Liberals/Progressives love to play the class warfare game. It may fool an ignorant electorate, their principal voting bloc, but what are the practical consequences of these "tax the rich" schemes. Invariably the middle class and the poor pay the price in lost jobs or higher price of goods or services.
This is what happens : http://blog.heartland.org/2011/07/economically-illiterate-obama-re-corporate-jets/
Dr. Walter Williams throws some light on the subject : http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2011/08/10/ignorance,_stupidity_or_connivance/page/full/
Alan Reynolds, the author of "Income and Wealth" writes : "The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, proposing on his blog "a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the rich." After all, he noted, "between the late 1940s and 1980 America's highest marginal rate averaged above 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Not until the 1980s did Ronald Reagan slash it to 28 percent."
Liberal Democrats like Reich and Obama, really believe the myth that if you increase taxes "on the rich" you will get increased revenues. These same guys get a hissy fit if you talk of "flattening" the marginal rates, lowering them, and closing all loopholes.
If you look closely at the math in this article for the WSJ by Reynolds, you understand why "tax the rich" does not get you the revenue you think you are going to get. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304259304576375951025762400.html
The classic rebuttal from Liberals is " But Clinton raised taxes, and the economy grew, and we ended up with a surplus". That is the story line. To separate fact from myth read this : http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5656 Excerpt :
And 1993 -- the year of the giant Clinton tax hike -- was not the turning point in the deficit wars, either. In fact, in 1995, two years after that tax hike, the budget baseline submitted by the president's own Office of Management and Budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted $200 billion deficits for as far as the eye could see. The figure shows the Clinton deficit baseline.
What changed this bleak outlook? Newt Gingrich and company -- for all their faults -- have received virtually no credit for balancing the budget. Yet today's surplus is, in part, a byproduct of the GOP's single-minded crusade to end 30 years of red ink. Arguably, Gingrich's finest hour as Speaker came in March 1995 when he rallied the entire Republican House caucus behind the idea of eliminating the deficit within seven years.
It was Bill Clinton who, during the big budget fight in 1995, had to submit not one, not two, but five budgets until he begrudgingly matched the GOP's balanced-budget plan. In fact, during the height of the budget wars in the summer of 1995, the Clinton administration admitted that "balancing the budget is not one of our top priorities."
Read on. It was a combination of a balanced budget plan that Gingrich and the Republican Congress insisted on, plus a cut in Capital Gains, plus cuts in spending, that gave us the "Clinton surplus". The MSM made sure to give Clinton all the credit.
This is what happens : http://blog.heartland.org/2011/07/economically-illiterate-obama-re-corporate-jets/
Dr. Walter Williams throws some light on the subject : http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2011/08/10/ignorance,_stupidity_or_connivance/page/full/
Alan Reynolds, the author of "Income and Wealth" writes : "The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, proposing on his blog "a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the rich." After all, he noted, "between the late 1940s and 1980 America's highest marginal rate averaged above 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Not until the 1980s did Ronald Reagan slash it to 28 percent."
Liberal Democrats like Reich and Obama, really believe the myth that if you increase taxes "on the rich" you will get increased revenues. These same guys get a hissy fit if you talk of "flattening" the marginal rates, lowering them, and closing all loopholes.
If you look closely at the math in this article for the WSJ by Reynolds, you understand why "tax the rich" does not get you the revenue you think you are going to get. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304259304576375951025762400.html
The classic rebuttal from Liberals is " But Clinton raised taxes, and the economy grew, and we ended up with a surplus". That is the story line. To separate fact from myth read this : http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5656 Excerpt :
And 1993 -- the year of the giant Clinton tax hike -- was not the turning point in the deficit wars, either. In fact, in 1995, two years after that tax hike, the budget baseline submitted by the president's own Office of Management and Budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted $200 billion deficits for as far as the eye could see. The figure shows the Clinton deficit baseline.
What changed this bleak outlook? Newt Gingrich and company -- for all their faults -- have received virtually no credit for balancing the budget. Yet today's surplus is, in part, a byproduct of the GOP's single-minded crusade to end 30 years of red ink. Arguably, Gingrich's finest hour as Speaker came in March 1995 when he rallied the entire Republican House caucus behind the idea of eliminating the deficit within seven years.
It was Bill Clinton who, during the big budget fight in 1995, had to submit not one, not two, but five budgets until he begrudgingly matched the GOP's balanced-budget plan. In fact, during the height of the budget wars in the summer of 1995, the Clinton administration admitted that "balancing the budget is not one of our top priorities."
Read on. It was a combination of a balanced budget plan that Gingrich and the Republican Congress insisted on, plus a cut in Capital Gains, plus cuts in spending, that gave us the "Clinton surplus". The MSM made sure to give Clinton all the credit.
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