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For those people worried about Trump


jbluhm86

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Salon is garbage.

 

But then again so is the blaze, etc.

 

I think Reagan was finely prepared, but he did whatever the guys pulling the strings told him to do. The guy is definitely a huge reason the wealth gap has exponentially grown more than ever in 2 decades.

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Salon is garbage.

 

But then again so is the blaze, etc.

 

I think Reagan was finely prepared, but he did whatever the guys pulling the strings told him to do. The guy is definitely a huge reason the wealth gap has exponentially grown more than ever in 2 decades.

I would agree with you on the dubiousness of Salon articles, however, this particular article is actually an excerpt from the book, "The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton" by William E. Leuchtenburg. I believe that Salon was just quoting him. His credentials seem pretty solid to me:

 

Mr. Leuchtenburg is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Over the course of six decades, he taught at Columbia University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and, as a visiting professor, at Harvard, Cornell, Duke, William and Mary and other American universities, as well as at Oxford where he held the Harmsworth chair. He served as presidential elections analyst for NBC and as presidential inauguration consultant for CBS, PBS, and C-SPAN. Elected president of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians, he is the first recipient of the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Award for Distinguished Writing in American History of Enduring Public Significance. He is the author of fifteen books, including The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-32, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940, In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, The White House Looks South: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy, and Herbert Hoover.

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195176162/?tag=saloncom08-20

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leuchtenburg

 

Only libdiots care what Salon has to say. I didn't even look at the link.

 

Then why bother wasting everyone's time commenting on it then?

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Reagan will probably be my most respected president in my lifetime. I have always said to appreciate Reagan you have to have lived through the Jimmy Carter administration. I don't have to read about the Reagan administration from a most likely liberal historian (as most historians are liberal). I lived through it. Supply side economics or what the detractors called trickle down economics worked very very effectively to create jobs and create prosperity in this country. This country was never stronger both economically or militarily in my lifetime than under Reagan.

 

 

Study: Liberal leanings hurt Republicans’ place in history

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/24/republican-presidents-lag-in-historical-rankings/?page=all

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Reagan will probably be my most respected president in my lifetime. I have always said to appreciate Reagan you have to have lived through the Jimmy Carter administration. I don't have to read about the Reagan administration from a most likely liberal historian (as most historians are liberal). I lived through it. Supply side economics or what the detractors called trickle down economics worked very very effectively to create jobs and create prosperity in this country. This country was never stronger both economically or militarily in my lifetime than under Reagan.

 

 

Study: Liberal leanings hurt Republicans’ place in history

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/24/republican-presidents-lag-in-historical-rankings/?page=all

 

 

Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Satan, Muslim, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal

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Reagan is responsible for the exponential growth of a lot of our current problems.

 

Clinton contributed a lot too.

 

That's from a non-biased point of view. Clinton was a puppet, Reagan was a puppet.

 

I was never a fan of NAFTA signed into law by Bill Clinton (with heavy republican support). I did see the reasoning of being against it as outlined by Ross Perot:

 

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Reagan invented trickle down economics - and many still push that idea today.

 

Facts and statistics say it doesn't work!

Reagan inherited an economic mess from Carter. Obama as well inherited an economic mess but under his administration we have had the worst economic recovery coming out of a recession since the Great Depression. The national debt has also grown to over 18 trillion (and Obama called Bush unpatriotic and selling our children's future out to China when the debt was at 9 trillion).

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Reagan inherited an economic mess from Carter. Obama as well inherited an economic mess but under his administration we have had the worst economic recovery coming out of a recession since the Great Depression. The national debt has also grown to over 18 trillion (and Obama called Bush unpatriotic and selling our children's future out to China when the debt was at 9 trillion).

 

 

You do realize that the war debt was not factored into the deficit under George W. Bush but it is under Obama

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You do realize that the war debt was not factored into the deficit under George W. Bush but it is under Obama

You do realize Bush has been out of office now for 7 years. The fact is we are over 18 trillion in debt with the projection of 20 trillion by the time Obama leaves office. BTW - Hillary Clintons new campaign promises alone amount to over 1 trillion dollars in new debt. The (no profiles in courage) republicans just caved in to the democratic 1.2 trillion omnibus bill to fully fund every program Obama and Nancy Pelosi could ever want. We are taking in a record amount of tax revenue right now which has decreased the deficit but not stopped the growing national debt. Big trouble ahead as we continue to run up spending on borrowed money.

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You do realize Bush has been out of office now for 7 years. The fact is we are over 18 trillion in debt with the projection of 20 trillion by the time Obama leaves office. BTW - Hillary Clintons new campaign promises alone amount to over 1 trillion dollars in new debt. The (no profiles in courage) republicans just caved in to the democratic 1.2 trillion omnibus bill to fully fund every program Obama and Nancy Pelosi could ever want. We are taking in a record amount of tax revenue right now which has decreased the deficit but not stopped the growing national debt. Big trouble ahead as we continue to run up spending on borrowed money.

 

 

Read all the metrics

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/01/07/the-story-behind-obama-and-the-national-debt-in-7-charts/

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i'm so tired of the Reagan myth. At the time he enraged arch conservatives for blowing up the currency and going into massive deficit spending. He's credited for defeating the old USSR but he did so at the expense of the dollars future. They've been scrambling to find "capital" to keep the dollar going ever since. People don't realize that the dollar woudl have likely been scrapped some time in the 90's without the dotcom boom. After that we figured out how to make marks out of the chinese and get them to keep the dollar afloat by absorbing our horrible debt. But that will bite us in the ass too eventually unless they come up with some new scheme and troll some other up and coming unsuspecting country. But tbh the world has basically caught on to our currency manipulations so the chances of finding that are slim to none. That's why people are entertaining the notion now of moving away from the dollar.

 

Any true (educated) libertarian is no big fan of Reagan.

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OBAMA vs. REAGAN on GDP GROWTH — NOT EVEN CLOSE

 

Trickle Down Economics versus Trickle Down Socialism

Ronald Reagan’s economic plan saw GDP surge at a 3.5% clip – 4.9% after the recession. That’s a 32% bump.

During the Obama years, thanks to his big government policies, the US economy has stalled. Today the quarterly GDP was announced. The GDP for the first quarter of 2015 braked more sharply than expected at only a .2% pace. The US economy has grown an anemic 9.6% during the Obama years (excluding today’s dismal number).

Of course, Obama’s record on job growth is also much worse than President Reagan’s record.

Net job growth has declined under Obama. By the end of the second year of their terms as president, economic growth under Reagan averaged 7.1% , under Obama an anemic 2.8%. (IJ Review)

And today, more than five years into the tepid recovery, labor-force participation remains at its lowest level since 1978 during the Carter years.

****************************************************

When Ronald Reagan took over from Jimmy Carter in ’81, things were actually worse economically compared to when Obama took over from George W. Bush in ’08.

Consider these three important comparisons of economic indicators, then and now:

– Unemployment was at 10.8% versus 7.7%

– Inflation (Consumer Price Index) was at 13.5% versus 2.7%

– Interest rates (prime rate) was at 21.5% versus 3.25%

In other words, Reagan inherited a bigger mess. Yet, there’s this chart of job growth:growth has declined under Obama. And by the end of the second year of their terms as President, economic growth under Reagan averaged 7.1% , under Obama an anemic 2.8%.

So, how did Reagan manage it? Across-the-board tax cuts, non-defense spending cuts, a restrained monetary supply, and deregulation.

What’s Obama done? Tax increases, spending increases, a massive money-supply increase through “quantitative easing,” and an explosive increase in regulations.

Game, set, and match to Ronald Reagan- and a sound, conservative economic policy.

 

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/04/131256-simple-graph-compares-reagan-obamas-recoveries/

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why can't you understand that our growth during Reagans years was because everyone had access to virtually free capital? Literally suckling at the tete of the spigots of credit. That's a bonanza that can only last so long. Had nothing to do with trickle down economics. We experienced the first "high" of our credit addiction. It was nice, but just like drug addictions there's consequences long term.

 

 

Go read you some Ron Paul.

 

 

 

OBAMA vs. REAGAN on GDP GROWTH — NOT EVEN CLOSE

 

Trickle Down Economics versus Trickle Down Socialism

Ronald Reagan’s economic plan saw GDP surge at a 3.5% clip – 4.9% after the recession. That’s a 32% bump.

During the Obama years, thanks to his big government policies, the US economy has stalled. Today the quarterly GDP was announced. The GDP for the first quarter of 2015 braked more sharply than expected at only a .2% pace. The US economy has grown an anemic 9.6% during the Obama years (excluding today’s dismal number).

Of course, Obama’s record on job growth is also much worse than President Reagan’s record.

Net job growth has declined under Obama. By the end of the second year of their terms as president, economic growth under Reagan averaged 7.1% , under Obama an anemic 2.8%. (IJ Review)

And today, more than five years into the tepid recovery, labor-force participation remains at its lowest level since 1978 during the Carter years.

****************************************************

When Ronald Reagan took over from Jimmy Carter in ’81, things were actually worse economically compared to when Obama took over from George W. Bush in ’08.

Consider these three important comparisons of economic indicators, then and now:

– Unemployment was at 10.8% versus 7.7%

– Inflation (Consumer Price Index) was at 13.5% versus 2.7%

– Interest rates (prime rate) was at 21.5% versus 3.25%

In other words, Reagan inherited a bigger mess. Yet, there’s this chart of job growth:growth has declined under Obama. And by the end of the second year of their terms as President, economic growth under Reagan averaged 7.1% , under Obama an anemic 2.8%.

So, how did Reagan manage it? Across-the-board tax cuts, non-defense spending cuts, a restrained monetary supply, and deregulation.

What’s Obama done? Tax increases, spending increases, a massive money-supply increase through “quantitative easing,” and an explosive increase in regulations.

Game, set, and match to Ronald Reagan- and a sound, conservative economic policy.

 

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/04/131256-simple-graph-compares-reagan-obamas-recoveries/

 

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why can't you understand that our growth during Reagans years was because everyone had access to virtually free capital? Literally suckling at the tete of the spigots of credit. That's a bonanza that can only last so long. Had nothing to do with trickle down economics. We experienced the first "high" of our credit addiction. It was nice, but just like drug addictions there's consequences long term.

 

 

Go read you some Ron Paul.

 

***************************************************

 

Sounds good ...let's read some Ron Paul:

 

RON PAUL
. Mr. Speaker, all Americans mourn the death of President Ronald Reagan, but those of us who had the opportunity to know President Reagan are especially saddened. I got to know President Reagan in 1976 when, as a freshman congressman, I was one of only four members of this body to endorse then-Governor Reagan's primary challenge to President Gerald Ford. I had the privilege of serving as the leader of President Reagan's Texas delegation at the Republican convention of 1976, where Ronald Reagan almost defeated an incumbent president for his party's nomination.

I was one of the millions attracted to Ronald Reagan by his strong support for limited government and the free-market. I felt affinity for a politician who based his conservative philosophy on ``. . . a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom . . .'' I wish more of today's conservative leaders based their philosophy on a desire for less government and more freedom.

Ronald Reagan was one of the most eloquent exponents of the freedom philosophy in modern American politics. One of his greatest achievements is the millions of Americans he helped convert to the freedom philosophy and the many he inspired to become active in the freedom movement. One of the best examples of President Reagan's rhetorical powers is his first major national political address, ``A Time for Choosing.'' Delivered in 1964 in support of the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, this speech launched Ronald Reagan's career as both a politician and a leader of the conservative movement. The following excerpt from that speech illustrates the power of Ronald Reagan's words and message. Unfortunately, these words are as relevant to our current situation as they were when he delivered them in 1964:

It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, ``We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.''

This idea--that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power--is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream--the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, ``The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.''

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government set out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.

 

One of the most direct expressions of Ronald Reagan's disdain for big government came during a private conversation when we where flying from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base. As the helicopter passed over the monuments, we looked down and he said, `Isn't that beautiful? It's amazing how much terrible stuff comes out of this city when it's that beautiful.' ''

While many associate Ronald Reagan with unbridled militarism, he was a lifelong opponent of the draft. It is hardly surprising that many of the most persuasive and powerful arguments against conscription came from President Reagan. One of my favorite Reagan quotes comes from a 1979 article he wrote for the conservative publication Human Events regarding the draft and related ``national service'' proposals:

 

..... it rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state--not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers--to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn't a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea.

I extend my deepest sympathies to Ronald Reagan's family and friends, especially his beloved wife Nancy and his children. I also urge my colleagues and all Americans to honor Ronald Reagan by dedicating themselves to the principles of limited government and individual liberty.

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yeah they shared the same views on small govt and Paul personally liked Reagan....but here's what he had to say about reagonomics in his resignation later to the RNC in 1987. Read carefully....

 

"since 1981 however, I have gradually and steadily grown weary of the republican party's efforts to reduce the size of the federal govt. Since then Ronald Reagan and the Republican party have given us skyrocketing deficits and astoundingly doubled the national debt. How is it that the party of balanced budgets, with control of the white house and senate, accumulated red ink greater than all admins put together?"

 

"despite the supply sider Keynesian claim that "deficits don't matter", the debt represents a grave threat to our country. Thanks to the president and the republican party, we have lost the chance to redue the deficit and the spending in a non crisis fashion. Even worse, big govt has ben legitimized in a way the democrtats never could have accomplished. It was tragic to listen to Reagan on the 86 campaign trail bragging about his high spending on farm subs, welfare, warfare etc, in his futile effort to hold on to control of the senate."

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look past his glowing superficial remarks about a dead man made in just the last few years. He can't at this point say a cross word about Reagan or his policies, or he wouldn't have been able to run for the RNC nor would his son have been able to. You can't touch Reagan in the republican party, but the libertarians do. Go read at mises.org.

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in theory it isn't bunk. Cutting taxes for the job creators "should" stimulate them to grow and thus create more jobs. But what they never wantd to divulge in that nice pie in the sky theory is that a lot of the job creators will create jobs overseas instead of here even if they pay 0% in taxes. It's something a lot of people aren't willing to accept. I'm all for torpedoing someone's tax rates as long as they definitively prove they're creating legit jobs here in the states and not some 39.5 hour no benny horseshit. Prove you're contributing to the growth and prosperity of this society, you shouldn't pay more than 10% in taxes OVERALL cause you've done your part.

 

Of course there's varying levels to that, you don't give the same tax rate break to someone employing 10 people as you do someone employing 100k or more. Sadly those kind of rational ideas will never enter the left vs right political octagon.

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Cutting taxes has always proved to stimulate the economy while higher taxes are just the opposite and lower tax rates would probably keep many companies from moving abroad. I like free trade but it has to be fair and agreed with Perot about NAFTA. I agree with Cleve I don't want to see corporations benefit from tax breaks and not have our own American workers benefit as well. I don't want to see corporations get tax breaks and move out of our country but leave those tax breaks for companies who stay here.

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Cutting taxes has always proved to stimulate the economy while higher taxes are just the opposite and lower tax rates would probably keep many companies from moving abroad. I like free trade but it has to be fair and agreed with Perot about NAFTA. I agree with Cleve I don't want to see corporations benefit from tax breaks and not have our own American workers benefit as well. I don't want to see corporations get tax breaks and move out of our country but leave those tax breaks for companies who stay here.

 

in his defense, Trump is really the only guy who's at least spoken towards that idea. I'm not sure if he'd actually impliment it or it's just words spoken for the benefit of his current audience, cause i've seen him kind of walk back and forth depending on who he's infront of.

 

I honestly think that even most democrats would be on board with the idea of lower corporate taxes as long as it's given to those that create economy here. I've heard even the wicked witch Pelosi talk about that but lament that most of these companies that did fenangle lower tax rates showed zero interest in stimulating economy here, so why should govt bend over even more for them?.....and it's a fair point. Why shoudl we listen to the mewlings of companies crying about their tax rates when they already managed to pay less in taxes than they're saying the rate should be?

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Reagan will probably be my most respected president in my lifetime. I have always said to appreciate Reagan you have to have lived through the Jimmy Carter administration...

 

Reagan inherited an economic mess from Carter. Obama as well inherited an economic mess but under his administration we have had the worst economic recovery coming out of a recession since the Great Depression....

 

...Game, set, and match to Ronald Reagan- and a sound, conservative economic policy.

 

https://mises.org/library/sad-legacy-ronald-reagan-0?control=488 circa 1988:

 

Spending
In 1980, Jimmy Carter's last year as president, the federal government spent a whopping 27.9% of "national income" (an obnoxious term for the private wealth produced by the American people). Reagan assaulted the free-spending Carter administration throughout his campaign in 1980. So how did the Reagan administration do? At the end of the first quarter of 1988, federal spending accounted for 28.7% of "national income."
Even Ford and Carter did a better job at cutting government. Their combined presidential terms account for an increase of 1.4%—compared with Reagan's 3%—in the government's take of "national income." And in nominal terms, there has been a 60% increase in government spending, thanks mainly to Reagan's requested budgets, which were only marginally smaller than the spending Congress voted.
The budget for the Department of Education, which candidate Reagan promised to abolish along with the Department of Energy, has more than doubled to $22.7 billion, Social Security spending has risen from $179 billion in 1981 to $269 billion in 1986. The price of farm programs went from $21.4 billion in 1981 to $51.4 billion in 1987, a 140% increase. And this doesn't count the recently signed $4 billion "drought-relief" measure. Medicare spending in 1981 was $43.5 billion; in 1987 it hit $80 billion. Federal entitlements cost $197.1 billion in 1981—and $477 billion in 1987.
Foreign aid has also risen, from $10 billion to $22 billion. Every year, Reagan asked for more foreign-aid money than the Congress was willing to spend. He also pushed through Congress an $8.4 billion increase in the U.S. "contribution" to the International Monetary Fund.
His budget cuts were actually cuts in projected spending, not absolute cuts in current spending levels. As Reagan put it, "We're not attempting to cut either spending or taxing levels below that which we presently have."
The result has been unprecedented government debt. Reagan has tripled the Gross Federal Debt, from $900 billion to $2.7 trillion. Ford and Carter in their combined terms could only double it. It took 31 years to accomplish the first postwar debt tripling, yet Reagan did it in eight.
Taxes
Before looking at taxation under Reagan, we must note that spending is the better indicator of the size of the government. If government cuts taxes, but not spending, it still gets the money from somewhere—either by borrowing or inflating. Either method robs the productive sector. Although spending is the better indicator, it is not complete, because it ignores other ways in which the government deprives producers of wealth. For instance, it conceals regulation and trade restrictions, which may require little government outlay.
If we look at government revenues as a percentage of "national income," we find little change from the Carter days, despite heralded "tax cuts." In 1980, revenues were 25.1% of "national income." In the first quarter of 1988 they were 24.7%.
Reagan came into office proposing to cut personal income and business taxes. The Economic Recovery Act was supposed to reduce revenues by $749 billion over five years. But this was quickly reversed with the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. TEFRA—the largest tax increase in American history—was designed to raise $214.1 billion over five years, and took back many of the business tax savings enacted the year before. It also imposed withholding on interest and dividends, a provision later repealed over the president's objection.
But this was just the beginning. In 1982 Reagan supported a five-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax and higher taxes on the trucking industry. Total increase: $5.5 billion a year. In 1983, on the recommendation of his Spcial Security Commission— chaired by the man he later made Fed chairman, Alan Green-span—Reagan called for, and received, Social Security tax increases of $165 billion over seven years. A year later came Reagan's Deficit Reduction Act to raise $50 billion.
Even the heralded Tax Reform Act of 1986 is more deception than substance. It shifted $120 billion over five years from visible personal income taxes to hidden business taxes. It lowered the rates, but it also repealed or reduced many deductions.
According to the Treasury Department, the 1981 tax cut will have reduced revenues by $1.48 trillion by the end of fiscal 1989. But tax increases since 1982 will equal $1.5 trillion by 1989. The increases include not only the formal legislation mentioned above but also bracket creep (which ended in 1985 when tax indexing took effect—a provision of the 1981 act despite Reagan's objection), $30 billion in various tax changes, and other increases. Taxes by the end of the Reagan era will be as large a chunk of GNP as when he took office, if not larger: 19.4%, by ultra-conservative estimate of the Reagan Office of Management and Budget. The so-called historic average is 18.3%.
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Cutting taxes has always proved to stimulate the economy while higher taxes are just the opposite and lower tax rates would probably keep many companies from moving abroad...

 

http://www.factandmyth.com/taxes/tax-decreases-do-not-increase-revenue

 

Correlating Tax Increases and Decreases with Revenue
By conveniently pointing to places where tax cuts were enacted at or around the time of a recovery or boom, tax cut advocates argue that tax cuts increase revenue. The problem with this is that the revenue increases following the Bush and Reagan tax cuts are dwarfed by the revenue increase following Bill Clinton’s tax increase on the wealthiest Americans. In fact, as a percentage of GDP, post-Reagan & Bush tax cut revenue falls below the 1965-2005 average. In other words, revenue increased because the economy was recovering/growing, and the tax cuts have little (probably nothing) to do with growth in GDP. if anything, these tax cuts actually lowered revenue increased from what they would have been otherwise. So the real question to ask is this: how much revenue did these tax cuts cost us?
clinton-taxes.jpg
Investment has been shown to increase both after tax cuts and tax increases. Investment increased both after Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increases and after George W Bush’s 2003 tax cuts. The reason is simple: investors were confident because the economy was growing and therefore felt that it was a good time to invest. In other words, it’s demand and other market signals that investors care about most, not tax rates. Tax rates can no doubt play a role (especially if they are disproportionately high), but the tax rate fluctuations between the Clinton vs Reagan and Bush tax rates are rather inconsequential to investor behavior.
Tax-Cuts-vs-Tax-Hikes.jpg
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The Kennedy Tax Cuts

JFK cut tax rates by 20% for every income group, arguing that the lower rates would increase economic outputs, revenue collections, and budget surpluses. He even called the lower rates an "investment" in the future. A student of history, President Kennedy was well-aware of the economic miracle that cutting taxes worked during the tenure of President Coolidge.

Kennedy died before the cuts took effect. But, in 1964, the rate for top earners dropped to 70%, down from 91%. The economy surged, experiencing rapid growth every year from 1965 to 1968. Tax collections during the same period grew at an 8.6% average, annually, and unemployment went down to 3.4%.

 

The Reagan Reductions

Ronald Reagan reduced the top tax rate from 70% down to 50% in his first term, and then down to 28% (but also eliminating some deductions) during his second. The economy responded to this stimulus by booming, initiating a quarter century of enrichment for all Americans that saw the average American worker gain 33% in overall personal wealth.

Not only did the rich get richer; every economic group across the board benefited, proving that, as the wealthy get wealthier, so does everyone else. President Obama's argument for raising taxes on the rich is that the income disparity has become so large. But so what? If everyone has improved his or her lot as a result of all this wealth creation, why should the government interfere? Is reducing the disparity between rich and poor really worth the cost of making everybody in the economy poorer, as a result?

It should be pointed out that, in 1980, federal revenues into the treasury were $517 billion, but 1990 saw collections hit $1,032 billion (that is over $1 trillion). And, in real terms, every year of the 1980s saw the percentage of taxes paid by the top 1% go up—from 18% to 25% of the tax burden from 1981 to 1990. The top 5% went from contributing 35% to 44% during the same time period.

 

The Clinton Years

When Clinton was President, the economy continued to boom. He raised income tax rates, but he also cut capital gains taxes down to 20%. This caused investors to invest more, and the amount of money collected on capital gains taxes almost doubled.

Republicans took over Congress in 1994, and they were able to force the president into balanced budgets during his last six years in office. Federal spending declined from 22% of the total US economy back down to only 18%, which is where it had stood prior to Clinton.

 

“W”

The Bush tax cuts took the Clinton rate for top earners from 39.6% down to 35% and cut capital gains down to 15%. Again, revenue collections increased. Federal tax collections surged to record levels between 2003 and 2007—by $780 billion in toto! Again, wealthy taxpayers paid more taxes into the treasury. The share of taxes paid by the top 1% now rose to 41%. Millionaires doubled their tax contribution, due to the fact that more millionaires had been created as a result of the wealth creation being caused by the American economic engine.

 

http://eaglerising.com/8311/tax-cuts-best-way-stimulate-american-economy/

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