Economy Does Better Under Democrats

Even Republicans are finally realizing that they've been "had" for the last 30 years...which is how we ended up with this clown car full of fools running for the GOP nomination.

 

And historically the deeper and longer the recession the stronger and longer the recovery. Not so under the Democrats.

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Because MILLIONS were lost and we're barely made up for them with a still unacceptable labor participation rate. Under Republicans we had full employment, no need to create millions of jobs, everyone was working.

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How is full employment, rising incomes, solid growth being had as opposed to the horrible record under the Democrats?

 

Be nice one of them will be your next President.

 

ROFL you mean the austerity that lowered spending growth and brought the deficits down, so now you oppose smaller deficits and support higher spending and higher deficits?

 

And once again leaves out 2008 and 2009 increases to hid the 9% spending increase in 2008 and the 18% spending increase in 2009. 29% in just TWO YEARS, it took Republicans 6 get there.

"In FY2009, Congress did not complete work by September 30, 2008. President Bush did sign some appropriations bills and a continuing resolution to keep the government running into President Obama’s first term, yet a Democrat controlled Congress purposely held off on the big spending portions of the appropriations bills until Obama took office. They did so for the purposes of jacking up spending. President Obama signed the final FY2009 spending bills on March 11, 2009.

Congressional Quarterly (subscription required) maps out a history of the FY 2009 final appropriations bills (H.R. 1105 and PL 111-, that would lead one to attribute most of the accelerated spending in FY 2009 to President Obama in a piece titled “2009 Legislative Summary: Fiscal 2009 Omnibus.” From CQ, “the omnibus provided a total of $1.05 trillion — $410 billion of it for discretionary programs — and included many of the domestic spending increases Democrats were unable to get enacted while George W. Bush was president.”
http://dailysignal.com/2012/05/24/the-truth-about-president-obamas-skyrocketing-spending/

Unlike last year, when Bush forced Democrats to accept lower spending figures, this year could prove more difficult for the president. The fiscal year begins Oct. 1, less than four months before he leaves office.

"He doesn't have us over a barrel this year, because either a President Clinton or a President Obama will have to deal with us next year," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "We are not going to be held hostage to the unreasonableness of this president."

Much of the president's plan has little chance of passage, lawmakers and budget experts say. Nearly $200 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings need congressional approval, which Democrats are unlikely to provide. "Dead on arrival," vowed Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-03-bush-budget_N.htm

 

Wages increased in the mid to late 1990's and in the mid 2000's, they dropped and have not recovered under Democrat policies, don't know what you don't understand here and if there is something in your cite which you believes supports your position then copy and paste it.

I think those are tired old leftist cliche's and doesn't show much understanding of reality, The fact is the poor do better under Republican policies along with everyone else. They have done HORRIBLE of the Democrat/Obama policies while the super-wealthy and done extraordinarily well and the income gap has surged.

Why, you are comparing one form of income to another, they are entirely different and its as if you believe the highest income groups don't paid earned income taxes. The highest earners pay the highest rates on capital gains and investment income, they pay the highest rates on earned income, they pay the most into Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, they pay the highest effect tax rates. They pay the highest EVERYTHING.

View attachment 39062

Let's don't use a chart a blogger made up. Let's use the Taxfoundation Study

"Table 1 breaks down the latest IRS data on number of returns, adjusted gross income, income taxes paid, and average tax rate by income group. In 2011, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers (those with Adjusted Gross Incomes (AGI) below $34,823) accounted for 11.55 percent of total AGI. This group of taxpayers paid approximately $30 billion in taxes, or 2.89 percent of all income taxes in 2011. In contrast, the top 50 percent of taxpayers (those with AGIs above $34,823) accounted for 88.5 percent of total AGI. The top 50 percent of taxpayers paid $1.01 trillion in income taxes, or 97.1 percent of all income taxes in 2011.
In 2011, the top 10 percent of taxpayers (with AGIs above $120,000) accounted for 45.4 percent of all AGI and 68.3 percent of all income taxes paid. Taxpayers in the top 5 percent accounted for 33.9 percent of all AGI and 56.5 percent of all income taxes paid. The top 1 percent of all taxpayers accounted for 18.7 percent of all AGI and 35.1 percent of all income taxes paid."
http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data

What is not progressive enough about that?

No we didn't, revenue growth slowed after the Clinton tax rate hikes and only got back on track after Gingrich and Kaisch forced him to sing tax rate cuts and welfare reform and slower spending growth and then we had surpluses.

There was a slowdown/recession that started in 2000 BEFORE he was elected and then of course the dot.com bust and then 911 and yes revenues dropped but he did the right think and passed a phased in tax rate cut, there was a small cut in 2003 but they were not to phase in until 2006. The economy was not coming around quick enough and the deficit hit $400B in 2004 and congress passed legislation to full phase in the tax rate cuts and revenues soared as the economy went into high gear. They then brought the deficit down to a measly $161B heading back into surplus.

Then the Democrats took control of the budget in 2007 for FY2008.

The Democrats including Obama raised spending 9% in 2008 and then 18% in 2009 and held it at those levels until the Republicans wouldn't budge and austerity was introduced. It's not the tax rate increase that is bring down the deficit is the austerity program which YOU and the left BLAME Republicans for.

Like what economic polices and how do American workers no benefit from full employment and rising incomes while having their tax rates cut? Please explain why horrible unemployment, more middle class people slipping into poverty a horrible labor participation rate and falling incomes benefit working Americans more.

I've seen it and you numbers are made up and off target, the middle class does not pay a 28% income tax rate and those in the middle and lower quintiles do not pay an effective rate of 14.5%.

There was a huge surge in tax revenue after they were fully phased in and a last Republican deficit of a paltry $161B. Again you numbers have no bearing in reality and Obama did NOT have his hands tied, not only was his stimulus the worst policy he could have engaged in he couldn't even manage properly.

No let's deal with reality as your hypothetical are not based on sound premises.

Sigh.............once again not based in reality

Day 8: Obama edict repealed 1996 welfare reform's work requirement
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/d...fare-reforms-work-requirement/article/2536341

 

http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-compensation/

The attached chart reflects the growth in wages and productivity. If we look at the benchmark (i.e. median male compensation) then between 1973 and 2011 it only increased 0.1% while productivity increased by 80.4%. My reference to median male compensation is not nefarious because the increase in median female compensation was predominately driven by increased compensation addressing the historic under-compensation for women based upon "liberal" equal pay laws. Yes, there were timeframes where the median male income increased but we can also see where it took a dive such as in the late 1980's as a result of "Reaganomics" of "trickle-down" that didn't work. As we can also see from the downturn in compensation it takes many years for it to turn around after major economic policies changes are implemented. The "compensation recovery" from "Reaganomics" didn't occur until years after he left office and then it was about 2004 before the policies of President Bush resulted in another downturn in compensation.

 

A dollar of income is a dollar of income because they all spend the same. A major problem with our tax codes is that income is broken down into "earned income" for workers taxed at rates that vary from 10% to 39.6% on net income and we have "unearned income" from investments that is taxed at rates from 0% to 20% on the same net income.

Investors don't pay any Social Security tax and only pay a 3.8% "Medicare" tax on incomes in excess of $200,000 for an individual or $250,000 for a couple filing a joint return and that was only implemented in 2013. I'm not sure where the idea came from that investors funded Social Security because, "unearned (investment) income" has never been taxed to fund Social Security and only recently has Medicare received any funding from investment income and even then only from high income households.

http://health.burgess.house.gov/uploadedfiles/one_page_on_unearned_medicare_tax.pdf

Let's compare two different income households.

The first is an individual that receives their income from self-employment and they have $35,000 in net taxable income. The first $8,925 in net income is taxed at 10% ($892.50) and the income between $8,926-$35,000 is taxed at 15% ($3,911.25) for an income tax obligation of $4,803.75 based upon the "earned income" tax tables. Additionally, because they're self-employed, they also have to pay 15.3% in Social Security/Medicare taxes on their $35,000 in income resulting in an additional $5,355 in federal taxes for a Grand Total of $10,158.75 in federal taxes.

The second is an investor sitting on the beach in Maui that has long term capital gains income of $35,000. Their tax rate for "unearned" capital gains on $35,000 is ZERO and they don't pay any Social Security/Medicare taxes on their income. The entire federal tax obligation is $0.00.

Now try to tell me that the self-employed worker busting their ass to earn a living and paying $10,158.75 in federal taxes is in anyway comparable to the investor with the identical income that pays ZERO dollars in federal taxes while sitting on the beach in Maui drinking a Mai Tai.

 

The economy doesn't actually do better under democrats. Democrats are elected after republicans have fixed the mess the previous democrats made. Then while the economy is good dems get elected and screw it up again. It is a vicious cycle.

 

The problem with this analysis is that it's cherry-picking data.

Personal income taxes on adjusted gross income for 2015 are estimated to be $1.54 trillion and only accounted for 47% of federal tax revenues. The Tax Foundation ignores the fact that another $1.065 trillion, or 33% of federal tax revenues are from Social Security/Medicare taxes that are imposed on GROSS earned income from every working American but not from investors. The workers labor is taxed at 15.3% from the first hour/dollar of income and that needs to be factored in as a tax obligation for low-median income households.

Next is the fact that the Tax Foundation splits it's analysis between the top 10% and the bottom 90% knowing full well that 47% of households have an adjusted gross income of Zero (or less) and don't have any tax obligation while also ignoring that of the top 10% that 9.9% are still working Americans paying the highest tax rates in America while the top 1/10th of 1% obtain their income from investments and are taxed at 1/2 the rates when compared to working Americans.

http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2011/10/25/beyond-the-1-percent/

The problem is that by focusing on the top 10% or even the top 1% the numbers are highly distorted. As I addressed in my income tax proposal on Creating Fair Taxation if we only taxed income "above median household income" (about $50,000/yr) at a flat rate to fully fund the general expenditures authorized by Congress the tax rate would have only been 29% for 2013.

http://www.politicalforum.com/budget-taxes/399015-creating-fair-taxation.html

Based upon this fact alone I will take the position that any tax rate above 29% is nefarious while any tax rate below 29% on income in excess of median household income ($50,000/yr) is too low.

 

This is about mean wages and they have go e up and down and not a matter of productivity. Nor do I accept the link

"Source: Author's analysis of unpublished total economy data from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Productivity and Costs program and Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Income and Product Accounts public data series"

If you want to post the data us the offical hard data lime the Census data.

 

I remember Jimmy Carter.

 

No income is not all the same it depends on how it is derived.

Again why would you want to increase rates on investment income and reduce how much tax revenue is collected if the purpose of the tax system is to fund the government?

And you have this weird notion that there are two groups of people, those that invest and those that work and there is a distinct line and one does not do both. That is fallacious nonsense.

I'm an investor and I pay SS taxes along with income taxes. And if someone doesn't pay SS taxes guess what they don't collect SS benefits.

Oh so now you limit it only to SS? Who cloaked that ONLY another SS. The remains however a high earner pays the highest rate into SS and gets the worst return while millions at the bottom get a free ride.

No lets stay away from your made up hypothicals bases on false premises and special circumstances and conflating income taxes with FICA taxes. The overall numbers clearly show the highest income groups pay the highest tax rates and by far the largest share of income taxes.

And basing a tax system on jealousy and envy is not a very practicle nor fair system.

 

No it is the metadata and consistent with the myriad of other studies and reports and findings.

And again you conflagration income taxes and FICA taxes while at the same time ignoring the EITC which not only gives millions at the bottom a free ride in SS they even make money off the tax system.

Well then stop focusing on them.

Here again fro the National Tax Payers Union.



If that is not progressive enough what would be?

And tell me exactly how many of the highest earners pay ONLY capital gains taxes?

 

Why are you only focusing on income taxes, which are the only really progressive tax but make up less than half of federal income taxes and maybe a quarter of all taxes?

It's deceptive to take only a portion of taxes paid and then pretend it realistically shows the true burden of taxes on various groups.

 

No, I mean the austerity that resulted in the reduction of well over a million jobs compared to when Reagan and Bush were president.


Austerity:

Obama
Federal Spending increase, 2009-2014: -0.53%
Total government employment, 2009-2014: -540,000

Not Austerity:

Reagan
Federal Spending increase, 1981-1986: +46.0%.
Total government employment, 1981-1986: +879,000

Not Austerity:

Bush
Federal Spending increase, 2001-2006: +42.5%
Total government employment, 2001-2006: +840,000

source data
Expenditures: http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45249-2014-04-HistoricalBudgetData.xlsx
Employment: http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm


See the difference?

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From *your* source:

Bush issued a veto threat on the bloated spending bills pending in Congress in late 2008. CQ estimated that the final spending bill “provided about $31 billion more in discretionary funding than was included in the fiscal 2008 versions of the nine bills” which is “about $19 billion more than Bush sought.” I would argue that Obama gets credit for the whole $31 billion in new spending. The most damning fact from the CQ piece is that “Bush had threatened to veto spending bills that exceeded his request.”

Sure. I'll agree that $31 billion in FY 2009 spending was attributed to Obama. That leaves the other 3.5 trillion he inherited. That is completely consistent with what Cato, Forbes, Marketwatch and Politifact say:

The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending in fiscal 2009 — for which the president is sometimes blamed entirely — was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office. ... Since pictures can convey information more efficiently than words, we’ll sum up the official spending figures in this chart. It also reflects our finding that Obama increased fiscal 2009 spending by at most $203 billion, accounting for well under half the huge increase that year. ... So by our calculations, Obama can fairly be assigned responsibility for — at most — 5.8 percent of the $3.5 trillion that the federal government actually spent in fiscal 2009, which was 17.9 percent higher than fiscal 2008.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/

When Obama took the oath of office, the $789 billion bank bailout had already been approved. Federal spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicare was already surging to meet the dire unemployment crisis that was well underway. See the CBO’s January 2009 budget outlook.

Obama is not responsible for that increase, though he is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill, from the expansion of the children’s health-care program and from other appropriations bills passed in the spring of 2009.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22?pagenumber=2

Listening to a talk radio program yesterday, the host asserted that Obama tripled the budget deficit in his first year. This assertion is understandable, since the deficit jumped from about $450 billion in 2008 to $1.4 trillion in 2009. As this chart illustrates, with the Bush years in green, it appears as if Obama’s policies have led to an explosion of debt. But there is one rather important detail that makes a big difference. The chart is based on the assumption that the current administration should be blamed for the 2009 fiscal year. While this makes sense to a casual observer, it is largely untrue. The 2009 fiscal year began October 1, 2008, nearly four months before Obama took office. The budget for the entire fiscal year was largely set in place while Bush was in the White House.

http://www.cato.org/blog/dont-blame-obama-bushs-2009-deficit


Having said that, it is impossible to look at the chart and not to see a large ramp up in outlays under George W. Bush — the president who reversed the direction of federal outlays, which had been falling. Indeed, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that much of the responsibility for 2009’s 25.2 percent rests with President Bush, and not with President Obama; in January 2009, before President Obama took office, the CBO released its forecast that fiscal year 2009 would see outlays of 24.9 percent of GDP based on pre-Obama policies.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/09/03/yep-obamas-a-big-spender-just-like-his-predecessors/

On Jan. 7, 2009, two weeks before Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the deficit for fiscal year 2009 was projected to be $1.2 trillion.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jan/29/barack-obama/obama-inherited-deficits-bush-administration/

 

I dont know where you get these figures . There are more federal workers now than when Obama took office. There were 2,790,000 federal workers in January 2009 when the president took office, and now there are 2,804,000 workers. The fact is that there is no month during President Obama’s term when the federal workforce was smaller than it was in the first month of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The president took over in January 2009. Every month after January 2009 has seen more federal workers than were employed in January 2009.

Wait I think I may have found your source. Paul Krugman. What a surprise

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/11/paul-krugman/paul-krugman-says-government-jobs-have-fallen-half/

 

Thanks for the distinction without a difference.

Compare those number to the previous Republican administration...

Nahhhh why would you...

 

So let's see if I can summarize the opinion.

EPI has released an undisputed study but since you disagree with it you choose to ignore it.

Well since you choose to disagree with undisputed information (that not even you can't dispute) there's not much more left to say.

 

This is actually true. Labor produces goods and provides services which is the "wealth" being created. Investments don't produce goods or services (although less than 0.00005% of dollars invested do fund the means for the production of goods and services by labor) and instead is income derived from the labor of those actually producing goods and services (wealth). So basically we have individual income based upon their creation of wealth and income taken from those that actually produce the wealth.

Since I don't give preference to either in my tax proposal it really doesn't matter.

Taxation of investment income that is not used for consumption (e.g. not spent but instead re-invested) does not negatively effect the economy which is based upon the production of goods and the providing of services for consumption. If the economy is not negatively effected, that generally doesn't happen related to investment income, then the increase taxes increase government revenue.

While there are those that derive their income exclusively from working, many that derive income for working and investing, and some that derive their income exclusively from investing I don't make any distinction between any of them. Our current tax codes do but I don't. As far as I'm concerned a dollar is a dollar is a dollar and all dollars of income should be treated identically and not divided into "earned income" and "unearned income" which is what our current tax codes define. I even oppose the special tax rates for corporations which are different than the tax rates for the self-employed small business owner.

A dollar is a dollar is a dollar and they should be subject to the identical tax rules regardless of source or the entity (person or business) that receives the income. That's what I've attempted to achieve with my tax proposal.

If your sole source of income is "capital gains" then it's "unearned income" and you don't pay Social Security taxes and only pay Medicare taxes on income in excess of $200,000 (for an individual or $250,000 if filing jointly). If you also have "earned income" then you do pay the FICA/Payroll/Self-employment tax based upon "earned income" so you seem to be mixing apples and oranges.

The CEO with a million dollar salary only has the first $120,000 subjected to the Social Security tax of 6.2% (with 6.2% matching funds by their employer). Their tax obligation would be $7,440 or 0.744% of their income while all workers with less than $120,000 in income have the full 6.2% tax burden (plus employer matching funds) on gross (not net) income from wages. There's no way that anyone can tell me that the CEO with the million dollar salary can't afford to pay the same 6.2% on gross income in taxes that a person earning minimum wage has to pay.

Since it's inception Social Security has always been a "tax and spend" welfare program and the taxation is really unrelated to the welfare benefit the person will receive at retirement. What is of real importance is the tax burden relative to income which is higher on lower income households when compared to high income households as demonstrated. High income households can logically afford higher tax burdens although my proposal makes it the same for everyone.

The only valid measurement is tax burden relative to income. For example we could have person A and person B that are paying taxes T1 and T2. Based upon $100 of income for both Person A might be paying $10 in T1 taxes and $30 in T2 taxes while person B is paying $15 in T1 taxes and only $10 in T2 taxes. It would be nefarious to claim that person B is paying more in taxes than person A based solely upon the T1 tax because person A's tax total is $40/$100 in income while person B's tax total is only $25/$100 in income.

I agree completely which is why my tax proposal eliminated all favortism for any group. Every household, based upon size, receives the identical exemption from taxation and pays the same tax rate on all income in excess of the exemption amount regardless of source. Everyone will pay the same 15.3% FICA/Payroll/Self-employment tax on all income with the same maximum amount dedicated to divesified and age-adjusted investment portfolios. Everyone will be entitled to the "once in a lifetime windfall income" tax exemption that would replace the inheritance tax. Small business and corporations will all be taxed the same tax rates as individuals without any preferential treatment for either.

Everyone is treated the same so there's no favoritism at all in my tax proposal which is why it's a "fair tax" proposal..

 

I would like to return to the foundation for this thread which is "Economy Does Better Under Democrats" because I disagree with it in principle.

Since roughly 1970 under the Nixon adminstration we've had a right-wing economic shift in the United States. It has been relatively constant under the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr adminstrations and any counter-acting left-wing economic policies have been minimal at best.

It's fundamentally a continuous progression of right-wing economic policies were two steps forward in the right-wing economic policies may sometimes take one step back based upon left-wing economic policies but the march has been consistatanly towards more and more right-wing economic policies since 1970.

This can be contrasted to social policies where left-wing policies have generally been the direction of movement where civil rights are gained but then once in awhile right-wing policies negate the ever advancing civil rights of the people. The movement continues towards greater civil liberties and rights in a two step forward and one step back progression.

Some like to point to Clinton or Obama adminstrations but the fact is that at best these adminstrations managed to implement one or two left-wing economic policies while overall we kept moving more and more towards the right-wing economic policies.

What we also know is that based upon this continuous shifting of our economic policies to the right that both income and wealth disparity has grown dramatically since the 1950's and 1960's when we had more left-wing economic policies.

Metaphorically we have the economic boat for Americans where right-wing adminstrations are drilling holes in the boat causing it to sink and left-wing adminstrations that, at best, can slow the leakage for a short period of time but the boats still sinking.

At some point even Republicans are going to be forced to admit their economic policies are a failure and some are already beginning to acknowledge that by expressing concerns about the income and wealth disparities that began around 1970's due to the dominance of right-wing economic policies in the United States since the Nixon adminstration.

PS - It is interesting that it was Nixon's right-wing economic policies that spawned the creation of the Libertarian Party and it's somewhat confusing as to why many Libertarians today support the same right-wing economic policies that were the reason for Libertarians to leave the Republican Party in the first place.

 

It is disputed and sites a blogger who used unpublished data. The Taxfoundation is a nonpartisan group which uses published data.

 

EPI is a non-partisan economic insititute and not a blogger and the information is contained in the US census reports but had not been previously summarized and published.

We also know that the Tax Foundation is an anti-tax research institution that is highly biased and often nefarious in it's reporting of information on taxation in many cases for example by only addressing the federal income tax and not reporting on all federal taxes the person/household is being subjected to.

 

His signing did not cause Bush's Great Recession:


http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...linton-glass-steagall-had-nothing-do-financi/



"There's not a single, solitary example that" signing the bill to end Glass-Steagall "had anything to do with the financial crash."
— Bill Clinton on Tuesday, August 11th, 2015 in an interview with Inc. magazine