Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: JBA on July 18, 2003, 12:10:44 PM
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http://www.investors.com/editorial/issues.asp?v=7/18
Moving Ahead
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Economy: It's official: The U.S. is no longer in a recession. It ended way back in November 2001 — 20 months ago, by our count. Time to move forward.
To listen to some critics, you'd think the U.S. was still deeply mired in a slump. In fact, as the data clearly show, the economy began to slip back in mid-2000. And the recession, which began March 2001, lasted just eight months.
We hate to toot our own horn, but in October 2001, just a month before the economy emerged from recession, our monthly IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index told you so.
Our data shocked some — and elicited comments of disbelief from others. The index showed that, just one month after the Sept. 11 attack, Americans' optimism in the economy had soared.
Why? Amid the gloom and shock of the post-9-11 period, average Americans knew something the media didn't: that out of the death and uncertainty of the terror attack, a stronger, better America would emerge.
And that's just what's happened. Americans have rolled up their sleeves, struggled through the tough times and are now getting the economy going again through hard work and big dreams they refuse to let die.
But they've had some help.
As the chart shows, President Bush inherited a weaker-than-normal economy.
His first round of tax cuts, which not coincidentally went into effect in 2001's fourth quarter, pulled the economy out of its tailspin. Congress' second round of tax cuts this year are now kicking the economy into high gear.
Let's also give the Federal Reserve its due. Once it understood its huge mistake in jacking up interest rates back in 1999 and 2000, it got religion in early 2001 and slashed rates 12 times to 45-year lows.
So where does that leave us now? Despite the gloom and doom of those who, for political reasons, are talking down the economy's growth prospects, things look pretty good.
Yes, the recession is over. The stock market is again rising. Housing remains solid. Consumer optimism has turned bullish again. Retail sales are growing. Inflation's dead. Productivity is surging — a source of future gains in our standard of living.
As for jobs, the perennial weak spot in recent recoveries, we must admit there's some shakiness there. Still, even as the number of payroll jobs is shrinking, the economically sensitive household jobs survey shows growth — 251,000 jobs last month alone. And that's the job barometer that's the first to turn in a recovery.
We also see signs of life in the rise of a key jobs indicator put out by the National Federation of Independent Business — the group that represents the nation's small businesses. Remember: Small business, not the Fortune 500, creates virtually all new jobs in America.
Like others, we have worries — and see big challenges ahead. But we may be on the cusp of a new era of growth. And that's exciting.
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Yep. We recovered in 9 months, pretty impressive considering 9/11 and all the other crap. Now balance the budget, Chimpy! Time to start slashing.
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Originally posted by funkedup
Yep. We recovered in 9 months, pretty impressive considering 9/11 and all the other crap. Now balance the budget, Chimpy! Time to start slashing.
Let's start with the foreign aid...no money for Israel or others...no, not isolationism....but lets stop being the Visa Card for the world.
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Actually we're just the MasterCard, Japan is the Visa card.
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dosnt point out the fact that we are now in a period of stagnation. That is what economists fear more.
according to greenspan the economy was going down and he had it lined up for a soft landing till chimpy gave the top 20 percentile massive tax cuts.
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How dare those miserable buggers keep more of their own money.
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Yeah if only the government had taken away more money from the people, the people would be much better off economically.
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listen i think tax cuts are good as well. but we should first give the largest tax cuts to the people that need it and will spend it. the middle class. sorry if i care about people that cant afford their car payments.
SOrry your right we should first give all the tax cuts to the people with 3 cars in every garage and already have everything they need that sure sounds like the right thing to do to me. They didnt accumulate their wealth by using any governement help like roads police or military protection so they should have the least amount of taxes.
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Originally posted by Frogm4n
dosnt point out the fact that we are now in a period of stagnation. That is what economists fear more.
according to greenspan the economy was going down and he had it lined up for a soft landing till chimpy gave the top 20 percentile massive tax cuts.
You of course know that the top 20 percentile pay 82 percent of all the income taxs. The bottom 20 percent pay none. So tell me how do you lower taxs for someone who pays none.
lets see 5 % less from 0 is ... oh crap cant give them a break oh well guess we should just give them money ... what we already do... crap give them more then:rolleyes:
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"From each according to their means, to each according to their needs"
I remember hearing that somewhere before..
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Originally posted by Frogm4n
They didnt accumulate their wealth by using any governement help like roads police or military protection so they should have the least amount of taxes.
Again, you've got the cart before the horse. The government wouldn't have any money to pay for roads or police or military without people out there busting their tulips at work. And you suggest that we penalize the group which contributes most, both in terms of the value of their work and the amount of tax revenue they provide to Big Brother.
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No Funked, he just wants to take money from productive people and give it to unproductive ones, because the productive people make the unproductive people feel bad because they cant buy all the neato stuff productive people can. You see they are hurting other people's feelings and so they must be punished...
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I believe Frogman said "the middle class".
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On October 24 of last year the Joint Economic Committee released the latest IRS data for 2000. Here’s the table:
> Top 1%: Adjusted Gross Income of more than $313,469 pays 37.42 percent of all income tax collected
> Top 5%: $128,336 pays 56.47 percent
> Top 10%: $92,144, pays 67.33 percent
> Top 25%: $55,225 pays 84.01 percent
> Top 50%: $27,682, pays 96.09 percent
> Bottom 50%: less than $27,682 pays a mere 3.91 percent
For the press release with those numbers: http://www.house.gov/jec/press/2002/10-24-02.htm
For six pages of detailed IRS tables, in PDF format: http://www.house.gov/jec/press/2002/irs2.pdf
SO WHO SHOULD GET THE TAX CUTS?
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I usually judge the economy buy the real estate market. Usually when the economy is bad, the prices of homes drops. The avg price of a single family home in Ma. is now over 300k. I just don't see the bad economy, but I am not well educated on the subject.
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what's truly sad is 50% of the pop make less than 28k a year
what's worse is that someone making over 55k, is in the top 25% :)
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Remember this is for a household. In most cases TWO INCOMES.
That is to say if you make 45K your wife makes 35K your in the top 25%. Through in a kid or two in college and your screwed
Can you honestly say they are rich?
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heck, you dont even have to throw in college just a couple of kids, cars and a mortage - tryin to keep everything running and everyone healthy ... oh yeah, livin high on the hog :rolleyes:
the dems and their buddies in the media tryin to create a class envy against the average joe ...
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70k barely keeps a family of 4 above the water line nowadays.
As to the recession ending.... duh! We had our best year EVER in 2002.
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Originally posted by JBA
On October 24 of last year the Joint Economic Committee released the latest IRS data for 2000. Here’s the table:
> Top 1%: Adjusted Gross Income of more than $313,469 pays 37.42 percent of all income tax collected
> Top 5%: $128,336 pays 56.47 percent
> Top 10%: $92,144, pays 67.33 percent
> Top 25%: $55,225 pays 84.01 percent
> Top 50%: $27,682, pays 96.09 percent
> Bottom 50%: less than $27,682 pays a mere 3.91 percent
For the press release with those numbers: http://www.house.gov/jec/press/2002/10-24-02.htm
For six pages of detailed IRS tables, in PDF format: http://www.house.gov/jec/press/2002/irs2.pdf
SO WHO SHOULD GET THE TAX CUTS?
let me get this right
Top 1%=37.42%
Top 5% = 56.47%
Top 10%= 67.33%
Top 25%= 84.01%
Top 50%= 96.09%
Total percent paid by these groups = 341.32% of the nations income tax?? ahh help me here, how can this be more then 100%? (damn over acheavers)
And how come I dont feel like a top 5% kinda guy?
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Originally posted by Eagler
the dems and their buddies in the media tryin to create a class envy against the average joe ...
That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Scooter, total is 100%, difference is one minus the other for the indivdual precentage. It looks like its placed as a "position" in the total amount of taxes taken in by someone with X amount of household income.
The top 50% of the nation pays out 96.09% of all the taxes leaving the other 50% to bring in the 3.01% for the total of 100%.
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you have to add all the percentages. ITs done this way to scew the numbers. The fact is a dividends tax cut only benefits those who make most of their income on stocks. Do any of you guys makeing around 55k benefit from suck a cut? People that dont work that sit on wealth will benefit. Rich kids and the like. Is it fair that they dont have to pay for the war but the people that work for a living do?
http://home.rochester.rr.com/jerryfisher/thiv26.gif
and if you dont believe we have a problem with class's in this country just look at who is president.
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Originally posted by Frogm4n
listen i think tax cuts are good as well. but we should first give the largest tax cuts to the people that need it and will spend it. the middle class. sorry if i care about people that cant afford their car payments.
SOrry your right we should first give all the tax cuts to the people with 3 cars in every garage and already have everything they need that sure sounds like the right thing to do to me. They didnt accumulate their wealth by using any governement help like roads police or military protection so they should have the least amount of taxes.
When you cant afford something, don't have it, its that simple. Do you want me to feel sorry for someone who buys stuff they can't afford?
This kind of thinking is wrong, if you want to give away what you worked hard for to make you feel better fine do it, just don't ask or expect me to.
Tax cuts are just that, if you pay more your cut as a percentage will be more You will still be paying a crap load more then someone who makes less.
You must not be in a position where you are expecting to add to you wealth in the near future and have no problem gust getting by. I have built up my business and my wife has worked hard on her career to build up our position in life and really did it buy not going in debt or buying things we could not afford. We worked hard for our money and don't want to give away any more then necessary. Some day I hope you get to the same place in life that you want to keep what you worked hard for.
Ya I figured out that the chart is a running total, it seemed strange at first blush. I really think what the libs want is a grant to the poor from the ritch and get all confused with the tax cut thing.
Robin Hood was a big time Lib, but remember they did say he STOLE from the ritch at least it was an honest reporting.
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actually i am set to collect on a nice little sum of money that i didnt work for. My family went from paying 30 percent of its taxes to 3 percent under bush. The shortfall has to be made up somewhere and you know the government it sure the hell wont come from budget cuts.
The reason i would rather see people with less money with more is because i would rather see a healthy society. Having low crime and crazy people off the streets is a public good in my eyes. If you have all the money in the world what does it matter if you have to live in a gated community, riots in the streets, and massive amounts of homeless in the country you live in. Thats why us liberals care about these people. It isnt because we feel for them its just that we are as selfish as the conservitives and dont like gated communitys.
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Originally posted by Frogm4n
actually i am set to collect on a nice little sum of money that i didnt work for. My family went from paying 30 percent of its taxes to 3 percent under bush. The shortfall has to be made up somewhere and you know the government it sure the hell wont come from budget cuts.
The reason i would rather see people with less money with more is because i would rather see a healthy society. Having low crime and crazy people off the streets is a public good in my eyes. If you have all the money in the world what does it matter if you have to live in a gated community, riots in the streets, and massive amounts of homeless in the country you live in. Thats why us liberals care about these people. It isnt because we feel for them its just that we are as selfish as the conservitives and dont like gated communitys.
Perfect point, you will get some of the money that you will probabley invest or spend (when you invest you allow others to spend it so same thing) this is good for all of us. Someone in your fam. earned that money in the first place. It is not a gift to you from the Gov. when your taxs are lowered you get some of your own money back, it was yours to start with.
Just how the hell do you think what you propose will stop crime of riots in the streets.
Rodney King was awarded millons from his law suit and was still a hood and was arested several times. Crooks and thugs with more money in there pockets are still crooks and thugs, they just have nicer cars.
It was tried as communision and it changed nothing still had classes still had crime still had revalutions.
Do you really think if all the money was spread out evenly with everyone living in the same type of home driving the same type of car this utopia would exist? You still have those that want to have without effort and those who will work harder for just a bit more, dude we are people not hampsters.
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Originally posted by Frogm4n
actually i am set to collect on a nice little sum of money that i didnt work for. My family went from paying 30 percent of its taxes to 3 percent under bush. The shortfall has to be made up somewhere and you know the government it sure the hell wont come from budget cuts.
The reason i would rather see people with less money with more is because i would rather see a healthy society. Having low crime and crazy people off the streets is a public good in my eyes. If you have all the money in the world what does it matter if you have to live in a gated community, riots in the streets, and massive amounts of homeless in the country you live in. Thats why us liberals care about these people. It isnt because we feel for them its just that we are as selfish as the conservitives and dont like gated communitys.
get the feelin you haven't been in the work force more than 10 years = < 28 years old
talk to me when you are over 40 - those rose colored glasses will be in the trash by then....
ps - conservative and don't live anywhere near a gated community - can't afford to - though have nothing against them .. nothing like watching the value of your homestead go to pot as the rentals in the hood park cars in their yards instead of mowing em..
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Originally posted by Eagler
get the feelin you haven't been in the work force more than 10 years = < 28 years old
talk to me when you are over 40 - those rose colored glasses will be in the trash by then....
ps - conservative and don't live anywhere near a gated community - can't afford to - though have nothing against them .. nothing like watching the value of your homestead go to pot as the rentals in the hood park cars in their yards instead of mowing em..
Funny I was thinking the same thing, I'm 41 my wife is 45, I think I had the rose colored glasses when I was 18 or 20 also (was going to make the world a better place and all that). When I was a kid I hoped that a Hurricane would come as that seemed so cool. Now I own a house and an airplane and really dread this season, funny how as you get older things change and reality sets in. When I was younger I was fearless, now I have fears.
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I think I started realizing the world was different when I saw Dennis Miller doing his monolog just after one of his children was born. My eyes were wide and my jaw open as I heard him say it.
It was all about walls and building them as high as you can. He never thought he would have come to that until he saw something on the tube while holding his baby. Build them tall and wide he said, give up on the rest. You can’t help them so help yourself.
The wall of course was metaphoric for making as much scratch as you can to try and stay as “safe” as you can.
I’m mixing cement as we speak :).
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About the Rich. Here is a compelling statement, made by one of the biggest Libs you can find.
Congressman Patrick Kennedy, D-RI (Rhode Island for those of you in public schools) recently declared to fellow members at a Washington nightspot, “I don’t need Bush’s tax cut, I’ve never worked a day in my life”
A number of other rich people, i.e. Warren Buffet, have at various times likewise declared that they do not need what are called “tax cuts for the rich”. But whatever political points such rhetoric may score, it confuses issues that are long overdue to be clarified.
One of the most basic confusions is between income and wealth. You can have high income and low wealth or vice versa. We have all heard of athletes and entertainers who have earned millions, that ended up broke.
There are also people of relatively modest incomes who have saved and invested enough over the years to leave surprisingly large amounts of wealth to their heirs.
Income tax cuts apply to income, not wealth. So the fact that some rich people say they don’t need a tax cut means nothing because they are not getting a tax cut on their wealth, since their wealth is not being taxed anyway.
Looked at differently, high tax rates hit people who are currently earning high incomes- usually late in life, after having worked their way up in their professions over a period of decades. Such as myself.
Genuinely rich people who have never had to work a day in their lives –people like Kennedy- are unaffected by income taxes except on what they are currently earning, which may be a tiny fraction of what they own.
In other words, soak-the-rich tax rates do not, in fact, soak the rich.
Someone who eventually works his way up to $100,000 a year will qualify as “rich” in liberal rhetoric, but by the time you reach that level you may have a few kids, college tuition, mortgage etc. You’re not exactly buying yachts.
Another fundamental confusion over tax rates with reduction in tax revenues collected by the government.
One of the enduring political myths of our generation has been the claim that the rise in deficits during the 1980s resulted from President Reagan’s “tax cuts for the rich.”
Tax rates were cut. Tax revenues were not.
More tax revenues were collected during every year of the two Reagan administrations than had ever been collected in any previous year in the history of the country. Nor was this experience unique.
When President Kennedy cut tax rates during the 1960s, tax revenues went up. The whole point was –and is- to encourage more economic activity and more activity generates more tax revenues, even at lower rates.
The same thing happened back in the 1920s.
Why, then, were there federal deficits during the Reagan administration? Because Congress spent even more money the then rising tax revenues brought in.
There is no amount of money that congress cannot out spend.
Although these were christened “the Reagan deficits,” all spending bills originate in the House of Representatives- and Reagan was never a member of congress. Indeed, the Republicans never controlled the House of Representatives during the Reagan Years.
Only after the Republican party gained control of the house in 1994 were there budget surpluses-for which president Clinton took credit, even though he too, had never been a member of Congress.
It is fascinating to see congressional Democrats, who have for decades been spending the country into growing deficits, suddenly expressing shock at the current deficits that have occurred while President Bush is in the White House- and the country is at war.
How serious are these deficits? As with all debts the burden depends on what your income is. As a percentage of national income, today’s deficits and national debts are far below what they were when Democrats were spending. In fact they are 3% of the GDP. The national average is around 5% and during the 1940s we were at 45%.
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Originally posted by Scootter
Robin Hood was a big time Lib, but remember they did say he STOLE from the ritch at least it was an honest reporting.
Actually, you got it backwards. Robin Hood stole from tax collectors (and rich rulling class who lived supported by taxes unjustly collected from working people) and returned the money to the overtaxed people.
He was a tax-cutter not tax-and-spender.
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Originally posted by JBA
Although these were christened “the Reagan deficits,” all spending bills originate in the House of Representatives- and Reagan was never a member of congress. Indeed, the Republicans never controlled the House of Representatives during the Reagan Years.
Only after the Republican party gained control of the house in 1994 were there budget surpluses-for which president Clinton took credit, even though he too, had never been a member of Congress.
It is fascinating to see congressional Democrats, who have for decades been spending the country into growing deficits, suddenly expressing shock at he current deficits that have occurred while President Bush is in the White House- and the country is at war.
{sands up} Clap, clap, clap well said (this is sig material here)
Very well put (I wish I could write like that)
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Originally posted by mietla
Actually, you got it backwards. Robin Hood stole from tax collectors and returned the money to the overtaxes people. He was a tux-cutter not tax-and-spender.
ya know you are right sir
I stand corrected (need to rent Robin Hood again)
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Good post JBA.