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I agree that the Roth IRA stuff is a little tangential, but I've now bothered to look up the numbers, and there were only $77B in Roth IRAs in 2000. Even taxed at the highest rate (40%) and with nobody contributing to new Roth accounts but only doing a one-time rollover, and with the remaining trillions in non-Roth IRAs never being converted, the income to the government was at most $50B or so spread over the previous two years--a factor, perhaps, but a modest one at best given the differences in deficits (>$200B over several years).

Actually, that $127B number is a bit misleading. The total value was the reported values as of tax year 2000. We have the Dot com bubble bust and a lot of money fall from the markets which most likely deflated that a little. The article even mentions on the first page about a decline in market value of $177 Billion. So the conversion rates could have been a lot larger.

But we are also talking about capitol gains Cuts too. If you look to the very last graph, you'll notice that they underestimated the impact of capitol gains by 84 billion dollars over the first three years (97,98,99). Now, we can't take a direct inference of the total amount benefit from the capitol gains cuts because they already estimated for an increase. If we look at Table one on this page, you will notice that it took 15 years for the capitol gains realizations to move 100 billion dollars (1980-1995) but between 1997 and 200, it moved almost 300 billion. Of course the capitol gains reduction was effective in may of 1997. So when you start adding them all together, you start seeing numbers equal to most of the so called surplus.

I had noticed that the "surplus" didn't actually decrease the debt (easy enough to do, if you look at the debt graph), but I appreciate the article pointing out why. Of course, that wasn't unique to Clinton, and it didn't matter for my point (or yours, as far as I know) that Clinton actually ran a surplus--the point, which remains true when one avoids accounting gimmicks, is that Clinton reduced the level of deficit spending over quite a number of years.

Lol.. I think you missed the entire point of the articles. You see, it wasn't that Clinton did anything special or spent the money on something other then paying the debt. As was noted in the link I provided, which was created by the same author you cited in your second link as well as that article being additional support for the one I posted.... Anyways, I lost myself for a second. The point is that the article you pointed to was in support of the first article I used which stated that the surplus was only because they counted debt as income due to public trust fund laws. The example they gave was "If in a given year you earn $30,000 and a friend loans you $5,000, and you spend $32,000, is that a surplus? While you can claim "I received $35,000 and only spent $32,000, thus I have a surplus," that's a pretty weak argument when you know that $2,000 of the money you spent was actually borrowed and has to be paid back later. That's pretty much what happened in 2000."

But, anyway, back to the question of whether Bush did anything to impact whether the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. First, the point that the poor got a larger fractional tax cut than the rich is not the right number to look at--it's the *fraction of income* not the *fraction of tax* that leads to a flattening or accentuation of wealth differences. From http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/washington/08tax.html in 2004, the net wealth increase from the tax cuts was about 2% for middle-income people and about 4.5% for the top income bracket. At the same time, it is true that

The top 1% by income (which isn't necessarily, and probably isn't, the richest 1%) still pay 25% of all taxes (and the top 10% by income pay half):

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011535

The tax system might not be perfect, but there isn't really any way to argue that it is biased against the bottom (you can argue that it isn't biased enough against the top, but that's pretty different).

http://cbo.gov/budget/historical.shtml http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/during_the_clinton_administration_was_the_federal.html

Of course no such chart could ever be produced. It would be like asking me to draw you a picture of "consciousness" using nothing but neurons.

The chart has Tax rate on the X-Axis and Productivity on the Y-Axis. These are both empirically determinable. Sample a bunch of people paying different tax rates and determine their productivity. The Congressional Budget Office has done studies like this one where the effect of a tax cut is assumed, and then all the economic feedbacks are accounted for based on current productivity and trends. You can't read the future, but if you can't even make forecasts, there is no such thing as economics.

This is part of the appeal of your heroes' arguments. They assume that things will work themselves out in the end so long as something is done immediately. What is not seen, what cannot be charted, is the economic growth that *did not happen* because of increased taxation.

The problem with your hero's argument is that he has no evidence to back up his claims. Show me that people work less when taxed at a certain rate. The fact is, there isn't very much evidence that this happens; it seems like common sense that it would, but it also is common sense that the sun travels around the Earth. History is full of examples where a country turned to austerity and all of the metric we measure an economy by went down. I give you history, Hazllitt gives you homilies.

It's telling that at no time does Hazlitt even claim that New Deal programs have hurt the economy. He says that they should, and that they can in ways that are, essentially, impossible to know. This is not science, this is gnosticism. This is religion.

They would have us continually struggling to survive a recession, and pay it back during prosperity, with the implicit assumption that the end result is a better economy. But they have nothing to compare to.

Aside from the US economy during the 1950s and 1960s, when America used its vast investments in assets like bridges, highways, dams and a secure Europe to exploit new markets and drive economic growth.

Meanwhile, Hazlitt's argument makes sense in theory.

That isn't enough.

I guess my point is that economic decisions have to be evidence-based and if you think action A will cost money, you have to be able to say how much and why. You do it when you get a mortgage, and governments do it when they raise revenue. That's what economists do. Economics in One Lesson only works if you accept that economics is mainly moral or philosophical, and that decisions regarding taxation, borrowing and spending must be informed by the way a certain small-L liberal value system regards property rights, and the ordering of a man's estate.

False. Here is my source:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011537

Do you have a source for your claim?

I suppose we could quibble over households vs individuals, but note on that page, there is no instance where moving up into a higher income group results in a cut in overall taxes.

And maybe the wealthy should be paying even higher taxes, I don't know, but the idea that they are paying lower taxes is simply false.

Clinton barely managed to balance the budget, and only by using money that eventually we'll have to pay back to social security

Actually, according to both the Congressional Budget Office and the Treasury Department, there was an on-budget (i.e. not including Social Security) surplus in 1999 and 2000. The only argument I have seen disputing this is the fact that the national debt went up each year. I'd be interested in an explanation for this discrepancy, but I haven't seen one.

It's not an ad hominem, what I did is more properly it is referred to as poisoning the well, and there are certain situations where it is actually appropriate. For instance, if someone said our moon landings were faked it would be important to note whether they were, say, an astronaut or a UFO conspiracy nut when you looked at the evidence they presented. Here it is important to note that the heritage foundation is extremely biased, and the direction of that bias.

In any case, my point is not that the Laffer curve does not exist. My point is that we are operating on the left hand side of the Laffer curve, where tax cuts will lower revenue and tax increases will raise it. You may want to read the Congresional Budget Office's 2005 report, "Analyzing the Economic and Budgetary Effects of a 10 Percent Cut in Income Tax Rates". It takes into account projected differences in growth rates caused by tax decreases, and it proves that the government would lose money by lowering taxes.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6908/12-01-10PercentTaxCut.pdf

What wasteful federal spending did you have in mind? How big is it relative to the deficit?

Where does paying down the $10,000,000,000,000 in federal debt fit into your picture?

Start here: http://www.cbo.gov/

For example, our deficits have been widely reported at 400-500bn throughout this decade when in fact they've been 700bn+.

Am I reading the data from the Congressional Budget Office wrong? Look at 2007, for example: the chart lists an "On-Budget" deficit of $342.2 billion, a Social Security surplus of $186.5 billion, a Postal Service deficit of $5.1 billion, and a "Total" deficit of 160.7. No year (up to 2007) had a "On-Budget" deficit of greater than $600 billion. You can get basically the same picture from the Treasury Department (you can avoid .doc files by getting the PDF linked at the bottom; see page 19 of the PDF, which has page number 12 in the document).

On the other hand, page 28 of the Treasury Department PDF (the document has page number 21) shows total debt outstanding figures increasing by amounts that tend to be more than the "On-budget" deficit (500-600 billion, but still not 700bn+). I haven't been able to find an explanation for the difference, but the answer doesn't appear to be Social Security.

Additionally, the difference between borrowing from the SS trust fund and the public is that the government has a strong obligation to pay back money borrowed from the public. They have no such obligation to pay themselves back.

Senior citizens tend to have high voter turnout. There is a strong obligation to pay back Social Security.

In fact, there has been a lot of talk about cutting Social Security payments because we're in a "crisis" (whatever). That's just laying the groundwork.

The last attempt to privatize Social Security failed. Obama is likely to win the election. He appears to be against cutting benefits and instead favors imposing new Social Security taxes on those making over $250 thousand per year.

The senate bill is S3325.

Posted the wrong links to the votes.
The final house vote as I read it is this one: Number 664.

While with the senate the result is reported by the Thomas.loc.gov history as:

9/26/2008:
        Passed Senate with an amendment by Unanimous Consent.

The cosponsors are:

Sen Alexander, Lamar [TN] - 9/23/2008
Sen Bayh, Evan [IN] - 7/24/2008
Sen Bond, Christopher S. [MO] - 9/23/2008
Sen Boxer, Barbara [CA] - 9/24/2008
Sen Brown, Sherrod [OH] - 9/26/2008
Sen Cardin, Benjamin L. [MD] - 9/10/2008
Sen Clinton, Hillary Rodham [NY] - 9/25/2008
Sen Corker, Bob [TN] - 9/18/2008
Sen Cornyn, John [TX] - 7/24/2008
Sen Feinstein, Dianne [CA] - 7/24/2008
Sen Graham, Lindsey [SC] - 9/23/2008
Sen Gregg, Judd [NH] - 9/25/2008
Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT] - 9/11/2008
Sen Hutchison, Kay Bailey [TX] - 9/24/2008
Sen Levin, Carl [MI] - 9/25/2008
Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] - 9/24/2008
Sen Smith, Gordon H. [OR] - 9/24/2008
Sen Specter, Arlen [PA] - 7/24/2008
Sen Stabenow, Debbie [MI] - 9/26/2008
Sen Voinovich, George V. [OH] - 7/24/2008
Sen Whitehouse, Sheldon [RI] - 8/1/2008

IOf you're offended by this consider this. There are a number of other issues they do not address, vis education, taxation, etc. But somehow in two months the House and Senate went from introducing this bill to passing it.

Incidentally, according to the CBO this bill is estimated to lead to spending up to $429 million over the next four years. So much to budget control.

How many more politicians and faux-news talking heads will continue to push the pseudo-scientific religion that is reaganomics?

Humans are capable of believing untrue things for a very long time, even after reality begins to seriously challenge those beliefs. The Left has long-cherished beliefs (Example: Unions are good for workers, My Counter-Example: The number of Unions up until the 60s that prohibited blacks from working at a union shop). The Right has its long-cherished beliefs.

There are a lot of possible explanations why people are like that, but the more important thing is to engage those people by asking questions about the basis of their belief and learning yourself. If someone says something, and you don't know if it's true or not, take some effort to find out if it is. Most of the time, you can Google the issue and find a lot of people have done the hard work for you. You just have to verify if their logic is sound and inferences are valid.

Krugman, via his blog and columns, does try his best to do this. In fact, he often posts links to early versions of his papers and mathematics on his NY Times blog and lets his readers pick it apart. He and Tyler Cowan (a libertarian leaning economist) have very civil debates via their blogs.

Most *-wing sites simply tune out contrary voices with more chanting and weak arguments that bolster that community's feelings on right and wrong. In short: people judge arguments by its truthiness, not its validity.

And for the record, we cannot judge if Reagnomics worked because Reagonomics is:

1. reduce the growth of government spending,
2. reduce marginal tax rates on income from labor and capital,
3. reduce government regulation of the economy,
4. control the money supply to reduce inflation.

To be honest, I don't believe he achieved those four goals during his presidency, so I'm not sure one can say Reagonomics worked or not:

1. Government spending as a percentage of GDP
2. Tax receipts as percentage of GDP
3. Quantifying regulation: Notice the Clinton years come out looking pretty good too (i.e., congress is as much to blame/credit as the President)
4. Inflation from 1913 to present

Basically it's a tax on the working class.

Agreed. Social Security taxes are very regressive.

In theory the tax hike was designed to build up a big reserve of cash so that Social Security could operate in the 2020s when the baby boomers started to retire.

This is really just an accounting trick so that the long term planning for the Baby Boomers' retirement is separate from the shorter term federal budget. Otherwise this would make governments in power as the Baby Boomers retire look fiscally irresponsible as large deficits are incurred when Social Security pays out.

the same chairman insisted that all this cash should not be put away someplace safe, but should rather be made available as a kind of piggy bank for the government to borrow from.

Do you have a better suggestion for "someplace safe" than government bonds? The Social Security trust fund earns interest on money borrowed by the government just like anyone else who lends money to the government.

By 2000, Clinton (and his VP Gore) had cut the deficit all the way back to a "surplus" which means we were still borrowing some from the SS funds, just not from the outside world anymore.

Actually, there was a budget surplus without any caveats. If you check the data from the CBO, they have one column showing deficits/surpluses including Social Security (and the Postal Service) and another column excluding them. Including Social Security, there were surpluses from 1998 to 2001. Excluding Social Security, there were surpluses in 1999 and 2000.

As for the overall debt, I tend to prefer something like the debt to GDP ratio. Charts like this one show how damaging Reaganomics has been.

Only sort of. Apparently the wealthy are on the hook for a much larger share:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011535

(I actually think rich people would do just fine with higher taxes, and that higher taxes for the rich wouldn't really do a whole lot of damage to the economy, but the populist ranting about how this rips off 'average tax payers' to the benefit of the 'wealthy' is sort of tiresome when you actually look at who pays the taxes in the United States)

The cost? $40 million a YEAR. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/85xx/doc8587/s1492.pdf

This isn't $40 million out of the ether, it's YOUR money (if you're a US taxpayer, anyhow).

It's peanuts. My family's share is forty cents. I'll pay it, just for the information, which ought to be available under the Freedom of Information Act.

Remember, the ISP's and such really don't have much interest in expanding access to broadband.

Not because they can't, but because they don't see a return on the required investment as ever paying off. Because it won't. Very few people are going to be willing to pay more for faster access - the few who do already are, the vast majority of internet users are still just doing web browsing and email, which really doesn't improve all that much with faster broadband.

Now, if the information gathered under this Bill results in a broadband equivalent of the Rural Electrification Act, it'll be a good thing. Annoying, to have my broadband rates raised to pay to provide broadband to the areas it isn't provided, but worth it, in the big picture.

What's the deliverable for things like the 'Broadband data improvement act'? Nothing, as far as I can tell, except some congressional reports about which areas of the country have high speed internet access. This is data that should be collected by the companies looking to know where to invest. That's how commerce works.

The cost? $40 million a YEAR. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/85xx/doc8587/s1492.pdf

This isn't $40 million out of the ether, it's YOUR money (if you're a US taxpayer, anyhow).

What in blue blazes are we doing? The economic crisis we're in is multi-faceted, and mad crazy spending is a big component, both privately AND governmentally.

The 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 budgets had total spending for the year lower than total income for the year, not based on any sort of future payoff. Those were the first surplus budgets since 1969's small surplus. The deficit returned as soon as Clinton left office, as all of Bush's budgets have been in deficit.

See the CBO data, the past 15 years of which Wikipedia nicely graphs.

Even if he does nothing else, Obama will raise taxes on the rich.

What's your definition of "rich"?

If it's the top 20%, the "rich" already paid 86.3% of federal income taxes in 2005.
If it's the top 10%, they paid 72.5% of federal income taxes in 2005.

Even if you include all federal taxes, the top 20% paid 68.7% of all taxes in 2005, and the top 10% paid 54.7%.

Source: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml

What do you consider a sufficient tax rate for the "rich"? They are already paying most of federal taxes.

If you really want to reduce government spending, decrease the DoD budget.

The only way I've seen anyone support such a claim is to game the numbers so that all DoD (including things that might be questionable as such) are compared with individual programs such as NASA, AIDS research, school lunch programs, etc.

A fairer analysis in my opinion can be fund here:

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/35xx/doc3521/352101.gif

As it shows a steadily declining outlay for defense and a rapid increase in "social spending" (since the 50s!). What's really interesting are the projections for the future, for which defense and everything else are lumped together into one steadily decreasing pool, but note, that in order to not have this forecast seem totally laughable they halt the decrease in "everything else" sometime during the next few years.

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/35xx/doc3521/352102.gif

The above graphs can be seen in in context here:

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3521&type=0

You might also fnd these interesting:

http://perotcharts.com/

At the founding of the country "defense" spending was the one thing the federal government was supposed to do. Obviously a lot has changed since then. People seem to forget that prior to 9/11 and during the former BUSH administration a bipartisan commission decided on the closure a lot of military bases around the country, saving billions of dollars. Those closures didn't actually complete until sometime during the Clinton administration though and he takes delight in claiming to have single handedly reduced the size of government. I don't know of anything else done during that administration to reduce the size of government. Bush II hasn't done much either but again, people forget that before 9/11 they were planning further cuts to the military, even to the point of merging the four major branches in some way to save duplication of efforts. Rumsfeld was far from popular with military brass at the time.

The left has painted a distorted picture of these events. While it may be possible to have a rational argument regarding the distribution of wealth in this country (as you mentioned) such an argument can only be rational if people are using actual facts, and not hyperbole from the Daily Kos.

In any event, the issue raised by the title to your original post can be answered by reviewing the moderator guidelines. Things can get modded up based on the fact that they are interesting, even if you don't happen to agree with them (and with your user number I'm shocked that you don't know this). If you want a pure popularity contest, go visit Digg. Slashdot's moderation system is far from perfect but for a semi-automated system it is about as good as you can get. Some of us aren't only interested in reading things we agree with, again there are well established political blogs where you can do that.

I'd like to see some links supporting your claims, that at least would make your posts more interesting to me.

If you really want to reduce government spending, decrease the DoD budget.

The only way I've seen anyone support such a claim is to game the numbers so that all DoD (including things that might be questionable as such) are compared with individual programs such as NASA, AIDS research, school lunch programs, etc.

A fairer analysis in my opinion can be fund here:

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/35xx/doc3521/352101.gif

As it shows a steadily declining outlay for defense and a rapid increase in "social spending" (since the 50s!). What's really interesting are the projections for the future, for which defense and everything else are lumped together into one steadily decreasing pool, but note, that in order to not have this forecast seem totally laughable they halt the decrease in "everything else" sometime during the next few years.

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/35xx/doc3521/352102.gif

The above graphs can be seen in in context here:

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3521&type=0

You might also fnd these interesting:

http://perotcharts.com/

At the founding of the country "defense" spending was the one thing the federal government was supposed to do. Obviously a lot has changed since then. People seem to forget that prior to 9/11 and during the former BUSH administration a bipartisan commission decided on the closure a lot of military bases around the country, saving billions of dollars. Those closures didn't actually complete until sometime during the Clinton administration though and he takes delight in claiming to have single handedly reduced the size of government. I don't know of anything else done during that administration to reduce the size of government. Bush II hasn't done much either but again, people forget that before 9/11 they were planning further cuts to the military, even to the point of merging the four major branches in some way to save duplication of efforts. Rumsfeld was far from popular with military brass at the time.

The left has painted a distorted picture of these events. While it may be possible to have a rational argument regarding the distribution of wealth in this country (as you mentioned) such an argument can only be rational if people are using actual facts, and not hyperbole from the Daily Kos.

In any event, the issue raised by the title to your original post can be answered by reviewing the moderator guidelines. Things can get modded up based on the fact that they are interesting, even if you don't happen to agree with them (and with your user number I'm shocked that you don't know this). If you want a pure popularity contest, go visit Digg. Slashdot's moderation system is far from perfect but for a semi-automated system it is about as good as you can get. Some of us aren't only interested in reading things we agree with, again there are well established political blogs where you can do that.

I'd like to see some links supporting your claims, that at least would make your posts more interesting to me.

If you really want to reduce government spending, decrease the DoD budget.

The only way I've seen anyone support such a claim is to game the numbers so that all DoD (including things that might be questionable as such) are compared with individual programs such as NASA, AIDS research, school lunch programs, etc.

A fairer analysis in my opinion can be fund here:

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/35xx/doc3521/352101.gif

As it shows a steadily declining outlay for defense and a rapid increase in "social spending" (since the 50s!). What's really interesting are the projections for the future, for which defense and everything else are lumped together into one steadily decreasing pool, but note, that in order to not have this forecast seem totally laughable they halt the decrease in "everything else" sometime during the next few years.

http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/35xx/doc3521/352102.gif

The above graphs can be seen in in context here:

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3521&type=0

You might also fnd these interesting:

http://perotcharts.com/

At the founding of the country "defense" spending was the one thing the federal government was supposed to do. Obviously a lot has changed since then. People seem to forget that prior to 9/11 and during the former BUSH administration a bipartisan commission decided on the closure a lot of military bases around the country, saving billions of dollars. Those closures didn't actually complete until sometime during the Clinton administration though and he takes delight in claiming to have single handedly reduced the size of government. I don't know of anything else done during that administration to reduce the size of government. Bush II hasn't done much either but again, people forget that before 9/11 they were planning further cuts to the military, even to the point of merging the four major branches in some way to save duplication of efforts. Rumsfeld was far from popular with military brass at the time.

The left has painted a distorted picture of these events. While it may be possible to have a rational argument regarding the distribution of wealth in this country (as you mentioned) such an argument can only be rational if people are using actual facts, and not hyperbole from the Daily Kos.

In any event, the issue raised by the title to your original post can be answered by reviewing the moderator guidelines. Things can get modded up based on the fact that they are interesting, even if you don't happen to agree with them (and with your user number I'm shocked that you don't know this). If you want a pure popularity contest, go visit Digg. Slashdot's moderation system is far from perfect but for a semi-automated system it is about as good as you can get. Some of us aren't only interested in reading things we agree with, again there are well established political blogs where you can do that.

I'd like to see some links supporting your claims, that at least would make your posts more interesting to me.

What he doesn't realize is that his tax burden is substantially higher than his parents' and grandparents' tax burden

Utter bullshit. As a percentage of GDP, tax rates have fluctuated between 17% and 20% for the past 40 years. As for income tax rates, the top bracket was taxed at a rate over 70% from 1936 to 1981. Now the top rate is 35%. If you're referring to the tax burden on the middle class, however, you may be correct.

You are obviously clueless about how taxes work. Cutting taxes RAISES government revenue.

UGH! There exist people who still believe this?!? Let's look at some statistics. The following years since 1968 had lower government revenues than the previous year: 1971, 1983, 2001, 2002, 2003. This is before even adjusting for inflation or population growth. Do you really believe that taxes are so high that we are on the far side of the Laffer curve?

Another poster pointed out that revenues went up 35% from 2003 to 2006. This conveniently measures from the bottom of the economic cycle and coincides with the economic bubble that is currently deflating. A longer term comparison reveals that from 2001 to 2007, revenues went up 29%, whereas from 1993 to 1999 (which included the Clinton tax increase), revenues went up 58%.

Even if a corporation was willing to spend that much money... there's no way it would happen. Almost everyone (politicians, executives, shareholders, and the general public) is pretty much incapable of long-term thinking. Hell, most companies don't even seem to think beyond this quarter, much less this year--just look at all the dumb decisions that boost quarterly profits at the expense of long-term ones.

A counter-example: Pharmaceutical companies in the US spend around $60 billion on R&D each year, and most of the drugs they test never make it to market. For those that do make it to market, the average time-to-market is 12 years. Despite the immense cost and huge amount of time before any profit is seen, the drug companies still invest in the long-term.

That's bad enough but you forgot "while reducing Federal income by slashing taxes" at the end.

Except the facts are otherwise

:

Total federal revenues grew by about $625 billion, or 35 percent, between fiscal year 2003 and fiscal year 2006... Had revenues grown at the same rate as the overall economy between 2003 and 2006, federal receipts would have increased by only $373 billion. The other $252 billion of the actual increase in revenues represents growth in excess of GDP growth

So the tax cuts stimulated enough increase in federal revenues to outstrip the growth of the GDP by 40%. Lower taxes increased growth in revenue.

All those reports that complain about IT job losses since 2001 are reflecting the dot-com implosion. I know hundreds of IT workers laid off during that time, none were laid off because of outsourcing, they were all laid off because of bad business decisions in a time of easy of capital.

Most IT folks I know have been re-employed since 2001. Currently across all unemployed, long-term unemployment is only 8% of unemployed.

I find it difficult to believe that there are currently 656,000 unemployed IT workers in the U.S - there are only 1.4 million unemployed Management, professional, and related occupations. I would not be surprised that short-term unemployment of IT workers is higher than others because of the rapidly shifting technological landscape, but I doubt they represent half of all office workers unemployed.

As of 2003, only 3% and the short-term unemployed and 4.2% of the long-term unemployed were in the Information sector.

At the same time, I know several recent Indian immigrants who started a company which created many new IT jobs in the US.

I agree that H1-B is silly. Anyone with a college education should be allowed to immigrate to the US and become citizens. They should come to the US where they can make use of our state of high economic freedom to generate wealth for all.

90% of the taxes in the USA are paid by people making over $250,000

[citation needed]

90% is overstated. But, it's not as much as some might think:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml

It depends on how you classify the various taxes. If you look at ALL taxes (income, social security, corporate, and excise), the highest quintile (top 20%) paid 68.7% of the taxes in 2005. If you consider only income taxes, the highest quintile paid 86.3% of the taxes.

In 2005, the average pre-tax household income of the highest quintile was $231,300. See the detailed data for the minimum, although be forewarned that the CBO divides household income by a factor that isn't quite the number of people in the household to normalize it to something resembling per-person.

You can get it all from the IRS and the Congressional Budget Office, and also from the Department of the Treasury. In fact, if you look at the 1040 instructions, there is even a pie chart that tells you where federal expenditures are spent (at least there was 10 years ago when I actually needed the instructions).

Here are some links to get you started.

http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/factsheetwhopaysmostindividualincometaxes.update.pdf
http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/js1287.htm
http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.pdf

Here's the thing - tax receipts have increased 26.8% from 2000 to 2007.

Since the "Bush Tax Cuts" were passed in 2003, let's look at the numbers from 2004-2007. Tax receipts grew 36.6% over this time.

Now, people can scream and argue until they're blue in the face about whether the war in Iraq is good/bad/ugly/Cowboy Neal, but the tax cuts decreased the deficit, not increased it.

Now, as far as I know, McCain doesn't "back" Bush - he's been trying to very careful distance himself from the least popular president in recent history. That "unprovoked preemptive war" - whether that assertion or the war itself is right or not - has decimated Al-Qaeda leadership. More have been killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan in related skirmishes.

So, one could argue that we fail at "nation building", although there's been a lot of progress with schools, electricity, roads, running water, and hospitals. Definitely not much in the WMD department, but we've been doing a pretty good job of gutting Al-Qaeda.

As for "torture", I assume you're talking about Guantanamo Bay. We're not using torture racks, electricity, acid baths, or wood chippers like Saddam Hussein - most of it is humiliation, like forcing the 20th hijacker to wear panties on his head. Now, that's morally reprehensible, and to my limited knowledge a questionable interrogation technique, but if that's torture there are a lot of college fraternities who need to be closed down, too.

So we haze^w "torture" prisoners we've captured shooting at us. John McCain's plane was shot down, crushing his legs and causing him to nearly drown when he parachuted into a lake. When he regained consciousness, a crowd crushed his shoulder with a the butt of a rifle and stabbed him with a bayonet. He was refused medical treatment for weeks, until they learned that his father was connected.

He spent two years in solitary confinement. His hair turned white. Then, they tied him up and repeatedly beat him until he "confessed." They offered to release McCain early because his father was a big-wig, but McCain refused repatriation unless everyone else was also released. While he suffered from dysentery, the beatings declined to only three times a week.

After five and a half years, we was released. Because of his injuries, he can't lift his arms above his head. He lost 50 pounds after his capture, yet the average Guantanamo detainee has gained 30. (Evidently they like Captain Crunch with sugar and honey.) We provide them with medical care and religious items - Qurans and prayer mats. We even released a lot with comparably minor offenses, who returned to bombing markets and shooting at soldiers.

There's a large difference between the torture inflicted upon John McCain and the prisoners at Guantanamo.

People earning over $230,000 pay ~67% of all federal taxes. People earning less than that pay ~33% of all federal taxes:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml

Not matching you doesn't really mean that they are inaccurate. If you are right on the edge of a quintile, the rest of the quintile that you are in is going to be dragging you up or down(depending on which edge of the quintile you are on), so there could be a huge discrepancy, if the numbers within the quintile vary quite a lot. It would be pretty controversial if the numbers were intentionally distorted(they were published in December of 2007, so there probably is not a party issue).

And effective taxes are the percentage of you income that the government ends up keeping, so the net amount that you pay to federal is what matters, not the amount that is withheld. You stated the net amount along those lines so I'm not sure why you mention what you had withheld.

Does one of the tables in this document make more sense(rates are probably going to be higher for single people than for families, etc.)?

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/Appendix_wtoc.pdf

Depending on who you call rich, the rich pay between 67% and 85% of federal taxes:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011535

Maybe they should pay more, but it is still quite accurate to say that the rich pay most of the taxes in this country.

Hi, welcome to thinking about taxes. People making $32,000 a year have a nominal marginal tax rate of about 25%. Rich people have an effective tax rate of about 25%.

Until understand the difference, don't bother talking about taxes publicly.

Effective tax rates by household income:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml

Maybe the author of that article has more recent information, or the difference between reporting individuals and households is significant, but for 2005, the Congressional Budget Office says that the top 10% of households paid about 55% of taxes:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011535

The point stands that the rich pay most of the taxes though.

In the U.S., the top 20% of wage earners(roughly people making in excess of $230,000) pay about 68% of federal taxes:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011535

The top 40% of wage earners(people making more than $85,000) pay nearly 85% of federal taxes.

In the U.S., the top 20% of wage earners(roughly people making in excess of $230,000) pay about 68% of federal taxes:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011535

The top 40% of wage earners(people making more than $85,000) pay nearly 85% of federal taxes.

They pay a smaller share of medicare/medicaid and social security, because of the income caps, but they still pay the maximum rates for those programs(and a person earning $100,000 is paying more than 2 people earning $40,000 each)

I guess you could argue that the wealthy should be paying even more, but it's a tough sell claiming that lower incomes are bearing most of the burden.

I've worked, studied, and basically lived in current political system for nearly 6 years, and in my opinion, its FUBAR, or close enough at any rate.

The biggest problem is that our current system was not built to handle vast government bureaucracy that has cropped up since WWII. Now look, before any liberals get pissy, I'm not a Paul-tard, and I'm not saying that government should only build roads, delivery mail, and fund a military.

That said, fundamentally, the U.S. form of representative democracy was built to do just that. It was meant to keep politics as the local and state level, while the current political discourse in this country has increasingly grown more national. Take the legislative bodies in the states and Congress for example. All of them are based on the idea of direct representation. A state legislator or House Member's role is to keep his or her constituents happy. If not, he gets the boot. And at the state senate and US Senate level (the latter especially after the 17th Amendment), the scope expands to a broader constituency, but the goal stays the same.

This structure creates an incentive and drive to keep the locals happy regardless of what the greater national interest might suggest. Now, that drive worked perfectly fine as long as the government had very little cash to dole out. Back in the 19th Century, the most a legislator could do was maybe bring some funding back for a new post office, roads, or at most a military installation. Government, especially at the federal level, did little else. Even education was rarely handled at the state level. There was very little money in government, and thus very little to try to corrupt. And when corruption did occur, it was on a much smaller (monetary) scale. (Hell even the land scandals with the railroad companies, while extremely bad, didn't really cost the government any money.)

Now, fast forward to the current situation where federal spending over the last 50 years has been at least 20% of the GDP, and where it is now accepted and expected that government's role is to dole that money out to someone, whether it be corporations through subsidies and contracts, the poor through welfare, students through college grants and loans, schools through grants and funds, the elderly through social security, the sick through medicare, deficit-inducing tax-cuts for taxpayers, and on and on.

With the current system, legislatures' are lured to keep the local folks happy by offering them a greater and greater share of the pie. They try to squeeze a nickel here, a dime there and before you know it, they've nickel and dimed their way into a quarter-trillion (or whatever it is now) dollar budget deficit. Look at Iraq, look at Social Security, look at the prescription drug benefit, look at no child left behind. All of these are just short term rackets run to please voters without any regard for any long-term damage they might be causing (i.e., inflation, debt, higher tax rates).

It's the reason why the Democrats spent their way into deficits while they were in power in the 60s. It's the reason why Republicans did the exact same when they took power in the 00s. It's the exact same reason why we'll still be running a deficit 4 years from now regardless of who wins this next election. (In case you can't tell, my pet peeve is deficits.) It's the culture of pork-barreled politics, and the principle behind it ("bringing home the bacon") leads our governments--state, local, and federal--to writing checks that our society cannot cash.

You know, it's not even really corruption per se. It's just the way the system was set up, and its probably functioning the way the Founding Fathers intended it. They just probably didn't intend for it to go beyond post offices, roads, and the military. All politics is local. Perhaps that is a maxim we (the U.S.) as a country need to rethink.

First of all, page 4 of http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/66xx/doc6609/08-15-Slides.pdf shows the 2005 revenues -- corporate income taxes were 13%, individual income taxes were 43%.

The main reason that corporate income taxes are relatively low is because corporations are taxed on their profit, whereas individuals are taxed on their earnings. A company can easily bring in $100M in revenues, but only make $5M profit, which is then taxed at ~35%, yielding $1.75M in taxes. The other $95M is also taxed, just not directly to the corporation. Instead, it shows up as, for example, employee income taxes. It's possible to shift that back to the company, but the employees would end up getting a pay cut.

Someone making $120,000 probably isn't having major problems acquiring health care. The median income in the U.S. is about $40,000, so it is a reasonable value for 'everyman', with people making more than that considered pretty well off by people making less than that.

Of course, if you split people into two groups, those with wealth and those without, and grant that part of being poor is not having any wealth, then *any* tax on wealth means that those people are(by definition here) paying more tax on wealth than poor people. This means that you can look at income taxes to decide if poor people are paying more taxes than rich people, all you have to do is decide what income makes a person rich. It doesn't help you decide if they are paying their 'fair share', but it helps you decide if they are actually paying more in real dollars or not.

So we need to know how much income tax people with various incomes pay. Here is what the Congressional Budget Office has to say:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011535

The top 20% of households, by income, paid 68.7% of federal taxes in 2005. The average income of someone in that groups was $231,300:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011537

If you look at the numbers for the top 1% by income, they made about $1,558,500 and paid 27.6% of the taxes paid to the federal government in 2005.

By looking at the average income of the second highest quintile we see that they had an average income of $85,200, and we can infer that anybody in a lower quintile made less than that; so the 80% of people who had an average income well below $85,200($48,400 for people who understand but don't feel like doing the math) paid 33.8% of federal taxes(the taxes not paid by the top fifth).

If you don't read this as 'rich' people paying most of the taxes, I don't see how we can have a discussion about it. (the discussion is about what is 'fair', not about who pays more, because it is pretty clear who is paying more)

Someone making $120,000 probably isn't having major problems acquiring health care. The median income in the U.S. is about $40,000, so it is a reasonable value for 'everyman', with people making more than that considered pretty well off by people making less than that.

Of course, if you split people into two groups, those with wealth and those without, and grant that part of being poor is not having any wealth, then *any* tax on wealth means that those people are(by definition here) paying more tax on wealth than poor people. This means that you can look at income taxes to decide if poor people are paying more taxes than rich people, all you have to do is decide what income makes a person rich. It doesn't help you decide if they are paying their 'fair share', but it helps you decide if they are actually paying more in real dollars or not.

So we need to know how much income tax people with various incomes pay. Here is what the Congressional Budget Office has to say:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011535

The top 20% of households, by income, paid 68.7% of federal taxes in 2005. The average income of someone in that groups was $231,300:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011537

If you look at the numbers for the top 1% by income, they made about $1,558,500 and paid 27.6% of the taxes paid to the federal government in 2005.

By looking at the average income of the second highest quintile we see that they had an average income of $85,200, and we can infer that anybody in a lower quintile made less than that; so the 80% of people who had an average income well below $85,200($48,400 for people who understand but don't feel like doing the math) paid 33.8% of federal taxes(the taxes not paid by the top fifth).

If you don't read this as 'rich' people paying most of the taxes, I don't see how we can have a discussion about it. (the discussion is about what is 'fair', not about who pays more, because it is pretty clear who is paying more)

No offense intended, but your Google skills must need work. Wikipedia for starters:

$586.1 billion (+7.0%) - Social Security
$394.5 billion (+12.4%) - Medicare
$367.0 billion (+2.0%) - Unemployment and welfare
$276.4 billion (+2.9%) - Medicaid and other health related
Total: $1.623T
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2007

More:

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/
Office of the President: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/browse.html
Congressional Budget Office: http://www.cbo.gov/

I think that is sufficient to back up my point.

I don't that's the only reason government expands. As someone who has worked in a few bureaucracies, here's what I have seen:
Every small group withing a large organization has a budget and an area of responsibility. If that group does its job well AND manages its political capital well, it gets more money next year. Its area of responsibility grows. It branches out in new directions. If it's really successful, in a few years it looks very little like the original group. Multiply this effect by ten thousand and you understand why the federal government continues to grow. Now, in a smaller government (cities, counties, universities, etc) eventually you run into a budget crunch and things get cut back. Corporate intervention isn't necessary for government bloating.

Now, one thing I'd be interested in whether or not our government is really bigger than it was a hundred years ago, as a percent of GDP. I suspect that our federal government doesn't cost all that much more than it did then. In terms of the actual number of individuals responsible for administration of the law (ie, take out medicare/military spending) I bet we're way more efficient now than ever before.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm?index=3521&type=0 says Gov't/GDP only went up 3% from 1950 to 2000.

And if you want to talk about how our personal freedom changes over time, you should read your history books. I'd start with the chapters on the various sedition acts. Or maybe the Japanese internment. McCarthyism? Slavery? Sure, this is a dark period, but things _have_ been worse.

Thanks for the numbers. Let's put that in terms of how much we spend in Iraq. According to the Congressional Budget Office, often called the nation's top accountant, we're spending about $9 billion a month (pre "surge" numbers). To date we have put in $533 billion dollars into Iraq. I know some damn big numbers. My eye balls are popping out of my head right now.

So... let's say the Space Shuttle and the ISS has cost us $50 billion dollars over the last 20-years. Shit let's say it's $100 billion dollars. Now do that Austin Powers thing with your pinkie. I know you want to do it. So how many months in Iraq is that?.... 11... haha! Eleven months in Iraq equals 20-years of manned space flight spanning four U.S. Presidencies and creating a mother fscking space station that orbits around the planet Earth from scratch. Whoa! That is a helluva comparison.

JOhn

Considering we're still all funked up from the economics of every single example you gave I think it's VERY relevant.

If you REALLY don't think that the decisions made more than 10 years ago don't affect us today, please read this. (PDF)

The infant mortality rate of the US comes up a lot. And the reason the US is so "high" is because of differences in how it's measured. Here are a couple of links for you: Op ed piece and something more scientific.

It's talking about a boost-phase anti-missile weapon.

Oh for crying out loud! The accountants are whinging about 4.8 billion over twenty or more years?!

Have they LOOKED at the US budget? In 2006, 406 billion went to interest payments alone for the debt. And they're griping at a price that is 1/200th of that per annum. Absolutely unfuckingbelievable.

I'm pretty sure interest payments are mandatory spending. Personally, I've no idea how much we should spend on NASA's activities, or whether a monolithic government agency is the best way to spend that money. Total discretionary spending is about a trillion dollars right now... take out defense and foreign aid and you get $460 billion. (source, PDF or XLS)

So spending on science is going to be a chunk of that, and NASA has to compete with lots of different scientists. All of them, I'm sure, could argue quite passionately and eloquently why their research needs a bigger slice of the pie.

I had a look at your source material
here
I think that your source has not fully interpreted the material that they got from the Congressional Budget Office
here

There are 2 observations that can be made from the CBO data that were left out on allegromedia that I think are relevant to this discussion.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer (not poorer relative to the rich but absolutely poorer.)
see CBO stats in the table named 'Average Pretax Family Income (In 1995 dollars)' (compare highest quintile to lowest quintile, 1977 to 1999[projected] )

While the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, the tax burden on the wealthiest is decreasing over time.
see CBO stats in the table named 'Effective Total Federal Tax Rate (In percent)' (examine the tax burden for the top 1% from 1977 to 1999 [projected] )

I had a look at your source material
here
I think that your source has not fully interpreted the material that they got from the Congressional Budget Office
here

There are 2 observations that can be made from the CBO data that were left out on allegromedia that I think are relevant to this discussion.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer (not poorer relative to the rich but absolutely poorer.)
see CBO stats in the table named 'Average Pretax Family Income (In 1995 dollars)' (compare highest quintile to lowest quintile, 1977 to 1999[projected] )

While the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, the tax burden on the wealthiest is decreasing over time.
see CBO stats in the table named 'Effective Total Federal Tax Rate (In percent)' (examine the tax burden for the top 1% from 1977 to 1999 [projected] )