The Tax Cuts

absolutely, they would get a nice EIC check back actually

 

A few more points...

The people who are so far down they don't pay income tax got no breaks.

The way this was handled, a short-term bump was always predicted and that's what we got. There is no dispute that the tax cuts provided a short-term stimulus, but as has been pointe out, there were many other courses availabloe that would have been more beneficial to the economy over the long-term.

Saw a recent poll (CBS?) where a majority of folks don't think they really got a tax cut when you factor in rising state taxes, fees, etc., the unfunded mandates for Homeland Security and No Child Left Behind, along with the loss of services in some of those localities... Alabama laid off troopers, Oregon closed schools, etc.

Go to the NYTimes and read some of Krugman's columns on the econimic policies pursued by this administration.

 

While you would have to adjust your numbers slightly for inflation I don't see anything wrong with your math.

Probably, but I think for people at the bottom end the bulk of their tax bite comes in the form of FICA, etc and state and local taxes and fees.

way off? not with your last guess.

I'm a total night owl, and am useless before 1 pm (nobody really even gets to work around here before 930 or 10 anyway, east coast thing) , I waste tons of time during the day at the office and then churn out work and bill hours between 9 pm and 3 am sitting on my couch at home-- nasty habit, but I get done what I need to get done

 

Actually, I got $80 more than I would have if I had a child last year. I did get the child deduction this year, but only $80 was the reduction I would have seen from the year before.

 

Rocket Fan, a very important consideration, which speaks to the priorities of the Bush Administration, is something that bnb touched on... when can anyone recall a President who pushed tax cuts, every year (including right now), during a war?

We have record deficits, which will drive up interest rates faster than they would have otherwise gone up, and we're in the middle of a war. What is wrong with this picture? How can anyone justify tax cuts now? We (the wife and I) are in the "upper middle" bracket, I suppose. Heck, if we didn't have kids, we'd be in high cotton. And we saw some benefit from Bush's cuts. But we would gladly do without those cuts in order to not have that debt dumped on our 2 young children and because we are in a war.

It is a war Bush chose to make. It is a war, and I'm speaking of Iraq, that we didn't need to take on when we did. It is a war that has turned into a terrible mess that has weakened our security, strained our armed forces to the breaking point, hurt our relations with the rest of the world, and he doesn't want to pay for it.

There is a lot wrong with this picture. Spin however you want, but you don't cut taxes in the middle of a war. If anything, you raise them in order to pay for it. Bush is beyond irresponsible.

 

As others have noted if you made the same amount of money in 2002 and 2003 and paid Federal Taxes in 2002, then you paid less in Federal Taxes in 2003 (assuming no changes in dependents, other lifestyle changes). The bottom tax bracket was lowered from 15% to 10%, capital gains were taxed lower, divends was lowered and the child credit increased.

Kerry origianlly said he woudl roll back the bush tax cuts and help the mioddle class. Now he's doing a smarter thing (IMO) and he said he will leave the tax cuts but would increast the highest bracket (I thought someone said $250k for a married family). If he can do that he will have achieved something good a tax cut for the middle class while taxing the rich more. I am a die hard conservative, but if he can get that done then I think I could live with this tax policy (but let's keep in mind what politicians promise and deliver are often very different).

 

The wealthiest 1% of the country accounts for about 50% of the tax cut, so it's more than sufficient. Besides, the middle class makes up a huge chunk of the population in this country. The middle class is more likely to spend and invest the money in a trickle down effect as a consumer.

 

If you are talking about the Bush tax cuts, then I would reply that Kerry is wrong as well. You have to understand that Kerry is trying to get elected. I don't expect him to come out for recinding the cuts for middle class families with children. That would be political suicide, considering who he's running against. And I don't think those cuts would be recinded by Congress, even if Kerry wanted them recinded. I also don't think there should be a "marriage penalty" in the tax code. You can get around that by raising revenue in other places, if need be.

We need to remember the realities of running for office, for good or ill. Bush and his never-ending tax cuts during a time of war is irresponsible, and not necessary for his re-election bid. He's doing it to repay his corporate contributers. And he's taken that to a new level that surprises even those who benefit. Corporate America never expected the largess they've recieved. They are some of the most surprised people in the country.

 

Conservative Motto
Good economy: tax cuts
Bad economy: tax cuts

 

Here you can read about how utterly ridiculous Forbes Kerry's economic policy is. It's absolutely astounding. This piece doesn't fully consider the amount of stock market wealth that will evaporate should Forbes Kerry decide to mess with the dividend tax break or the capital gains rate. These two cuts are labeled "tax cuts for the rich", yet they benefit every single shareholder in this country -- a huge number of people. Educate yourselves, liberals:

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109088763428374588,00.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Two Trillion in Ten Years

By KEVIN HASSETT
July 27, 2004; Page A16

An economic platform can offer a glimpse into the ideological soul of a candidate and provide crucial information to swing voters. Bill Clinton signaled his "New Democrat" credentials in 1992 when he advocated a generous business tax break, and signaled many events to come when he immediately dropped the idea after his election. President Bush sought swing voters with an aggressive federal expansion in education spending -- and then lived up to his promise. What does John Kerry's economic platform tell us? Very little about his ideology, but a great deal about the man himself.

Mr. Kerry promises higher spending, higher taxes and overall deficit reduction. But the details do not add up.

The centerpiece of his campaign is a proposal that would increase the proportion of Americans with health insurance. But succumbing to the tendency for presidential candidates with long experience in the Senate to include almost everything they ever voted for in their campaign platform, Mr. Kerry has added an astonishingly broad grab bag of other spending proposals -- 70 in all.

How much would all of these promises cost? Let's begin with the biggest proposal. The only existing score for the health plan was provided by Kenneth Thorpe, a former Clinton official and Emory University professor. He at first placed the cost of Mr. Kerry's health plan alone at about $1 trillion. Mr. Thorpe subsequently revised the figure downward to $653 billion to account for some rather mysterious "savings," apparently because the health plan's vague statements concerning prevention will yield miraculously precise lower expenses in later years.

The higher number is more reasonable. But starting with the lower number, the National Taxpayers' Union Foundation recently estimated that Mr. Kerry's proposals would increase government spending by $226 billion in his first year in office. That's about $2,000 per American family, or 10% of the federal budget. While the report did not include a 10-year score, the construction of one is hardly rocket science. My own calculations suggest that the total costs of Mr. Kerry's proposals would be at least $2 trillion from 2005 to 2014.

Mr. Kerry's tax proposal is to renew the cuts that were provided in recent years to the so-called "middle class," to reverse reductions provided to those with incomes above $200,000, and to introduce a new tax credit for higher education. All of the tax cuts enacted by Congress and President Bush are currently scheduled to expire, so Mr. Kerry's tax plan actually reduces tax revenue by more than $400 billion over 10 years. If Congress extends President Bush's tax cuts before departing this year -- something only Mr. Kerry's campaign thinks will happen -- then the Kerry plan would increase revenue by approximately $800 billion.

If we put the spending and tax sides together, the first budget that Mr. Kerry will submit would increase the deficit over 10 years by a minimum of about $1.2 trillion and, more likely, by well over $2 trillion. While a few smaller proposals from Mr. Kerry raise a little more revenue, they do not go anywhere near the level necessary to close the enormous gap between spending and taxes.

This is a strange result for a party that clucks like a nest of saintly deficit hawks. Even with the economy roaring ahead, one can hardly turn on the television or open a magazine without finding some anti-Bush intellectual waxing poetically about the perils of deficits. George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and adviser to Mr. Kerry, warned in one interview concerning President Bush's fiscal policy that "Past administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting," adding that "now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience."

The Kerry plan increases the deficit a great deal more than the dividend tax reduction that aroused so much inflammatory rhetoric last year. In order to provide his army of virtuous talking heads with virtuous talking points, Mr. Kerry has proposed budget rules that, on the surface, limit the growth of government spending. But he has walled off many of his proposals. In a debate during the primaries, John Edwards, now Mr. Kerry's running mate, said quite accurately that the Kerry plan would "drive us deeper and deeper into deficit." Even Mr. Akerlof, no political opportunist, complained openly in the Washington Post that the Kerry message is muddled. The candidate talks about deficit reduction but protects his pet programs.

How could such an internally inconsistent plan have been constructed? One explanation may be that there are too many cooks; Mr. Kerry's current advisory team includes 200 economists. But a more plausible explanation is that the economic platform is merely another manifestation of Mr. Kerry's own contradictions and confusions.

In economics, at least, Mr. Kerry is not a "flip-flopper," as the Bush campaign likes to say. If he were, his relationship to policy would be like that of Elizabeth Taylor to Richard Burton. But he does not hold a position passionately one day and then drop it for the opposite position the next day. The truth is that, right from the start, Mr. Kerry cannot make up his mind whether he is a free-spending liberal or a deficit hawk. He could not possibly reverse course on his economic plan because the current course is impossible to discern. If he backtracks on deficit reduction, he advances his health plan. His relationship to the deficit is Hamlet's toward King Claudius: anguished and indecisive.

Because of this indecision, Mr. Kerry has failed where almost every presidential candidate before him has succeeded. Americans will depart this week's convention with no idea what will happen to economic policy if the Democrats sweep into office in November. That may be acceptable to a Democratic base that has apparently been hypnotized by Michael Moore, but it will surely leave swing voters scratching their heads.

 

It was a good thread while it lasted.

 

No no Rocket Fan!

Your questions were honest and you seemed very sincere. I have no problem with you or the thread. In fact I was learning quite a lot myself.

Just wish others would have heeded your request.

 

I agree with the rich investing, but they don't need extra money to invest. They already have enough to invest.

If I have 15 mil dollars, I dont' need an extra 100,000 in order to motivate me to invest. I already have more than enough to live off of, and invest. Having the extra money won't matter as to wheter or not I invest.

That's the misconception out there. Do you think a multi-millionaire is out there holding on to his money afraid to invest? It's a fatal flaw with trickle down economics.