ColonelHaiku
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The Progressive Income Tax
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Matthew
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Well, the State I live in has a fairly regressive tax system and we went without a federal income tax for many years. Attitudes will have to change but I wouldn't rule it out. We will see how things go in the next year. I have a feeling there may be an emerging consensus for massive tax reform.
The strange thing is we have a president running on a platform of higher taxes. No serious candidate has done that since 1984. He must think it will work out better this time. Maybe he is right. He better hope so.
Apparently I wasn't the only one thinking this.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/morning-jay-mondale-2012_593981.html
"Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."
I remember the day Mondale said this and I knew, even though I was only 11 years old, that his campaign was over. It will be interesting to see if it works this time. Normally I would say no way but this time I just don't know.
usta in Portland
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A couple of thoughts...
1) I think you may be right in not being so sure.
2) Obama is not Mondale-that can be taken a lot of ways but Walter really lacked pizazz.
3) There is nobody remotely like RR in the campaign for theGOP.
4) In a material way Mondale was right; the 1986 tax reform did raise taxes through loophole closure and tax base increase and if you look at revenue as % of GDP there isn't much difference over the course of RR 8 years than in the 8 years before him. He did dramatically cut marginal rates but a lot 'tax expenditures went out the window'. But then after him they all came back and then some. Revenue varied from a bit over 19%/GDP to a low of just under 17% and was mainly about the average of those two numbers. By contrast we are at a little under 15% now with an estimated 16% this year.
Mondale had a good case on the spending issue too. In 1983-4 the spending went to a post war record of nearly 23% and never got back under 20% until Clinton's second term(his revenue was high in those years too 18.5% to over 20% just when Bush came in-thus the budget surplus.) Point being I suppose that it could have been a different scenario if it wasn't obvious that employment was rising; that RR had endorsed Volker's slaying of the inflation monster; and that GDP was rising again. RR reaped the benefit of an economy on the upswing and although the math looked pretty bad in places (it was during this time the US became a debtor nation) people were feeling good about things and they credited RR with the percieved improvement.
Not much of this obtains right now.:help:
1) I think you may be right in not being so sure.
2) Obama is not Mondale-that can be taken a lot of ways but Walter really lacked pizazz.
3) There is nobody remotely like RR in the campaign for theGOP.
4) In a material way Mondale was right; the 1986 tax reform did raise taxes through loophole closure and tax base increase and if you look at revenue as % of GDP there isn't much difference over the course of RR 8 years than in the 8 years before him. He did dramatically cut marginal rates but a lot 'tax expenditures went out the window'. But then after him they all came back and then some. Revenue varied from a bit over 19%/GDP to a low of just under 17% and was mainly about the average of those two numbers. By contrast we are at a little under 15% now with an estimated 16% this year.
Mondale had a good case on the spending issue too. In 1983-4 the spending went to a post war record of nearly 23% and never got back under 20% until Clinton's second term(his revenue was high in those years too 18.5% to over 20% just when Bush came in-thus the budget surplus.) Point being I suppose that it could have been a different scenario if it wasn't obvious that employment was rising; that RR had endorsed Volker's slaying of the inflation monster; and that GDP was rising again. RR reaped the benefit of an economy on the upswing and although the math looked pretty bad in places (it was during this time the US became a debtor nation) people were feeling good about things and they credited RR with the percieved improvement.
Not much of this obtains right now.:help:
Dan Sarandrea (Phila)
Waitin' On Parts...
Don't start with the budget "surplus" again!!!!:wink2:
ColonelHaiku
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usta in Portland
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Well, the term as defined can be accepted or not..
but it remains abroad. Not sure why this gets so much dander up -it is just a way of expressing a one year arithmetic relationship between revenue and spending. Place all the conditions on it you like regarding accountancy and it still says that in that particular year as against, say, the previous year or the following one, there was more money taken in than spent. What is the big issue?
If it is meaningless then so is all the deficit talk because the one is just the flipside of the other.
but it remains abroad. Not sure why this gets so much dander up -it is just a way of expressing a one year arithmetic relationship between revenue and spending. Place all the conditions on it you like regarding accountancy and it still says that in that particular year as against, say, the previous year or the following one, there was more money taken in than spent. What is the big issue?
If it is meaningless then so is all the deficit talk because the one is just the flipside of the other.
usta in Portland
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Buy a new...
Thesaurus, did you?
Thesaurus, did you?
ColonelHaiku
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usta in Portland
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Bravo Colonel
pulled off a technical foul and nothing I can really do about it. Well, I concede, you are the very last word in having the last word. Did you dredge that one out of memory or did you do a little searching under various words for the unsavory and immodest or.....
It is gratifying to see that you have found, once again, your natural level.
pulled off a technical foul and nothing I can really do about it. Well, I concede, you are the very last word in having the last word. Did you dredge that one out of memory or did you do a little searching under various words for the unsavory and immodest or.....
It is gratifying to see that you have found, once again, your natural level.
ColonelHaiku
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Dan Sarandrea (Phila)
Waitin' On Parts...
Then howcome at the end of that year we owed more than we did the previous year?
The ONLY way you can be more in the red from one year to the next is if you spent more than you took in. Which is the definition of a deficit not a surplus.
Don't take this personally, this "budget surplus" thing is all me, it's one of the pet peeves that I have:laugh:
usta in Portland
Daily Driver
Well, first of all...
I don't take things personally when they come from you Dan.
I'm not quite understanding the comment. Maybe I was being confusing-all I meant was that each year stands distinct from all the others, even those immediately before and after. So a 'surplus' can be run one year and the very next year a 'deficit' It is very artificial but the substantive issue is that the 'debt' will certainly increase in deficit years by at least the amount of the deficit. In surplus years the debt may or may not be changed-it is perfectly plausible that even in surplus years the debt increases or does not go down because there is no mechanism, that I know of anyhow, that requires surplus to be used to retire debt (I'm not sure how it would be retired in any event) or to prohibit borrowing even more money:help:
I don't take things personally when they come from you Dan.
I'm not quite understanding the comment. Maybe I was being confusing-all I meant was that each year stands distinct from all the others, even those immediately before and after. So a 'surplus' can be run one year and the very next year a 'deficit' It is very artificial but the substantive issue is that the 'debt' will certainly increase in deficit years by at least the amount of the deficit. In surplus years the debt may or may not be changed-it is perfectly plausible that even in surplus years the debt increases or does not go down because there is no mechanism, that I know of anyhow, that requires surplus to be used to retire debt (I'm not sure how it would be retired in any event) or to prohibit borrowing even more money:help:
ColonelHaiku
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Dan Sarandrea (Phila)
Waitin' On Parts...
It's easy for them to run around and claim they had a budget surplus when the nature of the federal beast allows them to make expenditures off-budget.
Because there are so many ways for the politicians to cook these books (off budget, on budget, public debt, govt held debt, blah blah), there is only one federal number that is equivalent to what a business or family would call its bottom line, and that is the total federal debt. All the other numbers are fine for what they are, but when you want to know the real 'bottom line' this is it:
If the total federal debt went up, we operated in the red for that fiscal period.
If the total federal debt went down, we operated in the black for that fiscal period.
(In those FYs that were claimed to be "surplus" years, even though the total debt went up, it went up by the smallest amounts contemporaneously, so I suppose that does deserve some "props":wink2
Because there are so many ways for the politicians to cook these books (off budget, on budget, public debt, govt held debt, blah blah), there is only one federal number that is equivalent to what a business or family would call its bottom line, and that is the total federal debt. All the other numbers are fine for what they are, but when you want to know the real 'bottom line' this is it:
If the total federal debt went up, we operated in the red for that fiscal period.
If the total federal debt went down, we operated in the black for that fiscal period.
(In those FYs that were claimed to be "surplus" years, even though the total debt went up, it went up by the smallest amounts contemporaneously, so I suppose that does deserve some "props":wink2
ColonelHaiku
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usta in Portland
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Well, it is just a definitional argument...
and the underlying reality of the debt is there and the underlying reality of the revenue and spending is there. The debt issue as a matter of deficits and surpluses is handled by economists by describing a primary budget deficit/surplus which excludes interest payments and a secondary one that includes it. The assumptions for analyzing these issues by the economists is opposite or at least not germane to your idea of operating in the red or black. If the US today were to put in place a budget which balanced including the payment on all of our debt, it would be hard to find support for the notion that we are operating in the red simply because there is debt to be serviced.
As to cooking the books-probably.
But, I understand, or think I do, your main point and it is one way to look at it. Whatever the issue of deficit/surplus the inescapable fact remains that at present the debt continues to climb and the spread between revenue and spending continues to increase.:help::shock:
and the underlying reality of the debt is there and the underlying reality of the revenue and spending is there. The debt issue as a matter of deficits and surpluses is handled by economists by describing a primary budget deficit/surplus which excludes interest payments and a secondary one that includes it. The assumptions for analyzing these issues by the economists is opposite or at least not germane to your idea of operating in the red or black. If the US today were to put in place a budget which balanced including the payment on all of our debt, it would be hard to find support for the notion that we are operating in the red simply because there is debt to be serviced.
As to cooking the books-probably.
But, I understand, or think I do, your main point and it is one way to look at it. Whatever the issue of deficit/surplus the inescapable fact remains that at present the debt continues to climb and the spread between revenue and spending continues to increase.:help::shock:
usta in Portland
Daily Driver
You know....
keeping hobbyhorses for pets is really fun but they get to be a drag after a while. If you don't want to accept that the deficit/surplus distinction is seperable from the debt then don't. As I pointed out somewhere else the two are only automatically linked by a deficit. A technical surplus has nothing whatever to do with the debt-the debt could and probably would increase in the event of a one year technical surplus.
That's it from me on this subject-it is mere word game in any event.
So much effort to deny a meaningless non-event so long ago-I don't understand the appeal.
keeping hobbyhorses for pets is really fun but they get to be a drag after a while. If you don't want to accept that the deficit/surplus distinction is seperable from the debt then don't. As I pointed out somewhere else the two are only automatically linked by a deficit. A technical surplus has nothing whatever to do with the debt-the debt could and probably would increase in the event of a one year technical surplus.
That's it from me on this subject-it is mere word game in any event.
So much effort to deny a meaningless non-event so long ago-I don't understand the appeal.
Dan Sarandrea (Phila)
Waitin' On Parts...
usta in Portland
Daily Driver
Dan, what difference does it make?
There is some relationship of a finite nature between revenue and spending. In the current situation where that relationship is obviously adding debt and will do so for the forseeable future-the definiton is hardly the issue be it 178 pages or 1780 pages.
My bringing up the surplus was just to show how the comparative gap between revenue and spending has widened since about 2000. Whether or not that 'surplus' was 'real' by some alternative definition doesn't change the fact of that widening gap, assuming, as I do, that roughly the same accounting methods were used across the ensuing 11 years or so. That I grant may be a big and unproveable and perhaps erroneous assumption, but the charts I have are the ones I have and they are from a deficit hawk source.
And this link is to a document that defines all terms relative to the budget process including descriptions of the various accounts and also very minor terms. the Deficit or Surplus definitions are barely any longer than the ones I offered-maybe 4 short paragraphs out of the whole document. Frankly I would be apalled to find out that the GAO did not have 178 pages of defintions of terms considering the size and complexity government spending. I have construction specifications for commercial buildings in my computer that run to 23 pages of term definitions just for that set of specs.
There is some relationship of a finite nature between revenue and spending. In the current situation where that relationship is obviously adding debt and will do so for the forseeable future-the definiton is hardly the issue be it 178 pages or 1780 pages.
My bringing up the surplus was just to show how the comparative gap between revenue and spending has widened since about 2000. Whether or not that 'surplus' was 'real' by some alternative definition doesn't change the fact of that widening gap, assuming, as I do, that roughly the same accounting methods were used across the ensuing 11 years or so. That I grant may be a big and unproveable and perhaps erroneous assumption, but the charts I have are the ones I have and they are from a deficit hawk source.
And this link is to a document that defines all terms relative to the budget process including descriptions of the various accounts and also very minor terms. the Deficit or Surplus definitions are barely any longer than the ones I offered-maybe 4 short paragraphs out of the whole document. Frankly I would be apalled to find out that the GAO did not have 178 pages of defintions of terms considering the size and complexity government spending. I have construction specifications for commercial buildings in my computer that run to 23 pages of term definitions just for that set of specs.
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