Country in the toilet and Goober Graham’s focus on NIL…

#126
#126
hog88 said:
How about cutting spending in every department/agency plus cut taxes for all? Historically revenue goes up when taxes are low and revenue declines when taxes are raised.

Plus back when the top bracket was north of 76% you could damn near wright off anything, so nobody was paying an effective rate anywhere close to 90%. I'm good with bringing back the 90% bracket as long as we bring back the allowable deductions.
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Where are you seeing that revenues historically rise and fall in correlation with taxes being low and high? That sounds like an argument that tax cuts pay for themselves via a ‘trickle down’ instead of just needlessly adding a ton to the national debt.
 
#127
#127
ukvols said:
Where are you seeing that revenues historically rise and fall in correlation with taxes being low and high? That sounds like an argument that tax cuts pay for themselves via a ‘trickle down’ instead of just needlessly adding a ton to the national debt.
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Do Tax Cuts Increase Government Revenue?

Fact Check: Higher Corporate Tax Revenue After GOP Tax Reform Debunks Another Democrat Myth - House Committee on Ways and Means

https://www.themainewire.com/2023/03/tax-cuts-increase-government-revenues-always/

In Actual Dollars, Tax Cuts Boost Revenue Time After Time

The problem has always been spending and not revenue. No matter how much revenue the federal government collects they will always spend more.
 
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#128
#128
ukvols said:
They want to lock in federal discretionary spending increases at below the rate of inflation. Discretionary spending includes thing like military salaries, grants for schools that serve the poor, rental assistance for the poor and disabled, and cancer research. They want to make these cuts while refusing to take another dollar from the top 1%.
They want to make a big cut to the IRS, which would further cripple its ability to target wealthy tax cheats.
They want to reverse tax breaks and federal spending that the Dems passed for clean energy. They also want to ease regulations on fossil fuels. In other words, they want to stick with their strategy of lying about the climate, blocking progress on dealing with it, and intentionally taking us backwards. We’re already the top exporter of liquefied natural gas and are expected to be a net exporter of crude oil this year for the first time since WW2. It’s not as if we stopped drilling for oil like some people seem to think.

This isn’t the time for these negotiations - not when the destruction of the economy is looming.
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Oh cry me a river. Spending needs to be reigned in.
 
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#129
#129
ukvols said:
This isn’t the time for these negotiations - not when the destruction of the economy is looming.
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The destruction of the economy is going to happen if these crazy lunatics in Washington don't stop the government spending. We are over $31,000,000,000,000 in debt and it climbs every minute.
 
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#130
#130
#134
#134
ukvols said:
They couldn’t have reversed the tax cuts without eliminating the filibuster.
There was a time in the 20th century when the top tax rate was above 90%. It doesn’t need to be that high, but it’s now 37%. We’re talking about people with far more money than their grandchildren could ever spend. Raising taxes on the top 1% is not going to cause inflation or lower wages. The right wing complains about the national debt whenever a Dem is in the WH. If that’s truly a concern, they should stop cutting the rich’s taxes and instead go the other way. If the goal is to pay the debt but not do it by taxing the rich, then they’re really saying they want to pay the debt by forcing the non-rich and specifically the poor to sacrifice - which would be very Republican.
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That's not quite accurate; they had the Democrat House & Senate numbers to do so under reconciliation but didn't have the Dem votes, and it wasn't just Manchin & Sinema.

No one paid anywhere near 90%, or we'd have had an economic dark ages. The U.S. doesn't exist on some isolated astral plane of economics that you can simply jack taxation without hurting your competitiveness; among OECD countries, the U.S. is only middle of the road competitively, and was even less so before the 2017 TCJA.

While we're there:
A careful analysis of the IRS tax data, one that includes the effects of tax credits and other reforms to the tax code, shows that filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $15,000 to $50,000 enjoyed an average tax cut of 16 percent to 26 percent in 2018, the first year Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect and the most recent year for which data is available.

Filers who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break of about 15 percent to 17 percent, and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw their personal income taxes cut by around 11 percent to 13 percent.

By comparison, no income group with an AGI of at least $500,000 received an average tax cut exceeding 9 percent, and the average tax cut for brackets starting at $1 million was less than 6 percent. (For more detailed data, see my table published here.)

That means most middle-income and working-class earners enjoyed a tax cut that was at least double the size of tax cuts received by households earning $1 million or more. https://thehill.com/opinion/finance...enefited-middle-working-class-americans-most/

Odd outcome for "tax cuts for the rich", and perhaps why Biden couldn't raise enough votes to reconcile repeal.
 
#135
#135
hog88 said:
Do Tax Cuts Increase Government Revenue?

Fact Check: Higher Corporate Tax Revenue After GOP Tax Reform Debunks Another Democrat Myth - House Committee on Ways and Means

Tax Cuts Increase Government Revenues – Always - The Maine Wire

In Actual Dollars, Tax Cuts Boost Revenue Time After Time

The problem has always been spending and not revenue. No matter how much revenue the federal government collects they will always spend more.
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Thank you for sharing the links.
This looks like a debate that is unsettled. It's not the clear-cut 'tax cuts don't pay for themselves' that I made it out to be; nor is it clear that cutting taxes automatically means the feds take in more cash.

The Forbes link, with the graph, shows that total federal receipts have generally risen over time, with a few dips, regardless of tax policy. It shows an increase in receipts from the first bar to the second bar between 1976 and 1980. The entire eight Reagan years, with his tax cuts, moved receipts up one more bar to the third bar, but we do get another bar during the four Bush Sr. years that followed. There is then an explosion in increased receipts during the Clinton years, despite a tax increase at the beginning that I presume was the Bush increase that hurt him politically (the 'read my lips' promise). Receipts sharply increased between 1992 and 2000 despite the top tax rate holding steady according to this graph. There are two Bush Jr. dips that are probably the dot.com bubble and/or 9/11 and then the '08 crash. Receipts bounced back from the first dip, and if the graph kept going, we'd probably see the same for the second dip. The graph doesn't appear to account for inflation, which is partially responsible for those increases in receipts. I definitely don't think the graph proves 'tax cuts mean higher receipts' like the piece's author claims.

Intuitively, a tax cut for all is going to boost the economy, at least in the short term, just by people having more money. Someone who is struggling and needs money suddenly having a little extra is probably going to spend it in the economy. What's debatable is what can be expected when the rich have even more - do they invest it in the economy? Do corporations having additional cash just mean more stock buybacks? I think the answers we get at least partially depend on where we get our news.

As for the debt ceiling 'negotiation', the GOP seems to think that just by having the House, they can achieve a result that is all take and no give, except for 'generously' allowing Biden to not have a detonation of the US economy on his record.
 
#137
#137
NCFisher said:
That's not quite accurate; they had the Democrat House & Senate numbers to do so under reconciliation but didn't have the Dem votes, and it wasn't just Manchin & Sinema.

No one paid anywhere near 90%, or we'd have had an economic dark ages. The U.S. doesn't exist on some isolated astral plane of economics that you can simply jack taxation without hurting your competitiveness; among OECD countries, the U.S. is only middle of the road competitively, and was even less so before the 2017 TCJA.

While we're there:
A careful analysis of the IRS tax data, one that includes the effects of tax credits and other reforms to the tax code, shows that filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $15,000 to $50,000 enjoyed an average tax cut of 16 percent to 26 percent in 2018, the first year Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect and the most recent year for which data is available.

Filers who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break of about 15 percent to 17 percent, and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw their personal income taxes cut by around 11 percent to 13 percent.

By comparison, no income group with an AGI of at least $500,000 received an average tax cut exceeding 9 percent, and the average tax cut for brackets starting at $1 million was less than 6 percent. (For more detailed data, see my table published here.)

That means most middle-income and working-class earners enjoyed a tax cut that was at least double the size of tax cuts received by households earning $1 million or more. https://thehill.com/opinion/finance...enefited-middle-working-class-americans-most/

Odd outcome for "tax cuts for the rich", and perhaps why Biden couldn't raise enough votes to reconcile repeal.
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Those are percentages of AGI. In total dollars, the rich got a bigger cut, because 1% of their money is worth more. This says that in 2019, the top 1% received nearly a quarter of the benefits. PolitiFact - Do 70% of the benefits from Trump's tax law benefit the wealthiest 1%, as Sen. Sherrod Brown says?

My mistake on reconciliation; I suppose it's been a few years. Perhaps a few Dems got in the way of a tax increase on the rich at the request of political donors.
 
#138
#138
It's not just me calling the GOP "hostage-takers" in regards to this debt ceiling 'negotiation'.

Matt Gaetz reportedly this week: "I think my conservative colleagues for the most part support Limit, Save, Grow & they don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage." House Republicans Pretty Much Admit They Are Taking Debt Limit ‘Hostage’

Mitch McConnell after the 2011 debt ceiling 'negotiation' while Obama was POTUS and after the 2010 midterms: "What we did learn is this - it's a hostage that's worth ransoming." The hostage McConnell sees as 'worth ransoming'
 
#139
#139
ukvols said:
Those are percentages of AGI. In total dollars, the rich got a bigger cut, because 1% of their money is worth more. This says that in 2019, the top 1% received nearly a quarter of the benefits. PolitiFact - Do 70% of the benefits from Trump's tax law benefit the wealthiest 1%, as Sen. Sherrod Brown says?

My mistake on reconciliation; I suppose it's been a few years. Perhaps a few Dems got in the way of a tax increase on the rich at the request of political donors.
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Yes, a 500K salary is larger than a 50K salary, so the actual dollars retained by the former even with much more tax liability is going to be...more.

How do you want to address the 'inequity' between a person capable of 500K income and someone who is not?
 
#140
#140
NCFisher said:
Yes, a 500K salary is larger than a 50K salary, so the actual dollars retained by the former even with much more tax liability is going to be...more.

How do you want to address the 'inequity' between a person capable of 500K income and someone who is not?
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Its why the typical cry “this tax cut benefits the rich” is stupid. Of course it does. We have a graduated system.
 
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#141
#141
NCFisher said:
Yes, a 500K salary is larger than a 50K salary, so the actual dollars retained by the former even with much more tax liability is going to be...more.

How do you want to address the 'inequity' between a person capable of 500K income and someone who is not?
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I never said it was ‘inequitable’, in and of itself, for someone to make more money than someone else. I questioned the value in insisting on giving tax cuts to people who unquestionably don’t need tax cuts.
 
#142
#142
ukvols said:
I never said it was ‘inequitable’, in and of itself, for someone to make more money than someone else. I questioned the value in insisting on giving tax cuts to people who unquestionably don’t need tax cuts.
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Need plays no role in it.
 
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#143
#143
ukvols said:
I never said it was ‘inequitable’, in and of itself, for someone to make more money than someone else. I questioned the value in insisting on giving tax cuts to people who unquestionably don’t need tax cuts.
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If lower income earners already are subsidized heavily by them, why shouldn't high earners also get a piece of tax cuts? Jobs that employ people are created by them and their spending; why treat them punitively?

Some would opine you don't need all that house, land, cars, household goodies, and could share it with 5 other families. That's where 'need' winds up.
 
#145
#145
NCFisher said:
If lower income earners already are subsidized heavily by them, why shouldn't high earners also get a piece of tax cuts? Jobs that employ people are created by them and their spending; why treat them punitively?

Some would opine you don't need all that house, land, cars, household goodies, and could share it with 5 other families. That's where 'need' winds up.
Click to expand...

I don’t think it would be punitive to simply stop giving tax cuts to the wealthiest.
 
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