Slashdot Mirror

A few of the "expert" ones I frequent:

Economics/Social Science:
Econlong
Marginal Revolution
The Money Illusion
Overcoming Bias
Bronte Capital - More short selling fund/capital management than economics

Law
Volokh Conspiracy (Now tied into the Washington Post)

Writing/Fantasy/SF
According to Hoyt
Mad Genius Club
Come Let Us Reason Together (more politics than writing)

Tax revenues are at inflation-adjusted record highs. http://cnsnews.com/news/articl...
and have been climbing overall for a while:
http://comeletusreasontogether...

What we have is a serious spending problem. Most of the "cutting taxes" over time is an illusion and doesn't amount to much.

Here's a useful chart covering spending and revenue with who controlled what. People like to talk about Presidential "spending", but the reality is that Congress can spend anything they want without the President (supermajority), but the President can't spend a dime without Congress.

Reagan asked for less spending than Congress ever gave him. Clinton asked for more spending than Congress ever gave him.

The problem with your analysis is that you have the facts wrong.

If you look at a chart of revenue and spending in constant dollars, you'll see that after the 1998 tax cuts, revenue increased until the dot.com bust in 2000. Revenue was down until the 2001 & 2003 Bush tax cuts, after which it increased until the housing bubble burst in 2007/08. Tha major tax cuts in the era you're talking about weren't followed by revenue decreases in the years right after they took effect. Revenue right now is about average for the last 15 years, down a bit because it follows the state of the economy and the economy overall is still down. Minor changes in tax rates don't affect revenue that much. Annual revenue is UP about a trillion dollars since 1980, so it's not like we've suddenly had less revenue than ever before.

Spending is the the obvious issue. Since 1980, spending is up $1.8 Trillion (still constant, i.e. inflation adjusted dollars). Since 2000, it's up over a Trillion dollars.

Bottom line, revenue is way up. Spending is just way, way more up. Revenue has gone in the desired direction. The issue is that Spending has gone in the wrong direction if we want to solve anything related to debt and deficits.

The problem with your analysis is that you have the facts wrong.

If you look at a chart of revenue and spending in constant dollars, you'll see that after the 1998 tax cuts, revenue increased until the dot.com bust in 2000. Revenue was down until the 2001 & 2003 Bush tax cuts, after which it increased until the housing bubble burst in 2007/08. Tha major tax cuts in the era you're talking about weren't followed by revenue decreases in the years right after they took effect. Revenue right now is about average for the last 15 years, down a bit because it follows the state of the economy and the economy overall is still down. Minor changes in tax rates don't affect revenue that much. Annual revenue is UP about a trillion dollars since 1980, so it's not like we've suddenly had less revenue than ever before.

Spending is the the obvious issue. Since 1980, spending is up $1.8 Trillion (still constant, i.e. inflation adjusted dollars). Since 2000, it's up over a Trillion dollars.

Bottom line, revenue is way up. Spending is just way, way more up. Revenue has gone in the desired direction. The issue is that Spending has gone in the wrong direction if we want to solve anything related to debt and deficits.

My son will be covered by our health care until he is 26. Good thing.

Don't you mean insurance? Or are you conceding now that this has nothing to do with insurance. Wait until you see the bill....

Pre-existing conditions not a reason for no insurance for millions of people. Great thing.

I'd be willing to wager that more people in the United States will have no insurance a year after the ACA took affect than in the average of the 10 years before. Care to take me up on that wager?

Raising the price of something and making it fit an individual's needs less doesn't typically lend itself to a higher sales volume.

And you would propose what? Do tell, oh wise slash dotter.

How about we start with the health care proposals at the bottom of this economic analysis?

Spending has gone up twice as much (in constant dollars) over the last 30 years as revenue has. Based on that, it's pretty difficult to make a good case that the issue is revenue and not out of control spending. You can blame military spending or Wall Street rescue spending. But it's pretty obviously a spending problem.

"From 1980 to 2012, Revenue is $892 Billion higher. Does that sound like taxes have just gotten too low?
In the same 32 years, spending is $1,844 Billion higher. Hmm... I think we see why our deficit is so high now...."

Sorry, but if you look at the differences in inflation adjusted spending and tax revenues for the last 30 years or so it's pretty obvious that while federal revenue has grown over time, federal spending has just grown much faster. It's pretty hard to make an argument that any sort of tax cut is the reason for spending having gone up so much.

Revenue generally tracks the economy, while spending just goes up and up. That's the problem causing huge deficits. The government will have to get spending under control (which flattened a little in the last "shutdown"s in 94-95) in order to stop adding to the debt constantly. It won't even take much, just a reduction in the increase in spending would balance the budget over the long run.