[gordoUSA]

Yes, and some of the money was spent shipping those jobs overseas.
The point was made by Warren Buffet, not me, and I doubt Warren Buffet is a left winger. Simply put, he thought the Bush tax cut was the wrong thing to do and gave a tax cut to the wrong people.

[gordoUSA]

Economists cannot agree on anything, they take the side of whoever is paying them at the time. It is the "Is the glass half empty or half full," argument.

However, to climb our way out of the financial mess created by Congress and added to by Bush, the next President, whoever it is, will have to raise taxes. It is a given. I saw some projections based on current spending and interest over the next 10 years, by then, more than 50% of the entire budget will go to pay just the interest on debt. Not retire the debt, just the interest. Anyone who has ever had a credit card understands what this is, and any competent bankruptcy attorney can tell you the same also.

[VitoCorleone99]

Originally Posted by RebelDarlin

With the size of the deficit we have, I'd say we can't support it now.

The dirty little secret is that there are only three areas that can even make a difference, Social Security, Medicare, and national defense.

As much as we would all like to see pork barrel spending controlled, it's a drop in the bucket. As much as many of us like to whine about foreign aid and benefits for low-income families, they're a drop in the bucket. As much as ...insert your pet issue here... it's a drop in the bucket. If you took every one of these discretionary budget items to zero, the two big entitlements and interest on our debt will engulf the entirety of federal tax receipts within the next few decades. Tax receipts will have to reach 30% of GDP within 50 years to break even, assuming that every single discretionary budget item and every dollar of debt service has been completely eliminated. (The interest projections in the post above this are complete nonsense, but in a sense the general concept is along the same lines as what I'm saying.)
Read here if you need a good dose of reality.

As much as some people think they can tax the wealthy and drive us to a socialist utopia, tax revenue has never been more than ~20% of GDP regardless of marginal tax rates. You can argue that you would rather see the wealthy contribute more of the 20% than they already do, but any implication that you will increase total dollars to the treasury is false. Leaving aside the conservative vs. liberal studies about tax cuts and their impact on revenue, tax receipts have historically averaged just over 18% of GDP and never gone much over 20%. Therefore, the 'tax the rich' argument doesn't apply to this discussion. Unless you can figure out a way to extract over 50% more revenue that we currently extract (and keep extracting a larger and larger percentage as time goes on), without collapsing the economy, you haven't solved the problem.

So what do we face? You can't tax your way out of it (like one side claims) and you can't cut your way out of it (like the other side claims). You have to face the reality that either we virtually eliminate our national defense or we completely revamp entitlement programs. I know where my preference would fall, but any politician who wants to make these changes has been, continues to be, and always will be, assailed by his opponents. "He wants to risk your future on Wall Street!" Then we, sheep that we are, get scared and pretend that the problem will just go away on its own. So we, as a nation, will continue to kid ourselves. We'll greatly overstate the impact of "welfare queens" and the war in Iraq and all the rest as we slowly fall into the abyss. Good times. Good times.

I won't even bother arguing whether you keep jobs in America by raising taxes on American companies. To this date, nobody has even attempted to make a coherent case for that viewpoint. It does make for a rousing campaign speech though.

[Colin]

I was reading this thread and realized something.

Regarding taxes and the rich; people who would have to pay 40% in taxes because their income is so high would gladly pay the 40% instead of being poor. When taxes were higher during the nineties, you didn't notice anyone stop making money because taxes were so high. They worked harder and made as much as they could because the money was there to be made.

Again, paying high taxes is always better than being poor. It's just that the super rich will never admit that.

[marylandkw]

Originally Posted by GTR SILVER

here ....here......... :wink:
dont bother..........they live in there own little world......they are not worth it....... :?........

This is your chance, I am not engaging in the "call everyone else foolish" game you seem to enjoy I am simply stating Facts and backing them up with hard evidence. If you think I am stupid, TEACH ME. This is your chance. I am not unwilling to listen to a logical argument backed by facts. I apologize if I offended you because I proved that the email you quoted was a lie.

[marylandkw]

Originally Posted by GMAN

Unless our leaders begin to reduce the size of government we won't be able to support it before long.

I could not agree more, and that is possibly the one chink in my Liberal armor.

Originally Posted by RebelDarlin

With the size of the deficit we have, I'd say we can't support it now.

I believe you are absolutely correct.

[VitoCorleone99]

Originally Posted by Colin

I was reading this thread and realized something.

Regarding taxes and the rich; people who would have to pay 40% in taxes because their income is so high would gladly pay the 40% instead of being poor. When taxes were higher during the nineties, you didn't notice anyone stop making money because taxes were so high. They worked harder and made as much as they could because the money was there to be made.

Again, paying high taxes is always better than being poor. It's just that the super rich will never admit that.

I hate to be the one to inject another reality check here, but the revisionist history really gets tough to ignore after a while.

For starters, they gladly pay 40% right now. One of the current candidates is talking about going to 40% federal income tax, plus payroll tax on every dollar above $250,000. Unless he's also talking about increasing rich people's retirement benefits, this is a 180 degree departure from an 'old age and survivor/disability' benefit to a full-blown welfare program. If you still support that then you're entitled to your opinion, but you deserve to be told the truth. Furthermore, your comparison to the 90's would be less accurate than a comparison to the late 70's for a couple of reasons. First is that the increased payroll tax, increased capital gains tax, increased dividend tax, and increased income tax would take us to a much more confiscatory tax environment than we had in the 90's. Second is that one of the candidates is also talking about a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Anything that puts downward pressure on oil supply and upward pressure on prices has catastrophic potential.

[Colin]

Originally Posted by Colin

I was reading this thread and realized something.

Regarding taxes and the rich; people who would have to pay 40% in taxes because their income is so high would gladly pay the 40% instead of being poor. When taxes were higher during the nineties, you didn't notice anyone stop making money because taxes were so high. They worked harder and made as much as they could because the money was there to be made.

Again, paying high taxes is always better than being poor. It's just that the super rich will never admit that.

Originally Posted by VitoCorleone99

I hate to be the one to inject another reality check here, but the revisionist history really gets tough to ignore after a while.

For starters, they gladly pay 40% right now. One of the current candidates is talking about going to 40% federal income tax, plus payroll tax on every dollar above $250,000. Unless he's also talking about increasing rich people's retirement benefits, this is a 180 degree departure from an 'old age and survivor/disability' benefit to a full-blown welfare program. If you still support that then you're entitled to your opinion, but you deserve to be told the truth. Furthermore, your comparison to the 90's would be less accurate than a comparison to the late 70's for a couple of reasons. First is that the increased payroll tax, increased capital gains tax, increased dividend tax, and increased income tax would take us to a much more confiscatory tax environment than we had in the 90's. Second is that one of the candidates is also talking about a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Anything that puts downward pressure on oil supply and upward pressure on prices has catastrophic potential.

I'm not talking about supporting anything or trying to revise history.

Put simply, taxes were higher during the 90's. Bush and the Congress lowered them, so they were higher. That cannot be denied.

Second, people who paid a ton of taxes in the 90's did so gladly and would do so again. Paying taxes and being rich is better than being poor and paying none.

Edited the bold.

[VitoCorleone99]

Originally Posted by Colin

Put simply, taxes were higher during the 90's. Bush and the Congress lowered them, so they were higher. That cannot be denied.

Tax rates were higher. Taxes collected were lower. So yes, I do deny your premise.

Second, people who paid a ton of taxes in the 90's did so gladly and would do so again. Paying taxes and being rich is better than being poor and paying none.

Edited the bold.

Of course being rich is better than being poor. That has never been the question. The marginal rate went from 39.6% to 35% under Bush. You could possibly argue that a return to 39.6% wouldn't be too terrible. Obama is talking about a marginal rate of well over 50% though, in addition to dividend hikes, capital gains hikes, corporate tax hikes, and windfall profits taxes. You're comparing apples and oranges. Carter is the baseline, not Clinton.

The question is whether or not higher taxes on rich people (a) yield more tax revenue and (b) harm economic growth (aka "jobs").

As for more tax revenue, no, higher tax rates don't produce it. The taxes under Clinton were very slightly higher than under Bush, as a percentage of GDP, while tax rates were higher at all income levels. Your argument holds up against the conservative spin up to this point. Where it unravels is in the fact that the economy was on a downward trajectory for the last few years of Clinton's term, caused largely by the reluctance of people to invest money after the dot com collapse. This culminated in the fact that we were in an actual recession at this point during Clinton's presidency, as opposed to the imaginary one that we are told we're in right now.

Bush cut capital gains and dividend rates, leading to sustained economic growth and heavy investment through 2006. Then the mortgage fiasco somewhat mirrored the dot com fiasco and here we go again. Tight capital markets now have been caused by a sheer lack of capital though, as opposed to tax policy. You can take a position either way as far as which is worse. I really don't know. What I wonder now is - Do we want people to be reluctant to invest or anxious to invest?

Over the long term, the amount of tax money collected from capital gains is fairly constant. Republicans who say that cutting capital gains will produce more revenue are only telling half the story. What happens is as follows. Capital gains rates go up. Joe Schmo makes $40,000 a year and wants to buy a house. He can't afford to sit on his investments until rates go down, so he eats the higher taxes and sells his investments. Richie Rich, on the other hand, can take his income from munis and life insurance policies until tax rates go back down, so that's what he does. When rates go down, he and people like him begin to dip into their taxable investments before someone comes along and raises the rate again. That last sentence is why receipts appear to go up when rates are cut, but it's only temporary. Over time, receipts level off regardless of higher or lower rates.

So, if we don't collect more tax revenue, why do we raise the rate? Does it contribute to job growth? No, it does exactly the opposite. Richie Rich's withdrawals of cash for income and reluctance to move investment income around leads to stagnation in the equity markets and puts upward pressure on interest rates, since he and those like him are tightening the money supply. They're still making millions, just like you said, but guys like Joe Schmo are taking it in the shorts.

Then why do we do it? According to Senator Obama, "because it would be more fair." Fair to whom, exactly?

[Twilight Flyer]

IMHO, last night did not put me on notice. It just showed me how desperate Sen McCain is by selecting a grossly under qualified running mate.

I get a chuckle out of that statement every time I hear it. She's far more qualified than Obama and the liberal thinking that she isn't qualified is tantamount to desperately grasping at straws.

This year, it's Vice President Palin. IN 2012, it'll be President Palin.

Accept the inevitable. :wink: