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: DizzyG who wrote (648178)	10/20/2004 10:43:44 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

"A well thought out response... I appreciate you thoughtfulness." Thanks, Diz. "Ironically, I agree with you on several issues: 1. Tax cuts are good. In fact, I think they should have been much larger." I agree --- but to preserve the beneficial effects, spending (particularly of the pork-barrel kind) needs to be reduced (like I posted: all the major economic analysis showed this... the GAO, CBO, Goldman, etc), and all vestiges of 'national industrial policy' (as expressed in numerous horry old 'special tax preference items') should be slashed out of the code. Higher economic growth would result from simplification of the codes --- letting business, for once, make investment decisions based upon rational economic factors... not merely to capture special tax benefits that may, in fact, be counter-productive economically. "2. I also agree that the tax cut should have been followed by a commensurate cut in government spending. It's out of control and BOTH parties are responsible." Agreed. But I'm sure you will also notice that discressionary spending the last four years (exclusive of all 9-11 or military costs) is running some 60% higher then in Clinton's last term. The pigs have gathered at the trough to feed. (IMO, no one of our two major Parties can be trusted to restrain spending on their own. Each seeks to reward their bases with special favors --- at the expense of the American taxpayers. It seems --- in the absence of a trustworthy fiscally conservative Party --- that divided government may be the best hope for fiscal sanity and prudence. At least a balance of power between the Parties would serve to restrain some of the more eggregious spending disasters that each Party, if alone in power, would seek to promote.) "3. I also agree that President's have very little to do with job creation." "However, I do have a problem with the so called corporate taxes. Frankly, I just have a hard time buying in to the corporate tax issue. Corporations are nothing more then tax collectors. They factor the taxes in to the price of products and pass them along to the consumer. The net affect is that consumers pay corporate taxes, not corporations." One thing to consider: our nominal corporate tax rates are some of the highest in the world... but the AVERAGE EFFECTIVE TAX RATE for our largest corporations hasn't been lower in our lives. (For many of the largest companies, it averages in the low to mid-single digits....) This shows the over-whelming influence that all of those loopholes and mind-numbingly complicated special tax code provisions have. (Even more disturbing: so many of the loopholes benefit only the largest multi-nationals, to the disadvantage of small and mid-sized companies who can't qualify for many of the breaks. Since it's the small and mid-sized companies which provide ALL of our net job growth, this is an especially pernicious effect of the special interest corruption of our tax codes.) Finally, as to your statement that "consumers pay corporate taxes, not corporations", I can only point out that --- under American law (since a Supreme Court decision, pre-WW I), corporations are legally considered to be CITIZENS... but with UNLIMITED LIFE-SPAN. This affords them NUMEROUS legal protections that individuals enjoy. I could go along with eliminating all income taxation of corporations --- but only if they were to give up all of the special protections that being 'INDIVIDUALS WITH UNLIMITED LIFE' afford them. After all, 'individuals' pay taxes, right? (PS --- they would never, ever, give this up....) [the Federal Reserve has far more influence on general business conditions then any President does... at least, in the short-run] "Just remember that the short run is all that matters. In the long run we are all dead. :)" So true! IMO, one of the biggest PROBLEMS with our 'leaders' today, and our entire political system, is that they are acting (predictably) just like children.... They are always eager to eat their dessert first (tax cuts, special interest loopholes and pork-barrel spending favors), but never seem to get around to eating their vegetables (cutting spending, the incessant growth of the government, restoring farness and simplicity to the tax codes by slashing out the 'special tax preference items', etc.) As a result of this REALLY BAD BEHAVIOR, long-term problems and issues (reform of Social Security, honest accounting in government, etc.) always get pushed out past the horizon.