James, can we rename this thread, ‘[size:14pt]Plucking the American Taxpayer’ ?[/size]
I feel like I’m conversing with a belligerent 14 year old Paris Hilton who lives on a very generous trust fund along with a very generous paycheck who has no idea of what is going on in the world, let alone her own country. Again, LAgirl we have a SPENDING problem NOT a taxing problem. Socialism is here and thus the push back. Our system is crashing because of out of control entitlements. I am not talking about fire and police. You are being ridiculous with those examples and you know it. We don’t want the inevitable strife that the French, Greeks, Irish, English, oh heck, all of Europe, has brought upon themselves with their generous socialistic policies. Limited government works to keep a nation working and thriving. We have had that before before government got too big. Bloated government, which we have now, gives us the SOCIALISTIC dark clouds that reasonable people know will eventually fail. So, don’t try to dress it up and tell me I’m benefiting now from something false and meaningless like SOCIALISM that will always run out of money. I fully expect you not to read this. I’m ready for your next set of talking points 
In regard to the Bush tax cuts you want sources, then I give you sources:
[Source #1] : http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/01/ten-myths-about-the-bush-tax-cuts#_ftn4
Myth #9: The Bush tax cuts have not helped the economy.
Fact: The economy responded strongly to the 2003 tax cuts.
The 2003 tax cuts lowered income, capital gains, and dividend tax rates. These policies were designed to increase market incentives to work, save, and invest, thus creating jobs and increasing economic growth. An analysis of the six quarters before and after the 2003 tax cuts (a short enough time frame to exclude the 2001 recession) shows that this is exactly what happened (see Table 3):
GDP grew at an annual rate of just 1.7 percent in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the six quarters following the tax cuts, the growth rate was 4.1 percent.
Non-residential fixed investment declined for 13 consecutive quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. Since then, it has expanded for 13 consecutive quarters.
The S&P 500 dropped 18 percent in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts but increased by 32 percent over the next six quarters. Dividend payouts increased as well.
The economy lost 267,000 jobs in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the next six quarters, it added 307,000 jobs, followed by 5 million jobs in the next seven quarters.
The economy lost 267,000 jobs in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the next six quarters, it added 307,000 jobs, followed by 5 million jobs in the next seven quarters.[16]
Click on the link above to see the tables and read more myths.
[Source#2]
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/26712.html
In case the link gets lost, here is a full read:
September 16, 2010
[size:14pt]Five Myths about the Bush Tax Cuts
[/size]
by Gerald Prante and William Ahern
This op-ed was published in the Fiscal Times on Sept 15, 2010.
Myth on the Left: The Bush tax cuts were only for the rich.
For the past ten years, Democrats have convinced a large fraction of the public that the tax cuts only benefited high-income people. The talking point has been repeated so often that it seems as if it must be true. But it never was. Everyone saved, and if all the tax cuts expire at the end of this year, everyone will pay.
The quickest way to prove this point is to compare the official “score” of the president’s tax proposal—letting the Bush tax cuts expire only for high-income people raises $630 billion over 10 years—with the official score for letting all the tax cuts expire, which raises $3 trillion over 10 years.
That means some pieces did benefit those at the top of the income spectrum: changes to itemized deductions and the estate tax, and the rate cuts on high wages, dividends and capital gains. And measured in nominal dollars, a high-income taxpayer saved more than a low- or middle-income taxpayer.
Nevertheless, the Bush tax cuts sent trillions of dollars in tax relief to those beneath the president’s so-called middle-class cutoff of $200,000, and when the tax cuts are measured as a percentage of their income, or as a percentage of their previous tax payments, the Bush tax cuts provided comparable benefits to all income levels.
The most damaging result of this myth is that Democratic Party spokespeople have convinced much of the electorate that all government funding needs can be solved by just raising taxes on the rich; a dangerous misconception, especially as our nation moves ever closer to a fiscal cliff whose avoidance will require hard choices on spending and taxes that hit all Americans.
Myth on the Right: The Bush tax cuts caused revenues to go up.
Republican spokespeople and other tax-cut enthusiasts have asserted that the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 actually increased revenue. They often point to rising revenues from 2004 through 2007 following the tax cuts in May 2003. Unfortunately, as any Economics 101 student will tell you, correlation doesn’t prove causation. Yes, revenue did rise, but we have to answer the question: Would it have risen anyway?
We can never be absolutely sure how the economy would have reacted if the tax cut legislation had failed for some reason in 2001 and 2003, but the consensus among experts is that the economy would have grown in the mid-2000s with or without the Bush tax cuts. That doesn’t mean the tax cuts had no feedback effect at all—people reported more taxable income than they would have—but those beneficial effects were not so great that the tax cuts could have “paid for themselves.”
The most damaging result of this myth is that Republican lawmakers feel less pressure to propose spending cuts. Why bother when cutting a tax rate will raise more revenue?
Myth on the Left: The Bush tax cuts caused the financial crisis and/or the recession.
Many Democratic leaders like to paint with a broad brush when it comes to the economic policies of the previous administration. They blame the real estate bubble, the financial meltdown and the recession on Bush administration policies generally, and then conveniently lump the Bush tax cuts in as part of the cause. As in the Republican myth above, this is a failure to distinguish correlation from causation. No authority on the economy would say that the banking crisis and the recession could have been averted by holding off on tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.
If one seeks to fix blame on the Bush administration, it’s more honest and productive to focus on the administration’s regulations (or lack thereof) pertaining to housing and banking, although even there, the Bush policies were more like a continuation of policies that go back decades.
Myth on the Right: President Obama is proposing the largest tax increase in U.S. history.
As part of their election strategy, Republican spokespeople are pretending that President Obama favors allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire for all taxpayers. Often that expiration is called the largest tax increase in U.S. history. Both charges are false.
In his budget, President Obama proposes extending the tax cuts for taxpayers earning less than $250,000 for married couples ($200,000 for singles). When confronted with this documentary proof, some on the right respond that the President had two years to address this expiring tax cuts issue but chose not to do so because he actually wants them all to expire. But by the same argument, Republicans could be accused of preaching spending restraint when they have no intention of cutting spending.
So is Obama’s actual tax plan—to allow tax cuts to expire for high-income people—a historically huge tax hike? No: At $630 billion over 10 years (0.4 percent of GDP), the Obama proposal raises less revenue than many past tax enactments when measured as a share of the economy. If Congress ignores the President’s request and allows all of the tax cuts to expire, will that be the largest tax hike in U.S. history? Such historical comparisons are fraught with technical difficulties, but as a percentage of GDP, total expiration would indeed be historically massive, probably bigger than any tax hikes except two enacted during World War II.
But is allowing a scheduled expiration to take place even a “tax increase” at all? All of the big tax increases in history have required explicit action by Congress. In this case, the “tax increase” was set in law by Congress in 2001 as part of the tax cut due to Senate reconciliation rules. By traditional “current law” comparisons, the Obama budget proposes a historically large tax cut, not a tax hike at all, because it raises less revenue than current law would.
On the other hand, even the president calls his plan a tax hike. That’s because his budget team adopted a “current policy” baseline. Instead of comparing its proposals to current law (the expiration), he compares it to what the policy was last year. By this measure, the Obama proposal to let high-income tax rates go up is a $630 billion tax increase over ten years, and that is significant but not huge, historically speaking. This is mostly a matter of semantics.
A Bipartisan Myth: Tax changes we like are “tax reform.”
Democratic partisans might say that the few provisions of the Bush tax cuts they supported in 2001 constituted “tax reform” because the dictionary defines “reform” as an amendment that improves some law or policy. The Democratic favorites 9 years ago were the establishment of a 10-percent tax bracket for the first few thousand dollars of taxable income, the doubling of the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000; and expansion of the earned income credit for couples.
Republican partisans say any tax cut is “tax reform” - that’s the basic principle advocated by the Americans for Tax Reform. And some academics on the right say that the true tax-reform provisions from the Bush era were the 2003 cuts to the dividend and capital gains tax rates because those reduced the double taxation of capital income.
However, “tax reform” has a more specific meaning in tax policy, expressed in the mantra “broad base, low rate.” True, the Bush tax cuts lowered rates, but they narrowed the base instead of broadening it. That is, instead of exposing previously untaxed income to taxation so that the system would be fairer, and rates could be lowered even more, the Bush tax cuts exempted even more income from taxation.
In 2005, the Bush team finally got around to fundamental tax reform, calling together a group of scholars. They published two smart tax reform proposals that would have lowered tax rates and broadened the tax base, but like the recommendations of almost every tax reform commission since 1986, the year of the last true tax reform, they were ignored by those in power. If by some movie magic, Congress could have enacted in 2001 either of the two plans proposed by the 2005 commission, the nation’s economy and tax system would be much better off.
Gerald Prante, Ph.D, is senior economist and Bill Ahern director of policy and communications at the Tax Foundation.
Next… Congress spends too much.
The Bush tax cuts substantially reduced 2006 revenues and expanded the budget deficit.
Fact: Nearly all of the 2006 budget deficit resulted from additional spending above the baseline.
Critics tirelessly contend that America’s swing from budget surpluses in 1998-2001 to a $247 billion budget deficit in 2006 resulted chiefly from the “irresponsible” Bush tax cuts. This argument ignores the historic spending increases that pushed federal spending up from 18.5 percent of GDP in 2001 to 20.2 percent in 2006.
[Source #2]: [4] See Brian M. Riedl, “Federal Spending: By the Numbers,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 989, February 6, 2006
The best way to measure the swing from surplus to deficit is by comparing the pre-tax cut budget baseline of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) with what actually happened. While the January 2000 baseline projected a 2006 budget surplus of $325 billion, the final 2006 numbers showed a $247 billion deficit-a net drop of $572 billion. This drop occurred because spending was $514 billion above projected levels, and revenues were $58 billion below (even after $188 billion in tax cuts). In other words, 90 percent of the swing from surplus to deficit resulted from higher-than-projected spending, and only 10 percent resulted from lower-than-projected revenues.
[Source]: Congressional Budget Office, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2001–2010,” January 2000, p. xvi, Summary Table 2, at www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/18xx/doc1820/e&b0100.pdf (January 16, 2007). The January 2000 baseline projected that 2006 tax revenues would reach $2,465 billion, and they instead reached $2,407 billion. The same baseline projected that 2006 spending would reach $2,140 billion, and it actually totaled $2,654 billion. WE HAVE A SPENDING PROBLEM!
Next…
The Republican majortiy congress from 2001-2006 along with the Democratic majority congress from 2006 to present cannot stop this insane spending:
"The FY2006 budget numbers are mixed signs of good fiscal policy. The huge revenue gains of 11.8 percent on the tax side of the ledger show the pro-growth impact of lower tax rates. [size:11pt]The spending side of the ledger disappoints as spending jumped by 7.4 percent. This increase in spending does not bode well given the need to reform entitlement spending to prevent a deeply worrying burden of government. With the entitlement challenge on the horizon, there is all the more reason to ensure that pro-growth tax policies are kept in place."
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Source:
Next…
Regarding how wonderful and beautiful everything is in Europe and how we should emulate their type of socialism, a prediction for us…
[Source] http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/11890.pdf
“If the United States is saddled with a French-sized
government, it will inevitably suffer from Frenchstyle economic stagnation. This means higher unemployment, lower living standards, and a loss of
upward mobility. The economic malaise in Europe is
tragic, but the dark cloud could have a silver lining if
policymakers learn the right lesson and protect
Americans from that fate by reducing the burden of
government—both today and in the future.”
Oh, the French citizens have a lovely life, until SOCIALISM can’t fulfill all the goodies that was promised to them even with higher taxes…
Full read below in case link is lost…
By John Lichfield in Paris
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Riot police charge at student demonstrators in Lyon yesterday
A menacing new spectre hung over the French pension reform dispute yesterday – the threat of a re-run of the multi-racial suburban riots of five years ago.
As petrol shortages spread and the country braced for a new day of strikes and marches today, there were violent incidents and clashes between police and youths in a dozen cities and suburbs around France.
Although the incidents occurred on the fringes of demonstrations by Lycée (sixth-form) students, most of the violence came from roaming groups of hooded youths who were not directly involved in the protests against pension reform. Cars were turned over or burned and shops looted and smashed in Nanterre, west of Paris, and in Saint Denis, north of the capital, which was the starting point of the riots of October and November 2005.
There were also violent incidents on the edges of student demonstrations in other Paris suburbs and in Lyon, Rouen, Roubaix and Nantes. In all cases, both police and student leaders blamed independent, mobile, racially-mixed groups of casseurs – or “vandals” – who were not part of the pension protests themselves. Their motives were unclear, but similar violence by disaffected youths has erupted on the edges of other peaceful student protests in France in recent years.
Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets and arrested almost 200 young people in more than a dozen incidents across the country. The government – already facing a disruptive pension reform protest by unions and Lycée students – will be desperate to avoid the kind of violent police response which could touch off more serious rioting in the tense multi-racial suburbs of French cities.
Yesterday’s incidents, though none very serious in themselves, added to the sense of a nation spiralling into a multi-layered crisis. Over 3,000 – out of 13,000 – French petrol stations ran out of fuel yesterday after panic-buying by motorists intensified. Eleven out of 12 petrol refineries remained on strike. Flying pickets blocked a score of petrol distribution depots. Others were opened up by police.
A chain of pickets defeated attempts by the authorities to reopen a refinery at Grandpuits, east of Paris. Key employees were ordered to return to work under the threat of legal action but pickets from the refinery and other industries blocked entrances to the site.
There were also sporadic blockages and go-slows by small convoys of lorries on the principal French motorways.
All of these actions are part of an “unofficial” second front opened by militant union branches against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to raise the minimum retirement age to 62 by 2018. At least 3,000,000 people are expected to join demonstrations today, and many public sector workers to stop work for 24 hours, in a sixth union “day of action” in seven weeks.
The more moderate union federations want to continue their soft or “political” strategy of one-day protests to build public anger against Mr Sarkozy. They hope that that this will help to oust him in 2012. A centre-left president and government could then reverse the reform. But the moderate national union leadership fears that the harder-line, confrontational strategy of more militant unions branches could anger public opinion and present Mr Sarkozy with a moral victory.
Next… Jolly old England
[Source] :
U.S. and U.K. Need a Pro-Defense and Pro-Growth Agenda
The British government’s spending review offers important lessons for the U.S., both good and bad. The U.K.’s aggressive plan, which calls for cuts to many government programs, offers a strong model for America to follow. Indeed, Washington will need to be equally aggressive and even more comprehensive to get federal spending under control, with one exception—defense spending. Defense spending is true mandatory spending as it is driven by each country’s respective need to address existing and emerging security threats, none of which are abating.
Reducing budget deficits is far more difficult without the revenues that flow from a strong economy. Thus, Osborne’s proposal to cut the corporate income tax rate from 28 percent to 24 percent is right on target and offers a good model for the U.S., which has a debilitating second-highest corporate income tax rate in the industrialized world.
But Britain needs to do more. To truly succeed, the proposed U.K. cuts must be matched by a strong pro-growth, pro-enterprise agenda designed to spur the creation of private sector jobs, reduce red tape for businesses, attract greater foreign investment, and maintain the city of London as a leading global financial center. Cameron should reverse the increase in capital gains tax, bring down the top rate marginal individual income tax rate from its current level of 50 percent, and resist the growing wave of European Union financial regulations, which threaten the competitiveness of the city.
Nile Gardiner, Ph.D. , is Director of, and Ted R. Bromund, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow, in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, and J. D. Foster, Ph.D., is Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
ahhhh! What a peaceful SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY IN THE U.K… mmmm. Go ahead and watch the happy students riot as Charles and Camilla head off to the opera… Watch this before the link disappears.
Oh, and the people in Cuba and North Korea are thriving as well.
We don’t want this crap here. If you want full blown SOCIALISM, then go back and live in Europe. I don’t think you will find it happy place today, as you found it when you lived there. The European governments understand what has to be done and they are trying to turn it around with their austerity programs and God BLESS them for their new found pragmatism. The American socialist democratic party wing doesn’t get it yet or else they are doing the Cloward-Piven plan to purposely collapse the economic system. James, you are lucky that you live in Buffalo. At least you have a shorter distance to travel to Canada when economic collapse and chaos happens.
We just had an election and the clear message was STOP THE SPENDING and focus on the deficit.
This thread may become a longer thread than the ‘Men shaving legs’ thread.