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All of these charts can be analyzed and debated to death, but it's pointless to someone that has a moral objection to income redistribution. Also, many people, like myself, would never trust the govt to do this in a fair manner even if they were ok with it. Plus, simply taking money from the "1%" or corporations is incredibly myopic.
The thing is, governments have to tax in order to provide their services. And taxation is in fact a burden on people. So you really can't avoid the question of how that burden should be distributed.
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Even a child understands that if you raise taxes on corporations by 10%, then they will simply raise the price of their product plus lay off workers to counter that loss of income.
That child will need to study some economics to understand what is called the incidence of corporate taxation, because it is not in fact at all automatic that corporations can pass tax burdens on to consumers or labor. In fact, when you think about it, if a corporation could unilaterally raise prices or lay off workers with no harm to its business, it would already be doing that because doing so would increase its profits. So if it isn't doing that already, some constraint is keeping it from doing so, and adding taxation won't necessarily remove that constraint.
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Obama and the liberals are incredibly simple-minded when it comes to complex issues. Example: They think banks are making too much money, so Obama pushes for new regulations capping the fees they can charge.
That isn't their thinking on that issue, which suggests you are the one trying to over-simplify these issues. In fact, with respect to the rule capping debit card processing fees, there were large businesses and industry groups lobbying for those rules, namely the merchants in question. Generally, these fee rules are about making the account terms a bank is offering more transparent, thereby allowing consumers to fairly compare different banking offers, which is actually a very pro-market attitude.
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So, to make up for this loss in revenue the banks raise the fees of everyone with ridiculous monthly debit card fees.
That's the result of this transparency I was just discussing. Banks were trying to get their revenues on these accounts in a variety of ways that were not clear to consumers up front. Now consumers will understand better what using a certain account will cost them, and they can make an informed decision about which accounts to use.
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But, the bum that can't balance his check book will pay less in overdraft fees.
Let's be clear on what was happening with overdraft fees, and how the rule changed that. With debit cards, the bank can simply deny a transaction if you don't have sufficient funds in your account to cover the transaction. What banks were doing was providing "courtesy" overdrafts, which meant they would allow you to make a purchase even though you didn't have sufficient funds and then charge you a large fee for that service.
The new rule still allows banks to offer overdraft services, but you will have to "opt in" to those services, instead of banks automatically providing those services whether you explicitly agreed to them or not.
So to be clear, are you saying banks should be allowed to provide that "bum that can't balance his check book" with an overdraft service he doesn't actually want, all so that it can change slightly lower standard account fees to other customers? In other words, are you saying you feel entitled to benefit personally from banks tricking other consumers with hidden fees and charges?
If anyone thinks that the issue of having the majority of the population victims of class warfare is a "liberal" issue, they're incredibly naive. Either that or heavily in denial.
If anyone thinks that the issue of having the majority of the population victims of class warfare is a "liberal" issue, they're incredibly naive. Either that or heavily in denial.
It's not about the labels but their targeted audience and their message. They can protest and scream all they want on Wall Street, but that's not going to change a thing. I suggested political centers like DC... basically, the corporations are luring lawmakers in (a.k.a. $$$) and the lawmakers are using the power of the legislature or administrative agency in favor of these corporations.
Those that believe we are not bankrupt are also in denial. "Norquists" is just an excuse to label people who are trying to downsize our government to its constitutional limitations. I don't use the term liberal to criticize "big government advocates." Progressives and even statists are the most accurate terms to describe those that believe the federal gov't should be spending and expanding without taking into consideration the possibility of a Greek-like scenario in the near future. They are delusional to that fact and will shoot down the opposition through name calling (e.g. terrorists), class warfare, etc. The wars, the social programs, agencies/departments, etc. have placed a major burden on the federal budget. It is unsustainable and lacks common sense. There needs to be cuts and reform. Lastly, tax hikes WILL NOT solve the problem. Why? Because the fed. gov't will keep spending and expanding. Look at recent history and you'll receive confirmation.
All of these charts can be analyzed and debated to death, but it's pointless to someone that has a moral objection to income redistribution. Also, many people, like myself, would never trust the govt to do this in a fair manner even if they were ok with it. Plus, simply taking money from the "1%" or corporations is incredibly myopic.
Even a child understands that if you raise taxes on corporations by 10%, then they will simply raise the price of their product plus lay off workers to counter that loss of income. Obama and the liberals are incredibly simple-minded when it comes to complex issues. Example: They think banks are making too much money, so Obama pushes for new regulations capping the fees they can charge. So, to make up for this loss in revenue the banks raise the fees of everyone with ridiculous monthly debit card fees. But, the bum that can't balance his check book will pay less in overdraft fees. Thanks liberals. That's progress folks. That's what a dozen ivy league educated economists come up with to get people back to work. Scary stuff.
Okay, so you don't want taxpayers or corporations to be taxed.
Basically you want the u.s. to look and be worse than Somalia or Cambodia....? No roads, no infrastructure, no post offices, no schools, no police, no jails. No nothing. We'd have nothing if no one should pay.
As to the 10% taxes on corporations. That sounds more like republican Cain's 9-9-9 plan. I haven't heard of a dem proposed straight 10% on corps yet.
Also, I agree on some of your points about the federal government but right now the pressing matter is corporate power. Plus the corporations manipulate government policy so these protests are very much addressing government mismanagement as well.
Last edited by Aqua Teen Carl; 10-17-2011 at 07:36 AM..
They can protest and scream all they want on Wall Street, but that's not going to change a thing. I suggested political centers like DC... basically, the corporations are luring lawmakers in (a.k.a. $$$) and the lawmakers are using the power of the legislature or administrative agency in favor of these corporations.
Again, that just makes no sense to me. If certain large corporations are actually pulling the strings, why not bring the protests to the corporations? In fact a major theme of the Occupy protests is heightening awareness of the role that large corporations are playing in politics, which they can't do just by protesting politicians.
In short, if you were actually serious about opposing corporatism, you wouldn't be trying to shelter the relevant corporations from public scrutiny.
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Those that believe we are not bankrupt are also in denial.
Balderdash. I'd say the people who are insisting we are "bankrupt" are actually in denial of the information I related above, but of course they aren't really in denial, they are just lying.
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"Norquists" is just an excuse to label people
The term I used is actually "Norquislings", which I think more appropriately captures the fact that these people are deliberately creating crises because they think those crises will present them with opportunities to achieve ends they couldn't otherwise achieve.
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who are trying to downsize our government to its constitutional limitations.
You are having trouble keeping your story straight--are we actually "bankrupt" and therefore have no choice, or are you pursuing a vision of federal government based on a constitutional view, and lying about us being "bankrupt" because you can't otherwise sell people on that vision?
And I might note that constitutional view is not supported by a plain reading of the actual Constitution, and has been decisively rejected by the federal courts. Again, it is precisely because legitimate paths to their desired vision have been blocked that the Norquislings are forced to try to manufacture a fiscal crisis and then lie about its nature in a last-ditch attempt to popularize their otherwise unpopular agenda.
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Progressives and even statists are the most accurate terms to describe those that believe the federal gov't should be spending and expanding without taking into consideration the possibility of a Greek-like scenario in the near future.
There is zero chance of the United States experiencing a Greek-like scenario in the near future. And you don't have to take my word for it: bond buyers would not be paying so much for U.S. debt if they thought that was a credible scenario.
The only real scenario to worry about is what we got close to with the debt ceiling debate, when the Norquislings actually walked us close to a voluntary and entirely unnecessary default. Again, these crises are being manufactured for political ends.
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Lastly, tax hikes WILL NOT solve the problem. Why? Because the fed. gov't will keep spending and expanding. Look at recent history and you'll receive confirmation.
Yes, let's look at recent history. The last time we had a significant federal tax increase was in the early 1990s. What happened to federal spending afterward?
Well, look at that: receipts went up, but outlays went down. Then taxes were cut in the early 2000s, and outlays trended back up. So much for "starve the beast".
Generally, there is an inverse relationship between federal taxes and federal spending--increase taxes and spending will slow, and vice-versa. You can actually see it on that chart: periods of increased receipts are generally correlated with periods of decreased outlays, and vice-versa.
There are a few basic reasons why that is true. First, interest on debt is a non-trivial category of spending growth. Second, increased taxation can be followed by faster economic growth under the right circumstances (basically if the increased revenues are used to pay down debt, or for increased anti-cyclical measures, or for long-term productivity projects like infrastructure investments and education). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, increased taxation improves the politics in favor of decreased spending--people tend to buy less of something if it costs them more, so when the "price" of government goes up (it starts taxing more), people become more hawkish about spending.
All this is a large part of why the Norquislings have failed--their chosen tactic is actually counterproductive, so much so that one might wonder if even the Norquislings are being duped, meaning they are just pawns for those who are trying to promote their own financial interests through manipulating the tax code, but who do not particularly care about the overall level of government spending and might even benefit from increasing it in various ways.
In short, this is once again a case where subservience to economic elites is inconsistent with the nominal ideology in question.
That child will need to study some economics to understand what is called the incidence of corporate taxation, because it is not in fact at all automatic that corporations can pass tax burdens on to consumers or labor. In fact, when you think about it, if a corporation could unilaterally raise prices or lay off workers with no harm to its business, it would already be doing that because doing so would increase its profits. So if it isn't doing that already, some constraint is keeping it from doing so, and adding taxation won't necessarily remove that constraint.
I just want to add this this particular problem, determining the group of people that are most affected by corporate taxes, is one about which there is considerable disagreement among economists. Parts of the corporate tax are translated into higher prices, lower dividends, possibly lower wages (via cost cutting), and other accounting and economic effects, and determining the magnitude of each effect has been difficult analytically or empirically.
And the upshot is that I agree that a child (or anyone really) could not say that higher corporate taxes directly and proportionally translate into higher prices.
I just want to add this this particular problem, determining the group of people that are most affected by corporate taxes, is one about which there is considerable disagreement among economists. Parts of the corporate tax are translated into higher prices, lower dividends, possibly lower wages (via cost cutting), and other accounting and economic effects, and determining the magnitude of each effect has been difficult analytically or empirically.
Agreed. And as is unfortunately common in economics, the correct answer is likely something such as "it depends greatly on the circumstances in question".
Generally the difficulty of reliably modeling the real world effects of various taxes, particularly as people adopt tax avoidance schemes, is one of the many reasons to adopt a somewhat flexible approach to tax policy. Periodically you need to take a look at what is actually happening under your tax scheme, and rework it to achieve something closer to your target distribution of the tax burden. After a while it will inevitably get off track again, and you will need to rework it again, and on and on.
On the subject of trickle-down economics, this report from the IMF (not exactly an anti-capitalist organization) found an inverse relationship between inequality and sustainable growth:
In recent work (Berg, Ostry, and Zettelmeyer, 2011; and Berg and Ostry, 2011), we discovered that when growth is looked at over the long term, the trade-off between efficiency and equality may not exist. In fact equality appears to be an important ingredient in promoting and sustaining growth. The difference between countries that can sustain rapid growth for many years or even decades and the many others that see growth spurts fade quickly may be the level of inequality. Countries may find that improving equality may also improve efficiency, understood as more sustainable long-run growth.
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A little more commentary:
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It may seem counterintuitive that inequality is strongly associated with less sustained growth. After all, some inequality is essential to the effective functioning of a market economy and the incentives needed for investment and growth (Chaudhuri and Ravallion, 2007). But too much inequality might be destructive to growth. Beyond the risk that inequality may amplify the potential for financial crisis, it may also bring political instability, which can discourage investment. Inequality may make it harder for governments to make difficult but necessary choices in the face of shocks, such as raising taxes or cutting public spending to avoid a debt crisis. Or inequality may reflect poor people’s lack of access to financial services, which gives them fewer opportunities to invest in education and entrepreneurial activity.
BrianTH, You have some nerve coming here and arguing your point in an accessible, non-confrontational, yet beholden to logic manner.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
The thing is, governments have to tax in order to provide their services. And taxation is in fact a burden on people. So you really can't avoid the question of how that burden should be distributed.
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