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Originally Posted by aceventura3
You may be correct, but your statement is vague. I made several posts in that thread and expressed some opinions, ask questions and presented some facts. Maybe you did get through to me on something.
The vagueness continues. What did I write that flies in the face of facts?
I do not dispute the numbers you posted. I don't dispute spending being out of control. I don't dispute there was a surplus during the Clinton administration.
I don't even dispute your understanding of SSI being in surplus. However, looking at Social Security as being in surplus without taking into consideration the long-term liability being created is an error in my opinion. I see Social Security as the biggest fiscal crisis facing this nation because future liabilities will consume bigger and bigger shares of our national income. To measure the inflows today against the outflows to day is an error.
The Bush deficit, if you agree is made up of three components (discretionary spending, non-discretionary, spending, off-budget spending) and then compared to tax collections, you have to then consider what would have happened to the deficit assuming no tax cuts for your argument to make sense that the tax cuts are the reason for the deficit. I don't see how deficit spending could have been avoided with or without the tax cuts. Then add in the costs of the war and deficit spending would be even worse with or without the tax cuts. But history shows temporary deficts are generally not a long term problem. The SS problem is different.
Regardless of the tax cuts, taxes collected (if you agree there is a correlation to GDP, all other things being equal), would have shown a peak in 2000 during the "dot com bubble bursting" and the economy going into recession. Both events where triggered before Bush took office. Assuming no Bush tax cuts, taxes collected would have declined. No one with specificity can give exact numbers on the impact of the Bush tax cuts, good or bad. However, based on the numbers you posted, after the recession tax dollars collect went up, the economy grew, jobs were created, incomes increased. All evidence of good things resulting from the tax cuts.
I know how you love IBD, but you can verify the numbers against your own source, but your comment above is misleading.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...76821557506429 |
ace...there is certainly a difference between the wealth owned by a household, and annual income. If a household owned a billion dollars of real estate....expenses to carry the properties could conceivably be higher than the income from the property, in any given year....but that household would still own assets of a billion dollars.
I've documented....in at least ten posts....that the bottom 50 percent of the US population owns just 2-1/2 percent of total US assets....yet you posted that they pay 3 percent of the taxes. The top ten percent own 70 percent of total US wealth.....and the top one percent owns 30 percent of total wealth.
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.....The top 5% earned 35.8% of all income and paid 60% of the taxes......
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...that top 5 percent owns at least 35.8 percent of total US wealth....probably more than 50 percent of total wealth. If the military budget is over $500 billion, annually....who do you think the military is protecting? You might say all of us....but the bottom 50 percent own almost none of the total US wealth. I documented, in the "How do you answer a soldier's..." thread, that the "freedoms" aren't protected, respected, or guaranteed, and that there are two sets of laws and financial rules in the US....one for the elite...much more lenient...than the other set for most of us....
So...who should pay for the costs of defense....the folks who have nothing, and work hand to mouth for wages....subject to a stringent and unforgiving set of financial and legal rules and penalties....and..if they are arrested, are mostly dependent on underfunded legal aid lawyers to represent them in court, if they are fortunate enough to be allowed access to regular criminal courts...(it took US citizen Jose Padilla two years to get "permission" to speak to a defense attorney...)...or should defense costs be paid primarily by the elite....the Mitt Riomneys with $250 million fortunes and 5 sons who support the Iraq war, but are working to "change things at home"....by campaigning to help get their daddy elected president....so he can transfer even more wealth, power, and privilege, from most of us....to the top ten percent....
The bottom 50 percent can, with a few hours notice, pack up most of what they actually own, and be off in their mortgage automobile, towards Canada, Mexico, or say...an inland area next to a mjor US military base....if there was a threat of an attack on the US mainland.....The sons/daughters of the bottom 50 percent who serve in the military would be ordered to defend the coastal districts that feature the real estate and business holdings of the top ten percent.....
ace....Bush's economic miracle have boosted personal income tax revenue less than $50 billion, in just six years.....personal income taxes, as a percentage of GDP...have dropped from 10.3 percent in 2000...to just 8 percent, in 2006.
Note in the data that I posted, that the recession that you point to as an excuse to give Bush a "pass"....never resulted in a reduction in SSI revenue collected....since it could not be cut by Bush. Since SSI collection stopped at annaul income levels above $100,000....the fact that SSI revenue collection never declined....supports my contention that income during the early 00's recession, did not decline as steeply as you believe.
The Bush tax cuts are responsible for a significant portion of the deficit increase in the Bush years....and the tax cuts shifted significant wealth to those who already owned 70 percent of everything, and burdened the bottom 50 percent, via their future share of the responsibility for a $9 trillion debt, instead of a $5.65 trilion debt ....
The job growth in the Bush years was less than half the number of jobs created in the comparable Clinton period...it was not high enough to cover new entires into the labor market.
...and ace....SSI would not be a burden for many, many years...if the federal government had not treated those collections as general revenue. If the yearly surplus collected was transferred to the SSA and invested as it's managers saw fit...instead of at an average return of 5-1/2 percent annually in special T-Bills.....as SSA is forced by the government to do....
All of that revenue is paid by employees and employers...and all income above $100,000 per year is exempted from the SSI levy. Who benefits most from the investment restrictions on the SSI trust fund, the use of the money collected as genreal revenue...and the exemption of the SSI levy on income above $100, 000...ace? The bottom 50 percent experience a 7-3/4 percent FICA/Medicare tax on their entire earnings, ace.....the top income earners pay those taxes on a much smaller percentage of earnings....
Your mindset will culminate in the top ten percent owning 80 to 90 percent of total wealth....Bush policies have accelerated that trend. If the reaction to that is not violent, a Hugo Chavez "like" figure will rise to lead a revolt against the wealth elite....and you will pronbably label him as "crzay", a communist, and or a criminal. We can have a country more like Denmark or France....or one like Mexico, ace.....it all depends on whether we support leaders like Reagan and the Bushes, or like John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich. Yhe data doesn't lie....Bush's tax policy have benefited those who needed it the least, but could afford to buy it and make it happen.....