Agreed, ergo my comment pertaining to the lack of benefit or rationale. Thanks for the link. Appears quite interesting.
i read something the other day that said unemployment among white collar workers is still in the 5-6% range... that it's blue collar jobs that aren't there. that creates a real mess. costly in a lot of ways, many of which aren't easily measured.
And this wasn't so much of a problem in the pre-globalized world, where sayings like "What's good for GM is good for America" largely rang true. Today? The interests of MNC's and the countries in which they are ostensibly domiciled are far more divergent.
the tax cuts hurt by creating more deficit - in other words, taking money out of other programs that tend to benefit the middle and lower classes which in turn cause a drop in consumer spending and therefore hurt the economy. Top 2% doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a tremendous amount of money. They pay the lion's share of taxes in this country because of the enormous amount of money they make. But to be fair, the bigger drain on our economy was likely the war in Iraq. All that money being pumped out of our economy and wasted human capital really is a drag. War usually comes with damage to an economy as it's a losing proposition from the standpoint of just throwing away resources for nothing in return. The net result of the war was higher oil prices - which hurt the economy, as well as a loss of a trillion dollars.
Nope . Income tax revenue after 2003 tax cuts: 2003: 925 billion 2004: 998 billion 2005: 1206 billion 2006: 1398 billion 2007: 1534 billion
2000: 1211 billion Which means that in 2005, tax revenues were lower than 2000, despite the economy growing by 14% over that period. That means much larger deficits as a result of reduced tax revenues.
i think the slate series (and the krugman report it's based on) trend the income disparity to the early 80's. So Regan, Clinton, Bush....and now Obama, can share the credit for this phenomena if it is indeed driven by gov't policy. Ain't non partisanship grand! (though it does seem the too many on the looney right celebrate the result)
Not sure where you are getting this, you can definitely see pronounced differences in the rate of growth of income inequality depending on who is in office: Chart speaks for itself, IMO
Oddly, I find myself in agreement with deepblue and favor letting them all expire. Tax cuts are the conservative's backdoor way of forcing cuts in social spending without having to pay the political price.
Economy was coming out of recession, relative to GDP and comparable tax receipts of other years, those revenues were low and generate deficits.
Graph from your link: The trend certainly starts in the 80's...not sure I care to analyze 1945 forward admin differences when tax policy tends to have a longer effect then a particular admins tenure. FWIW I'd be OK with all the bush cuts expiring. You'll note that 2008 cut of is $109K, which is less than half the propose cut off by the current admin for further cuts. Same as it ever was.
I have read that economic policies take 6 to 8 years before their effects are noticed in the economy. If this is correct then i would argue that Ron Paul is on to something in his debate of fiat currency versus gold backed currency. The United States was removed from the gold standard in 1972 and ever since then we've been able to inflate/manipulate our currency which is an unseen tax on our purchasing power. Not to say this is the sole cause but the great divergence according to Noah's article appears to pick up steam in '77.
Sam: I think the chart is misleading, however, as the post 1980 period includes 20 y Republican and only 8 democrat -- so...it's not surprising the income disparity was greater for Republican rule when the chart takes a 1948-2008 time period. Among the greatest increase during the divergence period was during the Clinton yrs. The only decrease was during Bush's first 2 yrs -- coincidently, the time of the tech wreck (anybody remember NASDAQ 5000?) and 911 disruptions. The divergence in income is real....and troubling (at least to some of us). But it's way too simplistic to try to pin this on Dem/Rep battles. Even if you can do the statistical gymnastics to make it seem so. The trend didn't reverse with Clinton, and is unlikely to do so under Obama (who's still pushing tax cuts for the +$100K crowd) unless the economy continues to tank.
