Ending tax cuts creates disincentive to work

[ghettopalmetto]

That's what I asked you. Meanwhile our economy is careening to destruction; to where our money won't buy much and government promises will have to be abandoned sooner and more drastically. Raising the taxes on the rich is fine as far as it goes but what about the other 2/3 or 3/4 of our annual deficit? As I tried to show on the other thread about ending the debt, we could get rid of the debt entirely by taking 10% cuts in military, health and retirement spending and raising total Federal taxes by about 61% for the next thirty years if we didn't start or expand government programs. The alternative, or partial solution, and probable solution, is to inflate away the value of the dollar.

Look at it from a personal level. If you're not meeting your annual expenses, you can either cut your expenditures, raise your income through job advancement or change in career, or both. Only an idiot thinks he can stay stagnant in the revenues, cut into the food budget, and still make-do just fine without doing a damned thing to grow his income.

In other words, the key is GROWING THE ECONOMY. Our Republican friends are only touting cuts, with little, if any, attention being given to the ideas that keep people in the shitter. For example, you can't cut off unemployment, or force mass layoffs of public employees, cut education funding, or allow health care costs to continue to spiral out-of-control, and then somehow expect the economy to grow.

If someone makes $30,000 a year, he can only cut so much out of his budget. At the end of the day, that person still makes $30,000 a year. Your description of the federal government's predicament is identical to such a scenario.

[lincoln8740]

Clearly, you've never run a small business.

pot meet kettle

[oladub]

The median income is about $52,000 before taxes per US household. Federal debt is about $43,000 per individual or about $122,000 for the average taxpayer. Since there are about 110M US taxpayers, taxpayers could be used as proxies for households. My description, then, is more closely alligned with families making $52,000/year who are carrying a $122,000 debt rung up by their wayward Uncle Samuel who took out huge loans after having given away the tools his family needed to make a living. Uncle Samuel gave those tools away to his family's competitors. Unlike the Federal government, most of us do not have a counterfeiting machine in the basement to make the game go on a little longer.

Now Uncle Samuel wants to borrow or print some more money to help his family 'grow their family economy' like he did before. This time, though , he says his plan will work! Sounds like a great idea.

[maxx]

It is not a tax increase for most Americans, and it is a lie to characterize it as such.

Austan Goulsbee explains it all for you with graphics!
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-col...ustan-goolsbee

[Gistok]

it is interesting how it's an Obama Tax Increase if the Bush Tax Cuts are let to expire as was written in the law. If this were a mccain administration and the sunset provision expired would it be a Mccain tax increase or simply responsible government as we try to dig ourselves out of two decades long wars?

It's kinda sad really that Americans as a whole are so vapid and unserious that they allow this sort of spin to actually influence their vote. It's not a tax increase, its the expiration of tax cuts....something that EVERYONE who wrote the law knew had to happen. Have a problem with it? Blame the republicans for bankrupting the country on wars of choice, medicare part d, and these unpaid for tax cuts.

Well stated Bailey!

I must not have noticed.... but starting in 2001 after the tax cuts were in place... was there a sudden uptick in entertainers performing around the country at concert venues?

Was there a sudden uptick in lecturing professors on the lecture circuit soon after 2001... to soak up all that extra money?

Were there suddenly more surgeries, because surgeons now had greater incentives to perform them?

I'd like to see some statistics to back up this professors claim....

... and if the tax cuts do expire for the well to do... I think that hearing less from this professor will be worth it!!

And if the upper income group does spend less time working... just look at the positive... they'll spend more time on leisure activities!! They would be helping the travel industry.... the hobby industry.... the leisure vehicle industry... the list goes on and on!!

[maxx]

And if the upper income group does spend less time working... just look at the positive... they'll spend more time on leisure activities!! They would be helping the travel industry.... the hobby industry.... the leisure vehicle industry... the list goes on and on!!

And you really think the top 2% spend their vacations in the U.S.???

[Gistok]

And you really think the top 2% spend their vacations in the U.S.???

Then who's going to the Hamptons, Palm Beach, Palm Springs, Martha's Vineyard, Newport, Nantucket, Aspen, Vail and the Berkshires??

[maxx]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-0...thy-books.html
"...Reich’s objection has less to do with morality than with practicality. When income clumps at the top, demand for goods and services shrinks, he says. Take the almost $100 million in compensation that Kenneth D. Lewis was allocated as chief executive officer of Bank of America Corp. as it skidded toward disaster, according to Forbes’ annual ranking of best-paid CEOs. To spend all that in a year, Lewis would have had to purchase $273,972.60 worth of goods and services each day, weekends included, Reich says.
“The sheer magnitude of the task of spending obscene amounts of money can be surprisingly challenging,” Reich says.
If you spread the cash around, by contrast, it gets spent..."