How Liberal leaders flunk math. They Fail to grasp human response to heavy taxes

Washington Times ^ | 11/20/2012 | Richard Rahn

[SeekAndFind]

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the largest teachers union, the National Education Association, failed fifth-grade math last week. The question he failed is: If X (government spending) is growing faster than A (government tax revenue) plus B (new revenue from higher tax rates on “the rich”), when will A plus B equal X? President Obama met with leaders of left-leaning organizations, including Mr. Van Roekel, to discuss the “fiscal cliff.”

After the meeting, Mr. Van Roekel appeared on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show to discuss the budget deficit. Mr. Van Roekel told Mr. Cavuto that he had recommended taxing the top 2 percent more to deal with the problem. Mr. Cavuto then correctly explained that taxing the top 2 percent could not solve the problem because even with the increase, spending would still be growing far faster than revenues — primarily because of entitlement programs.

After some back and forth, Mr. Van Roekel could not identify one item in the budget that he was in favor of cutting and kept insisting the problem could be solved only by taxing the top 2 percent, even though Mr. Cavuto again correctly and clearly explained that even taxing the top 2 percent at a 100 percent rate would not produce enough revenue because entitlements are growing faster than the economy. Mr. Van Roekel appeared to be unable to grasp this rather simple concept.

At the end of last week, Hostess Brands Inc., the company that makes Twinkies and Wonder Bread, asked to be liquidated because the bakery workers and their union bosses could not understand this: If A (workers’ salaries and benefits) is growing faster than B (sales revenue), company H (Hostess) will run out of money and be forced into liquidation. So 18,500 workers are losing their jobs

[Mack the knife]

Dems want the fiscal cliff to happen it’s a blessing for them.

---

Hold on there Grasshopper. It ain’t that simple.

Repeal of the Bush tax cuts also includes not just higher rates for higher income earners, but ...
* cutting the child credit in half, and making it non-refundable (this really hurts the illegals), and making some of these folks into tax payers, thus reducing the percentage of non-tax payers from 47% to something less
* raising the current 10% bracket to 15%,
* I think it would reduce the personal exemption
* putting 33 million tax filers into AMT territory — which eliminates the deductions (mortgage, state taxes), particularly hard on people in the blue states (e.g., New York, New Jersy, California ... who have high housing prices and high state taxes) The 33 million will put intense pressure on their Senators to DO SOMETHING!!!
* by not agreeing to anything, the Republican Tea Party congresscritters do not break their pledge to not increase taxes.
* there are other goodies that I don’t remember.

As they say, the devil is in the details. I believe the Dems want to avoid the “Fiscal Cliff” more than the Republicans.

[Vaduz]

Thats why I say it’s a blessing for them,it’s what they want to do anyway.

A rat is always a rat