Why is that scary? Because cutting taxes as a policy to fix our ills, doesn’t work.
According to the Orange County Register, “For the past two years, a family of four earning the median income has paid less in federal income taxes than at any time since at least 1955, according to the Tax Policy Center. All federal, state and local taxes combined are a lower percentage of per-capita income than at any time since the 1960s, according to the Tax Foundation. The highest income-tax bracket is its lowest since 1992. At 35 percent, it’s well below the 50 percent mark of much of the 1980s and the 70 percent bracket of the 1970s.”
The problem is that the tax cuts have not promoted economic growth and have caused the federal deficit to explode, “Those lower taxes have helped give the U.S. government the lowest revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product of seven industrialized countries surveyed in 2010 by the Congressional Research Services. (The other countries were Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and France.) The U.S. also had the lowest spending as a percentage of the GDP. But with the biggest gap between revenues (31.6 percent of GDP) and expenditures (42.2 percent of GDP), the U.S. also posted the largest deficit as a percentage of GDP – 10.5 percent.”
No conservative would dare give Obama credit. Is Obama a noble enough leader to decline ownership of the tax cutting title?
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
That should have been to Joel, not Phil
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Yeah here’s the problem with your contention, Joel.
New Jersey instituted a millionaires tax a few years ago. There was no appreciable exodus of millionaires/billionaires from New Jersey.
Secondly, your side of the spectrum argues that cutting taxes on the rich will lead to more jobs and economic prosperity for everyone else.
The years 2000-2011 prove the bullshit that claim is.
We have a rather large deficit. If you and your side want spending cuts to deal with it…then your side can compromise and increase taxes on the rich that your side has been cutting for decades without delivering any of the results your side said tax cuts would result in.
Considering your side says “we all have to sacrifice”
Well…guess what…ask the rich and businesses to sacrifice.
Then start cutting the military and all the corporate welfare your side loves to give out.
In other words…your side needs to quit asking only the poor and the middle class to sacrifice.
The rich got us into this damn mess by and large, they can damn well help get us out of it.
And if you think I have been snarky, then Phil I have to say you have no idea what me being snarky actually is.
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Well Nick, it appears you were more interested in making snarky comments instead of really looking at what I said in my first paragraph. Hauser’s Law: http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/5728
By the way, I never said their taxes were too high. I just don’t think it’s the solution.
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Last time anybody checked, tax cuts were discovered to do exactly nothing toward fighting any fire.
Got any better idea?
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Joel writes:
The point I’m trying to get across is that raising taxes is not going to solve the problem because lowering taxes did not cause it. Government spending has got to be cut.
Really? Lowering taxes did not cause, in part, the problem? THen pray tell why did we have a budget surplus before Bush cut the taxes on the rich?
Noone here, Joel, is arguing that one should only raise the taxes on the rich. SO pray tell why do you and your side have such a mental block when it comes to the idea that the solution is to 1: raise taxes on the rich and 2: cut spending?
THe claim that cutting taxes didn’t contribute to the problem is made by those with a serious lack of grasp on reality. Let us know when you and your side want to start dealing with reality, Joel, then you’ll be worth listening to. Until then let the adults fix the problems your side created.
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Gee, Joel, if you increased taxes on the rich to the rates they were during Clinton’s presidency not only would you bring in more revenue but it also means the cuts wouldn’t have to be as painful.
Sorry, when your side of the argument have cut the taxes on the rich to a third of what their former rates were your side loses credibility in saying that taxes are too high on them.
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I have to agree with Phil and James. Increasing taxation is not going to stop the deficit or bring in needed revenue. Tax revenues follow GDP on average 19.5% of GDP (see Hauser’s Law). Right now our government is spending nearly 24% of the GDP. You cannot spend more than you bring in.
The wealthy already pay the most in taxes. The top 1% earn about 15% of all income but pay 38% of all taxes. The top 5% (which includes the top 1%) pay 59% of all taxes. The bottom 50% of Americans are only paying 2.7% of all tax revenue. (nonpartisan figures from National Taxpayers Union)
You want places to make cuts? There is egregious bloat and waste in government. Per a report released in March this year from the nonpartisan GAO, there is an estimated $100-200 billion in waste. What are we doing in Lybia? and why?
When individuals have more month than the end of their paycheck, they have to make reductions in their spending. Sometimes those reductions are in very difficult areas to make.
The point I’m trying to get across is that raising taxes is not going to solve the problem because lowering taxes did not cause it. Government spending has got to be cut.
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To which, if I was President, I would point out all the tax hikes that His Messiah Reagan and the elder Bush did.
Because funny enough…according to the polls the people want the taxes on the rich to be hiked.
SO between that and the Republican plan regarding medicare I’d be constantly attacking the Republicans.
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The irony of this is that if he simply lets the Bush tax cuts expire the Republicans will then be able to paint him as the largest tax-raiser in history.
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Actually I’ll make this simple for you, Phil.
Your party says we all need to make sacrifices.
Okay…you can point out what sacrifices the Republicans are asking the rich and businesses to make right? Specific examples with sources cited, thank. Oh…and nonpartisan sources please.
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Phil writes:
What gave the government the lowest revenues was a huge recession so there wasn’t as much money to tax. Even property values took a tumble (arguably a huge part of what caused the recession … over-inflated property prices in a top-heavy market with too many high-risk loans … being traded as securities).
When the top 10% is paying over half the tax revenue in the country, and they make a lot of their money off of the market, business, and real-estate deals, it doesn’t take much of a drop in their incomes to have a huge impact on revenues.
The recession started in 2008. The Republicans were running up the budget into the red and the deficit up by 2002. Would you like to try that explanation again?
And the rich are the only ones who have seen their incomes INCREASE over the last 10 years. So again, your explanation doesn’t hold water.
The rich used to be taxed at 90% when Eisenhower was President. Since then their taxes are about a third, if that, of that rate. Tell us, Phil, when have we cut their taxes enough? Indeed Paul Ryan wants to use his little plan to give the rich another trillion dollars in tax cuts. When have we cut their taxes enough or too far? The fact is that since the tax rate on the rich used to be 95% and its not even a third of that now makes any claim that their taxes are too high pure and utter bullshit.
You’re wrong, Phil. We don’t have a spending problem. We have a revenue and spending problem. Your party isn’t actually interested in solving the problem until your party agrees to start restoring taxes on the rich to pre-Bush levels. Considering we had a budget surplus until your party foolishly cut taxes on the rich and started two wars it decided to put on credit card…the middle class and the poor should be the ones to sacrifice and the rich shouldn’t have to sacrifice a damn thing why?
And until your party starts cutting the military and all that corporate welfare that your party loves to give out there is no reason to consider you or your party serious. Do remember that it was Dick Cheney who said “deficits don’t matter.” And I don’t remember you or any other Republican objecting to that then.
So until you and your party are willing to actually sacrifice from the things your party cares about what you or your party blathers about the deficit doesn’t hold any water.
So put up or shut up, Phil.
Oh and by the way..kindly don’t engage in tentherism. Since that view of the 10th amendment has never been held valid there’s no reason to actually acknowledge it much less bow to it.
Or to put another way…your view of what the federal government should do or was meant to do is bupkus.
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Phil, if tax cuts to the rich would save the nation, we should be in clover by now. Obama’s being the greatest tax cutting president in history, and the sour economy dragging on, only indicates that tax cuts are NOT what our economy needs right now.
The top 10% should pay over 50% of the tax revenue when they make over 50% of the money, certainly. The very rich owe more to the gifts they receive from this nation than the poor and middle class, don’t you think?
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(besides, if you triple prices and then have a 50% off sale…)
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What gave the government the lowest revenues was a huge recession so there wasn’t as much money to tax. Even property values took a tumble (arguably a huge part of what caused the recession … over-inflated property prices in a top-heavy market with too many high-risk loans … being traded as securities).
When the top 10% is paying over half the tax revenue in the country, and they make a lot of their money off of the market, business, and real-estate deals, it doesn’t take much of a drop in their incomes to have a huge impact on revenues.
By spending way more money on way more things that the Federal Government was ever supposed to spend and relying on a small pool of the very wealthiest people to fund it, any dip in the economy is going to cause mind boggling deficits … especially if you were deficit spending to begin with. Right now, for every $1 we spend, we are borrowing 40 cents, and we’re spending 188 Million dollars an hour.
Our government does not plan for rainy days. It buys today’s votes with the next generation’s money. And maybe the next one’s, too.
We do not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.
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Yes, why can’t we be more like Europeans? That’s the ticket!
There was a time that government consumed 3% of GDP. Then Wonder Boy, and his successor, FDR, fixed the country and and left mind parasites in conservative brains too.
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[…] …when he’s making a mistake. […]
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