Kevyn

Better yet a value added tax to replace the income tax.

bylm1-Bernie

Do you mean like Trump's numbers are showing?

bylm1-Bernie

I'm not talking about taking chances in the equity market, Kevyn. I'm talking about taking chances in starting and maintaining a company or business which in turn hires people to work who might not otherwise have such a good job. They, in turn, with their income can make purchases and the cycle starts all over again. Have you ever heard of the "Multiplier effect"? Have you ever heard the statement that "A poor person has never given me a job"? If you have a gripe with the tax laws in the US, then I suggest you have a gripe with past Democrat Congresses, who since 1960 have ruled on average 3 years for every 2 led by Republican Congresses. Don't you think it's time to put the blame where it belongs?

Michael Rich Loc: Lapine Oregon

When it comes to government the KISP method is safest.

Keep It Simple Pendejo's!

Playing with the numbers is way too much authority to give people, who know only how to spend.

A flat rate will change into a more organized spending on the l***hes in office.

PeterS

Gosh, how soon we get off the topic. Supply-side is supposed to create enough growth that it fills government coffers with plenty of new gold to jingle-jangle--enough so to keep both conservatives and liberals happy but with both of Trump's budgets, he has turned in trillion dollar deficits. This was predicted by the CBO and if we follow its predictions then the rest of Trump's presidency--all 8 years of it--will turn in the greatest deficits ever recorded by this country. Obama, at least, had the excuse that he had a recession to deal with but Trump can't lay claim to any such miss-adventure.

Nope, Trump didn't have the best economy but it was far from what Obama had to deal with. So what's his excuse for the expected 10 trillion in new debt and more importantly why aren't you cons jumping up and down with anger over the increase in debt--you did so with Obama. Do you cons only care about the nation's debt when a Democrat is in office? That's what it appears--your motivation is purely political and has nothing to do with anything else.

When exactly do you guys expect to start repaying all the debt that you are creating...when a Democrat is back in power? That's a sad way to go about life--you degrade Democrats day and night but without them, you lack the power of your convictions! What a crock...

woodguru

So then what is the logic or justification to giving the wealthy more income from tax cuts?

woodguru

Lower taxes does not create more jobs, never has never will. Increase taxes and companies start looking for investments in their companies rather than pay taxes on profits, I know that can be hard to understand but it's a fact.

Clinton raised taxes, and then put on 25 million jobs and created a budget surplus.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Do poor people create businesses and jobs?

New York Times, January Jan. 17, 1990
The Reagan Boom - Greatest Ever

Almost everyone knows that the greatest depression the U.S. ever had was in the 1930's. It was known as the Great Depression, and its infamy merits a separate section in economics textbooks. But what was its counterpart? When did our greatest economic expansion occur?

We just had it. And it is still expanding, setting new records with each passing month.

We don't know whether historians will call it the Great Expansion of the 1980's or Reagan's Great Expansion, but we do know from official economic statistics that the seven year period from 1982 to 1989 was the greatest, consistent burst of economic activity ever seen in the U.S. In fact, it was the greatest economic expansion the world has ever seen - in any country, at any time.

The two key measures that mark a depression or expansion are jobs and production. Let's look at the records that were set. Creation of jobs. From November 1982, when President Ronald Reagan's new economic program was beginning to take effect, to November 1989, 18.7 million new jobs were created. It was a world record: Never before had so many jobs been created during a comparable time period. The new jobs covered the entire spectrum of work, and more than half of them paid more than $20,000 a year. As total employment grew to 119.5 million, the rate of unemployment fell to slightly over 5 percent, the lowest level in 15 years.

Creation of wealth.

The amount of wealth produced during this seven year period was stupendous - some $30 trillion worth of goods and services. Again, it was a world record. Never before had so much wealth been produced during a comparable period. According to a recent study, net asset values - including stocks, bonds and real estate - went up by more than $5 trillion between 1982 and 1989, an increase of roughly 50 percent.

There are other important measures. Steady economic growth. As we begin the decade of the 1990's, we are in our 86th straight month of economic growth - a new record for peacetime, five months longer than the wartime growth of World War II and only 23 months short of the wartime record set during the Vietnam War in the 1960's. Most experts now predict that it will last right through 1990, and perhaps beyond.
Continue reading the main story

Income tax rates, interest rates and inflation.

Under President Reagan, top personal income tax rates were lowered dramatically, from 70 percent to 28 percent. This policy change was the prime force behind the record breaking economic expansion. Interest rates and inflation also fell sharply and, so far, have stayed comfortably low - a further indication of the power and pervasiveness of Mr. Reagan's economic policies. The stock market. Perhaps the key indicator of an economy's booms and busts is the stock market, the bottom line economic report card. And here the record has been striking. During the period from 1970 to 1982, the stock market barely moved. The Standard & Poor's index of 500 stocks inched up about 35 percent during that entire period. But starting in late 1982, just as Reaganomics began to work, the stock market took off like a giant skyrocket. Since then, the Standard & Poor's index has soared, reaching a record high of 360, almost triple what it was in 1982.

There were other consequences of the expansion. Annual Federal spending on public housing and welfare, and on Social Security, Medicare and health all increased by billions of dollars. The poverty rate has fallen steadily since 1983.

When you add up the record of the Reagan years, and the first year of President Bush - during which he has faithfully continued Mr. Reagan's economic policies - the conclusion is clear, inescapable and stunning. We have just witnessed America's Great Expansion.

The Reagan economic expansion was not perfect and we will never have one that is. The Federal budget deficits were too high and still are, too many Federal regulations lay unreformed and the trade deficit is worrisome.

In fact, the Reagan expansion may not have been the best economic expansion in history, for every economic expansion must be judged by many criteria. But if we look at the sheer size and immensity of it, at its scope and power, then it cannot be denied that it was the greatest.

The full impact of the powerful economic recovery that President Reagan launched during the 1980s is still unfolding.

Mr. Reagan's expansion provided the financial resources to allow the U.S. to build up the combat capability of its defense forces and to begin blazing the new trail for a protective missile system. This, in turn, convinced the Soviet rulers they could never defeat the U.S., and today the Soviet Union and the U.S. are busily engaged in nuclear disarmament as peace breaks out in country after country throughout the world.

Equally important, it proved beyond doubt to all (except perhaps for a handful of left-wing faculty members in our best universities) that capitalism is superior to Socialism and C*******m. Our economy is the guiding beacon for all those countries that are ripping apart the ruthless collectivist regimes that ruined the lives of their people for so long.

One thing the Marxists got right: Economics is a powerful determining factor of history. But Marxists never dreamed it would be the economics of Ronald Reagan and all those capitalists that would prevail in the end.

emarine

Excellent reply Roy buddy … it amazes me how so many cant see it...

Rose42

Raise taxes and companies go offshore or outsource their work offshore. Raise minimum wage and taxes and the small business owner is hurt. A lot of businesses outsourced during the Clinton years because it was cheaper for them.

There is no simplistic answer. And the government is notorious for massaging jons and unemployment numbers.

bylm1-Bernie

You've been listening to too many l*****t propaganda sites. Lower taxes does create more jobs. The trouble with you l*****ts on this site (and everywhere) is that you don't know one damn thing about Economics.

emarine

Sounds good blade buddy... Regan caused some issues also... cutting tax's & large increases in Military spending leads to huge public debt every time ...


BEWARE OF REAGAN'S MILITARY SPENDING
By LESTER C. THUROWMAY 31, 1981



The New York Times Archives
H AVING started the debate about the economic impact of President Reagan's military spending in the New York Review of Books last month, let me respond to the points made by the economic defenders of the Reagan military budget.
The President plans to raise military spending to $343 billion a year in fiscal year 1986, from $162 billion a year in fiscal 1981. In that earlier article, I contended that, ranked in descending order of their probability, this increase in military spending would severely weaken this country's high-technology civilian industries as materials, equipment and sk**led personnel are moved from civilian to military pursuits; produce shortages of materials, equipment and sk**led personnel that will create ''bottleneck'' inflation in the sectors where the shortages occur, and stimulate general excess demand inflation in the rest of the economy just as it did during the Vietnam War.
Perhaps because there is no counterargument, the economic defenders of the Reagan Administration's defense budget have been completely silent when it comes to the first point. Since our high-technology civilian industries exist in the same regions of the country and demand the same equipment and personnel as our military industries, a rapid military buildup can only occur by taking resources out of the high-technolgy civilian sectors.
The effects are going to be particularly severe in the semiconductor industry since it is going to be facing a Japanese onslaught during the next three years. Since our military allies but economic competitors - mainly West Germany and Japan - are not planning to increase their defense spending, our computer industry will be hemorrhaging personnel just when it needs its best brains to survive.
Engineers and sk**led blue-collar workers will be moving from civilian computer companies, such as Wang Laboratories, to military contractors, such as the Raytheon Company, in the Boston area.
Continue reading the main story




The economic defenders of the Reagan Administration's defense budget also concede that bottleneck inflation will exist, but argue that it will be small. Bottleneck inflation added 1.2 percentage points to the nation's inflation rate during the first two years of the Vietnam War. Although it is true that 1.2 percentage points looks larger relative to a 1.7 percent inflation rate in 1965 than it does relative to 12.4 percent in 1980, it is still important.
There is also every reason to believe that the economy has become more inflationary-prone with the experience of the past 15 years and that the same bottleneck would create more inflation in 1982 than it did in 1966.
Bottlenecks depend upon how fast resources are being t***sferred from the civilian to the military economy. In the Reagan defense budget, military spending is to rise 9.1 percent a year after correcting for inflation. Given the time it takes to train new sk**led blue-collar workers and engineers, there is no way that the supply of sk**ls can keep up with this growth rate.
There is also every reason to believe that the President has underestimated his defense budget. Wh**ever happens in the rest of the economy, demand will push up prices for military hardware. It will take more money than is now estimated to buy the equipment that the Defense Department wants. In addition, the President's budget has not allowed for the increased training and personnel costs that will be necessary to man all this new equipment.
V IEWED as the fraction of the gross national product that must be reallocated to defense, the size of the burden depends upon whether you do or do not believe in the President's supply-side miracle - a much higher rate of growth in the G.N.P. According to the President's economic projection, the economy's real growth rate will average 4.4 percent from 1982 through 1986. If this occurs, the higher military budget will rise from 5.7 to 7.1 percent of the G.N.P.

But in order for the economy to grow at 4.4 percent a year, productivity has to grow 3 percent. But productivity growth has been below 3 percent for the last 16 years, and actually falling in the last three years. Productivity will not recover quickly. New factories, better-trained workers, and new management techniques will all be necessary.
Suppose that productivity were to stop falling but did not rebound, leaving the economy's growth rate at only 1.4 percent a year. In this case, the military budget would rise an extra 2.4 percentage points, to 8.1 percent of the G.N.P., from 5.7. At its peak, Vietnam required an extra 1.8 percent of G.N.P.
The economic defenders of the Reagan military budget are correct in saying that general inflationary pressures can be controlled if we raise taxes and cut civilian spending enough. But is Mr. Reagan planning to do so?
In President Reagan's projections, the Federal budget is to be balanced in 1984, with a $28 billion surplus in 1986. But this movement toward a balanced budget depends upon the supply-side miracle and that instantaneous recovery in productivity growth. If productivity does not recover and the economy's real growth rate is 3 percentage points less than Mr. Reagan predicts, there will be a $55 billion deficit in 1984 and an $86 billion deficit in 1986. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the President is underestimating 1982 expenditures by $25 billion. Add $25 billion to spending and you have a deficit of $111 billion in fiscal 1986.
President Reagan's economic defenders also point out that unemployment is higher and capacity utilization lower in 1982 than it was in 1965. Those unemployed resources could be absorbed to expand defense production.
But there is a problem. Those unemployed resources are not in the right geographic areas, industries or occupations necessary to expand defense production. There is also a question whether there is a lot of excess capacity on an inflation-adjusted basis. More than 7 percent of the population is unemployed, but up to now we have been told that more unemployment was necessary to stop inflation.
I have a lot of sympathy for the view that America's inflation was not caused by excess aggregate demand and that more unemployment will not cure inflation, but it is interesting to note that those who just a few months ago were arguing that more unemployment was necessary to stop inflation are today arguing that the unemployed can be put to work in defense industries without creating inflation.
One wonders what conservatives would be saying about inflation if President Reagan were planning to expand nondefense spending by $181 billion a year by 1986. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Lester C. Thurow is Professor of Economics and Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of ''The Zero-Sum Society.''
A version of this article appears in print on May 31, 1981, on Page 3003003 of the National edition with the headline: BEWARE OF REAGAN'S MILITARY SPENDING. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Continue reading the main story

kemmer

Due to these bogus "tax cuts", Gold Star families--survivors of servicemen k**led--are seeing their taxes quadrupled.

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

Blade, your article is only an opinion piece and not shared by very many beyond Ronnie backers.. in other words, it has no merit..

then or now.. it is all BS...


s://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/17/opinion/the-reagan-boom-greatest-ever.html

plainlogic

You flame out all the time AF1. You need a new GPS to head in the right direction.