"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...

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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.
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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?

"The first yields no benefit to the American people. "

I'll respectfully disagree, as the yield to this American is quite astounding.

"the billions sent overseas for other countries' people is a major sticking point for me."

You make a good point there. All I can say to that is this...many problems here (like poverty and homelessness) can not be solved by throwing money at tham. Many people are not poor due to a lack of money, they are poor because of laziness or menatl disease or addiction. Can't cure that with money. But you absolutely can save the life of an African baby, born with AIDS, with money.

But as usual, you make a logical point about solving our own problems first. There is some validity to that.

"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'll respectfully disagree again. IMHO, the world changed on 09/11, and we can respond to the new threat or we can ignore it. I have never felt like I was being treated like a terrorist. I don't see any large-scale elimination of inalienable rights. I don't see that I have an inalienable right to bring a shampoo bottle on a plane, I can just as easily buy it when I get there.

Some might say pushing and signing a bill that will ensure health care for millions of people comes somewhat close to that.
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hope he tries to run on that one :uhuh:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),[1] informally referred to as Obamacare,[2] is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010

January 24, 2012
More Americans Uninsured in 2011

However, more adults aged 18 to 26 now covered

by Elizabeth Mendes

This is the first article in an in-depth series on the state of health insurance coverage in America. Future articles will explore trends in types of health insurance coverage and uninsured rates across states.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- More American adults lacked health insurance coverage last year than in any year since Gallup and Healthways started tracking it in 2008. The uninsured rate has been increasing since 2008, climbing to 17.1% in 2011.


at least we're covering more "children" ages 18-26...good place to start or reinforce the road to government dependence:uhuh: oh wait....we're actually forcing insurance companies to accept them as children so that they can stay on mommy and daddy's policy....

Young Adults Seem to Benefit From New Healthcare Law

U.S. adults aged 18 to 25 -- who are now allowed to stay on their parents' plans until age 26 because of a provision of the 2010 healthcare law -- are less likely to be uninsured than in previous years. The percentage of uninsured declined further in 2011 to 24.5%, from 27.6% in 2010 and 28.2% in 2009. Although this group is still among the most likely to be uninsured, it is the only group Gallup tracks that has seen a significant decline in the percentage uninsured in 2011.


should have made it 36.....then the numbers would be really inmpressive:rotf2:

Some might say that...but as of now, it hasn't happened yet. Bush saved those lives, past tense. Obamacare has lofty goals, which are nowhere near accomplished yet. Time will tell if Obamacare does what he said it would do, but we know for a fact what Bush did. And Bush's feat remains mostly anonymous because of deranged hatred.

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Most of the law isnt in effect. You wanted to point out that one of the few parts that went into effect has lowered the uninsured rate?

You don't have the inalienable right to bring a shampoo bottle on a plane because the plane is not your property. Supposedly, the plane belongs to the airline company, and it has a right to say what you can bring onto its planes. That is the company's inalienable right to its property. It acts constitutionally when, on its uncoerced volition, it prohibits the shampoo bottle. When, however, it is coerced to do so by the government, the government, in effect, owns that piece of its property, and is denying, in that respect, its inalienable right and ownership of that property. The overreaching government in this case will say that it is acting under the now ubiqitous commerce clause. Originalists would say that the commerce clause was intended to promote commercial cooperation among the States, but not a tool for the central government to own commerce. The clause was not intended to allow the central government to become a commercial entity, nor one which would usurp the commercial powers of private entities. A progressive would say that the Constitution has evolved, and, indeed, the Federal Government does have, as a necessity, unlimited powers under various clauses.

Property and the right to it is precisely one of the original principles that progressives intend to remake. The progressive shift of property is from the individual, as originally intended, to the public, which, of course, is expressed in, and by, the government. For the public good, individual ownership of property must be limited to "reasonable" and "fair" or "equitable" bounds. Property was orignally one of the main tenets of the Founders Declaration of Independence. The pursuit of happiness was a more generalized version of the pursuit and ownership of property.

And this attack on property, and inalienable rights, started down, as JohnnyD says, the rabbit hole of a totalitarian like government long before Bush. And it is parroted as a benevolent exercise by various speeches of Obama, such as his you-didn't-build-it speech. It is government, directly, or through its regulatory directions of the people, that did it. We build publicly more and more, and own as individuals, less and less, through the regulatory schemes of a benevolent gvt. that directs our efforts toward the public good, not the selfish private.

"That is the company's inalienable right to its property..."

The airline doesn't own the space above my house where it flies the plane. Therefore, I have no problem with the feds telling airlines that they have to take precautions before they take to the skies. If an airline doesn't ant to put security measures into place, that endangers all of us.

"Property and the right to it is precisely one of the original principles that progressives intend to remake."

Agreed 100%. I just don't feel like the post 09/11 security measures have reduced my freedoms by any measurable amount.

I see a lot of things that scare me out there, most of them economic in nature, because I'm a numbers guy. But not many safety measures that are part of the war on terror, worry me. I only worry that we aren't going far enough in the name of political correctness.

I could be wrong but I'd be willing to bet that most of those 18-26 year olds would prefer a job to a free ride on their parents health insurance policy and a room in their basement :uhuh:

I hope you're right. But the fact that a large majority of those 18-26 year olds will vote for Obama, makes me think they'd prefer a handout.

How do you add $4 trillion to the debt, and still have unemployment over 8%...Not much to show for that expenditure...

When you give government power over you for safety, you might be a bit safer in one way (debatable), but in danger of forfeiting your sovereignty in another. Was it Franklin that said something to the effect that those who give up liberty for security and comfort deserve neither (or will lose both?).

Luckily, pretty soon after we got the current president, we stopped purging jobs. I know, don't blame Bush :love:

" For each job the private sector cut under George W. Bush, the private sector gained~0.09 jobs under Barack Obama (if one attributes January 2009′s job losses to Obama, the private sector eliminated ~5 jobs for every job it created under Bush). The economy would need to destroy 701,000 private sector jobs for Bush to break even with Obama (not accounting for the 125,000 jobs that the economy must create each month just to keep pace with population growth)."

Bush vs. Obama: Unemployment (May 2012 Jobs Data) | Reflections of a Rational Republican

I hope he tries to run on that too :uhuh:

Obama’s remarks on worst job growth: Did he end it or should he own it? - The Washington Post

The Pinocchio Test


There’s no doubt that Bush owns an unimpressive record on job creation. But Obama comes in either last, second-to-last or in the bottom half among presidents since the Great Depression, depending on which way you look at the numbers. considering all of the money he spent saving and creating jobs..you'd think he'd have better results :)

The president said that policies from 2000 through 2008 produced the “most sluggish job growth we’ve ever seen.” Perhaps so, but the worst numbers on record occurred under his watch.

Obama chose a poor metric for measuring past administrations. To make his point with jobs data, he has to point to his own numbers and completely disavow much of them, or else ignore public-sector losses. We came close to thinking this was worth Three Pinocchios, but ultimately decided he was not necessarily including his record in the statement oh....just give him 4 he's earned it . Still, it’s a very fine line. The president should be much more careful about making such a sweeping claim.

Three pages and I have a headache - time to roll a new thread