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You are ignoring my argument by speculating as to my motives. My motives are irrelevant. My argument is either correct or incorrect.

North Korea has nuclear bombs. They have recently developed missiles that can now reach about 600 miles and are trying very hard to improve them. If they put enough effort and money into the work, they will eventually have missiles that can carry nuclear bombs to the United States. The fact that some test missile blew up on the pad is unimportant. That is today. I am talking about what abilities that might have tomorrow. They have also had successful tests. If they try hard enough, and they seem to be trying hard, they will eventually succeed. They have talked several times about fighting a nuclear war with the United States. We can either allow them to develop the ability to drop nuclear bombs on us or stop them before they reach that point. Yes, we have good anti-missile systems, but nobody claims that they are anything like 100% effective. If North Korea launches five nuclear missiles at the US, there is a good chance that one or more will reach its target. We must stop them before their missiles have the range to reach us.

North Korea: Potential threat to be exploited by fear mongers and war mongers. How many billions/trillions of dollars will the military industry reap in profits through such exploitation?

United States: Actual threat. Trump is rattling his saber all the time and threatening to annihilate his perceived enemies.

After all, he once said, why have nuclear bombs if we can't use them?

Between the leaders of N. Korea and the U.S., which one is the bigger lunatic?

What would we think if north Korea sent ships to the Atlantic coast of USA and threaten us with military action?

Your motives are highly relevant, motives like that lead to the illegal invasion of Iraq. Try using a less hysterical news source. Have you read the BBC article? Kim Jong Un is perfectly rational.

Your motives are highly relevant, motives like that lead to the illegal invasion of Iraq. Try using a less hysterical news source. Have you read the BBC article? Kim Jong Un is perfectly rational.

Why would they want to "drop nuclear bombs on us"?

Are you suggesting that the USA is so ineffective that it would allow disagreement between the two nations to lead to military hostility?

It seems more likely to me that NK is developing its weapons systems to prevent us from dropping bombs on them.

That's the nuclear defense posture which the rest of the nuclear powers uphold.

Why not develop a relationship with NK which forswears hostility and seeks to make good economic relations between NK and the USA indispensable for the NK economy?

Our current policy just underscores and legitimates the paranoia of the regime.

Could Trump’s Corporate Rate Cut to 15 Percent be Self-Financing?

Spurred by some recent remarks from the Treasury Secretary, many tax policy analysts have been talking once again about how much economic growth can offset revenues lost from tax cuts. If a policy improves economic growth substantially, then it should increase tax revenue collections by increasing the incomes of individuals and corporations.

One question I’ve answered a number of times since this discussion began has been, what kind of growth would be necessary for a tax cut to be completely self-financing? So let’s take President Trump’s stated goal of a 15 percent corporate income tax cut as an example and run some quick back-of-the-envelope math with round numbers to illustrate the basics of how this might work.

How Much Growth is Needed?

The short answer is you’d need about 0.9 percent additional growth over the 10-year budget window that is commonly used in Washington D.C. for budget bills. By “additional growth,” I mean over and beyond what forecasters typically predict. The Congressional Budget Office’s baseline projections are that growth will average about 1.9 percent over the next ten years. In order for a corporate income tax cut to 15 percent to be self-financing, it would have to raise the level of growth to 2.8 percent on average.

The federal government raises about $40 trillion in revenue over the 10-year budget window, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s projections. A corporate income tax rate cut to 15 percent would reduce federal revenues by about $2 trillion over the same time period, according to the Tax Foundation model. In other words, it would reduce federal revenue by about 5 percent.

One way to make up for this loss of revenue would be by having an economy about 5 percent larger. A 5 percent larger economy would have 5 percent more income, which would be taxed and increase tax revenues approximately proportionally. (This isn’t precisely true, but it’s true enough for our purposes. More on this later.)

None of this is particularly complex so far: if an economy is 5 percent larger, it can reduce its tax-to-GDP ratio by 5 percent and raise the same amount of revenue. Simple.

However, a scenario in which the economy immediately becomes 5 percent larger is probably not the right idea to be discussing. Most developments that generate growth do so in a more gradual way. For the sake of keeping the example simple, let’s consider the case of straight-line growth throughout the budget window, an amount we add to the baseline growth projection each year.

To get an economy 5 percent larger, on average, throughout the budget window, you need additional growth of about 1 percentage point per year. This means the economy will be 1 percent larger in the first year, 4 percent larger in the fourth year, 8 percent larger in the eighth year, 10 percent larger in the 10th year, and so on. While the GDP won’t reach the “5 percent larger” target in the early years, it will exceed it in the later years, and on the whole that will balance out. Bear in mind that even though the economy is 10 percent larger in the 10th year in this hypothetical, this does not imply 10 percent GDP growth; it’s accumulated slowly over time.

In short, the basic back-of-the-envelope math tells you that the corporate income tax cut would need to add about 1 percentage point to growth for 10 years to be self-financing during the 10-year budget window. However, there are a few caveats and adjustments that need to be made. The first of these is something called “real bracket creep.” If people’s incomes go up, they get pushed into higher tax brackets, so taxes as a percentage of national income go up. The other caveat here is that we didn’t consider compound growth in the simple example. Both of these reduce the amount of growth needed, and collectively they mean you don’t actually need 1 percent, you need something more like 0.9 percent.

Is That Growth Target Realistic?

Tax Foundation’s Taxes and Growth model would not predict 0.9 percent added growth over the budget window from a corporate rate cut to 15 percent. We’ve run this particular scenario before as Option #51 in our book, Options for Reforming America’s Tax Code. The model predicts something more like 0.4 percent over the budget window: a sustained period of 2.3 percent growth instead of 1.9 percent growth, until the economy is eventually about 4 percent larger.

Other macroeconomic models used for tax policy, such as those used at Tax Policy Center or at the Joint Committee on Taxation, would also not likely predict that much growth from that 15 percent tax cut. Here’s why most models are likely to show more modest results from that policy.

The country is reasonably close to full employment. Most Americans who want to be working currently are working. There’s some potential for adding more workers to the economy, to be sure, but most of the people who aren’t working right now are retired, or in school, or otherwise not interested in joining the labor force.

Growth, instead, would mostly have to come from finding better jobs for the workers we have. Imagine businesses, spurred by their lower tax rate, start ordering new expensive buildings with new expensive equipment in them. These would generate higher revenues on a per-worker basis, increasing incomes across the board. This is an ordinary concept called “productivity growth,” and it certainly could be the result of well-crafted policy.

Unfortunately, productivity growth has relatively low variance, historically. It usually grows between 1 and 2 percent per year. Policy can probably help us stay towards the higher end of that range, but a single policy is unlikely to move productivity growth for the whole economy by a whole percentage point. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, among others, have discussed how both population and productivity are limiting factors on what kind of growth is possible.

This largely explains why most models of U.S. labor and productivity would not expect any single policy change to boost growth by 0.9 percent. In order to make a deficit-neutral cut in the corporate income tax rate, other deficit-reducing policies would be necessary.

America is the only country ever to use nuclear weapons. Americans like dropping napalm and agent orange on oriental people as was evidenced in the Vietnam genocide. Trump has repeatedly insulted the Chinese and is just looking for an excuse to invade China.

The threat of NK is just a ruse to further America's imperial ambitions. China can not allow an attack on NK in order to install a puppet government on China's borders because an attack on the Chinese people will inevitably follow. China needs to stop this bloodthirsty orange Hitler with a preemptive nuclear strike.

Poor Izzy is confusing the United States with the former British Empire, which did indeed invade China and fight a war with them to preserve its ability to export opium to China to pay for Britain's imports of silk porcelain and other Chinese goods.

Just make up **** because that's better that dealing with the facts. Nobody has defended Kim Jong Un.

There's no evidence the leader is mentally ill, he's ruthless like many dictators, but ruthlessly getting rid of potential rivals is what dictators do to stay in power.

You're just trying to justify a military adventure, because the truth is Kim Jong Un does not want to jeopardise his living god lifestyle.

The last missile NK tested exploded before taking off, and America's anti ballistic technology is state of the art. NK's missiles are hardly that. NK has submarines too, if they're going to attack mainland US with nuclear weapons they're more likely to go that route, or even smuggle one into to US.

If you're going to attack NK at least be honest about your reasons for doing so, allowing a war time president to win the next election. It worked for Dubya. Who gives a **** about all the South Koreans and Japanese who would die in Trump's military adventure anyway, as long as the Merkin deaths are kept nice and low.