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

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (33759)	3/6/2009 4:13:03 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

If higher taxes are supposed to be so good for the economy why don't they just tax at 100%. That should stimulate the economy like nothing before. Bartlett is a hit journalist with no credibility.

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (33759)	3/6/2009 7:11:32 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

(Some pretty remarkable results in that NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.... by a 48-20 percent margin, Americans believe Democrats will do a better job digging the U.S. out of recession than Republicans, and the question that asked for Party self-identification [who do you most identify with] which showed 'Independent' to clearly be the SECOND LARGEST political identification in the country... with 'GOP' down to third place....) Regardless of what makes it into the headlines or the evening news shows, I know that the professional politicians are taking numbers like this seriously.

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (33759)	3/9/2009 1:46:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

A productive step forward would be to fight against Obama's big government policies. As for Bartlett's article - 1 - He takes on the most extreme statements made by any opponent of tax increases, shows that they where not true in a few situations, and tries to imply that that means that the general arguments about higher taxes decreasing growth are false. Its not quite a full on straw man attack because people actually did make the statements he attacks, but he doesn't engage the important points. 2 - An important point of his argument is the history of TEFRA, and how after that tax increase you had rapid economic growth. But TEFRA took place after a large tax cut, and left rates much lower than they where before the initial cut. The growth could more reasonably be seen as an effect of the early cut, than as an effect of TEFRA. As for Clinton's tax increase as I've noted before Clinton's tax increase was on the scale of tens of billions a year in the context of an aprox. $7trillion economy, and that $7tril economy benefits from the residual effects of Reagan's tax reform and deregulation, and Volker's ending of the inflation of the 70s, combined with new factors such as a great expansion of the internet and other technological changes, that could hardly be said to be caused by the tax increase.