Posted on 09/25/2010 9:48:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The 2008 income tax data are now in, so we can assess the fulfillment of the Republican promise that tax cuts would produce widespread prosperity by looking at all the years of the George W. Bush presidency.
Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running this year on an economic platform of tax cuts, especially making the tax cuts permanent for the richest among us. So how did the tax cuts work out? My analysis of the new data, with all figures in 2008 dollars:
Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.
That much additional income would have more than made up for the lack of demand that keeps us mired in the Great Recession. That would mean no need for a stimulus, although it would not have affected the last administration's interfering with market capitalism by bailing out irresponsible Wall Streeters instead of letting the market determine their fortunes.
In only two years was total income up, but even when those years are combined they exceed the declines in only one of the other six years.
Even if we limit the analysis by starting in 2003, when the dividend and capital gains tax cuts began, through the peak year of 2007, the result is still less income than at the 2000 level. Total income was down $951 billion during those four years.
Average incomes fell. Average taxpayer income was down $3,512, or 5.7 percent, in 2008 compared with 2000, President Bush's own benchmark year for his promises of prosperity through tax cuts.
Had incomes stayed at 2000 levels, the average taxpayer would have earned almost $21,000 more over those eight years. That's almost $50 per week.
(Excerpt) Read more at tax.com ...
They would have worked a lot better coupled with massive spending cuts and regulation rollbacks.
After-tax incomes, which is more important, were greater because of the tax cuts.
Government has a very specific set of tasks that it's authorized to do. If the federal government wasn't so massively in violation of the constitution there wouldn't be a need to bleed every citizen of every last drop possible.
This is a lacking and frankly bizarre analysis. Tax rates are but one of many factors that impact total income produced across the economy. Using one year 2000 as a base for evaluating the entire decade following is bizarre, especially considering that year saw the beginning of a down turn, dot com bubble layoffs. Looks to me like an author that worked hard to manipulate the facts to back a predetermined conclusion.
This is a false analysis. Our economy was entering a recession as the dot com bubble burst. We were also hit with the worst foreign attack on our soil ever. So the question is not what was the economy like, but what would it have been like WITHOUT the tax cuts.
They are unrelated.
Given the NASDAQ meltdown and the resulting stock market performance, capital gains tax receipts were much lower during the decade. It has very little to do with the lowering of tax rates.
Clinton’s deficit into surplus had everything to do with the markets dot com blowoff, and very little to do with raising tax rates.
Why does this guy ignore the effect of 9/11 and the 2 trillion dollar hit to the US economy?
If I recall correctly, the dot-bomb cost the economy $5 trillion while 9/11 cost another $2 trillion. Hard to make up for those numbers.
Just looked...the author is a flaming libtard....that explains the massaging of reality...
There should have been a barf alert.
There’s number-crunching and then there’s number-scrambling. This would seem to be the latter, even to an economic dunce such as I.
...another distinguished graduate of The Paul Krugman Nobel Peace Prize School of Economics...
David Cay Johnston is a former tax policy reporter for the New York Times.
Nuff said.
Sack-o-crap analysis from sack-o-crap lefty...
It's ALWAYS the tax cuts and NEVER the outrageous and inefficient spending that's the problem. Always.
Pets.com at 900. I rest my case.
Let’s face it...libtards can no more understand economics than a baboon can grasp quantum mechanics.
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