WTG Georgie!

[Ripsnort]

Curly, most stock analysts even back in 1999 were saying how overinflated Tech stocks were, I mean my GOD, MS stock was trading for $160 a share! Yahoo was somewhere in the neighborhood of $240 for a while!  Companies with overinflated stock valuations like Amazon.com didn't even have the assets to cover their stock valuation!

Get real man!  Some of us pulled our stocks out of the tech sector after reading reports like this before the big downturn in the tech sector. (My dad should have been a stock analyst)

[TheDudeDVant]

Originally posted by lazs2
I have never been employed by a poor person.  least not since my pre teens and allowance..

No country ever taxed itself into prosperity or taxed itself out of debt.

We need to spend less...  that is the real solution.   Tax cuts are an excellent way to start.  

lazs

Wrong.....  Spending less is an excellent way to start...

dude

[lazs2]

184... I agree that you can't simply stop spending but you can slow it on worthless entitlement programs and at the same time give tax breaks.   the cash put back into the hands of the taxpayers will fuel the economy.   I admit that the government needs to be weened slowly tho.

spending on temporarry things like wars or infrastructure is nothing like setting up more entitlement programs that need to be be fed forever and do nothing but grow more expensive.

lazs

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by Westy
"No offense, but read an economics book. A basic one."

Why not share with him the title of the one you've studied from?

Share your expertise on how "trickle down" economics is a benefit and a successful story for anyone who's not already rich.

And explain to me how taxing the rich does any better.
In fact the rich already pay the bulk of the taxes.

You really think taxing the rich more will help? it wont.
reason being that they will simply offset any increace by raising the prices of their products orrr in cutting the costs of their labor.
As a buisness man myself I can tell you that ANY time my costs go up. Be it because of Material, Gas, food,or yes, Taxes. I raise my prices to offset the difference. My profit margin is not going to change period  because of my rising costs. I will simply charge you more to offset them and then some. and I will either layoff or simply not hire more people.

Now, does this help the little guy or hurt him?

On the other side. people more to spend he generally will do just that. Thus making the rich man richer. and how does this help?
Well this means he now has more to spend and can now afford to pay more people to do more things he would otherwise have to do himself
Old saying "Those that earn the most do the least"  
And from what I've observed . This is true
When was the last time you saw a rich person mowing their own lawn? Or painting their own house? or any of a billion other mundane things.
And the more ya make the more things that become mundane.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by TheDudeDVant
Wrong.....  Spending less is an excellent way to start...

dude

Are you the dude that just posted this?:
CLAIM: "We increased funding for counterterrorism activities across several agencies."

FACT: Upon taking office, the 2002 Bush budget proposed to slash more than half a billion dollars out of funding for counterterrorism at the Justice Department. In preparing the 2003 budget, the New York Times reported that the Bush White House "did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators" and "proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants." Newsweek noted the Administration "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." [Sources: 2001 vs. 2002 Budget Analysis; NY Times, 2/28/02; Newsweek, 5/27/02]

[DREDIOCK]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by lazs2
I have never been employed by a poor person. least not since my pre teens and allowance..

No country ever taxed itself into prosperity or taxed itself out of debt.

We need to spend less... that is the real solution. Tax cuts are an excellent way to start.

lazs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally posted by TheDudeDVant
Wrong.....  Spending less is an excellent way to start...

dude

I for one would like to see a detailed explanation on how Laz was wrong.
Cause I was never employed by a poor person either.
the poor cant affordt to hire people. thats one of the reasons we say they are "poor"
I've also never heard of a country that taxed its way out of debt.
Or is Laz wrong on this simply because you say he is?

[Westy]

"You really think taxing the rich more will help?"

 More? Not more. Just the same as the majority in this country are.



"Tax cuts are an excellent way to start."

 I agree. Across the board and for all.  IMO it would help if the US government stops spending far more than it collects.  Which it is doing right now worse than at any time before.



 BTW, Henry George's central idea was that "all kinds of taxation tend to stifle growth and hurt the interests of the poor. A high income tax, for instance, would produce unemployment. Only land tax, therefore, should be collected as the “single tax”.
 His idea seems to be void of any notion that "trickle down" economics work and from a quick perusal of his ideas it's quite apprarant that he never advocated that the poor need to shoulder a higher burden of collected taxesd while the rich got breaks and loop holes.

[Tarmac]

Flat tax.

[TheDudeDVant]

Originally posted by DREDIOCK
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by lazs2
I have never been employed by a poor person. least not since my pre teens and allowance..

No country ever taxed itself into prosperity or taxed itself out of debt.

We need to spend less... that is the real solution. Tax cuts are an excellent way to start.

lazs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I for one would like to see a detailed explanation on how Laz was wrong.
Cause I was never employed by a poor person either.
the poor cant affordt to hire people. thats one of the reasons we say they are "poor"
I've also never heard of a country that taxed its way out of debt.
Or is Laz wrong on this simply because you say he is?

way too much of a quote..  

I have worked for 'non-rich' folk...  But this has nothing to do with what I said..

If spending less is the action that is sought, government tax-cuts have little effect on spending..  Spending less effects spending...  Simple, eh? Not to say Lazs was wrong all together, but the first place to start is spending..  It goes without saying (forsome) , spending more and making less is not too productive...

dude

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Westy
More? Not more. Just the same as the majority in this country are.

 I agree. Across the board and for all.  

Westy, the more the income, the higher the income tax.  I agree, the rich should be taxed just the same as the majority in this country (which translates into LESS taxes paid for them)

Where Tax Brackets Come From
Congress establishes tax rates that apply to different levels of taxable income. Current law provides rates from 10% to 35%. The higher your income, the higher your tax rate.
    The range of income where you stay at any particular rate is known as a tax bracket. For a single person in 2004 the rate on taxable income between $29,050 and $70,350 is 25%. So those numbers establish the 25% bracket. If you're single and your taxable income is between those two numbers, your tax bracket is 25%.

[Westy]

Ok. We're talking the same thing essentially for I too am all for less taxes (less spending too).

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by TheDudeDVant
way too much of a quote..  

I have worked for 'non-rich' folk...  But this has nothing to do with what I said..

If spending less is the action that is sought, government tax-cuts have little effect on spending..  Spending less effects spending...  Simple, eh? Not to say Lazs was wrong all together, but the first place to start is spending..  It goes without saying (forsome) , spending more and making less is not too productive...

dude

Please, dude, read this slowly and carefully and don't be too partisan when reading it.

Low Taxes Do What?
The Wall Street Journal 02/24/04
author: Thomas Sowell

Some years ago, the distinguished international-trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati was visiting Cornell University, giving a lecture to graduate students during the day and debating Ralph Nader on free trade that evening. During his lecture, Prof. Bhagwati asked how many of the graduate students would be attending that evening's debate. Not one hand went up.

Amazed, he asked why. The answer was that the economics students considered it to be a waste of time. The kind of silly stuff that Ralph Nader was saying had been refuted by economists ages ago. The net result was that the audience for the debate consisted of people largely illiterate in economics and they cheered for Mr. Nader.

Prof. Bhagwati was exceptional among leading economists in understanding the need to confront gross misconceptions of economics in the general public, including the so-called educated public. Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman and Gary Becker are other such exceptions in addressing a wider general audience, rather than confining what they say to technical analysis addressed to fellow economists and their students. By and large, the economics profession fails to educate the public on the basics, while devoting much time and effort to narrower and even esoteric research.

The net result is that fallacies flourish in discussions of economic policy issues, while the refutations of those fallacies lie dormant in old books and academic journals gathering dust on library shelves. As former House Majority Leader Dick Armey -- an economist by trade -- put it: "Demagoguery beats data in making public policy."

Sometimes the fallacies are based on something as simple as a failure to define terms accurately. Everyone has heard the claim that a high-wage country like the U.S. loses jobs to low-wage countries when there is free trade. When the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect a decade ago, there were dire predictions of "a giant sucking sound" as American jobs were drawn away, to Mexico especially.

In reality, the number of jobs in the U.S. increased by millions after Nafta went into effect and the unemployment rate fell to low levels not seen in years. Behind the radically wrong predictions was a simple confusion between wage rates and labor costs.

Wage rates per unit of time are not the same as labor costs per unit of output. When workers are paid twice as much per hour and produce three times as much per hour, the labor costs per unit of output are lower. That is why high-wage countries have been exporting to low-wage countries for centuries. An international study found the average productivity of workers in the modern sector of the Indian economy to be 15% of that of American workers. In other words, if you paid the average Indian worker one-fifth of what you paid the average American worker, it would cost you more to get the job done in India.

In particular industries, such as computer software, Indian workers are more comparable, which is why there is so much outsourcing of computer work to India. But virtually every country has a comparative advantage in something, whether it is a high-wage country or a low-wage country.

Those who complain loudly about how many jobs have been "exported" to other countries because of international free trade totally ignore all the jobs that have been imported to the American economy because of that same free trade. Siemens alone employs tens of thousands of American workers and Toyota has already produced its ten millionth car in the U.S. Management guru Peter Drucker has said that this country imports far more jobs than it exports and no one has contradicted him. Indeed, those who are loudest in denouncing the exporting of jobs totally ignore the importing of jobs.

Free international trade produces both the benefits of increased productivity and the adjustment problems that all other forms of increased productivity produce -- namely, job losses in the less competitive firms and industries. The typewriter industry was devastated by the rise of the computer, as the horse and buggy industry was devastated by the rise of the automobile. Histories of the industrial revolution lament the plight of the handloom weavers when power looms were introduced. * * *

International trade has no monopoly on economic illiteracy. One of the apparently invincible fallacies of our times is the belief that President Ronald Reagan's tax cuts caused the federal budget deficits of the 1980s. In reality, the federal government collected more tax revenue in every year of the Reagan administration than had ever been collected in any year of any previous administration. But there is no amount of money that Congress cannot outspend. Here again, the confusion is due to a simple failure to define terms.

What Mr. Reagan's "tax cuts for the rich" actually cut were the tax rates per dollar of income. Out of rising incomes, the country as a whole -- including the rich -- paid more total taxes than ever before.

At the state and local levels, this confusion of tax rates and tax revenues has led some local politicians to see higher tax rates as the answer to budget problems, even though higher tax rates can drive businesses out of the city or state, with adverse effects on the total amount of tax revenues collected.

Price controls are another area where very elementary economics is all that is needed to show what the consequences are: shortages, quality deterioration and black markets. It has happened repeatedly in countries around the world, over a period of centuries. Yet politicians keep selling the idea of price controls and voters keeping buying it.

Many economic issues are complex, but sometimes a single fact will tell you all you need to know. When you know that central planners in the Soviet Union had to set 24 million prices -- and keep adjusting them, relative to one another, as conditions changed -- you realize that central planning did not just happen to fail. It had no chance of succeeding from the outset. It is a wholly different ball game when hundreds of millions of people individually keep track of the relatively few prices they need to know for their own decision-making in a market economy.

Simple stuff like this is not very exciting for economists and there is no payoff in one's professional career for clarifying such things for the general public. The only reason to do it is that it very much needs to be done -- especially during an election year.

Mr. Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author, most recently, of "Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded," just published by Basic Books.

[AKIron]

Curly just retired from teaching at some backwater school in Oklahoma and has a PHD in math, physics too maybe. Though that was before God invented electrons.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Tarmac
Flat tax.

Yes, we all need to agree on this as it benefits all of us, any income level.Either a flat tax or "Consumer tax".  The latter being a tax you only pay taxes on what you consume. If you're rich, and you consume alot, you pay alot.  If you're frugel(sp) and don't spend much, you don't pay much.

Abolish the IRS all together.

[TheDudeDVant]

Kids Rip??

Get to work!!

dude