On Sun, 4 Nov 2007 00:34:00 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/bg1765.cfm
sigh Gunner, will you PLEASE start reading those long articles that you
point people to, which you claim say one thing, but which actually say the
opposite? You'll save everyone some time and yourself some ...oh, never
mind, you probably don't care.
Here's what Laffer says in that article. First, it was mostly about capital
gains taxes
Actually...no. One small section of the article was about capital
gains..at the end. The first portions dealt with the increased
revenues:
"Over the past 100 years, there have been three major periods of
tax-rate cuts in the U.S.: the Harding-Coolidge cuts of the mid-1920s;
the Kennedy cuts of the mid-1960s; and the Reagan cuts of the early
1980s. Each of these periods of tax cuts was remarkably successful as
measured by virtually any public policy metric."
Followed by an investigation in all three tax cuts and the stats.
(his favorite subject, for a reason that would be obvious if you
thought about it -- cut tax rates on capital gains and people cash in to get
the lower rates, which increases tax revenues, temporarily), not income
taxes or total taxes, and he pointed out that the capital gains tax was
increased from 20% to 28% in 1986. Then he says this:
"Reducing the capital gains tax rate from 28 percent back to 20 percent in
1997 was an unqualified success, and every claim made by the critics was
wrong. The tax cut, which went into effect in May 1997, increased asset
values and contributed to the largest gain in productivity and private
sector capital investment in a decade. It did not lose revenue for the
federal Treasury."
Now, let's see if you remember who was president in 1997, hmm?
So then cutting the capital gains tax ALSO increased revenues. Thanks
for backing up the claim.
This of course followed the 1993 Clinton retroactive tax increase. The
largest regressive tax increase in history...which flatlined the
economy until 1997 when the Capital Gains tax break helped it start
climbing again.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/BG1544.cfm
The 1993 Clinton Tax Rate Increase.
Without a vote to spare in either the House or the Senate, during his
first year in office, President Clinton imposed the largest tax
increase in history. His increase in the top tax rate from 31 percent
to 39.6 percent59 was the biggest jump since Herbert Hoover boosted
the rate from 25 percent to 63 percent in 1930. Harvard economist
Martin Feldstein estimates that the tax rate increase raised only
one-third of the anticipated revenue.60 The combined effect of the
Bush and Clinton tax rate increases was utter disaster.
Some have argued that the Clinton tax increase must have succeeded
since the budget shifted from deficit to surplus in the late 1990s,
but the Clinton Administration's own budget figures dispel this myth.
In January 1995, almost 18 months after the tax increase was enacted,
President Clinton's Office of Management and Budget projected that
future budget deficits would remain above $200 billion--and climb in
all subsequent years.61 Needless to say, if the Clinton Administration
admitted in 1995 that the tax increase would not lead to a balanced
budget, it would be groundless to make that claim today.
What really happened? As always, it is difficult to provide a precise
answer, but the fiscal restraint imposed by the newly elected
Republican Congress, combined with pro-growth capital gains tax cuts
and private-sector initiative, clearly were the main factors in
balancing the budget. In other words, the budget was balanced because
government policy shifted away from President Clinton's original
approach.
The 1997 Capital Gains Tax Rate Reduction.
The 1997 capital gains tax cut is the most recent example of the
negative impact of static scoring. The Joint Committee on Taxation
estimated that reducing the capital gains tax from 28 percent to 20
percent would "cost" the government $21 billion over the next 10
years.62 The JCT did estimate that revenues would increase in the
first two years because the lower rate would encourage more asset
sales, but there was no attempt to measure the higher revenues that
would be generated because of better economic performance.
In reality, capital gains tax revenue skyrocketed, climbing from $62
billion in 1996 to more than $100 billion in 1999.63 But this figure
is only a partial measure of the JCT's failure to grasp economic
realities. In addition to mis-measuring the impact of a capital gains
tax cut on financial markets, the JCT failed to estimate the impact of
a lower capital gains tax cut on the overall economy. In other words,
the lower capital gains tax rate not only boosted revenues from the
capital gains tax, but also indirectly increased personal income tax,
corporate income tax, and payroll tax revenues.64 None of these
results were incorporated in the JCT estimate.
snip
I guess Im going to have to start back checking your claims that my
cites yada yada.
Gunner
"[L]iberals are afraid to state what they truly believe in, for to do so
would result in even less votes than they currently receive. Their
methodology is to lie about their real agenda in the hopes of regaining
power, at which point they will do whatever they damn well please. The
problem is they have concealed and obfuscated for so long that, as a group,
they themselves are no longer sure of their goals. They are a collection of
wild-eyed splinter groups, all holding a grab-bag of dreams and wishes. Some
want a Socialist, secular-humanist state, others the repeal of the Second
Amendment. Some want same sex/different species marriage, others want voting
rights for trees, fish, coal and bugs. Some want cradle to grave care and
complete subservience to the government nanny state, others want a culture
that walks in lockstep and speaks only with intonations of political
correctness. I view the American liberals in much the same way I view the
competing factions of Islamic
fundamentalists. The latter hate each other to the core, and only join
forces to attack the US or Israel. The former hate themselves to the core,
and only join forces to attack George Bush and conservatives." --Ron Marr