Metal Sludge Gossip Board

Nevermind wrote:a AAA credit rating from George Bush, and an unemployment rate of less than 6%.


You're doing a heckuva job brownie.

Nevermind wrote:a AAA credit rating from George Bush, and an unemployment rate of less than 6%.


You're doing a heckuva job brownie.

When you look at this final (budget) agreement that we came to with the White House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy.

Nevermind wrote:a AAA credit rating from George Bush, and an unemployment rate of less than 6%.


You're doing a heckuva job brownie.

Dr J Jones wrote:After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush didn't call for sacrifice. He called for shopping. "Get down to Disney World in Florida," he said. "Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed." Taken on its own, this wasn't such a horrible sentiment. But Boston University historian Andrew Bacevich has made a convincing case that it was part of a broader pattern of encouraging financial irresponsibility. "Bush seems to have calculated — cynically but correctly — that prolonging the credit-fueled consumer binge could help keep complaints about his performance as Commander in Chief from becoming more than a nuisance, Now we're paying the bill.

Nevermind wrote:a AAA credit rating from George Bush, and an unemployment rate of less than 6%.


You're doing a heckuva job brownie.

The United States is the biggest obstacle to a one world government there is but Obama seems hell-bent on leveling said obstacle. Yes we can!

ijwthstd wrote:

Dr J Jones wrote:After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush didn't call for sacrifice. He called for shopping. "Get down to Disney World in Florida," he said. "Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed." Taken on its own, this wasn't such a horrible sentiment. But Boston University historian Andrew Bacevich has made a convincing case that it was part of a broader pattern of encouraging financial irresponsibility. "Bush seems to have calculated — cynically but correctly — that prolonging the credit-fueled consumer binge could help keep complaints about his performance as Commander in Chief from becoming more than a nuisance, Now we're paying the bill.

Yeah this really got me when it was happening. Turns out we probably sacrificed our social security and medicare.

Crazy Levi wrote:Here's a history lesson:

The only thing Republicans believe in is slashing taxes for the rich. That's their entire economic policy. And it's been proven, time after fucking time, that it DOES NOT WORK.

And please change your "Iggy on Ecstacy" font colo, it's really hard on the eyes.

Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich
Americans know how to use the moving van to escape high taxes

Here's the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states. And the evidence that we discovered in our new study for the American Legislative Exchange Council, "Rich States, Poor States," published in March, shows that Americans are more sensitive to high taxes than ever before. The tax differential between low-tax and high-tax states is widening, meaning that a relocation from high-tax California or Ohio, to no-income tax Texas or Tennessee, is all the more financially profitable both in terms of lower tax bills and more job opportunities.

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies -- old and new -- have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

Martin Feldstein, Harvard economist and former president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, co-authored a famous study in 1998 called "Can State Taxes Redistribute Income?" This should be required reading for today's state legislators. It concludes: "Since individuals can avoid unfavorable taxes by migrating to jurisdictions that offer more favorable tax conditions, a relatively unfavorable tax will cause gross wages to adjust. . . . A more progressive tax thus induces firms to hire fewer high skilled employees and to hire more low skilled employees."

More recently, Barry W. Poulson of the University of Colorado last year examined many factors that explain why some states grew richer than others from 1964 to 2004 and found "a significant negative impact of higher marginal tax rates on state economic growth." In other words, soaking the rich doesn't work. To the contrary, middle-class workers end up taking the hit.

Finally, there is the issue of whether high-income people move away from states that have high income-tax rates. Examining IRS tax return data by state, E.J. McMahon, a fiscal expert at the Manhattan Institute, measured the impact of large income-tax rate increases on the rich ($200,000 income or more) in Connecticut, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 5% from 4.5%; in New Jersey, which raised its rate in 2004 to 8.97% from 6.35%; and in New York, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 7.7% from 6.85%. Over the period 2002-2005, in each of these states the "soak the rich" tax hike was followed by a significant reduction in the number of rich people paying taxes in these states relative to the national average. Amazingly, these three states ranked 46th, 49th and 50th among all states in the percentage increase in wealthy tax filers in the years after they tried to soak the rich.

This result was all the more remarkable given that these were years when the stock market boomed and Wall Street gains were in the trillions of dollars. Examining data from a 2008 Princeton study on the New Jersey tax hike on the wealthy, we found that there were 4,000 missing half-millionaires in New Jersey after that tax took effect. New Jersey now has one of the largest budget deficits in the nation.

By ARTHUR LAFFER and STEPHEN MOORE
May 18, 2009
WSJ.com

Crazy Levi wrote:And please change your "Iggy on Ecstacy" font colo, it's really hard on the eyes.

tylamonroe wrote:

Crazy Levi wrote:Here's a history lesson:

The only thing Republicans believe in is slashing taxes for the rich. That's their entire economic policy. And it's been proven, time after fucking time, that it DOES NOT WORK.

And please change your "Iggy on Ecstacy" font colo, it's really hard on the eyes.

Did it work when JFK did it?

Crazy Levi wrote:
Sure. Shit was trickling down all over the place.

Constantine wrote:Don't worry about anything. Your President has a secret plan soon to be released. Unnamed inside sources say that the President's plan is: Hope, Change, Hope, Change, Hope, Change, Hope, Chance, Hope, Change.


I am so glad that Obama will finally address the specifics!

Crazy Levi wrote:

Constantine wrote:Don't worry about anything. Your President has a secret plan soon to be released. Unnamed inside sources say that the President's plan is: Hope, Change, Hope, Change, Hope, Change, Hope, Chance, Hope, Change.


I am so glad that Obama will finally address the specifics!

So is the "hope and change" thing the new "Al Gore invented the internet?"

Crazy Levi wrote:Here's a history lesson:

The only thing Republicans believe in is slashing taxes for the rich. That's their entire economic policy. And it's been proven, time after fucking time, that it DOES NOT WORK.

Nevermind wrote:

Crazy Levi wrote:Here's a history lesson:

The only thing Republicans believe in is slashing taxes for the rich. That's their entire economic policy. And it's been proven, time after fucking time, that it DOES NOT WORK.

Liberals see taxes as a easy way to seize wealth so that they can work their redistribution schemes. They will do anything to get their hands on money that somebody else earned.