Posted on 01/02/2012 12:53:40 PM PST by Beave Meister
Of particular interest is the “Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982,” the largest of Reagan’s tax increases, and generally considered the largest tax increase — as a percentage of the economy — in modern American history. In fact, between 1982 and 1984, Reagan raised taxes four times, and as Bruce Bartlett has explained more than once, Reagan raised taxes 12 times during his eight years in office.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonmonthly.com ...
Thanks Beave Meister. About the author:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-benen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Benen
He did take the top rate from 70% to 30% and gave an across the board 30% tax cut for all income taxpayers. Also, he had the longest peace time economic recovery in American history.
And he did it eighteen months. Obama has been in office three years and the unemployment rate is?
I remember it very well. My taxes went down, the only time in my life that they REALLY went down, and made it significantly easier to pay my bills.
Second best, actually, was the Bush tax cut. My taxes didn’t go down all that much, but they did actually go down a little, which is more than you can say about almost all the other supposed “tax cuts” that politicians have boasted about over the years.
Most of them seemed to apply to somebody else, but never to me—an ordinary working guy with an ordinary household and children.
Employment was 31% higher under George Bush.
This is why folks aren't paying off student loans as fast as they imagine they should.
When you have 20% of your prime working age population UNEMPLOYED and even more UNDEREMPLOYED there's a chance somebody will sell a lot of special arm bands, guns and ammo!
Even ??? wikipedia has something resembling the actual story behind TEFRA.
Typical establishment Congress garbage that Reagan signed on a promise from Congress to find spending cuts “later”.
A good Presidential strategy is to veto every spending bill that Congress comes up with on it’s own and instead draft your own bills and send them over, knocking their heads together until they pass them.
Only when Congress realizes they have a “crazy” person in the WH that will wind up with them accomplishing nothing for 4 years will they come around and start passing real cuts.
If they’re doing their job, the President is not only taking on Congress, really, they’re taking on the entire political establishment.
As in everything, one must lead, follow or get out of the way.
Look a full coordinated frontal assault like this against all conservatives up to the election.
Reagan never raised individual federal income taxes and actually lowered the individual federal income tax rates. (Correct me if I’m wrong?). Cantor should hoave pointed that out.
The comments are sick. Bunch of leftist lemmings gathering in their unthinking echo chamber.
The correct truths are that tax increases are harmful to the economy because they reduce the relative demand for and production of capital goods and/or degree of capital intensiveness; and they reduce the productivity of capital goods; and they reduce the demand for labor. These truths are discovered and validated by a process of deductive reason from elementary principles.
The fact that the economy soared after raising taxes,does not falsify these truths, and it means that there were other factors involved at the time that were able to overcome the harmful effect of raising taxes.
Perhaps Reagan and his advisers believed that during a overheated economy it was safe to raise taxes, or that raising taxes would prevent an economy from overheating.
The Dems love to talk about Ronald Reagan’s tax increases, but they’re strangely silent on the spending cuts that were supposed to be the corollary to that tax increase. Reagan only agreed to the tax hikes because the Dems in Congress said that they would cut spending. The Dems lied, so that even though by the end of the 80s, the revenue to the Fed. Govt had increased tremendously, helped along by the tax cuts he also managed to get through Congress, the Dems just kept on spending, and adding on to entitlement programs, helping creating the problems we have today.
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