Tax Facts!

There are other times when it might be higher, but those are times when you do not need any stimulus. What I mean by that is that during boom times when the economy is already overheating, then the government might spend money and it boosts the aggregate demand very high, and leads to an even worse bubble.

But in times of decline and uncertainty, the evidence is that pump priming does next to nothing and may even have a perverse effect.

Of course, I don’t have a PHD, so no one listens to me, but I have quite a bit of history on my side.

As there is of course no such thing in reality as “unearned income.” A wise investment is an act of the mind, and is recognized as such by people who do not make their livings with their hands in the pockets of others.

I would encourage you to be more careful in selecting your sources. There is no good reason to rely on a six year old projection when actual data are available – especially when the projection is so strongly refuted by the actual data.

1) the post says in 2004, after the 2001 tax cuts, gdp gorwth was the highest in 20 years, but the stats say it was higher several times in the 1990s and 1980s

2) the post says after the 2003 tax cuts unemployment was the lowest since world war II, when the stats show it was lower in both the late 1960s and 1900s

these are major errors in easily obtainable statistics. both errors favor the argument of the post (that the bush tax cuts were very good for the economy).

there is no excuse for this sloppiness — raw economic growth and employment information is very easy to obtain — and if the cause is intentional falsification, it is an outrage to intelligent debate

You’re absolutely right, btw: Keynes and economists in general (besides some outliers like Krugman) are opposed to changing the current tax structure for the worse during recessions (though in all fairness, they’re also against nixing government expenditures, though to a lesser extent, as GMU, the U of Chicago, Austrians and monetarists would show). My guess is that ObamaDems are going into this non-renewal with their eyes wide open; i.e., with their economists kicking and screaming for them to renew the Bush tax cuts or otherwise promise no tax hikes. The Democratic Party’s composition, ideology, and interest groups make them unlikely to nix barriers to business entry, remove regulation that costs businesses money, and other supply side helps.

The UNDER employm,ent rate now is not that far from similar estimates of the same category during much of the 1930s.

This is gonna really test us and is now.

There is no such thing as a free lunch or truly unearned income. Even in the case of a trust fund baby, the income is still earned, it was just earned by someone who didn’t spend it and instead passed it to someone else.

In terms of the underlying truth of an incentive based economy, what many consider “unearned” income are actually more susceptible in both directions to supply-side impacts. In other words, the positive impact of a 5% reduction in capital gains tends to overshadow the positive impact of a 5% reduction in the top marginal tax rate for the reason that capital gains, unlike income, are under the control of the individual. If I don’t see the investment, there is no gain. Very few people can actually avoid having some “earned income” but virtually everyone can avoid having “unearned income” if they wish to do so.

Your statement makes sense if you’re using the term “earned” as in “earned income,” specifically wages and salaries. It doesn’t work if you’re using “earned” broadly enough to include what the tax code considers unearned income, eg, interest, dividends, capital gains.