120 Days Until the Largest Tax Hikes in History

[Sparta]

Too many variables - the housing and baby boom of the 50's. The manufacturing capability (which we do not have now!) was able to shift to consumer goods- which SHOT UP in demand because of MILLIONS of returning soldiers with money to spend and a variety of new things, appliances, homes, cars, and businesses to buy/invest in.

How great would the boom have been with even a marginally lower tax rate? I predict far, far greater with more tech advances.

How does this post make sense to you? In one paragraph you dismiss that whole argument by saying "too many variables" than in the last sentence you say with a lower tax rate, the whole economic boom would've been far greater and America would be more technologically advanced. With just tax cuts.

You're also completely ignoring the fact that those millions of soldiers coming home were being paid by the government, the very government which also reignited the manufacturing industry for the war, and since the weight of manufacturing shifted wartime materials to consumer products, that massive economic boom all happened because of that huge amount of deficit spending by the government.

You can't say the stimulus wont work because you don't have the manufacturing ability now, when the U.S. was in The Great Depression and had around 19% unemployment at the start of WW2, yet rebuilt the entire manufacturing industry and turned everything around in the face of the worst possible economic circumstances. With the right stimulus and enough deficit spending, you will come out this above board.

Look at Australia and what we did to get out of the recession. When the Rudd government instituted the economic stimulus package, the first part of it was handing out (no joke) cheques to a large percentage of the population to go and spend as it pleased, followed by investments and tax breaks for small businesses (the second part is what the Obama Administration wants to do now and wanted to do with that previously mentioned stimulus bill that the Republicans knocked back).

The Liberal Opposition here opposed the stimulus package because they were worried about deficits and debt, saying

Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull had said the government was treating parliament with "disingenuous contempt", accusing it of refusing to negotiate a less expensive package.

And if they got their way, we wouldn't have been the first industrial country to recover from the recession.

But business leaders had expressed their frustration at the Senate's earlier rejection of the stimulus plan.

"No other nation's parliament has refused a major stimulus package in the current environment of unprecedented global economic downturn," said the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Tax cuts are not a cure all and there is literally no possible way that the Republicans will solve the recession by reducing the deficit and trying the balance the budget and all historical examples suggest that doing this will make it worse.

There is little evidence that supply-side economics (Reaganomics) works, meanwhile there is a huge amount of real world examples of countries and government employing Keynesian economics to turn things around, that actually worked.

 

[RakuraiTenjin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoxDyC7y7PM

 

[No Limit]

One guy makes a great rational argument using historical evidance and the other posts a random video from the cato institute in response. Great rebuttal bro.

 

[RakuraiTenjin]

Australia as the only example. Yet it fails to look at economies like Argentina which are shining examples of the failure of Keynesian processes.

 

[No Limit]

I think someone mentioned Sweden before too.

But Argentina? What an odd example. What's wrong with Argentina (I never watched your video, if it was in there write it out)? They have lower unemployment than we do and a smaller debt.

There are countries in Europe that are having big problems. Greece being the obvious one. But these people have been doing huge deficit spending long before this recession started. Greece has a Debt as % of GDP at 113%:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_public_debt

We're at 50%. The funny thing is you are arguing that we need to increase, not lower, that 50% and go the way of Greece. Because tax cuts are going to cost trillions of dollars in the next decade and nobody has any ideas on how to pay for them.

You were given plenty of examples of stimulus spending working, in today's world and in our history. Examples you can't dispute. You can even look at the millions of jobs 400 billion in stimulus spending has already created. It saved 3.3 million jobs in the last quarter alone and without that spending the unemployment rate would be 1.8% higher right now:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...-created-up-to-3-3-million-jobs-cbo-says.html

Remember, these impressive numbers just this last quarter are only off of 400 billion dollars (as 300 billion of the stimulus was used for tax cuts, not spending). That's less than the pentagon spends each year and this $400 billion is spread out over a number of years. I see the jobs created by this spending every single day. Just one example I saw last week was a solar plant we are working with at Sandia National Labs having their hundreds of panels repainted for the first time ever because of this spending.

For your argument as to why tax cuts are good you mentioned Reagan. Reagan had a tax rate that was actually much higher than what the tax rate today is or what the tax rate will be once the Bush cuts expire (as they were designed to do). So the Reagan argument simply isn't credible. Especially when you take in to account what happened under the Clinton administration. He increased taxes on the top bracket by a very significant margin, and the economy improved greatly. Then ofcourse you can't ignore what happened under Bush. Yes, the economy imporved for a while after 9/11, and actually improved well. Until it lead to one of the largest gaps between rich and poor and then created the largest economic collapse since the great depression.

So you have absolutely no consistent data to point to that shows tax cuts stimulating the economy. But we have plenty of consistent examples of government spending doing just that. If you refuse to admit this based on all this data you are ignoring basic facts for partisan reasons. Why? When I said in another thread that these pricks in washington get people like you to vote against their own interests I was being very serious. And this is why.

I would like to ask you one final question. What do you think of republicans holding hostage tax cuts for 98% of americans so that the top 2% can also get a tax cut? What are their motivations for this?

 

[Sparta]

Almost none of that video is an effectual rebuttal against anything I said.

He goes on to say Hoover caused the The Great Depression through deficit spending and then he makes no mention whatsoever that Hoover also tried to balance the budget during the same period, which is what really did lead to the Depression, by cutting the amount of money that went into helping stimulate the economy. On top of that, he extremely conveniently leaves out any counter argument whatsoever as to what economic theory or practice helped pull the U.S. out of the The Great Depression during WW2, if not Keynesianism.

He then points to only two examples of failed Keynesian policies in practice, one is Argentina and the other is Zimbabwe. Seriously. As if ****ing Robert Mugabe was a good politician with the best intentions for his country at any time in his life.

He also appears to advocate the Laffer curve in another video. Which, really, says it all doesn't it.

But none of this really matters to the thread at hand anymore, because those Bush tax cuts aren't going to be repealed for the middle-class and if they are, it'll be because of Republicans.