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 : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (59981)	4/18/2008 10:52:21 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 542240

It's plenty of time to see if tax policies will either kick in new business revenues or bleed the Treasury. It will, indeed, tell you that, or at least tell someone who will spin it one way and someone else who will spin it the other way leaving you not knowing what to think. <g> But I don't think it all valid to use the deficit trend lines as a proxy for the impact of tax increases or decreases. Tax increases and decreases cannot be isolated from other factors that affect the debt. And even if we could, is the tax change necessarily or exclusively the president's doing. You can attribute blame or credit to a party if the White House and congress are in the same hands, but that's not usually the case. Tax legislation originates in congress. A weak president may just be along for a ride. You may be able to use the deficit as a proxy but definitely not the debt. Then there are all those other factors. For example, Johnson implemented his Great Society. The costs of that do not show up during his tenure, at least only minimally. They show up during Reagan's and Carter's administrations and all the rest going forward. We still have deficit from Viet Nam. Should we blame Obama for that when he's sitting in the WH? Presidents may be able to reverse tax policy but not entitlement spending or interest on the debt. Debt during a president's tenure isn't an adequate proxy, not even close. Congress has more than a little to say about the budget and other legislation and may not be the same party as the president. There's a lag time between the year legislation is passed and it's presence in the debt. And debt and deficit are not at all the same thing. To say that 'things are unfinished' or conservatism is yet to be applied is really kind of sad, don't you think? Yes, I think it is, the residual effect of the lack of accomplishment, that is, not the saying so. So much energy put into it. So much inter-partisan hostility and bitterness as the main output. So much disappointment and disillusionment for those who believed. So much lost opportunity for those who didn't believe but were stymied in their own different objectives. Sad when one's greatest accomplishment is to have denied opposing accomplishments. Very sad.