I did not summarize anything. I calculated averages by decade and did not leave out any numbers. The alternative would have been to list every year. Nothing I posted changed the overall results which you have yet to refute or explain.
What Taxing the Rich Could Yield
- Thread starter signalmankenneth
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I did not summarize anything. I calculated averages by decade and did not leave out any numbers. The alternative would have been to list every year. Nothing I posted changed the overall results which you have yet to refute or explain.
That is just plain silly. You could have a 1% or 50% tax rate and that does not mean you collect any money at all if people avoided those taxes. Revenue is what is actually collected.
The tax rate does not tell us how much people actually pay because they only pay that percentage once they earn over a certain amount. The effective tax rate tells us how much people actually paid in taxes and when tax rates were 70-91% people actually paid much less.
BS. Obama did not even sign the American Taxpayer Relief Act until 2013 meaning we would see any additional revenues until 2014. Don't forget we were still recovering from the recession and the economy was steadily improving.
"Economist Emmanuel Saez estimated that, in the three years since the tax hike took effect, strategies used by the rich to reduce their reported income eliminated about 19 percent of the revenue the government could have collected from the tax increase had the wealthy not changed their behavior."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-wealthiest-Americans/?utm_term=.8b393a8d6052
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Doing so paints an inaccurate picture because there are certain years where the tax rate is lower than the year before, and that will have an effect on revenue-as-a-percentage-of-GDP.
You did that specifically because you know that if you showed it year-by-year, you would see a jump in rev-GDP when taxes are raised, and a drop in rev-GDP when taxes are cut.
1% change to rev-GDP is $200B today.
$200B would fund free public college for 25 years.
LOL!
So right away, when you look at this chart you see that there are large changes in that rate. For example, in 1981 before taxes were cut, federal revenue was above 18% of GDP.
1% of GDP is $200B today.
$200B would fund free public college for 25 years.
So there is money to pay for things. Showing rev-GDP is a pointless metric to use.
HOLD UP A SECOND.
From 2012-2013, rev-GDP grew by 1.4%
What was the reason for that?
Oh right, Obama let the tax cuts for the wealthy expire at the end of 2012.
He does that, and suddenly rev-GDP jumps by 1.4% which, in 2013, would be $233 BILLION DOLLARS.
So from 2012-2013, when the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy expires, that resulted in $233B MORE DOLLARS flowing into the Treasury.
$233B would pay for free public college for about 30 years.
So nominal changes to the tax code results in massive changes to revenue collected.
So why are you using rev-GDP to prove a point that raising taxes won't change it when clearly raising taxes dramatically changes the amount of revenue collected?
Because you're a sophist.
1. That is literally a summary. So you're not even acting in good faith here. You're a bad faith actor who engages in sophistry because you don't want to eat shit for being wrong.
2. By obfuscating and withholding yearly information, you obscure nominal changes to the tax code that results in large changes to revenue collected.
I simply think you lost all perspective of GDP and revenue as a percentage of GDP.
I think you simply don't grasp the concept that a 1% change in rev-GDP has a massive effect on the total amount of dollars the Treasury collects.
1% of rev-GDP today is $200B.
In 2013, rev-GDP grew by 1.4%, which in 2013 was $233B.
For perspective, $233B is equal to:
- About 30 years of free public college under that current proposal ($80B over ten years)
- About 1/4 of the current $800B+ deficit
- About 1/2 of Medicaid's budget
- About 1/3 of the DOD's budget
Doing so would show that nominal changes to the tax code have massive changes to the amount of revenue collected; a point you glossed over because you either don't know the size of the economy, or you do and are trying to obscure it by using metrics the government doesn't use when determining its budget or spending.
In other words, you engaged in sophistry.
And the amount of revenue collected is determined by the tax rate, not the size of the GDP.
So you engage in sophistry because you know better, but don't want to admit it because that would mean you'd have to eat some shit.
The effective tax rate tells us how much people pay. So now you're moving the goalposts and abandoning the metric you used before to make your case because it can't anymore.
The marginal tax rates tell us how much they have to pay per bracket.
By nominally changing the marginal rate, you nominally change the effective rate, and you nominally change the rev-GDP rate, however, nominal changes to the rev-GDP rate results in massive gross changes to the amount of revenue collected. 1% of GDP is $200B today. So if you increase the rev-GDP rate by 1%, then that increases the amount of revenue collected by the Treasury by roughly $200B. $200B would fully fund free public colleges for about 25 years under the current proposal.
So the question is now; why do you engage in bad faith tactics to make your argument?
You're a fucking idiot and a liar.
The Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy expired at the end of 2012.
The previous rates for the top bracket went back to 39.6% for 2013:
All you do is lie. You lie because you've done it for so long, so often, and because no one has ever held you to account for bullshitting. I believe you've lied so much in your life that you simply don't know what it is like to act in good faith anymore.
Why would you lie about something so easily verified?
Also, THE DATA YOU PROVIDED shows that after the tax rates returned to pre-Bush levels on the rich, rev-GDP also increased.
That's your data that shows that, sparky.
Totally runs in contradiction to the metric you were using previously, showing that after the tax rates were raised, rev-GDP increased:
And here:
So when we combined the two, we see this:
2008: 17.1%
2009: 14.5%
2010: 14.4%
2011: 14.8%
2012: 15.1%
2013: 16.5%
2014: 17.2%
2015: 17.9%
2016: 17.4%
2017: 17.0%
So your link there says that rich people avoided paying taxes, however, your data shows that the amount of revenue the government collected actually increased substantially.
The problem with your argument is that you engage in sophistry, and you jump from one metric to the other, so you never end up making a coherent argument because one point you make in one argument totally contradicts the point you make in another.
signalmankenneth
Verified User
Robert Reich: The Big Economic Switcheroo
Exactly.
Conservatives act in bad faith because when you subscribe to Conservatism, it means you have to ignore anything that contradicts your beliefs. You have to misrepresent things; you have to compromise your ethics and values for sophistry and obfuscation because Conservatism is about preserving the individual ego by sacrificing society and truth.
Conservatives are just morally reprehensible people, and all their lifeboats should be torched.
Conservatism should not survive past this decade. It needs to be completely destroyed. It is not a benefit to society. Conservatism is anti-social.
You mean tax revenue increased as we recovered from the recession? Who knew? If you notice, it remained at those levels even in 2017 following a tax cut. Also, you have to look at long-term trends, not year to year changes which could be affected by man factors.
Previously you claimed revenue as a percent of GDP meant nothing; now you are using it to support your argument.
That is what I said--that Obama signed the bill to increase taxes on those above $400,000 in 2013. That means any increase in revenue would not be seen until 2014. You look for things to argue about even when you know when you are wrong (or cannot understand what you read).
Changing the rate by 1% makes the incorrect assumption everybody is paying 1% more in taxes on total GDP. The higher rates do not apply to all income but only after reaching a certain income threshold. So a person could be in the 39.5 bracket but only pay 22% (for example) on total income because they were paying the lower rates on lower income. Also, we do not pay taxes on total GDP.
Marginal rates do not show what we actually pay--that is what effective rates show us.
Simple economics.
Tax rates do not determine how much revenue is collected because you don't know how much income people will pay taxes on and how people will change their behavior to avoid higher taxes (like buying municipal bonds for income). Also, tax rates do not tell you how much people will earn in each income bracket unless you can predict the income of everybody.
You are confused about taxation.
There you go again!
You're doing that thing where you make deliberately vague statements that you then whittle down and redefine later on just to save face.
Tax revenue as a percentage of GDP increased to levels above where they were prior to the recession.
That's what your data shows.
After the recession, tax rates for the wealthy returned to pre-Bush levels.
Subsequently, rev-GDP increased to pre-Bush levels too.
What a fucking idiot. Way to self-own.
We don't pay taxes on the entire GDP; so, 1% increase in the tax rate does not increase government revenue by 1% of GDP. Much of the GDP is not subject to federal income taxes.
Wrong, boyo.
I'm using it to disprove YOUR ARGUMENT.
I'm using YOUR DATA to disprove YOUR ARGUMENT.
Data you deliberately selectively used, right?
So that would make you a sophist.