Clinton to go "scorched earth" - Page 3

Give me a break. No one wants equality. How many times have I written that socialism needs to be balanced with capitalism? What part of that do you not understand? And if you understand it, then why do you always lie and say anyone wants "equality"? Yes, that's right, you lie. When you say "Equality of outcome," it's a deliberate misrepresentation of what anyone wants or expects.

I just think that salary raises of workers should be equal in percentage to salary raises of CEOs. Don't you think that's fair? The CEO gets 10% more, the janitor gets 10% more. In no way does that lead to "equality" of income.

Unfortunately, that's not the direction the economy is going right now. And that's why we need tax incentives. Not to equalize pay, but to equalize the Delta of pay. Tell me how that discourages capitalism. Go ahead. It doesn't.

That is going to cause problems - Imagine if Apple had to replace Steve Jobs after he dies of cancer, and in order to get the best person they had to pay him a whole bunch of money. You could be left with the choice of "pay the janitors $100K/year" or "let the company die".

Equality - to me - means equality wrt the law and nothing else. If you try to enforce any kind of economic equality you end up distorting the economy enough to hurt it.

You know what I mean. When loss-making companies are giving overgenerous golden parachutes to outgoing executives, even when those same companies end up going chapter 11 and laying off 90% of staff, it's free market capitalism talking.

I think that the proper solution for that is to limit the amount of insurance that a company director can get, and wack them with lawsuits when they negotiate crap CEO contracts like that. There is no negative consequences for directors when they are negligent - since the company usually pays for director liability insurance against shareholder lawsuits.

SDW please provide some data to show how the economy has grown more after tax cuts than during other periods. I couldn't find a perfect graph, but here's one that puts it into some context:

It shows that the supposedly glorious Reagan years actually showed no more average growth than the supposedly terrible Carter years. And it shows how Bush II, after tons of tax cuts, has been close to the worst of all. And how Clinton raised taxes and had better average growth than Reagan or Bush. In short, the data simply don't support your "indisputable" argument that tax cuts have always caused more growth than other periods.

Please either address this or stop making that argument.

Is that graph adjusted for inflation? Because mismanagement of the economy and the oil crisis during the Carter years caused inflation to jump to 13%, so all that growth got wiped out and then some (and it took a couple years for Regan to get things back under control):

Monthly inflation rates, last number in each row is average for the year
1984 \t 4.19% \t 4.60% \t 4.80% \t 4.56% \t 4.23% \t 4.22% \t 4.20% \t 4.29% \t 4.27% \t 4.26% \t 4.05% \t 3.95% \t 4.30%
1983 \t 3.71% \t 3.49% \t 3.60% \t 3.90% \t 3.55% \t 2.58% \t 2.46% \t 2.56% \t 2.86% \t 2.85% \t 3.27% \t 3.79% \t 3.22%
1982 \t 8.39% \t 7.62% \t 6.78% \t 6.51% \t 6.68% \t 7.06% \t 6.44% \t 5.85% \t 5.04% \t 5.14% \t 4.59% \t 3.83% \t 6.16%
1981 \t 11.83% \t 11.41% \t 10.49% \t 10.00% \t 9.78% \t 9.55% \t 10.76% \t 10.80% \t 10.95% \t 10.14% \t 9.59% \t 8.92% \t 10.35%
1980 \t 13.91% \t 14.18% \t 14.76% \t 14.73% \t 14.41% \t 14.38% \t 13.13% \t 12.87% \t 12.60% \t 12.77% \t 12.65% \t 12.52% \t 13.58%
1979 \t 9.28% \t 9.86% \t 10.09% \t 10.49% \t 10.85% \t 10.89% \t 11.26% \t 11.82% \t 12.18% \t 12.07% \t 12.61% \t 13.29% \t 11.22%
1978 \t 6.84% \t 6.43% \t 6.55% \t 6.50% \t 6.97% \t 7.41% \t 7.70% \t 7.84% \t 8.31% \t 8.93% \t 8.89% \t 9.02% \t 7.62%
1977 \t 5.22% \t 5.91% \t 6.44% \t 6.95% \t 6.73% \t 6.87% \t 6.83% \t 6.62% \t 6.60% \t 6.39% \t 6.72% \t 6.70% \t 6.50%
1976 \t 6.72% \t 6.29% \t 6.07% \t 6.05% \t 6.20% \t 5.97% \t 5.35% \t 5.71% \t 5.49% \t 5.46% \t 4.88% \t 4.86% \t 5.75%

This is really what we might be looking at - a repeat of the Carter years, if oil prices continue to go up, taxes go up, the dollar falls, and interest rates go down. The upside is that we might be able to buy 30 year treasuries at 12% again, and sell them for a 300% profit when the crisis is over.

You keep saying the same thing over and over again, with no substitutive proof.

Here's a link for you;

Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2009

OK?

Under the main heading The Budget Documents, fourth link down;

Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2009

It's a PDF file, OK?

See Table 1.1, page 22 (nee PDF page 26), FY 2000 thru 2007 inclusive, Total Receipts, OK?


Those are OMB numbers, not adjusted for inflation, thus the need to include FY 2005 thru FY 2007, since one of those years would be the first year that tax receipts exceeded FY 2000 tax receipts in constant (inflation adjusted) dollars.

For FY 2000-5 the annual inflation rate would need to be below;

(2,153,859/2,025,457)^(1/5) = 1.24% annualized (inflation was above this at 2.55% annualized)

For FY 2000-6 the annual inflation rate would need to be below;

(2,407,254/2,025,457)^(1/6) = 2.92% annualized (inflation was close at 2.66% annualized)

For FY 2000-7 the annual inflation rate would need to be below;

(2,568,239/2,025,457)^(1/7) = 3.45% annualized (inflation was below this at 2.69% annualized)

[CENTER]
Annual inflation (and deflation), 1914-2007[/CENTER]

Figure from Consumer Price Index, data from BLS website BLS Consumer Price Index (ascii text file).

So there you go, conclusive proof that reducing tax rates do not increase the federal revenue stream (in constant dollars).

+1

Seems to me that the more you tax something, the less of it you get. Capital gains taxes deter investment. Progressive income taxes dull the effect of hard work and smart money management. Liberals love to use tax-based deterrence as just another method of creating the nanny state. "We're not going to make X illegal, but we're going to punish your 'bad' choices." Tobacco. SUVs. Carbon. Profit. You know, the evil things that we tax, or try to tax, so we can get less of them.

Our current tax policy is just another method of social and government control. Sadly, most people are resigned to the servitude of "well, that's just how it is."

... with a link to rhe RAW data, not exactly a winger site I might add, but real data, for you to prepare your verbose grammatical (e. g. wordy with no numbers) proof.

Bureau of Economic Analysis NIPA Tables

Hurry back.

Score: SDW10000BC = -666

... simply because government services would come to a screeching hault.

Transportation systems, infrastructure, down the drain.

Security and rescue services, down the drain.

Educational services, down the drain.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, ...

That's such a loopy hypothetical, that you must have pulled that one straight out of your azz!

There is a large presumption in your statement here. I wonder if you know it and just aren't saying or simply cannot see it. I wonder if anyone else can see it.

Actually two.

Well, I didn't float the RP hypothetical revenue cliff scenario, It was handed to this thread on a silver platter, as it were.

I think it's you that needs to keep up, since I've actually worked for the federal government, I know exactly what happens when the revenue stream is cut off, government stops dead in it's tracks.

Been there, done that!

So no, it's not a valid hypothetical, no matter what words you choose to inflict in this thread.

Government services (particularly in metropolitan areas) would start to decay in a matter of days.

Sounds good to me.
Self reliance is a dying art. Especially in the blue urban plantations. </half kidding>

Katrina, anyone?

(Self-reliance... that is, unless the government illegally seizes your guns when there is no police force... that whole 'self-reliance' thing goes right out the window... "we can't protect you, and we're going to prevent you from protecting yourself.")

SDW's point, the loathsome hypothetical as you see it, is valid... his point was regarding economic behaviour, and how it is affected and advised by tax policy... although I can understand how some people instinctively panic when it is even insinuated that the government could be less than "fully" funded.

Oh look.

Jubelum is involved in another philosophical debate.

<sends out search party for your point>

So I just went out to my mailbox, and guess what?

The goobermint sent me a treasury check refunding my entire 2007 taxes!

And then I took my shovel and went to the backyard and just started digging any old where, and guess what?

I found a rusty old tin can full of goobermint greenbacks!

Point is that you just can't make things up, but since you seem to think so, let's add $100 Trillion dollars each year to the private sector. Heck, I don't think that's enough, let's make it ... One Million Dollars.

[CENTER][/CENTER]

Start digging and check your mailboxes frequently!

The presumption(s) was(were) in your response to the hypothetical.

I'll spell them out for you.

First you assume that if the government doesn't provide a particular service (and you listed several) that they simply wouldn't be provided at all. You assumed that in the absence of government provision of these services (but in the presence of a whole bunch of new money in their pockets) that people would not find other, alternative, private/non-government means of obtaining these services.

Second, you assumed that the federal (which is what the poster you were responding to was referring) budget is the primary source of funding for the things you listed. It isn't. The fact is that 75% of the federal budget goes to primarily three things: direct transfers of money from one group people to another, "defense" (which is apparently what we call invading nations today) and interest on the debt (which is really, technically, simply a special case of the first). If you want to account for the portions of the federal budget allocated to transportation infrastructure, security* and justice and education, you'd come up with less that $200 billion for 2007 (out of about $3 trillion, or less than 7%).

*If you want to include defense...actual defense (not invading other countries, etc.) then one could approximate about 1/2 of the $580 billion defense budget. So another $290 billion. But heck, let every able bodied adult American have access to the public armories and one rifle and one pistol per adult (I suspect they have enough) and you have a citizen's militia (for probably a fair amount less than $280 billion per year!)

Wait, are you making any argument in favor of reducing the budget to zero...because it sure looks like it to me when you lay out the benefits like that.

Premise, one large public infrastructure is more efficient than tens of thousands of smaller private infrastructures. It's called economics of scale, it works in both the public and private sectors. And there is no profit motive in the public sector to boot.

And if you haven't worked for the federal government, then I'd suggest you don't know what your talking about. \ If you've never been a public servant, don't pretend, don't presume, how civil servants go about doing their jobs.

Except that your premise is wrong. In fact this exact model was once (the Soviet Union) taken to its logical conclusion by government control over every aspect of the economy (roads, housing, food, clothing, automobiles, etc.) They destroyed the economy in part because the government could never get the proper allocation of goods and services. The free-market does this extraordinarily well every day.


Which is the fundamental problem, because it is profit motive that drives those thousands of private enterprises to find more efficient ways to provide their products and services. You know like computers, consumer electronics, clothing, food, and many other examples.

P.S. The other problem with government-provided products and services is that they presume demand. The price system in the economy is what tells product and service providers what people really desire/demand. But when you get your income by force, where people have no choice, then there is no way to determine whether what's being provided is what's really wanted.

... if you don't know what your talking about, then you don't know what you're talking about.

And clearly you don't know what you're talking about.

I can't help you if you've never been there, done that.

It's as simple as that. TYVM!

Because I've never worked for the government I don't know what I'm talking about?



Or is that you way of simply dismissing people you disagree with without actually, you know addressing the argument? There's a name for that.

No, it's just that I'm not going to go there with your naive 18th century Libertarian POV.

Get a clue. \

Got it. Unwilling to defend your faulty presuppositions.

Ah, no!

I'm not willing to debate an ideology that simply wouldn't work in today's real world.

And saying my premise is wrong is your overly simplistic way of lying?

Seriously, if you want to play in the big leagues, you will need a whole lot of batting practice and fielding drills before you would ever have a chance of reaching my skill level!

There you go, piling on more faulty presumptions.



No, it's a way of saying that your premise is wrong.



Ahhh. Ignorance and arrogance. What a lovely combination.

No comment.

Do you call everyone that challenges your arguments a "troll"?

See you simply want everyone to accept your unsupported premises (for example that without the government we'd be in the dark ages) without challenge. If I'm a "troll" for call you out, then it's a label I'll wear with pride.

That's the behavior you're exhibiting now, no two ways about it.

Priceless. This from someone who's primary form of argument appears to be ad hominem! A good hearty laugh for me to start the weekend. Thanks.

Have a nice weekend.

Please come back when you have a better understanding of how our federal government works.

PS - What does the Russian form of government have to do with the American form of government? I'm not sure you can extrapolate our form of government to their form of government, or visa versa. It appears as if you were trying to make some kind of analogy, but for some reason it is an entirely moot point, since the American government isn't the Russian government.

According to you I won't unless I've worked for it.


I was addressing your (unsupported and faulty) assumption and claim of "big government efficiency" by providing an example where they did everything through the government (very inefficiently as it turns out). In fact I could cite dozens of examples where government does things less efficiently that the the thousands of competitors in the free-market, private sector. This is the problem with big-government advocates, you assume that the state can do things more efficiently without trying to support this assumption with pesky little things like facts and evidence.

(Of course I'm arguing with someone who thinks that tax increases can actually help the economy to grow. Go figure.)



You too.

Your last statement, show me where I stated as such. \ Looks like an incorrect interpretation of my position, which I haven't even stated to begin with.

And as a public servant, I've worked with the private sector on numerous occasions, overall I've found the private sector dealings I've had, to be quick AND sloppy (at their end). You get what you pay for, I guess. \

How can you even compare a totalitarian government to a democratic government, it make no sense whatsoever. It's apples to oranges.

Oh, and there's no such thing as a "free market" hundreds of billions of federal dollars provide for a socialized form of the "free market" otherwise known as corporate welfare.

Example, federal (and state/local) tax dollars fund road building, where heavy trucks produce virtually all of the subsequent damage to this infrastructure, the trucking industry couldn't exist without this form of corporate welfare.

The same is true of the navigation infrastructure (navigation channels. navaids, protective breakwater, jetty, and revetment structures).

Heck, the USA wouldn't even have one large shipbuilder, if it weren't for Navy procurements of their military watercraft, outside of that there are virtually no large ships being built in America (and there hasn't been for a long, long time), we wouldn't even be third rate by world standards.

The list goes on and on, automotive bailouts, airline bailouts, bank bailouts, heck if it wasn't for our extremely (per capita) heavy investments in defense spending, we couldn't compete with Airbus for passenger jets.

We should be investing heavily (with government backed funding) in upgrading/modernizing our rail infrastructure, because it's the second most efficient method (per ton) of cargo transport (after waterborne commerce).

High speed passenger/commuter trains you ask? China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, and Canada are kicking our behinds.

Big science is going overseas, because the federal government can no longer subsidize these efforts, as it once did.

In so many ways, these past seven years have been an utter nightmare, bad fiscal policies, being the main root of all these problems we now face.

The main point about not having worked for the federal government, is that you don't see the people, the actual civil servants, actually doing their jobs, you only see it from the top down, so that if you haven't been in the trenches you really have no idea how hard a typical civil servant works. At least the way I and my fellow coworkers have done and will continue to do.

So flatly stating that "big" government is less efficient than small government, just doesn't make sense, sure go ahead, eliminate all non-discretionary spending, and see what happens, it would make the Great Depression look like a cakewalk by comparison.

I see the common good that federal services provide, come up with a better system than the one we have now, but please leave your ideologies at the door, TYVM. \

That's a cute little post 'ry-cher, in line with the rest of your gems in this thread... but what exactly do you think I am "making up" ?

Excellent post on both points. Well done. So often we forget that there WAS a partial government shutdown in 1996, and guess what... we're all still here. Indeed, most of the "quality of life" things like water, sewer, etc are locally controlled. But never mind me, I'm an anti-federalist at heart, bound to join rancor with people who sleep better knowing that a bloated, powerful central government is taxing successful people in the cause of "fixing" all the inequality and injustice in the world.