Tax Cuts are great but spending is out of control

Liberals often complain about the rich getting tax cuts and this class warfare hasn't done anything but breed class envy. Everyone who is rich isn't evil. Some people start a business or service and they make money. They create jobs and give to non profits and charities. I have never worked for a poor man and I've hired workers when I started my own business.

But the left hates the rich unless their liberal/progressive. They love Warren Buffett but Buffet is a hypocrite. He says the rich should pay more but why doesn't he just give more money to Government if he thinks they are so efficient. He gave 1.6 billion to charities. Why didn't he give a billion to government? Why didn't Oprah, another rich liberal sent in more money to the government? They have a box you can check and then send in more money at tax time. i heard they got 3 million dollars sent in last year. That's Oprah's shoe money for a month. Why don't all of these rich liberals who love Government send in more money to the Treasury? Michael Moore, Oprah, Buffett, Gates and other actors and singers who scream that Government should tax us more, should send in more money to the government. The fact is they are hypocrites and they only want to give the government more money if it's a collective thing. They will not have the courage of their convictions and do this on an individual level.

Some people might think their money is better spent on their children's education and on charities that help those in poverty versus sending to the Black Hole in Washington that sucks up and spends money like crazy.

Tax cuts work if you reduce spending. Bush cut taxes and increased spending. All of these people who say we tried it the conservative way don't know what they're talking about. We didn't try it that way. Again, Bush cut taxes and increased spending. This is just crazy. Obama is making the same mistakes. He's spending like crazy and the American people will not be able to create the kind of jobs or enough jobs in this global economy with cheap labor to pay back this massive spending and massive debt.

Liberals say tax cuts add to the deficit but that's only if you are going to spend money regardless if you have the money. The Democrats are saying if they can't get the money in taxes they will borrow the money instead of cutting spending because they don't have the money.

Here's an article showing the benefits of cutting taxes. Also, 47% of Americans don't pay any income taxes. The evil rich or the top 10% pay 73% of income taxes.

A favorite liberal narrative is that President George W. Bush squan- dered the Clinton-era budget surpluses and piled up deficits with expensive wars and tax cuts for the rich. Candidate Barack Obama used this tale to great effect, and President Obama tells it still. Take his State of the Union address last week, when Mr. Obama attributed the Bush-era deficits to "paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program."

The truth is that Mr. Bush's deficits were the product of spending, not tax cuts. In fact, Mr. Obama could learn an important lesson for his own economic plan by studying Mr. Bush's two very different attempts at tax-cutting.

By 2003, Mr. Bush grasped this lesson. In that year, he cut the dividend and capital gains rates to 15 percent each, and the economy responded. In two years, stocks rose 20 percent. In three years, $15 trillion of new wealth was created. The U.S. economy added 8 million new jobs from mid-2003 to early 2007, and the median household increased its wealth by $20,000 in real terms.

But the real jolt for tax-cutting opponents was that the 03 Bush tax cuts also generated a massive increase in federal tax receipts. From 2004 to 2007, federal tax revenues increased by $785 billion, the largest four-year increase in American history. According to the Treasury Department, individual and corporate income tax receipts were up 40 percent in the three years following the Bush tax cuts. And (bonus) the rich paid an even higher percentage of the total tax burden than they had at any time in at least the previous 40 years. This was news to theNew York Times, whose astonished editorial board could only describe the gains as a "surprise windfall."

Unfortunately, Mr. Bush allowed Congress to spend away those additional tax revenues. The fact is that the increase in tax revenues that flowed from the '03 tax cuts could have paid for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and then some but for rampant discretionary domestic spending.

www.washingtontimes.com...

Bush didn't do anything to control spending and Obama is doing the same thing.

This would all be resolved if we mandated that citizens create one self-sustaining city in SimCity (or CitiesXL) that lasted for more than 200 years before being eligible to vote. To be eligible for office, at least five successful cities lasting more than 200 years.

Increasing taxes -can- increase revenue, but it is generally better to slash spending and decrease taxes. In some cases, when you have some steep tax rates (anything over 15%), you can increase revenue by decreasing taxes and encouraging more growth.

I know the reference will not be appreciated by many on the board - "You want to decide policies based off of a game!" - Really - it's a simulator. And while some things in it are going to be arbitrary and not reflect the real-world - the whole economics principle rings pretty true. The first thing you do when you start seeing red numbers on your revenue sheet is to hold off on discretionary spending. Failing that - you decrease optional public spending. Failing that still, you cut spending on stuff that won't immediately lead to a dysfunctional city (cutting utilities spending and resulting in ineffective roads, loss of power/water, etc - healthcare and education are long-term things that can be cut for the short-term if necessary). You should only increase taxes if you had substantially decreased taxes for an industry that you were attempting to invite in (such as high-tech industry) - and only by a percentage point every couple years to see how things pan out.

Of course - in the "real world" the solution to any of these problems is to simply print money. When you compare inflation rates to deficit spending relative to GDP... you see a rather close relationship that cannot be attributed to anything but causality.

But, it's not about the deficit and it's not about tax cuts. It's about votes. What gets votes is creating an enemy for the masses and generating a fervor to distract them from the truth. The left (in the generic term) acknowledges (rightly or not) that this tactic was used to garner support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, they use it against American citizens, in their class war.

You are correct. Bush and the Republicans of the 111th Congress were not Conservatives. They spent like... well... drunken Liberals.

It is completely un-American to demand any American pay more taxes, before drastic spending reform. Our career politicians have become addicted to spending and must be stopped, before they take us all down with them.