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Originally Posted by cbwm
Do you have any statistics to back up this claim. The chart showing the Bush (W) Tax cuts effect on tax receipts has been posted on this forum many times.
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I should have qualified that statement. Tax receipts under Reagan and H.W. were woefully insufficient to cover the huge amount of spending, hence the unparalleled deficits and whopping debt. Tax receipts under Dubya, same thing. The effect of tax cuts on tax receipts is also subject to the Law of Diminishing Returns. In addition, Dubya's addition to the federal debt eclipsed even Reagan's (doubling it, no less), thus more than offsetting any benefit incurred by increased revenue. If you're using that chart to show Dubya's effectiveness, I'll file that under, "How To Lie With Statistics, Advanced Tactics."
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Originally Posted by cbwm
Reagan inherited double digit inflation, unemployment, mortgage interest, a gas crisis, and an Iranian hostage crisis from our last socialist president (Carter), and managed to turn it all around while kicking the U.S.S.R's *** at the same time via Borrow and Spend.
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I remember my dad taking a pull tab from a can of "Billy Beer", bending it over to hold a penny in it, and saying, "Here you go, boy, your own Jimmy Carter money clip!"
Carter was undoubtedly a more successful ex-president, but in fairness he did inherit some of his woes from Nixon and Ford. Probably why he was the last Democrat to take North Carolina in the presidential race. BTW, we did not win the Cold War; our economy was just better able at the time to withstand heavy borrowing and spending. Our collapse is coming, and soon, to pay the price for our arrogance.
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Originally Posted by cbwm
True. I put the smile face to let you know I was just yanking your leg. To be honest, I don't believe in the Apocalypse. I do, however, believe in the existance of bad ideas and Obama is full of them. That is, of course, my opinion.
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Getting back to the OP, Obama's using Clinton's financial advisors, which leads me to think that his fiscal policies might actually be believable. Powell's endorsement weighs in pretty heavily, too, seeing as how I'd have voted for him had he run for president. Plus McCain's health care proposals piss me off. Now, I will admit that since all the Republican presidents we've had in almost thirty years have ballooned our debt to unmanageability, I don't trust McCain not to do the same. That's my personal bias; take it for what it's worth.
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Originally Posted by cbwm
Its interesting how the people telling you Republicans tax polices are bad are the same people who abuse the system the worst. Like you, I would be in favor of a flat income tax or purely use based tax system. I'm not sure how we get there from here.
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There are any number of people of varying ideological and political strains who have abused the tax system. The only way we're going to get to something more equitable is with bipartisan support, and voter pressure that speaks louder than PACs.
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Originally Posted by cbwm
In any event, I was referring to Business taxes and you are dead wrong on your business tax assessment. Our country has the second highest business tax rate ON THE PLANET. Companies use every write off and loophole they can and still pay 30% at the end of the day. You still haven't explained how increasing business taxes will help our GDP, our Stock Market, or your gauge of the income gap between upper and middle class. They should be working to lower those taxes and reduce loopholes.
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I can agree that loopholes need to be cut out. Sadly, neither candidate would be able to lower taxes, and both would raise them on the top 5%, from what I read. But making the tax system more equitable increases the spending power of the vast majority of Americans. The reason the Bush rebates didn't stimulate the economy like he hoped is because many Americans put that rebate into savings. Wouldn't you? Americans need to be encouraged to start spending again, but that's only going to happen if the demand side gets as much attention as the supply side. I'll grant you that a large increase on business would be detrimental, for all the reasons you've indicated. But the only thing that's going to save us is equitable distribution of tax burden (which is not socialist, BTW), combined with cutting out excessive spending, fraud and waste, and paying down the debt.
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Originally Posted by cbwm
On this we definitely agree, but lets be clear. Business tax cuts are not corporate welfare. I think you will agree that most small businesses (50 employees and under) A: do not have access to the same type of accounting resources and loopholes that big business do, B: make over 250k per year, and C: employ more people than the entire Fortune 500. Raising taxes on these companies is going to help our economy how? Do you think giving this money away to people who don't pay taxes is going to help our economy? or Balance the Budget?
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I think that too much hype has been made about "Joe the Plumber". In the end, neither candidate is going to raise poor Joe's taxes by an appreciable amount if he hopes to be reelected. The corporate welfare I'm talking about is that which is given to big business, not Joe. Believe me, I hope I'm not wrong here, but consider that the only president who didn't raise taxes on Joe since 1980 was Dubya. What that tells me is that halfway through the next term poor Joe's gonna have a coin flipped on his behalf, whoever wins.
tim 
. I think if you read what you wrote, you'll find you agree with me that your problem with Reagan, Dubya, or any Borrow and Spend Republican was spending. In pretty much every case, lowered taxes stimulated the economy. If only they had been able to curtail spending, the deficit would have been cut into deeply. Had Reagan not spent, we might be speaking Russian. Had Bush not spent, we wouldn't be in Iraq...... anyway....
