On Sep 15, 3:19Â pm, Michael Coburn
verizon.net> wrote:> On Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:15:42 -0700, Shrikeback wrote:
>> On Sep 13, 1:30Â pm, Bret Cahill
aol.com> wrote:>>> The corp. media don't want the public discussion on economic issues but
>>> who cares about them?
>
>> Yeah, you'll never hear them talk about the Jimmy Carter double-digit
>> everything high-tax economic staglfation boom, the threatened
>> ressurection of which is the only vital economic issue this election.
>> So spread the word: the peanut gallery won't do it for you.
>
> The so called "Carter" problem was inherited from a long line of tax
> cutting and spending politicos starting with the patron saint Kennedy who
> cut taxes on the rich from 9x%% to 70%%. Â
So at least we see what you favor, eh?
Anyway, those excessive tax rates were
1.) a way of slowing down inflation during
the war and after-war period, and 2.) offset
by writeoffs, which allowed the rich to pay
considerably less if they invested in directions
the gummint desired. A holdover from FDR
and WW2: force investment towards the war
effort, just like everything else.
> That was the beginning of the
> inflation problem. Â The dual "wars" of Johnson (Vietnam and the War on
> Poverty) and no increase in taxation exacerbated the problem of
> inflation, but Johnson _KNEW_ he was causing inflation and often spoke of
> it as helping the farmers (which it did). Â At that time the tax code was
> not indexed and so the government also benefitted from the inflation. Â
The gummint benefits from inflation on a number
of levels. Debtors always benefit from inflation, for
one thing. It devalues their debt. Inflation also
causes a rise in revenue, usually, since it must
be driven by overheated exchange.
But note that in the above, the poster has nothing
bad to say about unindexed tax rates, which were
the real undoing of the old high-tax ways. When
inflation pushes the middle class up into the 70%%
bracket, tax revolt becomes populist. How could
it be any other way?
> In
> this case the tax cuts actually did increase the revenue although at the
> expense of the productive sector. Â
At the expense of the productive sector? What the hell
is your idea of the productive sector? Gummint employees?
No. The reason these tax cuts increased revenue was
because more people were making money, meaning the
lower rate was made up for in (say it with me) volume.
Somehow, more people making money means the productive
sector suffered. How's that again? This is what I mean
about the decline of leftardism. The answer is in front
of them, yet they choose to filter it through ideological
prisms. It must be an essential part of leftard faith that
more people making money is a _Bad Thing_, perhaps
even an _EVIIIIIL Thing_
> Then along comes Nixon and instead of
> putting the tax code back to the way it was, he does wage and price
> controls, and removes the gold standard due to its "inconvenience".
Give me a break! The Gold Standard! Fiat currency is the way
of the New Deal. The Gold Standard causes deflation, and, in
fact, there isn't enough Gold around to cover the size of the world
economy. As Nixon said, we're all Keynesians now. And really
nobody advocates going on the gold standard except a few Old
Right extremists. You are kind of like Ayn Rand with higher-taxes.
> And
> Nixon decides to declare victory and leave Vietnam dumping a lot of
> military people into the job market and we have stagflation.
So now immigrants are to blame?
> Carter was the inheritor of all this malfeasance.
Yes, of course. It is always somebody else's fault, eh?
Having a bit of your yellowcake and eating it too?
> He did not create it. Â
> He, like any other politician other than Clinton, decided to dump the
> problem on the Fed and thus hired Paul Volcker as the hatchet man. Â
LOL. The problem was solved by the Fed for lo, those two decades
and then some. And, now, in spite of oil going higher (even corrected
for inflation) than it was during those dark days of the late
seventies,
the economy is _still_ not as bad as it was then. In spite of much
more immigration, the economy is _still_ not as bad as it was then.
In spite of cheap labor markets expanding like melanoma, the
economy is doing much better than it was then.
> Ronald Ray Gun was the beneficiary of this action. Â Carter was tossed and
> Reagan had the Volcker (the Carter appointee) to use as the bad guy. Â
> Reagan ab-used the Fed and Carter to create the biggest handout to the
> rich in history with his tax cut for the rich from 70%% to 28%%. Â
Note that he calls this, 1.) a handout, and 2.) to the rich. One of
the
problems Reagan solved was the unindexed progressive rates, which
really did doom the old order anyway. Face it, the middle class
doesn't
want to pay 70%% in taxes, and there is no need for it. Also, the more
rich we have, the higher revenues will go. Only Allah knows why the
leftards want fewer rich, unless it's to save the polar bears, or to
keep
the demographic that consists of people who don't need much financial
help from the gummint under control.
> And as
> the Fed was able to declare victory over the inflation monster and eased
> monetary policies, the economy grew. Â Ray Gun and the voodoo econ supply
> side trickle downers were able to prance and preen and declare that "See,
> deficits don't matter".
Actually, deficits are for the purpose of fighting deflation and
recession; that is the Keynesian way, in any case. So is
monetary policy. God knows what it is you want. Evidently
deflation and depression if you really want to go on the gold
standard.
> And now at the end of 30 years of lying stupidity and greed, the reality
> is coming home to roost. Â We now pay almost $400B in interest on the debt
> of the republican borrow and military war rightarded fascists. Â That debt
> is 80%% military spending debt. Â It is the price of Republican fascism.
That's absurd. Since military spending never goes over
1/4 of the Federal budget, it can't account for 80%% of the
debt, except by some fundamentalist leftard creation-
mathematics. Notice that after FDR, the federal debt was
150%% of the GDP. Now, it is more like 70%%.
The EU realizes the need to use fiscal policy to fight
recession, but they have guidelines that no state should
run more than 3.5%% of its GDP in deficit spending.
What percentage of the GDP is the federal deficit currently?
The following space is left for you to tell us (and show your
work, please
--->
Anyway, all of this is just a mix of anti-Keynesianism
combined with a desire for high taxes, even if it lowers
revenues. It's odd that leftards come out of the woodwork
to fly anti-Keynesian flags.
