How Supply Side Economics Exploded the National Debt While Increasing Economic Inequality

[JohnEngelman]

That is an infantile way to look at things. That's not how wealth works.

And I suppose you do have the right to say whatever you want. In the same way, you have the right to say racist things. Luckily, you saying things doesn't make policies.

My racist statements are factual and well documented.

For years public opinion surveys have indicated popular support for a more progressive tax system.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pol...IBiAHCEJIBBDMuMTaYAQCgAQGwAQo&sclient=gws-wiz

The Democrats would benefit themselves by addressing that popular support. Instead they defend affirmative action, condemn racial profiling, and claim that they are open to racial reparations.

 

[LittleDixie]

For years public opinion surveys have indicated popular support for a more progressive tax system.

The Democrats would benefit themselves by addressing that popular support. Instead they defend affirmative action, condemn racial profiling, and claim that they are open to racial reparations.

Maybe so, but something being popular does not make it correct or moral or right.

We can look back through history and find countless examples of where the majority supported awful policies.

 

[JohnEngelman]

Maybe so, but something being popular does not make it correct or moral or right.

We can look back through history and find countless examples of where the majority supported awful policies.

The U.S. government is a democracy. High taxes for the rich is a good policy. If the Democrats raised taxes for the rich very high, like they were from 1945 to 1980 they would never need to worry about defeating the Republicans again.

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

The government is not a Democracy, it is an entrenched bureaucracy tending to oligarchy by birth/college.

These lauded high tax rates came with so many carveouts, caveats, exemptions and assorted dodges
that they produced little, or no, windfall of government income making the effective marginal
tax rate for the rich no more, or less, than it is now because the rich buy into the government
and (for the right) pay protection and (for the Left) purchase quasi-religious indulgences
ensuring that legislation wrote does little harm to themselves possible as legislative partners.

The rich have so many mechanisms for protecting themselves and their income.
A business sees taxes as a cost of going business (despite what so many believe -
the nonsensical idea that taxes just come out of profit [and profit is a bad thing])
and merely passes that cost on to the hapless consumer, be it in the cost of goods
or in the provision of services; it falls on the middle-class, and hard.

Attacking investment wealth (to get those who inherited and hide income)
also prevents the middle-class from achieving upward mobility by punishing
investment. A person who works hard all their life and is solidly middle-class
becomes, for a short time in their life, when they retire and cash out that
home and delve into their other retirement investments.

In short, targeted taxes on the rich are counter-productive to the economy and
serve no other purpose than that of the political of wealth envy and pitting groups
against each other to divide and conquer, but again, in the effort, to those engaging
in the spirit of get-even and level the playing field, in the words of Walt Kelly's Pogo,
"We have me the enemy and he is us!"

This is why I am such a huge proponent of the FairTax.org.

PS - Terms like "Supply Side" and Trickle Down" are not economic terms
and should be avoided in economic discussions as the political pejoratives
that they really are. Nobody would dare refer to welfare and other forms
of "equality" or social safety net spending as trickle-up prosperity...

(when in fact, it is nothing more than a form of trickle-up poverty
designed, as we are discussing in the American Pie thread, to keep
the wards on the plantation/ghetto/hacienda...).
__________________________________________
Democrat born. Democrat bred. Libertarian led (by Democrats).

 

[JohnEngelman]

There are ways of reducing the wealth and power of the plutocracy, starting with steeply progressive taxation. Another method is to end private funding of elections, and have elections financed by the government. Those methods are used in other democracies and they work.

 

[LittleDixie]

The U.S. government is a democracy.

The US government is a Representative Democracy - a Republic. This is not the same as a Democracy.

Consider that current polls put the support for legalization of Marijuana at 2/3rds of Americans. If we lived in a Democracy, pot would have been legal the instant 51% of us supported it. And yet...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...tional-marijuana-under-federal-law/ar-AAWoHEX

 

[LittleDixie]

High taxes for the rich is a good policy. If the Democrats raised taxes for the rich very high, like they were from 1945 to 1980 they would never need to worry about defeating the Republicans again.

All taxation is theft. It is the government stealing from some people to pay others and to perpetuate incentives for not working or earning. Taxes on the rich, the poor and the middle are all immoral acts of involuntary taking. Targeting one group or the other for even more theft is also immoral.

The "Tax the rich" mentality is one based in envy and greed. You just want stuff and you want someone else to pay for it - someone who likely works harder than you and who offers more value to the world than you do. It is the desire to have someone else pay your way so you can continue to laze your way through life, doing the minimum but expecting to be showered with luxury and abundance.

When the whole system eventually crashes, it is going to be amusing watching all of the moochers and whiners adjust to actually supporting themselves like adults.

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

There are ways of reducing the wealth and power of the plutocracy, starting with steeply progressive taxation. Another method is to end private funding of elections, and have elections financed by the government. Those methods are used in other democracies and they work.

I just dealt with that.

I disagree strongly with your set of solutions.

The answer is to stop trying to mindlessly tax wealth and wealth creation
(a partnership of innovation and investment) and, to instead tax actual economic activity.

To further my remarks, it is a matter of privacy.
The government has no business with its nose in my business.
If I run a business, the only people who need a nose in it are the investors.*
You take a lot of rancor out of politics when you stop looking at individuals (or classes of).
You add fairness to it when everyone plays by the same rules and if government wants to raise taxes,
then they have to do it openly and on every single voter/citizen and stop hiding the fucking of the population
behind envy (and the hidden damage outlined), tricksy fees and ghost specialty taxes that only hurt the poorest.


* Or, admittedly law enforcement if I am engaging in criminal or negligent behavior.

 

[LittleDixie]

There are ways of reducing the wealth and power of the plutocracy, starting with steeply progressive taxation.

See the Laffer Curve.

At some point, raising the tax rate will actually generate less tax income than a lower rate would. Consider the extremes. If you were taxed 100% of your earnings, what kind of job would you do, or would you even have job? I wouldn't even bother with it. So, a 100% tax rate would likely cause others to make the same decisions and would cause a lot of people to abandon their jobs completely. This applies more and more to the higher levels of taxation. People don't see the rewards as worth it and they just stop contributing. No one replaces them - the work just stops along with the tax revenue.

Raising taxes is not going to do what you expect it to. Even if you don't agree that taxation is wrong, you should be able to see that raising taxes won't give you more money - it will just wreck civilization.

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

Those taxation levels were an illusion, smoke and mirrors, as I already outlined.

NOBODY paid them, but they made for great politics,
a tactic still being employed to this very day.

 

[JohnEngelman]

See the Laffer Curve.

At some point, raising the tax rate will actually generate less tax income than a lower rate would. Consider the extremes. If you were taxed 100% of your earnings, what kind of job would you do, or would you even have job? I wouldn't even bother with it. So, a 100% tax rate would likely cause others to make the same decisions and would cause a lot of people to abandon their jobs completely. This applies more and more to the higher levels of taxation. People don't see the rewards as worth it and they just stop contributing. No one replaces them - the work just stops along with the tax revenue.

Raising taxes is not going to do what you expect it to. Even if you don't agree that taxation is wrong, you should be able to see that raising taxes won't give you more money - it will just wreck civilization.

By the end of the Second World War the top tax rate in the United States was 94%. It did not wreck our civilization.

For years public opinion surveys have indicated popular support for a more progressive tax system. The Democrats should give us that and end all this nonsense about reparations, defunding the police, and so on.

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

Again, no one paid 94%. Ever.

Remember? Protection? Indulgences? Partnership?

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

Popular support?

We don't so much as teach personal finances in school anymore, let alone economics.

99% of the population is subject to Bastiat's parable of The Broken Window and taught not to see consequence.

 

[LittleDixie]

By the end of the Second World War the top tax rate in the United States was 94%. It did not wreck our civilization.

For years public opinion surveys have indicated popular support for a more progressive tax system. The Democrats should give us that and end all this nonsense about reparations, defunding the police, and so on.

Who knows what we could have accomplished if the government vampire hadn't drained all of that money from productive people. What could those productive people have been inspired to create if they weren't weakened and demoralized by such high taxes? We may never know. Perhaps we are living in the ruined civilization compared to what could have been without Roosevelt's taxes.

And again, public opinion does not dictate what is right.

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

Dixie, don't argue against a fallacy; you delve into the world of make-believe
and in make-believe world, we actually did successfully "soak" the rich past.

 

[JohnEngelman]

Who knows what we could have accomplished if the government vampire hadn't drained all of that money from productive people. What could those productive people have been inspired to create if they weren't weakened and demoralized by such high taxes? We may never know. Perhaps we are living in the ruined civilization compared to what could have been without Roosevelt's taxes.

And again, public opinion does not dictate what is right.

The 1950's were the golden age of America's white working class. A white man with a high school degree could get a job that enabled him to buy a house in the suburbs, and support a wife who did not need to work, and who could stay home and raise the children. When Trump's white working class supporters respond favorably to the slogan, "Make America great again," the "again" they are thinking about is the 1950's, when the top tax rate was usually 82%, and one third for the work force belonged to labor unions.

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

Nobody, but nobody paid 82%.

Just "feel-good" politics...
__________________________________________
Democrat born. Democrat bred. Libertarian led (by Democrats).

 

[Chobham]

It's easy to criticize tax policy in the absence of spending policy.

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

It's easy to criticize tax policy in the absence of spending policy.

From your keyboard to Buddha's monitor...

 

[icanhelp1]

The 1950's were the golden age of America's white working class. A white man with a high school degree could get a job that enabled him to buy a house in the suburbs, and support a wife who did not need to work, and who could stay home and raise the children. When Trump's white working class supporters respond favorably to the slogan, "Make America great again," the "again" they are thinking about is the 1950's, when the top tax rate was usually 82%, and one third for the work force belonged to labor unions.

We were also highly unionized back then. I remember every Sunday morning watching the AFL-CIO morning show. Where and when did they go wrong? We also had B-52 bombers flying overhead every 15 minute followed by KC-135s every half hour, a constant reminder that a nuclear holocaust was right around the corner.

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

The unions died when the workforce changed and labor became dear
and workers did not need the unions to compete for wages/salaries.

We produced a more educated and mobile workforce over time.
That single-working parent was no longer locked into the one job
that he was lucky to get because he now had options and choices.

This is why the Unions gravitated towards the public sector,
a class of worker that seeks no mobility other than upward
in the government (and why school administration has
become as big as, if not larger than teaching faculty).

It's going to become even worse as robotics replaces workers.
The "green" electric F150 is leading the way there...

Ford, again. Go figure.

 

[Chobham]

When it is policy, be it national or individual, to continually live beyond your means, then no amount of revenue, be it from taxes or wages, will EVER be enough. It will always end in financial collapse.

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

But, we have a fiat currency and the government can just print money.

Ask any MMT advocate.



Inflation is just demand!
Money is not a commodity!
It is just a measure of government "strength."

 

[Chobham]

Kershner's First Law: "When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare."

 

[Sh1ne0n67]

How long have I been saying that,

when you find it appropriate to tax people above your station in life,
then everyone below your station in life will find additional taxes on you acceptable?

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