’s share of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down:

This resulted in intense concentration of wealth at the top:

And forced working people to spend down savings to get by:

Which forced working people to go into debt: (total household debt as percentage of GDP)

None of which has helped economic growth much: (12-quarter rolling average nominal GDP growth.):

So the conclusion? Trump and the Conservatives' "tax reform" is just more of the same we've heard from them since 1980, and is just a thinly veiled attempt to redistribute wealth from the middle and bottom to the top.

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

Tax Cuts do a lot of things; increase deficits, explode debts, hurt wage growth...but in concert with unlimited campaign contributions, they actually steal our democracy. The average politician spends about 80% of their time raising money. And from whom are they generally raising the most money? From wealthy donors. And what benefits wealthy donors? Tax cuts. Here are some handy charts showing the extent of the theft of wealth and democracy by the 1% and their Conservative and Neo-Liberal enablers. Since the Reagan tax cuts, working people’s share of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down:

This resulted in intense concentration of wealth at the top:

And forced working people to spend down savings to get by:

Which forced working people to go into debt: (total household debt as percentage of GDP)

None of which has helped economic growth much: (12-quarter rolling average nominal GDP growth.):

So the conclusion? Trump and the Conservatives' "tax reform" is just more of the same we've heard from them since 1980, and is just a thinly veiled attempt to redistribute wealth from the middle and bottom to the top.

Back in 1776 the tax rate on the US citizen was around 3% and the people rose up and went to war with the punishing government. Today many sheeple pay well over 33% of their hard earned income to a suppressing government just so they can redistribute it to lazy liberal mother fuckers who don't want to work so they can survive. Every time the liberals start campaigning they HOWL how Social Security is going bankrupt and the evil R's want to take it away, yet you never hear from the Libtards, that WELFARE is going bankrupt, because working people pay into the SS system, expecting something back when they retire, those that sit on their liberal sorry asses, expect something but never contribute into it. Liberals hate this country, they hate everyone who works, and really could care less about those that don't do anything, except continue to vote for the same people who give them free stuff. That right there is the "TRUE" stealing of "Democracy". What I earn should be mine not someone elses who didn't earn it. A good liberal is a dead liberal, please abort more liberals in planned parenthood.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Tax Cuts do a lot of things; increase deficits, explode debts, hurt wage growth...but in concert with unlimited campaign contributions, they actually steal our democracy. The average politician spends about 80% of their time raising money. And from whom are they generally raising the most money? From wealthy donors. And what benefits wealthy donors? Tax cuts. Here are some handy charts showing the extent of the theft of wealth and democracy by the 1% and their Conservative and Neo-Liberal enablers. Since the Reagan tax cuts, working people’s share of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down:

This resulted in intense concentration of wealth at the top:

And forced working people to spend down savings to get by:

Which forced working people to go into debt: (total household debt as percentage of GDP)

None of which has helped economic growth much: (12-quarter rolling average nominal GDP growth.):

So the conclusion? Trump and the Conservatives' "tax reform" is just more of the same we've heard from them since 1980, and is just a thinly veiled attempt to redistribute wealth from the middle and bottom to the top.

Tax Cuts do a lot of things; increase deficits, explode debts, hurt wage growth

How do tax cuts hurt wage growth?

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

Tax Cuts do a lot of things; increase deficits, explode debts, hurt wage growth...but in concert with unlimited campaign contributions, they actually steal our democracy. The average politician spends about 80% of their time raising money. And from whom are they generally raising the most money? From wealthy donors. And what benefits wealthy donors? Tax cuts. Here are some handy charts showing the extent of the theft of wealth and democracy by the 1% and their Conservative and Neo-Liberal enablers. Since the Reagan tax cuts, working people’s share of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down:

This resulted in intense concentration of wealth at the top:

And forced working people to spend down savings to get by:

Which forced working people to go into debt: (total household debt as percentage of GDP)

None of which has helped economic growth much: (12-quarter rolling average nominal GDP growth.):

So the conclusion? Trump and the Conservatives' "tax reform" is just more of the same we've heard from them since 1980, and is just a thinly veiled attempt to redistribute wealth from the middle and bottom to the top.

I noticed you failed to talk about the exponential increase of the federal spending budgets, state spending budgets, and city spending budgets, which are the prime reason why the government always has to increase its tax of citizens. If you cut the budgets of all these bloated agencies, by 1/2 not only would you be able to put more money in each persons hands, but also balance the budgets of each entity. The end of poverty would be the government saying "POVERTY HAS ENDED", and at the point of the gun, make it so, even though, everyone would be equally poor and equally miserable.

Cloward–Piven strategy
The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty".
Cloward–Piven strategy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[The Derp]

How do tax cuts hurt wage growth?

 

[The Derp]

Back in 1776 the tax rate on the US citizen was around 3% and the people rose up and went to war with the punishing government.

Ummm...no, they revolted because of a tax on tea, not income. 1776 is also 240+ years ago, and the problems of the 18th century are not the same problems we face in the 21st century. You wouldn't treat cancer with leeches, would you? So why would you apply 18th-century thinking to 21st-century problems? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Every time the liberals start campaigning they HOWL how Social Security is going bankrupt and the evil R's want to take it away, yet you never hear from the Libtards, that WELFARE is going bankrupt, because working people pay into the SS system, expecting something back when they retire, those that sit on their liberal sorry asses, expect something but never contribute into it.

First, liberals do not howl that SS is going bankrupt, Conservatives do. And it's not "going bankrupt". SS can still pay full benefits out until 2030, which is 13 years away. Hardly an immediate problem. Secondly, if you are going to make the argument that SS is going bankrupt and needs to be fixed, the simple solution is to just remove the cap on taxable SS income, that way everyone pays the same % of their income into SS. Right now, the cap is around $120K/yr. That covers up to about 90% of all workers. Once you surpass $120K in income, none of it is taxed for SS. That doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? By just removing the cap on taxable SS income, you extend SS's solvency by decades. As far as welfare goes, the biggest welfare queens are red state legislatures who take the welfare block grant (reformed by Conservatives in the 90's) and apply as much as they can of that block grant to the deficits caused by their taxation policies. All red states do that, but some are worse than others. Kansas, for example, cut taxes, saw its deficits and debt spike, saw its credit downgraded at least twice, cut education spending, raided the Highway Fund, and raided as much of the Welfare block grant that was legally allowed, and still couldn't balance its budget. It's not welfare that's bankrupt, it's red states who use the welfare to paper over the deficits caused by their tax policies who are the ones "bankrupt" here. The Conservative proposal that didn't even get a vote in the House would have changed Medicaid to a block grant as well, which means red staters would use that block grant not for health care, but to paper over the holes in their budgets created by their poor taxation and economic policies.

 

[The Derp]

Liberals hate this country, they hate everyone who works, and really could care less about those that don't do anything, except continue to vote for the same people who give them free stuff. That right there is the "TRUE" stealing of "Democracy". What I earn should be mine not someone elses who didn't earn it. A good liberal is a dead liberal, please abort more liberals in planned parenthood.

Wow...well...a lot ot unpack here. First of all, it wasn't liberals who colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, that was all Conservatives who did that. Secondly, why would those Conservatives be talking with Russian spies anyway if they didn't want to subvert this country and repeal and replace our democracy? Thirdly, why did Conservatives not have a viable plan to replace Obamacare when they had 7 years to come up with one if they didn't want to just sacrifice health care for tarnishing Obama's legacy? Finally, when it comes to "free stuff", I am not sure what you're referring to, but nothing is free. Not even tax cuts. All liberal proposals involve taxes in order to pay for things like Medicare-for-All. Conservatives are the ones who explode deficits and debt, under the "promise" that the tax cuts will pay for themselves, and we'd be so awash in revenue we wouldn't need to cut anything. At least, that's how it was sold for close to 37 years until the realities of governance and math caught up with the failed philosophy. At first, we were told tax cuts would lead to so much economic growth, we'd have surpluses as far as the eye can see. When that never materialized in the 80's, suddenly the rhetoric shifted to tax cuts coupled with spending cuts would somehow generate economic activity to justify the hit to the deficit. When that never materialized, Conservatives shifted the rhetoric that the reason the tax cuts didn't work was because...because...no answer. Now we are seeing the fruits of that play out in real time in places like Kansas and Louisiana...two states that did Reaganomics on steroids and as a result, saw their economies stagnate while all their neighbors' didn't. So why is that? The answer is obvious; tax cuts do not generate growth and are used as a mechanism to redistribute wealth to the top in the fallacy that they would "trickle down" on the rest of us. It was a crackpot theory when Bush the Elder called it voodoo economics, and it's still a crackpot theory today.

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

Liberals hate this country, they hate everyone who works, and really could care less about those that don't do anything, except continue to vote for the same people who give them free stuff. That right there is the "TRUE" stealing of "Democracy". What I earn should be mine not someone elses who didn't earn it. A good liberal is a dead liberal, please abort more liberals in planned parenthood.

Wow...well...a lot ot unpack here. First of all, it wasn't liberals who colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, that was all Conservatives who did that. Secondly, why would those Conservatives be talking with Russian spies anyway if they didn't want to subvert this country and repeal and replace our democracy? Thirdly, why did Conservatives not have a viable plan to replace Obamacare when they had 7 years to come up with one if they didn't want to just sacrifice health care for tarnishing Obama's legacy? Finally, when it comes to "free stuff", I am not sure what you're referring to, but nothing is free. Not even tax cuts. All liberal proposals involve taxes in order to pay for things like Medicare-for-All. Conservatives are the ones who explode deficits and debt, under the "promise" that the tax cuts will pay for themselves, and we'd be so awash in revenue we wouldn't need to cut anything. At least, that's how it was sold for close to 37 years until the realities of governance and math caught up with the failed philosophy. At first, we were told tax cuts would lead to so much economic growth, we'd have surpluses as far as the eye can see. When that never materialized in the 80's, suddenly the rhetoric shifted to tax cuts coupled with spending cuts would somehow generate economic activity to justify the hit to the deficit. When that never materialized, Conservatives shifted the rhetoric that the reason the tax cuts didn't work was because...because...no answer. Now we are seeing the fruits of that play out in real time in places like Kansas and Louisiana...two states that did Reaganomics on steroids and as a result, saw their economies stagnate while all their neighbors' didn't. So why is that? The answer is obvious; tax cuts do not generate growth and are used as a mechanism to redistribute wealth to the top in the fallacy that they would "trickle down" on the rest of us. It was a crackpot theory when Bush the Elder called it voodoo economics, and it's still a crackpot theory today.

we have already heard enough of the liberal talking points, if you want to have a dialogue then bring some substance to the table,

Trickle down is a liberal term created to make it seem that only the Rich have money. Dumbass.

Supply side economics is, see a need fill a need, those that do that succeed. Bosses
Those that work for those that succeed are not smart enough or brave enough to take the chance. Workers
Those that don't work and feel sorry for their sorry lazy asses, rely on the government to give them free stuff. Liberal.


You cant see what is going on around you when you think like a typical liberal.

 

[The Derp]

I noticed you failed to talk about the exponential increase of the federal spending budgets, state spending budgets, and city spending budgets, which are the prime reason why the government always has to increase its tax of citizens.

.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing if what is in those budgets benefits taxpayers; things like schools, infrastructure, health care, scientific research, etc. benefit society because they're budget items that are used by taxpayers here and provide the infrastructure for businesses to grow and reach their consumers. When you have close to 1/5 of all spending on health care, that's a major problem. That's not because of government, that's because of profits. When you spend $600B a year on defense, the products produced with that money do not benefit this country and aren't even used here. The bombs are all used overseas. So when they explode, they don't benefit Americans or taxpayers. That spending is done overseas. And in most cases, the production of those weapons of war aren't even requested by the DoD, but the reps in whose districts those plants are located secure money for no other reason than to keep people employed...which would make our military the largest welfare program there is. One that is almost completely without budgetary oversight. So that's where most of the "waste" in government spending goes. I live in Atlanta. We just had a section of one of the most heavily-trafficked highways in the entire country collapse. We need every single federal dollar we can get in order to maintain the rest of the highway, so that doesn't happen again. Most federal programs are operationally stretched to their limits already. But that was by design; it's much easier to argue for the elimination of a government program if you reduce the operational funds needed to sustain it. That's the Conservative motive behind tax cuts; manufacture budget deficits that are used as an excuse to cut social spending, forcing operational cuts to the programs that undermine their effectiveness, then that diminished effectiveness is used as an excuse to sell the function off to private enterprise who profit at our expense while not providing any tangible improvement to the function itself. For the best (worst) examples of that, just look at private prisons and charter schools.

The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty".

A universal basic income is not a bad idea, actually, and would be economically beneficial to a capitalist system. It would generate automatic demand and consumer spending. Finland is experimenting with a universal basic income right now. The best way to reduce poverty in our economic system is to increase wages. If you're not going to do that, and you're not going to put in price controls, then you have to manufacture demand somehow. Our economy cannot sustain itself on spending by the top.01%. Surely you agree.

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

Back in 1776 the tax rate on the US citizen was around 3% and the people rose up and went to war with the punishing government.

Ummm...no, they revolted because of a tax on tea, not income. 1776 is also 240+ years ago, and the problems of the 18th century are not the same problems we face in the 21st century. You wouldn't treat cancer with leeches, would you? So why would you apply 18th-century thinking to 21st-century problems? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Every time the liberals start campaigning they HOWL how Social Security is going bankrupt and the evil R's want to take it away, yet you never hear from the Libtards, that WELFARE is going bankrupt, because working people pay into the SS system, expecting something back when they retire, those that sit on their liberal sorry asses, expect something but never contribute into it.

First, liberals do not howl that SS is going bankrupt, Conservatives do. And it's not "going bankrupt". SS can still pay full benefits out until 2030, which is 13 years away. Hardly an immediate problem. Secondly, if you are going to make the argument that SS is going bankrupt and needs to be fixed, the simple solution is to just remove the cap on taxable SS income, that way everyone pays the same % of their income into SS. Right now, the cap is around $120K/yr. That covers up to about 90% of all workers. Once you surpass $120K in income, none of it is taxed for SS. That doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? By just removing the cap on taxable SS income, you extend SS's solvency by decades. As far as welfare goes, the biggest welfare queens are red state legislatures who take the welfare block grant (reformed by Conservatives in the 90's) and apply as much as they can of that block grant to the deficits caused by their taxation policies. All red states do that, but some are worse than others. Kansas, for example, cut taxes, saw its deficits and debt spike, saw its credit downgraded at least twice, cut education spending, raided the Highway Fund, and raided as much of the Welfare block grant that was legally allowed, and still couldn't balance its budget. It's not welfare that's bankrupt, it's red states who use the welfare to paper over the deficits caused by their tax policies who are the ones "bankrupt" here. The Conservative proposal that didn't even get a vote in the House would have changed Medicaid to a block grant as well, which means red staters would use that block grant not for health care, but to paper over the holes in their budgets created by their poor taxation and economic policies.

Not once did you say, cut the budgets of bloated government agencies. Why don't you start there? Why does the government always have to raise taxes? If you got rid of 33 million illegal aliens living in this country that right there would be a good start. How many public schools have over 90 percent children of illegal immigrants? Never lower the taxes, just increase the size of government. By the way, Obama added 10 TRILLION DOLLARS unpatriotically. He did that even with raising taxes on the rich. Why is that? Dumbass.

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

I noticed you failed to talk about the exponential increase of the federal spending budgets, state spending budgets, and city spending budgets, which are the prime reason why the government always has to increase its tax of citizens.

.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing if what is in those budgets benefits taxpayers; things like schools, infrastructure, health care, scientific research, etc. benefit society because they're budget items that are used by taxpayers here and provide the infrastructure for businesses to grow and reach their consumers. When you have close to 1/5 of all spending on health care, that's a major problem. That's not because of government, that's because of profits. When you spend $600B a year on defense, the products produced with that money do not benefit this country and aren't even used here. The bombs are all used overseas. So when they explode, they don't benefit Americans or taxpayers. That spending is done overseas. And in most cases, the production of those weapons of war aren't even requested by the DoD, but the reps in whose districts those plants are located secure money for no other reason than to keep people employed...which would make our military the largest welfare program there is. One that is almost completely without budgetary oversight. So that's where most of the "waste" in government spending goes. I live in Atlanta. We just had a section of one of the most heavily-trafficked highways in the entire country collapse. We need every single federal dollar we can get in order to maintain the rest of the highway, so that doesn't happen again. Most federal programs are operationally stretched to their limits already. But that was by design; it's much easier to argue for the elimination of a government program if you reduce the operational funds needed to sustain it. That's the Conservative motive behind tax cuts; manufacture budget deficits that are used as an excuse to cut social spending, forcing operational cuts to the programs that undermine their effectiveness, then that diminished effectiveness is used as an excuse to sell the function off to private enterprise who profit at our expense while not providing any tangible improvement to the function itself. For the best (worst) examples of that, just look at private prisons and charter schools.

The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty".

A universal basic income is not a bad idea, actually, and would be economically beneficial to a capitalist system. It would generate automatic demand and consumer spending. Finland is experimenting with a universal basic income right now. The best way to reduce poverty in our economic system is to increase wages. If you're not going to do that, and you're not going to put in price controls, then you have to manufacture demand somehow. Our economy cannot sustain itself on spending by the top.01%. Surely you agree.

A universal basic income is not a bad idea, actually, and would be economically beneficial to a capitalist system

Did you know that, that was tried in the USSR(if you don't know what that was, it was the United Soviet SOCIALIST Republic) where doctors would spend 12 years of their lives learning how to save people, and got paid the same as a bread maker who spent 2 months learning how to make bread. (Why the fuck am I teaching you this, when you should of learned this is PRIVATE SCHOOL). So there are fewer doctors because of their studies and time to become able to save people, while there are many bread makers, which means there isn't a demand for them. Such a buffoon you are.

When you spend $600B a year on defense.

Without a defense there IS NO country, and that means there is NO welfare system. But you don't understand this since you are a brainwashed, goose stepping, low information, mind numbed, useful idiot of the left.. Now watch closely here with the next link.

Cost war on poverty
The War on Poverty has cost $22 trillion -- three times more than what the government has spent on all wars in American history. Federal and state governments spend $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars on America's 80 means-tested welfare programs annually.
The War on Poverty Has Cost $22 Trillion - NCPA
ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?article_id=25288

Now ignore the facts once again.

 

[The Derp]

we have already heard enough of the liberal talking points, if you want to have a dialogue then bring some substance to the table,

I have brought plenty of substance. In fact, the first post of this thread is nothing but substance in the form of data and charts that augment my argument. Happy to speak further to any of them that you may have a question with. But dismissing them outright and refusing to even consider them means we cannot have a reasonable debate because you refuse to accept the basic facts and realities I've posted. So chalking them up to "talking points" is a bit of an exaggeration. Whose talking points are they? Which ones are talking points?

Trickle down is a liberal term created to make it seem that only the Rich have money. Dumbass.

Trickle down = supply side = voodoo economics. It's the same thing. Give those at the top all the resources and it will magically trickle down on the rest of us. That is the central premise of the economic philosophy. So you can label it whatever you want, the fundamental principle at its heart is flawed. Slapping a new name on it isn't going to change its inherent problems. The charts I provided showed how, since the start of Reaganomics, the middle and lower classes have stagnated and gone into debt while the wealthy have increased their share of the total wealth. When that much wealth is concentrated at the top we cease being a democracy and are basically a crypto-fascist plutocratic serfdom, where rich interests hoard their wealth and pit classes against one another so they can skate away with even more. Which is exactly what has happened since 1980.

You cant see what is going on around you when you think like a typical liberal

First of all, not sure why you posted something from Democrats since Democrats are basically now just technocrats that serve their own wealthy interests. Falling back on a meme is weak sauce, man. Let's just take a look at Conservative policies put in practice in one of our "laboratories of democracy", Kansas. So in 2010 the people of Kansas repealed their moderate Republican legislature and replaced it with a bunch of whackadoo teabag-types who promptly cut taxes for the rich and businesses because we were told, by Brownback and Arthur Laffer (you know who he is, right?) that the tax cuts would be "a shot of adrenaline into the arm of the economy". That was in 2011. Here we are, in 2017, and that adrenaline never seemed to kick in. Kansas trailed the nation and all of its neighbors across nearly all economic metrics; it had job growth lower than the national average, wage growth dropped to 49th out of 50, GDP growth lagged the national average -which means KS was dragging down the Obama economy, it trailed all of its neighbors (including IL) in GDP growth, wage growth, job growth. Its credit was downgraded twice, and a $1B surplus was turned into a nearly $1B deficit in just a couple of years. Things are so bad in Kansas, that schools had to close early because there was no money to keep them open a full school year. Why? Because Conservatives gave the money to rich people in the form of tax cuts. Mitch McConnell said of the Brownback Tax Cuts "“This is exactly the sort of thing we (Republicans) want to do here, in Washington, but can’t, at least for now.” That was back in 2011. So do you still think we should emulate what they did in Kansas? Which was to double-down on the past 37 years of empty promises? Why?

 

[The Derp]

Not once did you say, cut the budgets of bloated government agencies. Why don't you start there?

Sure! Let's start with the Department of Defense, which has been a defacto welfare program for decades -since Eisenhower, really! The DoD's budget is never scrutinized for waste, fraud, or anything. We spend billions building tanks the Pentagon says they don't need, purely for the sake of keeping people in Congressional districts where those plants are located employed. Which would technically make our Defense Budget the largest welfare program in existence. Certainly larger, historically, than Social Security and Medicare. I am all about cutting funding for the DoD as I am tired of paying for corporate welfare for the likes of Boeing, Raytheon, etc.

So what do you want to cut? Conservatives never have an answer for that. Instead, they say they would just reduce budgets by X%, completely ignorant of what those cuts actually do operationally to programs. It's a lazy answer for people too boring or too afraid to actually do the hard work of looking at what our government spends money on and determining if it's wasteful. For instance, Trump fired 59 missiles into Syria at a cost of about $30M. Now, I'm no accountant, but even I know that $30M can provide a lot of healthcare to people who need it. So, as I asked, what do you want to cut and have you pondered how those cuts you want will affect the broader economy as a whole? Because that was the whole issue with the AHCA they had 7 years to come up with. They reduced "spending" by reducing the amount of money people would get for health care. So it solved none of the problems the market currrently faces and would have exacerbated the problems if passed into law. Conservatives have had 7 years to come up with a strategy for when they took control of DC. So where is this strategy? Because it seems like the only strategy they have is to be dicks to everyone.

If you got rid of 33 million illegal aliens living in this country that right there would be a good start. How many public schools have over 90 percent children of illegal immigrants?

So here's the thing, man. I hear your anger. I get it. You didn't get the things that were promised to you by the people you voted for. But it's not the immigrants' fault your boss refuses to pay you more. It's not the immigrants' fault that your bank jacked up your interest rates or foreclosed on your home. It's not the immigrants' fault you got addicted to Oxy and now have a heroin habit. Furthermore, most illegal immigrants in this country are people who overstayed their visas. The same visas Trump, and people like him, use to import foreign workers into this country to work at his resorts. Why? Because he doesn't have to pay them as much and can treat them like garbage. That's why he's all about expanding HB-1 visas. Those are the visas that have the most people who overstay. The number of folks on expired visas dwarfs the number of those who cross the border in the middle of the night. Most illegal immigrants come here on planes, not across the Rio Grande.

Never lower the taxes, just increase the size of government.

We lowered taxes. The top rate just 37 years ago was 70%. Now, it is 39.6%. That's nearly a 50% cut in the tax rate. So while the wealthy may pay a greater share of the taxes, the amount they actually pay is far less. And what do we have to show for this humongous tax cut? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

By the way, Obama added 10 TRILLION DOLLARS unpatriotically. He did that even with raising taxes on the rich. Why is that?

Simple...Bush and the Conservatives destroyed the economy with their hastily-inflated mortgage bubble beginning in 2004 and extending into 2007, they quagmired us in two unwinnable wars of occupation that they didn't pay for, and they forced on us an entitlement expansion that was not funded by anything. So that's why the debt grew. Furthermore, where was all this debt concern from Conservatives when Bush cut taxes in 2001, erased a surplus, and produced four record deficits during his eight years that doubled the debt? I find it hilarious that Conservatives screech about debt when they are the ones who doubled it when we could have paid it off by 2010 if they had done literally nothing. They couldn't even do nothing right. No surprise the party of Bush the Dumber, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump have no idea what they're doing. It shows, too. Bigly.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

How do tax cuts hurt wage growth?

Cool graph.
How do tax cuts hurt wage growth?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Back in 1776 the tax rate on the US citizen was around 3% and the people rose up and went to war with the punishing government.

Ummm...no, they revolted because of a tax on tea, not income. 1776 is also 240+ years ago, and the problems of the 18th century are not the same problems we face in the 21st century. You wouldn't treat cancer with leeches, would you? So why would you apply 18th-century thinking to 21st-century problems? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Every time the liberals start campaigning they HOWL how Social Security is going bankrupt and the evil R's want to take it away, yet you never hear from the Libtards, that WELFARE is going bankrupt, because working people pay into the SS system, expecting something back when they retire, those that sit on their liberal sorry asses, expect something but never contribute into it.

First, liberals do not howl that SS is going bankrupt, Conservatives do. And it's not "going bankrupt". SS can still pay full benefits out until 2030, which is 13 years away. Hardly an immediate problem. Secondly, if you are going to make the argument that SS is going bankrupt and needs to be fixed, the simple solution is to just remove the cap on taxable SS income, that way everyone pays the same % of their income into SS. Right now, the cap is around $120K/yr. That covers up to about 90% of all workers. Once you surpass $120K in income, none of it is taxed for SS. That doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? By just removing the cap on taxable SS income, you extend SS's solvency by decades. As far as welfare goes, the biggest welfare queens are red state legislatures who take the welfare block grant (reformed by Conservatives in the 90's) and apply as much as they can of that block grant to the deficits caused by their taxation policies. All red states do that, but some are worse than others. Kansas, for example, cut taxes, saw its deficits and debt spike, saw its credit downgraded at least twice, cut education spending, raided the Highway Fund, and raided as much of the Welfare block grant that was legally allowed, and still couldn't balance its budget. It's not welfare that's bankrupt, it's red states who use the welfare to paper over the deficits caused by their tax policies who are the ones "bankrupt" here. The Conservative proposal that didn't even get a vote in the House would have changed Medicaid to a block grant as well, which means red staters would use that block grant not for health care, but to paper over the holes in their budgets created by their poor taxation and economic policies.

if you are going to make the argument that SS is going bankrupt and needs to be fixed, the simple solution is to just remove the cap on taxable SS income, that way everyone pays the same % of their income into SS.

If you double, for instance, the tax a rich guy pays into SS, you have to double, basically, the benefit he receives. That would seem to make the problem worse, not better.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Liberals hate this country, they hate everyone who works, and really could care less about those that don't do anything, except continue to vote for the same people who give them free stuff. That right there is the "TRUE" stealing of "Democracy". What I earn should be mine not someone elses who didn't earn it. A good liberal is a dead liberal, please abort more liberals in planned parenthood.

Wow...well...a lot ot unpack here. First of all, it wasn't liberals who colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, that was all Conservatives who did that. Secondly, why would those Conservatives be talking with Russian spies anyway if they didn't want to subvert this country and repeal and replace our democracy? Thirdly, why did Conservatives not have a viable plan to replace Obamacare when they had 7 years to come up with one if they didn't want to just sacrifice health care for tarnishing Obama's legacy? Finally, when it comes to "free stuff", I am not sure what you're referring to, but nothing is free. Not even tax cuts. All liberal proposals involve taxes in order to pay for things like Medicare-for-All. Conservatives are the ones who explode deficits and debt, under the "promise" that the tax cuts will pay for themselves, and we'd be so awash in revenue we wouldn't need to cut anything. At least, that's how it was sold for close to 37 years until the realities of governance and math caught up with the failed philosophy. At first, we were told tax cuts would lead to so much economic growth, we'd have surpluses as far as the eye can see. When that never materialized in the 80's, suddenly the rhetoric shifted to tax cuts coupled with spending cuts would somehow generate economic activity to justify the hit to the deficit. When that never materialized, Conservatives shifted the rhetoric that the reason the tax cuts didn't work was because...because...no answer. Now we are seeing the fruits of that play out in real time in places like Kansas and Louisiana...two states that did Reaganomics on steroids and as a result, saw their economies stagnate while all their neighbors' didn't. So why is that? The answer is obvious; tax cuts do not generate growth and are used as a mechanism to redistribute wealth to the top in the fallacy that they would "trickle down" on the rest of us. It was a crackpot theory when Bush the Elder called it voodoo economics, and it's still a crackpot theory today.

First of all, it wasn't liberals who colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, that was all Conservatives who did that.

Did Russia expose the corruption of the DNC and HRC? Was that wrong?
Should that corruption have remained hidden from the public? Is that why you're mad?

 

[The Derp]

Did you know that, that was tried in the USSR(if you don't know what that was, it was the United Soviet SOCIALIST Republic) where doctors would spend 12 years of their lives learning how to save people, and got paid the same as a bread maker who spent 2 months learning how to make bread.

OK, so democratic socialism and communism are not the same thing. In a democratic socialist country, there still exists a free market, albeit it is more heavily regulated to protect the public's interests. Countries like this include Israel, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Japan, Canada, South Korea, and Australia. Hardly countries you would lump in with the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and Cuba, right? There are still rich people in Germany, aren't there? And if democratic socialism is so terrible, how come people like Mitt Romney keep their money in democratic socialist countries like Switzerland??? How do you explain that?

A Communist country is where the state controls everything including the means of production. That is not what any liberal here is proposing at all.

So, the war on poverty was working, despite Nixon and Ford's attempts to sabotage it in the early 70's. Poverty was declining from the start of the "Great Society" up until the end of Carter's term. It wasn't until 1980 when Conservatives came along and argued to cut social safety net spending because blah blah trickle-down personal responsibility, blah blah. So Reagan and the Conservatives undermined the effectiveness of federal anti-poverty programs, which led those programs to fail (Section 8 is a terrific example of this because it also ties into the homelessness crisis we've had since the 1980's.), which opened the door for Conservatives to reward their financiers by selling government functions off to private interests for profit. See: private prisons (where many of those homeless end up), charter schools.

Federal and state governments spend $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars on America's 80 means-tested welfare programs annually.

So how are you getting to that $1T number? You are counting Social Security and Medicare outlays? And are you counting things like the tank production plant in Lima, OH that is making tanks the Pentagon doesn't want? Or is it just meant to shock people into being afraid of big numbers for no reason? Does that include corporate welfare as well? The average effective corporate tax rate is about 12.4%. That's nearly 5% lower than the average effective tax rate for you and me. Why should corporations pay a lower tax rate than us, if corporations are people?

 

[The Derp]

How do tax cuts hurt wage growth?

Well, if you look at the chart you can plainly see that wages for all except those at the very top stagnated starting around 1980-2.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Tax Cuts do a lot of things; increase deficits, explode debts, hurt wage growth...but in concert with unlimited campaign contributions, they actually steal our democracy. The average politician spends about 80% of their time raising money. And from whom are they generally raising the most money? From wealthy donors. And what benefits wealthy donors? Tax cuts. Here are some handy charts showing the extent of the theft of wealth and democracy by the 1% and their Conservative and Neo-Liberal enablers. Since the Reagan tax cuts, working people’s share of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down:

This resulted in intense concentration of wealth at the top:

And forced working people to spend down savings to get by:

Which forced working people to go into debt: (total household debt as percentage of GDP)

None of which has helped economic growth much: (12-quarter rolling average nominal GDP growth.):

So the conclusion? Trump and the Conservatives' "tax reform" is just more of the same we've heard from them since 1980, and is just a thinly veiled attempt to redistribute wealth from the middle and bottom to the top.

Tax-rate cuts are different from tax cuts. Trump could easily double the tax base by opening up full development of our natural resources.

 

[HenryBHough]

So by the OP's logic, a 100% tax rate is the only way to achieve freedom!

Equality? Yeah! Everybody dependent on what government feels they need. Screw what they might want.