Tax Increases

Obama's policy of tax & spend is dragging the US economy down.

Its good.Democrats are making some very good decision to support economy and to overcome unemployment rate.

H2O you seem to have memorized every commie/conservative slogan published over the last 50 years and can recite them like a parrot. My wife’s parrot bit her the other day and she cried out stupid bird. The next day when she went to feed the parrot it said stupid, stupid. It only needed to hear the word once to pick it up. You pick up on commie/conservative slogans like the parrot picks up on words. The reason this slogan has been so effective is that it conjures the mental imaging of taking, taxing is fact one type of taking. The word spending mental impact is that after your money is taken, someone else will spend it or waste it.

The first thing the American people must understand is that slogans are designed as smart bombs meant to bypass the intellectual mind and explode in the emotional mind. The slogan “Tax and spend” has been used against every democrat for the last 30 years. All of the presidents from 1948 until 1981 paid the National Debt, as percentage of GNP, down. All the democrats that were president, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, and Carter paid the National Debt down. But Reagan changed all of that he did not continue to pay the National Debt down he tripled the existing National Debt. The tax and spend democrats were paying off the National Debt but Reagan tripled the National Debt.

In order for Reagan to triple the National Debt he had to borrow the money. The interest rates during Reagan term were some of the highest ever recorded. The money was borrowed on 30 year U S Treasury bonds. Those bonds were paying record interest rate of 15% for 30 years when Reagan borrowed the money to triple the national debt. Imagine loaning money to government at the interest rate charged by your credit card company. My parents did exactly that and the last bond just recently paid off.

When baby Bush was elected Vice President Cheney was quick to point out that “Reagan proved the National debt does not matter.” Since the National Debt didn’t matter baby Bush began cutting taxes for the ungodly greedy and put another $3 trillion on credit card for the Iraq oil war. If we were not paying double digit interest on the Reagan’s tripling of the national debt we would have a balanced budget. Forty percent of each tax dollar goes to pay interest on the Reagan and Bush national debt. That is the real spending.

Obama and his liberal democrats have done nothing to improve this countries
economic situation, what they have done is make the situation much, much worse.

H2O when Obama got elected he took over a country that had nearly completely collapsed. The economic experts tell us America had come within hours of a complete collapse of its economy and not only was economy going to collapse it would have been followed by a complete and total collapse of the government. It took 30 years of constant assault by the commie/conservatives to bring us to that point and if you will remember the life- long goal of the founding father of the commie/conservative movement was complete destruction of the American government. Grover Norquist, “just wants to shrink the American government to the point he can drag it in the bathroom and drown it in the bathroom.” After the Republican caused Great Depression it took a decade and a half to repair the damage.

There are no instant solutions, things are getting better the stock market is back to where it was in 2007 unemployment is better the recent raise in taxes on the ungodly greedy will help the middle class as it did during Clinton’s term in office but change will be so slow it will not be noticed at first. No change can take place until the paradigm shifts as long as we believe that in lottery winner economics where the winner takes all we will be a country of losers. One man said why is it immoral to take another man’s wealth with your fists and not immoral to take a man’s wealth with your brain? This generation has watched as the pensions systems have been systematically looted and then dumped on tax payers. In the 60% almost 60% of the private sector was covered by a defined benefit pension plan now only 11% are.

Political power has replaced the gun of the highway man. The highway men no longer ambush people along the road and rob them. They come in with a three piece suit and a brief case and walk away with millions.

The moral decay in America is the commie/conservative political philosophy that pits each man against each other like gladiators in the Roman Coliseum where the winner takes all. You can clearly see when Reagan tripled the National Debt he did not care what happened to the country as a whole only about cutting taxes for the extremely wealthy.

You drank the Kool-Aid and believed Obama's propaganda, didn't you, suckerZ

H2O I didn’t drink any Kool-Aid. I have been involved in politics for the last 40 years. I have been a union President on three occasions. I have written guest editorials for the newspaper. I have spent years studying political philosophy and political history. When I had a disagreement with a past mayor I stripped him of his labor council endorsement even though he was head of the county Democratic Party he was not reelected and lost every election thereafter.

A preacher that I had been arguing religion with for six months on the newspaper bulletin board invited me to Starbucks for coffee. I told him I didn’t drink coffee and I didn’t trust the Kool-Aid. I don’t drink anyone’s Kool-Aid.

Cut Tax Rates, Boost Tax Revenues

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenues

H2O when Reagan cut the tax rates on the ungodly greedy he tripled the National debt and set America on a course of destruction. Your blogger insists cutting tax rates on the ungodly greedy will make the people work harder and indeed this happened working class couples worked 32 hours a week and made less than their fathers did. This didn’t come from those couples electing to work overtime this came from the wife having to work to put food on the table. In fact full time work became endangered during Reagan term as companies worked employees 38 hours to keep from paying them the benefits they would have to pay full time employees. Wal-Mart made the biggest fortune in the world working employees part time.

“Cut tax Rates, Boost Tax Revenue” is a myth plain and simple. When Reagan cut income taxes 60% on the ungodly greedy he raised social security tax 280% on working people. Social Security, Medicare and income tax are all thrown into one pot and counted as “tax revenue” by the Federal accounting system. Cutting taxes on 1% of the population was offset by raising taxes 280% on the other 99%.

Ask yourself are you better off now than you were before Reagan took office. My real income adjusted for inflation has dropped by over 30% my quality of life money is gone. What Reagan did by cutting taxes on the ungodly greedy was put the country so far in debt we may never recover.
H2O according your theory if we cut taxes to 0% we would get huge increase in tax revenue, ridiculous, nothing more than a siren’s song.

H2O do you believe everything you read or just commie/conservative propaganda? It is much easier to believe something you want to believe is true than face reality. Never ever underestimate self-interest as a motive for believing in a particular political ideology. Many people have made a mythological hero out of Reagan. I worked through the Reagan years did you? They were the worst years in my life for the 8 years that Reagan was in office there were no pay raises and I lost substantial amount of money to inflation. The working class never recovered from the damage Reagan caused. The international Union came in before the election and tried to tell union members what was going to happen if Reagan was elected. Many shouted them down telling them they did not want to hear about politics when Reagan got elected over a hundred of them lost their job because Reagan revoked $2 million in Federal Revenue sharing. Those who did manage to find work got part time jobs with no benefits.

Reagan was a racist who launched his campaign in from a city in Mississippi where several civil rights workers had been killed and made up whole cloth a black welfare queen who drove a Cadillac to stoke white anger at blacks.

The author of the article you posted is Jack Kemp. He is a political ideologue who has good reason to lie. He was secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Bush senior administration. Kemp is approaching 80 and he was a professional football player no doubt with extensive brain damage. If you will remember Bush senior raised taxes to try and offset some of the damage done by Reagan.

As life got worse for the middle class, and there is no doubt about the statistics, the commie/conservatives try to spread the myth that life got much better. Without the rose colored glasses of an ex-football player the harsh reality of a middle class in decline is all that is left. All of Reagan’s tax cuts didn’t help the middle class they hurt it.

H2O that is the very principal that commie/conservative propaganda is based on. After the commie/conservatives were beaten so badly in the landslide 1964 they not only established Beachheads on college campuses they began setting up think tanks to “do studies.” The main stream news media, unlike the red neck right propaganda network, tries to be fair and give both sides of an issue. The commie/conservatives use the right wing think tanks to manufacture all kinds of nonsense studies like if you cut taxes to 0% you will collect more taxes.

As effective as “the study shows” was the statement by Vice President Cheney “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” but as soon as Obama was elected “deficits began to matter again.” The Reagan proof was no longer proof that “deficits don’t matter.

Kennedy cut the taxes on the ungodly greedy from 93% to 70% and we know that the countries that are getting ahead maintain a 70% tax rate on the ungodly greedy. But Reagan cut the tax rate on the ungodly greedy from 70% down to 28% but he raised the social security and Medicare taxes by 280%. There were no exemptions from payroll taxes at the time meaning that consumption was damaged as the working class had less to spend. The commie/conservative idea was that the working class would have to work more to replace the lost income and indeed they did wives had to go to work and working couples worked 32 more hours a week. Stay at home moms became as common as horse and buggies after the invention of the car. But there was a bright side each working mom made more money for the ungodly greedy. All wealth is ultimate generated by labor and the ungodly income went up over 600% with the increased labor. Wal-Marts fortune was built on the backs of working mothers across America.

H2O the Jack Kemp letter to the editor you posted a link to was written 1996. It contains factual errors as well as outright lies. It is no wonder that those who do not check the facts in the letter are so easily taken in.

Kemp says many commie/conservatives believe that Reagan dramatically increased the deficit. No dramatically increasing the deficit would be a 20-30% increase and Reagan tripled the budget deficit.

Kemp than gives us a history lesson telling us that when taxes were lowered in the 1920s that an economic expansion followed but fails to tell us it ended in the Great Depression.

Then Kemp resorts to outright lies to make his case, “true nominal budget deficits were higher at the end of Reagan’s era. But as a percentage of gross domestic product, the deficits actually diminished during the 1980s.”

A simple check of the graph of national debt as a percentage of GNP show a steep increase going from 30% of GNP to 60% of GNP during Reagan’s term in office.

H2O the other article you posted a link to is titled, “Cut Taxes Rates, Boost Revenues.” It cites Boehner deficit reduction plan calls for $800 million cuts in deductions for the ungodly greedy but cuts $900 million from social security. Social security has a dedicated funding source with a $2.7 trillion trust fund but Boehner. The author, Diana Furchgott-Roth claims lower taxes makes people work harder and we all know the harder the middle class works the richer the ungodly greedy get. All wealth is ultimately created by labor. During Reagan’s term the middle class couples had to work an additional 32 hours a week and they worked those additional hours not because taxes were lower but because they made even less with that additional 32 hours than they made before Reagan took office. Most people have someone do their taxes and have no concept of taxes through the year. But there is a limit to the additional hours the middle class can work to make the ungodly greedy richer. I know people that hold down three full time jobs to make a subsistence life.

The author and other commie/conservatives believe there is no limit to the number of hours the middle class will work if they just cut the taxes. Commie/conservative thinking is never grounded in reality. The newest thing now is happiness psychology where people are taught to be “happy” if you can’t change your circumstances just change your “attitude.” Working three jobs just comfort yourself with the illusion of “happiness.” Just thing of the ungodly greedy you are making rich.

H2O one of the causes that tax revenues go up according to your authors is that when capital gains taxes are cut more stocks and real estate is sold off because taxes are lower. Tax bills move through congress slowly rumors of a capital gains tax cut would serve to suppress sales of stocks and real estate in the year while the tax cut bill is moving through congress as people wait and see whether they will get a tax cut on capital gains. Once the capital gains taxes are cut those who have held onto their assets sell creating a spike that will last long term.

Your author Diana Furchtgott-Roth points specifically to the Bush Capital gains tax cut of 2003 and lauds the revenue on capital gains going up from $50 billion in 2003 to $103 billion in 2006. She of course credits this revenue increase to the capital gains tax cut and ignores the housing bubble that had expanded to the point it would explode the next year. Housing mortgages were being packaged as securities and sold and resold at tremendous profits even though they for the most part were worthless paper. Wall Street became nothing more than a betting parlor that would book any and all bets and call them securities. The banking system would of course collapse in 2007. That is what actual caused most of the increase in capital gains taxes during that period.

There had only been two previous increases in the capital gains tax in the last 50 years, 1969, and 1986. A graph of the of historical revenue generated by capital gains shows what happened prior to the capital gains increase in 1986. It seems capital revenue doubled prior to the raise capital gains taxes. After the capital gains tax raise a record was set for capital gains tax revenue other than the spike caused by the prior fire sale that was caused by the coming tax raise on capital gains.

So in fact we could say a raise in capital gains taxes caused a doubling of capital gains tax revenue.

There is a distinct pattern throughout American history: When tax rates are
reduced, the economy's growth rate improves and living standards increase.

The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates

H2O you do know what the Heritage Foundation is? That is propaganda central for the commie/conservative movement. The Heritage Foundation was founded by Joseph Coors, Paul Weyrich, and Edwin Feulner. Coors gave a quarter of million for the Heritage Foundation first year’s budget. Coors is also known to have bought a light cargo plane for Contras to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. Just another rich old man trying to use our government to make himself even richer. Nothing comes out of the Heritage Foundation that is not extremely twisted in an effort to make the ungodly greedy like Coors, richer and destroy the middle class. The Heritage Foundations has no credibility whatsoever, it has one reason to exist and that is to make the rich richer.

The commie/conservatives at Heritage Foundation can’t even get through the first sentence without telling major lies. The hard statistics show that the standard of living for the middle class declined every year Reagan was in office. Working couples worked longer hours and this was the effective end of the stay at home moms. But the standard of living did get better for the top 1/100 of 1% much, much better. But that top 1/100 of 1% is who the Heritage Foundation represents. How can they say it if it is a boldface lie? That is the purpose of propaganda to make lies believable and to use those believable lies to manipulate others. However there was a couple of years out of the last 30 when the middle class standard of living improved and that was when Clinton raised taxes on the ungodly greedy and hard statistics prove this also.

The third sentence is also a lie we know that when Capital Gains taxes were increased during Reagan term, other than the fire sale blip that rushed to beat the tax increase going into effect a record was set for capital gains tax the next year.

The term the ungodly greedy like to use is to “soak the rich” but nothing could be further from the truth, greed like radioactivity is highly toxic and must be kept under control or it will completely destroy a civilization. Greed is a sickness, a black hole that can never be filled and throughout history many societies have stood idly by and watched as the black hole of greed destroyed everything. America decided in the last century that we would not stand idly by and watch the ungodly greedy destroy America. A tax was levied on “excess greed” to control greed.

The second paragraph starts off with another lie, “periods of higher tax rates are associated with subpar economic growth and subpar revenues.” Clinton raised taxes on the ungodly greedy and balanced the budget and it was an era of outstanding economic growth. Hitler’s theory was if you repeat the lie often enough people will believe it.

H2O here is a hint just because they say it doesn't make it true.

It seems that everything is propaganda... there is no
truth to be found in Zar's little life bubble, so sad...