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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. T. who wrote (25195)	1/23/2008 3:04:46 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

So you propose taking revenues from the financially weak Social Security fund which is already slated for bankruptcy in the next decade anyway? Does that qualify under PayGo?

To: E. T. who wrote (25195)	1/23/2008 3:37:13 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

but so long as the tax breaks are temporary, they wouldn’t do much long-term economic harm either. Long term tax cuts won't do harm, except perhaps if they increase deficits to such levels as to cause a fiscal crisis or at least something that approaches that. And of course that harm can be eliminated by cutting spending as well as taxes (but politicians hate doing that). As long as tax cuts are temporary they don't do much short or long term good or bad. People often don't change their habits because of a relatively small, one time or short term increase or decrease in income or expenses (assuming they know it is just one time or for a short term). An exception to this is short term investment tax credits, because they have to be used now or people don't get the tax break, so you can push a short term increase in investment (but after the tax break expires you get a period of time when investment is even lower than what it would have been if you had not implemented the short term tax break). To really benefit you should make tax cuts long term, preferably "permanent" (permanent in quotes because no tax decisions are really permanent, taxes change around all the time, unfortunately). The ideal situation with taxes is to make them stable, simple, and low. Unfortunately we are 0 for 3.