djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Jul 16, 2011 16:11:38 GMT -5
if i said i agreed with you, would you also consider that the GOP has lost all credibility with their "cutting taxes will balance the budget" nonsense? Say it this way and we've got a deal. if i said i agreed with you, would you also consider that the GOP has lost all credibility with their "cutting taxes will balance the budget" nonsense? But the deal has to include cutting spending first. I think that's backwards from the Democrat's approach. It seems the Democrats want to cut tax breaks that the entire country has been behind and increase spending, which only the "takers" and Democrats in office are behind. As an example one set of figures I saw said the federal government has grown by 107 (plus) thousand employees since Obama took office. 107 thousand people is 5% of the federal workforce. That 107,000 workers removed from the taxpayer rolls and placed on the tax taker rolls. If each worker had been paying an average of $5,000 in taxes, it takes over 535 million dollars out of the taxes being paid and if each of those workers has ONLY a $50,000 annual salary it pulls over 5.350 BILLION out of the treasury, , , AND there is no one to replace it. They are now government employees. Not a good swap. To go further, it is no wonder Obama says we need more infrastructure construction. Otherwise where would they put 107 thousand workers? Never mind housing, schools, beauty shops and Walmart stores for them to spend all the salaries they're collecting from the tax money the rest us pay. And then there's the cost of their medical care and retirement benefits , , , but you probably don't want to consider those things just yet. well, cutting taxes will not balance the budget. and thinking so is part of the problem, imo. that was my only point. i think we should cut defense 50% and means test social spending, and freeze everything else. that, and letting the tax cuts lapse would close the budget gap in (5) years. nobody has the balls to do that, tho.
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henryclay
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Post by henryclay on Jul 16, 2011 17:26:24 GMT -5
Okay. Maybe we can reach some kind of agreement. I'm curious as to what has happened during the last 30 months that justifies increasing the federal workforce by 5%. Do you have any idea?
I have also provided numbers with my example, can you provide any better identifiers? What do you consider "social spending"? Why cut "defense"? Defense is a big word. Surely you don't mean release uniformed people into the unemployment lines during this recession. If so, what uniforms would you release?
And freeze everything else? I can't argue that point.
It is often posted here that you have to pay good wages and retirement benefits if you want good people to work for the government. Apparently that doesn't apply to military people. Military retirement has been frozen for 18 months, maybe even longer. The same is true for Social Security even though no other government retirement system has yet been frozen.
I don't think I said cut taxes to balance the budget. I said cut spending first. At least that's what I intended to say. THAT will do more to balance the budget than the increased revenue from cutting taxes ever can.
How many private sector taxpayers does it require to pay enough money into the government for them to pay ONE employee. And the downturn in the private sector today is why cutting spending is the poster child of balancing the budget.
Military retirees and Social Security recipients are already doing their part of the "freeze everything else".
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Jul 16, 2011 17:32:10 GMT -5
Okay. Maybe we can reach some kind of agreement. I'm curious as to what has happened during the last 30 months that justifies increasing the federal workforce by 5%. Do you have any idea? I have also provided numbers with my example, can you provide any better identifiers? What do you consider "social spending"? Why cut "defense"? Defense is a big word. Surely you don't mean release uniformed people into the unemployment lines during this recession. If so, what uniforms would you release? well, to begin with, i don't think that standing armies are all that useful for a terror war. what we need is smaller units for strategic combat, and less hardware. but no, i was not thinking "sack the troops" when i said that. the military has been growing smaller for decades, and i would simply not discourage that. aka "attrition" mostly i was thinking of overpriced weapons systems, insane new programs, and expansions of technology into new and dangerous areas. and no, i don't really know why the federal workforce is larger, but it might be stimulus related.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Jul 16, 2011 17:33:50 GMT -5
I don't think I said cut taxes to balance the budget. I said cut spending first. At least that's what I intended to say. THAT will do more to balance the budget than the increased revenue from cutting taxes ever can. so, you are saying that cutting taxes (other than capital gains) increases revenue? how does that work?
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henryclay
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Post by henryclay on Jul 16, 2011 17:49:32 GMT -5
>>>>>>>so, you are saying that cutting taxes increases revenue? how does that work?<<<<<<<
Oh, I dion't know, it has something to do with disposable income from the biggest corporatin down, and numbers apparently show that it has worked since John Kennedy engineered a 25% tax cut back in 1961 or 2 that was reported to have pulled the country out of a "stagflaytion" recession. However, you seem to know it does NOT work. Heck, if holding taxes at the same rates is good, maybe raising them is even better. I guess that's why the Democrats are so dug in. What fo you think?
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Jul 16, 2011 18:05:39 GMT -5
>>>>>>>so, you are saying that cutting taxes increases revenue? how does that work?<<<<<<< Oh, I dion't know, it has something to do with disposable income from the biggest corporatin down, and numbers apparently show that it has worked since John Kennedy engineered a 25% tax cut back in 1961 or 2 that was reported to have pulled the country out of a "stagflaytion" recession. However, you seem to know it does NOT work. Heck, if holding taxes at the same rates is good, maybe raising them is even better. I guess that's why the Democrats are so dug in. What fo you think? i don't think anything above actually answered the question. let me try again: do you think that cutting taxes would, all by itself, increase government revenues? but i am going to guess that this is a yes. i don't think that cutting taxes, by itself, raises revenues. i think the evidence is strongly to the contrary of this. it has been well researched by the OTA, and it is covered, i believe definitively, in OTA Paper 81. now, if the question is whether it raises or lowers growth, i think the jury is out. iow, there is insufficient evidence either way. our problem today is that we conflate issues of taxation, revenue, growth, unemployment and deficit as if they were all directly related, and that influencing one effects all the others. but the reality is far different.
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