how tax cuts stimulate the economy

as is typical of this board, every liberal bush hater can find glorious and laborious reasons why any thing Bush does sucks. reading your comments on tax cuts makes me laugh and puke at the same time. what a bunch of freakin idiots. if anyone out there working their asses off say to me, fuck i need more taxes taken out of my check and more taxes put on my cigs, gas, food, every day consumption products.... i'll tell you to look deep within your goofy brain and find a job at disney land(or whatever they call the democratic headquarters these days). i know this will piss everyone off but damn just because you hate Bush don't show your stupidity.

Exactly!

I will always spend my money better than anyone else!

I don't want bloated goverment payrolls (IE: California), I don't want to pay for some welfare queen's 6 kids from 5 different fathers, and I don't want to help/pay for homeless people who do not want to work.

California takes about $200 out of each paycheck I get (Paid twice a month); thats about $5000 a year! I really would like to spend that money on other thing besides prisons, welfare and homeless people.

The only people who are pro-taxes are people who don't pay taxes!!

dragonreborn, I think you're misinterpreting this thread to criticize it as an attack on President Bush. The use of tax cuts to stimulate economic growth is a stategy that is being used in a great deal of Western nations these days, usually at the request of multi-national corporations who have no interest in politics.
There is nothing wrong with them doing this, it's part of their nature to increase their profit margin and taxes eat into this.The problem is that they do not have a direct conection with the communities or societies they are selling their products to and so the money that they make is taken out of the local economy.
The money that is raised through taxation ,at any level of government,is used to maintain the infrastructure of that society (ie; education, healthcare,social assistance,roadwork,defense,civic services,etc...)By reducing the funding for these things you slowly erode what makes a society function smoothly.Does a corporation have to care?Of course not, it's not their job.Does a citizen have to care?No, but lots of Third World countries have little or no taxation as well.
The simple fact, as I see it, are that the gains being made by the average person by these tax cuts are vastly outwayed by the costs.
Personally I have no problem paying more in taxes as long as I get services like cheap education, cheap housing, cheap medicare and free transit to name a few.This may sound like a nanny state but I don't see anything wrong with a society looking after it's own.


[Edited on Nov 16, 2003 by YAWG]

Don't blame the "liberal hataz" for the fact that Bush has consistently made himself an easy target by being as incompetent as he could possibly be in the circumstances.

He's cutting taxes like he fought a war -- rush in headlong because it "seems like a good idea", with no thought for the consequences or how to deal with the aftermath. If he was cutting spending like he was cutting taxes, people might not like that either, but at least he'd be exhibiting some degree of logic and internal consistency.

It is not the fault of a single liberal Bush hater that the man is, in fact, a moron. Deal with it.

Tax cut? What tax cut? Haven't seen a lick of extra $$$ flowing my way, nor am I likely to. Not like I'd actually spend it on anything aside from bills.

[Edited on Nov 16, 2003 by SYH653]

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right on! i have the standard federal tax reporters not more then 10ft from my location at my desk in fact im the person that makes changes to them..
believe me that the changes to them are not in the favor of the majority
of persons in the us

We are sorry to inform you that your claim for a tax refund has been denied for the following reason:

You did not meet our minimum wealth requirement. You income fell well short of : " filthy stinking rich " - thus making you ineligible. Should you wish to appeal this notice, you may do so in the election next year.

Yours truly,

The Office of Regressive Taxation

sigh . . .

Unfortunately the surge in Krugman and Franken's sales are going to be offset by a few really big tax cuts (and subsidies) going to fairly samll companies who will remember when it comes time to make campaign donations.

Overall, I think the tax cut will be favorable to Republican politicians, even if its economic effects are mixed.

what's with these people constantly reposting everything? twice even...

Bush has proven himself to be the most incompetent leader since Clinton. His tax cut doesn't matter because he's proposed some of the largest expansions in government since, well, Clinton. This whole thing boils down to property rights. My body is my labor is my profit. I own it. Nobody knows better what to do with the fruits of my labor than I. What people don't realize is that the Dems and Republicans are exactly the same. They both want your money, and think that they are justified in taking it from you at the point of a gun. From my point of view it makes little difference whether they want to spend it on medicare or bombs, because I can't spend it on my home, or my groceries, or my education, or my entertainment. Civilization is only a network of mutual agreements between individuals, not a striving for some miasmic "greater good" that some nannyish officials decide upon. The greatest good is allowing individuals to strive for their own happiness.

and FUCK the dixie chiks!

Tax cuts don't help those who have lost their jobs to this crappy economy. They'd rather have jobs to pay taxes with.

Rocktopuss,

Actually Clinton shrank federal discretionary spending by 0.7% overall in his first term, and raised it by only 8% overall in his second (compared to 11.6% for GHWB's presidency). Bush has already raised discretionary spending (that is, spending that doesn't include national security and such, so don't blame it on the war on terror) by 18%, and he's still got a year to go even in his first term. For better or worse, Clinton was far from a tax-and-spend liberal. (Incidentally, my source is a press release from the Cato Institute - hardly a liberal, Bush-hating sort of org)

Incidentally, you do realize that Locke was only able to defend the picture of property rights you're pushing by assuming that G-d had invested us all with property rights in our own bodies - leave that out and you have a Hobbesian argument for tyranny, not libertarianism. And, I'm curious - are you really pushing the anarchist line that the government should not even tax for national defence and police protection? There's a reason we don't have Raytheon private rogue state insurance - national defence is an area of massive market failure.

How can you leave out that we have property rights over our own bodies? To my understanding, that is where all true rights originate from. Any perceived "right" outside of owning our bodies and minds (quality medical, education, child care, blah blah blah) is what people like David Kelley would call "negative rights," meaning that they come at someone else's expense. The entire bill of rights can be boiled down to one basic right. That is the right of me over mine.

And I do think (as most Libertarians do) that National defense is one of the only legitimate tasks of government, along with protection from fraud. I would definitely say though that what we have in the present day is far from being simply national defense and closer to being imperial force.

You can shake the numbers any way you like, discretionary spending says nothing about overall spending. My original point was that even though Bush may be offering tax cuts, he's still a government expansionist, just like Clinton was. How many more "social programs" do we have today because of Clinton? I just wanted to point out to everyone that Republicans and Democrats are alike in that they both want control of a greater share of your wallet.

Private property is a social phenomenon, not a natural one. Without a very definite structure of laws, police, etc. the notion that I have a "right" to the property even of my own body is a metaphysical chimera - what would it mean? This is why Hobbes - who, unlike Locke, doesn't have a doctrine of natural property - just leaves at that, in the state of nature, you have a right to whatever you can take. Putting things like police forces in place to prevent me from taking your stuff if I'm stronger is an active intervention, not merely an expression of some natural relationship. Now, you may think that all other rights spring from our natural property rights in our own bodies, but you need to offer some explanation of how we get that right in the first place.

And even here, there are some problems. A view like yours doesn't preserve the connection between desert and resources that it seems to. After all, the stuff I have isn't *just* the result of my own labor. But don't take my word for it -

"The natural state of human beings is not one of equality but of dependence on more powerful human beings. Economic freedom, including freedom of contract, in the classical liberal sense is one of the luxuries enabled by social organization. The long life, wide liberties, and extensive property of the average modern American are the creation not of that American alone but of society, that is, of a vast aggregation of individuals, living and dead; and of luck - in geography, climate, natural resources... If there are two equally able and hard-working people, one living in a wealthy society and the other in a poor one, the former will have a higher standard of living; and the difference will be due to the efforts of other members, living and dead, of the wealthier society and to other factors exteranl to the character, capacity, and efforts of the two individuals. The individual's 'right' to property in such a society is not 'natural,' becuase, even if we ignore the role of luck, his possessions are a product of social interactions rather than his skills and efforts alone, and those skills may be, in part or whole, a social product too."

The quote is from Richard Posner, Reagan appointee to the 7th Circuit court of appeals, and charter member of the law and economics school of jurisprudence.



The phrase "negative rights" is typically used the other way - to refer to all the freedoms 'from' that libertarians like (freedom from expropriation, freedom from arbitrary imprisonment, etc). Rights 'to', like a right to health care would be positive rights.

If your argument is truly based on my natural right to my own labor, how does national defence somehow trump that? You can't take my rights away just because I use them stupidly - if I want to take the risk that al-Qaeda will nuke me, why shouldn't I be able to? If you want to make an argument that, because of the market failures involved in national defence (e.g., coordination problems, catastrophic outcomes, etc.), you can't base it on an inherent natural property right that somehow fades away when it's not useful. You can still be a libertarian on something like utilitarian grounds (heck, Posner is), but you then can't simply shut down the argument that we should have a right to health care by saying that it ain't natural.

Discretionary spending isn't the total story about spending, no, but it's spending exculsive of things like national defence and law enforcement, so it's much of the story of the kind of spending that libertarians tend to oppose. Clinton actually cut a lot of social programs (notably welfare) - his fiscal policies were closer to Reagan's than to FDR's.

Technically speaking you can cut taxes and increase government spending to spur economic growth; however, spending the money on the military and wars drains the economy and does not spur growth. When you consider things such as Halliburton's gigantic no-bid Iraq contracts (something that violates GSA purchasing rules) and the rest of the money that is being pumped into the phony war in Iraq, the real picture immerges.

I make enough money that I got the whole whopping $300 tax rebate a couple of years ago. I thought it was a waste of Federal money back then and I stand by that. I spent my $300 on school supplies for needy kids -- it's a shame the Federal government doesn't think pencils and notebooks are a priority. Wasn't Bush supposed to be the education President? Wasn't that a hoot when he suggested eliminating the program RIF (Reading is Fundamental) that gives books to poor kids so they can learn to read?

The money that was given away in the 2001 rebate, and is being given away in the current tax cuts, could be spent on construction projects at home right now that would stimulate the economy. I'd rather have my tax dollars pooled with other taxpayers to rebuild schools, roads, and so on.

The thing is that the tax cuts aren't designed to help the people who need the money most. This is the same failed trickle-down economics that Ronald Reagan used when he nearly bankrupted the country 20 years ago. The poorest Americans pay the highest percentage of their total income in taxes. Sales taxes are far more regressive than income taxes.

Bush is planning to spend $200 Million on his re-election campaign. If you don't think those high dollar contributors are expecting a return on their investment you're fooling yourself. On the flipside, Bush already knows he won't get the votes of the working poor. It's not in his personal best interest to see that they get a fair shake.

What this all really boils down to is a very cold and calculated attempt to eliminate spending on social programs in general. By bankrupting the government, the political right can argue that the money just isn't their to help the poor. They can argue the best options available to the poor are to accept low paying jobs. Don't forget, this is a country that was founded on the economics of slavery.

Lets face it, politicians increase social spending to buy votes from the poor, perform tax cuts to buy votes from the middle-class and wealthy. Its all about getting re-elected. Personally, I support tax cuts because thats all the money the government needs. I don't like having my taxes increased to compensate for a government that has shitty money management skills. Most western governments could easily provide the social programs that are required with less tax money if they simply removed abusers from the system and increased their efficiency.

I would suggest that the amount of money lost to people who abuse the system ( welfare cheats, workers compensation scammers, and unemployment insurance fraudsters) is a tiny fraction of that which is lost through corporations and the very wealthy dodging their fair share of taxes.

Seems to me that the indigent mother who " steals " a welfare cheque to which she is not " entitled " is much more likely to be caught and prosecuted than is the white collar criminal who defrauds shareholders or the government.

I agree with Pauillac, and I think this immunity from prosecution is part of what the rich buy when they contribute to political campaign coffers. I wish I could say this is just an evil committed by the Republicans, but both major parties are equally guilty.

Well ... I think there's a question here as to what's the purpose of government. I think that a truly enlightened society tries to provide for all of it's people. I don't think that food stamps are government's way of buying votes from the poor. I think it's a way to help make sure people survive. Civilized people don't just watch other people die and do nothing about it.

On a practical level, social programs tend to be less expensive than the draconian suggestions of Republicans and Libertarians. Even if you choose to let the poor just get sick and die, you have to deal with the diseases they can spread to the general population. Helping a person maintain good health is cheaper than paying for serious illnesses. Educating people to hold decent paying jobs is cheaper than the costs associated with crime and imprisonment.

We're living history. Every action we take, or don't take, is going to be part of history classes taught in 100 years. What do you want to be said about this generation? Are we going to be the people who were so selfish that we turned our back on hunger, poverty, disease, and injustice, all for the sake of having a bigger TV set? We have a responsibility to the next generation, and part of that responsibility is giving them a world that is better than the one where we grew up.

In the really big picture, there is no us and them. There's just us. The question is ... what are we willing to do to be good to each other? We have the capability to end world hunger and do battle with many of the diseases ravaging the earth. We choose not to do this because the rich don't see any short term benefit in this kind of behavior. This is morally wrong. Is it any wonder that the poorer nations of the world hate us?

Supporters of the Bush tax cuts are getting duped, hosed, spun, finagled, bamboozled. Here's aul Krugman on The Tax-Cut Con

The starve-the-beast doctrine is now firmly within the conservative mainstream. George W. Bush himself seemed to endorse the doctrine as the budget surplus evaporated: in August 2001 he called the disappearing surplus ''incredibly positive news'' because it would put Congress in a ''fiscal straitjacket.''

Like supply-siders, starve-the-beasters favor tax cuts mainly for people with high incomes. That is partly because, like supply-siders, they emphasize the incentive effects of cutting the top marginal rate; they just don't believe that those incentive effects are big enough that tax cuts pay for themselves. But they have another reason for cutting taxes mainly on the rich, which has become known as the ''lucky ducky'' argument.

Here's how the argument runs: to starve the beast, you must not only deny funds to the government; you must make voters hate the government. There's a danger that working-class families might see government as their friend: because their incomes are low, they don't pay much in taxes, while they benefit from public spending. So in starving the beast, you must take care not to cut taxes on these ''lucky duckies.'' (Yes, that's what The Wall Street Journal called them in a famous editorial.) In fact, if possible, you must raise taxes on working-class Americans in order, as The Journal said, to get their ''blood boiling with tax rage.''

I was going to change aul Krugman to Paul Krugman, but I kinda like it.

[Edited on Nov 25, 2003 by MarkoffChaney]

This is really interesting. I hadn't read heard of this strategy before and this is a perfect fit for what the political right has been pushing since Newt Gingrich and pals took over the House of Reps in 1994. Bush is definitely their champion trying to do as much damage as possible.