Guns and Butter
This chart always amazes me--particularly reflecting on the outrage during the Bush years about the paltry spending on social programs. One of the reasons Bush had so much tax money to direct to two wars and all sorts of little social wars at home was his tax cuts. It's unfortunate that he didn't decrease government spending, but like the rest of us, it's easy to spend when the wallet is fat. Obama is doing just the opposite, and business investment has been dropping and unemployment rising since the summer of 2008 when he became the heir and parent. Capitalists aren't stupid--they can go elsewhere to invest. He's raising taxes and creating more social wars at home as well as increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. But instead of corraling terrorists, he plans to loose and lose them in Europe and America--and why not--they certainly aren't wanted back home where they are tainted!
This chart always amazes me--particularly reflecting on the outrage during the Bush years about the paltry spending on social programs. One of the reasons Bush had so much tax money to direct to two wars and all sorts of little social wars at home was his tax cuts. It's unfortunate that he didn't decrease government spending, but like the rest of us, it's easy to spend when the wallet is fat. Obama is doing just the opposite, and business investment has been dropping and unemployment rising since the summer of 2008 when he became the heir and parent. Capitalists aren't stupid--they can go elsewhere to invest. He's raising taxes and creating more social wars at home as well as increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. But instead of corraling terrorists, he plans to loose and lose them in Europe and America--and why not--they certainly aren't wanted back home where they are tainted!
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10 comments:
It's easy to spend when the wallet
is fat?????
Spit out the kool aid and use your head for a minute.
Didn't we run a deficit every year that Bush was president?
Didn't Bush cut taxes during war time for the first time in our history, creating the deficits that would make Reagan shudder and become the largest since WWII?
Didn't Bush double the national debt in 8 years?
I don't know what accounts for a fat wallet in your household, but where I live, we don't buy a sports car when the credit card's maxed out.
Fat wallet indeed!
I know it sounds counter intuitive for liberal Bush haters, but by cutting taxes, he actually increased the amount going to the federal gov't--people invested more, there were more jobs, workers paid more taxes, etc., etc. Obama's method, which is to punish investment, actually decreases the over all amount paid to the gov't, although various segments (the hated rich class) may pay more. Bush's mistake was NOT cutting gov't spending when he had all that tax money to burn. Obama's mistake is raising taxes to punish the successful and wildly increasing spending. Is there something about the chart that isn't clear?
Rather than parroting stale, patently disproven Limbaugh talking points, do a quick google search on tax cuts vs spending and you'll get gems like this from McCain's economic advisor Mark Zandi:
For every dollar invested you get the following put back into the economy:
Perm tax cuts: 38-48 cents
Temp tax cuts: 1.29
General aid to state govt 1.36
Infrastructure 1.59
Extending UI benefits: 1.64
Temp inc in food stamps 1.73
This is not a "liberal media" lie. This is simple fact with numbers directionally agreed upon by nearly all economists.
Your boy dubya was a disaster for the economy. But go ahead and continue to avoid facts and make ridiculous arguments about the fat wallet. Just understand that you run the risk of looking like a foolish ditto-head to rational people when you do so.
OMB is a ditto head? Wow. You are really messed up. Look up the tax revenues. That's why he was able to spend so much--and much of it unwisely, but he looks like a piker compared to Obama.
"Nearly all of the conventional wisdom about the Bush tax cuts is wrong. In reality: The tax cuts have not substantially reduced current tax revenues, which were in fact not far from the 2000 pre–tax cut baseline and over the 2003 pre–tax cut baseline in 2006; The increased child tax credit, 10 percent tax bracket, and fix of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) reduced tax revenues much more than most of the "tax cuts for the rich"; Economic growth rates have more than doubled since the 2003 tax cuts; and The tax cuts shifted even more of the income tax burden toward the rich.
Setting optimal tax policy requires governing with facts rather than popular mythology, which is why it is important to set the record straight by debunking 10 myths about the Bush tax cuts."
See Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/bg2001.cfm
Wow, you're all over the map here, aren't you? First you say that the tax cuts grew the economy and now you backpedal to say that they didn't hurt it too much. Well, I guess since the wallet was so fat, it was OK, huh?
You have no rebuttal to the fact that tax cuts are the LEAST efficient way to grow the economy, and that Bush doubled the national debt in just 8 short years with nothing to show for it but two wars and the worst economic disaster since the great depression.
A proud track record indeed. And despite all this--despite the fact that marginal tax rates are the lowest they have been in GENERATIONS, the right remains obsessed with tax cuts as the way to get us out of the problems that they caused in the first place.
Have fun wandering in the political desert. By all indications, you're going to be there for a long while.
Well, you don't get it. Tax cuts bring in more money. The deficit increased because Bush spent that new "income". The general economy didn't improve because he spent more than the more he took in. Got it? Good. Now go back to your own job. The boss is watching. I'm busy here and can't keep doing Econ 101 for you.
Don't chase away your critics. Let her go argue with Thomas Sowell.
"Out of $355 billion newly appropriated, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that only $26 billion will be spent this fiscal year and only $110 billion by the end of 2010. Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire.
If you cut taxes tomorrow, people would have more money in their next paycheck, and it would probably be spent by the time they got that paycheck, through increased credit card purchases beforehand. If all this sound and fury in Washington was about getting an economic crisis behind us, tax cuts could do that a lot faster."
Lol! So Limbaugh has conditioned you to readily admit that republicans have become the party of reckless free spenders but you're still not ready to let go of the myth that tax cuts grow the economy.
They say that admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery and you're halfway there.
Only 11 1/2 steps to go!
If you listened to Limbaugh as much as you claim, you'd be a lot smarter. As it is, your Media Matters filter is leaving a lot of holes in your information.
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