SCLaxAttack wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 11:31 am
a fan wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 11:11 am
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 11:06 am
a fan wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 10:54 am
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 10:19 am
Biggest issue is the huge reduction in tax rates. Hard for me to say that, but it's the reality.
How many times have I told the Forum that we're paying HALF the effective income tax rate that we were under Clinton.
Which is why when I hear Republicans feign concern over the deficit I know they are LYING.
Because the FIRST step to reducing/eliminating our debt and deficit is to double our effective income tax rates, so that we pay REASONABLE tax levels that we managed to pay without the Republican falling for DECADES.
Try telling that to Republican leaders or voters. They think taxes are a communist plot, no exaggeration. Don't believe me? Ask them.
Second step is spending. Let's use Reagan as the bar, since he has been Sainted by the R party: his spending after his policies kicked it was around 22% of GDP.
Anyone know what we spent in 2023?
22.4
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
Hey, how about that?
If I didn't watch Hannity with religious fervor, I'd think spending isn't the problem....taxes are.
Naaaaaah. Dems are bad, and they're not allowed to spend as much as Reagan did, because that would lead to communism.
And he was the third biggest adder to national debt since 1900, unless you want to exclude the two presidents during the two world wars because they had to finance those. So much for the Reagan tax breaks. Top ten adders to the national debt split 50:50 D:R. Ronnie #3, Trump #8.
https://www.investopedia.com/us-debt-by ... ge-7371225
Interesting list. It ranks them by percentage change.
In raw dollars, inflation adjusted, however, the list would look different.
And to normalize further, look at each 4 years.
Reagan is still up there, but Trump dwarfs.
By contrast, Biden is quite low on either list method.
The point is the same. We've been living with a myth that lowering taxes by GOP Presidents is going to result in lower deficits, and conversely the Dem spending is what drives deficits, when, in reality, the GOP Presidents have typically increased spending more than Dems. Both parties increase spending based on major events, wars, financial shocks, pandemics, but the problem is that we think that the tax rates on corporations and the hyper wealthy we paid during America's post WWII boom are anti-growth, when clearly that wasn't the case. And we got away from the realization that investments in greatly improved infrastructure pays big long term economic dividends in aggregate. Ike understood, but the GOP lost its way.
Personally, I don't have a big issue with having tested the trickle down concept, just that we needed to recognize that it's a fallacy way before now...
The other big tension has been how we understand regulation. One side has made regulation the enemy ideologically, regardless of its crucial benefits to successful capitalism and the common good. I was having this discussion with a regular Fox viewer, Trump supporter, just two nights ago. He was locked into the notion that regulation is "bad" per se and couldn't be shaken despite my wife (summa in economics, HBS, Bain, etc) and I trying to explain what externalities are, the tragedy of the commons, etc and the explanation why it's essential to successful capitalism that these be addressed. We emphasized that overlapping and contradictory regulation can be inefficient and should be rooted out, but not because regulation itself is evil. We explained that not all efforts at regulation, however well intended, necessarily deliver the desired outcome as successfully as an alternative regulation, but that we shouldn't not regulate at all when externalities are present. We should try, modify, improve not simply add regulations. Republicans used to understand this.
We tried to simplify for him, with examples like fences and laws against murder, and intellectual property rights, etc...he reverted to his John Wayne westerns and said something about cattle and sheep... conflicts...sheesh. The dumbing of America. And this is a quite intelligent guy. Just lives in a bubble and thinks he understands topics far beyond his own academic exposure, which is nearly entirely computer science.