Cutting Taxes = More Jobs

Stan Croft wrote:

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4442164/patriotic-millionaires-tax-us-more/

Even some wealthy members of our society are saying lets get it right and tax us more.

Their motivation is the same as Hollywood liberals; they seek popularity and the approval of others.

American Asian wrote:

taxing what? income or consumption?

And tax revenues get spent, and so are funneled back into the economy. The money does not disappear.

Rational Economics wrote:

Government spending is generally money consumed, not saved or invested. Worse, government actions are often directly antagonistic to the productive efforts of private enterprise. The government confiscates resourses that businesses need to make the economy more productive, and uses the loot to fund activities which make the the economy less productive. Everyone loses, except government.

these are baseless claims (unless u have some #s to back it up)

Money spent by the govt ends up back in the economy and is spent again.

I am pretty glad that governments have decided to create police and fire departments, and haul away my garbage, clean the water, etc. Seems to be worth it...

i am also glad the USG has as system of contracts that is the most robust in the world. Property rights are very detailed in the US, and this IP is in the public domain. Thank god. Think of the drag on productivity if you had to pay a monopolist to enforce your contract. Nightmare...

even if it were a 90 percent top tax rate, as was the case under Kennedy, that would not mean that the rich kept 10 percent of their income. It would mean that they kept ten percent of their taxable income OVER a certain threshold. The amount under the threshold would be taxable at lower rates. So, if you had a very progressive system, you might have the first 100k taxed at 30 percent, the next 150k at 40 percent, and so forth up to 90 percent on income over 1million. There was widespread affluence and a very strong middle class when we had such progressive rates of taxation. Today top tax rates are low, unionization is weak, and the richest have a very large proportion of the total.

All jobs are fundamentally supported by private business? If you did not have government investment in research, you would have no Internet, no computers, no lasers, no gps, ....

I don't know the answer, but one thing to look at is what is the inflation adjusted income that was taxed at 90%. Perhaps the number being taxed at the 90% was so small it had no influence. Also, there are always other things affecting the economy, it is very difficult be certain of a cause and affect. I can tell you I wouldn't be risking any of my money if I was only going to keep 10%, but my losses were all mine.

jjjjjjjj wrote:

even if it were a 90 percent top tax rate, as was the case under Kennedy, that would not mean that the rich kept 10 percent of their income. It would mean that they kept ten percent of their taxable income OVER a certain threshold. The amount under the threshold would be taxable at lower rates. So, if you had a very progressive system, you might have the first 100k taxed at 30 percent, the next 150k at 40 percent, and so forth up to 90 percent on income over 1million. There was widespread affluence and a very strong middle class when we had such progressive rates of taxation. Today top tax rates are low, unionization is weak, and the richest have a very large proportion of the total.

This is it- change at home. Bring back the business taxes that make it less profitable to outsource.

Make people work for their money- sorry you poor folk, you have to work and toil because, for whatever reason, you didn't earn the right to have an "easy" job (whatever that is).

Hey rich people, for a while anyway, pay higher taxes to get the country out of debt, then, when the economy is strong we can lower your taxes.

Let's work together as Americans, not against each other as Republicans and Democrats.

You Teabaggers are so anti-American is crazy.

Face it, when W said you're with us or against us he created division- there were sides.

When Dole said they were going to make it hard for Clinton to fix the country, he created sides.

People hated Bush for everything he did- that was wrong!

They hate Obama no matter what- that is wrong!

Americans should work together to make our country stronger.

What is even more comical is how people would vote to pay for stadiums for the professional teams because they thought it would hurt their economy. Those teams pitted cities against each other. In reality, all the teams did was trick the voters into giving them welfare. Those 500 milion dollar stadiums would have cost the team about 30 million a year and their payrolls are 60-70 million. If they were really hurting that bad, all they would have to do is cut the payroll for all the teams down to 30 million a year. I am sure the players could do okay on half the salaries they are making now. The gullible people in the end voted so Joe Pro could make 5 mil a year instead of 2.5 mil a year.

There are only a limited number of cities that can support pro teams so if your city didn't cave in, they would most likely still have a team.

HGHed wrote:

Clearly there is an optimal tax rate, although nobody really knows exactly what it is.

If the tax rate were 0, the government would collect no money. If it were 100%, it would also collect no money. So I don't know what the optimal rate is, and I doubt anyone else does, but too far in one direction is not good.

You are wrong. Everybody knows about the Laffer curve. If you cut tax rates, government revenues actually go up. So if you cut the tax rate towards 0, the tax revenue naturally increases towards infinity.

Totally true. Any serious look at the last 60 years or so of American history shows--actually--far more correlation between broad economic health and HIGH upper tax rates than the reverse. The Republicans have this ONE tired issue--LOWER TAXES!!!--that is not simply an irrelevancy, but actually bad for the the overall health of our society. It's a tragic and pretty much crimial con game.

Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap.

Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all.

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning

coach d wrote:

We had a test of that cutting taxes for the rich bullshit, called the Reagan Administration. According to Standard and Poors, FEWER jobs per year were created under Reagan than under Jimmy Carter.

Economists studying the Reagan tax cuts found that the cuts, which resulted in "deficits as far as the eye could see," actually resulted in jobs being exported oversees, due to the deficits REDUCING the ability of American firms to compete.

So, tax cuts for the rich actually result in FEWER, not more jobs being created.

That's also bullsh*t in that it resulted in "deficits as far as the eye could see." At the end of Reagan's term the Top 5%, despite having a smaller tax burden, were actually paying a LARGER portion of the overall tax receipts than they were at the end of the Carter Administration. Thats right, the rich were paying more of our taxes with smaller tax rates. Mostly because there were more rich people. Yes it didnt create jobs, but it certainly didnt create the deficit either. Mad military spending did that.

The above article actually answers my question quite well, it is all a game of politics.

@Rational Economics

Why would you expand if there is no demand?

And your argument about the rich spending creates jobs is BS. Buying a yacht doesn't stimulate the economy.

You might want to read up on the Laffer curve since you have no clue what it is about. The Laffer curve does NOT say that lowering tax rates increases revenue. It says there is some rate which will maximize government revenue. Any lower rate will reduce revenue. Any higher will also reduce revenue. Tax revenue should almost always go up (larger population, inflation). And the economic cycle also plays a roll. In 2000 we collected 1 trillion dollars in individual income taxes. In 2008 we collected 1.1 trillion in individual income taxes. That is a huge drop in revenue. Or lets just look at a years after the tax cuts2000 1,004,462 million2001 994,339 millionor how about 2002 858,3452003 793,699i.e we are cutting taxes and getting less revenue. That suggest we are on the upside of the curve where increasing the rate will increase revenue.As for what that maximum for revenue, no one really knows. There have been estimates from about 35% to 65%. Note capital gains are slightly different as there is more flexibility involved in when you realize the gain.And finally, the the real question is is the goal to maximize government revenue?

Mr. Obvious wrote:

HGHed wrote:

Clearly there is an optimal tax rate, although nobody really knows exactly what it is.

If the tax rate were 0, the government would collect no money. If it were 100%, it would also collect no money. So I don't know what the optimal rate is, and I doubt anyone else does, but too far in one direction is not good.

You are wrong. Everybody knows about the Laffer curve. If you cut tax rates, government revenues actually go up. So if you cut the tax rate towards 0, the tax revenue naturally increases towards infinity.

The issue has never been about creating jobs or what tax rate is fair. The real issue is starving the Federal Government of funding so that it will one day go broke. That is why W cut taxes. He wanted to kill off as much of the Federal government as possible in favor of private enterprise. Private enterprise hates the Federal government because the Feds have a bad habit of enforcing environmental, labor, health and safety regulations and occupying areas that private enterprise would like a piece of (social security).

A debt crisis is the only way to convince people to throw granny under the bus and to trust that Walmart will keep the chicken cold enough and to have as many private contractors as soldiers in Iraq.

TAXman wrote:

@Rational Economics

Why would you expand if there is no demand?

And your argument about the rich spending creates jobs is BS. Buying a yacht doesn't stimulate the economy.

A person who buys a yacht supports the seller of the yacht, who in turn supports the manufacturer of the yacht, who in turn supports the sellers of raw materials, etc. The employees of those companies in turn spend their wages on the things they need. This is healthy spending because a rich person has the savings to fund such purchases. The US government does not have the savings to fund its spending, and only "stimulates" the economy by issuing junk bonds and debasing the currency. Your argument that the rich don't help the economy is made out of pure, envious spite.

Rational Economics wrote:

A person who buys a yacht supports the seller of the yacht, who in turn supports the manufacturer of the yacht, who in turn supports the sellers of raw materials, etc. The employees of those companies in turn spend their wages on the things they need. This is healthy spending because a rich person has the savings to fund such purchases. The US government does not have the savings to fund its spending, and only "stimulates" the economy by issuing junk bonds and debasing the currency. Your argument that the rich don't help the economy is made out of pure, envious spite.

As usual, WRONG.

The CBO estimated that out of 11 possibilities (including continuing unemployment benefits), continuing the tax cuts for the rich would be the WORST choice as far as stimulating the economy and creating jobs, because they are more likely to save their money.

Sir Lance-alot wrote:

The CBO estimated that out of 11 possibilities (including continuing unemployment benefits), continuing the tax cuts for the rich would be the WORST choice as far as stimulating the economy and creating jobs, because they are more likely to save their money.

You have a fundamentally bad orientation with reality which destroys your reasoning process. Your basic error is that that you hold the prevailing opinion of "society" as your ultimate psycho-epistemological frame of reference. What this means in layman's terms is that you substitute authority for facts and logic. It never occurs to you that the CBO could be wrong, or that there is a major conflict of interest when a government agency "estimates" the ideal rate of taxation. You'd just as soon assume that the government writes the laws of economics. You think of the government as being an omniscient, omnipotent, all-benevolent overseer of mankind whose commandments are to be accepted on blind faith. Sound familiar?

You might want to check your sarcasm detector there, chief. I don't think it is calibrated correctly.

Rational Economics wrote:

You think of the government as being an omniscient, omnipotent, all-benevolent overseer of mankind whose commandments are to be accepted on blind faith. Sound familiar?

Sounds like clueless in the "girl not allowed to run" thread!!!