US FIscal Policy

dteowner

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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.

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.

source
 
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The problem is two-fold :

- too low taxes wouldn't give the government enough money for running the government, reducing the deficits etc.

- too high taxes cripple income of people wih lower income
- lower income means = less to spend
- less to spend means no building up of an inland economy.

In my oponion, an inland econimy is needed to build up an economy that's self-reliant,
because an export-oriented economy (like the German one is) has always the danger of being crippled when other countries just don't buy wares exported to them - no matter hat reason.

I believe that the U.S. just *needs* to slowly build up an inland economy again - together with an increase of what e cll here the "Mittelstand", which is I think the middle class.

Here in Germany, the *main* reliance has always been on the middle class and the medium-sized companies they created.

Big and huge companies had always been not so important.

This has changed considerably within the last 1-2 decades. Now, our government has become what many, too many people right now cynically call "the business'whore". They do SO much for - especially for the biggest, the greatest companies of all (in terms of politics) that many, many people suspect the gorvenment is controlled right now by lobbyists alone. Highly cynical caricatures even show the gorvernment or its members as puppets on strings.

They did so much for the big companies so that the mid-sized ones which had been the "sturdy legs" of Germany's economy for many decades became negledted - and as a result, the whole middle class is suffering now.

I just don't know what ld them, but I assume they just took the U.S. as a role model in terms of economy - with the result of the highest social classes being better than ever - and the lowest ones suffering most.

Because taxes are mostly hitting those who have few money to spend.
Their value in economy becomes more and more crippled - and at he same time the bosses of the big and the huge companies don't need to pay as much taxes than they imho should.

I call the money they earn "dead money", because it doesn't flow into the economy again; it doesn't participate in the economy, especially in the productive economy anymore.

And the poor ones ? They're reduced to cattler. They are meant to consume, consume nd consume and to be held poor, so that they are depending on what they get. And never ever be able to grow for their own use. I'm especially talking of the "Hartz IV" issue.

My current belief is - and this believe actuall seems to slowly, but steadily grow among German economist, too - is to strengthen the lowest social classes and especially the middle-tier class. Because it is them who keep the inland economy in a constant flow, and not the richest people who earn so muh money they don't know what to do with it.

I will never forget that advertisement in our newspaper - and in several others, too : An assemblage of really rich people actually pleaded[/i9 for being taxed much more than the government had planned !
The statement in this advertisement was that they strongly believed that really rich people should pay much more taxes - because they had a social responsibility.
But the gorvernment never changed things.

As a result, here in contemporary Germany there's a rich class (mostly consisting of company bosses) becoming richer,
a poor social class growing,
and the middle class beiong eroded.

And now the people begin to realize the mess the gorvetnment did to them. Late, but maybe not too lte.

And I believe that in the U.S. there should be more social responsibility as well - from my German-based point of view.


And as a side-note : We also have here the problem of "fleeing capital because of high taxes".
But there have also made steps into closer cooperation with countries like SWiss and Liechtenstein to track down those people who moved their money out of the country.
 
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In raw form, either the Democratic vision, or the Republican vision could work if implemented properly.

In the case of the former, it frees up money in the hands of the government, which if then invested in general infrastructure and trade, offsets and overcomes the impact to the economy.

With the Republican version, more money is freed in the hands of the people, more trade naturally follows, freeing up even more capital for everyone involved, the government included.

Our problem is, we are collectively trying to implement a half assed program in between, and keep jerking it first one way, and then another. Both programs can work, IF properly set from the ground up, and IF it is given time to work.
 
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Alrik, the issues in your country seem to reflect the issues everywhere. I see much the same here. The problem is still who's paying. Those with the most seem to pay the least and that is wrong. I realise soaking the rich won't work; it kills incentive. They need to pay their FAIR share. However, many of them don't. Thus the burden falls on the middle class.
 
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Increasing the taxes on the rich isn't enough, but it will help. We need to reduce costs, especially the military and corporate subsidies on the most profitable companies in the world: Exxon, and other oil companies.

But as usual, DTE's favorite source is suspect because of at least one untruth I know of. Medicare is more efficient that any private health insurance company. A much higher percentage of the dollars IN actually goes OUT to paying health care providers instead of the black hole of administration (and profits, for the case of private insurance).
 
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Interesting thread so far. While this may be odd of me to announce, plan on responding to this in detail tomorrow when I have more time available. Still, thanks for the discussion on this so far, gents.
 
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I believe that the notion that we can come out of this budget crisis without taxation is naive and foolhardy. Furthermore, I believe that the Prince John right wingers (I can play too, dteowner) are, in effect, putting their fingers in their ears and yelling at the top of their lungs at this point. I don't think that our current way of life is sustainable without bringing in more revenue, no matter how many government cuts are made. The fact that 10 percent of the population in this country controls over 90 percent of the wealth makes it easy for me to determine where the money should come from. Every time someone comes back with the argument, "The highest tax bracket pays 50/60/75/115% of the taxes!" all I can think is, "And yet, they still manage to stay in the highest tax bracket. How fucking heroic!"

The widespread douchebaggery and corruption exposed in the financial sector, combined with the ridiculous stories of corporations getting away with 14 billion dollar profits and no tax liability, really sours me to the whole idea that, somehow, they should be spared for the good of the nation. It would be one thing if GE - one of the companies that's been getting a good bit of press in the last week or so - was just creating gobs and gobs of jobs; but they cut their workforce by almost 25% between 2005 and 2009, only to bring those numbers back up and call it "job growth." I call bullshit on the whole thing.
 
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I believe that the notion that we can come out of this budget crisis without taxation is naive and foolhardy. Furthermore, I believe that the Prince John right wingers (I can play too, dteowner) are, in effect, putting their fingers in their ears and yelling at the top of their lungs at this point. I don't think that our current way of life is sustainable without bringing in more revenue, no matter how many government cuts are made.
I'm actually mostly on-board with you up to this point. The key problem, taken straight from the first passage I quoted, is that Congress (and the lefties being tremendously good at spending money they don't have doesn't mean the righties are completely innocent either, see Dubya Dark Ages) has shown for several decades that they never found a dollar they couldn't spend. You can find several posts of mine where I've said that I'd be fine with a tax increase as long as it was 100% guaranteed to go 100% toward the national debt. That's the rub, which is exactly why I posted it.
The fact that 10 percent of the population in this country controls over 90 percent of the wealth makes it easy for me to determine where the money should come from. Every time someone comes back with the argument, "The highest tax bracket pays 50/60/75/115% of the taxes!" all I can think is, "And yet, they still manage to stay in the highest tax bracket. How fucking heroic!"
I'll skip giving your overly-entitled butt a good spanking over this because the whole class warfare argument is incidental to the discussion. Evidence shows that you can steal every dollar you want from the rich and all Congress does is spend more. It's simply not a solution, regardless of where you stand on the whole class warfare thing.
The widespread douchebaggery and corruption exposed in the financial sector, combined with the ridiculous stories of corporations getting away with 14 billion dollar profits and no tax liability, really sours me to the whole idea that, somehow, they should be spared for the good of the nation. It would be one thing if GE - one of the companies that's been getting a good bit of press in the last week or so - was just creating gobs and gobs of jobs; but they cut their workforce by almost 25% between 2005 and 2009, only to bring those numbers back up and call it "job growth." I call bullshit on the whole thing.
Every time tax code reform gets brought up, it gets shot down within seconds, by the lefties. Why is that? I agree with what you're saying. Way too many loopholes in both the personal and corporate codes. So why not clean it up? My personal theory is that our government is made up of lawyers and accountants. Who directly makes their living off complicated tax code? Accountants and tax lawyers. Crooked bastards are smart enough not to cut their own throats, I guess. No real evidence to back that theory up, but it certainly fits the evidence. As to why it's the lefties shooting it down (you'd think the righties would be all over it "to protect their corporate overlords", but somehow it doesn't work that way), only thing I can come up with is that it would make their class warfare mantra much harder to promote if taxation is simple nd fair and cost them votes.
 
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Increasing the taxes on the rich isn't enough, but it will help.
Read the evidence, champ. IT DOESN'T HELP! Since WW2, it doesn't help. No reason to go any further with your class warfare froth because you're factually wrong from the first sentence.
 
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Read the evidence, champ. IT DOESN'T HELP! Since WW2, it doesn't help. No reason to go any further with your class warfare froth because you're factually wrong from the first sentence.

mein gott, my inner pedant rages.

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

nigga please, your making us conservatives bad, 5% is a big difference when it comes to billions

it doesnt help to tax the rich. at all. it wont raise money whatsoever. it doesnt help anyone.

id be foaming at the mouth if i was a socialist

your such a troll
 
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It's like you say, the loopholes keep the money out. Whether the rich are taxed at 99% or 20% it doesn't matter. They would find ways not to pay taxes, either by buying everything they can get their money back from or that is tax-exempt first, which then lowers their income, which makes them pay less taxes anyway.

At least some of the rich people have the decency to do this via charitable donations, others do it by buying 25 houses worth 50 million each in different countries and places so they can evade taxes. All of this is lawful tax evasion though, so the only people who suffer from high taxation are the people who cannot afford a building full of lawyers and accountants.

What needs to be done is close all of these tax-exemptions for the rich...
Then maybe raising taxes would actually matter. But since people in the US and most of Europe have become lazy since they (mostly) do have relatively comfortable lives, things won't change.

Things only change when the people scream for (specific) change, not just for a new leader who says he will change things.
Most groups now have "equal" rights in Western countries.
Timeline:
Only royalty has a say -> nobility has a say -> all rich men + nobility have a say -> all men have a say -> women also have a say -> gay people are now people who have a say too -> people don't care anymore

I wouldn't even consider this timeline simplified. It literally is what happened :O
 
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I don't necessarily believe that first sentence. Where are the "facts" to back that up, hmmm?
I don't understand your confusion. Allow me to copy the quote from the first post.
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.
That seems pretty straight-forward to me. Are you calling the guy a liar just because you don't like the results of his study?
 
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nigga please, your making us conservatives bad, 5% is a big difference when it comes to billions
Perhaps. Two problems with the whole thing, though. First, it's being advertised by the lefties as the solution to the problem. 5% might be a step in the right direction, but it's not "the solution" by any stretch. Second, as I've mentioned about 20 times now, we've got almost 6 decades of data that shows that the 5% solution will most likely generate additional spending rather than solve anything. So, "The Solution" is a drop in the bucket at best and based on decades of evidence most likely ends up resulting in a step in the wrong direction.

That's not much of a real difference, nigga.
 
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The guy is a member of the Independent Institute, a political libertarian organization. So yeah, his study is suspect as pure political fodder.

But more logically. He is ASSUMING there is a cause and effect between increased taxes and increased spending, according to an assumed behavior of politicians. To me it looks like purely theory, without more facts to back up a theory of cause and effect. Not surprising, that conclusion is just a restatement of rightwing dogma…
 
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I'm actually mostly on-board with you up to this point. The key problem, taken straight from the first passage I quoted, is that Congress (and the lefties being tremendously good at spending money they don't have doesn't mean the righties are completely innocent either, see Dubya Dark Ages) has shown for several decades that they never found a dollar they couldn't spend. You can find several posts of mine where I've said that I'd be fine with a tax increase as long as it was 100% guaranteed to go 100% toward the national debt. That's the rub, which is exactly why I posted it.

Well, if that's the case, then we're in agreement on this particular point.

I'll skip giving your overly-entitled butt a good spanking over this because the whole class warfare argument is incidental to the discussion. Evidence shows that you can steal every dollar you want from the rich and all Congress does is spend more. It's simply not a solution, regardless of where you stand on the whole class warfare thing...
...Every time tax code reform gets brought up, it gets shot down within seconds, by the lefties. Why is that? I agree with what you're saying. Way too many loopholes in both the personal and corporate codes. So why not clean it up? My personal theory is that our government is made up of lawyers and accountants. Who directly makes their living off complicated tax code? Accountants and tax lawyers. Crooked bastards are smart enough not to cut their own throats, I guess. No real evidence to back that theory up, but it certainly fits the evidence. As to why it's the lefties shooting it down (you'd think the righties would be all over it "to protect their corporate overlords", but somehow it doesn't work that way), only thing I can come up with is that it would make their class warfare mantra much harder to promote if taxation is simple nd fair and cost them votes.

First off, you're going to "spank my overly-entitled butt?" Sorry, my friend, but I gave 5 years of my life to the United States Marine Corps, with 3 combat tours thrown in for good measure. Everything I get from here on out, I've earned as far as I'm concerned. Do we have issues with entitlement programs in this country? Of course we do. But the "entitlement programs" aren't what fucked everything up 2 years ago, took billions of dollars of TARP money, and wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars of middle class retirement funds. You say class warfare is incidental to the discussion, but I disagree. I think the upper 10% hasn't bled nearly as much as the bottom 90%, and one of the first steps we should be taking to rectify the situation we find ourselves in is to make the "elite" play fair. It's going to require a combination of Republican and Democratic strategies: We need to pass laws restricting what the federal government can spend money on, and we need to bring in more revenue via closing tax loopholes and a modest tax increase, aimed at corporations and individuals who can obviously bear the burden. Anybody who thinks we can get out of this mess (I'm looking at you, John "Boner") without taxation is delusional.

And I'd like to see some evidence that it's the "lefties" that are always blocking tax code reform.
 
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The guy is a member of the Independent Institute, a political libertarian organization. So yeah, his study is suspect as pure political fodder.

But more logically. He is ASSUMING there is a cause and effect between increased taxes and increased spending, according to an assumed behavior of politicians. To me it looks like purely theory, without more facts to back up a theory of cause and effect. Not surprising, that conclusion is just a restatement of rightwing dogma…

I happen to agree with that assumption. It's not that big of a leap, if you think about it. The more money you make, the more you start to look around for things to buy. All you have to do is look at American saving habits, and how they've changed in the last 40 years. Our culture of acquisition and self-gratification doesn't stop at the Capitol steps.
 
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If you buy that theory, then when you decrease taxes then spending should go down. It didn't during the Bush years. So I think the conclusions are ancedotal. Spending going up when the economy/population grows I think is much more contributing factor than tax rates.
 
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No such assumption. There's absolutely no cause-effect listed. It's simply a fact that every time in the last 60 years there was a $1 increase in taxes, there was a $1.17 increase in spending. As far as the study is concerned, spending could have increased because of the phase of the moon when taxes went up. Of course, there's really no need for a cause-effect on this one since I don't think even you would try to hang an argument on claiming 60 years of coincidence.

It's hard numbers, Thrasher, so I don't know why you're fighting it. Well, actually I do know why, but it's clearly a lost cause.
 
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If you buy that theory, then when you decrease taxes then spending should go down. It didn't during the Bush years. So I think the conclusions are ancedotal. Spending going up when the economy/population grows I think is much more contributing factor than tax rates.

I can see where you'd make that assumption, but again; look at the spending habits of Americans, and you can see why government spending doesn't go down. We're notoriously bad for living outside of our means, and our government is no different. People get credit cards and loans for things they can't afford, and then they shift those balances to other loans and credit cards to make payments, and before you know it, they're bankrupt. Our government is no exception, save for the fact that they have the ability to print more money.
 
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