Comments by "Jim Werther" (@jimwerther) on "Meet the Press full broadcast — Jan. 22" video.
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@lorinelson7523
Lol! You know nothing about politics, and nothing about economics. Raise taxes on corporations? That will lower revenue, and drive us into recession. And those taxes would be paid by...you, and all the other consumers. Like that idea? Next: Who is raising taxes on the elderly and the poor? No one, obviously.
"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form."
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Open your mind.
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@rbn.austin6051
Supply side economics absolutely works.
The reason the debt has increased is because spending increased.
For example, under Reagan, the deficit increased despite the fact that revenue to the government increased, because the spending increased at an even higher rate. Reagan attempted spending cuts, but the Democrat House blocked nearly all of it.
Trump reduced taxes and regulations, which massively spurred the economy and therefore government revenue, but Trump never even attempted to cut spending. The Congress was then run by the GOP, who made no attempt to cut government spending. The Republican base at that time was firmly behind Trump, and would have howled at any Congressperson who balked at any part of his plan.
Clinton governed from the hard left his first two years, the result of which was an avalanche in the midterms, in which the Republicans captured both the House and the Senate. Clinton then famously chose "triangulation", turning very moderate in his policies, and agreeing with the GOP Congress on major spending cuts, including, most dramatically, welfare reform. As Clinton himself said in his State of the Union speech, "The Era of Big Government Is Over". If only! That one didn't last. But while it did, we actually had a balanced budget, even a slight surplus.
Milton Friedman noted back then that the secret to balanced budgets was divided government, because when one party runs all of it then they agree to spend away. Divided government means no agreement on where to overspend, giving us at least a chance at fiscal sanity.
Back to supply side economics - the idea is actually quite simple. Say you have a supermarket in which cereal is not selling at $5 a box and is now clogging up your shelves, leading the store to suffer losses. How would you make up for those losses? The equivalent of raising taxes would be to say that we are not bringing in enough revenue at $2/box profit on cereal, so let's raise the price to $6, thereby increasing the revenue to $3/box. The problem? Fewer boxes of cereal sold at the higher price, therefore no gain in revenue. Supply side would say to lower the price to $4/box, thereby decreasing the profit to a mere $1/box, which is more than made up for by the massive increase in sales.
That, in fact, is the entire idea of supply side economics, first pursued by Andrew Carnegie during the Coolidge administration. Noticing that rich folks were sheltering their money, he convinced the administration to lower taxes on the rich, which not only spurred economic growth for the entire country, it actually increased the amount of revenue raised in taxes just from the cohort upon whom tax rates were lowered.
Hope that helped.
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@rbn.austin6051
I would maintain that the micro example provided holds up well. That said, there is a limited amount I can reasonably explain in a YT comment. I would hope that you would spend some time reading or watching Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, or Arthur Laffer.
No, neither extreme of 100% or 0% taxation would work; both would bring in precisely zero revenue. This is where the Laffer curve comes in, wherein the idea is to hit the sweet spot. If we removed all regulations and 99% of taxes then the economy would go great guns, but the government could never come close to paying its bills. But no one is advocating lowering taxes to near-nothing. The idea is to reduce it to the point where people will risk and innovate and create, while the government can still fulfill its basic functions.
A basic flaw in your assumptions above is that more government spending on healthcare will produce a healthier society. History has demonstrated otherwise, and Thomas Sowell (among others) has explained why it is so.
I am opposed to term limits. It puts me in the distinct minority, but in both theory and practice (in states and municipalities where it is the law) the idea serves no positive purpose, and also violates the basic notion of a democracy free to choose its own leaders. Its popularity, I assume, comes from a vague "throw the bums out" populist, vengeful notion, but I've yet to encounter a reasonable argument in its favor.
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@rbn.austin6051
(Second Consecutive Comment)
I should have added slightly more specificity in my response to your points just above regarding stickiness and alternatives: The same does actually hold true when it comes to taxation. As Thomas Sowell explains in Chapter 23 ("Myths About Markets") of (arguably) his magnum opus, "Basic Economics", and as you can also read in his pamphlet-sized book titled "Trickle Down Theory and Tax Cuts for the Rich", markets absolutely do react to incentives and disincentives of levels of taxation. As noted earlier in this thread, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (who I am now thinking that I mistakenly and weirdly labeled "Andrew Carnegie" above) correctly intuited that the wealthy were stashing away their money in shelters due to overtaxation, and that lowering the top rates would stimulate commerce to the benefit of all, government included. And so it was in the 1920s, and again every time it has been tried.
Free market capitalism is a proven winner. Government intervention beyond a certain basic point leads inexorably to inefficiencies which only get worse with ever-increasing government involvement, which will always be the chosen remedy demanded by far too many.
Fact is, government overtaxation leads to recession. Government overspending leads to inflation. Anti-poverty programs lead to more poverty, anti-homeless efforts lead to more homelessness. The more government gets involved in healthcare, the worse healthcare gets. And so it is across the board, as history has shown.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, read and/or watch Milton Friedman and/or Thomas Sowell, who demonstrate these points so clearly and beautifully, and in a way I never could, especially when limited to a YT comment box.
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