What 52 Years Of Tax Cuts For The Wealthy Looks Like

[Donnachaidh]

http://front.moveon.org/what-52-years-of-tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy-looks-like/



It’s time to raise taxes for the wealthy, and stop attacking the middle class.

[EFerrari]

1. Not just the middle class, the country.

They are attacking the whole country. It's an organized attack on America.

[Hotler]

2. kicking n/t

[onehandle]

3. Yes, but you have to admit that tax cuts for the rich have benefitted us all.

After all, we have 100% employment, no poor, and a sound economy.


:sarcasm:

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. It sounds as if you don't believe in the Laffer curve.

Lower taxes mean higher revenue. This brilliant theory and "Star Wars" were features of the Reagan administration.

[toddwv]

6. Actually, I believe that the "Laffer Curve" has been proven as correct.

The only problem is that the right (and many others for that matter) forget that it is a CURVE and not a straight line.

The right's mythological Laffer "Curve" which has never been proven:



The other problem is that the curve is represented as a symmetric curve when it is actually not.



So when you hear a rightie bring up the "Laffer Curve" politely remind them that it is a curve and implies that there is a "sweet spot" of top marginal tax rate (I've seen some theories that it is around 65% in most conditions) and not a straight line.

Graphs from here:
http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2010/09/14/the-laffer-curve-debunked-part-one/?cp=2

[Lionel Mandrake]

8. Straight lines in economics are always false.

But that didn't bother the Great Communicator.



The caption reads: "Reagan gives a televised address from the Oval Office, outlining his plan for tax reductions in July 1981"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics

[Hippo_Tron]

22. I always say that the Laffer Curve is a function where if you take the first derivative

And set it equal to zero, so as to maximize the tax revenue on the y-axis, you will get an x value (marginal tax rate) that corresponds to whatever the Republicans happen to be proposing as the marginal tax rate at any given time.

It's very scientific and all...

[old mark]

11. Star Wars! IT came out as a cartoon earth, with the USA being attacked by

ballistic missiles from the evil empire. When they hit the Star Wars Protection Zone, they went "Doink" and vanished completely, just as , I am sure, they would have in real life...
That was the brilliant public information piece put out by the government for us little people's edification...

mark

[Lionel Mandrake]

13. I remember those TV ads selling "Star Wars".

People who took "Star Wars" seriously called it the "Strategic Defense Initiative" (SDI). Most physicists and engineers who looked into SDI concluded that it was bullshit.

Reagan believed Edward Teller's lies about how the research was going - especially the research on X-ray lasers. I fault Reagan for trusting Teller and ignoring the consensus among honest scientists.

Some conservatives argue that Reagan knew that SDI was bullshit, but went ahead with it in order to bankrupt the Soviets. That argument is implausible, because Reagan was too fucking stupid to think up such a scheme.

It's true that the Soviet leaders were scared to death of SDI, but they shouldn't have been.

[old mark]

19. Reagan gets way too much credit. The Soviet Union killed itself by idiotic

"planning" and huge expenditure of money needed internally for their military...sound familiar?

I wonder who will someday get credit for ending the US...


mark

[Lionel Mandrake]

25. Too much credit?

The Great Communicator could sell anything from soap to SDI to soak-the-poor economics.

[old mark]

26. How that sheepfucker ever got to be "beloved" is a tribute to his bullshit ability.

He was ready to retire and fade to obscurity when he was picked by a group of rich westerners to be governor of California and represent their interests. I never dreamed he would be elected governor, much less president. People laugh at Bachmann running, but I'm waiting till its over before I laugh too much...you can never tell.

mark

[Lionel Mandrake]

28. Reagan was genial and extroverted,

not at all intellectual, an okay TV host and movie actor who understood camera angles and could read a script. He made a perfect sock-puppet for that group of rich westerners. All it took was some PR money, and voila - beloved image of the common man who persevered and made good.

Reagan's image continues to be polished by conservative think tanks, like the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.



That's Herbert Hoover standing in front of the building known as Hoover's Last Erection.

By the way, the Hoover Institution took in Edward Teller after his retirement from the University of California (where Teller had been a pariah).

[calimary]

16. Oh yeah - I actually had that asshole tell me to my face "a rising tide raises all boats."

If it's set up your way, laffer, only in your own utopian universe.

So how come the vast majority of the boats have run aground (at least those that haven't sunk)?

[HughBeaumont]

27. The only kind of boats the "rising tide" has raised . . .. are the yachts.

[WatsonT]

18. I think the laffer curve is correct

and move obviously so at the extremes. Obviously a zero percent tax rate will yield not funds, likewise a 100% tax rate would kill the economy and yield no returns.

The debate is really over where the ideal tax rate should be and how it should be partitioned.

[Lionel Mandrake]

21. I mostly agree with you.

There would be one Laffer curve for a flat tax, and a different curve for any other way of divvying up the burden. The exact shape of the curve in any case is not obvious. Even if we knew where the peak was, we might not want to live there.

When I referred to the Laffer curve sarcastically as a brilliant theory, my point was not that it's wrong, but that it doesn't tell you anything you don't already know.

Reagan started a Republican trend of promising lower taxes for everybody, while delivering very selective tax reductions. The Laffer curve was used mainly to divert attention from the real issue, which was: whose taxes would be reduced the most? Taxes on the rich and on corporations are now much lower than they used to be. A greater fraction of the tax burden now falls on the rest of us.

[Hippo_Tron]

24. The Laffer Curve isn't actually published anywhere in a scholarly journal

Basic common sense dictates that if you tax people at 100%, there will be very little revenue. That doesn't mean, however, that there's a continuous quadratic function between 0% and 100%. It also doesn't mean that the maximum y value of this function just happens to be wherever the Republicans happen to propose that the marginal tax rate should be (which supply siders tend to argue).

[WatsonT]

30. Nature tends towards curves like this

go too far in any direction and you start getting diminishing returns.

I doubt it would be a flat line, or totally random, so the logical thing would be a curve of some kind.

[thelordofhell]

23. The Laffer curve is the chart the rich show you

As they laugh their asses off all the way to the bank with your money

[desertrat777]

9. the benefits of cutting taxes for the wealthy

Yes - they keep repeating this lie over and over. Say the lie enough, and people will believe it. Bush II cut taxes on the wealthy, and did eight years of tax cuts and two more under Obama (Bush III) creat any jobs? Of course not! Except, of course jobs in China and India. I'm sick of seeing all the homeless people - not drunks or bums, but simply people unable to find work - hanging out on street corners begging for money. I'm sick of seeing neocons like Governor Walker eliminating all the social programs and regulations that mitigated the ills of capitalism, programs that we had to fight tooth and nail for for the last hundred years and more, taken away so some rich sob can get even richer.

[Desertrose]

4. The only thing that trickles down on the middle/lower incomes is....

that warm yellow stream.

[alfredo]

7. It used to be called the horse and sparrow theory.

if you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.

[SOS]

10. "Trickle" was the perfect word for this abomination

Even the trickle has now dried up.

"Trickle down" was only half the actual name.

The full name of this theory is "Geyser up, trickle down".

[yurbud]

12. we must make sure that none of Paris Hilton's descendants have to work for the next three hundred

years.

Otherwise, it would be class warfare.

[mistertrickster]

14. If one adds in soc. sec. & medicare taxes, then the median family pays much MORE

as a percentage of income than the rich.

Ditto for sales and property taxes, gas taxes and just about any other taxes one can think of.

[hfojvt]

15. I think that graph includes social security

because it says 'federal taxes' instead of federal income taxes. I am not sure where their data is from, because the report I read on the Fab 400 does not go that far back in time.

[mistertrickster]

29. Good point. nt

[Name removed]

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[Hannah Bell]

20. kr