You aren't as confused as you appear. Small business is critical. The effective impact of the bill is that it does very little to help small business. The GOP for decades has stood with policies that favor big business over small business. The middle class is shrinking, but mostly because of downward mobility. Not what middle class means by definition, but what the standard of living for the middle class is today compared to what it used to be. This tax bill will likely continue the trend or increase it with the slimmest to no chance that it reverses it.

some of you should be wearing tutu's and shaking pom poms rooting for this tax bill...if you are correct it will guarantee gropin' Joe the white house in 2020 and the dems the house and senate(maybe sooner)...then everything will get fixed

when the dems are in charge it's a "partnership"...when the repubs are in charge it 'corporate welfare"

isn't it great?...the government keeps chunks of your earnings throughout the year and you either pay someone, invest in books or software and spend inordinate amounts of time figuring ways they
may have created for you to get some of it back and argue with other over who is getting screwed worse.....

The problem, to me, of government actively "helping" small business is that its help always comes with strings. Strings which always gives government some power it didn't have before it tied itself with those strings to whomever it helps. The attachment becomes symbiotic. Whoever or whatever is "helped" forever is attached by those strings, and is dependent on that attachment, to the government. The notion that government helps business by getting out of its way is a non-starter for those who believe in government help. Their claim is that without government protection, there would be cheating, bribery, coercion, or simply the crushing of the little by the big with its greater monetary power.

Fine. I'm all for government fulfilling its duty within the social compact that the people agreed to. That compact requires a free market, freedom being the uncoerced exchange of property, speech, or ideas. Actual cheating, bribery, dishonesty, are all coercive tactics which the people would not object to the government prosecuting as a crime. We would actually demand it. The kind of government help which aids free exchange is not direct financial assistance or tax or regulatory favors, but the protection of freedom in the market.

And I hear, over and over, bald statements like the GOP or the Democrats have forever produced policies that favor this or that. But too often, when details are researched, the statements turn out to simply be political talking points. And they filter down to the public and are repeated as the truth. In another thread, for instance, it was claimed that Steve Bannon is a racist, misogynist, anti-Semite, etc. Researching that characterization, I did not find actual evidence of that claim, just innuendos emanating from some associations, or article titles, or a claim by a bitter ex-wife, none of which are corroborated by his actual personal or business or political relationships, which include Jews many of whom dispute any notion of anti-Semitism. Leftist journals like Salon just make up caricatures based on the flimsiest "evidence," and state them as true. And so the leftist fans believe it and it gets backed up by more mainstream outlets who repeat what's in the lesser journals.

So I am not persuaded by uncorroborated statements. Nor by those whose corroboration is either suspect, biased, or inconsistent. I don't admit to being a thorough researcher at all. But from the more than casual reading I have done on policies reputed to favor the rich at the expense of the poor or middle class, those policies were found to be so only by some inconsistent or not truly provable way. I have found, to my satisfaction by the evidence presented, that after Coolidge helped institute such policies, as well as after Jack Kennedy, Ron Reagan, and George W. Bush also did so, the market did greatly expand and grew jobs and higher incomes. I have read unconvincing rebuttals to those claims. But, whatever the facts, market expansion occurred in every one of those instances. Coolidge, unlike any other President after him, actually lowered the national debt.

As for the standard of living today for the "middle class" compared to what it used to be, I personally prefer the quality of living over the standard of living. They might be one and the same. Except, to me, standard of living is more about the number of things owned. Quality of living is more about satisfaction with the things owned and the durability of those things and of relationships and of the culture we live in.

I prefer that the government stay out of the way of either the standard or quality of living except insofar as it protects our freedom to pursue either one or combination of the two. That means, for me, that government doesn't define what those things are, nor tries to direct for whom those things apply.

We could get into a large discussion about how government protects or distorts our pursuit of preferred lives, but I am accused of rambling on too much, as I am beginning to do here, so the oversimplification will have to, hopefully, suffice.

No, these bills as written now will do real structural harm...it's going to be a decade at least before we could even begin to repair. Get ready for 2 trillion dollar deficits as the new normal.

I'm still waiting for anyone to show me how giving corporations already making record profits a lot more money, and creating record deficits in the process, is going to create growth or lead to higher wages.

Where's the expert testimony? Where's the CBO analysis? The lack of thought going into this tax plan appears to just highlight the ruse, it's a payback scheme for years of Republican political support.

Testimony?? What . . . is this a trial? So you're saying that no so-called "experts" contributed to the tax plan? How often has the CBO been wrong? You're either very cynical or very partisan. Or you just like to rant.

:jump:

Right back at ya. Spence likes to refer to posts he doesn't refute as rants. I threw that tidbit right back at him. And to anyone else who deflects merely by characterizing a post as a rant.

given how frequently you are wrong...I'll just assume this on that..or that on this

Sound logic. It's like, we're already screwed so let's just make the problem worse.

Corporations today on average are not over taxed. How about you apply revenue to things that will make the country stronger like infrastructure, research, education and debt reduction.

If there are variations in the tax code more favorable to one industry or not...then propose reform.

if you're so confident in the tax proposals promoting long-term growth wouldn't you bring the economists before congress to participate in a bi-partisan discussion?

Crickets.

Have I ever been wrong?

Have I ever used the word "rant?"

Interesting Article on What States Get Fed Tax Money
 

Taxes

Are Red States Tax Takers And Blue States Tax Makers?
Against a national average of $1,935 in intergovernmental spending per American, red states receive just $1,879. Blue states get considerably more, at $2,124 per resident.
Kyle Sammin
By Kyle Sammin
November 17, 2017

With every debate on taxing and spending in Washington comes inevitable references to which states send more in taxes to the federal treasury than they receive in benefits for their citizens. The figures thrown around are sourced differently and vary widely, but the point of it all is for Democrats to point at poor, Republican states and call them hypocrites for doing exactly what Democrats say they should: taking money from richer places.

But how much of it is true? An op-ed in The New York Times this week accuses Republicans of favoring red states over blues ones in their plans, while repeating the old lie that small states’ equal representation in the Senate favors Republicans (the ten smallest states are currently represented there by nine Republicans, nine Democrats, and two independents who caucus with the Democrats; the ten largest states are represented by nine Republicans and eleven Democrats).

What kind of spending are they talking about? And what is behind these claims, which pit one part of the population against the other?
Who Pays More Taxes?

Let’s start with the taxes paid. In fiscal year 2016, the Internal Revenue Service collected a record $3.3 trillion in taxes nationwide. That money came from a total population of 312,471,695, according to the most recent census (for this article, the figures will only include the 50 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico). That gives us a national average of $10,622 in taxes for each American.

Even that figure is a little misleading, because the taxes collected include estate taxes, unemployment taxes, business taxes, and excises, which cannot be accurately attributed to one person. If we want to talk about individual income taxes only, the figure is a slightly lower $9,216 per person.

So do blue states pay more than red ones? Again, defining terms is important in answering the question. For this article, we’ll call states that voted for the Democratic candidate for president in 2008, 2012, and 2016 blue states. Those that voted Republican all three years are red, and those that shifted in different elections are purple.

The result: Democrats are correct on this fact. The blue states did pay more per capita in federal taxes than the red did. The $12,648 per capita taxation there is 118 percent of the national average. The purple states fell in between the two, slightly below the national average.

What accounts for the difference? Blue states are, on average, richer. Because we have a progressive tax system, more money comes from richer people, and if a state’s citizens are, on average, richer, they pay more into the federal fisc. The per capita income in the United States, according to the American Community Survey, is $28,889. In blue states, the figure is higher, at $32,295, which is 112 percent of the national average. The figures in the purple and red states are closer to the national average: the purple per capita income is $27,040 (94 percent of the national average) and in the red states the figure is $25,633 (89 percent of the national average).

Even with a flat tax, the rich pay more dollars of tax. The “flat” adjective refers only to the rate, so under a flat tax the rich still pay more, just not disproportionately more. But even so, the effective taxes paid in blue states are not very much higher than that of the reds and purples.

The IRS collected taxes equal to 37.03 percent of the income earned in America (again, this includes non-individual income taxes collected in a state, such as corporate tax and excises). In the blue states, the figure is a little higher: 39.16 percent. In the purples and reds, it is a little lower: 36.37 percent and 34.29 percent, respectively.

None of this is surprising. What is surprising is that Democrats often act like the red states are getting away with something. Progressive ideology has as one of its central tenets the idea that money should be transferred from the rich to the poor. In our progressive tax code, they have succeeded in enacting the first part of that equation. The only strange part is that they look askance at the poorer regions of the country for simply obeying the tax code.
Who Gets More Benefits?

How much the federal government takes in taxes is simple question. How much they pay out gets more complicated.

One way of looking at it is to see what percentage of states’ budgets are paid for by direct transfers of federal funds. That was the analysis done in a Pew Trusts report in July 2017, based on federal government data from fiscal year 2015. Intergovernmental transfers from the feds to the states include the money used to pay for programs that Washington funds but the states administer. About half goes to health-care programs; education and transportation spending also come out of these funds. They also include welfare programs, grants to local police forces, and other indirect federal spending within a state (this 2013 CBO report gives more details).

The results are somewhat at odds with the claims on the Left that the red states are takers while the blue states are makers. Of the ten states with the lowest percentage of funds coming from Washington, three are red, six are blue, and one is purple. The state with by far the lowest level of federal subsidization was the deeply red state of North Dakota. The highest ten included eight red states, but also two blue states: Oregon and New Mexico. (DC and Puerto Rico are excluded from these calculations because their relationships with the federal government are different than if they were states.)

On average, the three groups were not that far apart. Against a national average of 32.62 percent federal subsidy, the blue states received 30.80 percent. Purple states were almost exactly at the national level with 32.92 percent coming from Washington. Red state budgets averaged 35.75 percent federal money. As with the taxes, there is a slight tilt to one side, but nowhere near what you would think based on complaints from the Left.

A problem with this metric is that although federal funds make up a larger percentage of red states’ state budgets, the budgets in those states are generally lower overall than those of the free-spending blue states. If, instead of comparing federal funds to state budgets, we look at how much the federal government spends in intergovernmental grants per resident of a state, the results are turned on their heads.

Against a national average of $1,935 in intergovernmental spending per American, red states receive just $1,879. Blue states get considerably more, at $2,124 per resident. Purple states see the least of their money returned to them per capita, at just $1,770. Measured in this way, the blue states are getting quite a bit more than the red or purple.

Which States Get the Most of What They Paid?

The answer to the ultimate question requires us to compare what the states pay in and what they get back. Immediately, though, we have to understand that these intergovernmental transfers—the source of most calculations about these claims—are only a fraction of what the federal government spends. In 2016, the federal budget called for $3.9 trillion in spending, of which just $604 billion was in intergovernmental transfers. All of the claims about which states take what, therefore, are based on an analysis of just 15 percent of all federal spending.

Even within that limited range of figures, the results are not the open-and-shut case that critics from the Left would have us believe. For one thing: no state receives more in intergovernmental transfers than its citizens and corporations pay in federal taxes. The state that gets the most back in intergovernmental transfers is a blue state, New Mexico, at 80.27 percent. Red states West Virginia and Mississippi are the only other two that get back more than half of their taxes in this form of spending (67.30 percent and 63.12 percent, respectively).

This tells us nothing about the politics of those places, only that they are, on average, poorer, and therefore more eligible for federal programs for their residents. Delaware receives the smallest percentage back—9.89 percent. Again, this is probably a result of the disproportionate amount of corporate and trust income taxes coming from that state, not because of the politics of their state.
What About The Rest?

Other studies claim to take in the remaining 85 percent of federal spending and divvy it up among the states. Another Pew study does that through various methods, some of which make sense, others of which are harder to justify.

Nearly two-thirds of spending, they note, goes to individuals, not to state governments or groups. That makes it more difficult to attribute to one state. If a couple from Michigan retires and spends five months each year in Florida, to which state are their Social Security checks attributed? Their legal residence may be in Grand Rapids, but it is quite possible that they spend more of their money in Tampa.
As long as other people pay for you to survive, they will demand to control how you live.

There is also the matter of military spending, a large part of the federal budget. As Pew notes, military spending is spread unevenly across the states. That is as much through accident of history—where bases are located—than because of any twenty-first-century military need.

But the confusion goes even beyond that. Many of our military bases are located overseas. On all bases and ships, the men and women serving are from states and territories around the country. Does a Marine in Guam have his paycheck attributed to that territory, or to his home state? Doesn’t defense spending benefit all Americans, no matter where the check is cashed? What does the location matter?

It matters only in so far as the politicians and pundits who cite these statistics do so in an effort to divide us. The idea of a Blue America and a Red America is a dangerous one, but it is a tempting weapon to yield for a politician who wants to rally his base. State governments like California’s use these figures to justify their own righteousness and demand that, as net “donors” to the American republic, they be given more deference, and more power. (Even in that chart, note that the top donor state is red and the top recipient is blue).

This is a common refrain from the rich to the poor throughout history: they pay for something, so they must be allowed to control it, and to control the people that receive it. Indeed, that it is so consistently demanded shows why massive spending is incompatible with a free people. As long as other people pay for you to survive, they will demand to control how you live.

Politicians love to use fuzzy statistics like these to do so, and will always find an audience for their claims. As our government continues to expand in scope and size, we should consider this another reason to resist.
Kyle Sammin is a lawyer and writer from Pennsylvania. Read some of his other writing at kylesammin.com, or follow him on Twitter @KyleSammin.

:D

Bring your tax proposal before Congress in a bi-partisan discussion? That would be the surest way to trash it. The opposition party, in our time, is diametrically opposed to the other. Each party scrambles to get enough of a majority so that it can ram its agenda through without the squelching charade of a bi-partisan "discussion." Get serious.

Anyway, as it is, the GOP keeps caving, due to partisan pressures, on its initial proposals. I really liked the original idea of a 15% corporate tax rate, or less. Was very disappointed when that figure went up.

yup..I like the Pelosi legislative method..."you need to pass it to find out what's in it"....or John Kerry " I'll tell you my plan to fix everything if you elect me first"

Fun facts : what economist think about the GOP tax plan

Clearly they only asked liberal economists.

I have yet to see a single credible analysis that shows long-term growth. Everything is based on faith.

Yes, let's borrow even more money to fund the elite. Feed the sparrows by feeding the horses right?

"economists" are wrong more often than Spence...and that's a LOT!

I love the example produced to indicate the science behind the sentiment. Too much turkey also?
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It's not about sparrows and horses. They don't have the ability to generate wealth. They don't have individual entrepreneurs. They don't have a distributive tax system, nor a government which spends more than it has. They operate under a herd instinct in which individual freedom does not exist. They don't borrow money nor have an elaborate welfare system in which half the herd can exist without expending labor and so be fed and cared for by the other half.

It's about either expending labor to feed a dominating over-structure with more than half of the money created by the entrepreneurs which can then be redistributed in ways that ensure its domination. Or about reducing the feed of the over-structure, and limiting its ability to dominate a much freer society of individuals.

Bingo.

Spence, you work in finance in some capacity, yes? I know I struggle to come to terms with that, but I believe it's true?

What happened to the economy, after Clinton/Gingrich slashed taxes? Please remind us?

Cutting taxes doesn't always work (didn't work in Kansas). Increasing taxes doesn't always work (CT is on the brink of insolvency).

There is no explicit correlation between cutting taxes and growth. It is a myth.
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I believe he is a snake oil salesman of sorts.
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https://www.politico.com/interactive...e-cut-wealthy/


The Congressional Research Service published a paper in 2012 that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth. Congressional Republicans protested the findings, and the service briefly withdrew the paper.

Republicans argued that the CRS paper had methodological errors, namely that it didn't account for the long-term benefits of tax rate cuts. The paper looked only at effects on growth within the first year of the cuts.

POLITICO looked at each time the country changed the top income tax rate and the following five years of GDP per capita growth rate. The results are similar to the CRS findings: changing the top income tax rate does not have a predictable effect on economic growth.

Higher taxes equate to higher economic growth due to companies looking to achieve maximum deductions to lower their taxes by means of hiring more employees or more expenses. Lower taxes equal higher profits. It ends there.
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Obama referred to published federal studies, which said that Obamacare would save each family $2,500. Maybe tomorrow, they'll publish a paper saying the earth is flat. I'm not impressed.

If Hilary had won, and she was proposing tax cuts, Spence would be all for it.

As long as the feds have enough to do the things they are supposed to do, it cannot be a bad thing to take no more.

Tax cuts can be followed by a recession (or growth), it doesn't mean the cuts caused the recession (or growth). There's too any moving pieces. But who here, chooses to pay more taxes than we have to?

Being slightly above middle class here in CT, I presume I'll be paying more since I can no longer deduct my asinine CT taxes. If poorer people are helped by doubling the standard deduction, and businesses are helped by slashing the corporate tax rate, I'll take it.

I'd like to see businesses keep more of their income (and this become instantly more valuable), I'd like to see some of the money parked overseas come back here, and for sure I'd like to see people below the middle, (1) keep more of their income, and (2) have better potential for wage increases. I don't know if this plan does that, neither does anyone else.

I remember the good old days when the Repub. said deficit matters. Now, not so much.

Hypocrites.

"Higher taxes equate to higher economic growth"

Oh my, yes. Which explains the surging economy in high-tax places like Connecticut, Venezuala, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

"Lower taxes equal higher profits. It ends there"

Wrong. This is economic illiteracy at its absolute zenith. It only "ends there", if the business owners bury that profit in their backyards and leave it there, or I guess if they burn it. Nebe, is that what you do with your profits? I bet it isn't. And if you either (1) spend that profit to buy things, (2) invest that profit to grow, (3) put it in the bank and save it, or (4) invest it in the stock market, or (5) give some of it to charity...if you do ANY of those things, the profit most certainly does not "end there", it gets re-circulated and helps the economy.

Now, that is true. But, lower taxes, by themselves, don't always increase deficits. Because they can be stimulative. Don't you live in CT? We raised taxes one too many times, and tax revenue collected dropped by 450 million, because it was restrictive, people finally had enough. Tax revenue collected, often does not move in proportion with tax rates levied. There are way too many moving pieces. If revenue always moved in lockstep with price, a Honda dealer could get rich by charging $100,000 for a Civic. Supply and demand gets in the way of that.

What thoughtful people should be advocating for, is what Clinton/Gingrich did. Cut taxes in a way that is stimulative, and cut wasteful spending. It worked when they did it, it worked like a charm. How come no one remembers that?

Maybe they helped fuel the dot-com bubble,by making it cheaper and more attractive, to take risk on new technologies and products? Maybe they made that surge better than it would have been, without it? Way too many moving pieces.

The growth during the Clinton and Bush years, was unlike anything my generation has seen. I'm not sure you've shot down my proposition that it might be a good idea to replicate that. Today, there are lots of technology and green energy ideas on the verge of taking off. Maybe tax cuts could help spur that along. Maybe it's worth a try. Anyone who claims to know that it can't work, is blinded buy ideology. If the Democrats were proposing this, everyone here knows you'd be cheerleading for it.

Maybe it made the bubble worse because many saw the opportunity for greater profit? Who the hell knows, but what's certain is that the tax cuts didn't cause the growth, new technologies born from government funded programs did.

Tax cuts can give business more capital to invest in or use new technologies regardless of where those technologies were born. And government funding is not government creating. God help us if we are going to depend on government tax collection and control to develop technology, business, culture, and the well-being of society. You seem to be all in for socialism. That's OK, but don't pose as some supporter of a free market system.

Here are two articles that analyze things a bit differently than you:

http://www.heritage.org/taxes/report...conomic-growth

https://www.thoughtco.com/effect-of-...growth-1146370

But that's the rub. Big corporations in general have excess cash they're unwilling to invest because they don't see a return. For many sectors capital investment goes to automation which further reduces the need for employment.

Of the articles you linked, the heritage piece is just standard conservative philosophy but doesn't take in the complexities of our current situation. We have massive debt, a crumbling infrastructure, an evolving global economy etc... What is the impact of increased leverage in terms of debt service and inflation? Hello???

The other one is more just reform minded but doesn't even support your argument for the most part. I'm not against reform, that's not what is really being proposed right now though.

I work primarily with Fortune 500 manufacturing executives to help them understand how capital investments in technology can best drive innovation and operational excellence.

Front row seat.

So what do you tell them, to turn over operations to the masses and to raise minimum wage? Everything you must tell them, spurs in the face if everything you profess to believe here.
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But lower taxes, changed the math behind the cost benefit analysis, that is undertaken whenever a new technology is being considered. Me thinks your front row seat has an obstructed view.
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I didn't intend to link to that one. As you say, it doesn't speak to anything now . . . or ever, since the reform it specifies ain't gonna happen no matter who is in power.

The one I intended to link to was this one (I replaced the wrong one with this in my previous post):

https://www.thoughtco.com/effect-of-...growth-1146370

This article reduces "conservative" economic policy to the basic requirements to which taxes should be addressed and for which government should spend. When government is restricted to its constitutionally required basics, tax policies don't have to be obscure, complex beyond readability, as Progressive tax codes must be in order to give the illusion of fairness.

yup...the Progressive city council(unanimous) and the mayor plan to argue before the Supreme Court that personal income is not personal property....this should be good :huh:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...l-judge-rules/

“In order to uphold its income tax, the city would have to convince a court that individual income is not protected by the constitution.”

At the Supreme Court, Seattle officials hope to attack the long-standing interpretation that income taxes are property taxes.