Contrary to some popular beliefs, this country does NOT have a spending problem, but rather, a Revenue problem.

[tarheelbybirth]

Ok, then we'll set aside your aside about the 1% since you didn't have a point.

My problem with this scenario is that since he was 18 he's been busting his ass in an entirely blue collar career field. He sells what for him has been the culmination of a career, and in that one year you deem him a scandalous 1%er, who should see exactly how much of the proceeds confiscated in taxes?
How much is enough to drag him down and satisfy you?

Why? Under what non-Marxist world view is someone creating wealth a reason for anyone to be embarrassed? What kind mindset drives that opinion?
I want you to explain it, if you can.what it "culminates" -

You posted that the top 1% take home 20% of the INCOME so we won't "set it aside". How you could confuse that with "wealth" is a mystery. Can't keep up with your own talking points?

Comprehension seems to fail you as well. I said not a word about your brother or his nature. I said if he sells his property, he pays tax on it just like he would if it was income from a job. Now that might be "Marxist" to you but I fail to see how. Why should the income from selling his building - no matter what it "culminates" - be treated any differently than the income derived from his glass shop?

Take a few to gather your thoughts and try next time to respond on point. Both yours and mine. Maybe have a Snickers...you seem out of sorts.

 

[SA_Hawk]

Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts, debt as a percentage of the economy would be declining permanently.



Introduction and summary

The need to increase the debt limit1 has focused attention on the size and trajectory of the federal debt. Long-term projections show2 that federal debt as a percentage of the U.S. economy is on a path to grow indefinitely, with increased noninterest spending due to demographic changes such as increasing life expectancy, declining fertility, and decreased immigration and rising health care costs permanently outstripping revenues under projections based on current law. House Republican leaders have used this fact to call for spending cuts,3 but it does not address the true cause of rising debt: Tax cuts initially enacted during Republican trifectas in the past 25 years slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues. In fact, relative to earlier projections, spending is down, not up. But revenues are down significantly more. If not for the Bush tax cuts4 and their extensions5—as well as the Trump tax cuts6—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining. Instead, these tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded. Eventually, the tax cuts are projected to grow to more than 100 percent of the increase.

Tax cuts initially enacted during Republican trifectas in the past 25 years slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues.

You can cut a check to the U.S. Treasury anytime you like bro. You know to help out with the revenue problem and all.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

Beats the hell out of your team red.

team red sux as well.

That’s why I’m on team USA 😁

 

[abby97]

You can cut a check to the U.S. Treasury anytime you like bro. You know to help out with the revenue problem and all.

No, like all libs, he doesn't want higher taxes for himself, just for everyone else. He wants your taxes to pay for things he wants but doesn't want to pay for himself.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

team red sux as well.

That’s why I’m on team USA 😁

😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣

So sad you’re so invested in team politics.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

So sad you’re so invested in team politics.

Well, get your red team on board as an actual functioning party then. Because they are clearly your team.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

Well, get your red team on board as an actual functioning party then. Because they are clearly your team.

Nope. I voted for Joe.

Voted for Rebekah nut job jones over Gaetzas well.

Keep fellating team blue though tar heel…

 

[tarheelbybirth]

Nope. I voted for Joe.

Voted for Rebekah nut job jones over Gaetzas well.

Keep fellating team blue though tar heel…

LOL...anyone who plays the "they're both the same" card these days is chin deep in red team bullshit. The GOP not only can't govern, they can't BE governed. Their standard-bearer...and it's not even close...is a WOB dictator, swindler, and indicted criminal.

Will Rogers famously said, "I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat." He's rolling in his grave laughing hysterically at the GOP right now.

Try to keep your mouth above shit level.

 

[CarolinaHawkeye]

I had it read to me backwards and I'm all like, "Whu-whu-whuuuuutttt?!?!

Surprises no one.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

LOL...anyone who plays the "they're both the same" card these days is chin deep in red team bullshit. The GOP not only can't govern, they can't BE governed. Their standard-bearer...and it's not even close...is a WOB dictator, swindler, and indicted criminal.

Will Rogers famously said, "I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat." He's rolling in his grave laughing hysterically at the GOP right now.

Try to keep your mouth above shit level.

Never said they were “both the same”.

They both suck in their own unique ways.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

Try to keep your mouth above shit level.

Try not to slip off that team blue taint buddy.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

Never said they were “both the same”.

They both suck in their own unique ways.

And implying that those "unique ways" are remotely equivalent puts you right back in the GOP latrine...it's over your mouth...breathe through your nose!

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

And implying that those "unique ways" are remotely equivalent puts you right back in the GOP latrine...it's over your mouth...breathe through your nose!

Lick that team blue taint!!! Work it!!

 

[CarolinaHawkeye]

Actually, we have both.

 

[MikeyHawk]

Excluding the effects of the changing plans for student loans, the deficit is on track to double from $1.0 trillion in 2022 to $2.0 trillion in 2023, CBO estimates.

White House budget is for the deficit to be 5% of GDP every year to 2033

Interest on the debt is now more than Medicaid and is running 2.5-3.0% of GDP each year

Adjustments to the tax code are needed. Also, spending has to be addressed.

This WH was planning to incur $330 billion in Student Loan relief while running a deficit of almost $2 Trillion. The politics of the Student Loan relief are up for the people to decide, but, it is a pretty clear example of why there are deficits. Tax cuts are obviously another issue. Both Student Loan relief and Tax cuts could be argued to increase disposable income which increases activity, job growth, tax revenue, etc.

 

[joelbc1]

Horseshit. Every budget Reagan submitted - save one - was larger than the budget passed by Congress. Reagan wanted his 600 ship Navy. And he nearly tripled the debt to get it. And you didn’t care.

Don’t bother the Reagan right with facts, Tar Heel...it doesn’t fit their agenda.

 

[Titanhawk2]

Republican plans for future tax cuts

Recent proposals by some Republicans, whose party now controls the House majority, would further reduce revenues. In fact, the first bill passed in the 118th Congress, which was introduced by Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE) and passed with only Republican votes,32 would rescind all unobligated portions of the $80 billion in funding for the IRS that was provided in the Inflation Reduction Act.33 The Inflation Reduction Act funding for the IRS is projected to pay for itself several times over through increased enforcement of taxes already owed by the wealthy and by large corporations; the Office of Management and Budget estimated that this funding would raise more than $440 billion over the decade.34

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) has also introduced legislation to make permanent President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts,35 at a cost of roughly $2.6 trillion over the next decade.



Conclusion

A series of massive, permanent tax cuts have created large federal budget primary shortfalls and continue to exert upward pressure on the debt ratio. In other words, the current fiscal gap—the growing debt as a percentage of the economy—stems from legislation that cut taxes, disproportionately for the very rich. While it is true that the Great Recession and legislation to fight it, along with the costs of responding to the health and economic effects of COVID-19, pushed the level of debt higher, these costs were temporary and did not change the trajectory of the debt ratio. If Congress wants to decrease deficits, it should look first toward reversing tax cuts that largely benefited the wealthy, which were responsible for the United States’ current fiscal outlook.

Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio

Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts, debt as a percentage of the economy would be declining permanently.

www.americanprogress.org

And with the Bill the Cat avatar, I assume this was actually written by Berkley Brethed

 

[TheCainer]

And with the Bill the Cat avatar, I assume this was actually written by Berkley Brethed

Aaaaaack

lol

 

[tarheelbybirth]

Lick that team blue taint!!! Work it!!

Lie through your teeth!!! Work it!!!

 

[seminole97]

Horseshit. Every budget Reagan submitted - save one - was larger than the budget passed by Congress. Reagan wanted his 600 ship Navy. And he nearly tripled the debt to get it. And you didn’t care.

With respect to funding ‘defense’, I know Reagan asked for more than he got, but as to the overall budget, Congress always spent more than the White House requested.

Jan 6, 1987. New York Times

Among Mr. Reagan's proposals are sharp cuts in farm programs and student loans and curbs on Medicare and Medicaid, along with a new plan to spend nearly a billion dollars to help retrain displaced workers for new careers.

But even Republican leaders of Congress said Mr. Reagan's budget would be substantially reworked. Such a reworking has come to typify the budget process. The President's budget is both a political statement and an economic manifesto, and in recent years it has been altered so much by Congress that the final product bears little resemblance to what the President proposed.
…

White House officials said the President was willing to be flexible in other areas, observing that he proposed the smallest increase in military spending since he took office. And they noted that a large part of the proposed savings over current budget trends came from gains in Federal revenues.

Mr. Reagan acknowledged that Congress ''has rejected most'' of his earlier proposals to curtail domestic spending, but he resubmitted many of them.

…

The President asks again for reductions and elimination of some domestic programs and reduction in the growth of others, most of which Congress has refused in the past.

 

[TheCainer]

With respect to funding ‘defense’, I know Reagan asked for more than he got, but as to the overall budget, Congress always spent more than the White House requested.

Jan 6, 1987. New York Times

Among Mr. Reagan's proposals are sharp cuts in farm programs and student loans and curbs on Medicare and Medicaid, along with a new plan to spend nearly a billion dollars to help retrain displaced workers for new careers.

But even Republican leaders of Congress said Mr. Reagan's budget would be substantially reworked. Such a reworking has come to typify the budget process. The President's budget is both a political statement and an economic manifesto, and in recent years it has been altered so much by Congress that the final product bears little resemblance to what the President proposed.
…

White House officials said the President was willing to be flexible in other areas, observing that he proposed the smallest increase in military spending since he took office. And they noted that a large part of the proposed savings over current budget trends came from gains in Federal revenues.

Mr. Reagan acknowledged that Congress ''has rejected most'' of his earlier proposals to curtail domestic spending, but he resubmitted many of them.

…

The President asks again for reductions and elimination of some domestic programs and reduction in the growth of others, most of which Congress has refused in the past.

Speaking of Reagan, would he even survive in today's GOP?

In his 8 years in office, the national debt nearly tripled. But, he at least had the common sense to realize that increased revenues were needed to help to alleviate the level of debt that was rising during his administration. He actually raised taxes 11 times during his presidency. Would any republican today even have the nerve to suggest that a tax increase would be appropriate? This article was written over 12 years ago and an awful lot has changed even since then.

Ronald Reagan Myth Doesn't Square with Reality​

About 10,000 people will gather this weekend at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California to honor what would have been the 100th birthday of former President Ronald Reagan -- among them Dick Cheney, the Beach Boys and Sarah Palin.

Reagan, who served as president from 1981 -1989 and died in 2004 at the age of 93, is widely considered the patron saint of conservatives; ask a prominent conservative their hero, and odds are they'll point to the Gipper. (The adulation is so widespread that candidates at a debate last month among the candidates to be RNC chairman were asked their hero - "aside from President Reagan.")

Reagan is perhaps most often invoked by those who cast him as having held the line against tax increases. Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, for example, often points to Reagan when calling for lower taxes and spending cuts; he says, by contrast, "tax hikes are what politicians do when they don't have the determination or the competence to govern." Conservatives also hail Reagan as a budget cutter willing to make hard choices to keep spending in line.

It's certainly true that Reagan entered office as a full-throated conservative vowing to cut both spending and taxes. And he quickly followed through on part of that promise, passing a major reduction in marginal tax rates. (According to author Lou Cannon, the top marginal rate fell from 70 percent when he came into office to 28 percent when he left.)

But following his party's losses in the 1982 election, Reagan largely backed off his efforts at spending cuts even as he continued to offer the small-government rhetoric that helped get him elected. In fact, he went in the opposite direction: His creation of the department of veterans affairs contributed to an increase in the federal workforce of more than 60,000 people during his presidency.


And while Reagan somewhat slowed the marginal rate of growth in the budget, it continued to increase during his time in office. So did the debt, skyrocketing from $700 billion to $3 trillion. Then there's the fact that after first pushing to cut Social Security benefits - and being stymied by Congress - Reagan in 1983 agreed to a $165 billion bailout of the program. He also massively expanded the Pentagon budget.


Meanwhile, following that initial tax cut, Reagan actually ended up raising taxes - eleven times. That's according to former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, a longtime Reagan friend who co-chaired President Obama's fiscal commission that last year offered a deficit reduction proposal.

(at left, CBS News correspondents and producers share their best memories of Reagan)

"Ronald Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes," historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan's diaries, told NPR. "He knew that it was necessary at times. And so there's a false mythology out there about Reagan as this conservative president who came in and just cut taxes and trimmed federal spending in a dramatic way. It didn't happen that way. It's false."
It's important to note that Reagan's tax increases did not wipe out the effects of that initial tax cut. But they did eat up about half of it. And as Peter Beinart points out, the 1983 payroll tax hike went to pay for Social Security and Medicare. ("Reagan raised taxes to pay for government-run health care," Beinart writes.) Reagan also raised the gas tax and signed the largest corporate tax increase in history, an act Joshua Green writes would be "utterly unimaginable for any conservative to support today."
Reagan was not happy about raising taxes or expanding government, and we certainly shouldn't forget that he had to work within the constraints placed upon him by a non-compliant Congress. But that doesn't change the fact that Reagan both increased spending and, after the initial cut, showed a willingness to raise taxes - exactly the sort of policy prescriptions so widely condemned by today's Reagan-reverent conservatives.
These facts have largely been lost as the right has enshrined Reagan as its patron saint, and they may fade further amid the speeches at this weekend's centennial celebration. But the reality is that Reagan was a president who held firm beliefs but was also willing to work with his ideological opponents. And that's the sort of thing that doesn't much lend itself to mythmaking.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ronald-reagan-myth-doesnt-square-with-reality/

 

[tarheelbybirth]

Meanwhile, following that initial tax cut, Reagan actually ended up raising taxes - eleven times.

But those tax hikes to offset the effects of his tax cut shifted the burden to the middle class from the wealthy.

 

[HawkMachine]

Simplest thing to do to fight the deficit is to pass a law restoring tax rates to 1999 levels of Clinton Administration.

Ummmmm NO THANKS.

Those are some hellish rates.

 

[seminole97]

But those tax hikes to offset the effects of his tax cut shifted the burden to the middle class from the wealthy.

You wouldn't just spread lies on the internet, right?

 

[tarheelbybirth]

You wouldn't just spread lies on the internet, right?

LOL...I don't think you understand the implications of what you just posted.

 

[seminole97]

LOL...I don't think you understand the implications of what you just posted.

LOL...I don't think you understand the implications of what I just posted.

 

[TheCainer]

You wouldn't just spread lies on the internet, right?

That table isn't really helping your argument. What it is clearly showing is the vastly growing income disparity over the last 40 years. Think about it. Income tax rates are about half of what they were in 1980 and the taxes paid by the wealthiest have now about doubled. They have all of the income.

As they say, you can't get blood out of a turnip. Low wage earners aren't making, on a percentage basis, what their predecessors made 4 decades ago.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

LOL...I don't think you understand the implications of what I just posted.

If you're paying a top marginal rate of 70% and that gets slashed to 28% how do you end up paying a larger share of the personal income tax?

 

[tarheelbybirth]

That table isn't really helping your argument. What it is clearly showing is the vastly growing income disparity over the last 40 years. Think about it. Income tax rates are about half of what they were in 1980 and the taxes paid by the wealthiest have now about doubled. They have all of the income.

As they say, you can't get blood out of a turnip. Low wage earners aren't making, on a percentage basis, what their predecessors made 4 decades ago.

I was going to let him figure it out but I'm glad some people understand. In the late 1970s the top 1% of earners took about 9% of the total income. In 2018, they took nearly a fourth at 22%. The class war is over and the top 1% won.

And what that table doesn't show is that capital gains taxes were slashed as well.

 

[seminole97]

That table isn't really helping your argument. What it is clearly showing is the vastly growing income disparity over the last 40 years. Think about it. Income tax rates are about half of what they were in 1980 and the taxes paid by the wealthiest have now about doubled. They have all of the income.

They don't have all the income. The answer to how much they have has already been posted in the thread. Consult it.

I'm specifically addressing the falsehood: "those tax hikes to offset the effects of his tax cut shifted the burden to the middle class from the wealthy."

Income tax burden of the bottom 95% in 1980: 62.9%
Income tax burden of the bottom 95% in 2020: 27.3%

Explain how that "shifted the burden to the middle class from the wealthy."

 

[seminole97]

If you're paying a top marginal rate of 70% and that gets slashed to 28% how do you end up paying a larger share of the personal income tax?

I knew you didn't understand.

When you see the government will take 70% of the proceeds of selling your business, you might decide you deserve to keep more of that, and refuse to sell.
70% rates earns zero in taxes without a sale.

28% rate looks different, you'll take home over twice as much money from the sale as you would've before under the old confiscatory rates. Sell!
28% rate earns taxes on an exchange that wouldn't have happened under the old rate framework.

If you see a tax analysis that admits to being 'static' it is useless, because it assumes people don't change their behavior under different circumstances.

Confiscatory taxes hinder economic action because they weigh heavily in economic decision making.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

I knew you didn't understand.

When you see the government will take 70% of the proceeds of selling your business, you might decide you deserve to keep more of that, and refuse to sell.
70% rates earns zero in taxes without a sale.

28% rate looks different, you'll take home over twice as much money from the sale as you would've before under the old confiscatory rates. Sell!
28% rate earns taxes on an exchange that wouldn't have happened under the old rate framework.

If you see a tax analysis that admits to being 'static' it is useless, because it assumes people don't change their behavior under different circumstances.

Confiscatory taxes hinder economic action because they weigh heavily in economic decision making.

Quite literally WTF are you talking about? The 70% marginal rate was on income...not capital gains.

 

[seminole97]

Quite literally WTF are you talking about? The 70% marginal rate was on income...not capital gains.

The top marginal tax rate is reduced from 70 to 50 percent, effective January 1, 1982, and the maximum tax rate on long-term capital gains is reduced from 28 to 20 percent for sales or exchanges after June 9, 1981.

People who own their business have significant control over how much of the business' earnings they want to pay to themselves and subject to income tax rates. In lieu of suffering confiscatory rates they direct the earnings in ways that reduce Uncle Sam's bite.

That's how reducing tax rates can increase tax revenues.