Warren Buffett says we should increase tax on the super-rich. What would make him come out and say this now?
How common is it for someone like Buffett to go against his own interests? I am not aware of how dire our situation is involving the economy.
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52 Answers
Because he is smart and it would be in his best interest to ask this as a higher tax rate would help solve our deficit crisis, which would stimulate the economy which would make him lots of more money he could pay more taxes on.
Warren Buffett has always been a progressive thinker. Most of his fortune is willed to charities. People should not stereotype the rich as always being conservative and greedy.
Did you read the article? He paid less than 18 percent in taxes. That’s less than most working families. Because of the tax code. It’s a joke.
@Blackberry His income is almost all taxed at the capital gains rates, where the average working family is taxed at the ordinary income rates, plus they pay social security on all their income.
Buffett knows a stable society is in everybody’s interest. Conservatives are striving for more inequality and a lower standard of living for most people. And they’ve succeeded, with average wages stagnated for decades. Tax rates for the wealthy are at their lowest rates for decades and their share of the national wealth has soared.
Conservatives have been telling us for thirty years that would create jobs and boost the economy.
The past decade overwhelmingly proves them wrong.
Buffett has long spoken like this
From 2007 “The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.” link
Why say this now? He did say it last year already. But he is just one of the special kind of wealthy Americans. They can sleep if they gave Uncle Sam billions of their hard earned dollars. I have a friend who is 91 and only has 2 million dollars. That’s nothing compared to Buffett but he believes in paying taxes as a patriotic duty. He remembers a time when the tax rate was at 93%! I haven’t researched on that yet. But, wow.
Im not a millionaire but I do understand why rich people hate taxes. If you make a million now, chances are you give 350T to Uncle Sam. Now make that 10 million in earnings.
It’s human nature. You worked hard for something, you deserve to keep a lot of it. And what if you also feel that taxes are going to welfare of undeserving people? You are going to fight tooth and nail, right? Vote for anti-tax political candidates.
But it takes a special kind of human being to let go of that huge amount of money. It takes a really big heart. And you also need to be less judgmental of other people whom you think you are feeding and providing shelter with your tax money. I think Buffett isn’t bug down by details and looking at the big picture. And his love goes more to his idea of what America is all about not what he is all about.
I hope the rich aren’t so stupid as to want working folks to make less money or be unemployed. They make less money that way. Sure, they pay lower wages and save there, but they don’t sell nearly as much because no one can afford to buy anything.
We are all better off if we all make more money. If we make more, we spend more, and the economy grows, and we make even more.
Really rich people won’t even notice if they are taxed more. What happens at a certain level of wealth is that it no longer affects how you live. You could give away 90% of your money, and you wouldn’t notice the difference. I don’t know how much Bill Gates gave to set up his foundation, but I think it was a significant portion of his net worth.
The thing is, that after a certain point, you aren’t in it for the money; you’re in it for the status. He who dies with the most wins. They are all competing to be worth the most. But they could keep track of wealth using pennies and give all the dollars to the benefit of society.
If they do think people are lazy and don’t deserve support, they should spend some time living with a single-parent family in poverty. People don’t want to stay in poverty. No one stays there by choice.
He could always pay more if he is so concerned.
@Cruiser you know as well as anyone that more taxes will not mean that the debt will go down, especially since the government will not cut spending.
the tax rate was at 93%
The top bracket peaked at 92% in 1952 And nobody had an overall rate anywhere near that.
Simplified explanation of how US Federal tax brackets work.
Two tax brackets
10% up to $10,000
20% over $10,000
1)
If you make $10,000, you pay $1,000 (10% X $10,000)
Overall rate = 10%
2)
If you make $11,000, you pay $1,200 (10% X $10,000 plus 20% X $1,000)
Overall rate = 11%
3)
If you make $20,000, you pay $3,000 (10% X $10,000 plus 20% X $10,000)
Overall rate = 15%
He is attempting to move the Republicans off their impossible stance regarding not getting anymore revenue from the wealthy (among whom they live and work).
He has always said this. Why don’t you believe how much he pays in taxes? Here is an article supporting it with data from the IRS, quick read, very interesting.
Also, important to remember he is looking ay actual tax rates on adjusted gross income, not the numbers thrown around in the media.
@JLeslie It’s an idiom expressing surprise, not a literal lack of belief.
@JLeslie I’ve never followed Buffet before, so this was new news to me.
@Blackberry Oh. If you go back you can find many interviews with him saying such a thing. During the Obama McCain run he was fairly outspoken. Bill Gates also wants higher taxes. Gates’ father proposed a bill to either create or increase state income taxes in Washington state if I remember correctly during the last voting cycle.
An interview back in 2007 with many related interviews on the same page.
Neither Buffett nor Gates would even feel it if their effective tax rate doubled!
@CaptainHarley I don’t think either is suggesting double necessarily. There are a whole bunch of people in America who would barely feel it if their taxes went up 5%. They may not be thrilled to pay out the money, but they can afford it. Just a little less going into personal savings, it doesn’t affect their buying power.
Just an interesting observation about Buffet’s recommendation. He talks about top earner’s strategy to reduce thier taxes. In that he mentions things like ‘Carried Interest’ and ‘Futures Trading’ That allows those people to effectively move their income from normal rates (35%) to long term Capital (15%) rates. Yet his recommendation is to increase the top tax rates rather than address these investment strategies. If we accept his recommendation, very little will change in his world but taxes for those earning a paycheck will go up (probably his secretary will pay more). Even if the capital gains rate goes up his tax rate will still be well below that of any person earning a paycheck no matter how big it is.
Very few of us even know what ‘Carried Interest’ is let alone use the tax break. Same with ‘Futures Trading’. It is not for the feint at heart and primarily a tool for the uber wealthy. So why would he define the problem so well and then propose a solution that would not affect himself in any appreciable way? But it would affect many others that don’t have the same manipulative ability. Curious.
@Jaxk Read it and got the impression aside from wanting taxes raised on him he also wants those smart money uber wealthy investors to lose their low tax rates, a group which also includes him. I think it’s very clear what he wants, increase tax rates for the rich no matter how they make their money. We may not understand terms like carried interest or ever had the chance to dabble in futures trading but there is nothing complicated with giving up or refusing to give up part of your money as tax.
@mazingerz88
Nothing complicated about saying that. What gets complicated is his solution to it. If we were to eliminate the loophole for those categories he points out (which include him) we would gain much more than the lousy 5% increase on capital gains and would not affect the average investor such as you or me. The rate change for capital gains however effects most of us to a lessor degree. I would have much more sympathy for changing the loophole than I do for changing the rate.
Since the Reagan Revolution, we have switrched our tax code from one that was perhaps at times TOO progressive to one that is regressive. Over the past 30 years, the income and wealth gap between the richest Americans and all the rest of us has been steadily growing wider. The wealthiest 400 families now own as much financial wealth as the bottom 50% of Americans combined. Their share is steadily growing at a rapid rate, while the bottom 60% have actually lost income in real, inflation adjusted dollars, over the past 30 years.
The right is Hell bent to destroy all unions with catchy slogans like “Right to work…” They conveniently neglect to mention that the rest of that phrase is “for third-world wages.” Unions helped us build the world’s first true middle calss. They fought for workplace safety laws, weekends off, paid holidays and a living wage for a full day’;s work. Sure there are things wrong with them today, and they need to be fixed. But killing them all is just another nail in the coffin lid of our middle class.
Our middle class is shrinking because of regressive taxation and brutal competition from thrid-world countries where people do work for subsistence wages and sometimes as outright slaves. We have a choice to make. We can put everybody to work by emulating the thrird world, and thus join them, or we can use American ingenuity to figure out how to win in the global economy as stay the world’s leading democracy.
Warren Buffet sees that we are on a track to eventually become a banana republic, and he doesn’t want that for his country, even if he and his family would be one of the ruling plutocrats.
@ETpro
Good spin. Democrats want to raise taxes so that they can spend more. OK. They tend to spend the money creating government jobs in hopes that will expand the economy. It hasn’t worked but it certainly boosted the deficit. If you hire a government worker for $100K/yr that will cost the taxpayer $150K (I low-balling). That worker will pay about 10K in taxes. In order to gain enough revenue to pay for that guy the private sector must create14 jobs at $100K. The numbers just don’t work. That’s why it’s not happening.
As for Buffet, he’s telling us that he pays less in taxes than anyone in his office. He’s not suggesting that he pay the same taxes as everyone else, he’s suggesting that we raise the rates for his executives by 5% and if we do, we can raise his rate by 5% as well. That not fixing the problem, the next year he’ll still be paying less than everyone else. And you’re cheering that. Why is he not suggesting that we raise his rate to match the rate everyone else is paying? Get him up to the 35% and then talk about raising it to 40% or higher. Until he does that he’s just a hypocrite.
As for the Unions, when the beast has rabies, you have to put it down.
@ETpro A lot of the factory jobs that have “left” have gone to right-to-work states, like Texas for example.
I really hope Ohio voters keep Senate Bill 5 intact.
@Jaxk Good spin. The National Debt curve over the past 30 years clearly shows that’s a total lie. The debt has skyrocketed under every single Republican administration and only gone down as a percentage of GDP under Democrats. Republican Big Lie #1 is we;re the party of fiscal responsibility.
We need to balance our budget. If we do it solely by cutting government spending when consumers can’t sepnd and therefore business won’t spend, we will push the economy from slow recovery from a deep recession Repulicans caused into full-blown depression. If we try to do it by raising taxes sky hogh, we will produce the same disastrous result. We need to do it with a balance of spending reduction where spending doesn’t boost the GDP, redirection of what spending we do into things that promote logn term growth of the economy (fixing crumbling roads and bridges, building new ones where needed, building a smart grid for the electrical net, setting up nationwide broadband), and finally we need to raise revenues to be able to do those things.
The big canard in the phony debt crisis is that every approach suggested can’t be done because ti only yields an improvement of $100 billion or $200 billion or whatever the number, and the deficit is much larger than that. There simply is no single pill solution to what we face. We can only fix it by attacking it from all sides. We must admit that each little step counts or we will just go on squabbling over finding the solution while the current huge deficits keep piling weight onto the national debt until the phony debt crisis of 2011 becomes a very real debt crisis like Greece is facing today.
The root problem is much the same in Greece. Political divisiveness prevents them from ever doing anything rational to actually resolve the problems they face. I am a patriot. I don’t want America turned into Greece to line Wall Street billionaire’s pockets, and I don’t want it to become a banana republic. If we don’t reverse the course the supply siders put us on, we are soon going to come face to face with both those ugly realities.
@ETpro
You are getting under my skin. If that’s the intent it is succeeding. You think that if you throw out “LIAR” it will somehow make your post sound intelligent. It doesn’t. Then you try to back it up with some Jackass Blogger that spins a tale an idiot could see through.
You’ve only been able to elect one president in that time frame. Between Newt Gingrich and Clinton they reduced the rate of spending growth from 8%/yr to 3%/yr. They did it during the Internet revolution where the growth was beyond anything we seen since the fifties. The Internet Revolution was not Clinton’s doing nor did Al Gore invent the Internet. The expansion was so great that even Carter could have done well. It was the spending reduction and the Internet that balanced the budget despite what that moron on YouTube says.
The debt crisis is not phony it is real. We have time to avoid the Greece example but not if we stick our head in the sand and say it’s not real. And please don’t post another idiot on YouTube to tell me it’s not real.
The only way out of this is to grow the economy. Raising taxes rates won’t do that. I know you love spending but we don’t have any money. You’ve spent it all. The easy way out would be to open up drilling but I also know you guys hate that as well. This administration is reduced to a one trick pony. Raise taxes, otherwise they have no ideas. Anyone that disagrees with raising taxes must be, Let me guess…... Irrational?
Sorry about the tone. You set me off with the “Lie” comment and I usually react poorly to it. If you want a rational discussion, that’s what I like best. If however, you want a name calling contest, I can do that as well.
@Jaxk I wish I could give you more GAs for that one.
@Jaxk You ad hominems won’t kill me or the truth posted in that video I linked to above. All the facts he refers to are accurate, and verifiable on US Government websites if you want to try disproving the curve shown. The post came not from “some Jackass Blogger” but from a credible site called Zfacts.com. The source of the video is here and I simply didn’t post that link because it requires you to scroll down near the bottom of the page. But the page presents chart after chart with references to where the source data may be verified.
The economy definitely did help Clinton reduce the debt, but you conveniently leave out the fact that he raised revenues by increasing taxes, particularly on the top bracket. Republican lore is that revenue increases are only possible by cutting taxes. So that inconvenient truth gets replaced by Newt Gingrich leading the charge to reduce spending that Republicans somehow never got around to doing during Reagan or George H. W. Bush’s presidency. Nor did they do so when they had complete control of government under George W. Bush. He slashed taxes and raised spending, and he benefited from 7 years of a wildly inflating real-estate bubble but still added the fewest jobs of any president since the Great Depression hit Hoover. And the 3 decades of Republican deregulation came home to roost when the real estate bubble burst in 2007. The $130 trillion per year in derivative debt packaged up and marketed by the banksters lined a few pockets on Wall Street and left most Americans in financial jeopardy for the first time in their lives. 8.8 million Americans lost their jobs in the recession of 2007–2009. More than 2.3 million Americans lost their homes and most of their life’s savings between 2007 and 2010..
No, we are not in a debt crisis yet. The debt has been higher and we paid it down. But we didn’t do it then by slashing taxes, deregulating everything and letting jobs create themselves. That won’t work this time either. We have a far more challenging situation facing us today than we did at the end of WWII. It’s going to take more than just standing back and letting the private sector do what it sadly has not done throughout 3 decades of voodoo economics to get us out of the jam we are in today.
And the very first step in getting out of the hole is to realize how we dug ourselves into it in the first place and QUIT DIGGING!
@ETpro Bush also left us with a AAA rating.
@cletrans2col And created all the causes it got downgraded by S&P. Is your point that if I foul something up royally then hand it off to someone else, it;s their fault it got fouled up?
@ETpro
I’ve been through your numbers so many times I’m weary of it. They carve out end points to r measure from peaks to troughs or vise versa, whatever it takes to distort the numbers. I’m too tired to do it again. You love you fewest jobs number yet never include Obama’s number, we both know why. Just like you never include the Obama debt numbers. Bush added $5 trillion to the debt in 8 years, Obama did the same in 3 years. You want to criticize spending under Reagan and Bush and then turn around say spending is our salvation under Obama. Now you want to blame the drop in our credit rating on Bush. He’s been out of office for 2½ years.
Yes our debt was higher but not by much:. The difference we won’t have a war torn world to rebuild. And the debt is escalating at a rate we can not sustain. The spending has got to stop!
I will agree with your last point: “And the very first step in getting out of the hole is to realize how we dug ourselves into it in the first place and QUIT DIGGING!”. That means STOP SPENDING.
@Jaxk I keep reading and hearing from Republicans the spending has got to stop. I did not study Ryan’s proposal but I think I heard that even some of his colleagues did not want it. I maybe wrong. Somehow it seems to me that the Democrat’s way is too balance the solutions between spending and raising taxes and then keep their fingers crossed that it will work. The economy is too complicated for me to predict its forward results so I am banking on their good intentions. The Republican’s way is cutting spending w/o raising any taxes. If they have their way, can you share your outlook as to what will happen to the traditional beneficiaries that will be affected by the cuts and its impact on the whole country? Is it even really doable politically? Because the Republican’s say it but does not elaborate on and address the concern of those who are opposed.
The Democrats point blank say they want to “hurt” the rich and not the poor. The Republicans cannot even say they want the poor to participate in solving this problem. They just say no tax hikes, stop spending. I guess there comes a time that even in politics where posturings and vagueness is norm, someone should speak crystal clear.
@mazingerz88
There are so many things we could do to resolve the problem, it’s hard to know where to start. The first thing we need to do is understand what is happening. Everyone talks about the ‘Baseline’. That is what everyone uses to forecast our debt. The baseline grows about 8% year over year for the next decade. Even the Ryan plan does not eliminate the growth of spending but only slows it. When you look at any of the plans to get our budget back on track, they don’t cut spending but rather slow the growth.
The other piece of this, is the economic growth. Without growth, no plan will work. The trick here is to inject money into the economy without increasing the deficit. We know private business has the money, they have trillions sitting on the sidelines or overseas. If we can get them to spend some of that, we will grow the economy without growing the debt. Government spending injects money into the economy but raises the deficit. Raising taxes takes money out of the economy but reduces the deficit. Neither strategy is appropriate for the situation we find ourselves in.
There is A GAO (Government Accountability Office) report that shows $100—$200 Billion in savings annually without cutting a single program. Things like this should receive immediate attention. There really are ways to reduce spending and increase revenues without draconian cuts nor tax increases. We’ll just never find them by calling each other names. I want major tax reform so bad I can taste it. Now is not the right time for it. Let’s get out of the ditch and then try to fix all evil in the world today.
@Jaxk There seems to be a hindrance here and traditional way of doing politics seem to contribute. What should be generally an emergence of pragmatic solution based on common sense is bogged down in what looks like a bad reality tv show starring politicians with media talking heads in the supporting role.
@mazingerz88
Yes, a bad reality TV show is a good analogy. The upcoming election will only make it worse. If you are trying to win a race, there are two strategies you can use. Speed up or slow down your opponent. Everyone seems to be focusing on the latter.
@JLeslie What the hell is going on? Maybe the world will end in 2012…..
@JLeslie
How magnanimous of him. He’s willing to have his rate go to 25% while everyone else in the top bracket is paying 35%. Still that’s better than Buffet that wants his to go to 20%.
@Jaxk Seriously? That is what you have to say about it? I have always been interested in reading your opinions, but that comment is just annoying. You know he is talking about the 17% so many in his tax bracket actually pay. Bracket is bullshit and you know it. What, are you hoping to sway some jelly with your twists and spin? Some Jelly who can’t do math, doesn’t understand the difference between taxes on adjusted gross income and a tax bracket? Does not bother to read a full article on the topic? Must make people like you so very happy to have to many ignorant followers on your side. I don’t think you are ignorant, by the way, I am not calling you that, and not saying it about the entire Republican party, so don’t even try to go there. And, of course there are ignorant people on the left, but it certainly does not make me happy. Sorry you are catching my rant, but fluther has just been so annoying for me today. I think of this as the one place to have honest debate, and today I feel like there is all sorts of passive aggressive manipulative things going on, including your last statement.
@Blackberry He has always been strong on balancing the budget, not being indebted to other countries, not being in bed with Saudi, not being controlled by OPEC, etc. I don’t find this out ofncharacter for him, as I know Trump for the last three years plus watching him on Larry King, Morning Joe, and other shoes. On the other Q it was pointed out Trump is a media hound, which I do agree with, and the bullshit about the birthers lost him some credit with me for sure, also pointed out on the other Q.
@Blackberry I don’t mean you should know already because it was said on the other Q, just that I did not come up with those things, other people on the Q did, and I wanted to give them credit,
@JLeslie
First let me say that I don’t try to manipulate anything. I say what I think. I read Trumps statement as tacit agreement (at least for him personally) with Buffet’s point. That point was to raise taxes on the wealthy and even raise taxes again on the wealthier. Maybe Trump wasn’t really agreeing with the whole point, I don’t know, he didn’t say. I’ll give him credit for stating why he didn’t think it would work for some of his cronies, but I didn’t comment on that part.
What I am saying is that it is disingenuous to say those that are paying a higher rate and earning less (those Obama considers wealthy but not in the top 400) should pay more while insuring that you still pay half what they do. I find that lacking.
And Trump saying he’d also be willing to pay half as much is lacking as well.
The truth is I don’t agree with raising the capital gains rate at all. But I wouldn’t mind getting rid of some of the tricks they use to pay capital gains rates on income that is not long term capital gains. You don’t need to monkey around with tax rates to do that.
@Jaxk That 17% is about Capital Gains rates and loopholes and write-offs. I don’t think Trump said raise the tax bracket rate? Maybe I am mistaken? The tea party and generally the right wing don’t want to raise anyone’s taxes, not even the top 400. And when I say raise I mean so in the end they pay more, however it is done, so they are not paying a lower percentage in the end than so many people who earn less. Obama in the speech I saw during the whole debt ceiling fiasco, he talked about getting rid of write off and loopholes not raising the bracket. If you want to just do everyone earning over $10million I will take it as a start. If you want the wealthy to not have tp pay more I am willing to raise taxes on practically everyone; down to $100k. I think Obama should have let all the Bush tax cuts expire, and start fresh. The people suffering the most right now are those without a job, they don’t pay taxes.
@JLeslie
As I stated above, Trump did not say whether he agreed with raising the income tax brackets or not. The fact that he didn’t disagree I took as tacit agreement. And that may not be true.
If you were listening to the debt ceiling debate, there was a point where Beohner was willing to provide revenue enhancements. Specifically broadening the tax base. That means closing loopholes. Obama said no that the $800 billion was not enough and he wanted $120 billion. The difference is $800 billion could be raised by closing loopholes but $120 billion required raising rates. Beohner would not raise rates and Obama would not address the tax code without rate hikes. That was the stalemate.
The tea parties are against raising anyone’s rate to fund more spending. That is the main point. I have never heard a speech from Obama that did not include additional spending. And I’ve heard a lot of his speeches. Listen to him and when he says investment, that means more spending.
If you want the economy to drop into a real depression, raise taxes on everyone. That should pretty much do it. Even the Democrats don’t want that, which is why they are focusing on the top 2%. They think they can get the top guys without hurting the economy. They’re wrong but that’s what they think.
@Jaxk I actually really don’t care what Obama says actually. I know I brought him up, but that is my mistake. Right now I am just interested in the collectives opinion. I am all for cutting spending by eliminating waste, redundancy, and programs that are truly stupid. I am not willing to ge rid of medicare or social security, and I want socialized medicine; and Obama did not get close to what I want regarding healthcare. I think the medical system is a complete farce.
I am really tired of hearing people saying we can’t raise taxes on the rich (whether the raise is from increasing the bracket or closing loopholes. So I am not saying I am tired of you specifically, I mean people where I live and on facebook who make less than $100k a year, have probably never paid at the capital gains rate, and think they know what they are talking about when they say if we tax wealthy people more they will spend less. I am not wealthy, but we do ok, if you taxed me 8% more, which is what Trump was saying, I would not spend less. If you cut my taxes 8% I would not spend more most likely. And, I am not even up at that $250k mark. For sure the the guy making half the income my husband and I do would spend incrementally more than me.
@JLeslie
I’m with you on everything except socialized medicine. Although I will admit single payer would be better than what we got. And as an added bonus, it would be constitutional.
That aside, everything we do with taxes (both capital gains and income), regulation, government spending, etc. is a trade off. You get some benefit by increasing and you lose something the other way. We are continually searching for the sweetspot. If we raise taxes, it will hurt the economy. The question is how much, barely noticeable or a killer. Anyone that says they know how much, is guessing (myself included). There is however some knowledgeable guessing going on.
In a report from the CBO on capital gains:
“In general, there is significant consensus that broad-based
reductions in taxes on capital have the potential to boost
economic growth over the long run. Reductions in capital
taxation increase the return on investment and therefore the
formation of capital. The resulting increase in the capital
stock yields greater output and higher incomes throughout
much of the economy.”
and
“the availability of resources would also depend on how the government
financed any loss in revenue resulting from a tax
cut. If the loss was offset by reduced spending, the outcome
would be increased economic growth. If it was not offset,
the cut’s overall impact on the economy might be negative”
The trick here is not whether you would actually spend more of your money (some would some may not), but rather that you would do something with that money. Whether it is savings or stock market or property, the economy benefits from all that. I am not advocating a tax cut, either income or capital gains but I am concerned that a rate hike will slow our delicate growth (I’m being generous). Closing loopholes however affects a very small number of people (and companies) and only those that are already the most profitable. I have no problem with that. But I would not like to see that extra revenue used to fund more government spending. We simply can’t afford it.
@Jaxk You look at the curve of the Great Depression with the GDP utterly collapsing between 1929 and 1933, and then climbing from the winter of 1933, and you claim that Republicans handled the depression well and FDR made it last longer. You look at the debt to GDO dropping right up till Reagan, then going up like a skyrocket, and you claim it had nothing to do with Reagan’s policies. The charts don’t matter, because your ideology says that any graphs that fail to confirm deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy are simp[ly miunderstood, or happened for entirely different reasons even though we see the patter repeat again and again.
I will grant you we don’t face the dame world of 1946. And maybe the only solution to today’s global market chalenges is going to turn out to be the Republican one of turning the USA into a third world nation that can compete with the rest of the third world. Somehow, Germany and Norway haven’t had to do that. But what do stupid European socialists know? Maybe you are right. But I will not give up the American Dream without a fight. And I want that dream to apply to all Americans, just like it did when I was a kid. I don’t want to dismantle unions, deregulate business as much as possible, eliminate the minumum wage, the EPA, workplace safety stnadards and anything else that limits profits; and put everybody back to work that way.
I personally think we are smarter than that and we don’t have to do it. If you’re going to try to take me there without even try9ing to find another way, you’re going to have to drag me kicking and screaming and fighting all the way.
@ETpro
You obviously have no idea what happened during the Great Depression or you wouldn’t be pushing to do it again. The Great Depression, A Success Story? Where do you get this stuff?
But your question is a good one, “what do stupid European socialists know?” Hell if I thought Germany or Finland was such a utopia, I’d move there. Since I don’t I’ll just to to pick up the rubble left from the Obama disaster. And you can continue to talk about the Obama success story. Or does he have to get unemployment up to the mid teens and stay there for a decade to be considered a success?
We’ve already tried it your way. It didn’t work. neither in the 30s nor now. It’s hard to give much credence to your argument since our definition of success is so different. You seem to think the 5% unemployment under Bush was a total failure while the 9–15% unemployment under Obama and FDR is a resounding success. I want a government that plays little or no role in my daily life while you want a government that employs everybody. I want a government that won’t bankrupt us in 10 years while you seem to want to accelerate that schedule.
I see very little common ground.
@Jaxk Hoover first tried austerity. He thought it would restore coinfidence to the markets. The GDP shows that was an abject failure. FDR applied stimulus, only not enough. But at least he turned the GDP and jobs curve around. The only deviation was the recession within the depression, when Republicans convinced him to put the brakes on spending and unemployment rose rapidly again. What finally brought on sufficient stimulus was WWII spending. And yet your want to try what Hoover tried. No thinks. I know enough about what happened in the Great Depression to know your solutions are backwards.
We do have this common ground. I am just as against continued, eternal growth in spending and debt as you are. I don’t want the US bankrupt in 10 years either. I don’;t want that from a wrongheaded austerity program while we’re already teetering on a double-dip recession, or from unchecked spending after we recover. My point is we have to get the economy rolling before trimming spending and adjusting loopholes out of tax code. When consumers can’t spend and therefore businesses won’t spend, government’s the only one left that can/
@ETpro
Here’s the problem. First you don’t listen very well. I have never supported anything Hoover did during his term. You want to say I supported his policies but that’s simply build a straw man to try and make you argument more palatable. Hoover in fact raised the top tax rate from 25% to 63%, an action I would never support. Additionally he raised tariffs and other tax taxes in an effort to balance the budget. He only made it worse. You assertion of ‘austerity measures is like wise misguided. His austerity measures were primarily tax hikes and in fact he increased spending rather than decreased it. It is in fact you that’s wants to try the Hoover plan rather than me.
FDR continued with the Hoover tax rates and in fact raised them dramatically in ‘37. Not surprisingly we went back into depression at that time. I guess it’s the old Democratic argument that if it didn’t work the first time try it again. It’s bound to work the next time. There is an interesting Graph here, That shows what happened to the tax share paid by the top income earners when the rates were raised. The share of income taxes paid by them dropped from 50% of revenues to 25% of revenues as the rates went up. It’s really quite simple, as the rates go up the wealthy find more ways to shelter thier income. A concept that Democrats will never learn.
We are in a somewhat different position today. Our debt has grown so dramatically that we don’t have room for either tax cuts or spending increases. Unfortunately those tools have been taken away from us. There are a few that think the debt is not a problem and we can just go on spending, but most recognize the problem.
Currently we have financial institutions sitting on the sidelines and not lending. They have cash and interest rates are at the lowest level in 50 years, yet no one can get a loan. We would be wise to try and figure out why that’s happening. We have industry sitting on $trillions but won’t spend it. They’re holding it off shore or in reserves. We would be wise to figure out why that’s happening. We have housing prices at bargain basement prices but no one is buying. They either have no confidence or can’t get a loan. We would be wise to figure that one out as well.
I suppose we could just go merrily on with the strategy we have. Spend as much as we can, demonize those that would be able to solve the problem, and use every tool we have to take away the money that should be spent by private industry, to grow the economy. There’s plenty of money out there that should be injected into the economy. But as long as we feel industry is our enemy so we must chain them up, we will never get that benefit. Continue to demonize the banks, the oil industry, the insurance cos, the health care providers, and any body else that could help us recover. Pass a mountain of new regulation to insure they don’t do anything you may not like and they will not do anything at all. That’s where we are right now. No one with money is doing anything. Yes, lets do more of the same, I’m sure it will work this time.
@Jaxk Too late now to read this and respond. Maybe tomorrow later today.
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