Interesting response on U Tube debate

[fnurt]

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Regardless, lowering tax rates has the effect of raising tax revenues, as demonstrated by Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush.

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Come on, you can't seriously believe this. Do you think you can keep lowering tax rates to zero, and revenues will keep going up and up?

Bruce Bartlett, one of the principal authors of Reagan's tax cut, wrote an op-ed recently in which he decried the mindless propaganda of the very claim you are making - that tax cuts somehow INCREASE revenues.

He notes that studies of Kennedy's tax cut demonstrate that about one-third of the lost revenue was recouped. One-third, not "more than 100%," as your theory would have it.

Please, enough already with the ridiculous claim that tax cuts raise revenues. I know it's a popular line among demagoguing politicians, but it's really a self-discrediting thing to say.

[JPFisher55]

Lowering tax rates can temporarily increase tax revenues if they increase economic growth. Visa versa for tax increases. However, increased government spending also can cause some economic growth so the process is complex.
Tax revenues are up during recent years due to decent economic growth. Hard to say if the Bush tax cuts caused this growth.

[JavaNut]

Budget explorer

So do you need to lower taxes, or do you need to get the very rich to actually pay tax or what?

Let us just see, Reagan elected in 1980 started as president in 1981 and lasted 8 years, and then it was Bush. Then the debt just started rising and rising, is that good?

A debt of US $8.000.000.000.000, wow.

[JPFisher55]

Less government spending LOL!

[dfan]

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This is clear if you look at long term US wealth distribution charts. You will see that over the past several decades more and more of the nations wealth has become concentrated into the hands of a smaller and smaller percentage of the US population.

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This is blatantly false, you can go to the Fed and CBO websites and pull up the actual charts, which I see you haven't.


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That is because money begats money which begats even more money and so on, especially in the form of capital income. And if tax policy stays pretty much the same as it has been this effect will eventually lead to almost all of the wealth in the hands of a very small % of Americans.

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This is also wildly incorrect. 94% of millionaires are self-made according to the two latest studies [it was 90% 10 years ago.]

Secondly, most family fortunes [those that pay the Death Tax] are reduced to less than $1mm per descendant by the third generation due to taxes, divorce, and over-spending/ under-investing.
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In 2007 the US middle class is poorer in real dollars than their parents were even though the real dollar GDP in 2007 is much higher than it was a generation ago.

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You are 100% false yet again, why are you so ignorant and lazy to actually pull up the data? Your campaign is misinformation is laughable. Here's the actual data from the FRB, CBO, and IRS websites:

Real, after-tax, per-capita disposable income is up approximately 91% or more since 1972. Over the past two years, real disposable income is up 4% or so.
[This, of course, includes the tens of millions of immigrants who have arrived on the scene recently, and have not had the full benefit of all of those decades to climb the economic ladder. ]

1972 - Real, disposable income per capita, chained 2000 dollars: $14,512
1987 - Real, disposable income per capita, chained 2000 dollars: $20,072
1995 - Real, disposable income per capita, chained 2000 dollars: $22,153
2006 - Real, disposable income per capita, chained 2000 dollars: $27,789

Everyone's entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. You'd think the 'society imploding' doom-and-gloomers would not need to resort to disinformation to make their point.

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I find your tone blatantly rude on so many levels, not the least of which is that you accuse me of ignoring CBO stats, etc, but put up NO wealth distribution stats of your own. Rather you resort to attacking and name-calling and then throw in some income stats that aren't really germane to the topic. Not helpful.

As we all know from looking at our pokertracker stats - our beliefs often are sobered up by real numbers. So if anyone really is interested in whether the "Monopoly Effect" as I call it really exists, some actually relevant data follows.

From wikipedia, here is the change in the GINI index of income equality for the US since '67. Higher numbers indicate more skewed distributions (100 = one person has all of the nation's income):

# 1967: 0.397 (first year reported)
# 1968: 0.386 (lowest coefficient reported)
# 1970: 0.394
# 1980: 0.403
# 1990: 0.428
# 2000: 0.462
# 2005: 0.469

Income distribution has become more and more skewed as time has passed. For a chart showing all the countries, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient . You will note that the US has the largest Gini coefficient of any of the wealthy countries. Also see http://www.eoearth.org/image/Income_...olds_graph.gif for a nice graph of the changes in the share of income for the bottom 20% vs top 5% over time.

For wealth (as opposed to income) the data is harder to come by. We know income numbers going way back, but not wealth numbers that precisely. (That's the reason you won't be posting any longterm Fed numbers on this I bet). The best data appears to be from the Survey of Consumer Finances, which has been in place since 1983:

Year / %wealth for top 20% / %wealth for 20-40th pctl
'83 81.3 17.8
'89 83.5 17.1
'92 83.8 15.9
'95 83.9 15.9
'98 83.4 16.4
'01 84.4 15.2

In less than two decades the richest 20% of Americans have increased their proportion of the US wealth pie from approx. 81% to 84%. That may not sound like much, but when you realize that the next 40% are splitting up what is left, their drop of 3 percentage points from approx 18% to 15%, is a real drop of 17% ((18-15)/18). As you undoubtedly know, the bottom 40% of the US population possesses less than 1% of US wealth.

So you are wrong - the data DO show that both the wealth and income distributions are getting more and more skewed over time.


Your next "rebuttal" of changes in the distribution of wealth consisted of you posting per capita income?! If you gave it a moments thought you would realize that per capita income is obviously irrelevant to the discussion at hand. DUCY?

In any case, I was referring to the phenomenon discussed in recent articles such as this:
<ul type="square"> NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- American men in their 30s are earning less than their father's generation did, challenging a long-held belief that each generation will be better off than the one that preceded it, according to a new study published Friday.

The report, the first in an ongoing 18-month study on economic mobility in the United States, also revealed that the income growth of the median American household is declining.


The study was produced by a handful of politically diverse think tanks including the Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Urban Institute. It looked at income levels of American men in their 30s, which can be a good indicator of lifetime income.
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Relying on Census Bureau figures, the study's authors found that after adjusting for inflation, men in their 30s in 2004 had a median income of about $35,000 per year, for a 12 percent drop compared with $40,000 per year for men in the same age group in 1974.

That stood in stark contrast to men in their 30s in 1994, who earned 5 percent more than their fathers did.
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Do you homework and please quit spouting from the "right-wing/Reagan-trickle-down/cut-taxes-to-increase-revenue/disagree- with-me-so-you're-ignorant" mantra. Amaze me by being open-minded to the possibility that "reaganomics" is flawed. Look at the data I presented and think about it and then, if you don't think it supports my point, explain logically why. Feel free to show me some real evidence that both wealth and income are not generally becoming more skewed over time. Whatever you do - don't come back with more O'Reilly Factor debating tricks like calling someone who disagrees with you uninformed. Anyone can make that accusation without providing a single logical counter point. If you can't do that, then die already.

[NajdorfDefense]

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Regardless, lowering tax rates has the effect of raising tax revenues, as demonstrated by Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush.

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Do you think you can keep lowering tax rates to zero, and revenues will keep going up and up?



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To zero? No. If you make tax rates 100% will tax revenues go up and up and up?


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the very claim you are making - that tax cuts somehow INCREASE revenues.


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Aside from the ridiculous assertions you point to of someone else's opinion, I see the actual facts don't seem to faze you since they totally discredit your knee-jerk, fact-free response.

But don't take my word for it, look at the CBO data unless you're afraid to admit you're 100% wrong, it seems you were either too scared or ignorant to simply check the data.

In 1997, the tax rate on capital-gains income was cut by the Republican Congress. As supply-side theory would predict, compared with revenues expected by CBO in 1996 before the cuts were enacted, actual tax receipts were 5% higher in 1997, 10% higher in 1998, and 12% higher in 1999.

'Last year the Congressional Budget Office released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook, and buried in one of its nearly impenetrable tables of numbers is a remarkable story that has gone entirely unreported by the mainstream media:

The 2003 tax cut on capital gains has entirely paid for itself. More than paid for itself. Way more.

To appreciate this story, we have to go back in time to January 2003, before the tax cut was enacted. Table 3-5 on page 60 in CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook published in 2003 estimated that capital-gains tax liabilities would be $60 billion in 2004 and $65 billion in 2005, for a two-year total of $125 billion.

Now let's move forward a year, to January 2004, after the capital-gains tax cut had been enacted. Table 4-4 on page 82 in CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook of that year shows that the estimates for capital-gains tax liabilities had been lowered to $46 billion in 2004 and $52 billion in 2005, for a two-year total of $98 billion. Compare the original $125 billion total to the new $98 billion total, and we can infer that CBO was forecasting that the tax cut would cost the government $27 billion in revenues.

Those are the estimates. Now let's see how things really turned out. Take a look at Table 4-4 on page 92 of the Budget and Economic Outlook released this week. You'll see that actual liabilities from capital-gains taxes were $71 billion in 2004, and $80 billion in 2005, for a two-year total of $151 billion. So let's do the math one more time: Subtract the originally estimated two-year liability of $125 billion from the actual liability of $151 billion, and you get a $26 billion upside surprise for the government. Yes, instead of costing the government $27 billion in revenues, the tax cuts actually earned the government $26 billion extra.
http://www.americanshareholders.com/...002-782484.gif

This should come as no surprise since the same effect occurred following the 1981 and 1997 capital gains tax reductions. Following the 1997 capital gains tax cut revenues increased $24 billion above the forecast in 1998 and $36 billion above forecast in 1999 due to higher levels of economic growth ...' ~ Dan Clifton

This trend continued in 2006, making the numbers even more dramatic, well over $100bn extra in tax dollars collected than originally forecast in just 3 years.

http://www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf

Seriously, your data-free reply was hilarious. Your closed-minded opinion doesn't refute the facts no matter how hard you wish for it to come true.

[jkpoker]

tax cuts have earned extra government revenue the problem is government is to big and spends far to much.

Say what you will about Bush ( i like him for the most part)

he spends WAY WAY to much money

[fnurt]

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Seriously, your data-free reply was hilarious. Your closed-minded opinion doesn't refute the facts no matter how hard you wish for it to come true.

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Like the data showing that the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut, which you yourself cited, recouped only one-third of the lost revenue? Which one of us ignored that, exactly?

If Bruce Bartlett, one of the foremost advocates of supply-side theory, says that it's a ridiculous exaggeration to claim that tax cuts magically make revenues go up, I'm going to go with his verdict, thanks.

You've cited a few examples of narrowly-targeted capital gains cuts and are attempting to generalize from that to a statement about tax cuts in general. I can't tell if you're being deliberately dishonest or are merely cutting and pasting someone else's disingenuous argument.

Anyway, I apologize for getting lured into a discussion that truly belongs in the politics forum, and I won't go any further down this road.

[TheEngineer]

UIGEA reduced my income (net and gross). I hope we can improve the situation for online poker.