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New Captives of the Supply Side
The author of this [link|http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/opinion/09chait.html?ref=opinion|NYT opinion] , an editor at 'The New Republic' argues that economic conservatives and not social conservatives are calling the shots in the Republican Party:

Ardent anti-tax conservatives represent a clear minority among Republican voters. And yet the most extreme and counterfactual subgroup among them \ufffd supply-siders \ufffd remain firmly in control of the party.

The party\ufffds economic priorities are reinforced at Grover Norquist\ufffds weekly \ufffdWednesday Group\ufffd meetings, where conservative activists, politicians, business lobbyists and pundits meet to hash out a common agenda. Mr. Norquist is known to cut off any mention of issues like abortion or homosexuality with a curt \ufffdNo sex talk, please.\ufffd

A handful of fanatical ideologues, along with a somewhat larger number of money men who stand to gain a fortune from supply-side policies, relentlessly enforce the faith. They do so with far more success than the religious right, and they receive far less mockery for their efforts.

Just last month President Bush insisted, yet again, that \ufffdsupply-side economics yields additional tax revenues.\ufffd Hardly an eyebrow was raised.
Seamus
New are tax revenues up or down?
whose money is it, mine or yours?
thanx,
bill

Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep

reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
New Down by some indicators.
Depends a lot more on the economy in general than the tax rate. Tax rates in Michigan are down over the past 12 years, personal income is up a bit, but tax revenues are in the toilet.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New last time I checked Michigan isnt a supply sider state
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep

reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
New So?
That means that it can't be used as a data point? Taxes were lowered, revenues went down instead of up. What's your point?
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New Did you even read the opinion?
Yet there is no more debate about this question among economists than there is debate about the existence of evolution among biologists. Most economists believe that it is theoretically possible for tax rates to be high enough that a reduction in rates could actually produce more revenues. But I do not know of any tenured economist in the United States who believes this is true of the Bush tax cuts.

Granted, economic growth sometimes causes revenues to rise faster than expected after a tax cut, as has happened since the 2003 tax cut. But sometimes revenues fall faster than expected after a tax cut, as they did after the 2001 tax cut. And sometimes revenues rise faster than expected after a tax increase, as they did after the 1993 Clinton tax increase.


We all pay taxes. How do we find the right level of taxation to fund what the government intends to do and not hurt the economy?
Seamus
New couple of nits
or perhaps ignorance
But I do not know of any tenured economist in the United States who believes this is true of the Bush tax cuts.
last time I checked Walter Williams is still tenured

couple of linkies
[link|http://taxprof.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/revenue20growth.jpg|http://taxprof.typep...venue20growth.jpg] old numbers tho

newer linky [link|http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-02-12-federal-deficit_x.htm|http://www.usatoday....ral-deficit_x.htm]
The amount of revenues collected from October through January were up 9.7% from the same period a year ago, climbing to a record level for the period of $834.1 billion.

smores
[link|http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/wm1628.cfm|http://www.heritage..../Taxes/wm1628.cfm]
Federal and total tax collections in the United States are at an all-time high in nominal terms and are rising steadily, and federal receipts as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) are again above the post-war average. At the same time, state and local tax receipts are also rising as a share of GDP toward their all-time high.

from the cbo
[link|http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:R7N9N1MN_osJ:www.cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm%3Findex%3D8116%26type%3D1+federal+tax+receipts&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=12&gl=us|http://209.85.165.10...=clnk&cd=12&gl=us]
Total federal revenues grew by about $625 billion, or 35 percent, between fiscal year 2003 and fiscal year 2006
thanx,
bill


Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep

reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
New C'mon box
reality is overrated.

Personal income tax is just a small piece anyway. Nobody's touched payroll taxes...which is more than 1/3 of receipts.

Economic growth with limits on gov spending solves all problems. What to do with entitlments and reducing debt....biggest question facing this government for the next 5 administrations at least.

Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry.Adrian Belew
New Your cites are mixing lots of things together.
It seems to me that if one wants to argue about the effect of Bush's tax cuts on federal revenue, then one should compare receipts that were impacted by the tax cuts before and after they were put in place. IOW, comparing total federal receipts is bogus because that includes FICA and all the other taxes that we pay - we should be looking at income tax revenues. (FICA's income limit has been [link|http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/cbb.html#Series|going up] substantially.)

Also, many of Bush's tax cuts began in 2001, making the first chart misleading.

[link|http://www.cbpp.org/10-21-03tax.htm|Center on Budget and Policy Priorities] (from 2003):

The final budget figures for fiscal year 2003 were released on October 20 by the Treasury Department. They indicate that income tax receipts (including receipts from both the individual and corporate income tax) equaled just 8.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. This is the lowest level of income tax collections, as a share of the economy, since 1942. The decline in income taxes as a share of the economy to a level last seen six decades ago helps explain several other key findings about the final budget tally.

[...]


(I haven't been able to find similar data for a later period.)

[link|http://www.cbpp.org/1-31-07tax.htm|CBPP]:

The President and members of the Administration routinely argue that the tax cuts have produced a robust economic expansion and should therefore be made permanent for the sake of the economy. This argument does not withstand scrutiny.

Every recession in modern U.S. history has been followed by an economic expansion, regardless of whether taxes were cut, increased (as in the early 1990s), or left unchanged. The recent tax cuts were not responsible for the current recovery, just as the tax increases of 1990 and 1993 were not the reason the economy recovered from the downturn of the early 1990s, instead of remaining permanently stagnant.

Moreover, compared with other post-World War II recoveries, the current recovery is not an exceptional one, and by some measures is well below average. If tax cuts are crucial to economic growth, then the current recovery should stand out brightly in comparison to previous recoveries. It should certainly outshine the comparable years of the 1990s recovery, which followed two significant tax increases. Instead, economic growth has been weaker during the current recovery than during the average post-World War II recovery and about the same as during the comparable years of the 1990s recovery. Investment growth has been notably weaker in the current recovery than during the average previous recovery and the recovery of the 1990s, and employment and wage and salary growth have been especially weak. Employment growth during the current recovery has been slower than during any prior post-World War II recovery.[3]


Emphasis added.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Thats a pretty bold assertion they make
without a whole lot of economic citations to back it up. It is an exceptional recovery simply because it wasn't squashed by roughly a doubling of energy costs.

Agendas. Everyone has one.
Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry.Adrian Belew
New I thought you argued that energy costs don't matter much?
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=248099|#248099].

Coming around to [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=146800|my way of thinking], eh?

;-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New Huh?
No, that was not an argument that energy costs don't matter. Only a statement that the increase had not derailed the economy.

And your chart would seem to indicate what I was saying in the previous posts...this recovery is INDEED exceptional..as oil prices have more than doubled since your post and growth has continued.

So if thats your point, then I agree...somehow I don't think that was your point, though.

Just a hunch :-)
Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry.Adrian Belew
New I think we'll be paying the piper relatively soon. Images.
Someone on NPR this morning said that he thought that there hadn't been a recession this time (as opposed to 1973-1974, 1991, etc.) because the Federal Reserve hadn't assumed that inflation was going to go out of control and increased interest rates. I wouldn't be surprised if that was also a major factor. 0% interest rates for car purchases certainly helped keep things moving for quite a while.

Lots of things were happening in earlier oil price spikes that contributed to those recessions (Watergate, Iran hostages, etc., etc.). We've been "lucky" that many factors are helping to mitigate the effect on the economy this time around (especially easy money for one). While we can argue the importance of Bush's tax cuts, we can't ever really know. Color me skeptical, though.

I think that eventually $80+/bbl oil is going to do bad things to us. Whether we'll muddle along for another 6 months or 3 years, I obviously can't say. As you and others have noted, developing countries like China may be hurt more than the US if prices keep climbing.

It doesn't look like the factors keeping the price high this time around are the same as in the past - there's not additional production that's coming on like to take power away from OPEC as there was in the 1980s, and demand is rising very rapidly now.

The overall trend since late 2004 doesn't look too promising to me:

[image|http://www.bea.gov/briefrm/gdp.gif|0|Real GDP Growth in USA|472|641]


[image|http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif|0|Oil prices in constant 2006 dollars|600|800]


(Oil crossed $30/barrel somewhere in 2003-2004.)

So, in terms of the post-1973 oil price spikes, this has been an "exception" in some respects. The trouble is, as always, comparisons to the past are imperfect.

We'll see.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Could it be that corporate revenue increased
because of the increased military spending and not because of the tax cuts?


In 2005 Corporate revenues increased considerably so it could be said the Bush economic policies are working as planned, but are they?

Corporate revenues increased due to the fact the Department of Defense contract awards doubled from $133 billion in 2000, to $269 billion in 2005 and further increased to $295 billion in 2006.


[link|http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_richard__071008_laugh_with_laffer_ov.htm|Laugh with Laffer] 
Seamus
New a very small part of it
the 162 billion*2% profit margin of large defence contractors then the taxes on that isnt that much. The 2% is a reliable figure from when I worked for such a company and all usg bids were costs + 2%
thanx,
bill
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep

reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
New Interesting use of stats
Jobs creation especially, considering Clinton's starting unemployment rate was almost 8% and Bush's starting point was about 4.

So, of course, they subtract the losses from the recession from 4 to 6 and then count the 6 to 4 and get only the increase in workforce between the 2 periods...so Clinton gets 4 points as a gimme PLUS the increase in workforce.

I love reading this stuff. Just continues to show you can prove both sides of an argument using the exact same stats.
Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry.Adrian Belew
     Captives of the Supply Side - (Seamus) - (15)
         are tax revenues up or down? - (boxley) - (14)
             Down by some indicators. - (admin) - (2)
                 last time I checked Michigan isnt a supply sider state -NT - (boxley) - (1)
                     So? - (admin)
             Did you even read the opinion? - (Seamus) - (10)
                 couple of nits - (boxley) - (9)
                     C'mon box - (bepatient)
                     Your cites are mixing lots of things together. - (Another Scott) - (4)
                         Thats a pretty bold assertion they make - (bepatient) - (3)
                             I thought you argued that energy costs don't matter much? - (Another Scott) - (2)
                                 Huh? - (bepatient) - (1)
                                     I think we'll be paying the piper relatively soon. Images. - (Another Scott)
                     Could it be that corporate revenue increased - (Seamus) - (2)
                         a very small part of it - (boxley)
                         Interesting use of stats - (bepatient)

I suggest a new strategy: let the Wookie win.
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