No, it's not. Supply side economics never said to completely eliminate the social safety net. That's weird. Look at all these evil countries: CATO HANDBOOK FOR POLICYMAKERS Table 42.2 Top Individual Income Tax Rates in the OECD (percent) Change Country 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2007 1980–2007 Australia 62 60 49 47 47 47 45 17 Austria 62 62 50 50 50 50 50 12 Belgium 76 76 58 61 60 53 53 24 Britain 83 60 40 40 40 40 40 43 Canada 64 57 49 49 48 44 44 20 Czech Rep. n.a. n.a. n.a. 43 32 32 32 11 Denmark 66 73 68 64 59 59 59 7 Finland 68 67 60 57 54 53 52 16 France 60 65 60 62 61 56 49 11 Germany 65 65 53 57 56 44 47 18 Greece 60 63 50 45 43 40 40 20 Hungary n.a. n.a. 50 44 40 38 36 14 Iceland 63 56 40 47 45 39 36 27 Ireland 60 65 58 48 42 42 41 19 Italy 72 81 66 67 51 44 44 28 Japan 75 70 65 65 50 50 50 25 Korea 89 65 64 48 44 39 39 50 Luxembourg 57 57 56 50 47 39 39 18 Mexico 55 55 40 35 40 30 28 27 Netherlands 72 72 60 60 52 52 52 20 New Zealand 62 66 33 33 39 39 39 23 Norway 75 64 51 42 48 40 40 35 Poland n.a. n.a. n.a. 45 40 40 40 5 Portugal 84 69 40 40 40 40 42 42 Slovakia n.a. n.a. n.a. 42 42 19 19 23 Spain 66 66 56 56 48 40 39 27 Sweden 87 80 65 50 55 56 56 32 Switzerland 38 40 38 37 36 34 34 4 Turkey 75 63 50 55 45 40 40 35 United States 73 55 38 43 43 39 39 34 Average 68 64 52 49 47 43 42 26 SOURCE: James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, Economic Freedom of the World (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb111/hb111-42.pdf
It is well documented that conservatives give more to charity. Although maybe these town hall people aren't conservatives, or maybe it's a different group of conservatives.
I completely agree with the rest of your post - the best solutions are created by addressing the minority viewpoint - but I would suggest, at least in the Senate right now, the left side of the aisle has been far more willing to open dialogue with the right than vice-versa. And that's not even considering that the left is the majority in power, and in general, the minority party should be the side more willing to compromise to get elements of their agenda incorporated into the majority party's agenda.
It is also an absolute certainty that nothing will get done here regardless of what I say or do. This is a BBS, not Congress. I don't have a mission and I'm not trying to accomplish anything here. I'm just chatting. I'm not seeking concessions to pass a bill or anything, so I don't much see the point in going out of my way to be diplomatic. This kind of stuff reminds me of everyone warning Obama supporters not to get too confident during the election as though supporters' over confidence could somehow affect the candidate. I don't support Democratic Congressmen expressing themselves as sincerely as I do here, but I don't see any reason why I shouldn't.
I thought I saw it on The History Channel... I guess you'd have to grow up in an alcoholic household to get my drift. I'm sure there were some who used responsibly.....
Can you say more about Wyden's town hall? I don't know anything about it, but find him an interesting politician.
Good information. It looks like a lot other nations believe that there is some sort of supply-side facet to the economy. Also - how did the Bush family take money from the poor? I'm not being facetious here. I thought GW lowered tax rates for the poor as well. Was there some sort of welform reform that was passed? Or some reduction in the minimum wage?
When you lower taxes, it disproportionately benefits the wealthy. You can argue whether that's good or bad or fair or not, but that's how the money flows. However, when we lower taxes by $1 trillion, we have to borrow that same $1 trillion. That affects most of the country equally in higher interest rates, etc. Those bonds are also purchased primarily by the wealthy/middle class/foreign countries, so those groups benefit from the interest earned on that new debt while the poor do not. So the action's benefits focus on the wealthy while the costs affect everyone. The Democrats would be more the opposite - they also deficit spend, but the majority of their spending is directed towards the poor and middle class. So those are the beneficiaries while everyone shares the costs. So (even ignoring any tax increases) you could argue that Dems benefit the the poor at the expense of the wealthy (though they still get the benefits of the interest earned on the debt).
Wyden started out by honoring local vets for about 20 minutes... probably thinking it was something that would take the edge off the crowd. After several standing ovations for well-deserved WWII, Korea, and Vietnam vets receiving belated medals, he opened it up to questions. Every question was about health care. The crowd looked to be about 45-45-10 (with the 10% being Larouchites). Through the luck of the draw, about 90% of the "questions" were from folks against health care. Wyden has introduced a health care that is different from the main bills being considered and kept referring to his own legislation to avoid answering tough questions. ("Under my plan, you do get access to exactly what Congress has." and "Under my plan, not a dime is added to the deficit.") He did say Palin had gone too far, but he quickly said some progressive had too, but he didn't give any examples. Many of the questions were fear-based statements or representative of narrow self-interest. ("This plan will take away my medicare." and "I'm a student at a state university and I don't think I should have to subsidize anyone.") There was constant booing at Wyden's answers and constant derision heaped on questioners from both sides. The meeting almost got out of control when a LaRouchie (with Hitler-esque Obama sign) tried to pretend he had the ticket that had been called and grabbed the microphone away from an aide. Wyden cut him off and an old, old guy whose number had really been called took the microphone away from the Larouche guy, who everyone booed back to his seat. The old guy let loose with some winger talking points and since this was about the 10th person in a row who had spoken out against health care, the pro forces started to yell at Wyden. Thankfully, the next guy offered a pro public choice question, and stated it well enough to let a little steam out of the pro crowd. No real news except that Wyden would not commit to the anti-forces that he would vote against any health care bill that came about through reconciliation, but he tried to weasel out of it instead of confronting it directly. ("I do not believe that complete health care reform can be passed through reconciliation." That's correct as only budget and not policy matters can be passed through reconciliation, but still a weasly way to answer it.) He got thoroughly booed and chants of "liar" started up. Afterwards, people were yelling at each other with most of the anti crowd yelling the Commie Socialist thing and the pros yelling that they want their tax dollars to go to help all Americans, including the ones calling them Commie Socialists. I'm not sure what Wyden's game is here. His attempts to thread the needle by talking about his bill (which has little chance of passing) and discussing bipartisanship did not placate the anti crowd one bit. By looking too much like a politician instead of the quasi-independent he's been elected as, he probably lost more votes than he kept. I was a little disappointed, Wouldn't be surprised to see a Dem challenger for his next primary... he's ticking off a lot of Dems and there doesn't seem to be any good reason for it.
^^^ Thanks for the write-up. I was curious about that too, but was mentally sidetracked by inglourious FatBasterds.
That was interesting info from Mr. Clutch, but I wonder exactly how the tax systems compare. Do some of the countries listed also have other taxing mechanisms in place to obtain revenue? If so, what are they? What percentage of nation-state income does their income tax provide? What do other taxes provide the state? And so on. Without knowing more about the tax systems of the countries mentioned, it is kind of hard to compare them to our own system here in the States.
I don't get what point you're making here. The last column of your graph is misleading; it's a delta in tax rate from 1980 to 2007 for each country, but the way it's portrayed here, it looks like an average. It's not; the "Change" didn't get positioned correctly, and the "-" sign didn't translate in the copy/paste. Virtually all those countries have higher top tax rates than the US. (The Cato--which almost always argues for lowering the tax rates on the wealthy-- .pdf states that they added 4 to the US number because they figured that's a reasonable state income tax number. Clearly, that's not the case, especially if you live in Texas, Florida, or on the other end New York. The methodology does not make clear that adding in district/regional income taxes was done for any other country in that graph.) A few countries rates' are comparable. Mexico and Slovakia, experimenting with lower rates, are not my ideas of model countries. (I think to make your point, you should have just mentioned Monaco and been done with it.) Of course, almost all those countries have some form of national health care. You get what you pay for, I guess.
^ I take that back: looking again, it mentions "subnational" taxes are included. However, it still does not specify what income levels are affected by each "top" grouping in each country. I also think more information is needed to make an accurate comparison.
Europe also has a VAT tax, which is regressive in nature. (Some think it's coming to the US). The US also has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. aghast, my point in this is that economies around the world came to the consensus lower marginal tax rates were good, it wasn't something rammed through by the evil Bush for his rich friends.
The statutory rate is amongst the highest in the developed world. The effective rate that is actually paid is not, though. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=784 The U.S. corporate tax burden is smaller than average for developed countries. Corporations in 19 of the member states of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development paid 16.1 percent of their profits in taxes between 2000 and 2005, on average, while corporations in the United States paid 13.4 percent. Nevertheless, some have argued that U.S. corporate tax rates unduly burden U.S. companies by pointing to the country’s top statutory tax rate, which is 35 percent. For example, a recent Wall Street Journal editorial calling for corporate tax cuts noted that this is the second highest top statutory tax rate among developed countries. While true, this gives the false impression that the corporate tax burden is greater here than in other developed countries. Because the U.S. tax code offers so many deductions, credits, and other mechanisms by which corporations can reduce their taxes, the actual percentage of profits that U.S. corporations pay in taxes — or what analysts refer to as their effective tax rate — is not high, compared to other developed countries.
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