AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

My "Europe bashing" isn't "reflexive". It is instead thoughtful and well-considered.

The observable fact that Medicare Medicaid and Tricare have ended up costing many multiples of the estimates offered when these programs were created is hardly a bromide: it is simply a fact.

The difficulties the European countries are now facing in sustaining the financing of their social welfare systems and the public rage that appears to accompany any attempt to curtail cost growth tells us clearly that there is probably more to the cost picture than is generally acknowledged, and that this option is not without its challenges and adverse side effects.

In the face of all that to blithely assert that this option is vastly simpler and cheaper because of some statistics devised by self-serving bureaucracies (that generally don't know the real cost of doing anything) is the real bromide here.

It is true: I don't want my taxes to go up. I believe that raising them will have adverse effects on our economic growth that could offset any revenue gains that might be realized by the government.

You appear to assert that there will be no such effects, however you haven't offered anything but a bland assurance that this will be so.

georgeob1 wrote:

My "Europe bashing" isn't "reflexive". It is instead thoughtful and well-considered.

now, that is funny.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

My "Europe bashing" isn't "reflexive". It is instead thoughtful and well-considered.

now, that is funny.

My Europe bashing is not funny at all: I take it very seriously.

I have some experience with the unique world of government accounting, and have learned that government only very rarely knows the real cost of anything it does or buys. Private health insurers do their own fraud prevention and enforcement and its costs are reflected in their rates. This is not at all the case with Medicare, Medicaid or Tricare. Government agencies appropriately draw significant services from supporting agencies and their appropriated costs generally reflect only a fraction (sometimes small) of their real costs.

I will ask this again, because I think it's really important: Can you point to a time when taxes were raised, yet revenues fell? And not over a one or two year period, but over a 5 or 10 year period.

Cycloptichorn

The difficulties the European countries are now facing in sustaining the financing of their social welfare systems and the public rage that appears to accompany any attempt to curtail cost growth tells us clearly that there is probably more to the cost picture than is generally acknowledged, and that this option is not without its challenges and adverse side effects.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I will ask this again, because I think it's really important: Can you point to a time when taxes were raised, yet revenues fell? And not over a one or two year period, but over a 5 or 10 year period.

Cycloptichorn

I' m willing to do some research, but only if we refine the question. The phrase " .. taxes were raised.. " permits multiple interpretations. Do you mean tax high end tax rates (without respect to deductions and various escape conditions) or the actual % of GDP collected by the government?

A very good case can be made for the proposition that lower tax rates are often (not always) associated with increased government revenues.

Taxes and Revenues
October 17, 2007 6:03 P.M.
By Ramesh Ponnuru

Yesterday I noted that Bush’s tax cuts had caused revenue to be lower than it would otherwise have been. A number of people have emailed me saying that I’m wrong: Revenues have been growing fast, and are higher than they were before the tax cuts took effect.

That shows that the tax cuts were compatible with rising revenues, not that they caused them. The tax cuts may have boosted our economic growth, but we would have had some growth without them. So the question is whether tax cuts boosted growth so much that they ended up raising money.

I can’t think of any serious economist who thinks that happened. The 2003 Economic Report of the President said that “[a]lthough the economy grows in response to tax reductions… it is unlikely to grow so much that lost tax revenue is completely recovered by the higher level of economic activity.” Bush’s own Treasury Department has disavowed the view that Bush’s tax cuts have raised revenue.Rob Portman and Ed Lazear, while serving in the Bush administration (as head of the OMB and the Council of Economic Advisers, respectively), said that the tax cuts had reduced federal revenue.

I’ll give the last word to Alan Viard, an economist who worked at the White House before joining AEI. Last year, the Washington Post quoted him: “Federal revenue is lower today than it would have been without the tax cuts. There’s really no dispute among economists about that.”

This said by a man that has obviously never been there.
Killing ANYONE is not worth any amount of money.

Yes, there are times when it is neccessary to kill in war, but that still doesnt mean that it isnt without cost.
There is a lot more then a monetary cost involved.
Killing someone always leaves a amrk on a persons psyche, and no amount of money will erase that.

Yes, there are times when it is neccessary to kill in war, but that still doesnt mean that it isnt without cost.

You certainly are correct that there are difficulties.

But you perhaps don't know or don't want to know that the private insurers have the same if not more?

Cyclotroll, you are probably the most hate filled, narrow minded individual on A2K.
You continuously spews liberal rhetoric and propaganda, you are clueless neanderthal.