Amaros
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Joined: 7/25/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Estring
I don't need to be an expert on economics. I just need to listen to what most economists say about tax cuts. It usually has a positive impact on the economy. In case you haven't noticed, the economy is doing quite well.
Ok, sorry, I gotta call bullshit here: if the top 1% are making money, the economy is doing good right? What is your metric here? Define "quite well" - incomes growing? Quality of life improving? Test scores? Crime?
Which economists?
No glittering generalities or half truths please, link to primary sources.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Estring
And unlike you, I don't blindly repeat the mantra that only the wealthy benefit from tax cuts. Everyone who pays taxes benefits. Now it seems logical to me that the more taxes you pay, the more you benefit from a tax cut. Do you know the percentage of taxes the wealthiest pay compared to everyone else? For your homework, look that fact up, genius. You may find that when you avoid mindlessly spouting rhetoric that belongs on a bumpersticker, and check what the facts really are, you may learn something.
Yes, everyone who pays taxes benefits, though of course the people that benefit the most are the ones making the most money - lemme tell you how that works: in Adam Smiths day, there was no public infrastructure, everythign was privatley owned, including the roads - if you wanted to manufacture and sell goods, you needed to use a toll road, and that goes for everything, bridges, ferries, etc.
Without public infrastructure, you can invest all you want to and manufacture your ass off - if you can't get it to market, it's all for shit - you don't make a dime until somebody buys it.
To continue: in Smith's day, there was no public education, if you needed skilled labor, you had to train them yourself, and hope somebody who wasn't paying for training didn't use that savings to offer them better wages and hire them away from you.
'Course this didn't actually happen a lot, because under the feudal system you couldn't be in business without a charter from the crown, or at least the local strongmans say so, and these entities would essentially grant monopolies, and take their cut, which was whatever they decided it was - if they happened to need money to fight a war for example, pony up pal, you can be replaced.
So now, we have public infrastructure, public education, and a regulatory business environment designed ideally, to prevent monopolistic practicesadn keep us from backsliding into feudalism, corporate or otherwise. Not a lot of progress in those times, though it suited some people, to be sure.
So who benefits from all these taxes, regulations, and infrastructure? Everybody, but the more money you make off all that, the more you are benefitting from it, both technically and practically speaking - this is called "the benefits principle" and you will find it in any decent economics textbook.
In different terms, taxes are part of the cost of doing business - all businesses have what is called "inputs", i.e., the percentage of profit they have to reinvest to stay in business or expand - the economy as a whole works in a very similar way, and I didn't even mention research support, which shoulders costly basic research into things like nuclear energy, computer science, materials, etc. - you see basic research is extremely expensive, and it produces nothing in terms of profit - ther eis no profit in researching and defining markup languages unless you have a monopoly on them, or doing basic physics research with no immediate applications - there is a great deal of profit to be made in applied research that turns discovories made in basic research into products and commodities - even very large companies seldom invest much in basic research, all the pharmacuetical research you hear touted is based almost entirely on publically funded basic research.
Now the beauty of this is, this research is available to anyone, usually for no more than printing and shipping costs, you can get the same research Phizer is using to develop multibillion dollar pharmacueticals and develop your own, if you want to, and are capable -and Phizer can't stop you, because of the regulatory environment.
You're also probobly going to want property rights, an educated labor market, and soem way to transport your good to market, no?
quote:
ORIGINAL: Estring
And one more thing, this President is actually spending more than a Democrat. Look that up too.
Um, no, the pubs are spending rather more than democrats ever have, by at least an order of magnitude - and since none or very littel of that is actually being spent on infrastructure, public education or basic research, all programs which have been cut, the impact onthe economy of all this spending will be negligable, while the opportunity cost of not doing them will be considerable in decades to come.
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RE: What do YOU get out of it.. - 
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