50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says

A Democrat controlled Congress which controls the purse strings. What years did it go up a trillion?

 

No, CA is not even in the top five states in total tax burden, as I already informed you.
This source says it is 13th:

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494

This one says fifth, but it ignores per capita income:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/tax-burden-by-state

Here's one that says 14th:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...-with-the-highest-and-lowest-taxes/111555224/

Etc. And it is the low property tax rates that are driving people out: the high income tax, sales tax, and other taxes associated with low property taxes means it is so profitable to own land in CA that it is not affordable to live there. To live there, you have to become the slave of either a landowner or a mortgage lender.

 

I see, so now you get specific and make it income tax.
The over all tax burden(which is what counts) by state puts CA about mid pack.
The truth and facts do not support the right wing propaganda.

 

I said that we pay the highest taxes and even posted the link. I did not change anything.
CA also leads the nation in poverty.

I get called a liberal on other topics. Not everyone who notices poor results Democrats are known for is a right winger.

 

But your claim was factually incorrect. CA only has the highest top marginal personal income tax rate, not the high rate of taxation in general. I already posted links proving it is not even in the top five in total taxes.

And that claim, like your other claims, is just objectively false:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_poverty_rate

 

No, I'm asking why some people (including the agencies responsible for deciding the amount in the first place) respond 'emotionally' when the greedy types say it's not enough.

If everyone, including the agencies involved, simply refused to respond to demands for more, then that would be the logical, pragmatic, NON-emotional response .. but that's not what we see, is it? We see people wailing about the poor folk who aren't getting enough, and demanding a 'resolution'.

 

The greedy, privileged, parasitic rich take an order of magnitude more from the community in return for nothing than the unemployed poor (~40% of GDP vs ~4%) while numbering an order of magnitude fewer (~1% of the population vs ~10%). We have poverty not because we cannot meet the needs of the poor, but because we can never sate the greed of the rich.

 

An example of the failure of supply-side economics (Reaganomics). When you cut taxes, but not expenditures on the erroneous theory that the tax cuts will pay for themselves with economic expansion. It didn't. In fact, the response to massive tax cuts, early in his first term, was a mini recession following 9/11. The added costs of TSA, a do-over of intelligence agencies, military expansion, and continuing globalization, and another tax cut (widely condemned by most economists) all added to the debt. Bush DID finally got the economy moving with the Housing Bubble, which led to a banking and credit crisis and The Great Recession.
IMO, "trickle down" may work, but only given a set of specific circumstances. Primarily, you need to ensure the extra disposable income stays in the country and isn't used to move factories abroad, and secondly it has to be spread more-or-less evenly to support a consumer society. Those conditions had almost disappeared by the Reagan years. The Reagan economists were sort of like the generals who are always fighting the last war.

 

No, you're saying you can't get there from here. I'm saying you can.

It's really that simple. Just ****ing do it.

 

And yet wages and family wealth has grown. Household income hit a record hit last year. Until pandemic unemployment levels were at record low and even now rival levels Obama only reached in his second term. Stock Markets are high, optimism - at least pre-Biden - was high.

 

We have poverty because some people are determined to be poor.

If even one person can escape poverty, then the CONDITIONS EXIST TO ESCAPE POVERTY - obviously, since they were able to do it. It's a frank absurdity to claim that conditions don't allow it, given that. And since thousands of Americans escape poverty every year via their own efforts, those conditions are necessarily well established and universal.

 

Do what?

 

What does 'spread evenly' mean, in practice?

 

Good question. I don't believe in an equal distribution...that's impractical, kills incentive, etc., etc. So, I have no problem with upper, middle and lower income classes. And, I think the Gates pledge program about giving much of his wealth (and the income from that wealth) to charity is a good idea. Many of the very wealthy do this, but many do not...so I support a progressive income tax. And, unless there is some physical or mental defect, I believe people should do something for their income...at the bottom of the ladder, that may require government intervention. Someone with a full-time job should be able to a minimum wage sufficient for a basic living standard. But, until we do something that ensures that, I find it obscene to see the exaggerated extremes of "luxury goods," such as six mansions, 200' yachts, a fleet of private jets, etc. I'd have to do some research, but I believe (if I were King) I'd target distribution to some of the post WW II years, when there was (IMO) a more equitable distribution. I think we do need some mechanism to off-set the "leverage" of wealth, but short of a total leveling...i.. wealth should benefit...just not has much as the present.

 

Bull$#!+. We have poverty because we all have to pay the privileged full market value just for permission to work, shop, access desirable public services and infrastructure, etc., and the least productive can't afford it.

Yes: the conditions for THAT person to escape poverty. Not necessarily for any other person. It appears you do not know enough logic to understand the difference. As I have explained that difference to you before, very patiently, multiple times, in clear, grammatical English, it is evident that you either are unable to understand it, or choose not to. I am guessing the latter.

Right: the fact that they were able to do it proves that the conditions existed for THEM to do it. NOT necessarily for anyone else to do it. You just have to contrive some means of not knowing that fact, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

No it's not. It's a plain fact, and easily demonstrated:
1. There is some random distribution of productivity (probably normal, log-normal, inverse exponential, or some combination thereof).
2. We all have to compete in the market for access to the economic opportunities that the privileged own.
3. That competition for access to economic opportunity establishes the market price that the privileged will require us to pay for their permission to access it.
4. We all have to pay the privileged the market price for permission to access economic opportunity, as they have no reason to charge anyone any less.
5. Because the price is set by market competition, those who are best able to compete in the market -- i.e., the most productive -- are able to afford it, while those who are least able to compete are not.
6. Those least able to compete are therefore forced into poverty by the need to compete with those most able for the available economic opportunities, and to also pay the privileged the market price for permission to access them.

Right: the thousands, out of millions, who are at the high end of the distribution.

Garbage, as proved above. You could with equal "logic" claim that because Usain Bolt can run the 100m in less than 10s, the conditions exist for anyone to do so. It's just absurd, despicable, disingenuous filth.

 

Right. The problem is not inequality per se but injustice that aggravates the normal inequality justice implies. The mechanism of that injustice in advanced capitalist economies is privilege: legal entitlements to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation.

 

No kidding? You mean government spends whatever it wants regardless of its ability to pay for it? Who would have guessed? If we increase the revenue, government will spend that and continue borrowing and printing money in order to spend more. Certainly you understand that.

 

If everyone was as smart or productive as that one person who has that ability, or those "thousands of Americans" who have that ability, then it would get that much harder for everyone seeking to escape poverty. There is a reliable feedback effect for that.

 

I see you still don't know how bills become law, lol.

 

It would appear that the title of this thread is inaccurate.

 

Seems to prove the study's point. How are you interpreting the chart?

 

Bingo. That's how the treadmill that powers the escalator of the privileged works: one might get ahead of one's fellows by running the treadmill faster than they do, but if everyone runs faster, the treadmill just goes faster. That is the only possible reason we still have working poor despite the orders of magnitude increase in the productivity of their labor.

 

You misspelled "accurate." Not only does your graph indisputably show that the top quintile's gains have not trickled down to the bottom 80% and the top 5%'s gains not trickled down to the rest of the top quintile. It doesn't even show how much faster the top 1% is pulling away from the rest of the top 5%, how much faster the top 0.01% is pulling away from the rest of the top 1%, how much faster the top 0.0001% is pulling away from the rest of the top 0.01%, etc.

 

When Reagan cut taxes, the National deficit grew as debt was required to make up for the loss. First Bush and then Clinton raised those taxes back up and the result was a National surplus at the end of Clinton’s presidency. Set to pay off the National debt within our lifetimes. Then lil’ Bush cut taxes and blew up the National surplus, turning it into a crashing deficit and exploding debt. Then came the Trump. The Republicans cut taxes again exploding the deficit and debt.

 

If one person escaped poverty that means that conditions existed to escape poverty, FOR THAT PERSON. I don't know if your aware of this but conditions are not the same
for everyone.