Why we can't afford tax cuts

by SixofNine 80 Replies latest social current

• 

  Francois

  I know Scott Burns writing, 6/9, (and I have nothing to learn from him) and I know leftist pap when I see it, even when I smell it - apparently you don't. And I continue to maintain that I can get a grasp on even the obvious: tax cuts are not "paid for." This is little more than a standard leftist fable used in defense of the indefensible. Do you "pay" for taking money out of your own piggy bank? Do you pay for, say, a DVD, after you have decided you don't want it? Suppose you decide NOT to remove money from your piggy bank so that you CAN purchase an Izod shirt with it? Does the piggy bank die? Roll over and play dead? Scream at you for taking money? Experience a draw-down in its balance?
  

  I learned long ago - when I was one - that lefties can spin any situation they like to make it seem like any thing they like. Think "JW doubletalk and flummery." It's the same process. When the JWs do it you understand what they're doing with the facts, how come you don't recognize it when leftists play likewise fast and loose with the truth?

  francois

  P.S. If Burns were the infallible genius you describe, he'd be getting rich as Croesus in the stock market, not piddling around demonstrating his genius in a Texas news rag. And, 6/9, you have no idea how I "fancy" myself. Are you now a mind-reader too?

  Edited to reply to Bendrr - Your figures are essentially correct. The bottom 50% of wage earners pay about 4% of taxes, the top 50% pays 96%, the top 5% pays 36% of all taxes. Yet even given the manner in which the democrat party has skewed the tax table, they scream that every tax cut is a "gift to the rich." Unfortunately, the audience to whom the democrats are speaking is so damned ignorant they don't realize what's going on. People who ARE informed and who DO know what's going on are usually in that top, hated, "rich" upper 50%, so they can be ignored.

  Here is the democrat plan (or should I say the neo-Marxist plan): Saddle a minority of taxpayers with ALL THE TAXES. Make that minority as small as possible. Make the other citizens who are NOT paying any taxes dependant on the politicians and on government in general, responsible for meeting their needs in terms of health care, income, child day care, food, transportation, etc. In short, make the vast majority of people aware that the democrat party is vital to their own self-interest.

  Now you have a small minority of people paying all the taxes, so small a minority that in fact their votes DO NOT COUNT. If every one of the tax paying people were to vote as a block for any but a democrat, it would not make one particle of difference. If you're a democrat, it's a sweet plan. Who would ever vote for anyone else, when that anyone else might raise YOUR taxes instead of just taxing the rich? Your grasp on power is guaranteed. You are invincible in the voting booth. You are free to do anything politically you like. You are not required to answer to any responsible party, other than the voters in your district which are made up of people who depend on you for the substance of their life, and a few of the hated rich whose opinions you are now free to ignore, since they only make up a single-digit percentage of all people casting votes. Sweet, ain't it? And you really think the hated rich are going to take that kind of screwing? The democrat party thinks so. You like the sound of this? You're not horrified regarding the implications for your own freedoms as guaranteed by the constitution? Then keep on voting democrat. And kiss your freedoms good bye as soon as the neo-Marxists take over. But you don't care, do you? Cause now the hated rich are paying your bills. How ignorant. How blind. Didn't 70 years of the most repressive government ever known on this planet in the Marxist Soviet Union teach ANY lessons?

  Remember John Galt.
• 

  expatbrit

  Right idea, cack-handed delivery:
  The latest Bush tax cut
  
  Disingenuous and risky
  
  May 29th 2003
  From The Economist print edition
  
  
  There is nothing wrong with tax cuts or tax reform; but don't muddle them up
  
  IT IS hard to object to tax cuts—particularly when you are about to receive one. However, even the most conservative American should pause to reconsider the “economic recovery bill” concocted by Congress and George Bush that will hand back some $350 billion over the next decade. Sadly, this giveaway is disingenuous and also something of a gamble.
  The first sleight of hand is that $350 billion number. Mr Bush had hoped for twice as much, but Congress has squeezed his tax cuts into a smaller package by setting time limits. For instance, the cuts in dividend taxes and capital gains are due to expire in 2008. At face value, this presents an absurd series of incentives for taxpayers. In fact, the chances of politicians letting the taxes reappear are slim. Add in a little political reality and the true cost of the tax cut could be $800 billion.
  
  
  
  
  By trying to smuggle in dividend-tax reform as the best way to give the economy an immediate jolt, Mr Bush has improved neither the stimulus nor the long-term fiscal position. There has been fanciful talk from the White House about lower investment taxes delivering an immediate confidence-inspiring boost to the stockmarket (which, incidentally, has not happened). But nobody trying to jumpstart the economy would begin with dividend taxes. True, some of the other measures in the tax cut, such as increasing the child tax credit, may have a more stimulative effect. But Mr Bush looks set to go into the next election having overseen at least 1m net job losses.
  The longer-term danger is greater. By equating tax reform with a short-term giveaway, Mr Bush has made his overhaul of the tax system hopelessly one-sided: it is all tax cuts, with no countervailing reforms on the other side of the ledger, such as reorganising Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. The main long-term fiscal challenge is restructuring these “entitlement” programmes to cope with the demands of the retiring generation of baby-boomers by the end of this decade.
  
  
  Less pork, more beef
  
  
  
  
  In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan also cut taxes (from far more draconian levels) and failed to cut spending: the result was an entrepreneurial boom, but also huge deficits, which were reduced only when Mr Bush's own father raised taxes. Bush the younger is heading down the Reagan road, with the additional huge problem of those retiring baby-boomers. Unless he changes tack, he could leave a terrible mess behind him.
• 

  Francois

  expatbrit, as far as I know, all spending bills originate in the house and must be agreed to by the senate. The president doesn't, can't, under our constitution raise taxes alone as your post implies. They didn't change that, did they?

  Try to remember that the house and senate were controlled by the democrat party at the time, and they put on new taxes in order to push Bush's "watch my lips..." remark down his throat. His failure was in taking the bait. He should have told the democrat party to pound sand.

  When you start talking politics, truth is the first victim same as it is when war starts. Jerking the "fact" that taxes were indeed increased under Bush senior absent its context is cheap, but it's risky. Someone may come along and supply the context, and then your story and your point is fucked.

  francois
• 

  Realist

  43 trillion??? = 150.000 per person!!!!

  that sounds awfully (non reliablely) high! most western nations lie somewhere between 10.000 and 20.000 $ national debts /capita.

  (japan leading with 40.000, US 13.000 (according to the statistics i know)).

  Simon,

  who said the Euro will go down soon (to parity?)? if its true than it would be worth buying dollars (=> 20% gain! )
• 

  expatbrit

  Francois:

  Unfortunately the Economist has only so much room for context in its editorials. Most of its readers will, however, have enough knowledge to fill in the gaps. Personally, I'm no fan of the previous administration that counts a blow job in the Oval Office as it's most significant action.

  I think the two points of the article where that, while tax cuts are the right thing to do, this one could have been directed better, and that there should be a simultaneous trimming of burgeoning social programmes that are the real problem here.

  Expatbrit
• 

  ThiChi

  Top 50% of Wage Earners Pay 96.09% of Income Taxes
• 

  ThiChi

  The Liberal Media: Alive, Well & Gravitasy

  May 30, 2003

  The DNC has sent out a bunch of memos using the phrase "last-minute revision" by House and Senate leaders to demonize the tax cut - and their willing accomplices in the media have passed on this talking point like dim-witted parrots. They want to give the impression of something done in secret, when of course everybody who paid attention knew what would be in this bill. ........montage of Jennings, Brokaw, Stephy, Brown, etc. mindlessly repeating the absurd noting that minimum wage parents are "left out" of what Judy Woodruff called the "childcare tax credit."

  First: There is no "care" in the $400 extra added to the existing $600 child credit. You can use the money for whatever you want, but of course liberals just assume it's another transfer of wealth from producers to non-producers to buy their votes. Second: If you're not paying taxes, you don’t get tax relief - but there's more to it than that. This whole thing is being reported as some kind of a purposeful mistreatment of minimum wage earners, along the lines of the claims that Ronald Reagan stole cans of beans from homeless people near the White House. Gloria Borger admitted: "I've got five press releases today from Democratic presidential candidates" pushing this lie. But her co-host Alan Murray slips with the secret: The Senate removed the tax credit for low-income people at the last minute to keep the so-called price tag of the tax relief bill below $350 billion. That's the magic number "Republicans" Voinovich and Snowe said was the most money they would give back to the American people who earned it in the first place. " ......why not just eliminate the cut on the rich?" They did. This provision does not apply to incomes above a certain level. .....These tax cuts are going to generate revenue, making the whole discussion silly and moot. Again: If Blanch Lincoln, Voinovich and Snowe had just agreed from the outset to sign the bill with this original provision, tax relief would've made it to minimum wagers. There was a provision in the bill to include these people even though they don't pay income taxes, but the Voinovich crowd decided they needed that money more than these poor people the liberals profess to care so much about.
• 

  SixofNine

  Realist, the figure comes from generational accounting which figures the true amounts of unfunded obligations. It includes Social Security, Medicare, etc. At it's core, it's not really a tax problem at all, but an old people problem, lol. Realisticly, it's probably more the fact that both politicians and regular folk don't really care beyond the here and now. It's hard enough to think about the collective good in the here and now, it's that much harder to think about the collective good of our grandchildren. "Why not let them deal with it?" Unfortunately, it seems we are leaving them debts that may be impossible to "deal' with.

  Francoise, I challenge you to provide one line of that article that would qualify as "leftist". Btw, perhaps I was wrong about you fancying yourself a straight shooter, after all, you never, ever, for all your talk of providing facts, provide facts. Perhaps you're just a blunderbuss. So far, you haven't givin the slightest indication that you even understand what the article by (the quite wealthy) Mr. Burns was about. I've said it before, your agenda will make you stupid.
• 

  outnfree

  1/ "According to the Congressional Budget Office, the wealthiest groups of Americans have paid a growing share of federal taxes since the mid-1980s. About 1.2 million families with average incomes of $768,000 now pay about 21 percent of all federal taxes, up from 15 percent in the mid-1980s. In contrast, taxes for the poorest group of Americans dropped from 22 to 17 percent of total taxes during the same period." -- AMERICA AT ODDS, E. Sidlow, B. Henschen, 3rd Edition, page 10

  I'm with Yeru, how about an across the board tax rate? (And I'd settle for 3 tiers, too, if I had to. ;) )

  2/ Spending programs must be cut. There is so much fat (not to mention pork) in the federal bureaucracy. How about requiring each Federal Department to not only be "studied" for ways to improve productivity, but actually COMPELLED TO IMPLEMENT the results of said studies?

  3/ Economics should be taught beginning in middle school. Start with learning how to balance a checkbook, and progress from there with practical things like installment debt and credit purchases to banking, the FDIC, how mortgages work including FHA, VA and SallieMae loans, government notes, securities, the stock and futures markets, etc., as the kiddies work up to high school graduation. To paraphrase the Syms ad: "An informed voter is our best constituent."

  I don't think enough people are knowledgable about economics and monetary policy (including me, but I'm getting there!), and certainly enough people aren't voting in the U.S. Less than half of eligible U.S. voters register. Even fewer than that actually vote. Those of us who want change one way or the other need to put some effort into "getting out the vote." We can start by educating our own [ex-JW, therefore traditionally apolitical] households on why it is important to the country's future that we exercise that right.

  outnfree
• 

  ThiChi

  It is amusing that Sixofnine only offers a fallacy by offering only one choice, Spending, and more spending.

  You are singing the same mantra that the liberals did in the 80's. However, history shows that Reagan kept his part of the bargain by raising revenues seven fold, by Tax Cuts. Unfortunately, the Congress spent it as fast as the revenues came in.

  The government does not create wealth. It can only confiscate from one person and give it to another. The money is not the Government’s, but the peoples. The Income Tax has only been around since 1913. I hope we go back the Founding Fathers idea and scrap the Income Tax

  all together.

  The real issue is reforming the Government programs that wastes billions of our tax dollars because the programs are riddled with waste, fraud and poor returns (SS Program) and incompetent administration by the career bureaucrats.

  Why does the Government exempt itself as employees from Social Security and other programs for public welfare? Very telling........

  There are more choices than just to be taxed to death. The real stupid person is the one who cannot see this.........