But those issues have been argued and reargued on these threads many times. To their credit, some of the most ardent supporters of the war have taken a long, hard look and changed their views. That's a good thing. If we'd kept the lessons of Vietnam in mind there'd have been no Iraq and we'd have been out of Afghanistan years ago. This nation building intervention in nations that do not share our common law, religious or cultural history is simply stupid and I hope that we can remember it the next time and not march our young soldiers off in yet another silly war.
I suppose there is little value in arguing then. Iraq was certainly no Vietnam and comparisons then and now are ridiculous. We did have a national security interest in being in Iraq. I would point out that we don't get to change our minds if wars don't end up being nice and clean. They usually aren't.
You know all the points and you disagree with them, and that's fine. Without turning it into a protracted discussion, I would say only that Democrats were totally spineless when it came down to it. From the Clintons to Feinstein and Rockefeller, everyone had the same intelligence, and these people supported the war right up until the time it started. You can't just say, "Oh, it was wrong, we're packing up and going home" after the war starts. You have to see it through. And to his credit, George Bush had the guts under the most difficult circumstances imaginable to make the surge happen and win the war. The Iraqis have their chance at Democracy and if they choose not to take it that is on them. But it will be a while yet before we know. It doesn't happen quickly or easily. But the effort was heroic on the part of the US, and I would support doing it again today if we had the same information and the circumstances were the same. And so would pretty much everyone else who supported it at the time.
Afghanistan is a different war with different circumstances. We should get out of there today. Not in 2014. To assume that the two wars are in any way similar is just ridiculous. They're not.
There have been economic times where lowering taxes did provide necessary capital that was invested in new plants and businesses and thereby jump started those economies. It's insane, however, to think that in times like these where there is a boatload of money sitting on the sidelines, where production is at much less than 100% of capacity and where demand for goods and services is anemic, that putting more money into the hands of the so called "job creators" is going to induce them to build new businesses beside the plants sitting idle, or working at half capacity, to produce more goods and services to add to those that aren't selling.
I don't think there is particular value at this time in arbitrarily cutting tax rates for wealthy people. But there is certainly no value in INCREASING tax rates for the wealthy.
What COULD be helpful, however, is to carefully structure tax policy so that hiring is encouraged, not discouraged. For example, the reinstitution of the section 38 investment tax credit is a huge incentive for business to spend money, which creates jobs. If you have to make it a 30% credit then so be it; that's better than having unemployed people. It costs nothing. Providing an extended jobs credit that is not limited to disadvantaged workers but includes persons who have been unemployed for an extended period will cause borderline employers to hire when they otherwise wouldn't. The tax code has been used successfully to provide incentive for business for decades.
At this point you can't expect the effects of tax incentives to be as useful as they would have been three years ago. We are in a far more difficult situation than we were in Jan, 2009, as we have moved from a temporary recession to a more chronic condition of unemployment. We've tried idiotic ideas like "Cash for Clunkers" and something more substantive will be required.
If you go to the companies who are doing the most outsourcing and ask them, "What would it take for you to move those jobs back here?" you will get an answer. And there is some amount of tax credit that will make that happen. I can guarantee you that. There is a number for every last one of these businesses that will put those jobs here, I don't care who they are. And that's what we ought to have done three years ago and we'd be out of this mess. Instead, we wasted a multiple of that on economic stimulus that has never worked and never will.
And that's why trying to historically revise the history of tax cutting by claiming that every boom from JFK to George Bush followed some kind of tax cut is, even if it were true, far too simplistic.
No, it isn't. Because we know what works better than anything else. That's not to say it always works, or that it would work at this point, but we know with certainty if you raise taxes now you're going to kill any hope for growth. Kill it.
It is not revisionism to say these things have worked in the past. The correlation is crystal clear; every time we've had tax cuts it has stimulated the economy, although sometimes better than others. And there is strong evidence that tax increases have the opposite effect (just look at the Bush 41 tax increase; the recession began immediately once he announced the tax increase). Tax cuts have clearly been stimulative in the case of JFK, Reagan, Clinton, and GWB in 2003. The degree to which it was stimulative can be debated; however, there is just no way to get around these facts.
After all, how many jobs did Romney create with the large tax breaks he got from the Bush tax cuts and the reduction of his capital gains taxes to a maximum of 15%?
This is a shallow comment. You cannot look at one investor and draw any conclusion. However, we do know with absolute certainty that when Clinton cut capital gain rates we saw a surge in economic growth that was unrivaled in 15 years (Clinton made other serious mistakes that are directly responsible for the crisis we're now in, but that is a different topic). Clinton's early tax increases were clearly responsible for the failure of the early 90s economy to come back as strongly as it should have.
Taxation is a complicated subject and you're right, its effect on the broader economy is even more complicated. But to discount the single most important thing government can do to stimulate economic growth is a mistake -- one Obama already made once. The problem we have now is very serious and does border on being an economic depression. Increasing taxes will insure that we are still dealing with it eight or ten years from now. |
