We all know the fix for that
[QUOTE=Tiny12;2748925]So you honestly think that Democrats are the Party of small government and lower taxes? In the words of our Commander In Chief, "Come on man!"
For every article you trot out from a left of center New York Times opinion columnist arguing for the superiority of Democratic governance, I could trot out two from right of center Wall Street Journal columnists if I weren't so damn lazy. When Leonhardt writes off Congressional control as a factor he loses credibility in my eyes. And when you look at his list of presidents, the top one, FDR, came to power in the aftermath of the worst depression in modern USA History, while the person in last place, Trump, had the misfortune to be in office when COVID hit.
At the risk of sounding immodest, my post #10362 in this thread makes more sense and is less biased than Leonhardt's article.[/QUOTE]Oh, sorry, but if you don't like FDR (or JFK / LBJ, Carter, Clinton, Obama and now Biden) getting credit for pulling us out of serious economic downturns and catastrophes, the fix is for the American electorate to prevent the Repubs that preceeded them from producing serious economic downturns and catastrophes.
And from all available historic evidence the only way to prevent them from doing that is to vote all Dem down every ballot every time. Once in, Repubs apparently can't help but produce those results. And a vote for a Third Party candidate or not voting typically results in Repubs winning. So those last two are not options for America avoiding the next Great Repub Depression / Recession, Massive Jobs Destruction and Catastrophe.
Hoover famously exacerbated the Great Repub Depression with his Smoot-Hawley Tariffs and his Classic Repub mistake of providing Supply-Side / Trickle-Down government aid and spending on the exact wrong people. The Great Repub Depression didn't just "hit" or "happen" on Hoover's watch.
Coronavirus was another endemic viral spread that very likely could have been contained or at least significantly damage reduced had the leaders of the proven Pandemic Prevention and Response teams not gone missing where they were needed most for more than a year by Trump contrary to all expert warnings not to do something so dangerous and stupid. And especially had Trump not compounded that disastrous decision by spending critical year 2020 doing, lying and saying everything a World Leader could do, lie about and say to make sure it would become the historically deadly economy and global supply-chain-destroying and Inflation producing Trump's Pandemic it became.
Those were Trump economic decisions. Trump's Pandemic didn't just "hit" or "happen" on his watch.
Doing the work to substantiate your claims
[QUOTE=Tiny12;2748939]I don't see where you're disagreeing with me .... [/QUOTE]BTW, I will say this however, you do, do the work and unlike the arch "bothsidesist", you do provide actual evidence, data and information to substantiate, support or refute said opinions / claims.
Bothsidesism, care to substantiate any of its claims?
[QUOTE=EihTooms12;2748811][QUOTE=JustTK;2748783]...And your insistence that the Dems have done a better job than the Reps is very poor rationale...[/QUOTE]
It isn't my "insistance" that gives Dems the notable edge in producing better economic results than Repubs. It's the data.
You have any quotes or examples for your accusations about what I assert when there is a gain for Repubs and all that? I suspect I provide plenty of substantiation for what I assert about what
actually happened and why. But I am willing to review your linked quotes to give it some consideration. ...[/QUOTE]Yep, I've said it before, about the "bothsidesist". The dude does not put in the work, to provide support to substantiate any of his claims / arguments. Next he'll tell ya to go read "book xyz" from "Joe Author", that'll explain all my "say so".
And now he's piggy-backing and riding on Tiny 12 "data / evidence" coat tails, and pawning off the work, as if its his own findings, as if he did the work.
How does that help your Bothsider argument?
[QUOTE=Tiny12;2748925]...
When Leonhardt writes off Congressional control as a factor he loses credibility in my eyes.
...
At the risk of sounding immodest, my post #10362 in this thread makes more sense and is less biased than Leonhardt's article.[/QUOTE]Ok, let's go with your idea.
With the constant and most common denominator for crap economic results being a Repub in the White House, accompanying oil shocks and all ("August 2001 PDB? What August 2001 PDB"? GW Bush might well have asked in September of that year), I guess the only conclusion is when Dems control Congress during those times the Repub POTUS is just plain ineffectual and unable to prevent those dastardly Dems from fucking up his economy. By contrast, Dems in the White House can somehow manage to get some positive things done anyway with Repubs controlling Congress.
So how does that support your contention again?
My contention still is that any legislation proposed, fought for and passed by Dem Presidents and Dems in Congress is diminished in its effectiveness and positive results with every Repub vote it receives. Why wouldn't that be so if those are votes are coming from people who think this government of, by and for We, The People and nobody else "is the problem" and have gleefully gone to war against it?
Oh, and on that last point, if Repubs are so effective and positive either when they are in the White House or when they control Congress, why have they never proposed and passed a single piece of meaningful legislation or anything whatsoever worthy of being revered and cited as something that Makes America Great when they controlled BOTH the White House and Congress over the past century?
I challenged you and anyone else here to rack their brains, rip through Google Search and come up with the list of legislation even remotely rivalling that of Dems when they were in the White House and controlled both houses of Congress. That was several days ago. So far not one person has been able to come up with anything.
I mean, we know they produced 2-3 of worst Great Repub Recessions and Crashes in history thanks to the legislation they came up with under those circumstances. But I was hoping to be surprised by something, you know, a bit more positive than those Repub "accomplishments. ".
Angels on the head of a pin
Here is a thought: all Americans are war mongering sociopaths. Every last one of them. Nice numerical cut off points but little good to all the others murdered by Americans and their proxies. Despite the considerable competition, Americans are far and away the scummiest war mongers the world has ever seen.
Bothsidesism all "dog-ma" and no bite?
[QUOTE=JustTK;2748620]Thats exactly what it is. And usually from the people that CANNOT think for themselves. How ironic. Yes, its how it works. Our way, or the highway. Thats the US system. Been that way for a few decades, I call it binary thinking, and yes it does spell trouble.
Don't worry, the protagonist has joined my shortlist of ignored folk. No doubt he will respond here with more drivel.[/QUOTE]
Why wouldn't I respond here, it is a discussion/opinion forum after all. As you've reminded us on many occasions. But you seem to use this thread as a means to simply bash BMs and America.
[QUOTE=JustTK;2748620]...He is like a dog w a bone. Hehe.[/QUOTE]
Better a dog with a bone, than a spewing "dog-ma" without one. Or a dog that [b]stands for nothing and falls for everything[/b], chasing its tail, like a half-crazed mutt.
Once again, your QAnon/Repub/Bothsidesism "dog-ma" is all bark and no bite.
Biden inflation getting worse
Biden's plan to curtail inflation not working. Gas just went up to $6. 59 a gallon in San Diego today. Over $7 in some areas of California. Biden continues to spend tax payer dollars on giveaways and inflation rising. Idiots are still talking about Trump and past presidents while America suffers. Biden stupidly and incompetence may have USA equal the recession of the 1930's. The worst president ever and he hasn't a clue. Just like the idiots talking about the past. The past looks great with past republican or democrat presidents compared to todays leadership and the future looks even worse. Republicans are smart enough to acknowledge that Biden is a disaster. Several democrats admit USA is in trouble. The idiot socialists keep trying to talk nonsense thinking that Biden disasters will improve on their own. Stupidity at its finest.
Dems Good, Repubs Bad? Not exactly.
[QUOTE=Tiny12;2749144]Interesting post, thanks. Bloomberg and Brookings are both basing their stories on the Tax Policy Center. The Tax Policy Center was set up by the Urban Institute and Brookings Institute. It's not merely left of center, it's left wing, and staffed by Progressive economists. The change in after tax income is explained by our sharply progressive tax system. Overall, we have the most progressive tax system in the OECD, and the federal income tax is more progressive than sales taxes and property taxes. Anyway, if a low income earner is paying at an average 10% tax rate, and you cut his taxes by 10%, the increase in his after tax income is 1%. If an upper income earner is paying at 40%, and you cut his taxes by 5%, his after tax income increases by 2%. So yes, the upper income earner shows a larger increase in after tax income.
You have a point when you say that all I looked at were the tax tables. I don't know everything that went into the TCJA. I make more than the average American, and my taxes went up. I have a real estate property in a foreign country that I hold through a foreign company. I have to pay at an 80%+ tax rate on income from the foreign property, because of the GILTI tax in TCJA! And I can't take full advantage of the state income tax deduction any longer. But certainly the TCJA helped Donald Trump, for example, a lot. The Trump Organization undoubtedly benefits greatly from the QBI deduction for pass through entities from income associated with high levels of depreciation.
Your sources are old and, being based on TPC analysis, biased. It would be better to look at actual, recent data. I pulled IRS tax statistics for 2017,2018 and 2019 (last year available), and compared tax rates for those years by income level. You can do this if you wish here.
[URL]https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-statistical-tables-by-size-of-adjusted-gross-income[/URL]
The tax cuts took effect on January 1, 2018. It didn't really make a difference whether I looked at 2017 vs. 2018 or 2017 vs. 2019, overall the numbers looked similar. For 2017 vs. 2019, people earning $10,000 or less saw their taxes cut by 27% to 40%. That's not a big deal though, because they were paying little taxes to begin with. The big winners were people making $40,000 to $500,000. Their taxes went down from 16% to 18%. People making $20,00 to $40,000 and $500,000 to $1,000,000 saw cuts of 10% to 12%. Those who benefitted the least made in the range of $10,000 to $20,000 and $1 million+.
So this basically looked like another sop to the middle class, who account for the majority of voters. Which perhaps was the intention all along. One caveat, I'm not sure that the TCJA was entirely responsible for the changes in average tax rates, there may have been other factors at play.
Americans for Tax Reform, which like the Brookings Institute is biased, published this piece on how the tax system became more progressive after the TCJA. They don't really show cause and effect though. Anyway, their numbers are almost certainly correct:
[URL]https://www.atr.org/new-cbo-report-finds-tcja-made-tax-code-more-not-less-progressive/[/URL]
Editorial Comment: One thing that amazes me, from the piece, is that the top 1% pays 41.7% of the income tax. And Democrats still say the wealthy don't pay their fair share. Democrats need to focus their efforts on helping those who aren't doing as well as the rest of us, instead of tearing down the people at the top. To their credit, Kyrsten Sinema and a few others do exactly that, despite the pressure from the progressives to concentrate on class warfare.
As to the corporate tax cuts, you really need to get over your Stockholm Syndrome and appreciate what's best for your stock portfolio and America. The effects of the tax cuts were reflected more in wages than in a reduced unemployment rate. We got to 3. 5% unemployment before COVID hit, the lowest since 1969. How much lower can you go? Real wages and household income took a huge jump upwards in 2019. As to capital spending, regardless of what the survey says, it jumped up after the TCJA. The "capital expenditures" component of stocks in the S&P 500 index was in the range of 71 to 76 in 2012 to 2017. It was 71.43 in 2017. It jumped up to 83.46 in 2019 and 90.90 in 2019.
A lot of money came back to the USA as a result of the TCJA. Companies were keeping it overseas because they'd have to pay up to 35% tax on it if they brought it back. Wharton said as much as $2. 8 trillion were parked overseas. I'm not sure how much of that came back, but through expansions, capital spending, dividends, share buybacks, and parking the money at USA Banks where it can be leant out, what money that did come back is now circulating in our economy.
I can't understand why anyone would take the position that the corporate tax rate didn't need to come down. Including state income taxes, our average rate was around 40%. The next highest in the developed world was Australia, at 30%. And Australia, unlike the USA, doesnt tax dividends. Yeah, some companies with loopholes and who had subsidiaries in tax haven countries, were getting by just fine. (Aside: The TCJA helped in this regard with the GILTI tax that I was b*tching about above. Now companies can't park money overseas and avoid taxes from their foreign operations, because of TCJA.) But many of our companies just weren't competitive. Even Obama and Biden wanted to bring the rate down to 28%.
This will be my last post for a while. I've gotten addicted to replying to your posts and it's eating up way too much time. You're a worthy competitor on the battlefield of ideas, especially considering you're fighting from a much weaker position, having to defend the economic policies of a Democratic Party that's increasingly dominated by progressives.
P.S. If you want my Excel table or the capex data for the S & P 500 send me a PM with an email address. I cant link to them.[/QUOTE]I appreciate all the details. But regardless whatever went into that hundreds of pages long TCJA, what matters is what came out of it. And what came out of it is fewer jobs were created with it than without it and the GDP growth rate did not produce a noticeable increase with it than without it. At a cost of Trillions. The unemployment rate was declining in a straight line from the year Obama and the Dems passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act at the end of February 2009 with no Repub votes. The fact that it continued on that trajectory until it declined to 3. 5% under Trump after it was already down to 4. 7% when he took over is nice, but meaningless in terms of the TCJA. Once the unemployment rate hits the "Full Employment" level, which it did in this era sometime about 2 years before Trump took office, a 1-2% uptick or dip here and there is really meaningless. Extreme weather events, baby-boom retirements, whatever. Not all that much to do with some economic legislation.
Almost all economic legislation is like the TCJA. Pages and pages of details, something given to someone here, something taken from someone there. And whatever is given in that bill sf often taken away in another bill and vice versa. That's why I try only to focus on the end results from administration terms, their budget proposals, what got passed and all that, not digging into the weeds so much since everyone digging is bound to miss some detail elsewhere that changed everything.
However, I do think it is valid to factor in the repeated and obvious stated goals and intentions of each party involved in crafting legislation. Because it is their overall philosophy that guides every detail they put into legislation. You will see the sum of all the details in all the related legislation in the results. That's where Dems' Demand-Side economic philosophy vs Repubs' Supply-Side economic philosophy comes into play.
There is a very good reason Dems' Demand-Side philosophy (putting more money in the pockets of the lower and middle income earners) always significantly outperforms Repubs' Supply-Side philosophy (putting more money in the pockets of corporations and the top income earners) on jobs creation, expanding the economy, paying down the debt and deficits, etc. And, sorry, it is also blissfully "simple".
Lower and middle income earners tend to spend all the money in their pockets very quickly, often right up to their next paycheck. For obvious reasons. All too often, they need to. Put more money in the pockets of lower and middle income earners and they will be hitting restaurants and malls to spend it today. The economy will grow. Businesses will get more customers and will need to expand just to keep up. Businesses will need to hire more workers. Grudgingly, as usual. But they will need to hire or miss out. Tax revenue from businesses and workers grows. Roads, bridges, schools, etc get repaired. More jobs are created from that. Police forces get funded. It goes on.
Corporations and top income earners tend not to spend extra money in their pockets very quickly, if at all. Again, for obvious reasons. They don't need to. There are only so many hamburgers a wealthy person or corporate CEO can eat in a week, only so many cars they can drive, boats they can sail, etc. They can bank it and forget about it. They can speculate on stocks with it. In fact, they can easily create a stock market bubble with fun discretionary money and laugh when the bubble bursts. They can buy another villa in Italy with it. And I assure you the last thing they want to do with extra money in their pocket is expand their business requiring them to hire more pain-in-the-ass employees if it is not clear their doing so would increase their pleasure in life rather than reduce it and add more complications and hassle to their lives.
On top of which, there are too few of those top marginal income earners compared to the huge percentage of lower and middle income earners for any big deal tax cut for them to matter. It cannot possibly do much for the economy and, guess what, it never does. Well, it does add to the deficit in a big way and diverts tax revenue money that sure could come in handy when the inevitable Great Repub Recession comes around.
It used to crack me up when weepy Repub John Boehner would take the floor of Congress and demand an answer from Obama, "Where are the jobs"? And then he would extoll the virtues of what he termed "Job creators", by which he meant the beneficiaries of his Party's typical Supply-Side / Trickle-Down economic failures. He was just slamming a Dem and flattering the ego of his favorite political donor class by telling them they and not the unwashed rabble were the "job creators. ".
First of all, Obama's economy recovered and created more jobs than any Repub ever could have created had a Repub ever taken over from a Dem with economic conditions as disastrous as it was when Obama took over from GWB. But, of course, they never have done that in at least 100 years.
Second, one reason Obama's recovery was slower than it easily could have been was because Moscow Mitch had that meeting on Obama's inauguration night and set the orders for everyone in his caucus and it was so in the House as well not to do anything to help Obama pull us out of that Great Repub Crash and Recession. Which in one case meant they would stubbornly obstruct Obama's efforts to go back to the Clinton / Dem top marginal tax rates. And that kept the recovery from really taking off. LOL. Let's just say there was no Repub counterpart to Tip O'Neill working with Obama.
Third, the relatively few typical beneficiaries of Repubs' consistently failed Supply-Side / Trickle-Down philosophy are not the true "job creators" in a national economy. The true "job creators" are the many, many more lower and middle income earners who go into the marketplace and spend all the money in their pockets as quickly as possible, essentially forcing businesses to do something they for the most part hate to do; hire more employees to keep up with the customer traffic.
