Cuts for the Wealthy Have Resulted in Loss of a Million Jobs: It's Just Common Sense

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signalmankenneth

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One of the traditional America values that used to be revered as a sign of our national character was common sense.

But no longer. Most of the right-wing slogans and sound bites are based on promoting economic policy that has proven not to work. This is the opposite of common sense: it's doing what repeatedly hasn't shown results and insisting that it will magically be effective the next time around.

GOP Congressman Randy Hultgren of Illinois was confronted with common sense about the Bush tax cuts at a summer recess town hall meeting.

Indeed, a constituent asked Hultgren why - if the Bush tax cuts helped create jobs, as the GOP argues - the unemployment rate has gone up around 3 percentage points since they were enacted? Hultgren was flummoxed.

He couldn't answer the question and fumbled his way into talking about "the stimulus" instead of the ineffectiveness of excessive tax cuts for the wealthy. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks featured a video of the encounter and remarked that Hultgren was "stone cold busted." Uygur noted that we've lost a million jobs over the last ten years.


The constituent also pointed out that the nonwealthy end up paying more in additional government taxes (to cover the interest on the debt, but one could add that additional flat, local and state taxes are borne by the middle and working class), while the rich just get richer.

You can add to that the common sense and prima facie reality that if the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were repealed, it would go a long way toward reducing the national deficit with which the GOP and the Tea Party are so obsessed.

By Mark Karlin

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So essentially you are arguing tax cuts should end recessions because unemployment should never go up and that they caused the financial meltdown.
 
Return of Dune said:
No answer from these two clowns either.
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So all the tax cuts, even ones for the poor, were bad?

See everyone, likes to focus on how the effective tax rate for people making 250k and over went from 39 to 35, but they forget (often intentionally) that Bush cut taxes for every other income bracket, including those making 18.5k and under. He reduced their taxes from 15-10 percent, or 1/3. But since that affects more people, it's not nice to bitch about it.
 
The Bush tax cuts primarily benefited the wealthy and continue to do so.


Where are the jobs Bush promised?




Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running this year on an economic platform of tax cuts, especially making the tax cuts permanent for the richest among us.


So how did the tax cuts work out?

  • Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.

  • That much additional income would have more than made up for the lack of demand that keeps us mired in the Great Recession.

  • That would mean no need for a stimulus, although it would not have affected the last administration's interfering with market capitalism by bailing out irresponsible Wall Streeters instead of letting the market determine their fortunes.

  • In only two years was total income up, but even when those years are combined they exceed the declines in only one of the other six years.


http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/CHAS-89LPZ9
 
President Mittens said:
So when Bushs cuts went to the bottom 50% (reducing their rate by 1/3) that was bad?
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One of every eight dollars of the tax cuts went to the 1 in 1,000 taxpayers in the top tenth of 1 percent, the annual threshold for which was in the $2 million range throughout the last administration.


The only other large beneficiary was parents with children under 17 who make enough to pay income taxes, thanks to the $1,000-per-child tax credit Republicans started championing in the mid-1990s.



http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/CHAS-89LPZ9
 
The number of people reporting incomes of $200,000 or more but legally paying no federal income taxes skyrocketed in the second Bush term.


A decade ago it was fewer than 1,500 taxpayers; in 2000 it was about 2,300.


This high-income, tax-free group jumped to more than 11,000 in 2007 and then doubled in 2008 to more than 22,000.


In 2008 nearly 1 in every 200 high-income taxpayers paid no federal income tax, up from about 1 in 1,500 in 1998.


The share of high incomes that were untaxed increased more than sevenfold to one dollar of every $166.

The Statistics of Income data on tax-free, high incomes severely understate economic reality because they exclude deferral accounts, including those of hedge fund managers with billion-dollar incomes who can legally report no current income and borrow against their untaxed gains to live tax free.




http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/CHAS-89LPZ9
 
IRS data show that average incomes were smaller in 2008 than in 2000.


​

Sponsors promised voters that the 2001 and 2003 Bush temporary tax cuts would pay for themselves by spurring more investment, thereby leading to robust economic growth.


Instead, individual income tax revenues in 2008 were smaller than in 2000, despite a 10 percent growth in the number of taxpayers.



http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/CHAS-89LPZ9
 
Allowing half the people to qualify for NO TAXES or even TAX CREDITS is a slap in the face to those of us that have to carry to load....


and don't forget.....DON'T FEED THE TROLL
 
bravo said:
Allowing half the people to qualify for NO TAXES or even TAX CREDITS is a slap in the face to those of us that have to carry to load....


and don't forget.....DON'T FEED THE TROLL
Click to expand...


Really Bravo, you are carrying the load are you?
 
The question to ask is whether their policies worked as promised. Have they even come close?


Where is the prosperity -- and where was it in the Bush years, when massive increases in both military and discretionary spending provided a chronic stimulus to the economy?


The hard, empirical facts:


The tax cuts did not spur investment.


Job growth in the George W. Bush years was one-seventh that of the Clinton years.


Nixon and Ford did better than Bush on jobs. Wages fell during the last administration.


Average incomes fell.


The number of Americans in poverty, as officially measured, hit a 16-year high of 43.6 million, though a National Academy of Sciences study says that the real poverty figure was closer to 51 million.


Food banks were swamped.


Foreclosure signs were everywhere.


Americans and their governments are drowning in debt.


And at the nexus of tax and healthcare, Republican ideas perpetuate a cruel and immoral system that rations healthcare -- while consuming every sixth dollar in the economy and making businesses, especially small businesses, less efficient and less profitable.



http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/CHAS-89LPZ9
 

Last November, as George W. Bush was promoting his book, he was asked if he thought his infamous tax cuts should be extended.


Bush defended the cuts, saying that they promote job growth.


“If one is interested in job creation in the private sector, it is important to recognize that lower taxes enable the job creators, i.e., small businesses, to have more money with which to expand their work force, and I would, yeah, I think they ought to be extended.”


They were extended.


Where are the jobs?



http://www.cnbc.com/id/40317273/Extending_Tax_Cuts_Will_Create_Jobs_George_W_Bush
 
My employer hasn't shown a proffit sense 2008. Which means he hasn't made any money.

Even after laying off half the people at my company he can't make any money.

Also, Dune couldn't be more wrong.

Get rid of the income tax, go to a consumption tax for a short time, get rid of the EPA, Department of Energy, and Obamacare, and jobs will come back.

Just common sense stuff.
 
"Hultgren was flummoxed."
He was probably taken off guard by a question that is so asinine as to be completely unbelievable. For one, the question itself contains lies and false innuendo that only a liberal (ie: completely brain dead with the mandatory DNC prefrontal lobotomy) could actually believe the content.

The Bush tax cuts took place in 2001 and 2003. The UE at the time of the larger of the cuts in 2003 was around 7.5%. By 2004 it had fallen to 5.9% and continued to fall to average under 5% 2005-2007. (http://www.bls.gov)

It was not until the housing and banking crisis of 2008 that UE went back up, a phenomenon that had NOTHING to do with tax cuts, but rather an inevitable crisis resulting from an accumulation of bad policies enacted and supported by both parties over many years and several administrations. Only the liberal pundits, who have NOTHING positive to offer so all they can do is continue to blame Bush - completely ignoring the fact that they had full control of congress and the WH for 2 full years in which to enact their programs - can come up with the TOTAL nonsense that the tax cuts of 2003 are actually even related to, let alone are the cause of the current UE levels. Pustule headed morons with their heads firmly shoved up the donkey's ass may believe it, but thinking people do not.
 
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