Over There On The Horizon, It’s A Storm Waiting To Destroy America

It’s too late. Yes the storm gathers, but its dread winds are now upon us.

We foolishly chose a leader who has returned the World to the year 1937.

Romney is no hope at all—the guy who manipulates his charitable contributions so his latest tax returns don’t show less than a 10% rate.

Brother Bob, Carter became a gentleman farmer, when his father died in 1953 upon resigning his commission with the Navy. He and his wife managed a farm supply and feed store for nine years, until he was elected to state government.

Although, Carter had a BS degree from the Naval Academy, class of 1946, served in the submariner fleets of the Atlantic and Pacific and then took graduate classes in nuclear physics to assist in the launching of our first nuclear submarine; I doubt that he knew how to change the injectors on a tractor or knew to put the rim side down when filling a split rim wheel to avoid losing his head.

This is the kind of work shirt man I write of, the kind of man Lincoln was, he who could split rails or drive a team of mules from behind a plow or cultivator. Yet was well read and stronger than any man in Washington. When you compare the celebrity worshipping Obama, you have a buffoon riding a train and trying desperately to maintain the pretenses of a fool.

The Obama will become a euphemism for weakness ineffectual endeavors and counter effective policy, just as Lewinsky has its own special meaning and Carter has become known for weakness.

Randy
hi,
one of the first thing MITT ROMNEY DID WHEN HE WAS HANDED THE NOMINATION, WAS TO GATHER THE OTHER CANDIDATES AND TOLD THEM HE NEED THEM TO JOIN IN HIS TEAM,
I REMEMBER THAT AND THOUGHT OF HIM AS A REAL LEADER, THE CANDIDATES CAME TO TELL OF HIS QUALIFICATIONS AND ASSURED HIM OF THEIR SUPPORT,
THAT WAS NOT IN THE NEWS, BUT WHAT GOES ON BEHIND THE CURTAIN IS VERY GOOD TO KNOW EVEN MORE ABOUT A CHOSEN TOP LEADER, BECAUSE MITT ROMNEY HAS DEMONSTRATE THAT HE IS NOT TALKING TO SHOW UP, BUT ACTIVATE WITH CONCRETE ACTIONS,
HE WILL WORK WITH INNOVATION IDEAS COMING FROM THE SMART BRAINS, NOT GOING ALONE LIKE A KNOW IT ALL AS OBAMA DOES AND JUST LOOK AT HIS OWN CREW, THEY DON’T KNOW WHERE TO DANCE IN THE WHITE HOUSE SO IT GIVE US CONFIDENCE TO OBSERVE HIS WAY OF ENCOURAGING THE BIG BUSYNESS TO COME BACK AND FEEL THAT THEY WON’T BE MADE VILLAIN , BUT APPRECIATED FOR ANY EFFORT TO CREATE NEW MARKET FOCUSING ON THE PEOPLE JOBS AND BETTERMENT FOR ALL AMERICANS, WHO WHICH TO SUCCEED,
IT’S EVIDENT THAT MITT ROMNEY WILL BE MORE COMFORTABLE ONCE SITTING IN THE WHITE HOUSE TO GET INTO ACTIONS THAN GO AROUND THE COUNTRY SELLING HIMSELF AND FACING THOSE ATTACK CONSTANTLY POURING AT HIM LIKE THEY ARE DESPERATE TO REALIZE HIS SUPERIOR ABILITY TO DO THE RIGHT THING AND FOR AMERICA NOT
TO BE BOTHER PERSONALLY BY THE ONES WHO HATE AMERICA, BECAUSE MITT ROMNEY WILL MAKE THE MILITARY VERY STRONG AND ALSO GIVING THE MILITARY THE POWER
THEY DESERVE AND THE WEAPONS TO ACHIEVE THE TASK OF THEIR COMMANDER IN CHIEF, WHO WON’T FOOL AROUND THE ROE,
BYE

Compare:
Obama
with Romney (With safety glasses and power tool).

Add to this the VP choices.
Biden can’t get a phrase out without double-entendre.
Ryan is a details-man.

Don’t forget that NASA has now become an Islamic outreach program. Your Idiot in Chief is destroying your country! Rush was right! He has to fail.

Peanut Boy was NOT a regular guy. He ran against the ghosts of Nixon and Watergate, just like Ubama is STILL running against the ghost of Dubya. Carter was a professional high school hall monitor.

Former Comptroller General David Walker has long been warning the country of the impending fiscal burden which is about to present a never before seen financial crisis.

Some years ago he had placed the ‘looming’ number at roughly $50 trillion, and it seemed astronomical to me, but his numbers made sense. Now Walker pegs the burden at $70 trillion.

Only a determined, fearless, honest, politician will confront this number and tackle it.

It is a job destroyer for pols to even talk about policies that will seriously dent that enormous wall.

Your video, Skook, is quite right, . . . first they have to admit and acknowledge that there is a problem.

The worse part: You can’t GROW the economy out of this mess.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran for President on an economic platform described by George HW Bush as “voodoo economics.” This was the Laffer Curve theory that cutting taxes would generate sufficiently increased economic activity to pay for the tax cuts.

At the end of WWII, we had a much more unfavorable Debt/GDP ratio than we have today or will have in the medium term future. We taxed ourselves to pay down this debt. We paid it down all the way from 1.25 to 0.32 by the end of Jimmy Carter’s Presidency (yes, the much maligned Carter still managed to pay down the debt ratio, as all of his predecessors since Truman had done).

So Reagan reduces capital gains taxes down from 50% and marginal taxes down from 70%. Yes, that’s what we used to pay. 50% capital gains tax. 70% marginal income tax. And Barack Obama is a Marxist/socialist who is fomenting “class warfare,” because he wants to see capital gains go back to 23.8% (where it was in the 1990s) and marginal income tax to go back to 39.6% (where it was in the 1990s).

What was the effect of Reagan’s tax cuts? Conservatives say “a great continuous economic expansion.” Sure, we got that. We’d have gotten it anyway — probably it helped, at the margins, but it was at a cost of doubling the debt ratio, by the end of Reagan’s third term (the GHW Bush Presidency).

Supply side was once a valid economic theory. It’s now been discredited. There are common sense fixes for both Social Security and Medicare. But the underlying problem with our growing debt is an unsustainable tax structure. We are paying less in the way of Federal taxes under Obama than we paid for the past 60 years.

There is this underlying myth that, if you put more money into the hands of the “job providers,” they will provide more jobs. This not only fails the real world data test, it fails the common sense test.

Small businesses provide the most jobs. If you have relatively high tax rates, there is less incentive to take money out of the business and spend it on fancy cars and yachts and other creature comforts. There is less incentive to take money out of the business and invest it in the secondary equities markets or securitized real estate markets or foreign currency markets or precious metal markets. There is more incentive to just keep the money in the business (where it escapes taxation, because money invested in growing the business is all tax deductible).

What happened with the Bush tax cuts? Did increasing the incentive to take money out of small businesses grow the economy? Job creation, even before the meltdown, was anemic. Most of that untaxed money went into creating a real estate bubble and a stock market bubble and into creature comforts.

Mata previously posted a link to the largest study ever done on the effect of tax cuts and tax increases. Every tax cut since the 1960s cost the treasury revenue. Every tax increase increased treasury revenue. This is, as Bill Clinton so succinctly stated, simple “arithmetic.”

Carl Sagan famously wrote that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” The economic claim that cutting taxes increases treasury revenues is an extraordinary claim, for which there is no proof, much less extraordinary proof. The economic claim that increasing taxes (within the parameters of recent American history) increases treasury revenues is an ordinary claim, which has extraordinary proof.

Supply side economics is an exotic theory which has failed the test of time.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

Hi Aqua,

With regard to tax cuts increasing revenues:

These data (the data you posted) are always trotted out by conservatives. Truly, at this point, I’m not trying to be contentious, but I’m simply trying to improve economic clarity, among those of us who argue these things.

Tax collections rise when the economy grows. The economy always grows, with or without tax cuts, save for brief periods of recession. One of the big drivers of economic growth is population growth. So whenever there is a recovery from a recession there is economic growth. Whenever there is population growth, there will be economic growth. Whenever there is an environment of economic stability (related to your point about “uncertainty”), there is economic growth, with or without tax cuts. So, of course, there will be increased tax revenues with economic growth.

On top of this, when you have a cut in capital gains tax rates, there tends to be an unloading of capital assets. Often times, there is a long advance “warning” that there may be a cut in capital gains tax rates (e.g. when Reagan emerged as a credible candidate). So people with capital gains hold on to their investments longer than they otherwise would have, waiting for the capital gains tax cuts to occur. But this doesn’t generate major economic activity (or tax receipts) which would not have otherwise occurred. It simply (and artificially) manipulates the timing of capital gains unloading decisions.

But that’s not the issue. The issue is this: When you cut tax rates, you cut the amount of tax revenues per unit (dollar) of taxable economic activity. This is simple arithmetic. So the question is this: do tax cuts generate sufficiently greater amounts of taxable economic activity to make up for the decreased revenue per unit of economic activity inflicted by the tax cuts (presuming that any such increased economic activity was actually attributable to the tax cuts)?

The clear and convincing answer is no. In addition to the huge study which Mata herself quoted, I’ve previously posted links to about 10 different conservative economists who all addressed the issue: do tax cuts ever pay for themselves? The unanimous answer was “no.” I then challenged Mata and others to provide a link to a single credible economist who actually made a credible case (or was even willing to support the claim) that tax cuts do pay for themselves.

To date, this challenge has not been accepted.

P.S. Hi Mata (just saw your last post). Of course, entitlements need to be reformed. That’s peripheral to my discussion, however. I was making the point that, whatever is problematic regarding entitlements, we have an unsustainably low tax structure today (again, taxes under Obama are lower than they’ve been for 60 years). We can and should get our taxes back up to where they were in the 1990s.

Regarding social security and Medicare: I’ve offered my own fixes before.

SS:

(1) Increase social security eligibility age to 70. (2) Remove ceilings on income subject to payroll tax and self employment tax.

Medicare:

Transition to a system of paying for health care outcomes as opposed to paying for health care services provided.

P.P.S.S. Hi Mata, you also quoted me:

Mata previously posted a link to the largest study ever done on the effect of tax cuts and tax increases. Every tax cut since the 1960s cost the treasury revenue. Every tax increase increased treasury revenue. This is, as Bill Clinton so succinctly stated, simple “arithmetic.”

and said:

Every tax cut has *not* cost the treasury revenue since the revenue has doubled every decade since the Great Depression.

This is a flat out, incorrect statement.

These were the data (supporting my assertion, above) from the very study which you, yourself, brought to our attention. Again, the question is not (1) does the economy always grow (it always does grow, absent brief periods of recession)? The question is not (2) do tax receipts increase when the economy grows (they always do)? The question is (3) do tax cuts ever generate sufficiently increased revenue to make up for the revenue losses which occurred as a result of the tax cuts? The answer to question (3) is that, no, they don’t make up for the revenue lost to the decreased tax rates.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

Hi Mata,

(4): Does continued high taxation during periods of low or no GDP economic growth result in more, or continuing declining revenues.

And the answer to (4) is yes… they do. For the same reasons that milking an undernourished cow doesn’t result in the same or increasing amount of milk.

You are arguing in favor of Keynesian economics. A tax cut, without commensurate spending cuts, must be paid for with borrowed money, just as a spending increase.

So, during times of “low or no GDP economic growth,” a Keynesian may, indeed, cut taxes (as Obama did, for that matter). But, once economic growth is on the historically normal upward trajectory, the economically responsible thing to do is to bring the tax rates back up to where they were before the recession/stagnation.

Hi Hard Right,

David Brooks is a pundit, not an economist.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:

You said:

“SS ws envisioned a a way to deal with a nation in which 3/4 of old people lived out their remaining lives in poverty. And this was in an era of larger families, where families helped out the elderly, more or less. But the average life expectancy was 63 years…………”

How little you seem to know of history. SS was designed to still the fears of a population in a deep Depression and who were worried about their future. It was a placebo designed for no other reason than to get FDR re-elected, when he was facing real opposition. Promise them bread and circuses. People were afraid. Still those fears letting them know that Uncle Sam was going to take care of them.

As to the average age, FDR was banking on everyone being required to contribute (be taxes) but very few collecting, so the collection age was set at 65. Why? Because the average life expectancy in 1936 was not 63, as you stated, (showing you are frequently wrong) but the average life expectancy in 1936 was 56.6 years for a white male, 60.6 for a white female, (according to UC Berkley) and just 48 for a black male. FDR knew this, the Democrat Congress knew this, and they never anticipated medical avancements that would allow us to live longer.

Even Social Security, the beloved Socialist plan of the 1930’s Democrats, was based on a lie, that you would be able to retire securely with Uncle Sam, when they knew you would probably never live long enough to collect.

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
I know when you post you get a lot of responses, so you don’t have to respond. I’d rather see your response to Mata. But in regards to this:

Tax collections rise when the economy grows. The economy always grows, with or without tax cuts, save for brief periods of recession. One of the big drivers of economic growth is population growth. So whenever there is a recovery from a recession there is economic growth. Whenever there is population growth, there will be economic growth.

I think JoeTote put it better than I did earlier. But let me explain this in my macro-world. I’m not rich; I have yet to become a blip on Obama’s radar, but that is only because my wife quit working to finish her degree. She has always wanted to be a nurse and we were at a place where she could pursue that dream. Even so, we have a nice house, a pool, a big yard. I like doing the yard and cleaning the pool, but I don’t really have time. I pay people to do my yard and clean my pool. In my own little way, I contribute to the economy. When the government starts taking more of my money, and I cannot make more money, something has to give. Either my savings is decreased or my budget is decreased. If it is the budget, I may have to quit paying to have the pool cleaned or the yard done or both. That affects those companies. Maybe not by my acts alone, but others may feel the same crunch. If enough people feel that crunch, those companies go out of business. That is a tax loss for the government. Increased taxes just affected the tax base.
Now take that to a larger scale. People complain about the rich, but those people buy things and services. There is a point at which they will reduce spending in either goods, services, or both. That affects the tax base. Do you not remember the Yacht Tax? The tax destroyed 330 jobs in jewelry manufacturing, 1,470 in the aircraft industry and 7,600 in the boating industry. The boating industry never recovered here in the States.

Hi Retire: I can’t address your assessment of the motives behind social security, but I do want to note that my statement of average life expectancy had to do with the life expectancy of an average American worker, which is the only type of American relevant to the present conversation. The statistics you refer to are life expectancy from birth, which aren’t relevant to the question of government pensions for workers and how long workers are expected to live.

The other thing is that it’s libelous to write that I’m “frequently wrong,” as if this were proven fact. How can I possibly respond to this? I suppose that I could say, no, I’m not frequently wrong, but how does that contribute to a positive discussion for either of us? On the other hand, you could legitimately write, “just as you were wrong in the case of nnnn.” This would be a specific criticism and it would give me the opportunity to respond — either to agree or disagree and to state the reasons for my disagreement.

Hi Aqua,

Thanks for the good comment. You are right, I can’t begin to give point by point rebuttals to everyone, when they start ganging up on me, but I will honor your request that I respond to Mata and address your single example. When able.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:

On top of this, when you have a cut in capital gains tax rates, there tends to be an unloading of capital assets. Often times, there is a long advance “warning” that there may be a cut in capital gains tax rates (e.g. when Reagan emerged as a credible candidate). So people with capital gains hold on to their investments longer than they otherwise would have, waiting for the capital gains tax cuts to occur. But this doesn’t generate major economic activity (or tax receipts) which would not have otherwise occurred. It simply (and artificially) manipulates the timing of capital gains unloading decisions.

I thought I remembered something about this from 2008. Google is good.

… for a few moments in yesterday’s presidential debate on ABC News, anchorman Charles Gibson sounded like a charter member of the Club for Growth or Americans for Tax Reform. It came when Mr. Gibson questioned Senator Obama about the capital gains tax. Mr. Gibson quoted Mr. Obama as talking about raising the tax to 28% from 15%. “But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent,” Mr. Gibson said. “And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent. And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?”

Mr. Obama was totally flummoxed, betraying a fundamental lack of understanding of the Laffer Curve. The Democrat of Illinois spoke of the need to “finance health care for Americans who currently don’t have it,” and of the need to “invest in our infrastructure” and in “our schools.”

Mr. Gibson, to his credit, wouldn’t let the point go. “But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up,” he replied to Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama replied by changing the subject, to “a housing crisis that this president has not been attentive to.”

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2011/01/30/abc-cap-gains-tax-hit-ignores-charles-gibsons-finest-hour-questions-apri#ixzz27R7oHnXH

Hi Aqua (#35): Gibson’s statement/conclusion was incorrect. He was called out on it, at the time. Given 10 minutes, I could dig up a lot. Since I only have one minute right now (wife’s waiting to leave), this one will have to do:

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1286

I agree that Google is one of the most truly amazing technological developments of my lifetime. Right up there with GPS navigation.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, raising taxes causes tax payers to change their habits. Companies that can go over seas. (Look at France, Greece, Spain right now. Or look at the people leaving California.) Then again those who can work for cash or barter. There is a huge cash and barter commerce going on right now. I just got a granite counter top for 40% under market by paying cash. Buy fruit and vegetables at the farm or eggs and meat. Pay cash get a discount. Little gets claimed as income. No income, not tax. Even services are being done for cash. Lawn services are a great way for people to make cash money that will never be taxed. I expect that snow removal will be much the same. Raising taxes is another form of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:

So what are you trying to spin; that the life expectancy rates for non workers are different than that for workers and when calculating the life expectancy rates in 1936 the FDR administration differentiated between the two for the pupose of creating a Social Security plan? Odd, in all the many numerous articles, and books, I have read about the factors affecting the creation of Social Security, I have never come across that claim.

But let’s assume you are right (which I doubt) then the life expectancy for workers, due to farm/factory accidents would be even less than the age of 56.6 for males and 60.6 for females, which makes FDRs miracle cure even more nefarious.

Oh, and when have you been wrong before? Think Fourth Amendment.

As to increasing taxes: you have to look no further than, as has been pointed out, your own state. Of if you want to continue wearing blinders thinking Governor Moonbeam is going to put California on a path to fiscal soundness by increasing taxes, then look at the state of New York that increased income taxes on the upper level incomes and started bleeding millionaires.

Hi Retire: You don’t understand how life expectancy rates are calculated. The numbers you quote are those which pertain to all babies born alive. The numbers that I was quoting are the life expectancy of those who live long enough to get a job and are forced to pay social security payroll or self employment taxes. This is the relevant population dataset.

This (link below) explains it clearly. Your initial charge that social security was set up as a cynical “circus” for people who’d never live long enough to get into the Bit Top was unfounded.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html

Regarding your distain for The Austinist, I really wish that you’d presented a link to a credible source which refutes the statistics offered in the article. I’d never read the Austinist; it was simply the first link which came up on Google. But the Austinist got their facts straight, which anyone can easily confirm, for e.g. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-02-17-texas-census_N.htm

Regarding Thomas Sowell and liberals being responsible for high housing costs in California, that’s simply not true. California doesn’t just have the most people, it has the highest urban density in the nation. It’s not a place like Oregon, with lots of green space and relatively few people. California is overpopulated, stuffed to the gills, in the great urban and coastal areas where most people want to live. Get away from the coast, and you may as well live in Texas 🙂

There is simply no constituency whatsoever for more population growth. Even back in the 1980s, a slogan was “glad you had a good time in California; now go back home.”

I live in one of the most lopsidedly conservative counties in the USA (Orange County, CA). The people who are the biggest NIMBYs are not liberal dues paying members of Greenpeace, they are conservative home owners, who are tired of suburban traffic jams, to say nothing of freeway traffic jams. They are tired of living on postage stamp sized lots. For the price of my little stucco (chicken wire and waterproof plaster) house here in Huntington Beach, I could live in a beautiful McMansion in Texas. Lots of Californians have cashed out their California stucco and traded it for much larger Texas brick and fieldstone, sitting in the middle of a nice Texas McRanch. That’s got nothing at all to do with liberal politics.

With respect to taxes, the tax differences between California and Texas are a pittance, compared to differences in mortgage payments for comparable houses. All bubbles burst, and California had an unsustainably huge population bubble. Teachers can’t afford to live in the neighborhoods where they teach. I’ve run a small business in Huntington Beach (population 200,000) for 20 years and I’ve hired about 40 different people, about 3/4 with major university science degrees, and not a one of them lived in Huntington Beach, save for a single employee, who lived in a small apartment for a couple of months, before moving back to Long Beach. One employee, who worked with me for 15 years, had a daily 2.5 hour commute from Norco (East of Riverside). The cost of housing is a far bigger barrier for a business to overcome than the difference in total tax burden (which average $4,900 in total state and local taxes for CA; $3200 for Texas; especially given that income averages $6,000 per year more in Callfornia than in Texas: http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/sl_burdens_byyear_1977-2009-20110223.swf

Here’s a balanced analysis of the state of California, from the standpoint of economics and population change.

link-9 page PDF (ginormous URL)

You asked for a reference to a comparison of migration figures for rich Texans vs rich Californians. Fair enough. This was something I read on an airline in flight magazine. I’ll try and find the story (or a similar story). May take me some digging. In the meantime, take note of the state where Romney is building his new Manse, complete with car elevators. But Romney doesn’t have to worry about having most of his own money getting taxed, I suppose, given that he outsources it.

Finally, you say:

You live in a state that thinks it can tax and spend its way out of a financial disaster. Perhaps you should rethink that policy. It ain’t working, bubba.

Maybe you missed this:

What’s the debt to GDP ratio of Califoria? 18.67% Of Texas? 17.28%

And despite our slightly higher current unemployment rate, our per capita income is still 15% greater than yours, including the unemployed.

Incidentally, although I don’t know your name, you know mine. It’s “Larry,” not “bubba.”

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

The left placed the bulk of the blame for our deficits on the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq War. The Iraq War has been over with for awhile now meaning a half of their stated reason for the increase in the deficits is gone. If their theory was correct, we would have seen a huge reduction in the deficits. We haven’t. Looks like their theory has been proven to be false.