In summary, the conversation discusses the increasing national debt due to the $100 billion a year for the Iraq/Afghan wars and the $60 billion for Hurricane Katrina. There is a debate about the effectiveness of tax cuts in increasing revenues, with some arguing that the recent increase in federal revenues is due to temporary factors such as the expiration of a large tax cut and an increase in capital gains tax payments. However, others argue that the tax cuts have not led to significant economic growth or job creation. There is also a discussion about the estate tax and the cost of repealing it, with estimates ranging from $290 billion to $1 trillion. The conversation ends with a debate about supply side economics, also known as "voodoo economics," and
True. I never said they were. I asked if tax cuts pay for themselves. Specifically did Bush's tax cuts pay for themselves. If revenues do not increase, they don't. If revenues increase they do.
All your analogies are meaningless to me. Just like all the climate models and their explanations mean little to me. The ice is melting, so I conclude the planet is warming up.
Clinton said he would get rid of the deficit and he did. Call it luck or whatever. As far as I am concerned he did what he promised to do.
In order to answer that we'll have to dance in front of the 'it's the health of the gov'ts books that drives the private sector' volcanoe once again.
Gov't needs to balance its books? Add revenue, cut spending. Of course, not even singularity driven Economics courses argue that 'companies' can raise revenues by raising prices. Yet we are to believe that gov't, the entity that makes it's money the old fashioned way: by dipping it's little funnel into an either strongly or weakly flowing stream, can somehow have its revenue determined by how deep or how shallow it dips it's little funnel into that strongly or weakly flowing stream.
Seems to me, when you can start to see the rocks, it doesn't matter how deep gov't dips its little funnel. We now have it on good advice that the strength of the stream is in no way influenced by how far the funnel is inserted.
Not even, I suppose, another 3.6% on a tiny fraction of folks earning over $250K/yr, but only on the amount above 250K/yr.
Well then, it must be interest rates.
Why no, it's midnight basketball.
Scratch that, it's gays in the military.
No, wait a minute, we need someone to scare the crap out of the country with Nationalized Health Scare, and then not implement it.
Oh, Hell. I give up. The primary purpose of this debate seems to be to simply imply that GWB has 'taken' us somewhere we don't want to be, and that someone has a plan to take us back. I guess, without actually hearing the details of what or how that is, we'll just all have to pretend that there is some point to this debate.
Welcome to Cargo Cult Economics; you are free to walk around the cabin, because nobody is actually flying the plane.
