North . . Dogma

14 Comments

1. I can never tell what your point is.

   Were tax cuts an impediment to federal income tax inlays?

   Well there were only two rounds of tax cuts in your table JFK’s 1961 and RWR 1981. And both of those were followed by decreases in revenues, I mean “inlays”

   It is also interesting to note that Tax Reform of 1986 really was a disguised tax increase.

   I would expect inlays to flucuate ith the economy as a whole, while outlays would fluctuate against the economy.

   I wonder why there were double digit increases in inlays in 1969, 1971, and 1977. And 1967 and 1975 for outlays.
   ?
   Vague memories of Nixon adjusting excise taxes.

   67: Vietnam? Apollo?

   1975: When did the oil embargo start? WIN buttons.

   Comment by Just John — 3/28/2003 @ 1:35 pm | Edit This




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2. I would expect inlays to flucuate ith the economy as a whole

   Well, John, you just “got” a good bit of my point. As the economy rises, the inlays will probably fall suit & as the economy tanks, so do the inlays.

   Pretty much puts a pisser on the argument that tax cuts cause the gov’t to lose money, eh? We’re nowhere NEAR the Carter tax rates and look at what the nation/economy has done since the Reagan tax cuts took effect. Tax inlays have boomed, yet there are still people all over the place who rail against the Reagan tax cuts as being something that caused the large debt. Go back & look at what happened after JFK’s tax.

   The actual data tells another story than what we’ve been told by the anti-tax folks, eh?

   Comment by Ricky — 3/28/2003 @ 1:51 pm | Edit This




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3. This is what I see in the last column:
   JFK/LBJ 2 black, 6 red
   RMN/GRF 4 & 4
   JEC 3 1
   RWR 3 5
   GWB 1 3
   WJC 8 0

   Comment by Just John — 3/28/2003 @ 2:10 pm | Edit This




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4. Just John,

   Are you mature enough to remember the Regan years and how strong and proud our nation was? The bottom line is this:

   Jimmy Carter turned a 10.7 % surplus into a 6.7% deficit. That’s aproximately 18% decrease. That’s why he was a one term president.

   Ronald Regan, for 8 years, and George Bush, for 4 years, worked on the tragedy Carter caused. Unfortunately, Clinton received the rewards of the turnaround.

   Argue, vary from the point, do whatever your liberal mind wishes. If you research economics, you can educate yourself and learn how the whole deficit/surplus things work. Now thats going to require more than the left-winged websites you have in your favorites. Of course, it’s obvious thats all you know. Your thought process is programmed by those who believe in a dependent, socialist point of view.

   Comment by Keith — 3/29/2003 @ 7:18 pm | Edit This




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5. Ricky, thanks for posting useful numbers this time.

   Keith, you simply don’t understand what the last column means. It isn’t the deficit or surplus, it’s the change in deficit or surplus (a first difference). There was no 10% surplus for Jimmy Carter to turn into a deficit; he inherited a deficit (just subtract out from in columns). In fact, the deficits at the end of his term were smaller than those of the last Nixon/Ford years.

   Ricky seems to have learned from my suggestion he stop posting about economics until he understands the tables heis looking at. Keith, you should do likewise.

   Comment by Andrew Lazarus — 3/30/2003 @ 7:50 pm | Edit This




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6. Andrew,
   Don’t be a jackass or your ass will be gone. Capiche?

   In fact, the deficits at the end of his term were smaller than those of the last Nixon/Ford years.
   Actually, Andrew, since Carter was inagurated in 1977 & submitted a budget that took effect late that fiscal year, the 1977 data refers to the last Ford budget.

   And in 1981, in constant dollars, the on-budget deficit was larger than 1977.

   Don’t talk smack, Andrew. It usually comes back to bite you in the ass.

   Comment by Ricky — 3/30/2003 @ 8:09 pm | Edit This




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7. And in 1981, in constant dollars, the on-budget deficit was larger than 1977

   In absolute terms, yes; as a percentage of the budget, no. And both ways, pretty close to equal.

   I’ll try to clean up my language.

   Comment by Andrew Lazarus — 3/30/2003 @ 10:11 pm | Edit This




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8. I never voted for Carter anyhow. For me, the shine came off in February of 1976.

   But I wouldn’t badmouth any Georgian on this board.

   Comment by Just John — 3/30/2003 @ 10:43 pm | Edit This




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9. Ricky,
   Just FYI, that “current events” guy on Maher’s show has a bit on the Georgia flag this week.
   Check it out.

   Comment by Just John — 3/30/2003 @ 10:45 pm | Edit This




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10. Was the show any good? I had high hopes after the first two episodes, but it got so bad after that, I just couldn’t bring myself to waste my time.

    But I wouldn’t badmouth any Georgian on this board.
    Hang around & you’ll see me do it plenty of times (read: Bill Campbell).

    Comment by Ricky — 3/30/2003 @ 11:04 pm | Edit This




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11. Getting this thread back on topic….

    If we look at the inlays, the “tax cuts cost money” rhetoric is just that, IMO….rhetoric. What “costs” money are recessions or downturns.

    Let’s call a spade a spade & get a reasonable national discussion going.

    Comment by Ricky — 3/30/2003 @ 11:09 pm | Edit This




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12. Ricky,

    In 1981 the oil market collapsed, oil went from over 60$ a barrell to 12$ in 1985. The first Regan tax cut was not very substaintial, you do remember that he cut a number of middle class deductions don’t you?

    In the early 70’s Nixon took us off the gold standered, fixed domestic oil prices after domestic production peaked and had us on a wage price freeze. And your trying to make a point about taxes?

    Here is an intersting question, what was the % cut the over all effective tax rate of the first Reagen tax cut? I’ll bet you can’t answer that question. And what about the Reagen tax increase of 86?

    Also the problem is that the deficit number sin tis chart inclued the payroll tax money, there hasn’t been a true surplus for sometime (Exception FY 2000), there was never a surplus in the 80’s.

    So no, I don’t think this chart suggests any link between tax rates and spending. If it does your going to have to point out specifically the years where you think this chart suggests that and then demonstrate the casual link between the taxes and the spending.

    Comment by Rick DeMent — 3/31/2003 @ 7:41 am | Edit This




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13. To take the ups and downs of the economy out of these numbers, it would be more useful to calculate the percentage of revenues and outlays to real gdp.

    The infamous WSJ op/ed page used a large y axis range of values to try to make the point that as a share of gdp, federal revenues tracked within a narrow range across the fiscal policies of a Carter or a Reagan.

    The problem was that they compressed the y axis so much that it appeared the ‘yield’ of revenues to gdp was about 20%, and little variation from that could be seen. However, if the y axis was expanded, it became clear that the Reagan tax cut period coincided with a dropping of the federal tax take out of the gdp from a little over 20%, say 20.5% or something, to 19% or less. The numbers are close enough that with an exaggerated y axis range, you can’t tell the difference in the graph, which looks almost flat.

    However, the 1, 1.5, or 2% drop in revenues as a percentage of gdp is a huge figure. Assuming gdp is $8 trillion, 1% of gdp is $80 billion. Coincidentally, when the Reagan team tasked its OMB head, David Stockman, to calculate how much ‘worse’ the deficit would have been under the Carter tax and spend policies, he returned the report that the deficit would have been about $80 billion less.

    No, it wasn’t only Reagan’s tax cut effects, it also was his doubling of nominal defense spending levels in a few years of double digit increases that made for his deficits. As many of the more frank commentators admit, including Larry Kudlow.

    Comment by sofla — 4/2/2003 @ 12:46 pm | Edit This




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14. Been there, done that, sofla.

    I’ve already detailed the budget versus GDP & during the Reagan years, inlays grew at a rate higher than GDP 7 of 8 years.

    Comment by Ricky — 4/2/2003 @ 12:58 pm | Edit This




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