No it falls exactly in line with what I said. revenue will increase based on GDP not tax rate. MY comment and the two you posted all go together.
No - you conveniently added a qualifier "necessarily". So now you're claiming that they CAN affect revenue (and thus the deficit). Earlier, you stated that they simply do not. Trying to subtly backtrack with semantics is stupid.
So why are you for spending cuts, given that expanding spending has more effective fiscal multipliers, and a larger contribution to GDP growth than cutting taxes?
revenue can go up after a tax increase. The tax hike wouldn't be the cause. Your English is broken foreigner. Earlier I stated a tax hike won't cause a revenue increase (at least for income tax).
No evidence to support this. Grammar smack is amusing from someone who doesn't know where to properly place a comma. Interesting. So if we raised the tax rate to 100%, you believe the government would generate the same amount of revenue as it does now?
Hauser's Law. There is a reason i removed that comment before you responded. I misrepresented what i wanted to say. TO answer your question that would obviously destroy revenue.
Fair enough. With that said, a lot of the economists on the IGM panel are environmental/labour/health economists, and quite a few have interventionist leanings, while I get the sense the WSJ is mostly interested in asking only financial economists and certain macro-economists what they think. Given the WSJ's leanings, they probably picked a whole bunch of neoclassical and financial economists who worship capital markets, and it's not hard to see that panel returning a "we still believe" verdict.
Yes. Do you believe going from a 0% income tax to 5% would increase the revenues that a government generates? In other words, do you believe in the Laffer Curve?
Not only is GDP growth generally faster under Democratic administrations, but if you look at the graph you posted, Reagen-era tax rates were at about 17.5%, and Clinton-era tax rates were about 20%+ of GDP. Oh sure, it hasn't gone from 17.5% to 50%, but you do realize we are talking about American GDP right? i.e a 15 trillion behemoth? literally a 1% difference in that is enough to buy a couple of small countries.
No. Do you think Obama's tax hikes will some how buck the trend that has existed since 1945 and cause us to generate more than 20% of GDP in revenue? In other words, whats your take on Hauser's Law? or are you hoping tax increases will some how increase GDP?
Interesting. So if a government has no revenues and institutes an income tax (and has no other tax sources), it will never be able to generate any revenues in your mind? This also brings up the question of why you used the Laffer curve to argue against B-Bob if you don't even believe in it. I disagree with the premise. The goal is not to get above 20% of GDP. We're somewhere around 16% now, so if it helps us get closer to that, it helps. And I don't believe it will have any substantial negative impact on GDP. I think Hauser's Law is silly and irrelevant here. First of all, it's not a law based on science or economics or anything of that sort - it's just an observation of history. In other words, it's simply true until it's not - there's no theoretical basis for the numbers. Second, a range of 14% to 21% is a hugely wide range of revenues. That's meaningless. If a tax hike takes you from 15% to 20% of GDP, that can mean a significant increase in revenues. I would point you to the criticisms of this "law" from your own link: Forbes.com columnist Daniel J. Mitchell has argued that Hauser's Law has been observed due to the fact that the U.S. does not have a national sales tax and instead collects taxes in a federalist system, in contrast to many other Western nations. He also stated that the U.S. has an inherently more progressive system as well. Thus, he concluded that the Law represents a socio-political policy trend rather than a true economic law and that the trend could change rapidly if value-added taxes are imposed at the federal level.[8] Economist Mike Kimel, writing for the Angry Bear website, has stated that Hauser's Law is misleading as it sweeps large differences under the table. He wrote that tax revenue is higher in the years following a tax increase and lower in the years following a tax cut. He defined the time periods 1951-1953, 1967-1968, and 1991-2001 as "tax hike eras", and 1953-1967, 1969-1991, 2001-2010 as "tax cut eras", and points out that tax revenues increase in "tax hike eras" and that tax cuts lead to lower revenues.[9] Zubin Jelveh, writing for Portfolio.com, criticized the Wall Street Journal editorial for failing to adequately separate social insurance taxes from other types of tax revenues (such as income tax and corporate tax revenue). Because social insurance taxes go directly into the Social Security trust fund, revenue that is not earmarked for pension checks has actually fallen over the last 50 years. Jelveh points out that the main reason for this decline is a dramatic decline in corporate tax revenues, from more than 5% of GDP to less than 2%. Jelveh uses these facts to critique editorialist David Ranson's use of Hauser's Law. Ranson believes that because tax revenues remain constant over time, raising tax rates on the rich will be ineffective at raising revenue.[10] Journalist Jonathan Chait has written in The New Republic that "swings are fairly dramatic" through U.S. history for tax receipts as a percent of GDP. He stated that the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations received "massive" extra revenues as the result of tax increases while the George W. Bush administration tax cuts lead to a "massive" drop in revenues. He labeled the idea of static, flat revenues as a "scam".[11]
yep--- more leverage for Republicans with the debt ceiling. ruh roh. For the moment, not a terrible deal, depending on what happens in two months. First major tax increase on high earners in about 20 years.
