dteowner
Shoegazer
We've hit on this across numerous threads, so I thought I'd start a thread specifically for it. Makes for less hunting, hopefully.
I'll start it off with an economist backing up what I've been telling y'all for years. The leftie Robin Hoods that think they can tax their way out of our deficit don't pay attention to the problem with that strategy--more money in equals more money out in the world of Congress. Thrasher won't care for the source, but the economist's analysis could just have easily been posted on MichaelMoore.com if Mikey were willing to be honest about things for once.
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I'll start it off with an economist backing up what I've been telling y'all for years. The leftie Robin Hoods that think they can tax their way out of our deficit don't pay attention to the problem with that strategy--more money in equals more money out in the world of Congress. Thrasher won't care for the source, but the economist's analysis could just have easily been posted on MichaelMoore.com if Mikey were willing to be honest about things for once.
Tax increases can’t close the gap because any new taxes will spur further spending, argues Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University. Politicians want to be reelected, and tax-increases make reelection more difficult, so “they offset the negative political effect of [imposing] higher taxes by increasing spending,” said Vedder, who has tracked taxes and spending from just after World War II until 2009. During that period, he said, every $1.00 of increased tax-revenue spurred federal spending by roughly $1.17.
The scale of the current deficit is another problem. Until the November election, President Obama has supported an end to the lower tax rates won by President George W. Bush. If the the Bush-era taxes on people earning more than $250,000 were boosted from 33 percent up to almost 40 percent, as many Democrats urge, the estimated 10-year deficit of $13,600 billion would reduced by only five percent, assuming the government did not increase spending elsewhere, Riedl noted.
For example, U.S. income-tax rates in the 1960s reached up to 91 percent, and dipped to 33 percent after 2000, but tax revenues never rose above 21 percent of gross domestic product, he said. The ceiling exists because higher tax-rates cause people to change their work, to move assets or to change business, so reducing taxes paid in the treasury, he said.
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