The Truth re Tax Cuts 4 The Rich, Deregulation & Job Creation: a GREAT debunking of Trickle-Down BS
.. this article dispatches the conservartive fairy tale of Trickle Down bullshit as good as any I have seen. It summarizes the various criticisms and provides links to great articles on the biggest con the CONservatives have been so successful selling over the last 30 yrs (thanks in no small part to the Corporate media GOP toadies)
http://bridgeproject.com/?reads_detail&id=48&sort=0
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Summary
Despite demanding immediate deficit reduction in a difficult economy, conservatives insist that any increase in tax rates for top income earners will kill jobs. Instead, they argue for lowering tax rates on the wealthiest Americans (while downplaying the deficit impact of such a tax cut) as way to increase hiring. There is no evidence for this argument, however intuitive it may seem. Lower tax rates on the rich are not associated with more hiring or stonger GDP growth, and while conservatives insist that top income tax rates hit small businesses heavily, their ludicrous definition of “small business” renders that statement meaningless. Along with the threat of higher taxes, conservatives insist that federal regulations are holding back job creation and have made loosening the rules a focus of their agenda. However, tax breaks for the wealthy and deregulation do almost nothing to increase consumer demand, which is the true driver of hiring and expansion decisions.
Tax Breaks For The Wealthiest Americans Do Not Create Jobs Or Grow The Economy
Lower Top Marginal Tax Rates Are Not Historically Associated With More Job Creation Or Economic Growth. The following two charts from the Center for American Progress show the average annual growth in GDP and total payroll employment, by top marginal tax rate since 1950:
According to CAP: “These numbers do not mean that higher rates necessarily lead to higher growth. But the central tenet of modern conservative economics is that a lower top marginal tax rate will result in more growth, and these numbers do show conclusively that history has not been kind to that theory.” [Center for American Progress, 6/27/11; Center for American Progress; 6/21/11]
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CBO: Reducing Income Taxes Is Less Effective Than Other Policies To Encourage Job Growth. According to the Congressional Budget Office:
"Policies that would have the largest effects on output and employment per dollar of budgetary cost in 2012 and 2013 are ones that would reduce the marginal cost to businesses of adding employees or that would be targeted toward people who would be most likely to spend the additional income. Such policies include reducing employers’ payroll taxes (especially if limited to firms that increase their payroll), increasing aid to the unemployed, and providing additional refundable tax credits in 2012 for lower- and middle-income households.
Policies that would primarily affect businesses’ cash flow but would have little impact on their marginal incentives to hire or invest would have only small effects. Such policies include reducing business income taxes and reducing tax rates on repatriated foreign earnings."
CBO prepared the following chart showing the projected effect on employment of various policy options:
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they referred to a David Leonhardt article in the NYT without giving a link. Here is the articles link:
Were the Bush Tax Cuts Good for Growth?
... Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?
Those tax cuts passed in 2001 amid big promises about what they would do for the economy. What followed? The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II. Amazingly, that statement is true even if you forget about the Great Recession and simply look at 2001-7.
The competition for slowest growth is not even close, either. Growth from 2001 to 2007 averaged 2.39 percent a year (and growth from 2001 through the third quarter of 2010 averaged 1.66 percent). The decade with the second-worst showing for growth was 1971 to 1980 — the dreaded 1970s — but it still had 3.21 percent average growth.
The picture does not change if you instead look at five-year periods. Here’s a chart ranking five-year periods over the past 50 years, in descending order of average annual growth:
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[font size="3"]This article provides a lot of good information in one place to use in commenting on web-sites like those of M$M and others where conservative loud-mouths shout their bullshit.
Those who have a web-site (free hosting provided by www.Google.com/sites) or a facebook page (create a new page just for public issue info. - if you use your own home page and paste a link in there it will soon slide down out of sight - hard to find when you need it.) You can also just insert/paste links to articles in a Word file and save it to you hard drive with a name which will enable you to find it later when you want to refer to the articles you have listed in there.[/font]
= new reply since forum marked as read
