Post #131,046
12/16/03 4:05:49 PM
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How long is an acceptable lag time to you?
Starting in 2 weeks, approximately 80,000 people a week will lose their unemployment benefits. Realistically, they'll have no income whatsoever for an unknown length of time. But I'm sure they can find jobs at McDonalds for $5.35/hr to support their families. Considering that Uncle Sam estimates that it takes a minimum hourly pay of around $8.70/hr to support a family of 4 at just above the poverty level (and that's before taxes, you do the math. Since this recession began in the last year of Clinton's presidency, over 3 million jobs have been lost. Since then, only around 1 million jobs have been created, leaving 2 million slots gone, possibly for good. Maybe they can learn new skills so that they can be hired by someplace that hasn't outsourced their jobs to India (yet). Oh wait...the employers want those people to have 2 or more years of on-the-job experience with those skills, which they won't have. Guess they're screwed.
Just another excuse to beat the drum for increased min wage and a further extension of unemployment.
Just for the record, when was the last time you were on umemployment for a significant amount of time (measured in months)? lincoln
"Windows XP has so many holes in its security that any reasonable user will conclude it was designed by the same German officer who created the prison compound in "Hogan's Heroes." - Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
[link|http://users3.ev1.net/~bconnors/resume.htm|VB/SQL resume]
[link|http://users3.ev1.net/~bconnors/tandem_resume.htm|Tandem resume]
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Post #131,061
12/16/03 5:48:37 PM
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That 80k a week figure...
...is over 18 months old. It was the same justification used to extend unemployment from 26 to 39 weeks. Now you are asking to extend again to 52. Without major revisions, the state systems will have a very hard time actually >paying< for what you are demanding they do.
Yes there have been jobs lost. Yes there have been jobs created. Net during a recession is jobs lost. We're one month away from being able to officially declare the start of the recovery, yet people DEMAND that things go back to like they were instantaneously....as if the down cycle never actually happened...these things take time.
I may be accused of drinking the kool-aid, I guess its just unfortunate that economic history bears this out. THey don't call it the dismal science for nothing. Sometimes the news isn't all that great, especially if you are on the bad news side.
So, enact these changes and the next set of op-eds will be about how all these new fed benefitis programs have bankrupted the states and how federal spending is spiraling out of control.
And if you want jobs created, the last thing you want to do is make the hiring of workers more expensive by raising the minimum wage. That is simple econ theory that you learned in high school.
And there has never been a guarantee that jobs lost will be recreated in kind. I don't see any resurgence in jobs for mainframe jockeys, for instance. That is a skill that is no longer necessary in the numbers it once was. So to expect a like replacement at a like salary is foolhardy. I don't expect taht those people should have to work at WalMart as greeters either...but keeping ones skills current in a high skill area is not an employer responsibility, it is an employee responsibility.
As for the export of jobs, I hope this administration actually takes this one on with some more gusto. They have reduced the H1b take drastically and nearly caused an allout trade war to protect steelworkers...but there needs to be some direction to ensure growth in manufacturing jobs as opposed to service jobs. This is NOT their sole responsibility nor their fault. The migration to a service and IP based economy has been going on for quite some time.
I'm just getting really tired of this "jobless recovery" chant being drummed on by the candidates and being drummed louder >now< simply because they can't bitch anymore about how bad the overall economy is. (since its the best its been in 20 years...you remember...the last time somebody cut taxes drastically)
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,067
12/16/03 6:54:31 PM
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Do you mean the way
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=123442|Ronald Reagan cut taxes?]
Quote:
since its the best its been in 20 years...you remember...the last time somebody cut taxes drastically
Reagan backed himself into a corner and had to raise taxes NUMEROUS times to save himself. Or are you forgetting about that little IOU of over a trillion dollars that you'll be handing your descendants, all thanks to deficit spending budgets signed by Reagan? lincoln
"Windows XP has so many holes in its security that any reasonable user will conclude it was designed by the same German officer who created the prison compound in "Hogan's Heroes." - Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
[link|http://users3.ev1.net/~bconnors/resume.htm|VB/SQL resume]
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Post #131,071
12/16/03 7:13:37 PM
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My how revisionists will play.
[link|http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.htm|Simplistic but effective analysis].
[link|http://www.ncpa.org/pi/taxes/pdtx64.html|Stated in even simpler terms]
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,134
12/17/03 1:32:04 AM
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Revisionists?
My claim then was that Reagan's tax policy made the gap between rich and poor get wider. The "boom" was highly unevenly shared, and most of us got farther behind. I don't care what the total wealth is, I care about what the average person's wealth does because I expect to be closer to average than stupendously wealthy.
Strangely enough, my claim is still the same. From 1980 to 2000 the size of the largest fortunes increased 10 fold while average family incomes declined. Tax policies that encourage insane concentrations of wealth while chanting about a trickle-down that never comes are not what we need. Yes, when you cut taxes, the amount paid by the rich also increased. Because the rich had incentives to pay themselves larger fractions of their corporate wealth. The profession with the fastest growing paycheck is "CEO", as the business world has come to accept as normal ever greater levels of theft by management. You think that theft is an undue word? Just remember that the job of a CEO is to manage assets owned by someone else. A board of directors rubber stamping ever larger stock option plans for themselves is their using their control to take ownership of what was not theirs in the first place. That is theft in my books.
In case you think that I am overreacting, I note that payouts that are normal today would have caused justified outrage 20 years ago. In 1981 the most that any CEO dared request was 5.7 million. It is hard now to find a CEO of a major company who thinks that he is worth so little...
This isn't the first time that this has happened. It happened during the Gilded age as well. The upshot is that tax policies that are overly advantageous to the rich encourage massive centralization of wealth, to the detriment of the general public. This can continue for quite a while, but eventually the powers that be over-reach themselves, the general public reacts, and the political pendulum swings the other way.
For more on this, I'm going to have to point you at [link|http://www.wealthanddemocracy.com/|Wealth and Democracy].
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #131,150
12/17/03 7:32:31 AM
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The tax cuts don't do that.
Sure...thats what we're all encouraged to believe...tax cuts favor the wealthy.
On the percentage basis, the 80s cuts went pretty stright across the board. In the 90''s the stock market made the smart ones (that had money to begin with) incredibly wealthy.
The straight poop is still;
Taxes were cut 25% for everyone.
In 5 years economic growth had compounded at over 5% per year
In 5 years government revenue had nearly doubled.
The same lesson had already been learned with Kennedy.
The same lesson is about to be learned under Bush.
What are you doing with your taxes, funding the government or creating a socialist nirvanna?
Corporate governance is a separate issue, though I'd say that a profession with an even faster growing paycheck would be baseball player. Corporate governance has started to reform itself. Boards and shareholders are indeed balking at the pay and benefits of those like Jack Welch. Recent events with Tyco and the Stock Exchange are fine examples of this system correcting itself.
The 90s bubble has created alot of separate issues but the issue surrounding taxes is abundantly clear. If you want to grow the economy and increase government revenue, you cut taxes.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,190
12/17/03 11:04:02 AM
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Point.missed()
Look at the following chart of after tax household income.
[link|http://www.wealthanddemocracy.com/chart3.htm|http://www.wealthand...cy.com/chart3.htm]
Only odd years are shown. But picking the 4 years most likely to illustrate your point, from 1983 to 1987 the middle quintile's after tax income went up. By a whole 1.07%. Going from a nasty recession to a boom. The top 1% went up by 15.8% in the same time period. Sure, taxes aren't the only contributer to that. But they are a big one. And looking over a 18 year period, I see no sign that increasing wealth for the top 1% trickled down. (Though, to be fair, if the boom leading into 2000 was shown, you would see something different, which got erased shortly thereafter.)
Being fair again, the bottom quintile went up by 10%. But if you track that line you see that it just has a lot more variance with economic climate. Going from recession to boom helps them.
And longer-term the trend becomes clearer. From 1979 to 1997 the bottom and middle quintiles just stood steady. The top 1% over doubled their income. Not shown but highly relevant is that the same period saw an ever-increasing trend towards 2-income families in the middle quintile.
Now how the Reagan tax cut was distributed across the board, I can't say. I wasn't paying tax back then, and I don't have decent figures in front of me. But if you assume that the economic boom didn't increase salaries for the middle quintile one bit over inflation and we assume that income tax before was 20% of salary (I'm deliberately picking a low number here), then a 6% reduction in tax burdens would have entirely explained the increase in disposable income.
Therefore, judging from actual disposable after tax income, I think that we're safe in saying that tax burdens on the average family fell by something less than 6%. Which means that while 25% may have been cut across the board, it wasn't exactly shared equally, and didn't affect the average person much.
Now I see you already dismissing me with, What are you doing with your taxes, funding the government or creating a socialist nirvanna? To which I respond, who is our government supposed to serve? My answer is that the government is supposed to serve the average American. Which you can't do by socialism because socialism doesn't work. But it does mean that when government policies leave the average person alone, generate wealth for the already well-off, and leave the country with massively more debt, then government has failed of the goals that I value. (The winners of the political lottery probably value different goals though.)
About corporate governance. I believe that the issue is separate but related. I believe that the attitudes which lead to massive increases in CEO salary are the same ones which made it acceptable to manipulate the political system more blatantly for personal gain. The specific decisions made were, of course, made separately. After all few directors of corporate boards serve in our government...
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #131,248
12/17/03 4:04:13 PM
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Not really missed.
Just a general feeling that the "big picture" which you adequately describe is being unfairly blamed on the wrong cause.
In its basest form, tax cuts have historically shown that the laffer curve does exist...and that by lowering the tax percentage across the board, you increase growth, discourage sheltering with the net effect being a disproportionate rise in tax revenue. As odd as it sounds, cutting taxes is >profitable< for the government.
The problem in the Reagan era was that these rises in income were forecast by the CBO, and the government felt obligated to spend all of those increases and more. This is not a Dem versus Rep argument...because both sides were involved in the obscene growth in government spending during the Reagan years.
Separately, and maybe somewhat to your point, the investment market went into a period of unbelievable growth. This by its very nature is going to give those with money to invest an opportunity that others don't have. And because investment income is treated differently by the tax system (netting gains and losses, allwing fed, state and local interest exclusions, cap gains breaks) the net is that a wealthy individuals overall tax burden per dollar can average down in comparison.
That market expansion also led to the abuse in corporate governance (and its decline is imo leading the correction). Option plans, payment in appreciating stock and other "non-salary" considerations led to unprecedented payments being made to the CEO set of some of the FOrtune 50...but the incredible abuses during the 90's seemed to be in the tech sector.
So, while the issues are related (and the Bush tax cut was "less fair" than the Reagan one because of a couple of specific changes)...the real issue is that this irrational fear of massive tax cuts being referenced as "voodoo economics" is not represented by the most basic of facts. Every American paid less tax after the change (some may obvisouly "feel" it more than others), and the following years showed record economic growth, and on top of this government revenue grew at a pace even larger than economic growth.
In short, alot of things may be broken, but blaming it all on tax cuts is aiming at the wrong target.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,294
12/17/03 8:46:42 PM
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I'm wondering if you have figures on the fairness....
of Reagan's tax cut.
I ask because you claimed a 25% across the board cut. I was a kid back then, but I remember hearing that the tax cut was far from even, and the back of the envelope analysis above indicates that while someone might have seen 25% tax cuts, it certainly wasn't the middle quintile. Of course the top income bracket saw a drop in marginal taxes from 70% to 50%, and then 50% to 28%. Which alone increased the disposable income of the top few by 150%. Certainly the middle quintile didn't see gains like that.
Unfortunately searching for this stuff is hard because people like to spin the data every which way. So you can readily find plenty of people to say that it was fair. And plenty to claim that it was unfair. For instance I found [link|http://pw1.netcom.com/~rdavis2/taxcuts.html|http://pw1.netcom.co...vis2/taxcuts.html] which argues against the line of argument that you had above. Is the criticism on target? I don't know enough to judge.
Still there undoubtably was an economic boom, even if it doesn't seem to have been felt by the average American very much. Of course more than just changing taxes fed into what happened with well-off Americans. And, as always with economics, there are enough feedback mechanisms that it is trivial for 2 people to look at a feedback loop and blame different points of feedback as being to blame, with neither seeing that they feed into each other, changes in one affect the other.
I also said nothing about a Democrat vs Republican thing. Indeed the very tax cuts you were discussion were by a Democrat (JFK) and then a Republican (Reagan).
On the size of the financial boom, I disagree with you somewhat. The 80's look good by comparison with the 70's (the worst decade for stocks in the last century). But until the bubble in the late 90's, through the last century you consistently find long-term stock market returns (counting dividends of course) around 10% per year. The 80s were good, but so were the 50s and 60s.
What you do find that changed was ongoing rhetoric about deregulation and unfettered free markets. This fed into cutting top tax rates. This fed into the huge amount of economic activity from hostile take-overs in the 80s. There was the deregulation of banks, leading to the creation of new bond markets. (That started under Carter actually.) The entire atmosphere that resulted made it easier for CEOs to argue that they needed better incentives. Plus the fact that the CEOs would get most of the payout, not the IRS, made them better incented to ask for as much as they could.
So no, cutting tax rates didn't cause CEOs to be paid more. But I see them as having correlated causes.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #131,305
12/17/03 10:40:12 PM
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That was sort of my point.
fairness is taxation is a subjective viewpoint. Most want the tax system to accomplish something other than fund the government.
[link|http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-261.html|http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-261.html]
Its old but fairly detailed on some of the subjects covered.
[link|http://www.fpanet.org/journal/articles/1981_Issues/upload/9554_1.pdf|http://www.fpanet.or...upload/9554_1.pdf]
Pretty much covers the Economic Recovery Act of 1981.
Theres some real nostalgia there...like Dow Jones 2509 as a high by 1989...compared to nearly 12000 at the end of the next decade.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,315
12/18/03 1:45:42 AM
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You say that like it is a bad thing
Most want the tax system to accomplish something other than fund the government.
Well, duh. Governments redistribute money on a massive scale. It is inherent in what they do. This is necessary since very few public goods (eg the legal system, basic welfare, defence, etc) would be funded voluntarily by private parties. The government redistributes money from points A, B, and C to points D, E and F. Hopefully D, E and F are places where the money is used to greater public good than A, B and C. The decision of who to take money from (and how much) is the flip side of deciding who to give it to (and how much), and is just as important a policy choice.
Unfortunately the trend is for governments to act in the public interest only slightly more than private parties do. However members of the government know full well that if they don't act, then nobody will, and so they have more incentive than most to provide certain key public goods. Which justifies government.
For an explanation of why private parties consistently will not provide public goods even when they are in their own interest, see [link|http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/logic_of_action.htm|this summary] of [link|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674537513/ref=lpr_g_1/103-5359208-2422230?v=glance&s=books|The Logic of Collective Action]. The same logic, of course, holds for why it is hard to get people to get government to act in their own interests either.
Back to the actual discussion, again we have questions about what the right figures are to quote. The Cato article that you point to quotes real family income. Meaning the cost of both dollars given to people, and benefits provided. Hourly "real" salaries rose under Reagan. The figures that I was quoting before were based on actual take-home pay. That was pretty much of a wash (improved marginally). The Cato article mentions that hourly pay dropped. (Greater take-home income is therefore a result of either longer hours worked or lower taxes, I can't tell in what balance those factors mattered.)
So how much should the middle quintile appreciate increased benefit payments? That is hard to tell. Certainly some of the increase in benefit payments was because key benefits, eg healthcare insurance, became more expensive, and not because people got more benefits. How much of that happened? I dunno. I don't have figures. And if we did have figures, I have little doubt that they can be spun to make the answers come out any way that you want them to.
However my really basic opinion was and remains that the place where tax cuts do the most good is when you cut taxes for average people. Those people are exactly the ones who are likely to take any extra dollars and spend them, generating lots of business. By contrast if you earn over a million per year, I don't think that your last $100,000 is nearly as critical to you as a $50K earner's last $5,000.
And yes, there is an implicit social agenda in that statement. There is an implicit social agenda in any possible choice of government policy. Attempting to deny that there should be one is just choosing a social agenda while refusing to admit what it is.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #131,329
12/18/03 8:13:51 AM
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There is a minor difference...
...between provision of public goods and simple wealth redistribution. And the >real< policy problem now is not what those necessary public goods are, but the vast amount of crap that is done in addition to the provision of those necessary public goods.
Regardless of what was done...however...I find it hard to understand how the near doubling of government revenue in 4 years did not benefit the average American..especially considering the fact that the Fed spent it and more. No one spent more money for federal services, yet everyone got a 90% increase in spending on those services. Everyone's income went up in real terma (some more than others). I'm finding if difficult to understand what, if anything, is so horrible with this picture.
My agenda is even simpler. Giving the government money to spend is less efficient than leaving it in the econnomy at large..even if its left idle. Private individuals can and do more with a dollar then the fed does on a regular basis. I'm also relatively certain that if the Fed would develop some fiscal responsibility, it would garner alot less resistance to some wealth transfer from top to bottom. As it stands now, there's no reason to think that any dollar I give is going to do anything but line the pocket of somebody elses constituency. The government takes in much more than it needs to provide basic services. Latest example, all those without healthcare could have been covered for their lifetime for the amount committed to get a few folks prescription drug coverage. The government can't fix these things without waste on a massive scale.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,362
12/18/03 11:10:24 AM
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And there we differ
We agree on the waste in government, and probably on a lot of the reasons for it. We both dislike the drug company give-away that just passed. Bureaucracies have a natural tendancy to grow on exponential curves until forcibly checked, and the current growth in government simply cannot be sustained in the long-term.
However you have more faith than I in the beneficial effects of increasing how much well-off people get to keep. At least with the current administration, the words "tax cut" seem to be code words for, "Cut taxes for wealthy people and a few targeted constituencies for PR purposes." I do not see this as valuable.
By contrast I would see value in a revenue-neutral rearrangement of the tax system that cuts lots of targeted exemptions, increases how many gradations of income there are, and moved tax burdens from average people back to rich ones. It is ludicrous that taxes take a higher percentage of my income than George Bush's. As Warren Buffett says, If this is class warfare, then my class is winning.
So while we dislike a lot of the same things, the words "tax cut" do not make me cheer.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #131,373
12/18/03 12:16:57 PM
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Possibly
I worry more about "targeted" being added to the words "tax cut". Possibly the same issue you have, just as to where the "targeted" comes in.
This is the real tricky part of taxation though...at what point does it become more beneficial to hide the money than to just pay.
[link|http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/indincdi.pdf|http://www.irs.gov/p...-soi/indincdi.pdf]
Study by the IRS that shows exactly what you describe as an objective of the tax system. What the tax system isn't going to fix is the "rich getting richer". If you tax the top 1% to penalizing levels, you lose revenue. Attack the top 10% you achieve the same result.
In essence...the system is already progressive. It is not stopping the polarization of wealth. The only way to systemically change this is to get the wealthy people incentified to build wealth generating investments into the infrastructure. The government can't build a factory that employs 1000 innercity people in jobs that bring them to middle class levels. >Rich people< do that. Convincing them to do that is everybody's job, including the government. Some wealthy people do this as charity...but most will do it if there's something in it for them (some profit...they didn't get rich by being stupid in most cases). If you use government as a hammer in these cases, you will not get the desired result. Better to use the carrot.
But the >real< problem is in the coporate tax codes. And I'll be the first to tell you I don't know enough about them to do anything but make educated guesses. My guess is that most of the real problems in the economy stem from problems here and in other areas of overregulation. Incentifying offshoring, disincenting capital investments, allowing off b/s payment schemes for employees...especially sr level employees...these are not income tax related. It seems like alot of the code actually promotes "bad" corporate behavior. It also seems like government is alot less willing to actually attack this as the real problem.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,399
12/18/03 2:54:39 PM
12/18/03 3:05:57 PM
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Oops, dupe through user error. Ignore :-(
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Edited by ben_tilly
Dec. 18, 2003, 03:05:57 PM EST
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Post #131,402
12/18/03 3:05:08 PM
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That report has some major limitations
Look at the bottom of page 2. Further, while Federal individual taxes are included in the database, Social Security (FICA) taxes, corporation income taxes and excise taxes are not. 2 out of 3 of those are highly regressive in nature. Also missing are state and local taxes, which again tend to be regressive in nature.
Secondly the report doesn't address how much of an effect the rich hiding money has. Sure, as tax rates were cut, revenue increased. Your interpretation seems to be that people stopped hiding money from the IRS. My interpretation is that the incomes of the top percentile actually increased - no hiding involved. For instance there were no CEOs in 1981 making $10M/year. Today there are plenty. (There are even a few who make 10x that much.)
Actually I lie. It does kind of address that. On page 5 it mentions that in 1986 there was a jump in top incomes as people hastened to realize capital gains before changes in tax rules came into effect. But I think that we can agree that while such one-time effects can be large, they are not relevant over the long haul.
Which leaves the really big question - whether changing the overall structure of taxation is good or bad economically for the average American - unanswered.
However there is one question answered which you do not see in the current political debate. Income disparities lead to health problems. [link|http://www.inequality.org/lardneressay2.html|http://www.inequalit...ardneressay2.html] summarizes some of the research on this. Of course you will never see the current administration acknowledge this...
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #131,407
12/18/03 3:21:10 PM
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One other consideration re: wealth hiding...
...is that attempts at enforcement against those with lotsa dough have been somewhat lacking. I've read a few articles about various administrations retargeting the enforcement division of the IRS from those with $$$ to those who don't have much - doesn't make sense to target those who don't have a lot of money in the first place, you'd get a much better ROI going after those with the cash.
All this talk of cutting taxes on the wealthy to discourage wealth hiding - it smacks of reducing the punishment for theft to discourage burglary. The wealthy, they may be different than you or I - but they have the same basic social responsibilities as the rest of us. In fact, I would argue they have a greater social responsibility than the rest of us; as it is our social structure that allows them to amass this wealth; the power of the wealthy is dependant on the compliance of the masses.
I have a blue sign on my door. It says "If this sign is red, you're moving too fast."
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Post #131,412
12/18/03 3:29:37 PM
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Shhh, don't tell the masses
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #131,417
12/18/03 4:06:30 PM
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Stay huddled, poor boy :)
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,414
12/18/03 3:40:13 PM
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Wow...
All this talk of cutting taxes on the wealthy to discourage wealth hiding - it smacks of reducing the punishment for theft to discourage burglary. The wealthy, they may be different than you or I - but they have the same basic social responsibilities as the rest of us. In fact, I would argue they have a greater social responsibility than the rest of us; as it is our social structure that allows them to amass this wealth; the power of the wealthy is dependant on the compliance of the masses. Ben and I were having this great conversation and being really civil and you had to come in with >that<???? What basic responsibilities are you talking about. Providing employment, paying required taxes, etc? They do have greater responsibility, and for the most part accept it. Even capt evil himself Bill Gates gives at least a quarter BILLION to charitable causes every year. His creation employs tens of thousands...including lots of accountants who's sole lot in life is to find places to put his money that result in the least possible tax burden. He's not stealing. He's not doing anything at all illegal or immoral. Decisions on where to invest and what to invest in consider the effect of taxes. Reducing that effect means more taxable investing is done.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,418
12/18/03 4:08:41 PM
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Er, wasn't being uncivil...
Just pointing out an opinion. If I was trying to make it uncivil, I probably would have preceeded it with "Listen, you fucking idiot..." ;) I'm just interested in your opinion on mine.
Yeah, Gates is giving a lot of money to charity. Me, I think it's because Melinda has him by the happy sac - as do a whole bunch of people at Microsoft - but Bill's just one example out of many. I'd love to see a comparison of how much REAL wealth those who are in the 1% wealthiest (who own what, 50-70% of our country) actually return to the commons? I'm not talking about job creation; I'm talking about paying taxes instead of dodging them.
The responsibility I am referring to is the funding of our government, and the functions it provides. The wealthy benefit from the legal system (look at patent/IP law - massively favors those with expensive lawyers), the protection of the police force (rioting poor folk don't intrude in wealthy neighborhoods - look at LA, they knew that if they stopped tearing up their own neighborhoods and went somewhere where there was actually *wealth*, they'd get shot to shit) and the military...
Besides, the whole concept of the majority of the tax burden being placed on the lower and middle class is a medieval idea that came from the end of feudalism - that the former slaves had to pay back their wealthy masters for their freedom.
I'm not arguing for the wholesale confiscation of wealth from the wealthiest 1% - I'm asking that they pay their "fair share", and that "fair share" is defined as a flat percentage of cash for everything above and beyond what they (and we) need for basic survival.
That's the cost of participating in a society - you have to share the burden. If you're more capable of carrying the burden, then you should carry more of it, or exempt yourself from the benefits of participation.
I have a blue sign on my door. It says "If this sign is red, you're moving too fast."
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Post #131,422
12/18/03 4:21:40 PM
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Well they do.
Double the share if I remember my stats right. Roughly 15% of the income is earned by the top 1% and they pay roughly 30% of the taxes.
1% of the population funds nearly a third of the government revenue from income taxes. Whacked again they are because many are tied to businesses that are materially affected by the corporate income tax. They get whacked again for another half when they kick the bucket.
They pay. They continue to pay. And no matter how much they pay, it is never enough. While I don't for a minute think that they will all become John Gault and walk...it certainly does change the equation somewhat when the "fair share" becomes penal in nature.
It also seems to me extremely disingenuous to say that they somehow have MORE reponsibility as a citizen than I do...simply because they were successful and I was not. And don't start on police and where they are needed...cause I'm sure those folks could hire better security for less money....basic protections like police, defense, legal structure etc are there and available to everyone. I don't expect to be given anything just because I'm not rich.
(I was kidding about the civil part)
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,424
12/18/03 4:41:07 PM
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Sarcasm detector is on the blink today. :)
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Post #131,433
12/18/03 6:37:39 PM
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Really?
I sure wish I could use the blink tag right about now.:) So rarely is it apropos.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,416
12/18/03 4:05:40 PM
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No we won't see that..
...debated. And I thought that study was fairly interesting. Work continues to ensure we're not dealing with statistical anomoly (as good research should). It is an interesting finding that merits alot of attention, and the writer at least understands that it may take a revolution to get the real point made.
As for the remainder. Income taxes, unto themselves, are being blamed as the problem. Fica is INDEED regressive and should not be, imo. If you eliminated the hard cieling you could probably halve the amount taxed ...and since the benefit is essentially fixed, doing so would make this tax progressive also.
Corporate taxes are not part of the discussion (and as I said are imo a large part of the problem) and state and local taxes are generally fixed percentage jobs with no deductions...which some may argue as progressive...but I would consider neutral.
Sales and excise taxes are regressive in the fact that those who spend a larger percentage of their income see a higher total percentage paid...but on an incremental basis are also neutral...as each new dollar subject to the tax is charged the same amount regardless of who spent it.
Changing the overall structure would be nearly impossible now...Changing FICA and raising the low-end baseline of those required to pay would help, somewhat...but the tax structure alone is not going to fix the issues you raise as problematic. The only way to do that is keep the progressive nature that is essentially in the income tax structure already and incent creating of wealth in the lower 50%....to bring them up. In the end, the benefits of that approach are going to be far greater than spending time trying to figure out how to bring the 1% down.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,502
12/19/03 10:53:36 AM
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Insanity is...
doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
We already know that what we are doing results in widening income disparities. What do you suggest doing to narrow the gap if making taxes more progressive is off the table?
That progressive tax structures can accomplish that is easy to show. The tax system used to be far more progressive than it is now, and the effect on wealth was so extreme that the 50's are nicknamed "The Great Compression". By contrast low tax regimes (the present, the Gilded age) have seen accelerating gaps, and I think that the connection is clear.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #131,518
12/19/03 11:30:12 AM
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The new gilded age
Paul Krugman seems to agree with you on this and makes the additional point that "class mobility" is a myth for the most part. Let's talk first about the facts on income distribution. Thirty years ago we were a relatively middle-class nation. It had not always been thus: Gilded Age America was a highly unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920s. During the 1930s and '40s, however, America experienced what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have dubbed the Great Compression: a drastic narrowing of income gaps, probably as a result of New Deal policies. And the new economic order persisted for more than a generation: Strong unions; taxes on inherited wealth, corporate profits and high incomes; close public scrutiny of corporate management--all helped to keep income gaps relatively small. The economy was hardly egalitarian, but a generation ago the gross inequalities of the 1920s seemed very distant.
Now they're back. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez--confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office--between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.) The distribution of income in the United States has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality. [link|http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040105&s=krugman|Source] I would venture to guess that the support of Republican policies by the working classes is at least partly due to belief in the myth of class mobility, "When I make it big I don't want my money taxed". Guess what Bubba, you aint gonna ever have to worry about tax rates for the upper 10% because you aint ever gonna *be* in the upper 10%. -----------------------------------------
"After months of searching and billions of dollars,
we've finally captured the man who had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11 !"
-Rob Cordry, The Daily Show
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Post #131,580
12/19/03 5:51:06 PM
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I know that definition.
And what I'm trying to tell you is simple...that you cannot accomplish what you want by simply changing the income tax structure.
Taxes in general can help. But the income tax structure is already in place to do what you ask.
Other taxes (fica, sales, etc) can be modifed to add to the progressive nature of the tax.
That, still, will only get you so far.
Quite simply, the analysis being presented by everyone is significantly oversimplified. It wasn't the tax structure in the 50s and 60s alone causing the compression in earnings. It helped, but it didn't eliminate rich people's ability to get richer. What happened during that time was an abundance of relatively high paying manufacturing jobs that employed the masses. What's happening now with the "transformation into a service economy" is the replacement of high paying manufacturing positions with lower paid service industry positions. The net result is that the average middle class person doesn't earn more (nor less as the stats point out)...but the growth is consistent in the other areas...so the net is the leaders pulling away from the pack, so to speak.
What I hear is that people expect that the problem can be fixed by attacking the leaders...and I don't think it can be done. In fact, I think the entire process of doing so is counterproductive. This country needs to re-establish its manufacturing dominance. Jobs created cannot be food clerks at McDonalds. They need to be steelworkers, craftsmen, skilled labor.
In addition, corporate governmance needs to be re-established. I think that is occuring on its own...but can be helped. Curbing the benefits can be done by making it costly for corporations...possibly through tax structures. But that is not >income< tax related.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,600
12/19/03 8:16:36 PM
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You have succeeding in telling me
You have failed in making me believe.
The current income tax system is progressive, yes. However the level of progressiveness is nothing compared to what it was in periods where wealth disparities shrank. And the wealth disparities didn't shrink in the 50's and 60's. They shrank from the 30's through the 50's, and then started to expand again in the 60's (after JFK's tax cuts).
Now you can claim all you want that returning to the extremes of the 50's (top marginal tax rates over 90%) would fail to hinder the accumulation of wealth for the top fraction of a percent. You can make the assertion, but I'm not being convinced by it. Because the historical record is pretty clear about what happened when taxes were that high. And common sense says that when you lose 90% of what you make (beyond an admittedly handsome base), then accumulating obscene amounts of wealth just became a lot harder.
Whether this is a good or bad thing is another story entirely.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #131,074
12/16/03 7:16:58 PM
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Debt doesn't count in Reagonomics
Because they won't be around to pay it off. That's the undercurrent to most arguments from most supply-slide supporters: I got mine, now you go get yours, to hell with everybody else.
In short, Greed is Not Enough.
See why it's so appealing to so many?
bcnu,
Mikem
Java, Junk. Both start with a "J", both have four letters. Coincidence? I think not.
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Post #131,080
12/16/03 7:58:25 PM
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Amazing
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,093
12/16/03 8:53:07 PM
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You mean "succinct" don't you?
To be fair, partially stolen from a book title.
"Greed is Not Enough: Reaganomics"
by CUNY Economist Robert Lekachman
On the cover:
"The only thing better than this book is its exquisite timing."
-John Kenneth Galbraith
bcnu,
Mikem
Java, Junk. Both start with a "J", both have four letters. Coincidence? I think not.
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Post #131,104
12/16/03 9:40:25 PM
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Hardly.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #131,107
12/16/03 10:01:59 PM
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Tax Revenue.
Simple really.
1981 - tax revenue 244 billion.
1989 - (after 25% cut and corresponding growth) 446 billion.
So Reagan cut taxes and gave the government more money to spend. And they spent that and more.
It wasn't the tax cuts that were the problem.
In addition, the share of taxes paid by the top 1% >increased< under Reagan. The "rich not paying their fare share" returned with a vengence when Clinton hiked taxes in 93...making it advantageous to hide money once again.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #132,082
12/23/03 7:42:34 PM
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Best in 20 years?
By what measure - CEO average salary?
I'm tied into the local business community. The FACT of the matter right now is there is still virtually no investment in new ventures. The money pool isn't empty - but there's a fucking lid on it. When it gets reasonably easy to start a company again I'll buy that the economy is improving. But jobs or no jobs, there's no available capital to launch new ventures and its the new ventures that create new jobs. The bigcos aren't going to help, yet presently the game is skewed entirely in favor of bigcos. They're the only ones with access to money for expansion.
This economy looks a lot like it did in 1989 - on its ass and wimpering.
"I believe that many of the systems we build today in Java would be better built in Smalltalk and Gemstone."
-- Martin Fowler, JAOO 2003
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Post #132,085
12/23/03 8:07:48 PM
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Hmmmm.. Would that be that last time a Bush was in the WH?
bcnu,
Mikem
Java, Junk. Both start with a "J", both have four letters. Coincidence? I think not.
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Post #132,092
12/23/03 8:51:15 PM
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Well its the oil bust years
And I admit that the view of the economy from Denver is a little odd.
I just picked up the Denver Business Journal to read that Petroleum Engineers are again in demand - commanding $75k on graduation from CO school of mines.
I graduated in 1989 with a BS in Petroleum Engineering and couldn't get a job sweeping a rig floor for over a year before giving up and finally weaseling my way into computer stuff. The Denver economy was on its ass with the oil bust - lots of vacant commercial real estate - lots of unemployment and foreclosures.
Kind of how it looks now except the PEs are getting jobs again (and they claim there's a labor problem as the older force is retiring and not enough entries to replace them - same thing I heard when I started my degree - harumph).
"I believe that many of the systems we build today in Java would be better built in Smalltalk and Gemstone."
-- Martin Fowler, JAOO 2003
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Post #132,127
12/24/03 12:16:53 AM
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Actually, no.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #132,208
12/24/03 3:47:01 PM
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So Bush, Sr. wasn't in office in 1989?
Who was that masked man? Oh wait, that's right about the time he was "out of the loop" right?
Ever tire of being an apologist?
bcnu,
Mikem
I don't do third world languages. So no, I don't do Java.
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Post #132,245
12/24/03 7:27:12 PM
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Never mind...missed the other date reference.
My P.O.R was 1983...Todd's was 89. Yeah...there was a Bush in the WH in 89.
Ever tire of foretelling doom? ;-)
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition
It goes in, it must come out.Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #132,380
12/26/03 9:43:16 AM
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I'll quit foretelling doom.
Right after the overthrow. :-D
bcnu,
Mikem
I don't do third world languages. So no, I don't do Java.
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