Bush Legacy

[Texsox]

Alright alright.........Who are you and what have you done with Tex?!?!?!

 

I think I've been quick to praise Bush when he does things that are good, and I accept that he will appoint conservatives when given a chance. I believe he has done a nice job of finding diversity within conservatives.

 

There are a number of ideological things that I disagree with him on, and sadly some of that has been on my conservative side. No matter how politicians like to tell us we will have a free lunch while racking up deficits, unless y'all are planning on leaving this country, or finding your way into a lower tax bracket, you and I will be repaying the debt, with interest. Fiscal responsibility was, IMHO, the best card the GOP had over the tax and spend Dems. Reagan taught everyone the don't tax and still spend road map to popularity. I still believe a tax and cut spending until out of debt, works for families and works for governments. The government borrowing money, giving it to us to spend, is like a parent buying approval from their kids.

 

On a personal level, I "like" and "respect" Bush a whole lot. I'd rather he babysit my kids than Clinton. I would rather spend a weekend at Crawford than with the Clintons. I believe on the character issue, he's flawed like all us humans, but as good as we could expect.

 

Like his dad, he seems to have lost enthusiasm and patience for the job.

[Balta1701]

Congressional spending is by far and away more at fault then anything tax cuts have "chipped away at" for our deficit right now.

Actually...you're fairly wrong...they're both roughly the same order of magnitude, with the tax cuts actually being the slighltly larger piece, According to the data.

 

I'm just citing a blog here with a few graphs, but the blog itself is fairly well sourced in where the data came from. Here's your key block:

 

Tax revenues fell from 20.9% of GDP in 2000 to what is now projected to be 17.4% of GDP for 2005. Federal expenditures rose from 18.4% to 20.1% over the same period. With tax revenues way down and expenditures way up, voila, a big surplus turned into a much bigger deficit. In terms of this simple arithmetic, 2/3 of the swing from surplus to deficit would be attributed to lower tax revenues and 1/3 to higher spending.

 

And one other key point...

 

Nonetheless, the above graph also suggests that using 2000 as the base year for fiscal comparisons may be a bit misleading, since tax revenues for that year were at their highest level and expenditures were at their lowest level, as percentages of GDP, of the previous quarter century. An alternative baseline is to look at what the average values for these two magnitudes had been over 1970-2000. By this metric, despite the rise since 2000 in government expenditures as a fraction of GDP, spending is still below the average historical value of 20.9% observed during 1970-2000. On the other hand, tax revenues in 2003-2004 represented a lower percentage of GDP than at any point of the preceding quarter century. With the mid-session revisions, the gap between expenditures and receipts currently stands at 2.7% of GDP, almost identical to the historical average gap of 2.6%, albeit with both magnitudes shifted down a little less than 1% relative to the historical averages.

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

It isn't just tax cuts I'm pissed about -- it is not closing loopholes in tax law that allow for Cayman Islands bank accounts, etc. etc. to avoid paying their fair share.  If any average person tried what most corporations can get away with in regards to paying taxes, our asses would be in prison so damn fast.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[southsider2k5]

Wealth in America

 

 

 

"If one leaves aside homes and real estate, the top 2% of all families are found to own 54% of all net financial assets (stocks, bonds, pensions funds and so on), the top 10% to own 86%, and the bottom 55% to have zero or negative financial assets."

Lester Thurow, A Surge of Inequality. Scientific American. May, 1987, Vol 256(5):30-37. Pp. 32.

 

 

 

1. Financial Wealth (1989 data)

 

Top 1% of wealth-holders have 48% of all financial wealth

 

Next 19%                          have 46%

 

Next 80%                          have  6%

 

Bottom 54% have no net (assets minus debt) financial wealth

 

2. Marketable Wealth

 

    ("Net Worth:"  Financial wealth + housing and consumer durables' residual value)

 

Top 1%            have 39%

 

Next 19%        have 45%

 

Bottom 80%    have 15%

 

3. Income

 

Top 1%            have 17%

 

Next 19%        have 39%

 

Bottom 80%    have 45%

 

4. Distribution of Increases in Marketable and Financial

      Wealth Produced during the 1980s

 

  A. Financial Wealth Increases

 

Top 1%            got 66%

Next 19%        got 37%

Bottom 80%    got -3%

 

  B. Marketable Wealth Increases

 

Top 1%            got 62%

Next 19%        got 37%

Bottom 80%    got  1%

 

5. Distribution of Marketable Wealth Produced during

        1962-1981

 

Top 1%                  got 34%

Next 19%              got 48%

Bottom 80%          got 18%

 

(Household Wealth Inequality in the United States from

Top Heavy: A Study of the Increasing Inequality in Wealth in America.

Edward N. Wolff, Twentieth Century Fund Report, 1995.)

These are the most recent figures I have found so far...I'll keep looking.

 

I am going to go with Balta on this one. Income is very different than wealth. Taxing wealth vs income is two different things and America doesn't tax wealth, well at least until death, but that is a different story. If we are looking at income (and I will bold that in your quote just for reference sake), then you are going to be surprised again by the statistics. This is from the CBO on tax burden by income brackets

 

Income class 2000 law Bush tax cuts Difference

Bottom 20% -1.6% -2.7% -1.1%

Next 20% 1.5% -0.1% -1.6%

Middle 20% 6.4% 5.4% -1.0%

Next 20% 15.3% 15.2% -0.1%

Top 20% 78.4% 82.1% 3.8%

Top 10% 63.5% 66.7% 3.2%

Top 5% 51.4% 53.7% 2.3%

Top 1% 31.6% 32.3% 0.6%

 

The Bush tax cuts actually have the rich paying a higher share of income, and a higher percentage of taxes than their corresponding % of incomes in the US. I guess that means you are in favor of a tax cut for the ultrarich then because you want to bring their tax burdens in line with their relative income %?

[Balta1701]

The Bush tax cuts actually have the rich paying a higher share of income, and a higher percentage of taxes than their corresponding % of incomes in the US.  I guess that means you are in favor of a tax cut for the ultrarich then because you want to bring their tax burdens in line with their relative income %?

Wait one second on that point...are you saying that the Bush Tax cuts have the upper tax brackets paying a higher percentage of their income to the government in the form of taxes, or are you saying that the Bush Tax cuts have the upper tax brackets paying a higher percentage of the government's total tax revenues? Given the massive budget deficits those are 2 very different things, and I'm just trying to understand your statistic.

[southsider2k5]

Wait one second on that point...are you saying that the Bush Tax cuts have the upper tax brackets paying a higher percentage of their income to the government in the form of taxes, or are you saying that the Bush Tax cuts have the upper tax brackets paying a higher percentage of the government's total tax revenues?  Given the massive budget deficits those are 2 very different things, and I'm just trying to understand your statistic.

 

Here's the site and the full story

 

http://www.poorandstupid.com/2004_08_15_ch...267440494775082

[Texsox]

As the poor become poorer and the wealthier, wealtheir, the wealthy will pay a higher percentage of the overall budget. When GM closes a manufacturing plant and those workers struggle to find matching jobs, the middle class slips a bit more.

 

I don't blame that on Bush, just like I didn't blame it on Clinton. It will take a nation to fix that little problem.

[jackie hayes]

But the top 1% control at least 85% of the nation's wealth!!!

None of the numbers you cited back this up.

 

Yeah, if you throw out housing + real estate wealth, the story changes quite a bit. But there's no obvious reason to do that, and supposing that you do simply exclude that wealth from taxation, you'll see the rich shift from financial instruments into real estate, so it's unclear how exactly you implement your 85, 95% taxes from the rich idea.

 

Btw, Bush did make a couple very good appointments. It's just unfortunate that neither O'Neill nor Powell stuck around.

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

I am going to go with Balta on this one.  Income is very different than wealth.  Taxing wealth vs income is two different things and America doesn't tax wealth, well at least until death, but that is a different story.  If we are looking at income (and I will bold that in your quote just for reference sake), then you are going to be surprised again by the statistics.  This is from the CBO on tax burden by income brackets

The Bush tax cuts actually have the rich paying a higher share of income, and a higher percentage of taxes than their corresponding % of incomes in the US.  I guess that means you are in favor of a tax cut for the ultrarich then because you want to bring their tax burdens in line with their relative income %?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All I'd like to see is less unemployment, less homelessness, less disenfranchisement, a CHANCE for the lower and middle classes to become middle and upper class...a bigger piece of the pie for those who need it!

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

None of the numbers you cited back this up.

 

Yeah, if you throw out housing + real estate wealth, the story changes quite a bit.  But there's no obvious reason to do that, and supposing that you do simply exclude that wealth from taxation, you'll see the rich shift from financial instruments into real estate, so it's unclear how exactly you implement your 85, 95% taxes from the rich idea.

 

Btw, Bush did make a couple very good appointments.  It's just unfortunate that neither O'Neill nor Powell stuck around.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Condi sucks!!!

[Balta1701]

Condi sucks!!!

That was a well thought out, well-reasoned, highly intellectual argument.

[Controlled Chaos]

This is some revealing info:

THE TIMES CATCHES KERRY IN A LIE

 

But there's something remarkable revealed in one of the tables that accompany Johnston's story -- which he cleverly never comes out and says in the text. As perspicacious reader Jim Glass pointed out to me, the table shows that the entire income decline in 2001 and 2002 is due exclusively to losses by taxpayers making over $100 thousand a year, with the vast majority of it coming from taxpayers making over $1 million. Taxpayers earning less than $100 thousand -- the overwhelming majority of American households -- actually saw their income rise during the two years.

 

 

It's plain as day: the richer you were, the worse you got it. So why wasn't the headline "The Rich Get Poorer, and The Poor Get Richer"? Because that's exactly what the Times and the rest of the liberal establishment so desperately wants -- and they will never admit that it occurred during George Bush's presidency.

 

Another table accompanying the story shows that the middle class is not only doing fine, but expanding -- in direct contradiction to Kerry's convention claim that it is shrinking. This table shows the change in the number of tax returns filed in each income category. Note that the lowest-income category shrank as people on the bottom rung of the economic ladder advanced. And all the highest-income categories shrank, too, as "the rich" fell down a rung or two (from the artificial heights of Clinton bubble, back when liberals weren't so concerned with income inequality because their team was in the White House).

 

Which categories grew? The middle class, of course.

 

 

You see, as they say on TV, "the truth is out there." It can even be found in the pages of the New York Times if you know how what to look at and what to ignore.

 

But you'll have to ignore a lot. Get a load of the very first sentence of an article in the current issue of the leading liberal magazine, The American Prospect:

 

"For most Americans, the last four years have represented a low point in our economic history."

 

Never mind that Great Depression thing you learned about from your grandparents. That was hyped intelligence. But I can't say the same thing about what Kerry and his surrogates are saying about the economy. That's hyped stupidity.

[Texsox]

I know y'all are having fun with the eye charts, but just one quick break for the Holiday

 

and the Number 1 Thanksgiving Haiku...

 

Butterball Hot Line?

This is an emergency!

My penis is stuck!

[Balta1701]

I don't know what the answer is myself, but I'll just say re: that last post with graphs that it's very interesting that they choose 2000-2002, the time of the peak bear stock market, as the time to look at how the incomes of people have changed. Do you think that stock market losses were included in those incomes? I bet you they are -that's the only possible way that the numbers could have gotten so low.

 

The stock market turned around in 2003. Those numbers may well have completely flip-flopped since then.

 

Furthermore, it is also certainly worth considering whether or not the average taxpayer is seeing his or her income rise not just with respect to the year before it, but also with respect to inflation - for example, if your salary rises by $500, but the cost of your health insurance rises by $1000, you haven't exactly come out a winner.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I know y'all are having fun with the eye charts, but just one quick break for the Holiday

Is that autobiographical? If so, remind me to pass on the glazed ham when I come over for dinner.

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

That was a well thought out, well-reasoned, highly intellectual argument.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I suppose you want (or think you deserve) an explanation...here goes...She has bent over backwards to placate the "Palestinians" every chance she has had. She f**ks Israel over whenever she can.

[Texsox]

I suppose you want (or think you deserve) an explanation...here goes...She has bent over backwards to placate the "Palestinians" every chance she has had. She f**ks Israel over whenever she can.

 

I4E, are you back? We missed you.

[kapkomet]

I4E, are you back?  We missed you.

Yea, I think someone's back. He's a little too crazy to be his "calm" brother.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Yea, I think someone's back.  He's a little too crazy to be his "calm" brother. 

Meds run out?

[southsider2k5]

I suppose you want (or think you deserve) an explanation...here goes...She has bent over backwards to placate the "Palestinians" every chance she has had. She f**ks Israel over whenever she can.

 

That is so wrong it is laughable. The US has bent over backward for 60 years now to ensure Israels exsistant and safety. They get more of my tax dollars than any other country on the planet. We hide protect them in the UN, we protect them against their middle eastern enemies, and we supply them with every kind of aid imaginable. If we were truely f***ing Israel, we would cut them off and see how long their survival lasted for. If it wasn't for us, the Jews would have been a deadrace a long time ago, both because of our work in WW2 and our protections of Israel over the last 60 years. I wish someone would f*** me over the way the US is doing Israel.

[Texsox]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[FlaSoxxJim]

That is so wrong it is laughable.  The US has bent over backward for 60 years now to ensure Israels exsistant and safety.  They get more of my tax dollars than any other country on the planet.  We hide protect them in the UN, we protect them against their middle eastern enemies, and we supply them with every kind of aid imaginable.  If we were truely f***ing Israel, we would cut them off and see how long their survival lasted for.  If it wasn't for us, the Jews would have been a deadrace a long time ago, both because of our work in WW2 and our protections of Israel over the last 60 years.  I wish someone would f*** me over the way the US is doing Israel.

Anti-semite.

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

That is so wrong it is laughable.  The US has bent over backward for 60 years now to ensure Israels exsistant and safety.  They get more of my tax dollars than any other country on the planet.  We hide protect them in the UN, we protect them against their middle eastern enemies, and we supply them with every kind of aid imaginable.  If we were truely f***ing Israel, we would cut them off and see how long their survival lasted for.  If it wasn't for us, the Jews would have been a deadrace a long time ago, both because of our work in WW2 and our protections of Israel over the last 60 years.  I wish someone would f*** me over the way the US is doing Israel.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

WRONG!!!

 

1) Egypt gets as much financial support from the US as does Israel, and Egypt is not even a Democracy, nor are they an ally.

 

2) Condi Rice, just last week, ensured that there can/will be a steady flow of weapons/explosives from Egypt into Gaza, by forcing Israel to give up control of the border surrounding Gaza.

 

With "friends" like the Bush administration, Israel doesn't need enemies!

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

Anti-semite. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not necessarily anti-Semetic, just uneducated and/or uninformed, ignorant, and/or just plain stupid.

[Rex Kickass]

With three years to go, its too soon to say what is legacy will be. It's 2005 and we still don't even really know what Clinton's is and we're just starting to realize the full legacy of Reagan and Bush 41.

 

Now you can continue arguing about tax breaks and rates and stuff I don't even pretend to understand.