It's Time to Gut, Not Cut, the Federal Government

You mean like the comparisons between 8 years of Clinton, who created 23.1 MILLION jobs with Reagan-era tax rates...and 8 years of Bush who created 3 million jobs over 8 years?...after the tax cuts?... I thought tax-cuts were supposed to create jobs?

So, there is a fair comparison...

OH, and here's a site that takes the Reagan Myth on out more than 3 years:

http://www.ourfuture.org/node/66167

Isn't it amazing how the trends of the 3 years in the first graph, don't really change after 8 years....

Tax rate cuts, like the ones that Reagan initiated and the ones that Bush initiated, reduce the rates at which businesses and the populace are taxed and result 100% of the time in tax revenue increases. Not just in dollars, but also as a percentage of GDP. When you look at the tax rate cuts of Bush 43, what you find is that they resulted in an increase in revenue as a percentage of the GDP - up from 15.95% of GDP before the tax rate cuts to 18.38% of GDP within 3 years of the rate cuts being implemented. Where are Obama's figures? Down from 17.69% the year he was elected to under 15% in the here and now because he insists on engaging in class warfare and trying to get a tyranny of the majority effort underway to raise, not lower, the rate of taxation on the one segment of the economy that has capital to invest in an economic recovery. Hells Bells LJ, why would anyone want to risk their capital simply to have Uncle Sam confiscate more of it should the risk prove to be fruitful? If you are going to have to pay more in taxes, why wouldn't you simply decide to earn less? The millionaires and billionaires are already rich enough for multiple lifetimes, they don't need to earn more money, they can simply live off of the money that they have already earned. Tax rate increases never generate the amount of revenue that is claimed will be raised by increasing the rate. Remember the 10% luxury tax signed into law by Clinton? Not only did it fall far short of projected revenue, it actually cost tens of thousands of jobs as a result, and, IIRC, an overall decrease in total revenue when the lost income taxes and privilege to be employed/have employee payroll taxes from those jobs were subtracted from the revenues realized from the luxury tax itself.

The rich don't need to work to make more money and they don't need to spend the money that they have already earned. That is why class warfare tax rate increases on such a small segment of the society never generate the promised revenues and allowing everyone, including the evil rich, to keep more of the fruits of their own labor does work to increase overall tax revenues both in actual dollars and as a percentage of the union's GDP each and every time the tax rates are lowered regardless of which political party does the actual cutting of the tax rates. It worked as well for Truman and Kennedy as it did for Reagan and Bush. When tax rate cuts are accompanied by federal government spending cuts, not a slowing of the rate of increase, but an actual reduction in the amount of money spent by the federal government from one year to the next, the effects are even greater than simply cutting the tax rates are by themselves. We can see this in the huge expansions of the 1920's and immediately after the conclusion of WWII when Congress forced Truman to abandon entirely a resumption of FDR's failed "New Deal" Keynesian policies.

Obama and the tyranny of the majority Democrats are not going to get their punish the rich more tax. Either everyone gives up their Bush era tax rate reduction or no one does, that is simply the reality of the way the situation will play itself out. Either Obama and the Democrats will agree to extend all of the tax rate cuts or they will block such an extension and force a situation where the largest single tax hike in history is levied upon the citizens of the States right before a major presidential election year and during one of the worst economic recessions ever witnessed in the history of the Union as the Bush era tax rate reductions are taken away from everyone. No, the Democrats would be much better off abandoning their class warfare taxation rhetoric and donating the "hundreds of thousands of dollars" that they "don't need" to private charities than they would be trying to pass legislation which instead forces a small segment of the populace into donating it to the federal government to waste in the form of higher tax rates for that one small segment of the populace.

"tyranny"
"class warfare"
"confiscate"

...<sigh>.... The Sovereign Citizen speaks....

Doesn't change the data in the graphs that showed what the Reagan years actually did to the economy and the middle class...does it...

What has done the most harm to the middle class here is the unsustainable level of taxation required to fund the federal desire to be the central collection and distribution center of the union's charity. In my lifetime, yours as well, the excise taxes that are supposedly levied to fund the Ponzi based social programs has been raised 400% over what they were when the middle class was vibrant. When the privilege tax rates were doubled and the amount of income subject to the privilege tax was also doubled not only was the middle class the one that was hit with the 400% increase both in terms of paying higher taxes out of pocket, but also in having wage increases delayed or eliminated. That 400% increase also took away their employer based private pension plans and took the money from them that had been going into their own savings - transferring it instead to the treasury of the general government to be squandered away. And yes, most of that tax hike came during the Reagan years in an effort to stave off the fiscal insolvency of the Ponzi based social programming of FDR and LBJ and as a result of 3 or 4 years worth of double digit inflation that he was elected to put an end to - which he did. The annual inflation rate was over 13.5% the final year of Carter's (mis)administration and was cut in half by the end of Reagans 2nd year in office to just over 6% and nearly in half again, to about 3.2%, by the end of his third year in office.

The other enduring mess that Reagan signed was automatic hikes in the benefits of the Ponzi based social programs tied to inflation, this is the primary reason that these programs are fiscally unsustainable in the here and now with all of the Boomers starting to collect the benefits and why they are adding so much to our annual federal deficit. Both Social Security and Medicare require more money than the privilege taxes levied to fund them are capable of providing, or will be capable of providing without another substantial tax rate increase and raising the amount of income subject to the tax yet again. Medicare is already without a ceiling and it sucks over 45% of its money from the general fund - money which should instead be going towards roads, bridges, courts, and all the legitimate functions of government specifically outlined by the Constitution as being federal responsibilities.

You want to blame Reagan for failing to fix the inherent problems with these Ponzi based social experiments, that's fine by me. The problem, however, should have never been there to fix. The general government should never have involved itself in the individual welfare of the citizens of the States to begin with. Without those intrusions, the federal burden would be under 10% of the annual GDP of the union, as it was for the 125 years before the federal government decided to intrude into this area.

Funny how the more involved in State responsibilities the federal government has become the more damage has been done to the middle class, isn't it. Funny how the more power the federal government claims as its own, the worse off the middle class becomes, isn't it. It's almost as if the corruption which accompanies having a single entity possess plenary power is destructive of having a middle class, isn't it. Maybe that's why no central government has ever produced a vibrant middle class in the history of governance? Why having a central government inevitably results in a ruling and a peasant class? Hmmmmm . . . . maybe the way to have a strong middle class is not to have a central government with plenary powers - what do you think, LJ?

Since you state falsehoods as "facts" and then solicit comments on your falsehoods, thanks but I'll get back to flossing the cat and sorting the silverware drawer.

But you have fun with your "general government"... Zzzzzzzzz :Snooze

Your incessant lectures on Social Security are as tiresome as always. The Courts have decided differently. It's time to get over it.

What was it the courts decided about those programs again? Oh, I remember now. The taxes levied were not any different from any other tax levied by Congress and submitted to the Treasury, that Social Security was just another appropriation of Congress and that no one had a private property right to any specific benefit resulting from the payment of those taxes while employed.

Given the facts as they exist, your continued assertion that these Ponzi based social experiments don't add to the yearly federal deficit is proven to be as false as nearly everything else you contribute to the forum.

The facts as they exist are that Social Security exists; it's legal; it's solvent for the next 20 years... Get over it.

You can't possibly know how much I don't give a flip that you don't like it.

She dosn't care PS- she would rather see government grow until it's completely destroys this country.

She dosn't care what it's doing to the middle class- that our government is so big now that the country can not prosper anymore.

Just keep raising taxes- that's the answer.

I care about seeing the 1% give up a little--(operative words: "A LITTLE")--to ensure the survival of the middle-class. And you're right--I don't care about the howls of feigned-outrage from the 1% or the "suckers" who support them.