Posted on 02/18/2010 4:36:23 AM PST by radioone
Economists have given us all the usual diagnoses of what went wrong in a now bankrupt Greece — high taxes, tax cheating, too generous retirements, unsustainable entitlements, government corruption, and anemic demography.
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
You forgot the third element in the trifecta of evil. The 17th Amendment, which permitted the direct election of Senators, turning the states into beggars and created 100 princes in our domestic House of Lords!!
Hit the streets - because all of these entitlement recipients think government is the wealth creator.
Refusal to continue paying out at current levels, therefore, would only happen because Republicans are being "mean-spirited".
Ping
Same as it's been from the first. He's long on generalities and short on specifics. That litany of things he knows will not happen all at once is of no use. Anyone can and does 'imagine' what a responsible politician would do. That does not spur new economic activity and generate more income for citizens and revenue for governments.
Where are his solutions to this:
So for a while longer, we need the miner, the oil pumper, the farmer, the fabricator, the carpenter, the road-builder, the railroad guy, the cement layer, the chemist, the computer engineer — and the system that allows them all to create wealth unimpeded by government and in an environment in which the citizen who benefits from their labor appreciates their industry.
"Unimpeded by government" can mean vastly different things to different people. The statement means nothing as used here.
And he puts no specifics on this:
We strangle Silicon Valley with all sorts of labor and business regulations until it fabricates and outsources abroad. In other words, we are creating no real new sources of concrete wealth as we nuance the shrinking capital we inherited.
What? Not enough H1Bs? Too many? Too many state required employee overheads? What regulations? What's he talking about?
General discussions of problems and little in the way of specific solutions and policy changes he'd like to see. Sounds like Ross Perot in 1992, but even shorter on real specifics.
Hopefully, the Republican party has learned something during the Obamacare debate: that corporations (especially transnationals) are not politically conservative. They are mostly amoral and out strictly for their bottom line, as the drug companies flocking to cut deals with Obama showed, after the GOP had protected their profits from the Dims for many years.
Republicans really need to reassess their relationships with big corporations. The transis will abandon the GOP in the blink of an eye if it helps their bottom line.
Yes, in effect, the Greeks are in trouble because of insufficient tax revenue.
While the Greek tax *rates* are high, the level of compliance with their tax system is laughable. Everyone in Greece brags about how they’ve gamed the tax system to not pay taxes.
They're in trouble because of over spending.
While the Greek tax *rates* are high, the level of compliance with their tax system is laughable.
I wonder if there is any correlation between the two?
Their level of spending is atrocious, true. Over 50% of their GDP is from government spending.
The reason why Greece is in trouble (and Italy, and Spain) is that the southern European nations have a long history of shiftless, lazy bums grifting off the public tit while dodging and cheating on their taxes. In Greece, 30% of their economy is “underground.”
Greece has defaulted on their public debts for 105 years out of the last 200. This isn’t a new problem. It is a long-standing cultural one. They’re a nation of grifters, tax cheats and union hacks.
That litany of things he knows will not happen all at once is of no use.
"All at once" is your criterion, maybe you should use it.
"Unimpeded by government" can mean vastly different things to different people.
You have no choice but to say it, you think our corporate tax rate isn't high enough, and that lowering it did not spur growth.
What? Not enough H1Bs? Too many? Too many state required employee overheads? What regulations? What's he talking about?
Seeing that this is a conservative website, you have a minimum level of understanding of economic cost. You appear to believe that costs are merely things to be funded.
Lol, here we have the weakest, lamest tactics used on FR by one of the weakest, lamest debaters. So, you propose to tell me what I really think? Did you get that information from the Psychic Hot Line? Sorry, I don't think corporate taxes should be raised. I do think there is a point of diminishing returns where lowering them further will not spur more economic activity or more revenue to the government. Not sure where that rate is, but some who think lowering taxes is the answer to all problems begin to sound like the libs who say spending more and more on education is the solution to all problems.
And, yes, VDH is very long on generalities and short on specific solutions.
Seeing that this is a conservative website, you have a minimum level of understanding of economic cost. You appear to believe that costs are merely things to be funded.
A pathetic dodge to very specific and relevant questions. And stop your amateurish tactic of trying to tell me what I actually think. I'd put my background in knowing how costs are actually met up against anyone posting here.
Absolutely this is what is going on with the taxation shift from corporations to the US middle class. In the post WW2 era, 1950s and 1960s, our corporations were so world dominant. They dominated in America, we would never have allowed Japanese to come here and set up automobile factories. Our corporations were so strong they probably would have done well at 65% taxation. In a way that era was an aberration. There were always genetically hi-IQ and industrious Japanese, Germans , Korean who would eventually recover from WW2 and become industrial threats.
Plus we allowed them to steal industries from us via their protectionism in order that they get stronger thus more able to help us contain USSR and Chinese communism during the cold war
Just a partial list: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index:
Just a partial list. Much more at the link: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index
Ping !
Let me know if you want in or out. Links:
FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index NRO archive: http://author.nationalreview.com/?q=MjI1MQ== Pajamasmedia: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/ His website: http://victorhanson.com/
That's great, so get started.
The main thing that's heard these days is to reduce the corporate tax rate to make domestic companies more competitive. But that rate went from 52% to 35% during the decades when domestic corporations were becoming much less competitive.What's your measure of "less competitive?" Fewer corporations in the U.S. than a few decades ago? Lower GDP than a few decades ago? Lower corporate GDP than a few decades ago? Some other measure?
U.S. corporations pay either the highest, or the second highest corporate income tax in the world (depending on how it's measured). U.S. corporations are practically the only corporations in the industrialized world that pay corporate income taxes on their world-wide income.
I'll gladly explain to anyone who asks how that encourages U.S. companies to off-shore their operations. In other words, I'll explain how it makes U.S. corporations less competitive. I cannot explain it to you because you're retarded.
bump
And despite all the cheating, the CIA World Factbook estimates their tax revenue was $109 billion last year for GDP of $339 billion. A bit over 32%. Doesn't sound like they're suffering from a lack of tax revenue.
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