'Tax Cuts for the Rich'?

[Tijuana]

I know perfectly well who Sowell is. He's a right wing hack who makes money by telling right-wingers what they want to hear on economic issues. He's been doing it for decades now and has been giving the economics profession a bad name in the process. The actual amount of research he does to back up his statements his zero, but then he doesn't need to provide any actual evidence when all he does is tell right-wingers what they want to hear, as they are never going to ask for that evidence in the first place.

As for the sources for what I say there are plenty. The congressional research office has said this -



Then there is the IMF who have said this -



Then there have been studies done on tax cuts in US states and their effect on job creation. Again for anyone who has paid attention to the reams of evidence that have been coming out giving the rich tax cuts creates basically zero new jobs because tax cuts for the rich doesn't create economic growth -



I could go on and on but hopefully you get the picture now? This is what actual evidence is, not making some unsubstantiated claims and then posting the trash you write for $$$$ as Sowell does.

Oh and FYI you are clearly not understanding my inequality argument. What I am saying is that as inequality rises as the rich take a great share, this causes average economic growth rates to slow. And again this is backed up by lots of evidence.

The figures A and B are laughable trend lines on a scatter graph. They clearly have not removed enough variables to make any statement about that trend line. I mean, just sayin. I would never present those graphs at work and expect to not get laughed out of town.

But, you are missing the whole point. The point is not to cut taxes for the rich. The point is to cut taxes for everyone. This lie just will not die!

The idea is that you put money in the hands of everyone, not including the lower end, but ESPECIALLY the lower end.

You want families to have more spending power, because there are WAY more of them than the wealthy.

Spending drives the economy. Cutting the taxes of people in such a way that results in spending will grow the GDP. Growing the GDP, if done dramatically enough, will grow revenue to the treasury, despite the lower rates.

A X B = C has two variables. If you move A (the rate) you can grow C. If you move B (the base) you can grow C.

The Laffer curve asks the question, where is the "sweet spot" and that is ENDLESSLY debatable. But, understanding that BOTH of the variables in an equation can change the product, is hardly a novel concept.

You guys are arguing that supply side is tax cuts for the rich, when in reality it's just cuts for everyone, that result in enough growth that the final product is higher than before.

[Ripster42]

It sounds like we need a word renowned economist with advanced degrees from Ivy League institutions to sort it out. Read the OP.

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There is no way to proportionalize the growth. The poor don't have any investments. However, when you had no job before, and now you have one that moves you in to the middle class, your standard of living has increased far more than that of someone who used to be a millionaire, but is not a billionaire.

The only way to make it all equal is Communism. I think we can all agree that Communism is the equal redistribution of poverty.

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How would you define supply side economics?

Ya, I'll completely agree that communism, practiced on any sort of scale larger than maybe 20 people, is bullshit and a scam. But you should just as easily be able to agree that pure capitalism (as communism is pure socialism) is just as much bullshit and a scam because it just leads to social unrest and revolts. The objective is to find a middle ground between the two, and, according to everything I've read that actually addresses increasing wealth divides and how that affects society has said we're currently straying too far in one direction. I don't exactly want the type of labor unrest we had in the early 20th/late 19th as that seriously detracts from growth, and, with our current intractable leadership, could possibly not be addressed until the nation fractures.

[Tijuana]

The "all boats rise at high tide" is a bullshit argument in this context. The wealth gap is increasing at a faster rate than the economy is growing. Economic mobility is decreasing. Stop saying bullshit and thinking it's an argument.

A booming economy, with proper distribution of income and good economic mobility is the best way you can help the poor. Instead we just have a good economy with an ever larger proportion of the wealth going to an ever decreasing proportion of the population.

You are just insulting people and making uninteresting points. You are not worth the keystrokes, when others are providing actual arguments.

[Ripster42]

You are just insulting people and making uninteresting points. You are not worth the keystrokes, when others are providing actual arguments.

How is the fact that the wealth gap is increasing faster than the economy is growing an uninteresting point? Or is it just something you have no answer for?

[buck008]

You guys are arguing that supply side is tax cuts for the rich, when in reality it's just cuts for everyone, that result in enough growth that the final product is higher than before.

It's not tax cuts for the rich. It's tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich and further the wealth and income disparity in the country. Supply side economies that favor extreme deregulation and privatization drive the cost of goods and services up while removing many of the social safety nets people leaned on to survive. The middle class would see (if they are very very lucky) a small decrease in taxes that would be totally wiped out by the increasing price of everything else.

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How is the fact that the wealth gap is increasing faster than the economy is growing an uninteresting point? Or is it just something you have no answer for?

Generally speaking, they feel that discussing income disparity is inciting "class warfare" and not a valid avenue of discussion. Tax cuts would fix it, because they say it would. Not because of any basis in reality.

[Tijuana]

Here's one

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/...ch-get-richer/

This is interesting but irrelevant to my point, the OP, and the Trump tax plan. The Trump tax plan, in addition to rate changes, makes HUGE changes to deductions, including a doubling of the standard deduction that is used by 70% of the public.

Again, nobody is arguing that cutting taxes for the rich benefits everyone. They are saying that cutting taxes for everyone, grows GDP, and increases revenue to the government. The result of this, is that the rich get richer, the poor get richer, and the middle class get richer. Do the rich get more richer than the poor? Of course! But there is NO WAY to avoid that, since their base is so much higher. That math is inescapable. The rich get richer any time the economy grows, regardless of tax rates. These arguments are akin to shooting the messenger, when you complain that tax cuts for the poor benefit the rich more than the poor.

Do you guys even realize the Trump plan does away with ALL of the loopholes? The only thing left will be charitable donations and the mortgage interest deduction.

[alexw]

The figures A and B are laughable trend lines on a scatter graph. They clearly have not removed enough variables to make any statement about that trend line. I mean, just sayin. I would never present those graphs at work and expect to not get laughed out of town.

But, you are missing the whole point. The point is not to cut taxes for the rich. The point is to cut taxes for everyone. This lie just will not die!

The idea is that you put money in the hands of everyone, not including the lower end, but ESPECIALLY the lower end.

You want families to have more spending power, because there are WAY more of them than the wealthy.

Spending drives the economy. Cutting the taxes of people in such a way that results in spending will grow the GDP. Growing the GDP, if done dramatically enough, will grow revenue to the treasury, despite the lower rates.

A X B = C has two variables. If you move A (the rate) you can grow C. If you move B (the base) you can grow C. The Laffer curve asks the question, where is the "sweet spot" and that is ENDLESSLY debatable. But, it understanding that BOTH of the variables in an equation can change the product, is hardly a novel concept.

You guys are arguing that supply side is tax cuts for the rich, when in reality it's just cuts for everyone, that result in enough growth that the final product is higher than before.

Oh boy, you are obviously not understanding those graphs...... The fact that the first one is so scattered means there is next to no correlation. I.e. there IS no correlation between tax cuts for the top 10% and job creation. For there to be a correlation you would expect them to form a near straight line as the last two do.

And the article you originally posted was all about tax cuts for the rich. If you wanted to talk about tax cuts for everyone then you should have led with that rather than a Sowell article. And lastly the reason the last last two graphs form a near straight line is precisely because of the reason you gave, spending by the poor drives the economy and that creates jobs.

[Ripster42]

Generally speaking, they feel that discussing income disparity is inciting "class warfare" and not a valid avenue of discussion. Tax cuts would fix it, because they say it would. Not because of any basis in reality.

Ya, and it's garbage. Calling that class warfare, while not calling disproportionate tax cuts class warfare is gross dishonesty.

[buck008]

This is interesting but irrelevant to my point, the OP, and the Trump tax plan. The Trump tax plan, in addition to rate changes, makes HUGE changes to deductions, including a doubling of the standard deduction that is used by 70% of the public.

Again, nobody is arguing that cutting taxes for the rich benefits everyone. They are saying that cutting taxes for everyone, grows GDP, and increases revenue to the government. The result of this, is that the rich get richer, the poor get richer, and the middle class get richer. Do the rich get more richer than the poor? Of course! But there is NO WAY to avoid that, since their base is so much higher. That math is inescapable.

Do you guys even realize the Trump plan does away with ALL of the loopholes? The only thing left will be charitable donations and the mortgage interest deduction.

That piece specifically discussed the Trump tax plan, so I do not see how it is irrelevant. It specifically addresses that fact that most of what Trump and his people say about his tax plan is bunk.

[Wyrt]

When has tax cuts for the rich every coincided with the strengthening of the middle class? The money doesn't trickle down, it goes right into the pockets of CEOs and shareholders.

Also, Trump apparently wants to increase the gas tax. Yay for regressive taxes!

[Tijuana]

Ya, I'll completely agree that communism, practiced on any sort of scale larger than maybe 20 people, is bullshit and a scam. But you should just as easily be able to agree that pure capitalism (as communism is pure socialism) is just as much bullshit and a scam because it just leads to social unrest and revolts. The objective is to find a middle ground between the two, and, according to everything I've read that actually addresses increasing wealth divides and how that affects society has said we're currently straying too far in one direction. I don't exactly want the type of labor unrest we had in the early 20th/late 19th as that seriously detracts from growth, and, with our current intractable leadership, could possibly not be addressed until the nation fractures.

Unless you plan on taxing accrued wealth, you Utopia can never exist. Good luck getting anyone to agree to that.

Congratulations on making your first post in the thread that makes an actual point, and doesn't include insults.

I'm still waiting for your definition of supply side economics. I say this because I think the wiki look up will educate you a bit more than I'm able to accomplish so far.

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Oh boy, you are obviously not understanding those graphs...... The fact that the first one is so scattered means there is next to no correlation. I.e. there IS no correlation between tax cuts for the top 10% and job creation. For there to be a correlation you would expect them to form a near straight line as the last two do.

And the article you originally posted was all about tax cuts for the rich. If you wanted to talk about tax cuts for everyone then you should have led with that rather than a Sowell article. And lastly the reason the last last two graphs form a near straight line is precisely because of the reason you gave, spending by the poor drives the economy and that creates jobs.

To be fair, I just saw the shitty scatter and quit looking form there.

Since the Trump plan factually is not a tax cut for the rich, given the deductions, I fail to see the point of a debate about rates, that neglects the GIGANTIC changes to deductions for the rich and to the poor via the doubling of the standard deduction.

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It's not tax cuts for the rich. It's tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich and further the wealth and income disparity in the country. Supply side economies that favor extreme deregulation and privatization drive the cost of goods and services up while removing many of the social safety nets people leaned on to survive. The middle class would see (if they are very very lucky) a small decrease in taxes that would be totally wiped out by the increasing price of everything else.

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Generally speaking, they feel that discussing income disparity is inciting "class warfare" and not a valid avenue of discussion. Tax cuts would fix it, because they say it would. Not because of any basis in reality.

Tax cuts for the poor benefit the rich more than the poor. The math is inescapable; if you hugely grow the economy, the rich benefit more than the poor, in dollars for dollars comparisons. This is has always been true, and always will be true. Perhaps this is why the gap is widening, over long periods of time?

[buck008]

Since the Trump plan factually is not a tax cut for the rich, given the deductions, I fail to see the point of a debate about rates, that neglects the GIGANTIC changes to deductions for the rich and to the poor via the doubling of the standard deduction.

And you are conveniently not mentioning that by shrinking the tax brackets from seven down to three, many middle class people will move to a higher tax bracket without the commensurate increase in income.

[Tijuana]

How is the fact that the wealth gap is increasing faster than the economy is growing an uninteresting point? Or is it just something you have no answer for?

I'm just disregarding all of your posts that are at the root mere insults. I'm interesting in what you think. I'm not interesting in hearing your insults, no matter how colorful they may be.

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And you are conveniently not mentioning that by shrinking the tax brackets from seven down to three, many middle class people will move to a higher tax bracket without the commensurate increase in income.

Yep. But did you look at where that happens, and that the standard deduction is being doubled? There is no way that you can spin this, that the poor get screwed.

What I find curious about the left, is that they always complain that the rich benefit more than the poor, even when you only cut taxes for the poor. But, in their plans, taxes are raised for EVERYONE. In both Hillary's and Bernie's plans, taxes go up for everyone. How does that square with the ideology being used to bash the Trump plan? /popcorn

[buck008]

Tax cuts for the poor benefit the rich more than the poor. The math is inescapable; if you hugely grow the economy, the rich benefit more than the poor, in dollars for dollars comparisons. This is has always been true, and always will be true. Perhaps this is why the gap is widening, over long periods of time?

There are entire books written on the many causes of the growing income disparity in the United States. It is the worst in the "first world" by a huge margin. You can't sum it up in two sentences.

[Tijuana]

I gotta say, as much as I have been disappointed with some of the things happening in this forum (rampant unchecked antisemitism, etc), I truly do enjoy the ability of you guys to battle on an intellectually high level. When I am banned, I have been posting at other forums, and it's just not as much fun to debate with mouth breathers, as it is with you guys.

I gotta get to bed though. I look forward to reading your posts about how evil and dumb I am tomorrow morning.

[Breccia]

You guys are arguing that supply side is tax cuts for the rich, when in reality it's just cuts for everyone, that result in enough growth that the final product is higher than before.

The last time supply-side economics was tried in earnest, 1981-1992 (W didn't give it the ol' college try, much like he didn't give college the ol' college try) the top rates were lowered from 70%, to 50%, to 28%, to 31%. During that time, payroll taxes were increased twice. So yes, it was a tax cut for the rich.

Meanwhile, total US tax income, [uirl=http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-and-outlay-summary]shown here in convenient constant dollars[/url] because inflation doesn't help the supply-side argument, didn't really increase much, in fact dropping multiple times. Despite an increased payroll tax, as previously mentioned, trying to pad the meter (so to speak).

Check that table. Total tax revenue really soared in the Clinton years. Guess what Clinton did to top income tax rates? Oh, and he left payroll taxes pretty much alone. So, yeah, he taxed the rich.

Basically, we tried Reaganomics, I mean trickle-down, I mean supply-side economics, and we tried it by tax cuts for the rich. And it didn't really help much. For one, the majority of Reagan/Bush years had higher inflation than Clinton saw on his worst day. Reagan/Bush also had historically high deficit/GDP ratios, again typically higher than Clinton. Granted, there was also a lot of increased military spending, a market crash, a war and a recession throw in the mix, none of which helped. Plus, unemployment spiked under Bush, which doesn't help either, other than to directly refute that the lower tax rates were creating jobs (that there had to be other factors involved). And maybe you can argue that those make the experiment invalid -- although, the lowered taxes on the rich plus increased military spending does sound kinda familiar, plus we're looking at military action with multiple countries, so we could be repeating history here. But the fact still remains: we gave it a good try, the benefits didn't seem to materialize. We tried it, it didn't work.

[Deleted]

I honestly can't find any graphs or illustrations that supports this notion that the rich ended up paying more in actual revenue.

Honestly the only thing that I really can find that supports it, is because there was quite a lot of inflation going on, and also that Reagan didn't exactly have these flat tax cuts across the board, he reverted a lot of them and also taxed differently (most notably is probably that payroll taxes ended up paying almost 10 % more of the total revenue).

[buck008]

Yep. But did you look at where that happens, and that the standard deduction is being doubled? There is no way that you can spin this, that the poor get screwed.

What I find curious about the left, is that they always complain that the rich benefit more than the poor, even when you only cut taxes for the poor. But, in their plans, taxes are raised for EVERYONE. In both Hillary's and Bernie's plans, taxes go up for everyone. How does that square with the ideology being used to bash the Trump plan? /popcorn

Well, you are admitting to a bit of dishonesty by admission. That's a good start.

Second, this isn't about the poor. The poor don't pay income tax, so stop attempting to frame the discussion in that manner. Anyone below the poverty line currently does not pay income tax. They wouldn't pay it under any tax plan that has currently been proposed. So don't bring it up anymore. This is an irrelevant point.

Third. The standard deduction isn't a refund check. It isn't money in anyone's pocket. It simply lowers one's taxable income. However, since there are now only three brackets, that fact will not matter to most people. The standard deduction can't push one below the poverty line, so it will not affect the tax rate of most people.

For example, I make 10000 and the standard deduction is 1000, then my taxable income is now 9000. Unless that pushes me to a lower tax bracket, it does nothing for my overall tax rate. Had to edit here because I misspoke and left out half of my point. The increase in tax rate without an increase in income, in many cases, will not lead to a large decrease in overall tax burden regardless of the raise in deduction.

If you want to get into someone like Bernie Sanders plan, you also have to realize that with higher taxes comes reduced costs of healthcare and education. That's a net win for many in the middle class.

[NED funded]

You can lobby Congress to prevent Embraer (a Brazilian company) from selling to previous Boeing customers in Europe?

Or if you want to switch back to U.S. owned consumer products since Aerospace doesn't help you there...

You can lobby Congress to prevent RC Cola from being able to sell soda to Jenny's Market?

No, I can lobby congress to pass stupid regulations so new comers never start and therefore no disruption. So I don't have to innovate. For example cable companies.

[Breccia]

I guess if you were looking at testing supply-side on a smaller scale, we could look for states where it worked.

Which means we can skip Oklahoma.

And Kansas. Whoa...especially Kansas.

If you wanted to look at something on a larger scale, you could try the IMF study of 150 countries. They concluded that increasing the wealth in the top quintile reduced economic growth, while increasing the wealth of the bottom quintile did increase economic growth. They specifically cited costs of health care and education, which Trump is trying to increase.