How the ex-DNC chair ruined Clinton’s chance at 2020

PostmodernProphet said:
how does taking the pie away make it grow?....
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That's not what I said. I said that concentrating the wealth - giving the wealthiest a huge share of the pie - makes it not grow. It reduces opportunity, competition, and much more that helps the pie grow, to create more stagnant fortunes.

Look, let's make this simple and look at a picture.

In the chart below, see the period from the late 40's to 1964, when the top marginal rate was 90% (the period in the 50's, Republicans were in charge, though it's still higher than later; the peak growth was in the 60's under JFK and LBJ, including when the top marginal rate was lowered to 72%. Then we got Nixon/Carter, and the oil embargo, and the beginning of inflation, and growth of the 'ok' 3-3.5% rate. Then Reagan, the excessive tax cut and a big recession, then half the cuts reversed.

Then the economy stabilized at that 3.0-3.5% rate for a while - LOWER than most of the period from WWII to Reagan. Because we were past where cuts helped growth, to where cuts were simply making the rich richer (see chart 2).

Then see the biggest growth increase in the 35 years since Reagan - it begins and ends under Clinton, when he raised taxes on the rich. Then comes the Great Recession in 2008. Get it?

http://ablog.typepad.com/.a/6a00e554717cc988330148c793e514970c-pi

http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2011/inequality-p25_averagehouseholdincom.png
 
Craig234 said:
That's not what I said. I said that concentrating the wealth - giving the wealthiest a huge share of the pie - makes it not grow. It reduces opportunity, competition, and much more that helps the pie grow, to create more stagnant fortunes.

Look, let's make this simple and look at a picture.

In the chart below, see the period from the late 40's to 1964, when the top marginal rate was 90% (the period in the 50's, Republicans were in charge, though it's still higher than later; the peak growth was in the 60's under JFK and LBJ, including when the top marginal rate was lowered to 72%. Then we got Nixon/Carter, and the oil embargo, and the beginning of inflation, and growth of the 'ok' 3-3.5% rate. Then Reagan, the excessive tax cut and a big recession, then half the cuts reversed.

Then the economy stabilized at that 3.0-3.5% rate for a while - LOWER than most of the period from WWII to Reagan. Because we were past where cuts helped growth, to where cuts were simply making the rich richer (see chart 2).

Then see the biggest growth increase in the 35 years since Reagan - it begins and ends under Clinton, when he raised taxes on the rich. Then comes the Great Recession in 2008. Get it?

http://ablog.typepad.com/.a/6a00e554717cc988330148c793e514970c-pi

http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2011/inequality-p25_averagehouseholdincom.png
Click to expand...

What you leave out is automation and globalization. Short of an another world war we cannot go back to an economy similar to the '50's and '60's. Technology has been a game changer. It has brought tremendous wealth and benefits but it also has created even larger inequality.

If we want to stop (technological) process maybe we can go back but that's highly unlikely
 
cawacko said:
What you leave out is automation and globalization. Short of an another world war we cannot go back to an economy similar to the '50's and '60's. Technology has been a game changer. It has brought tremendous wealth and benefits but it also has created even larger inequality.

If we want to stop (technological) process maybe we can go back but that's highly unlikely
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And what you do is to connect unconnected things. You seem to fall victim to the fallacy that because economics has many factors, you can just throw out any of them and claim they cause things. When you can't look at the charts I posted for 70 years of history and use common sense about them, what's the point to the discussion? The concept is how excessively concentrated wealth reduces productivity. I'll leave you to research that. Automation and globalization are real but automation doesn't destroy productivity.
 
Craig234 said:
And what you do is to connect unconnected things. You seem to fall victim to the fallacy that because economics has many factors, you can just throw out any of them and claim they cause things. When you can't look at the charts I posted for 70 years of history and use common sense about them, what's the point to the discussion? The concept is how excessively concentrated wealth reduces productivity. I'll leave you to research that. Automation and globalization are real but automation doesn't destroy productivity.
Click to expand...

Discussing the factors that allowed for such growth in the '50's and '60's is not unconnected or a fallacy.

Automation increases productivity among workers but also can require fewer workers.

Concentrated wealth is a problem but there are multiple ways to address it
 
cawacko said:
Discussing the factors that allowed for such growth in the '50's and '60's is not unconnected or a fallacy.

Automation increases productivity among workers but also can require fewer workers.

Concentrated wealth is a problem but there are multiple ways to address it
Click to expand...

It's both discussing unconnected topics and a fallacy.

You don't seem to understand the difference between what productivity is and 'needing fewer workers'. You might try saying what all these ways to address concentrated wealth are you claim there are.
 
Craig234 said:
That's not what I said. I said that concentrating the wealth - giving the wealthiest a huge share of the pie - makes it not grow. It reduces opportunity, competition, and much more that helps the pie grow, to create more stagnant fortunes.

Look, let's make this simple and look at a picture.

In the chart below, see the period from the late 40's to 1964, when the top marginal rate was 90% (the period in the 50's, Republicans were in charge, though it's still higher than later; the peak growth was in the 60's under JFK and LBJ, including when the top marginal rate was lowered to 72%. Then we got Nixon/Carter, and the oil embargo, and the beginning of inflation, and growth of the 'ok' 3-3.5% rate. Then Reagan, the excessive tax cut and a big recession, then half the cuts reversed.

Then the economy stabilized at that 3.0-3.5% rate for a while - LOWER than most of the period from WWII to Reagan. Because we were past where cuts helped growth, to where cuts were simply making the rich richer (see chart 2).

Then see the biggest growth increase in the 35 years since Reagan - it begins and ends under Clinton, when he raised taxes on the rich. Then comes the Great Recession in 2008. Get it?

http://ablog.typepad.com/.a/6a00e554717cc988330148c793e514970c-pi

http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2011/inequality-p25_averagehouseholdincom.png
Click to expand...

1) Clinton gave the rich their biggest tax DECREASE, not increase
2) The economic boom began in 1982 and continued until 2000. A brief recession in the early 90's due to the Gulf War and Bush raising taxes didn't stop the tech revolution. Pretending that boom started under Clinton is pure nonsense.
3) the recession of 1981/82 was a result of the dramatic rise in interest rates by the Fed under Volcker to kill inflation. Which it did. How do you justify your claim that the tax cuts caused the recession of 81? the recession began prior to the passing of the tax cuts and ended in late 1982. So if the tax cuts were the cause of the recession, why did the recovery begin in late 82? The next tax package wasn't until 1986.
 
Craig234 said:
And what you do is to connect unconnected things. You seem to fall victim to the fallacy that because economics has many factors, you can just throw out any of them and claim they cause things. When you can't look at the charts I posted for 70 years of history and use common sense about them, what's the point to the discussion? The concept is how excessively concentrated wealth reduces productivity. I'll leave you to research that. Automation and globalization are real but automation doesn't destroy productivity.
Click to expand...

Who's productivity has been destroyed?
 
Craig234 said:
It's both discussing unconnected topics and a fallacy.

You don't seem to understand the difference between what productivity is and 'needing fewer workers'. You might try saying what all these ways to address concentrated wealth are you claim there are.
Click to expand...

Maybe we are talking past each other but you have completely lost me on why it's not important to understand why we had the growth we did during those two decades.
 
Superfreak said:
1) Clinton gave the rich their biggest tax DECREASE, not increase
Click to expand...

I'm referring to Clinton's increase of taxes on the rich in his first budget, described below by Politifact. Later he fought Republicans on lowering capital gains taxes, but finally made a deal to do so, a mistake.

"Clinton raised the top marginal rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (previously, President George H.W. Bush had raised the top tax rate from 28 percent to 31 percent in 1990)."

2) The economic boom began in 1982 and continued until 2000. A brief recession in the early 90's due to the Gulf War and Bush raising taxes didn't stop the tech revolution. Pretending that boom started under Clinton is pure nonsense.
Click to expand...

The Bush recession wasn't because he raised taxes (as noted, Clinton raised them further and growth increased). I said the biggest increase in growth in the period began and ended with Clinton. It did. The picture isn't unclear.

3) the recession of 1981/82 was a result of the dramatic rise in interest rates by the Fed under Volcker to kill inflation. Which it did. How do you justify your claim that the tax cuts caused the recession of 81? the recession began prior to the passing of the tax cuts and ended in late 1982. So if the tax cuts were the cause of the recession, why did the recovery begin in late 82? The next tax package wasn't until 1986.
Click to expand...

That one I'll agree with more.

What Reagan did was buy some growth by creating the first massive deficits in peacetime in US history, tripling the national debt. (Comparison: Reagan added almost $2 trillion; Carter $300 billion; Ford $224 billion; Nixon $121 billion).
 
cawacko said:
Maybe we are talking past each other but you have completely lost me on why it's not important to understand why we had the growth we did during those two decades.
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It is important to understand why; which is different than you just throwing out things that happened and saying they are why.
 
Craig234 said:
It is important to understand why; which is different than you just throwing out things that happened and saying they are why.
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The global conditions at the time are just throwing things out there? This was a period when Europe and Japan were trying to rebuild themselves and China was going through its internal issues with Mao and was not a player on the world stage

You can't look at conditions today and say look what we did in the '50's when it was a completely different global economic environment
 
PostmodernProphet said:
first of all, they own the pie......the question isn't about "giving" them anything......its about taking it away....
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Well, that's a nice right-wing lie. So, the wealthiest - the 0.01%, let's say - 'own' all the wealth, and all the rest of the bits of wealth that go to anyone else is taking it away from them? Your warped view of that is the problem.

you realize this chart shows that GDP went up after Reagan cut taxes, right?....
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Yes, they went up *from the recession* and matched the lower growth rates of the previous decades - they never matched the average much less the higher growth rates of previous decades.

Look longer term. Reagan's cuts primarily increased the concentration of wealth at the top and the national debt. Saying the nation got wealthier is like saying you're richer if you buy things on a credit card. The longer term effects were a snowballing debt, growth in that 3.0-3.5% range, and problems from a return to banking crashes by deregulating FDR's bank regulations to bubbles like the Great Recession in 2008, and record inequality - not record growth.
 
So before this, Hillary was the leader of the Democrat Party. Yet libbies here in this forum denied that.
 
cawacko said:
The global conditions at the time are just throwing things out there? This was a period when Europe and Japan were trying to rebuild themselves and China was going through its internal issues with Mao and was not a player on the world stage

You can't look at conditions today and say look what we did in the '50's when it was a completely different global economic environment
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That's more valid than what you said before. But it's still misguided. The simple fact is, when taxes were higher and inequality lower, our country was more productive as a result. More of the wealth went into business revinvestment and to workers who spent it fueling the economy. The post-Reagan undertaxing of the wealthy has sent trillions right into their pockets, where it has been far less productive, inflating their accounts, driving up the prices of the biggest corporations - with trillions of wealth sitting off-shore idle.
 
Craig234 said:
Well, that's a nice right-wing lie. So, the wealthiest - the 0.01%, let's say - 'own' all the wealth
Click to expand...

idiot.....we are talking about taxes........the people you are taxing own 100% of what you want to tax.......if you're too fucking stupid to realize that you shouldn't be debating taxes......
 
Craig234 said:
I'm referring to Clinton's increase of taxes on the rich in his first budget, described below by Politifact. Later he fought Republicans on lowering capital gains taxes, but finally made a deal to do so, a mistake.

"Clinton raised the top marginal rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (previously, President George H.W. Bush had raised the top tax rate from 28 percent to 31 percent in 1990)."



The Bush recession wasn't because he raised taxes (as noted, Clinton raised them further and growth increased). I said the biggest increase in growth in the period began and ended with Clinton. It did. The picture isn't unclear.



That one I'll agree with more.

What Reagan did was buy some growth by creating the first massive deficits in peacetime in US history, tripling the national debt. (Comparison: Reagan added almost $2 trillion; Carter $300 billion; Ford $224 billion; Nixon $121 billion).
Click to expand...

1) Again, Clinton gave away the biggest tax DECREASE to the wealthy. Raising the marginal tax rates while not eliminating loopholes and deductions doesn't tax the rich. It simply dupes simpletons into believing that is occurring.

2) Wrong. The growth began under Reagan. it continued under Bush and Clinton.

3) Reagan added about $1.6T, Bush about $800B (4 years), Clinton about $1.6T, Bush about $5T, Obama about $10T. Reagan also had to rebuild the military, provide stimulus to help us recover from Carter's ineptitude with double digit inflation and unemployment. Reagan also bankrupted the USSR by forcing them to keep pace. That also aided the prosperity we saw in the 1990's.
 
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