OT: Raising or lowering taxes--what effect on the economy?

Mightly impressive that GW Bush's best deficit is going to equal Clinton's worst deficit.

As long as you keep judging GW Bush by Special Olympics criteria, he'll always come out a winner.

Where did you get your numbers? Because not even 80% of the American public works now.

You're also making the kind of mistake that Karl Marx made because you're not counting everything, in this case, the benefits of government spending. If you assume that there aren't any such benefits, then you should favor abolishment of the government.

Damn, boy, you is a moveon.org parrot in extremis.

The 30% tax reduction in the Reagan years resulted in a nearly 100% increase in revenue. The reason the Dafficit was so big was you damn Democan'ts spent more than one dollar for every new dollar of revenue, like it was Christmas or something.

The reason Clinton's Dafficits shrank was the 1994 Republican Contract with America where Congressional spending was finally reigned in somewhat.

Charles of Schaumburg

I never seen a group that wants to pay more taxes than the lefty liberals of this generation. Step up to the plate and pay gleefully you deserve it.

As for me, I'm on a fixed income and cannot afford higher taxes. Perhaps the dimmies will work it so you will pay my share, LOL.

We are at war.......

We never balance the budget while at war.

Clintoon was not at war (we should have been, but he is a coward...)

Hogwash, the current BUDGET deficit during time of war, is only around 2% of GNP and falling. Defects during the Clinton years, with the good economy brought on by the Reagan tax RATE cuts, averaged 2.7% of GNP.

mike hunt

The money the government spends would produce a much greater benefit to the counties economy, if spent as capital investment. The government does nothing that produces growth, because the government must first take the money from the producers and redistribute it after deducting the cost of collecting the money, which only stymies growth.

Raising tax RATES always adversely effects the economy

mike hunt

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Jeff, just admit you were mistaken when you said that home mortgage interest pays off U.S. Treasury bonds. My goodness, what an outrageous statement. I don't know where in the world you came up with that. You probably read something or heard something and misinterpreted it.

Let's take your latest rebuttal one sentence at a time: You say "Municipal bonds are paid off by local taxes, treasuries are not."

Well you are partially correct. U.S. Treasuries are not paid off by "local" taxes (you are right there). Treasuries are paid off by "federal/national" taxes. But unlike your previous posts, Treasuries are still NOT paid off by home mortgage interest. This sounds like something wacky our current President would say. I'd like to know what you read or heard to make you think that.

Let's see. Your latest rebuttal says, "Municipal bonds are paid off by local taxes." Here, too, you are partially correct. Munies are indeed paid off by local taxes *IF* they are *GENERAL OBLIGATION* municipal bonds. If, however, they are *REVENUE* municipal bonds, then those munies are definitely *NOT* paid by local taxes. General Obligation munies and Revenue munies are very different.

Jeff, you're a well-meaning Republican, so I don't want to lay into you too hard. I will just offer for your edification Marilyn Cohen's excellent book "The Bond Bible," Annette Thau's "The Bond Book," and Hildy and Stan Richelson's "Money-Making Guide to Bonds."

I think you will love those books since you obviously have an interest in things financial. Those books are where I learned a great deal of my financial knowledge. As they say, there is no substitute for "book learnin'." The web, internet, and televison can be a supplement to book learning, but they cannot take the place of books.

Oh yeah, a few days ago I mentioned William Blum's book "A Hidden History of the C.I.A." Blum's book is actually called "The C.I.A.: A Forgotten History" (it's subtitled "U.S. Global Interventions since World War 2"). And let me again recommend Jonathan Kwitny's "Endless Enemies"--what a book! Kwitny worked for the Wall Street Journal.

And how big was the deficit in the last year of the Clinton presidency?

I don't know how because I've seen only one of their commercials (showed a soldier trapped in quicksand), and most of what I've heard has been from paranoid right wingers like yourself.

But leading voodoo supply siders, like Alfred Laffer, William F. Buckly, Paul Craig Roberts, Jude Waneski, all said that there wouldn't be any deficits, even with big spending increases -- they predicted surpluses unless taxes were cut again. So what went wrong with their theory? Even Reagan's budget director said that forcasts made with supply-side model assumptions were wrong, while conventional models were right.

Having Congress and the Executive branches headed by different parties did keep spending in check. You now see what happens when one party controls both branches -- wreckless fiscal policies.

Those would be reckless fiscal policies.

They're not wreckless because they have certainly wrecked a lot of things.

Which counties? Are you referring to the ones in hurricane-stricken areas?

That's not true -- look at land grants to railroads, the Interstate Highway System, all the hydroelectric dams built in the 1920s and

1930s, the California public university system (do you really believe Silicon Valley happened only because of Stanford and CIT?). the GI Bill, and subsidies for the Internet, and all the medical research (almost all prescription drug development has been paid for by federal taxes). Maybe that's why Forbes once published an article saying that optimum economic growth occurred with government being about 23% of GDP (it's probably now around 30%, including state & local).

Again, also untrue. The tax increase of 1968 helped keep Great Society and Vietnam spending from causing even more inflation (OPEC's oil embargo and price hikes, plus Nixon's wage-price controls made inflation worse), and the tax increase bill of 1993-94 loosened credit so much that the economy grew faster (at one time in the 1980s, government did 70% of all the country's borrowing, and some businesses simply could not borrow money from any legal sources).

If GW Bush didn't occupy the White House, your tax cut in 2001 would have been a lot bigger, and Paris Hilton's would have been a lot smaller.

The Dims would have cut taxes?

ROFLMAO.....

That is the LAST thing Dims do...

and we would all be dead....thanks to having the traitor, coward Kerry as prez...

I can't wait for the democrats to once again gain control of the budget. Memories continue to be short, until it hits them in the old pocketbook, LOL.

I find it enormously funny these dimmies seem to think the tax increases that the democrats will impose is for everybody but them, LOL. I got a news for them, it's gonna be you buddy. Cheers and have a nice day.

I'm illustrating the point, the numbers are invented for that purpose only.

Having said that, our job market is churning along with more than 95% of jobs filled. That is, our unemployment rate is less than 5%, which means that everybody that wants a job has one.

I have to wonder where you get your figure that 80% of us are not working ...

Not only do we have better than 95% employment -- which by historical standards has meant full employment -- we are also keeping 12 million illegal aliens in jobs that they come here to get because they can't get a job at home.

Benefits of government spending? You've got to be kidding.

When government spends $4, the private sector could spend $1 and get more done. Assuming there are benefits of government spending, the result is a redistribution of wealth at the hands of government, and THAT my friend is Communism. Surely you do not propose that ...

What deficit? ;-) What was the surplus?

An then, what was the projected cost of the war during GWB's presidency, & how large is the running tab, as of now...? (argghhhh!)

Cathy

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