More "unexpected" bad economic newsFollow

Then you must not be paying them. :)

I don't know why there was an expiration date on the cuts; maybe it was needed as a compromise to garner enough support to pass them in the first place, maybe it was a way to revisit them and make more cuts if things were going well, etc.

The point I was trying to make is that there isn't one overriding tax rate for everyone that's been in place and unchanged for decades and these cuts were a temporary reprieve, but that taxes are tinkered with all the time in one area or another. Each administration has a position on taxes and enacts some changes based on what they believe the overall strategy should be; it's (unfortunately) not as exact of a science as you are making it out to be.

I hope not. He'd be terribly wrong.

You're in a mood.

So you're not saying that since the temporary tax break is in place, people are winding themselves up into a manufactured frenzy at the very idea of having the tax rates revert to former levels?

Interesting.

Well alrighty then.

No more so than people winding themselves up into a manufactured frenzy at the very idea of having spending on their pet entitlement program revert to some former levels (ie: zero).

Here's the deal though, and the reason why the issue is so backwards. An entitlement program is the government giving something to someone. Failing to give someone something isn't the same as taking it from them, yet that's exactly how it's argued if anyone even suggests cutting spending on an entitlement program. On the other side of the fence, taxes are taking from those paying the taxes. When we increase taxes (regardless of *how* it happens), we are in fact taking something from someone.



Yes. It's very interesting how in some people's minds failing to renew a bill that gives someone something they didn't earn is equated to "taking" from them, but failing to renew a bill that reduces the amount of money taken from someone doesn't result in anything being taken from them. Isn't that strange? Regardless of directionality, entitlements are "given" to you, and taxes are "taken" from you. Not doing those things doesn't reverse the directionality, it simply removes the effect. So failing to tax doesn't give people money, it simply doesn't take it. And failing to provide entitlements doesn't take things from people, it simply doesn't provide them.


It never fails to amaze me how hard this concept is for so many people to understand. I guess when reason and ideology clash, reason often loses...

But there was a Republican in office then, Joph. And they had a 50/50 chance that they could ***** about a Democratic president when the tax cuts inevitably expired.

Perhaps not the same scale, but the unemployment benefits which were set to expire a couple months ago? There were certainly some editorials about that at the time. Don't know if we had a thread specifically about it on this board, but it certainly was an "issue" raised. Do I really need to go looking for language condemning Republicans for opposition, or can we both agree that it did happen and move on?



Huh? A lot of Conservatives did argue that the tax cuts should be made permanent. Heck. IIRC, it was a major campaign position in several election cycles. I'm not sure what point you think you're making here. Are you seriously insisting that we should have opposed the tax cuts entirely unless they were made permanent? Cause that's just dumb...

Edited, Jun 14th 2010 4:23pm by gbaji

Gbaji, I hope you realize that no one is saying it's disingenuous to argue that the tax cuts should remain. Opposing it is fine.

Maybe. Are you that worried about impressing me? I think it's a poor comparison.


Wow, way to try to get out of defending your stupid posts by ridiculously overinflating! "Joph says he's the ARBITER!!!" Or maybe I've just paid attention over the past decade and have opinions about what I've seen. Frankly, I don't think there's much to defend the notion that the GOP fought with any zeal for permanent tax cuts.


No, and it never was. But it was a beautiful strawman and I hope you bought it dinner before fucking the hay out of it with that stupid response. Actually, I was noting the difference between the two responses. Now maybe you have some wonderful and perfectly valid rationale for why there was no hue and cry back then towards the GOP but there is now. I kind of doubt it given how you've handled this thread thus far but who knows. Hope springs eternal.


Yeah, in that money is being spent on both of them. They could have just as easily cited the unfunded Medicare expansion or years of unfunded wars. Did you even bother to read the quote or were you just too busy shaking with anticipation to type it?

Funny. Sure looked like you were arguing that conservatives shouldn't complain about the tax cuts expiring because since the GOP didn't fight as hard to make them permanent, they clearly didn't think it was that important either. But I'm sure you'll come up with some more vaguely worded BS to further muddy the waters...



Between what two responses? WTF are you talking about?

I and other conservatives think it's a bad idea to let the Bush tax cuts expire. Instead of arguing against the tax cuts themselves, you choose the incredibly odd approach of insisting that since the GOP didn't vote to make them permanent, we shouldn't care if they expire. I'm unaware of any other interpretation of what you posted, but I'm sure you'll insist that wasn't what you meant.

How about actually saying what the hell you mean instead of dancing around?




Why would there be "hue and cry" towards the GOP? I'll ask again: Are you arguing that conservatives should have been pissed at the GOP because they only passed tax cuts but failed to make them permanent? Cause you are once again certainly appearing to be making that case.

If that's not what you mean, how about you actually say something in clear English instead of tossing around innuendo and implication?



Lol. No. Money is not being spent on both of them. In one, money is being spent, in the other revenue is not being collected.

What's funny is that I've been trying for several posts to show that the left fails to make a distinction between taxing less money and spending more and here you go giving me an example of exactly that failure. Perfect! Although I'm betting you're still not going to get it even now that I've pointed it out. Pretty please maybe can you grasp that there's a difference between those two things and that you (and most liberals) consistently fail to pay attention to it when talking about economic policies?



I did. And you're correct. They could have. However, the Democrats wanted to attack the Bush tax cuts, and create an equivalence between the two, so they chose that example to make their comparison. You get that right? You do recall that I said several posts ago that while the arguments used are similar in both cases that the two cases aren't actually the same because one involves taking less from people, while the other involves giving more to them. Both create a gap between revenue and spending, but they do so from different directions, and it's a mistake to treat them as though they are the same.


Shocking how it just keeps coming back to that whole "tax cuts are different than increased spending" thing...

I know that some people like to play word games, but the reality is that the taxes are being raised. What you're trying to do is insist that since this happens as a result of not acting to prevent it, that this somehow has a different effect. What I will agree is that it's incorrect to say that Obama or the Dems are "raising taxes". They are "allowing taxes to increase".

I'm not going to play word games to manipulate opinions, but at the same time, I'm not going to shy away from what is actually happening in order to do the same thing. It's equally wrong to insist that we can't say that taxes are going up. It's only wrong to say that they are because of an action taken by the current Dem controlled congress, much less by the Obama White House.


But semantics aside, the reason the tax cuts should stay is that the portion of the economy they tax are the ones which are most responsible for new jobs and economic growth. That's why Bush applied those tax cuts in the first place, and not keeping them now of all times is a huge mistake. There are two major components at issue here: Marginal rate, and Estate taxes. In both cases, we're looking at rates affecting people making 250k or more (more like 650k for the Estate taxes IIRC). In the case of income and capital gains, those earnings are overwhelmingly re-invested into the market itself, which results in greater job creation and economic growth. We can debate that, of course, but such debates usually revolve not around what that money is typically used for, but the amount of overall effect it has economically.


On the estate taxes, it's a really bad one. It'll mostly affect small to medium sized business owners. There are so many ways for the "uber rich" to pass their wealth along in ways that minimizes taxes that estate taxes don't really affect them that much. It's the folks with a small business or chain of stores and other physical assets which can't be shuffled into a trust or foundation or some other sneaky thing, and which is one of the keystones of upward mobility in our society, who are most affected by this sort of tax.

Due to inflation compared to indexes, the estate taxes affect a hell of a lot of people who you might not think of as super wealthy either. I have a friend who's parents live in a very nice house that they've owned in a neighborhood that has since become very upscale. Their house is worth well over 1M dollars, even though it's "modest" in size. It's all about the neighborhood, and there are a number of areas in San Diego like that. When they die, neither of their children will be able to live in the house they grew up in simply because neither of them could possibly afford the estate taxes on the property. They are not wealthy, and their parents, while well off, don't have millions of dollars to hand down either.

There's a lot of people who's greatest gift to their children is the family home. Estate taxes, when they don't adjust upwards with inflation result in homes purchased 50 years ago being worth so much on paper that the people inheriting them can't afford to keep them. You can argue that this is fine, since they can sell it and keep the half they get back, but why not let them keep the whole darn thing? IMO, the Estate tax is just dumb all the way around. It's just a greedy attempt to take from people at the worst point in their lives. Every penny someone has left when they die is money earned on which they already paid taxes. It should be theirs, and they ought to be able to pass that on complete to their children. I'm not sure what right we have to take that away and frankly, I think the motivations for doing so are ugly.

Edited, Jun 14th 2010 7:56pm by gbaji

Well, that's like the third or fourth time you've had to say that in three posts so, I dunno, maybe I'm being too smart for you or something. Read it again and scrunch up your forehead and try to riddle it out.


Hehehe... it's funny because you completely failed to understand it. It's like there's a debate you really want to have so you keep hoping that's what I'm saying so you can use all of your nifty points you have saved up inside you.

Edited, Jun 14th 2010 10:18pm by Jophiel