So if it's logical that corporations only care about profit in light of Obamacare...

I've never heard anyone but the left use the words trickle down.

Sustaining our entitlement state requires an ever expanding pie to keep up. This means economic growth. Growth only occcurs when people are willing to put capital at risk to expand and hire, with the hopes of a future return. Cutting taxes frees up more capital for this purpose.

So you will say, nah, the rich will just horde their money. Hording it means putting it in a bank, which will lend it out to someone else that wants to get rich. They will use that money to expand and hire.

let JFK explain

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_AAEp0J_hzU#t=0m4s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

The biggest problem with our budget (both public and private) is the medical cost. There is no way this country can function if the share of healthcare industry as a percentage of GDP continues to grow at this pace (currently about 17%) When it hit 40 or 50% the whole countries is going down the tube.

Where are all this money going? Doctors and other healthcare workers, drug makers, hospitals, insurance companies. If you want to cut medical cost, these groups have to make less, and they will not stand for this, and they have unbelievable powers. That is why no one is willing to take on them, not even Obama when he started the healthcare reform.

If you reduce medicare and medicaid cost, you basically solved 90% of the deficit problem.

 

Given your general lack of information, this is not surprising. behold the magic of wikipedia:

 

you just quoted someone skeptical of supply side economics using the term trickle down to malign it, not promote it

 

I quoted Reagan's budget director calling his policies "trickle down".

Your battleship is sunk.

Edit - I should also say, the fact that you think the nomenclature associated with a failed policy is more important than its inherent failure is another reason why you don't appear to be very well informed. You could call it trickle down, supply side, purple monkey dishwasher - the empirical evidence doesn't change.

 

Companies already are more profitable and more flush with cash than ever in our history. If they aren't hiring now and banks aren't lending now, what makes you believe that giving them access to even more cash will change that? Perhaps they aren't investing for other reasons - like a lack of customers.

 

But it a pretty apt description, n'est pas? We give all kinds of largess to rich people and they are supposed to create jobs with it. Of course, it hasn't worked out that way in practice, as evidenced by the lack of higher GDP and job growth during the Reagan and Bush years than at times when tax rates were much higher.

I've never heard anyone but the right use the words "entitlement state." (according to your logic above, this sentence should completely negate yours)

It sure sounds good, but cutting taxes has not increased economic growth. There is absolutely no link between marginal tax rates and GDP (the "pie" you were referring to) growth.

Yes, this is the theory. Unfortunately, the theory has been disproved by the fact that the rich hoarded their Bush tax cuts and jobs were not created out of it.

JFK's tax cuts were a little different. I would argue that at the time, we were to the right of optimal on the Laffer Curve. As has been observed by many, almost nobody paid the punitive 90% tax rates that were in effect for much of the 20th century and such a high tax rate definitely proved to be a disincentive for rich people to obscenely line their wallets.

Of course, these high tax rates definitely convinced employers to pay their workers more in bonuses and higher wages, as evidenced by the fact that families were able to make ends meet on one salary after WWII, but before the JFK tax cut. So, the lower tax rates have been a HUGE boon to the wealthy, but (especially with regards to the Reagan and Bush tax cuts) the cuts have also dramatically increased deficits and debt over the past 30 years without providing much benefit at all to anyone but the wealthy.

How is it fair that all of the gains in the economy have gone to the very wealthy while median incomes have gone down?

 

This is something that should be repeated. Lowering marginal tax rates *discourages* businesses from spending (on wages or otherwise) because it raises the relative cost of doing so.

 

But no one who advocates these policies says it's about trickle down. Yet others keep ascribing this belief to them.

It would be like me saying "you and the left believe X", without citing anyone who expresses this belief.

Also, why the need for some to constantly proclaim their intellectual superiority? Comes off as insecure and defensive. If it were manifestly true, why the need to declare it?

 

Just Reagan's budget director, whom you disingenously characterize as "the left"

Probably the same as yours to declare your corresponding lack thereof - Why the need to keep spamming the board with stupid post after stupid post?

This time two weeks ago you were Mr. Unskewed polling junior detective, championing the cause like the rest of the delusionals. This time one week ago the cold hard truth of reality slapped you upside the head.

Apparently this did not provoke a moment of clarity. You keep making poorly reasoned/disingenous posts, based on limited understanding of the facts, in a debate and discussion forum.

The operative question is why are you upset when they are rightly criticized as lacking merit and you as consistently lacking information?

 

The theory is different because we expect those profits to be re-invested. Which they often are, but that doesn't necessarily benefit society as much as the individuals that are increasing their wealth.

 

I'm a Jack Kennedy fan, and you're are taking that film clip out of context. You didn't show the entire thing, only what supports today's GOP wet dream. So here you go.


The notion of Kennedy as supply-side forerunner is a powerful myth, but it is a myth. Context is key. Conservatives love to quote a speech Kennedy gave at the Economic Club of New York in December 1962. Here's one quote—I've italicized the crucial part often left out: "Our present tax system, developed as it was, in good part, during World War II to restrain growth, exerts too heavy a drag on growth in peace time; that it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power; that it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking." JFK was not expounding an implacable economic philosophy; he was speaking about a very specific circumstance. The top marginal tax rate was 91 percent, which JFK wanted reduced to a "more sensible" 65 percent. Compare that with today's 35 percent top rate, and ask: If supply-siders are so enamored of JFK's tax policies, would they advocate a return to a "more sensible" 65 percent top rate? Applying Kennedy's tax talk to the current structure, JFK biographer Robert Dallek says, is like comparing "apples and watermelons."


http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/01/26/the-myth-of-jfk-as-supply-side-tax-cutter

 

That points to one of the big Republican problems. Every time it is tax cuts. At what point have you cut enough taxes? Probably by the time you are running $1 trillion deficits. If they would focus on actual tax reform, they'd be a lot better.

 

"Trickle down" relies on rich people spending equal or faster then they make money. But they don't, because there's no security in spending all the money they're making.
They don't hire more people because lower taxes = more profit = more work available. They hire as a last resort when production can't keep up with demand. You create demand by fueling the middle class, who does the majority of consumption.

 

See, you rob Peter to pay Paul, who then gives it right back to Peter. Seems rather inefficient. All it does is redistribute the pie filling, rather than growing the pie.

Pie only grows when resources (time/money/material) are used to produce something of greater value (delayed consumption).

Tax cuts mean more resources available for capital.

 

I repeat:

Companies already are more profitable and more flush with cash than ever in our history. If they aren't hiring now and banks aren't lending now, what makes you believe that giving them access to even more cash will change that? Perhaps they aren't investing for other reasons - like a lack of customers.

 

You constantly mistake the map for the territory. Your assertions about your ideology are wholly based on abstractions, ideal settings, and an imagined reality that will cling to your definitions.

In this case the "rather inefficient" part you're talking about means that your middle-class "Paul" actually has the money to pay the bills for his family, to invest in education, to buy a home, and so forth... and there's no "robbery" involved.

But I'm sure you'd rather talk about how your hypothetical pie proves your ideology correct. Just like living alone on an island proves your ideology correct, and the dictionary definition of your ideology proves it correct.

You have adopted an ideology that seems to have little actual contact with reality. I know it works out beautifully in your head, but we live in a world filled with failures that seemed to work just fine in someone's head.

 

They're not only flush with cash, they have even more money just sitting idle than people even know about:

I've read the report and posted it here a couple times. This is all the money stolen off the backs of tax payers facilitated by government through lobbying interests of the .1%. You could effectively end the recession and eliminate all private debt if $21 trillion were put back into circulation where it belongs.