Another American Revolution?

Originally posted by StarValleyWy
Excellent!

Let's see.

I want Bush gone. Now. [b] We disagree. We are not evil.
I don't care how much violence they use. The sooner the better. I disagree. Reason and democracy must serve for another thousand years. Then there will be a "personal Shield" force field invented that will make "law" a quaint notion. Till then, reason mu ...[text shortened]... alk. But as long as dictators hold as much power as my government... 'fuget' 'bout it!' [/b]

Originally posted by telerion
[b]You are really long winded.

You have a very short attention span. Too bad. You could have learned something. There were many, many mistakes in your post.

Every time we cut taxes, eighteen months later, the government tax revenue increases. Without exception. Ever.

Great claim. Do you have any evidence to back it up? I was led to ...[text shortened]... ely, it just has forms and rules for filing taxes.
Waiting for you to prove me wrong.</edit> [/b]

Originally posted by shavixmir
See.
And this is why if I had a gun I would shoot you.

That's the justification of violence. My pre-emptive strike to stop you ruining everything I have ever fought for.

Bang. Dead.
Bleeding ever slower on the ground.

You.

Originally posted by StarValleyWy
Aw.

The commie solution.

It works up to a point. But sooner or later, you always lose.

Damned dumb peons. We refuse to stay dead.

Originally posted by shavixmir
I don't think there's a communist alive who'd agree with my solution.

However, I'd do it just the same. Somethings are above communism, aren't they?

Originally posted by StarValleyWy
[b]What is intelligent debate?

Originally posted by WHY AYE
Wasn't there talk of an 'anti-rec' option a while ago?

It would be useful and sometimes better than replying to certain posts.

A formal petition to ask Russ for an Anti-rec option should be started.
Or 'reply and quote' this post to see who thinks it to be a good idea.

Originally posted by StarValleyWy
Good Idea. You would get all of mine.

WHY?

AYE don't know. Just like you.

So. What is "intelligent debate"? Have a clue?

I will say that it is 'two people expressing examples and reasons of a point of view, each trying to become the chief chimp on RHP."

What is your definition? Just out of curiosity. Curious George here.

Originally posted by WHY AYE
Niceone, just the reply I was expecting.

Firstly, lets define intelligence.

Proof is more rigorous than I intend in a kids exchange of views.

Well, I don't intend this to be a 'kids exchange.' If you intend to continue posting to me as if it were, than I ask you to please admit now that you're not interested in a serious approach to these questions.

Let's assume for now that you do want to get just a bit more serious.

I took some time to read through the two sources you offered.
The first was a short rant from Dick Armey. I don't like to read economic arguments written by partisan hacks for partisan hacks. For example, I don't take my economics from Paul Krugman's pieces in the NY Times.

Aside: necessary disclaimerI feel responsible to point out that Armey isn't any where close to the level of Krugman as an economist. Here is a short summary of some key differences.

Armey- got PhD from very low ranked department (U of Okla), taught at very low ranked department (North Texas), appears to have published zero scholarly articles in any economics jounals (no tenure), and has been out of the profession for almost 30 years.

Krugman- got PhD from MIT (in top 5), taught at Yale and Princeton (number 1 for his field), published about 100 scholarly articles (including many groundbreaking ones) in top journals, still teaches at Princeton.

So as far as economists go Armey is about a (D) and Krugman is an (A).
end aside

Now what do the two have in common? Well, both have become, Armey much earlier than Krugman, PARTISAN HACKS. These men are less interested in promoting sound economic policy than they are in being their political opponent's worst nightmare. So I find your first source far below the standard for a genuine discussion of the issue of taxes on government revenue.

Here is the one really economic statement in Armey's essay (The rest is, IMO, a bunch of conservative grandstanding. If there is something in particular that you think is important from the text, please do us a favor and quote it here.)
from Dick Armey
[R]aising taxes is bad economic policy. Raising taxes hurts the economy by raising the cost of business and lowering the return of capital. Raising taxes hurts families who want to try and save to buy a home, send a child to college, or even want to engage in such selfish behavior as taking a nice family vacation.

There is an element of truth here. Raising business taxes does raise the cost of business. Of course, he isn't careful to distinguish the type of tax because he is preaching rhetoric to the choir, and this does not require specifics or accuracy. Taxes on capital (i.e. property taxes, taxes on gains from investment) do lower the return on capital. This does reduce the share of the economy's resources devoted to capital accumulation and investment, and instead shifts them to gov't revenues. This certainly decreases production to some extent depending on the degree of taxation.

Now I've already argued that the gov't has a role in the economy and thus needs some funding through taxation. Like most things in economics, there is a trade-off. In this case, it's a trade off between growth in GDP and the allocation of resources to sectors that cannot be managed efficiently by the private sector (e.g roadways, parks, waterways, natural resources, military).

A major fallacy occurs when one assumes that growth in GDP necessarily makes everyone significantly better off and thus should be persued as the number one priority. Growth in GDP does not capture important factors like how wealth is distributed, what primarily accounts for the rise in GDP (remember Gov't Spending is a component of GDP), or the growth in quality of life (e.g. leisure time, life expectancy due to better health care, college-level achievement).

The biggest problem with Armey's point is that it is so general as to be pointless. Sure if you raise everyone's taxes on everything, you will make it harder to save for a home or to send a kid to college, but our tax code is far more sophisticated than that. It allows for considerations for housing or college education. Armey would have you think that when you reduce/increase &quot;taxes,&quot; you reduce/increase every tax rate at once. That is silly nonsense (well, unless he gets his way some day and institutes the flat tax).

Ok enough Dick Armey. Your next source is a step up from the first. It also has nothing to do with taxes and gov't revenue. Oh well, I guess that point has been resolved. I want to take some more time studying it before making any comments. I also want to see the quality of your response before I devote my time to more rigorous investigation. Let's finish your post.

Then just ask yourself if we got richer or poorer. That is a matter of public record. See the stock market from the moment of the Bush tax cut till NOW.

It has happened every time taxes are cut. Wealth increases and we get richer.

We were discussing the role of taxes on gov't revenue. You've really moved the goal posts here, but let's see. Yeah, I agree with you. The stock market is certainly effected by tax cuts. You give everyone a bit more to spend (&quot;a bit&quot; varies quite a lot), and the wealthy will put a lot of their &quot;bit&quot; into the stock market.
Couple of issues however:
1) The growth in the stock market after its crash (the crash happened even while Bush was promising tax cuts) is not entirely due to tax cuts. In fact, I suspect more had to due with market dynamics. Buy low as they say. People had rational expectations and knew that the stock market was clearly undervalued. After a period of panic and of government regulated clean-up of bad companies, investors took the opportunity to buy up undervalued stocks. This buying raised the market.

2) Well, actually most people didn't really get richer beyond the refund amount. If you speaking economy wide, then the answer is that a very small percentage of the economy got richer. The rest stayed about the same or got poorer. Just like Armey's blending of tax rates, you are blending people. Different wealth percentiles of society are affected differently in this case.

3) Finally, tax cuts must be balanced by tighter gov't spending. If you spend more than you bring in from taxes, then you must spend less or borrow from abroad to shore up the shortfall. This administration is criticized among both Democrats and fiscal-conservative Republicans (as opposed to the religious republican nuts who don't care about balancing budgets as long as xtian prayer gets back into school) for not being reponsible to keep gov't spending in check with revenue.
This irresponsible behavior, along with a growing trade deficit, has led to the weakening of the US dollar. This will eventually have some effect to reduce our trade deficit (cheaper xports, more expensive imports, you know how it goes) but this effect alone does not bring it back into balance for some complicated international economic reasons that I won't get into in this post. Nevertheless, the other effect from increased borrowing, will not be alleviated until the gov't starts reducing its debt. Then where does the money come from? Ans: Taxpayers. Either through an increase in tax rates or from a drastic reduction in important government programs, which reduces their welfare.

Irresponsible tax cuts, then can work to stimy aggregate wealth. There is no free lunch you know.

ok your going to have some kind of revolution, great. In NZ were going to have the real thing, no rhetoric, real blood &amp; guts a fair dinkum civil war, you can feel it building up

our maori hordes have just about had enough of our law passing and trickery so we will need heaps of those weapons you are testing in iraq but like america in iraq ..

god will be on the side of white!