Now if I haven't lost the reader completely, let me throw in yet another curve ball: It's not at all clear that Reagan "cut taxes" on net! Yes, he cut tax rates when he first came into office, but in his second term he signed an "emergency deficit reduction act" that "closed loopholes" (and destroyed the real estate market). Thus it is difficult to assess the overall tax drain on the economy.(emphasis added) Let's be honest: We can bicker about statistics all day. But here's something that I bet will surprise you. Surely a roughly fair measure of the total amount of taxes (we're not even talking about spending, remember) taken by the government would be the percentage of gross domestic product. This particular statistic is not very sensitive to inflation, and it also incorporates the possible benefits of a booming economy. Now if the supply-side version of the Reagan years is generally correct, surely federal tax receipts as a percentage of GDP should be much lower under Reagan than under Carter, right? Not really. For the fiscal years for which Carter can be held responsible (i.e. 1977 through 1980), tax revenues as a percentage of GDP were 18.0, 18.0, 18.5, and 19.0. The figures for Reagan's fiscal years (1981 through 1988) are 19.6, 19.2, 17.4, 17.3, 17.7, 17.5, 18.4, and 18.1. Yes, some of the lowest years occurred under Reagan, but the following is also true: The two years in which the greatest fraction of the economy was taxed occurred under Reagan,[3] and two of Carter's yearly figures were both lower than four of Reagan's yearly figures. (In fairness, I admit that the average of the above numbers for Carter is 18.4 percent, while for Reagan it is 18.2 percent. But hardly something to write Thomas Jefferson about.) http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1668
And another article,
A central theme of the supply-side school is that a sharp cut in marginal income-tax rates will increase incentives to work and save, and therefore investment and production. That way, few people could take exception. But there are other problems involved. For, at least in the land of the famous Laffer Curve, income tax cuts were treated as the panacea for deficits; drastic cuts would so increase stated revenue as allegedly to yield a balanced budget. Yet there was no evidence whatever for this claim, and indeed, the likelihood is quite the other way. It is true that if income-tax rates were 98% and were cut to 90%, there would probably be an increase in revenue; but at the far lower tax levels we have been at, there is no warrant for this assumption. In fact, historically, increases in tax rates have been followed by increases in revenue and vice versa. http://www.mises.org/econsense/ch10.asp
And again,
And on Reagan's tax cuts,
Taxes Before looking at taxation under Reagan, we must note that spending is the better indicator of the size of the government. If government cuts taxes, but not spending, it still gets the money from somewhere—either by borrowing or inflating. Either method robs the productive sector. Although spending is the better indicator, it is not complete, because it ignores other ways in which the government deprives producers of wealth. For instance, it conceals regulation and trade restricdons, which may require little government outlay. If we look at government revenues as a percentage of "national income," we find little change from the Carter days, despite heralded "tax cuts." In 1980, revenues were 25.1% of "national income." In the first quarter of 1988 they were 24.7%. Reagan came into office proposing to cut personal income and business taxes. The Economic Recovery Act was supposed to reduce revenues by $749 billion over five years. But this was quickly reversed with the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. TEFRA—the largest tax increase in American history—was designed to raise $214.1 billion over five years, and took back many of the business tax savings enacted the year before. (emphasis mine) It also imposed withholding on interest and dividends, a provision later repealed over the president's objection. But this was just the beginning. In 1982 Reagan supported a five-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax and higher taxes on the trucking industry. Total increase: $5.5 billion a year. In 1983, on the recommendation of his Spcial Security Commission— chaired by the man he later made Fed chairman, Alan Green-span—Reagan called for, and received, Social Security tax increases of $165 billion over seven years. A year later came Reagan's Deficit Reduction Act to raise $50 billion.(emphasis mine) Even the heralded Tax Reform Act of 1986 is more deception than substance. It shifted $120 billion over five years from visible personal income taxes to hidden business taxes. It lowered the rates, but it also repealed or reduced many deductions. (emphasis mine) According to the Treasury Department, the 1981 tax cut will have reduced revenues by $1.48 trillion by the end of fiscal 1989. But tax increases since 1982 will equal $1.5 trillion by 1989. The increases include not only the formal legislation mentioned above but also bracket creep (which ended in 1985 when tax indexing took effect—a provision of the 1981 act despite Reagan's objection), $30 billion in various tax changes, and other increases. Taxes by the end of the Reagan era will be as large a chunk of GNP as when he took office, if not larger: 19.4%, by ultra-conservative estimate of the Reagan Office of Management and Budget. The so-called historic average is 18.3%. http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=488&sortorder=articledate
And again in the Laffer curve,
There are some other problems with the Laffer curve. The amount of time it is supposed to take for the Laffer effect to work is never specified. But still more important: Laffer assumes that what all of us want is to maximize tax revenue to the government. If--a big if--we are really at the upper half of the Laffer Curve, we should then all want to set tax rates at that "optimum" point. But why? Why should it be the objective of every one of us to maximize government revenue? To push to the maximum, in short, the share of private product that gets siphoned off to the activities of government? I should think we would be more interested in minimizing government revenue by pushing tax rates far, far below whatever the Laffer Optimum might happen to be. http://www.mises.org/econsense/ch2.asp
The real problem here, ftD, is that you've staked out a position to defend Saint Abe at all costs even if it means putting down everybody else including Reagan. So you twist, turn, and contort the numbers to the point that a SS tax increase of sixty-five hundredths of a single percentage point is somehow larger than Smoot-Hawley, the FDR income tax, the WWI income tax, the Morrill Tariff, the Tariff of Abominations and virtually every other exhorbitant tax hike in our nation's history save two. Leave it to a Claremonster to back himself into defending the absurd, all in the name of defending Saint Abe.
The real problem is that you want to tear down Lincoln no matter what the historical context.
Lincoln was a war time President and every war time President in history with the only exception being George W.Bush, raised taxes.
You want to pretend that the Reagan tax increases were not as large as even conservative economists admit they were (third largest in peacetime history by dollar amount) and then appeal to some razzle-dazzle about rates.
"No need" only because you are not even honest enough to answer the simple straight forward question of which is the bigger tax hike: raising the rates by 5% or raising the rates by 60%. You're dishonest to boot, ftD, and just like liberalism and neo-nazism, chronic dishonesty places you in good company within the Wlat Brigade.
The problem is you have an ego problem, you think you are lot smarter then you really are.
You also seem to have a nasty habit of accusing others of being dishonest.
May I suggest that next time you start throwing around words like 'dishonest'you best look in the mirror first.
Hate can make a man say anything.
As for Lincoln never being for a repeal of a tax,
Under these circumstances it remains with the General Assembly to determine, in their wisdom, whether any means can and shall be devised, to relieve the people from the payment of the two mill tax, (emphasis given), while at least, the collection of that tax is but a useless burthen upon them (Writings of Lincoln, v.2,p.209)
And what's your point now in flooding this thread with quotes from Mises institute articles? It still doesn't divert any attention away from the fact that your methodology of ranking tax hike sizes violates the Laffer Curve.