"So you think a lack of oversight on the banks had nothing to do with the current recession?"

I specifically said that fishy financial products, tied to mortgages, played a big role. So I cannot imagine why on Earth you'd claim that I said something so stupid.

"top-down approach, which is clearly what Bush and Romney are advocating for"

Bush advocated a top-down approach? Then can you explain why Bush lowered tax rates for everyone, not just for the rich (which liberals like to lie about)?

Romney wants a small-government approach. Why does that, in your view, equate to a "top-down" approach? Romney isn't proposing to eliminate anti-poverty programs. He isn't proposing to eliminate welfare, food stamps, or unemployment. He just doesn't want the feds doing things they suck at. In a sane world, liberals would happily debate the merits of a limited-government approach. Instead, as always, they demonize the other side, saying things like "that's how we got into this mess, and he wants to do it again! We can't afford that!"

Rockhound, government debt didn't cause this recession (though it will cause the next one). And let me make one more point, and try to pay attention, because this is something liberals REALLY struggle with. Let's pretend I agree with you that federal tax revenue plays a big role in recessions...President Bush cut tax rates. Those lower tax rates were followed by the largest amount of tax dollars ever collected by the IRS.

Thus, where do liberals get off claiming that the Bush tax cuts cost us anything? You cannot know for sure that higher tax rates would have produced more tax revenue. It's not that simple. Why? Because demand increases when you reduce price. Always.

Rockhound, do you claim that higher tax rates will always produce more tax dollars, than lower tax rates? If so, why not impose tax rates of 100%?

It is irrefutable, demonstrable fact, that it's possible to lower tax rates and increase tax revenue. It happened within the last 10 years, for God's sakes.

Now, please don't suggest that I'm saying lower tax rates will always increase tax revenue, because that's equally ridiculous. But they don't always move proportionately. Liberals hate that fact, and thus cannot accept it.

That is a common misconception. Now, I'm no Palin fan. But the fact is, McCain was trailing in the polls untuil he picked Palin, at which time he lept ahead in the polls and stayed ahead, until the economy collapsed.

If you want to say she was a dunderhead, you have a point. But it's demonstrably false to say that she 'hurt' his campaign more than she 'helped' it. The media really likes to say she torpedoed his candidacy, but the simple facts do not back that up.

And when I say I'm no fan, I mean on the ticket for VP, not as a person. I'm shocked to hear you call her "wretched". Anyone who decides to give birth to a baby with Down's syndrome (and she did that before she was wealthy) gets an A+ for compassion in my book. I don't like her kid having a voyeuristic reality show. But I'd rather have lunch with her than the liar-in-chief.

from the crazy liberal Bruce Bartlett :smash:

"Revenue has averaged 18 percent of G.D.P. since 1970 and a little more than that in the postwar era. At a similar stage in previous business cycles, two years past the trough, revenue was considerably higher: 18 percent of G.D.P. in 1977 after the 1973-75 recession; 17.3 percent of G.D.P. in 1984 after the 1981-82 recession, and 17.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1993 after the 1990-91 recession. Revenue was markedly lower, however, at this point after the 2001 recession and was just 16.2 percent of G.D.P. in 2003.

The reason, of course, is that taxes were cut in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006.
It would have been one thing if the Bush tax cuts had at least bought the country a higher rate of economic growth, even temporarily. They did not. Real G.D.P. growth peaked at just 3.6 percent in 2004 before fading rapidly. Even before the crisis hit, real G.D.P. was growing less than 2 percent a year."

and this:
"...And on July 15, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona said, “Even the much-maligned Bush tax cuts brought in an additional $100 billion a year to government coffers.”

It is hard to know where these totally erroneous ideas come from. Federal revenue fell in 2001 from 2000, again in 2002 from 2001 and again in 2003 from 2002. Revenue did not get back to its 2000 level until 2005. More important, revenue as a share of G.D.P. was lower every year of the Bush presidency than it was in 2000."


Bruce Bartlett: Are the Bush Tax Cuts the Root of Our Fiscal Problem? - NYTimes.com

She's had just as many, if not more, embarrassing public comments as Joe Biden has had and repeatedly displayed a level of ignorance to common issues that even Biden would have difficulty competing with.

I'd hardly say that she "decided" to give birth to a Down's baby, especially someone that says she'd be opposed to her own daughter having an abortion even if she was raped(Sarah Palin on Abortion). It'd be the epitome of hypocritical if she hadn't had the child.

Yea, trickle down works great when your economic growth is being fueled by a credit bubble!

-spence

You could also argue that in our present situation tax raises would enable the bottom by building a stronger state in which to prosper. Yes, this does assume a level of responsibility we've not seen from either party.

Assuming that in this case "Progressive" = Republicans and Democrats?

There is no war dividend when you're running a deficit.

I'd also argue that government revenues ultimately have more to do with larger (increasingly global) economic trends rather than incentives like low taxation or deregulation.

Our taxes are at historic lows and wealth continues to concentrate at the top and be funneled offshore. Trusting industry has given our housing market a 10+ year wound...

How can anyone seriously argue that yet lower taxes and even less regulation is going to change the vector positively for the American people?

-spence

Spence...please elaborate on this gem :)

Depends on what you mean by positive. And it depends on what you mean by historic. There were boom times with lower taxes and less regulation in the past. But, if you prefer Wilson's, and the progressives', idea of society being a well ordered bee hive, directed by government, then tinkering with economic levers from the "top" may be your way of achieving a positive vector. If you prefer individual sovereignty, the vector should be directed by the people, not the government.

This also includes Corporate Taxes: Corporate income taxes for the past three years have hovered at just over 1 percent of GDP, lower than for any three-year period since World War II. The average for OECD countries is 3.5 percent.

The problem I have is the amount of $$’s wasted. Too many stories of gross and wasteful spending and so much scandal in our Government. Regardless of taxes being historically low, an argument could be made that government spending is historically high. So it’s the chicken and the egg, cut spending or increase taxes. I think we need a little of both from everyone. Not just concessions from the rich or the poor, but from everyone. (even though I don’t know what is rich and what is poor)

lower taxes and less reguation allow the individual the freedom to determine their own vector....they also restrict the governemnt's ability to interfere in the life of the individual...which is a problem for the progressive who believes that everything must flow through government and obviously have very difficult time relinquishing whatever control they gain over the individual through government regulation and various forms of taxation.....

this whole discussion reminds me of the Milton Friedman-Donahue from the 70's...nothing has really changed and Donahue and company will never learn..the montra is essentially the same:uhuh:

DONAHUE: When you see around the globe the maldistribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few haves and so many have-nots, when you see the greed and the concentration of power, did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea to run on?


FRIEDMAN: Well, first of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy. It's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

DONAHUE: But it seems to reward not virtue as much as ability to manipulate the system.

FRIEDMAN: And what does reward virtue? Do you think the communist commissar rewards virtue? Do you think Hitler rewards virtue? Do you think American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? You know, I think you're taking a lot of things for granted. Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us.

DONAHUE: Well --

FRIEDMAN: I don't even trust you to do that.




ahhh...the "angels who are going to organize society for us"...the "Philosopher Kings"

Yuval Levin had a great analysis of this recently

This remarkable window into the president’s thinking shows us not only a man chilly toward the potential of individual initiative, and not only a man deluded about the nature of his opponents and their views, but also (and perhaps most important) a man with a staggeringly thin idea of common action in American life.

The president simply equates doing things together with doing things through government. He sees the citizen and the state, and nothing in between — and thus sees every political question as a choice between radical individualism and a federal program.

But most of life is lived somewhere between those two extremes, and American life in particular has given rise to unprecedented human flourishing because we have allowed the institutions that occupy the middle ground — the family, civil society, and the private economy — to thrive in relative freedom.

The Hollow Republic - Yuval Levin - National Review Online

it was not "trusting industry" or lack of regulation that gave our housing industry a 10 year wound, it was removal by government through cohersion, threats and supposed good intentions, any "risk" for lenders and other players up the line creating the environment for all sorts of unfortunate consequences, government also created a culture that sought to reduce standards and requirements for home ownership to such a level that not only was there little risk for the lenders but little responsibiity required on the part of the buyers ....this happens frequently when government steps in to assume or reduce the risk to the individual or entity and corresponding responsibility to society....government creates vehicals that carpool the risk in life for the individual(and other entities) and mitigate responsibiity and often in areas where they have no business meddeling, they load the vehical up with both unwilling and willing participants and then the vehical goes careening off a cliff....

"tax raises would enable the bottom by building a stronger state in which to prosper"

Which explains why there is no poverty in places with strong, tax-funded states like Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.

"Our taxes are at historic lows ..."

That makes a great bumper-sticker, because yes there were tax rates in the 70's at one point. But that argument is destroyed when you consider that just about no one paid those taxes, because there were even more shelters then...

Furthermore Spence, you need to consider all taxes. For example, CT did not have an income tax 25 years ago, nowt it's around 5.5%.

I'm guessing that the average earner works longer into the year to pay his tax bill, than he did 50 years ago. I don't have the data to prove that, but it cannot be false.

"There is no war dividend when you're running a deficit.

"

True. But despite what people on your side of the ailse like to claim, we don't enter into wars for profit.

"How can anyone seriously argue that yet lower taxes and even less regulation is going to change the vector positively for the American people?"

Because it worked when Clinton did it. And it worked beter after Bush did it. You work in finance, right? Wasn't the economy robust from 1996-2007? Granted, much of that was fueled by a reckless housing bubble, but not all of it.

Spence, lower taxes means people like me and you get to keep more of our money. You honestly don't think that would help you? And assuming you will either spend, donate, invest, or save that money in a bank, it will help others, too. That's not rocket science.

Spence, let me turn that around. What evidence do you have, to suggest that more taxes and more regulation, will improve the situation?

No one is saying we don't need any regulation. but there is such a thing as too much regulation.

Das Vedanya...

AMT for example.............

The only fair way to look at it is dollar amounts paid compared to gross income. The average is almost exactly the same today then after the Reagan tax cuts of ~1986. Here are the numbers:

"...calculating all taxes paid by Americans and dividing the sum by the nation's total income. To make this calculation, we turned to the Tax Foundation's annual "Tax Freedom Day" report, which offers calculations of total tax burden going back to 1900. (There was no federal income tax then, but there were state and other taxes.)

The foundation's expected tax burden for 2010 is 26.9 percent, up slightly from the 2009 tax burden of 26.6 percent. (This is not unusual: The tax burden typically falls during recessions, as taxpayers move to lower tax brackets.)

Under Eisenhower, that figure ranged from 24.8 percent to 27.7 percent, with the figure lower than 26.9 percent for seven out of eight years. So by this measurement, the tax burden was lower most of the time under Eisenhower.

Under Reagan, it ranged from 29.2 percent to 31.1 percent, meaning that in all eight years it was higher than the current tax burden under Obama."

PolitiFact | Barack Obama says taxes are lower today than under Reagan, Eisenhower

I can understand if someone still believes that lower tax rates would be better for the economy. However, all the arguments about rates and stuff need to be about actual paid. Same reason why it is bogus for the cons to throw around the 39% corporate tax rate as if it is what companies actually pay.

Great point. It's misleading for consrevatives to point to the corporate rate being high, and it's equally misleading for a liberal to point to higher individual rates decades ago.

Zimmy, are your percentages reflective of all taxes, feredal, state and local? I'm not doubting your numbers, just curious what's in there.

And what worries many of us is the magnitude by which we are overspending, particularly on entitlements. If you give an honest answer to the question "what do tax rates need to be, to pay for these entitlement programs", I think that answer will scare the hell out of people. Liberals (as a group) will not ever address that question, and conservatives (as a group) do a terrible job of getting that message across.

Obama's statement that "rates" are lower today than under Reagan or Eisenhower are mostly true, but deceptively so, as your linked article notes. And deceptive, as well, in ways that the article doesn't mention. And, in itself, meaningless--Obama doesn't mention that they are not lower than under Bush--begging a so what? His intention, I believe, is to create the "meaning," perception, that he is actually a tax cutter, not a typical tax and spender. That he is fiscally conservative, even more than Eisenhower, or Reagan. The article offers caveats to that perception, one of which you quote. The total tax burden was actually less under Eisenhower than under Obama. So, as you say, if the only fair way to look at it is by total tax burden, then, though rates are lower now, the burden was less under Eisenhower. Also, though rates were much higher (at the top incomes) then, the loopholes were more extravagent, and those rates were not paid, so the comparison of rates is irrelevant. Plus, Reagan began the process of reducing those loopholes, thus was able to lower rates. He began, as Spence likes to say, a vector. He started in office with top rates at 70% and reduced them to 50% and then to 28%. And the current rates that Obama brags about were created by Bush, not him. Though he hasn't yet increased rates, he has, as the article says created or raised some taxes other than income, and some have, conveniently, not kicked in yet, such as the tax penalty for non-insurance. And he wants to raise the "rates" on higher incomes. Unlike Reagan, Obama's vector seems to be trending upward. And is it "fair" when looking at the total burden, that the burden of income taxes, even if the rates are the same, is shifted to fewer payers (nearly half don't pay federal income tax now)?

Whether lower rates would be better for the "economy" or not might be debatable. But if the context of the debate does not include what, ultimately, type of government we wish to have, the big choice that Obama says we are going to make in November, it is all just wonkish tweaking that, if the market is allowed to prevail, and we can survive bad choices, we can recover from if we choose to maintain and re-energize a free market economy directed by minimally encumbered individuals.

I beleive his point is that there is a choice between his policies and Mitts. He would close loopholes, slightly raise the rate on the top 1%, and keep middle and lower class taxes low. Romney would slash rates on the top 1%, who are already paying historically low rates. I am pretty sure he isn't trying to say he is more fiscally conservative than Reagan.

"He would..." is a pretty loaded statement considering that aside from health care, he hasn't done a whole lot domestically to benefit the American people that he said he would do.

Again, aside from health care, his *actions* pretty much make him just George W. Bush 2.0.

Then why bring in comparisons with Eisenhower and Reagan. Did he compare Mitt's policies to Eisenhower and Reagan? I just read the quote not the context from which it's taken, so don't know. As you must know by now since it's been mentioned here several times and there are articles on the subject, the "rates" under Eisenhower and others up to Reagan were more fiction than fact in terms of what was actually paid. In many cases, what was actually paid was far less than what is paid today. So the "rates" being historically low is a meaningless point.

Mentioning and comparing himself to Eisenhower and Reagan, who have become more widely admired by the public and historians now than in the past, is obviously a slant to make himself appear other than what he is. And it makes Eisenhower and Reagan look other than what they were. I mentioned Reagan's tremendous cuts in rates all-around. And though Obama compares "his" rates favorably to those other two, they are not even his rates, but Bush's, who also cut rates all-around. I mentioned that Obama has already raised some taxes and rates other than income, and that unlike his predecessors, his tax rate "vector" is up, not down.

As far as Mitt's policies, they might well be a corrective to the burden of previous rates that under different, market oriented, policies than Obama, would "stimulate" the economy more than throwing federal money at it.

Again, is this the great difference that we are voting for in Nov.?

He brings it up because there is a loud group of people trying to spin the perception that we have tax rates like Belgium. They are not. The conversation needs to be based around reality.

He mostly has faced a Republican majority who's mantra is "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

For a President that campaigned on getting rid of the aisle and making sure both sides work together, he did a pretty good job early on of putting up a solid brick wall separating -Ds from -Rs.

Also, you're ignoring the Executive Orders he has made that aren't dependent on approval by that Republican majority.

[QUOTE=JohnnyD;952687Again, aside from health care, his *actions* pretty much make him just George W. Bush 2.0.[/QUOTE]

Come on...

First and foremost, George Bush is credited with saving the lives of more than one million Africans, thanks to a massive AIDS initiative that he spearheaded (called EPFAR). In a fair world, he gets the Nobel Peace Prize for that. Obama will never do anything that comes close to that.

Bush also created a massive security infastructure from scratch, and in short order. Every single security expert said we would get attacked again, and IMHO opinion he did a decent job keeping us safe.

Obama gets credit (deservedly so) for his aggressive actions in some areas of the war on terror, but all he really did was leave the Bush mechanisms in place, and reap the rewards.

Not yet, they aren't like Belgium's rates. But unless we make serious changes to entitlement programs, Belgium is going to be looking pretty good. That's future reality.

I don't know what kind of math you're doing. For two entire years, Obama had a Democrat majority in the House, and a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate. For far more than 50% of his term, the Republicans literally could do nothing to stop him from doing anything he wanted.

As you said, let's start by working in reality...

Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Here is a time line for you: President Obama DID NOT control Congress for Two Years! | The Pragmatic Pundit

PolitiFact | The Obameter: Campaign Promises that are Promise Kept

Most cons would complain he has done too much.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

You got me, Brown came in when he did, at which point there were 59 Democrats. However...

Does the 59 Democrats include independent Joe Lieberman of CT, a radical left-winger (on everything except the Iraq War) who caucused with the Democrats?

Also, the person who wrote that timeline made a mistake that was probably self-serving. You don't need 60 votes to pass a bill, you need 60 to avoid fillibuster. Obamacare was signed into law in March 2010, after Scott Brown was elected.

I'm not going to say that Republicans haven't prevented him from doing anything, of course they have. But he can't blame them for every single thing he tried to do but failed. During the time he had ultimate control, what did he do? Not very much. Can't blame that on the GOP, right?

But you did catch me putting my foot in my mouth...but so did you, you said Obama has been faced with a "Republican majority" for two years, and that's not true. The Republicans have not even come close to a majority in the Senate since he took office, and have only had a majority in the house for the last 20 months...

The first yields no benefit to the American people. I'm sorry but saving 1 million people in Africa from AIDS just means that they're now going to die from famine, war or some other disease. With the number of homeless children and vets that we have in this country, the billions sent overseas for other countries' people is a major sticking point for me.

In the second, it could be argued that Bush's "security infrastructure", along with his Patriot Act could be argued to be the pinnacle point in which we started down the rabbit hole of a totalitarian-like government where once inalienable rights are blatantly infringed upon and every citizen is treated as a terrorist.

I never said anything about a republican majority for two years. And the point of my post was that it was not a free for all for the Democrats for his first two years. That is a complete distortion of reality. They had a filibuster proof majority from September 24, 2009 thru February 4, 2010. A bit more than four months. 20 months to 4 might be "mostly", not counting all the other time before that where filibuter in the senate could stop his agenda.

I am not familiar with this loud group claiming that we have tax rates like Belgium. That is so obviously wrong that it would hardly be worth trying to rebut by bringing up Reagan and Eisenhower. For one, Belgium has a VAT tax. Some (many?) here feel we are headed for such a tax here. Then we would be more like Belgium.

Also, the argument that U.S. corporations pay far less than our high corporate tax rate, as if that makes their tax burden less than foreign companies, is misleading. Some do pay an effective amount below the rate, but some pay close to it. On average, according to a N.Y. Times business section article on May 2, 2011, U.S. companies pay about 25% of their profits in corporate taxes. They pay state and local corp. taxes, as well, that many foreign companies don't pay. What they actually pay in federal taxes, according to the article is a few percentage points higher than those in most other major industrial countries. Nor does the article specify whether the comparison is to what most foreign companies actually pay, or if it is to their tax "rates." Most foreign countries also allow for many exemptions so that when we compare American "effective" rates to foreign tax "rates" it leaves out what foreign effective rates are.

As for our corporations shipping money offshore (transferring profits to countries with lower or non-existent rates) only happens because those countries DO have lower rates.

Again, is this what this coming election is about?