On May 4, 10:18*am, "D. Peter Maus" wrote:
On 5/4/10 11:42 , bpnjensen wrote:

On May 4, 7:29 am, "D. Peter *wrote:
On 5/4/10 09:11 , bpnjensen wrote:

On May 4, 3:05 am, "D. Peter * *wrote:
On 5/3/10 23:17 , bpnjensen wrote:

On May 3, 8:48 pm, "D. Peter * * *wrote:
On 5/3/10 18:57 , m II wrote:

D. Peter Maus wrote:

* * * Yeah, when I pay more tax than John Kerry, it makes my blood boil, too.

Would paying more tax than George Bush be different somehow?

* * * George Bush didn't run on a platform of raising my taxes.

...nor did he run on a platform of doubling our national debt.

* * *You mean the way Obama trebled it in less than 5 months? Or
increased it 10 times over the period of his first term? I mean, if
you want to have a third grade argument, we can. But you've
demonstrated too many times that you're smarter than that.

* * *The discussion, however, is that Kerry, like Obama, and
especially Biden, ran on a platform of raising taxes for us, while
doing everything he can to avoid paying his own. If he's so
determined that more taxes need to be paid, then let him lead the
way...pay more of his own money into the Treasury before he
confiscates ours. If Biden is so convinced that paying taxes is a
patriotic thing to do, then let him lead the way. Let him show us
his own patriotism and forego his exemptions. Let him and pay more,
before telling us that we must pay til it hurts as a matter of duty.

* * *If it's a matter of taking care of the less fortunate, then
donate more of his own money before redistributing ours. By his own
released records Kerry donates nothing to charity. While you and I
do, out of our own pockets. Bush and Cheney donated more out of
their own pockets...more of their own money...than all the Democrats
in Congress combined. While those same Democrats argued that we must
be more generous, and take care of the less fortunate, by raising
our taxes and redistributing that wealth, at the same time
protecting their own.

* * *Kerry, especially, makes 5-10 times what you and I do, and yet he
avoids paying his share of taxes, while arguing that you and I must
pay more. If George Bush had done the same, I'd be just as ****ed at
the double standard. But he didn't.

* * *It's laughable at how the argument, no matter the topic, always
gets pushed back to what Bush did or did not do. The truth is that
I'm no happier about Bush's Presidency than I am Obiteme's. His
administration is responsible for not one, but two lame-ass stimulus
packages that did nothing but make busywork for civil employees. It
cost the government about $2400 in man-hours to write those silly
$600 stimulus checks that did nothing to stimulate the economy.
While a simple tax cut would have boosted economic output, and in
the process increased the flow into the Treasury immediately. Bush's
administration further wrote checks on my future to bailout General
Motors, Chrysler and how many banks and Wall Street brokerages?
While letting them go to bankruptcy when bankruptcy first
threatened, would have ended the harping, and started the rebuilding
within two weeks. Instead of dragging the process out, further
depressing the economy until there was no way the banks, the auto
companies or Wall Street brokerages could recover themselves.

* * *The reality is, that Bush did precisely what he ran
against...government interference in the private sector. Had GM, for
instance, simply been allowed to fail when the issue first came up,
there would have been a bankruptcy, and another manufacturer, or
manufacturers would have swooped in and bought up the assets for
pennies, restructured the businesses, and moved on. For two weeks
there would have been a lot of nail biting, stocks would have been
depressed, and then recovery would have been well under way by the
time the housing bubble burst and the real crash occurred nearly a
year later. The economy would have strong enough to absorb the hit
without spending nearly two trillion more out of public coffers,
which created the public panic that virtually halted the economy for
more than a year.

* * *The economy is resilient. It has the ability to right itself
after a bubble burst. Had it been allowed to simply do so, as with
the crash of the 20's, the economic calamity that followed, like the
Great Depression, would have been very short lived before recovery
began. History has shown time and again, that economic downturns are
short lived except when government interferers. And that the debt
soars when the ruling party can't keep its hands to itself.

* * *So, yes, I'm furious at Bush, as well. He took a well
intentioned, and successful Presidency and ran it off the rails.

* * *But that's not what this discussion is about.

* * *You know, it's rare that Kevin and I find ourselves on the same
side of a political issue, but he's right...both parties are
abominations to the Founding Fathers' intentions, these days.

* * *There are 535 people who can be blamed for the state of the
nation. 535 people who have run for office decrying the enormous
government waste. The same 535 people who could at anytime put an
end to that waste overnight. And yet, they have not. 535 people who
have run for office decrying runaway government spending. The same
535 people who could at anytime end that runaway government spending
overnight. And yet, they have not. 535 people, every term who have
promised campaign after campaign, that there will be improvement in
government responsibility, government transparency, and government
effiency. The same 535 people, who, every term fail to fulfill those
promises, blaming the economy, the deficit, international terrorism,
tooth decay and toenail fungus.

* * *The deficit hasn't been addressed because those 535 people don't
WANT it addressed. Because it's a touchstone for their campaigns.
End the debt and they lose the issue that gave them their impetus
for election. Government waste hasn't been addressed because that
money is their pipeline to support in the civil sector. Runaway
government spending hasn't been addressed because that money is the
source of their power for that 535 people.

* * *535 people. That's all it takes to end these ills. 535 people.
Each one with the power to change things.

* * *And yet, they don't. Because they don't want to.

* * *It could be done overnight. In the dead of night. The same way
they hide their efforts from those of us who elect them. But it
doesn't happen because those 535 people con't want it to.

* * *But all of this is not the issue at topic in this discussion.

* * *The argument that we, The People, must surrender our hard-earned
productivity to the Federal Treasury being made by persons who,
themselves, exploit every opportunity to avoid their share of
taxation is an abomination unto itself.

* * *And that was the point of this discussion.

Peter - there is one issue that this argument, and many others like
it, miss entirely - it is the FLOW of money, not the amassing of
money, that keeps the economy going. *Pure private enterprise, for all
its innovation, tends to amass and concentrate money in specific
places; in some cases, like Wall Street or the banks, that amassed
money is either given to execs or squandered. *The stimulus packages,
OTOH, kept money flowing. *So what if some of it goes to public
employees? *Public employees, at the end of the day, are mostly middle-
class, mostly typical family people, and spend that money in turn at
lots of private commercial stores - whether for clothing, cars, food,
washing machines or entertainment of one kind or another. *The private
sector gets it back again...but in the meantime, someone's child not
gone hungry, sopmeone has not lost his home or been unable to afford
health care.

It's the flow that matters when the economy is tanking.

* * That's exactly right. FLOW matters. But only private sector
spending. In the private sector, each dollar spent is turned over to
create another dollar and that dollar goes back into the economy.
Further, in private sector spending each dollar spent triggers
productivity, which increases total domestic product, which
increases the value of every other dollar spent.

* * Public spending comes from taxation, which is a dollar removed
from the economy, lost in bureaucratic fractionalization, and then
returned to the economy as a small fraction of it's original value.
Like $600 stimulus checks that cost $2500 in man-hours each to
produce. $1900 of that is lost to the bureaucratic maze. While $2500
in tax cuts to the same individual will produce far more in economic
stimulation than the $600 check when taxation remains high. Because
$2500 in tax cuts puts that full $2500 back into the economy, with
corresponding productivity. More dollars, and stronger dollars, in
the economy

* * Public spending, on the other hand does nothing to stimulate the
economy because the government is not part of the economy.
Government feeds on the economy. But the government produces
nothing. A government dollar spent does nothing to stimulate
production, so there is no increase in total domestic product, and
no increase in the value of the dollar spent. Further, a government
dollar spent requires infrastructure support of many more dollars in
bureaucratic operating costs, which come from taxation. In the end
the dollars spent are a fraction of the massive cost of bureaucracy,
and taxation on the dollars put back into the economy are incapable
of paying the cost of putting them into the economy. Fewer dollars,
and weaker dollars in the economy.

* * Public sector spending regardless of volume, increases nothing,
stimulates ...

read more »

I disagree. *Public sector is roughly the same as private sector. *I
work in the public sector, but I spend my money in the private
sector. *The tax money that does not go into my pocket goes to various
places, but they are either to others who ultimately spend it (again
in the private sevctor) or it becomes something that somebody can use
or enjoy, like a freeway overpass or a public park. Moreover, a good
deal of R&D is done as a result of public funds. *The money all goes
back to someone or something as tangible as if it were the private
sector.

* *All the money can't, Bruce. Every dollar has to support the
bureaucracy that handles it. And that cost is multiples of the
amount released. The government can't operate at zero cost. Hell the
collection of the dollar, alone, costs many times it's value.

* *Look at your own budgets. See where the money goes. Where
operating costs are defrayed, and the ratio of cost to dollars spent.

* *No one's suggesting, btw, that we curtain public projects like
infrastructure improvements. Only that spending be reigned in when
times are tight. And costs contained.



If nothing else, money spent as stimulus keeps things alive - rather
than on a permanent downward spiral - while the rest of the economy
stabilizes. *Without it, the flow ceases in time of economic drought
and lots of even worse things happen. *That may be worth nothing to
you, but it counts with me.

* *In times of economic drought, cutting taxes has worked every time
it's tried. Without fail. Even Kennedy knew that. And don't think he
wasn't fought tooth and nail on it.

* *Public spending costs. Cutting taxes produces economic activity
which produces more available revenue to the taxation mechanics.

* *It never fails. It never has failed.

Peter - you act as though the money coming in to the government
disappears, but that simply does not happen. What is a bureaucracy?
It's PEOPLE. Plain, ordinary people, who spend the money after they
get it and it then leaves the bureaucracy back to the overall
economy. I admit, there may be more efficient ways to do many things
(I try to be a hard worker and efficient, even though I loathe my
job), but as long as something gets done it's nor a total waste, and
even then, the money goes back to the economy afterward. And as far
as I am concerned, I get lots of good things (some priceless) for the
relatively meager taxes I pay, and I am happy for them.

I don't recall a specific instance where cutting taxes has done the
population at large any good. Intuitively it SHOULD, and so in theory
it should work, but a lot of assumptions have to be made about what
happens to the money instead. It certainly does business a lot of
good, the stockholders who own them and the wealthy who run them.
However, you are assuming that this wealth trickles down to both the
populace (workers) and the government - I have seen no sign of this
EVER happening. If you include the loopholes that business and the
very wealthy enjoy, those tax rates are among the lowest they have
ever been (some large businesses pay practically zero each year) , and
yet while the number of billionaires rises each year, the middle class
erodes at a rapid pace and the poorer are becoming legion. Coolidge
lowered taxes dramatically in 1926, and what happened 3 years later?

http://www.gusmorino.com/pag3/greatdepression/

Then in the 1950's America's business was booming with a 80-90% tax
rate on them. Since then, the pendulum has slowly swung back, and
look at the last ten years for a near perfect parallel to what
happened 80 years ago. The only thing standing between what we are
just now going through and another Great Depression (essentially the
stoppage of the FLOW) are the stimulus funds - and I fear that even
those may not be enough, since we are not yet out of the woods and
there are plenty more derivative dominoes stacked on beds of mushy
sand out there, not just in the US but worldwide. Just as in the GD
we had far too many goods available for the people to buy (supply
exceeded demand), as well as similarly dangerous speculative
investments with no basis for the initial purchase, we now have
exactly the same thing, with no clear end on the horizon, in the
housing market - the single most significant domestic part of the
economy.

Economists may disagree, but most of the economists I have read think
the stimulus funds were necessary in the short term. I hate the
national debt as much as anyone, and I see no easy way to pay
ourselves out of it - and the obnoxous trade deficit that currently
exists is no help either. In the long term we surely should minimize
government excess as much as possible, but two years ago, almost
everyone in the elected political spectrum knew it was the right step
at the right time.

Bruce