Re: TK was exactly right. OT

On Jul 7, 12:42 pm, SLAVE of THE STATE <gwh...@xxxxxx> wrote:


I don't agree with that.  Assuming we actually knew GDP for 1800 or
1900 (or do "we" really know it ever?), we could rather casually say
that guvmint spending has been increased as a percentage.  So it has
hardly been maintained as a constant rate.  Everyone has their
opinions, but as a side note, it is my opinion that the increased rate
is most certainly not justified in either social or constitutional
frames.

Fine. I'd love to see your dream federal budget. Your sources and
amounts of revenue, and your expenditures. Just as things like
mortgages or rent and car payments dominate personal budgets, the big
ticket items in the federal budget are very tough to cut.


"Wealthy" amerikans don't need SS benefits, as they are rich.  There
is no reason for them to pay into that system at all, or take anything
out (other than by guvmint decree).   So if the rich get more out of
SS than they pay in, well who's fault is that?


Heh heh! Checked your investments lately? The "I" in SSI stands for
insurance. Good drivers "don't need" car insurance either, but sure as
*** some of them are going to have an oopsie.

And in in the link I gave, Gwartney says quite the opposite of you:
"The critics of the eighties tax policy argue that the top rate
reductions were a bonanza for the rich. The taxable income in the
upper tax brackets did increase sharply during the eighties. But the
taxes collected in these brackets also rose sharply. Measured in
1982-84 dollars, the income tax revenue collected from the top 10
percent of earners rose from $150.6 billion in 1981 to $199.8 billion
in 1988, an increase of 32.7 percent. The percentage increases in the
real tax revenue collected from the top 1 and top 5 percent of
taxpayers were even larger. In contrast, the real tax liability of
other taxpayers (the bottom 90 percent) declined from $161.8 billion
to $149.1 billion, a reduction of 7.8 percent. These findings confirm
what the supply-siders predicted: the lower rates, by increasing the
tax base substantially in the upper tax brackets, caused high-income
taxpayers to pay more taxes.

That's very interesting. You've got the top 10% paying $50 billion
more, the bottom 90% paying $10 billion less, for a net increase of
$40 billion. So the net effect was that real tax revenue increased,
and Reagan's gigantic deficits and tripling of the national debt were
just a bad dream?
No, wait. Those things are historic facts. They are the bottom line.
I don't know what you're smoking, but I wish you'd stop trying to blow
the smoke up my ass.

Laffer's proposition has not be proven wrong, that I am aware of.

You know how if you got in a spaceship and accelerated to near the
speed of light, you could watch stars being born and dying while you
sipped a drink? It's perfectly true in theory, but in practice there
is no way to actually do it. Same for the Laffer curve. There's no
doubt it's true in theory, but the conditions where you could increase
tax revenue by cutting taxes will never occur in the real world, so it
has no practical application.
-Paul

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