I apologize, if you didn't mean "objective" as a codeword for "I disagree with this" but that is usually the case with most people. Given the known slant here, sometimes I get a persecution complex, heh. Anyway, I think "liar" and "idiot" should be used sparingly, because it takes a long time to really understand other viewpoints. Particularly when the topics are complicated.
You made statements there that I'm wondering how you reconcile: "Want to ask yourself why revenues were high in 1999 and 2007? Was it the higher tax rates? You'd get away with that argument in 1999 before the Bush tax cuts..." and "The tax rates don't matter much." I'm asking, would it not then follow that if tax rates were the same in 2007 as they were in 1999, two points when the economy was booming, that the tax revenue in 2007 would have been a lot higher?
Since 1945, we've never breached 20% by more than mere decimals, and never more than one year at a time. You could say that we might have done it in 2007 without the Bush tax cuts, but that's a hypothetical that can't be known. What we do know is that it hasn't happened before. Tax rates have been raised without increases in actual revenues, like in 1990 and again later in the 90s, but we've never seen sustained tax revenues over 20% of GDP under any tax policy for 85 years of data.
You could say "this time is different" but on what strength would it be different this time? Tax rates have been much higher historically, and the revenues were always the same percentage.
Well, you really do have a gift for letting the parts that disturb you drop. Okay, there is tons of local government. But state revenues also rose, and there is only 50 of them, for which data is reliably available. So explain that raise in the level of revenue that apparently cannot raise at all.
One state taxes this way; another taxes that way.
Seven states have no income tax at all. Right now. Further back in history? I don't even know the historical tax policies, and neither do you, and neither does anyone here. You give me an impossible task and then jeer at me when I can't do it. Obviously, though, if states choose low tax policies, they get low taxes. Over time, more states have become centralised and demanded more taxes.
State and local governments are lower to the ground, so they have many means of raising revenue that the federal government cannot do. When a local or state policeman stops a speeding driver, that's state and local revenue. So shall we put federal FBI agents on the highways to make the same revenues for the federal government that state and local governments can make with their police? The federal government isn't close enough to ground level to implement many of the local revenue strategies.
You are asking me to compare your apples to my orange. That's why I pass over this.
And yes, economic boom raise revenues and bust lower it. That's not the point. Actually, it destroy your previous argument that revenue where stable at 20% of GDP.
No. Not revenues, Sheb.
Revenues as a percentage of GDP. That's a key difference. That revenues should increase in an economic boom is obvious because the economy is larger. Half of a barrel is a bit more than half of a teaspoon. Obviously. However, the observation that
revenues as a percentage of GDP should also increase is not something that you can airily pass over as obvious. It isn't obvious, and I'm not sure that you even understand yet.
If you set a tax at a certain rate, then in your thinking, you get that rate, right? So in any economic conditions, you might have higher or lower revenues, but you'll always have the same percentage that you set. Nope. That's not the data. The tax rates don't fix the amount of the pie that the government gets. That is the objective data in the the charts and spreadsheets. Prosperity sets the percentages, not the nominal tax rates.
Percentages.
Actually, it destroy your previous argument that revenue where stable at 20% of GDP. So please come back when you have a consistant worldview based on facts rather than just dismissing stuff that you don't like and acting inconsistant like a goddamn climate denier (or any other kind of reality denier actually).
Hi. I'm back.
And I'm here to tell you that claiming I said the tax revenues had to be stable at exactly 20% is merely convenient horseshit. When I said there's a cap around 20%, I used words like "around" and "approximately" on purpose. I meant there's an empirical cap in the data from what we can see over 85 years of records, which is a good length to have data. I did not say that it was an immutable law of nature.
Use common sense. I show a chart where there's clearly variation, and even small points where it breaks 20% just barely, and then I say there's a cap around 20% of GDP. Now
you claim that I said that the revenues are always 20% and never 19.9% or 20.1%. Does that seem an honest summary of what I've been saying?
You want to end this discussion, and you want to do so while declaring your victory in order to feel good. Fine! You win. But don't put words into my mouth while doing so.
In closing, let this be noted. Right now the tax revenues are around 15%. Historically, there's a lot of upward movement possible: at least another 5% is historically possible. You could get as much as $800 billion more dollars out of the economy. But tax rates won't do it. We need prosperity. Prosperity sets the percentage. You just can't point to a tax raise that has managed to change the revenues as a percentage of GDP.
The earth may not move around the sun... and yet it moves!
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 763334 times)