Go Back   I-Mockery Forum > I-Mockery Discussion Forums > Philosophy, Politics, and News
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Preechr Preechr is offline
=======
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: NA
Preechr is probably a spambot
Old Jul 16th, 2004, 10:15 PM        A contest between big spenders
Jeff Jacoby
July 16, 2004

For fiscal conservatives, the choice this election could hardly be more depressing.

In the Republicans' corner is George W. Bush, who presides over the most bloated federal budget in US history. Bush's profligacy has left in tatters the traditional GOP claim to fiscal rectitude. He has uncomplainingly signed into law every pork-stuffed appropriations bill sent to him by Congress. He has flooded the government's books with red ink. And he has embraced new schemes for draining the Treasury, including the largest expansion of the welfare state in decades -- the prescription-drug entitlement, which will cost, over the next decade, more than half a trillion dollars.

When, from the Democrats' corner, John F. Kerry excoriates Bush for "three years of reckless spending and skyrocketing deficits" and declares that what America needs is "a return to the fiscal discipline that brought record surpluses and the largest economic expansion since World War II," he speaks nothing but the unadorned truth. But Candidate Kerry doesn't preach fiscal discipline very often, and there is no reason to believe that a President Kerry would practice it.

The Democratic standard-bearer has committed himself to dozens of costly campaign promises -- everything from expanded Amtrak service in rural areas to a new program for preventing childhood obesity to $50 billion in additional aid to the states. According to the [url=www.ntu.org[National Taxpayers Union Foundation[/url], Kerry's budget proposals would add a breath-catching $226 billion to the federal budget in the first year of his presidency. Over a four-year term, they would cost more than $621 billion -- a tab that would have to be paid either with steep new taxes, or by taking the government even more deeply into debt.

The 2004 presidential race pits a big-spending Republican Tweedledee against a big-spending Democratic Tweedledum. What's a fiscally responsible voter to do?

Bush promises to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of 2008; Kerry promises the same thing. Bush says he'll do it by "holding the line on federal spending;" Kerry, by "restraining spending growth." (Even their cliches are interchangeable.) What both are really counting on is economic growth: The Congressional Budget Office is already projecting a nearly 50 percent drop in the deficit by 2008 even if nothing else changes at all.

Still, there is at least one significant fiscal-policy difference between the president and his challenger. Bush strongly defends the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and has been urging Congress to make them permanent. Kerry denounces Bush's "tax cuts for the wealthy" and says he would seek to restore the old tax rates for incomes higher than $200,000. At times Kerry says he would use the revenue from higher taxes to fund new social welfare programs. At other times he suggests that raising those taxes is a key to reducing the deficit.

The idea that tax cuts cause unbalanced federal budgets comes right from the Democratic songsheet. But is it true? If, as Kerry promises/threatens, the tax relief of high-income Americans were repealed, would the deficit melt away? Economists at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation recently ran the numbers, using an economic model similar to that of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

They began by calculating the effect of restoring the top two income tax rates (now 35 percent and 33 percent) to their pre-Bush levels of 39.6 percent and 36 percent, and of once again double-taxing the dividends of upper-income taxpayers. That would bring in $27 billion, reducing this year's deficit of $477 billion by less than 6 percent. Deficit remaining: $450 billion.

So the Tax Foundation went further. It assumed that anyone with dividends or capital gains qualifies as "wealthy" and restored the old tax rates on those earnings for all brackets. That would reduce the red ink by another 4 percent, to $430 billion.

In short, overturning all of the Bush tax relief for "the wealthy" would reduce the deficit by a mere 10 percent.

Well, what if *all* the old income tax rates were restored to their pre-Bush levels, and the new 10 percent bracket for low-income workers eliminated? That would painfully squeeze millions of middle- and working-class Americans, but it would enrich the Treasury by $70 billion. The deficit would then be down to $360 billion -- still 75 percent of where it stands now.

Finally, the economists calculated the impact of going whole hog -- restoring the marriage penalty, repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax adjustment, and lowering the child credit from $1,000 back to $500. Wiping out the Bush tax cuts in their entirety would raise a grand total of $164 billion -- enough to cut the current deficit by only a third.

"Bottom line," the foundation's Scott Hodge and J. Scott Moody conclude, "if our goal is to cut the deficit through higher taxes, there is very little blood left in the stone of individual income."

Bush's tax cuts aren't driving the deficit. Bush's reckless expenditures -- for which John Kerry, as a member of Congress, is partly responsible -- are. The only way to stanch the red ink is to choke off extravagant federal spending. Alas, that is the one thing that neither Tweedledee nor Tweedledum has any intention of doing.



©2004 Boston Globe
__________________
mburbank~ Yes, okay, fine, I do know what you meant, but why is it not possible for you to get through a paragraph without making all the words cry?

How can someone who obviously thinks so much of their ideas have so little respect for expressing them? How can someone who so yearns to be taken seriously make so little effort?!
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Sethomas Sethomas is offline
Antagonistic Tyrannosaur
Sethomas's Avatar
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: The Abstruse Caboose
Sethomas is probably a spambot
Old Jul 16th, 2004, 10:47 PM       
In short, overturning all of the Bush tax relief for "the wealthy" would reduce the deficit by a mere 10 percent.

That's pretty remarkable, considering that motion would affect maybe .3% of the population. Poor, poor rich folk. :/
__________________

SETH ME IMPRIMI FECIT
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Preechr Preechr is offline
=======
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: NA
Preechr is probably a spambot
Old Jul 17th, 2004, 12:12 AM       
Yes. You're looking at roughly 700,000 people, all of whom earn over $500,000 per year. The infamous "Top 1%" of earners started at $292,913 earned in 2001, the latest year available, for a total of a little under 1.3 million people, so the folks we're talking about amount to about a little more than half that group... 0.5% of the population?

Gosh, aren't those privileged few "lucky." If the government decided to start taking only 35% of my income rather than the customary 39.6% of it, I guess I'd be so tickled I'd just shit myself. For that 0.5% of people, their combined "refund" thanks to the cuts is slightly more than what the bottom 50% of the earners contributes to the Federal Treasury. I'm sure those hard-earned dollars coming in from the plebes is worth more somehow than that fun-money going back to the elites, right?

The funny part of it is, those eeeeevil tax cuts also increased the amount of those that pay no taxes at all to a record 40% of all filers by raising the threshold for the bottom 10% bracket to $7000 AGI from $6000. That leaves the remaining bit of the bottom 50% (that's 10% of the filers altogether) paying the 4.1% of the total tax bill offerred up by that bottom half.

Yeah... but a lot of those poorest Americans have kids to support, right? Bush-Tax-Cuts to the rescue! For a head of household making only $15000 per year (don't judge!) the earned income tax credit will contribute another $4,273 to the cause, making that poor single mom's "taxes" actually 28.5% of her income.

Did you know that half the filers in this country are married, and the other half file as single or head-of-household? Wanna hear a funny story? Out of the top 20% of earners in this country, 85% of those folks are married. One out of three married couples actually qualify as "rich" according to the IRS. By contrast, just 1 of every 7 single or non-joint filers is in the top income group. Married folks, in fact, pay 75% of the taxes, leaving 25% to the single people.

Isn't that great?! Let's see what we've learned by looking at these numbers... If you earn a lot of money, it's Ok for the government to take 1/3 of it because it has to pay for the kids that poor people can't afford to have. It's better to be single, broke, stupid and squirting out babies, in fact, than it is to get married and work for a living.

Our tax system rewards stupidity and punishes production.

Poor, poor us.
__________________
mburbank~ Yes, okay, fine, I do know what you meant, but why is it not possible for you to get through a paragraph without making all the words cry?

How can someone who obviously thinks so much of their ideas have so little respect for expressing them? How can someone who so yearns to be taken seriously make so little effort?!
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Sethomas Sethomas is offline
Antagonistic Tyrannosaur
Sethomas's Avatar
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: The Abstruse Caboose
Sethomas is probably a spambot
Old Jul 17th, 2004, 12:52 AM       
Ah yes, FDR invented progressive taxation, right? Right?

I know plenty of people who would rather have money and get taxed out the ass for it than live in a trailer. Your arguments are pretty fucking weak.
__________________

SETH ME IMPRIMI FECIT
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Preechr Preechr is offline
=======
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: NA
Preechr is probably a spambot
Old Jul 17th, 2004, 08:56 AM       
"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."

Hey, I know I'm a bit of an extremist... but my idealism is based on an overriding principle. Where's your maxim of "Soak the Rich" coming from?

I'll admit I'm mostly just looking for dialog here... If you don't want to have that conversation, it won't hurt my feelings.
__________________
mburbank~ Yes, okay, fine, I do know what you meant, but why is it not possible for you to get through a paragraph without making all the words cry?

How can someone who obviously thinks so much of their ideas have so little respect for expressing them? How can someone who so yearns to be taken seriously make so little effort?!
Reply With Quote
  #6  
mburbank mburbank is offline
The Moxie Nerve Food Tonic
mburbank's Avatar
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: right behind you
mburbank has disabled reputation
Old Jul 19th, 2004, 03:37 PM       
I think we need to look at a full use policy towards the rich. How much of a dent could we put in the deficit if the top 1% were taxed one hundred percent, after being forced to liquidate all of their holdings? After that we could hollow them out and make foul weather gear for the homeless, and use the innards for food and fertilizer.

I mean, it's only 1%! How mny ultra rich people do you even know? I sat we consume them utterly as a warning against the perils of greed.
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Preechr Preechr is offline
=======
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: NA
Preechr is probably a spambot
Old Jul 19th, 2004, 04:55 PM       
ROTFLMAO
__________________
mburbank~ Yes, okay, fine, I do know what you meant, but why is it not possible for you to get through a paragraph without making all the words cry?

How can someone who obviously thinks so much of their ideas have so little respect for expressing them? How can someone who so yearns to be taken seriously make so little effort?!
Reply With Quote
  #8  
mburbank mburbank is offline
The Moxie Nerve Food Tonic
mburbank's Avatar
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: right behind you
mburbank has disabled reputation
Old Jul 20th, 2004, 08:14 AM       
Can I just say how proud I am that after three years on the internet I still have no idea what that means?
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Jim Duncan - Weather Jim Duncan - Weather is offline
Senior Member
Jim Duncan - Weather's Avatar
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Richmond, VA
Jim Duncan - Weather is probably a spambot
Old Jul 20th, 2004, 12:19 PM       
Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. :/
__________________
From Central Virginia's most experienced meteorologists, this is NBC 12 First Warning Weather.

Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

   


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:20 PM.


© 2008 I-Mockery.com
Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.