This is both an interesting, and scary graph. The most important thing to me is not just the sheer magnitude of the Obama deficits, but the respective trends of both administrations.
Note that the Bush deficit was decreasing every year until 2008, when it got hammered by the TARP (at least I’m assuming that’s the cause, though it could also be a result of the slowing economy throughout the year, not to mention Congressional spending increases under the Democrats starting in late 2007). Note also that this was happening despite the evil Bush “tax cuts” (which obviously weren’t really tax cuts — they were just tax rate cuts that actually were reducing the deficit, despite the out-of-control spending by the Republican Congress).
In contrast note that the Obama plan is ever-increasing deficits after 2012, whether you believe administration or CBO projections. And though they decrease in the near term, they never get as low as the worst Bush deficit before they start to sky rocket in the teens. This, simply put, is fiscal insanity. And increasing taxes on “the rich” (as they’d surely love to do if they could get away with it) isn’t an option. There simply isn’t enough money there, and if there were, it would tank the economy even more, with even larger deficits from reduced tax receipts and automatic increases in non-discretionary wealth transfers. Also, estimate the integral under the curve. That’s an accumulating debt, with an ever-increasing proportion of the deficit going to interest, particularly when people become reluctant to loan money to a budding Weimar at low rates.
People who will be protesting on Wednesday won’t be protesting against a party. They’ll be protesting against a government completely out of control. But unfortunately for the Democrats and the left, they will be seen as the much larger part of the problem, because the Republicans are now at least giving lip service to reduced spending and reduced government. But they’re going to have to work very hard to live down their spending spree of the “compassionate conservative” (read, “progressive lite”) Bush years.
[Evening update]
“Liberal doughboys afraid of tea parties.”
Liberal bloggers and media groups can’t get the Tea Party phenomenon out of their heads. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, to them. Ordinary people getting together to protest against the liberal establishment. There is a cognitive disconnect. There must be a plot; the vast right-wing conspiracy at work.
So true to form, Media Matters sounded the horn that this was not a real protest, it’s a Fox News segment. Kind of a made for T.V. reality show, with a cast of tens of thousands. Think Progress joined in with “Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests.”
And the netroot blogosphere heard the call. FireDogLake proprietor Jane Hamsher posted “What Part of ‘FNC TAX DAY TEA PARTIES’ Don’t You Understand?” Hamsher also promoted “citizen-organized protests” which were unlike the “Fox-organized” Tea Parties; I guess she didn’t catch the irony of promoting counter-protests to protest other people promoting protests. Anyway, almost no one showed up for the counter-protests.
Gee, I think I have one of those in comments.
[Monday morning update]
More tea-party panic:
What’s the big deal? ACORN, MoveOn, and Soros get to pull puppet strings year after year, and that’s ok. But God forbid Fox News puts so much as its imprimatur on Tea Parties! No way! That’s too sinister, too insidious; and makes the whole movement illegitimate and inauthentic. Whatever…
Jane Hamsher and Oliver Willis are probably asking “Who the hell are this Tea Party bunch? Where did they come from?” I’ll tell you who they are, Jane and Oliver. They’re your worst nightmare: they’re small-governmenters first and party-loyalists second.
And we’re not laughing with you, Jane and Oliver. We’re laughing at you.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
More on Crazy Jane and the other panicked and paranoid leftists (like my commenter):
She’s implying because freedomworks listed the Texas Tea parties and Dick Armey is part of freedomworks that the Tea Parties, Houston in particular, are being organized by “Corporate lobbyists”. Houston Tea Party has never spoken with Freedomworks or Dick Armey, though we do know that Freedomworks has offered legal advice to different Tea parties, we’ve not sought it. None of that should imply they are running the show unless you go to the point of just making stuff up.
The “Corporate lobbyist” line is a laugh. Felicia is a local Mother of two who worked with some local grassroots groups like Raging Elephants. I was someone who was trying to be apolitical the past 4 years until I took a good look at was going on, and I was laid off last week and currently unemployed. There are other organizers and volunteers with us. None of them come close to the description “Corporate Lobbyist”.
And no, this woman is nuts, Fox News is not organizing the Tea Parties, they’re just jumping on board (like a lot of people are trying to). But she’s seeing Dick Armey and Fox News as the boogeymen in the closet…
So… I’ve had my LMAO moment for the day. How about you? 🙂
Edit: More on this silliness:
If we’re being organized by “corporate lobbyists” then where the heck is my check?
Yeah, me too. How do I get in on this hot “corporate lobbyist” action?
The 2009 deficit was well over a trillion before Obama even took office.
Lobbyists like Dick Armey can organize astroturf stunts like the tea parties all they want. But they don’t have any answers; they just want more tax cuts for their corporate clients.
Lobbyists like Dick Armey can organize astroturf stunts like the tea parties all they want.
That’s one of the most hilariously stupid things you’ve posted here, and that’s a pretty high bar.
Are you saying that Dick Armey and other lobbyists aren’t involved in organizing the tea parties?
Are you seriously arguing from the position that the Bush tax cuts or something similar should or will be around in the future? Everything you said in this post is based on that assumption.
I am saying that the tea parties would be happening regardless of what “Dick Armey and the other lobbyists” were doing, despite your hilarious whacked-out conspiracy theories.
Are you seriously arguing from the position that the Bush tax cuts or something similar should or will be around in the future?
There were no Bush “tax cuts.” They were actually tax increases, if one looks at the actual change in revenue.
But yes, I am arguing that lower tax rates are better for the economy.
The 2009 deficit was well over a trillion before Obama even took office.
You mean the budget deficit that was approved by the Reid-Pelosi congress, right? And you really believe a lame duck that you on the Left did everything to prevent from being effective should (or could) have done more about stopping that? But you have no problem with the massive increase that the Magic Teleprompter proposes? What a hypocrite you are.
The 2009 deficit is huge because revenue falls and spending rises in a recession. That’s what Obama inherited.
As for Bush’s “tax increases” — compared to what? Do you really think revenue would have been lower if the Clinton-era tax rates had been retained? If so I have a perpetual motion machine to sell you….
If tea parties would be happening without Freedom Works and the like, why is it falling to Freedom Works to organize them, publicize them, etc?
Do you really think revenue would have been lower if the Clinton-era tax rates had been retained?
If so I have a perpetual motion machine to sell you….
Then you know a lot more about physics than you do about economics.
If tax rate cuts reliably increased revenue, everyone would be for them — they’d be free money. There’d have been no reason for Reagan and Bush to stop where they did — why not drop rates even further and watch the extra revenue roll in?
But there’s no free lunch. If you cut tax rates you pay fiscally, and if you raise tax rates you pay politically. Pretending otherwise is a Madoff-style swindle: “Give me my tax cut, and I promise you’ll end up with even more money!” The benefit to high-income taxpayers is real and paid up front; the revenue boost is something you have take on faith.
If tea parties would be happening without Freedom Works and the like, why is it falling to Freedom Works to organize them, publicize them, etc?
If protests against the Iraq War would have been happening without Moveon, Code Pink, International A.N.S.W.E.R and the like, why did it “fall to them” to organize them, publicize them, etc.?
If tax rate cuts reliably increased revenue, everyone would be for them — they’d be free money. There’d have been no reason for Reagan and Bush to stop where they did — why not drop rates even further and watch the extra revenue roll in?
Partly because they wouldn’t have been able to get much lower rates (Reagan in particular, since he never had a Republican Congress). But also because there is a lower limit at which cutting tax rates does start to result in revenue loss. It depends on where you believe we are on the Laffer curve. Obviously both zero rates and a hundred percent rates result in zero revenue, so there’s a maximum in between.
The benefit to high-income taxpayers is real and paid up front; the revenue boost is something you have take on faith.
No faith required; history demonstrates it.
Actually, the biggest scare in the last year or so has been “deflation.” With both stock market drop and house price drop (even if housing should be down) the thought was that deflation was causing the drop in monetary wealth. Since more voters owe money than those with significant capital, this cannot be allowed.
When gold started dropping from over $1000 to less than $900 in the first week of March, this allowed cover for more inflation. The government does not want another 1930s deflation where the banks end up “owning everything.”
The problem for most of us isn’t government spending, it’s government waste. I was told that the Panama Canal expansion is to cost $5.2 billion. Even if it costs $10 billion, the Panamanians will have something to show for it. Unlike us, who are wasting the same amount for ACORN!!!! (yes Jim, that insult is at you!)
That is the real reason for the graph above, and why the tea parties are occurring. If we could spend 5.2 billion or 10 billion for a third interstate around Chicago, I could buy it. We don’t have the money for human waste and corruption so rampant in D.C.
And we don’t have the growth infrastructure when taxes and regulation are out of sight to ignore this waste. So people are justified starting tea parties and going Galt. And that’s reality, Jim.
Rand: You still haven’t answered why Congress wouldn’t be unanimously in favor of lower tax rates, since (in your fantasy world) it would give them more money to spend.
No faith required; history demonstrates it.
History demonstrates no such thing, because it does not tell us what revenue would have been in the alternate scenario. Over the past thirty years the highest marginal top rates have coincided with the best fiscal performance; but instead of concluding that “history demonstrates that higher rates raise more revenue” you conclude the opposite. History is not going to convince anyone when you can make the road not taken look like whatever you want.
Next you say that there’s a point below which tax rate cuts do cost revenue; why is it so hard to believe that Reagan and Bush both crossed that line?
Scott: The bulk of the federal government’s spending is defense, social security, medicare and medicaid. “Waste” is a convenient whipping boy, but that isn’t where the money is. The GOP pseudo budget proposal included all sorts of wishful thinking spending cuts, and even then forecast a 2009 deficit within 10% of the one we’ll actually get. ACORN has nothing to do with it (I asked previously for evidence that the ARRA funds ACORN; I don’t recall a response).
Rand: ANSWER, MoveOn, and CodePink are not lobbyists funded by corporations with a huge financial interest in lower tax rates. Freedom Works is like the pretend terrorists in “Die Hard” — making noises about ideology, while working for their payday.
Next you say that there’s a point below which tax rate cuts do cost revenue; why is it so hard to believe that Reagan and Bush both crossed that line?
Because there’s zero evidence for it. Look at the graph above. With George Bush’s “tax cuts” the deficit continued to fall (we certainly weren’t cutting spending). By your theory, it should have risen, because of the lost revenue from the “tax cuts.”
ANSWER, MoveOn, and CodePink are not lobbyists funded by corporations with a huge financial interest in lower tax rates.
No, they’re funded by people like George Soros, who has his own financial interests. And what difference does it make who is funding it? The fact remains that there is a lot of popular anger at this insane spending. Are you seriously suggesting that there is not? And if so, are you nuts?
Jim, what part of WASTE do you not understand???? ACORN is 100% waste, regardless of what mechanism funded it. And the majority of the 700+ billion “bailout” this year was WASTE!!! That is the major reason for the 1.7 billion above. The graph would look much more acceptable (<1 trillion) without it.
What about the out years after 2012? Blame that on Bush, even though Pelosi and Reid have controlled Congress since 2006. Come on Jim, your guys can do better, except they haven’t found a spending program other than defense that they can cut. And they have no clue on how to grow anything except tax rates for the “rich,” which is now approaching anyone with a heart beat.
Because they’re no smarter than you are?
Rand: I posit that the Bush deficits would have been much lower if he hadn’t cut tax rates. The CBO (source for your graph) agree. Why do you think the cuts will expire in 2011? Because if they’d been passed as permanent cuts Bush would have had to own up to even larger deficit projections.
I would expect people upset about this “insane spending” to disapprove of Obama’s performance. Yet his approval ratings remain in the 60s, where they’ve been since he was sworn in. His disapproval number is about 30, which is about what Bush’s approval number was when he left office. So big surprise — the people who liked Bush don’t like Obama. You see popular anger, I see sore losers backed by lobbyist money, trying to look like a spontaneous movement. For pete’s sake, the chicagoteaparty.com website was registered in 2008!
Scott: Show me evidence that ACORN wastes an interesting amount of federal money. Or that most of the ARRA spending will be wasted. Note the future tense. ARRA includes $550B of spending, spread over two years, so stimulus spending it is not responsible for anything close to $700B of the 2009 deficit. The GOP stimulus proposal (permanent tax rate cuts for the wealthy) would have increased the deficit by trillions more.
they haven’t found a spending program other than defense that they can cut
Obama is proposing an increase in defense spending.
the “rich,” which is now approaching anyone with a heart beat
Do you think that more than 2% of Americans make more than $250,000? Or do you think that 98% of taxpayers don’t have a heart beat? What’s your definition of rich?
McGhee: Right — Dems in Congress aren’t smart enough to spot a chance to give trillions in tax cuts to their biggest donors, spend trillions more on their pet projects, and do it all without increasing the deficit. What will the GOP do once word finally gets out?
Jim,
At my name is a link from the Wall Street Journal on what’s wrong with ACORN. Don’t say that it is right wing propaganda – the Journal editorial pages are (now) middle of the road. And this was before the election.
“It’s about time someone exposed this shady outfit that uses government dollars to lobby for larger government.” That’s why its 100% waste. And now we give ~5 billion to them. Sorry, you defend the indefensible here. This is not constitutional spending.
Like my old Illinois senator Everett Dirkson said (before inflation)… “a million here, a million there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.” Have you’ve been reading InstaPundit and all his comments about Porkulus? Don’t say that it’s only 550 billion for ARRA – count everything please.
And Jim, finally stop trying to play gotcha. Of course, defense spending might be going up – gee, maybe due to inflation? What is the % increase in one of the only legitimate Federal responsibilities vs. the % in pork? When you show me true reductions in Federal spending for items that are not in the Constitution, I’ll listen. But you can’t.
Why do you think the cuts will expire in 2011?
Because Democrats run the Congress, and they hate the idea of people keeping more of their own money, even if it means increased government revenues. Remember in the debates when Senator Obama said that he would increase capital gains taxes, even if it resulted in decreased revenue, because it had to be done in the name of “fairness”?
I do, even if you want to feign amnesia.
Scott: The WSJ article does not say anything about ACORN using government money to lobby for larger government. Nor does it say anything about $5 billion — you’re just making stuff up.
Instapundit can get all worked up about earmarks and ARRA, but it doesn’t change the fact that earmarks are a tiny fraction of the budget and ARRA’s $550B in spending over two years, not the $700B in one year that you claimed. Look it up!
Rand: It wasn’t Democrats who put an expiration date on the Bush tax cuts, it was Bush and a GOP Congress in 2001 and 2003, because they wanted to minimize the projected long-term deficit impact. Get it? Even they knew that they were increasing the deficit.
As for Obama’s comment, he wasn’t interested in getting into an argument about short vs. long term capital gains tax revenues. You can boost revenues in the short term by temporarily cutting capital gains tax rates — people with appreciated assets will grab the chance to sell. But if you’d left the rates alone they would have been sold eventually, and there would have even more revenue. Like a good politician, Obama changed the subject to a simpler and more compelling argument: that it’s unfair to tax unearned income less than earned income. I don’t for a second believe that Obama thinks he could raise more revenue in the long term by dropping capital gains taxes.
[Democrats] hate the idea of people keeping more of their own money
Geez, what color is the sky on your planet? Do you think Democrats have horns and tails too? Democrats would love to have more revenue to spend. Democrats don’t hate people who are rich — they ask them for campaign donations. I’ve got the phone calls and letters to prove it.
To clarify: the WSJ article asserts that ACORN “uses government money to lobby for larger government” but does not offer evidence to support the claim. They report that ACORN has received government money, and that ACORN lobbies the government, but not that the one paid for the other. You could just as well claim that GM and Lockheed Martin use government money to lobby the government.
Most of the WSJ article is hysterics about “voter fraud”, by which they mean ACORN employees defrauding ACORN by filing bogus registration forms — a phenomenon that has no effect on elections. And if this article is supposed to show government waste — come on! The biggest grant they could find was $16 million over 10 years. That’s less than 1 millionth of the federal budget. It wouldn’t even cover Sarah Palin’s road to nowhere (the $25M road she built to access the non-existent “Bridge to Nowhere”). Surely you can come up with a bigger target than ACORN.
Rand: It wasn’t Democrats who put an expiration date on the Bush tax cuts, it was Bush and a GOP Congress in 2001 and 2003, because they wanted to minimize the projected long-term deficit impact.
No, they put an expiration date on it because it was the only way they could get it past a Senate that was essentially tied. But please, keep rewriting history. And beclowning yourself here.
You could just as well claim that GM and Lockheed Martin use government money to lobby the government.
You think they don’t? Did you know that “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?
Jim,
I’m done with you. Rand needs to kick you out.
By your own admission, ACORN is getting government funds. The last number I saw was 5 billion during the 700 billion package that was passed with Olympia Snow, Specter, and Collins support. Maybe it turned out to be less, but if it’s even one dollar, it’s wrong.
I did not claim that the WSJ said 5 billion. But my direct quote was taken from the article. I copyed and pasted it, and went back to check. It’s still there.
I can’t argue with fools anymore.
Do you think Democrats have horns and tails too?
No, I just think they’re susceptible to the very human failing of envy.
Democrats would love to have more revenue to spend.
Obviously, they have conflicting values. Plus, like you, they’re economically ignorant.
Democrats don’t hate people who are rich — they ask them for campaign donations. I’ve got the phone calls and letters to prove it.
Of course they like rich people who give their money to Democrats. What’s your point?
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/var/plain/storage/images/media/obama_index_graphics/obama_index_april_12_2009/213308-1-eng-US/obama_index_april_12_2009.jpg
You are smoking crack.
“I would expect people upset about this “insane spending” to disapprove of Obama’s performance. Yet his approval ratings remain in the 60s, where they’ve been since he was sworn in. His disapproval number is about 30, which is about what Bush’s approval number was when he left office.”
The above graph was a response to the above quote.
Obama is about to sink under 50% Jim. A long way to the bottom and plenty of time to get there.
Back to the topic of tea party organizing…I know the guy who’s organizing the Denver event, and never once have I heard him mention Freedom Works, Dick Armey, or any corporations/foundations being the “real” organizers behind any of it.
What I have heard him say is that he gets constantly hectored by those who support the tea party idea, but blame the Republican and Democrat parties equally, and get incensed whenever they hear somehow that the state or national GOP might be calling the shots (example: the state GOP posted some verbiage on its website that implied it was sponsoring the Denver event, and it took him much effort over several days to calm the activists down).
This assertion that the tea party movement or any organizing or activism from the right cannot not be paid for by Big Corporations We Don’t Like(tm) and masterminded for the unthinking right-wing rubes by the strategeric geniuses in the command-and-control center deep in the bowels of Castle Rove is, as others have been pointing out lately, nothing but projection. The left gets support from wealthy donors like Soros, Bridges, Stryker, Gill, et al, and has a centralized messaging and coordination infrastructure the likes of which even Karl Rove, Dick Armey, and Grover Norquist could only dream of, but they assume that since the right is evil, they must have all that the left has and more.
And don’t bother, Jim, calling this hyperbole or paranoid fantasies or whatever dismissal you’ve already devised for a reply — the aforementioned infrastructure is all documented in Matt Bai’s “The Argument”, and in Fred Barnes’ article “The Colorado Model” in the Weekly Standard last August. And it’s been publicly acknowledged by the participants. And it seems a new head of the messaging hydra pops into public view every couple of weeks lately (e.g. the CAP breakfasts and Journo-List).
To complete the thought about the Denver event, the activists here are very sensitive about a party or individual or organization hijacking the tea party phenomenon for their own ends. If there was any indication that the Denver event was an exercise in astroturfing, they would be raising quite a stink about it.
I have read online similar stories about tea parties in other cities.
[I seem to arrive at these conversations so late]
“You could just as well claim that GM and Lockheed Martin use government money to lobby the government.”
Rand:
You think they don’t? Did you know that “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?
No, but a serendipitous side effect of tax dollars paid to GM and Lockheed Martin is the production of tangible, apolitical goods.
The impetus for the tea party in my own community is being provided by students attending three colleges in the area.
Scott: Should Rand kick out anyone who calls you on your made-up facts? The $5B for ACORN is a fantasy.
Mike: Look at more than one poll. Gallup reports today that “Over two-thirds of Americans (71%) have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in President Obama to do the right thing for the economy.” NYT/CBS reported April 7 that Obama had 66% approval, 24% disapproval. The RCP average of polls (including yours) has Obama at 60/30.
Rand: If Bush’s tax cuts had been projected to be revenue-neutral, much less revenue-enhancing, they would not have been subject to PAYGO rules, and wouldn’t have needed expiration dates. They do because everyone knew that they were revenue-negative. Remember, these were the projections of a GOP-controlled Congress.
T.L. and danae: I’m sure there are sincere people at tea parties, just not very many relative to the people who support the president’s policies. And if FreedomWorks wasn’t involved why does their website say things like:
And:
And:
And:
[Denver is on the list]
Jim, how much is Soros paying you?
Specific Question for Jim,
I make stuff for a living, all the stuff I make is built in the USA. In the last two years I’ve exported more than 1M of electronics (gross not net) built in the USA to China.
I don’t make money shuffling paper.
What is a fair total tax rate for a business man like me?
, how much of MY hard earned income should the government take? 25%,50%,75%,90%?
In Q4 2008 things were slow, so we ended up with inventory we id not sell, What do you think my marginal tax rate was on that inventory?
What tax rate will drive me to build things in Mexico and setup an offshore distribution in a low/zero tax area? Hint: how many NEW international manufacturing business are being set up in the USA?
The fundamental problem is that the government is spending 1.85T that’s 6K of credit card bills for EVERY man women and child, 6K is not the amount of government, its the amount of government debt added each year.
The current government CBO debit at the end of 2019 is > 20T (11.3 + ~9.5 from the chart) Thats 65K. Just the interest on that amount of debit will be more than 10K for a family of four.
Our est 2008 GDP is 14.5T a 1.85T deficit makes 12.7% of GDP. That number is higher than many third world economies where the IMF has had to intervene. We just can’t afford that much government.
Jim here cited presidential approval polls for Obama to support his argument. The thing is polls are bullshit. How do you know that people who answered the poll were telling the truth about what they really feel? You don’t. And in this current political climate there’s the added problem that saying you disapprove of Obama means to many people that you disapprove of a black president. A lot of people aren’t going to say that, just like a lot of people who voted against Obama have quietly removed the McCain/Palin bumperstickers from their cars rather than deal with the fallout. (Before the election I used to see tons of McCain/Palin bumperstickers when driving around Orlando. All I’ve seen since the election are the Obama ones, with the exception of one for Bob Barr.)
Anyway, you know, take those 60% approval figures with a grain of salt.
Leland: Soros doesn’t pay me anything.
Paul: The 2009 deficit isn’t Obama’s — all but $275B or so of stimulus spending was there when he arrived, and there was going to be some deficit-increasing stimulus no matter who was in the White House (the GOP proposed much larger deficits). If you really care about government waste then take a look at student loans. We could save $90B by loaning directly (as Obama proposes) rather than through middlemen (as Bush did). Naturally the middlemen are protecting their windfall. Will you hear any support for Obama’s proposal at tea parties? For that matter, were there any tea parties when Bush ran the debt up to where it is today?
Andrea: Polls predicted the election results very accurately, and they all show much stronger support for Obama than for the Congressional GOP that is opposing his policies. “You can’t trust polls” is the last refuge of someone who doesn’t like what they are saying.
Late to the party here, but I don’t think liberals are “panicked” by teaparties. They are either laughing at the folks who show up (see Maddow, Rachel) or believe that the attendees are confused / deluded / generally out of touch. For example, the Nebraska teaparty is protesting “taxation without representation.”
Except Nebraska does in fact have representation in Congress, and for 95% of Americans the policy proposed is a tax cut.
for 95% of Americans the policy proposed is a tax cut.
Please stop repeating that lie.
Rand, my source for the tax cut is here. If you have a different source, please produce it.
That chart is a lie. It does not depict tax cuts. Handing someone a check is not a tax cut.
Leland: Soros doesn’t pay me anything.
He must be paying you. That’s the only possible explanation for you doing what you do. You implied that yourself in your first comment, and then out right suggested it is the case later. Obviously people don’t do stuff like you do unless they are paid to do it. So apparently Soros is paying you, or you argument has no merit.
Rand – the chart shows tax rates. If the rates are in fact correct, then it is by definition a tax cut. You may not like what it says, and you may be even unhappier with cutting a check to refund / offset Medicare and Social Security taxes, but it is a tax rate cut.
There is absolutely no way to construe the tax rate cut as a tax rate increase for people making less then $250,000.
Until I see how those “tax rates” were derived, I continue to call bullshit. And no, cutting a check to refund/offset payroll tax is not a tax rate cut, because there is no correlation between the size of the check and the amount of payroll tax owed. To call it that is sophistry.
Well, Rand, I have no control over what you believe. But “belief” and “fact” are different things.
My belief (that you cannot cut income tax rates on people who do not pay income tax) is a fact. To pretend otherwise is demagoguery, which is how The One got elected.
Of course you can cut income tax rates on people who get full refunds. It’s not like the money wasn’t withheld from their paychecks.
Of course you can cut income tax rates on people who get full refunds.
I didn’t say you couldn’t.
Again for Jim, a very explicit question:
I make stuff for a living, all the stuff I make is built in the USA. In the last two years I’ve exported more than 1M of electronics (gross not net) built in the USA to China.
I don’t make money shuffling paper.
What is a fair total tax rate for a business man like me?
, how much of MY hard earned income should the government take? 25%,50%,75%,90%?
In Q4 2008 things were slow, so we ended up with inventory we id not sell, What do you think my marginal tax rate was on that inventory?
What tax rate will drive me to build things in Mexico and setup an offshore distribution in a low/zero tax area? Hint: how many NEW international manufacturing business are being set up in the USA?
BTW arguing that it was bad under bush is irrelevant,
I think GWB was a disaster. He too the worst parts of the Republican socal controls, and spent like a drunken sailor, it was bad really bad under bush, but this is worse. Please answer the question I asked?
Three precise answers with numbers and percent signs attached.