Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (479462)	10/21/2003 3:52:10 PM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769667

Gee Kenny you just develop memory problems or something? Even you should be able to figure the answer to that one out...

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (479462)	10/21/2003 4:00:14 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Respond to of 769667

I did explain it in my post. Most of the tax cuts didn't take effect until this year. The dramatic decline in growth took place mostly in 2000 and early 2001. Declines in growth cause declines in federal revenue. The other reason is that the data point for federal revenue in 2000 is skewed rather heavily by the huge surge in the market, which ended in March 2000. The precipitous decline (in the ten months between March 2000 and the time Clinton left office the Nasdaq lost nearly half its value) involved people selling shares, in many cases shares they had acquired for much less money years earlier. This tax money rolled in and skewed upward the 1999 and 2000 receipts. In 2001 there were far fewer capital gains or stock option gains to report, and Clinton handed off to Bush an economy growing at less than a third of the pace it had been growing a year earlier. The 2001 attacks on the nation's financial center also had an impact on revenues, though I am not sure how significant a factor that was because I don't have any data on it. The largest tax cut took effect this year, not in 2001. Yet we have in the latest quarter 3.3 percent growth, and the revenue decline has not been as much as was projected. Nevertheless, I stated in my earlier post that I do not necessarily agree with Limbaugh's argument that revenues will increase this time. I think they very well might not, and then spending cuts or tax increases might need to be considered. But to say that Limbaugh was lying about the past just simply isn't true.