Re: Couldn't have said it better
You are right. Those statistics cited in the original are indeed proportional. I have no idea what they were trying to prove, and I reacted to what those kinds of statistics traditionally try to prove.<br /><br />And I have no idea why some get so irrational about this subject. I suspect it is because they lack rational arguments, which the evidence suggests is the case.<br /><br />As far as tax cuts to the wealthy, I am afraid it is too difficult to give a complete economic theory education in a paragraph or two, but I will give it a try anyway.<br /><br />The government needs a certain amount of money to operate. If it is out of balance, in deficit, as it is now, there are only two things to do. One is to spend less, but that is hardly likely with the war and all the other things going on.<br /><br />The other is to raise more money. This is the tricky part. You can simply raise taxes accross the board, but that gives people less to spend on other things, and the economy slows down even more, and you end up bringing in less than you expected it would, and still have the same problem. Except the economy has slowed.<br /><br />Or you can cut taxes in the hopes it stimulates activity, and has the result of bringing in more money, as opposed to less. That is the theory of this tax cut, or so it is claimed.<br /><br />The problem comes when it is targeted at the very wealthy, when the problem in the country is that we have overcapacity everywhere. These wealthy people are not going to take the money and invest in new capacity when we already have too much. With interest rates so cheap, they would be borrowing money and investing it, if there was a reasonable return to be made.<br /><br />And the wealthy people are already spending everything they want to spend anyway, and a big tax cut for them will do nothing to stimulate the economy, and just generate more deficits.<br /><br />We need more consumption in this country, and in that light, the people in the middle are more likely to spend extra money from a tax cut that they recieve, which causes some of the capacity to be put back to work, and more people employed and paying taxes, and the deficits decrease. (BTW this is precisely the strategy that your hated Clinton used, and it worked perfectly for quite a while, until it was abandoned by this president)<br /><br />Sadly, the wealthy people tend to be the ones that make the big republican campaign contributions, and they seem to get what they want under this administration.<br /><br />I guess when the economy gets even worse, as it surely will, they can always continue to blame it on the Clintons, as it appears they still have lots of willing listeners to that theory, however much it is that it makes no sense.
