Debt Rattle May 4 2017

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

Fred Stein Americans All 1943   • “We Have Enough Votes”: House To Vote Thursday To Repeal Obamacare (ZH) • Democrats, Not Trump, Are Driving Pol
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle May 4 2017]

[rapier]

Since 1978 when US federal tax cutting started and through all the changes in the tax laws the percent of taxes to GDP has been almost a constant near 20%. All the strum and drang has been about, nothing. Well the tax burden has shifted from corporations and the top to the middle which has always been the point. It isn’t about cutting taxes its about shifting taxes.

https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/2016-budget-chart-spending-revenue-percent-of-gdp.png

All the squiggles since 1945 are due mainly to changes in tax collection because of cyclical changes in the economy and not rates

There is no way to asses the macro effect of cutting taxes because taxes have never been cut. Actually cutting taxes doesn’t effect GDP much at all. It doesn’t make any difference who spends the money. Only ideologues imagine that somehow government spending money is any different than you spending it. Of course you all know the complex fairy tale about the why of this, evil government and all that. This idea isn’t even economics, it’s religion. The worst religion in the universe. The religion of money.

[Dr. Diablo]

UBI article is the craziest thing I’ve ever read. Other guys built a restaurant. Other guys constructed the building. Other guys built the power plant that powers it. Other guys grew the food they serve. Other guys work there to make meals. But because I’m part of the same “Society” they are — even though I did no work — I get to eat there for free, without helping at all. Sounds great! Where do me and 300 Million others sign up? Oh wait, no one will WORK there if you get the same benefits as NOT working there?

…I think we might have tried this experiment before. Over and over and over and over and over and over and…bend over. It’s failed every time. Hundreds of years in a row. Everywhere on earth. Hundreds of millions have died and more are dying today. But not this time. This time people will work for free and eat for free, due to the overwhelming beneficence of man. Where’s this writer live? I’m going to live at his house.

Taxes certainly aren’t discussed clearly, and that’s cleary the point. However what the article points out is correct: there is a point of maximum taxation somewhere between 0 and 100%. (Unlike the theories of the UBI-ers) But we don’t need math to figure it out. There has been taxation and records since Babylon. We alredy know at what point no more tax hikes will work; we’ve been over that level for decades. That’s why it seems odd that one side would say cutting taxes is always a benefit and will always work. Because as long as they’ve been alive, that’s actually been true. So true you’d have to go back over 100 years to look at a time where government has actually helped anyone.

The same thing is true of government spending. Government spending presently is measurable waste. It’s Keynes’ plan of making everyone rich by digging holes and filling them up again, i.e. total stark-raving nonsense. Things get done by men doing things, not by wasting their time. But although presently government does perhaps 10% function with 90% waste (and I can prove it), that doesn’t mean it HAS to be this way. 19th c infrastructure projects were quite a storm, but a lot of them had government doing expensive projects for sizeable “returns”, that is, social and thermodynamic net benefit. It’s just that no one alive today has ever seen governments benefit the people by spending.

So unfortunately, no, government spending on 100 medical-adjusters to obstruct the care provided by one doctor is not the same as having 100 doctors providing care with 1 adjuster supporting them. And we should know this, although we no longer do. So it’s easy to prove government spending is not equal to citizens spending, and you have to dig deep in history indeed to find any examples where it was.

[Ken Barrows]

Whether tax cuts pay for themselves is debatable? Industrial society doesn’t pay for itself anymore, so it follows that tax cuts don’t, either.

[Professorlocknload]

“Their discipline is the product of ideological desire not to blame banks or creditors, wrapped in a libertarian antagonism toward government’s role as economic regulator, money creator, and financer of basic infrastructure.”

Point missed,,,,,it is .gov protection and enabling of banks and creditors, that cause the economic distortions created by profligate and irresponsible expansions of credit, that academics seem not to understand.

After all, what is a market supposed to consist of, if not the actions of many individuals acting in their own best interests?

[Professorlocknload]

Do tax cuts pay? Well, it depends on who gets paid. If it’s the Pentagon/MIC, it might say tax cuts are not profitable. If it’s the working lower and middle classes and small businesses that actually produce things that are used for purposes other than promoting the “Broken Window Fallacy,” then yes, they are likely productive over the long haul, if for no other reason than the government is net consumptive.

But then, .gov has become very proficient at destroying the means of production and, well,,,,killing people and blowing things up. And .gov is insatiable when it comes to demanding enough revenue to continue accomplishing those “great” tasks, ie; carrying out a process of population control and creating jobs for glass makers and installers,,,,never mind the perfectly functional glass they destroyed in the endeavor.

https://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

[rapier]

RE: It’s just that no one alive today has ever seen governments benefit the people by spending.

For better, and for worse, every single aspect of how you live your life is a product of government spending. Government is the the ground upon which is built society and culture. Government is the ground and society and culture are the field. I mean field and ground in the cognitive sense.

vase or faces

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A6jvknpKxgU/UnhRFnLBvWI/AAAAAAAAAaw/mGfUcfJigHI/s1600/oi_rubin_vase01.jpg

Now in many ways corporations are displacing government as the ground of our society and culture but recall that corporations themselves are a legal fiction created and made possible by government. They pretend to be the ground but it is pretense. Or one may posit that ‘markets’ are becoming the ground but under the neoliberal model which is infecting all aspects of our society and culture these ‘markets’ are themselves a creation of government. The great falacy is that neoliberalism is lazzez faire but in truth the neoliberal project is to take over government in order to create the markets those in power desire.

Well I go off into the weeds. Again, for better and for worse, our great modern centralized governments have created what for we middle class people is a very very comfortable and safe life. Some fantasy of an even more safe and comfortable and wealthy life with less government is just that, a fantasy. It is government which has allowed our bubble of a civilization.

[Nassim]

<b>“Climate Change is a Scam!” – Dr. Patrick Moore, PHD in Ecology and founder of Greenpeace</b>

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