Forbes (and Data): Art Laffer is wrong... consistantly.

And they keep forgetting that when the Bush tax cuts expire those same people will see their taxes go up 50%.

"But we's got to get those uber evil rich people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

What a load of horse shit. The income tax is just about the only progressive tax we have yet "it's so unfair!"

Yeah, virtually all of our taxes are regressive but the one actually progressive tax, which was designed to be progressive from the get go, is *whine* *snivel* unfair even though it's half of other countries and filled with so many loop holes it looks like Swiss cheese. "Wow is me I will cry if a single billionaire has to pay a single penny in taxes."

And, here I go, having to defend the painfully obvious once again. Here, an economics professor from George Mason covers much of it. I'd post Thomas Sowell's video on the subject, but I don't have audio at the moment.

The idea that most people's economic lives haven't improved in the last 30 years is just...laughable. 30 years ago, we couldn't have had cellphones or plasma TVs at ANY price. Food wasn't as cheap. Gasoline was rationed now and again.

Stagnant? Please. That's nonsense.

First off I am, shocked, shocked to see that an ex-economics professor and current chairman of the Koch founded and funded Mercatus Center would argue that there hasn't been middle class stagnation.

Secondly, he's setting up a straw man. Median wages are what matters, not household income. As has been pointed out multiple times, when wages stagnated, wives were sent into the work force to make up for it. Having a 60% rise in household income, when hours worked are doubled isn't exactly an improvement in my book. In fact I would lay many of our social ills on the lack of parental guidence provided by having one parent stay home and raise children.

Funny, I'd lay it on to many dumbfucks making babies with no thought to how they're going to support them.

Of course you would.

Sigh. Wages didn't stagnate.

Workers' incomes buy a lot more now than they did 30 years ago. Ask your middle class friends who have personal computers, SUVs, flatscreen TVs, and smartphones. These things couldn't be had at any price years ago and are now commonplace.

I'm looking at my new(ish) car parked outside. It's a 2012 model, the same make and model (Ford Mustang GT) as my first new car in 1989. In inflation adjusted dollars, they cost about the same. But the new car gets better gas mileage, has 200 more horsepower, better brakes, better handling, better build quality, is safer, and is better for the environment. Even if the number of hours I had to work to attain it is the same (of course, it's not; even adjusted for inflation, I make considerably more than I did in '89), it's a MUCH BETTER car in every respect. Similar things could be said of ANYTHING I buy with my salary. I am (and have been) middle class and am far, far better off than I was 20 years ago. And I'm not at all unusual.

I remember the misery of the 70s; to say we aren't much better off now than then is simply delusional. But, hey, if you like double-digit inflation and double-digit interest rates and such, feel free to advocate against the policies that have successfully kept them under control for thirty years...

My mother stayed home and raised three kids without having to hold an outside job. We had what we needed for a middle class upbringing, with all three of us being able to go to college. Today a single parent household is the exception among the people I hang with. What was normal for the way I grew up would not be possible now. Maybe things are better in a material way since we do seem to have an awful lot more "stuff", but those material things come with a cost over and above the price tag.

I doubt that anyone could do today what our family did on an Air Force Warrant Officer's salary, but hey, if you like it that both parents feel compelled to work, then I don't want to hear about the loss of "family values".

Toys got better. So what?

That's not the question. Not everything is about you. The question is whether someone who is where you were 20 years ago is better off. The answer for most is no, no they are not. Housing is more expensive, healthcare is more expensive and they are saddled with a shitton of debt b/c while tuition has risen MUCH faster than the rate of inflation, the states funding has not, so more and more of the burden has shifted to the student. Combined with a lack of wage growth this means that while at one point someone COULD work their way through a good college in four years, today that is a mathmatical impossibility.

But hey, you're doing better so:

Good point. What was tuition for four years at a public school thirty years ago? Twenty grand maybe?

Re: Forbes (and Data): Art Laffer is wrong... consistently.

So why exactly is WF always whining?

An interesting chart and study I found while looking for the above chart:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/the-struggles-of-men/

You make this shit more expensive by artificially driving up demand with tax-funded programs fulfilling imagined entitlements. Meanwhile, American workers spent those same decades pricing themselves out of their jobs.

The glorious social obligation worker's paradise comes at a cost, and only those with the most financial means are able to fend it off. My solution would be to stop pretending we can guarantee everyone a full education, satisfying career, healthy family and long prosperous life. Trying to lay it all at the feet of wealthy objects of envy who haven't paid "their fair share" is pissing in a hurricane. We need to SPEND LESS, not find more creative ways to increase tax revenues.

/UA

when will you get it through that thick fucking skull that it hasn't been the workers being overpaid which has eroded the economy, but the executives who have fleeced it? It isn't envy, it's about getting what's been earned and laboured for.

Executives want the old Carnegie days where they could call National Gaurd on workers.

I'm going to (purposely) show my ignorance here.

From this chart it would appear that the wage level stayed relatively the same (a bit more with insurance, a bit less without, but same general area) from the early 70's until now, basically 40 years.

but why should we assume they are supposed to grow?

the market value of flipping a hamburger, or doing an oil change, or building the arm on a recliner is what is it.

sure there are exceptions, where a skill becomes more rare or more in demand and THAT wage might go up (and conversely, some skills are rendered obsolete and the value of that work goes down) but over the whole market, the value of labor relative to the rest of the economy is what it is.

i don't understand why we should assume that it's worth more in real dollars to flip a burger or change the oil now than it was 40 years ago.


Yes, there might well be a legitimate concern about wealth accumulation at the very top, and that's worth discussing.

But I don't get the logic that says median income ought to steadily increase in real terms. Why?

Can you honestly say that taxes are being applied fairly to each of the classes? As in a progressive flat tax where the higher your income, the more you pay. Example being below $20,000 you pay 5%, below $35,000 you pay %15, below $55,000 you pay 20%, and everyone else pays 25%.

The Bush tax cuts might have cut taxes for all, but the system still isn't fair, therefore the whole thing was fucked to begin with.

First off it puts the lie to the idea that Reagonomics have been good for the nation as whole. The policies have been good for a very small percentage of the population but have done little to nothing to help the majority of the popuation.

Then you get to the costs.

We've added massive amounts of debt during that same period, both as a nation and as individuals. Has it been worth it? Well if you are the top 1% it has.

We've cut institutions and practices that allowed for greater social mobility. Has it been worth it? Well if you are the top 1% it has.

As others have pointed out, the standard of living that those before us were able to afford on a single parent income is now out of reach for the average family. This has had all sorts of negative social implications.

One clarification. It's income above or below certain amounts that is taxed, not a person as a whole.

What I'm saying is that if someone is making 75k in your scenario, they don't get taxed 25% of 75k. They'd pay 5% on the first 20,000, 15% on the next 20k, 20% on the next 15k, and then 25% on the last 20k.

If you taxed the entirety you'd have a situation where someone making 55k in your scenario would take home $41,250 whereas someone making 54k would take home $43,200.

You might already understand this, and were just simplifying it, but it is an important distinction. Many people don't grasp it and operate under the assumption that people can actually lose money when moving to a higher tax bracket, thus creating a perverse incentive to stay just below a threshold when in general this is not the case. Although thanks to our fucked up tax code there might exist a few specific instances where it happens, they are few and far between and are a result of our completely fucked tax code and not the 'progressive' nature of it.

that wasn't really my question though.

Has, say, health care cost exploded? higher education?

sure.

and therefore a person on the same (real terms) income level might well be able to afford less.

but that means we are doing something wrong with health care and education, not that the wages ought as a matter of course to have been increasing.

The latter might well be true for reasons I've not figured out - but it is not implied by the former.

Another noted piece by Paladin's economist:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704224004574489324091790350.html

"Learning to Love Insider Trading". I should you not - this guy thinks that insider trading rules should be abolished, because there's nothing like letting a CFO dump 100,000 shares of stock to save his ass while everyone else takes it in the rear.

This is uber-right wing shit here. But sounds great if you are an Executive, doesn't it?

Paladin should be embarrassed of linking to that sort of nonsense.

It's an article in the Wall Street Journal, which is hardly out of the country's mainstream. And, while I take no position on this issue (I haven't researched it), a quick glance shows that there's reasoning behind his position.

When did you stop beating your wife?

Eventually Paladin will get those damn glasses on Demi.

"I've come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out bubblegum."

Up until the 'trickle down' economics era, that had been the trend for all of American history. Each generation passed on a better economy and standard of living to the next.

Are you really asking why that would be a good thing?


Also, it's not that people are just getting paid the same amount to do the same job. The productivity of the American worker has skyrocketed during that period. The American worker is creating much more value for his or her hour of work than ever before, they just aren't getting paid for it.

Now you've really gone full retard if you actually believe that pay received by individual executives is anything more than a symbolic outrage. The impact of their actions on the economy and job market is a seperate matter entirely from how much money they personally have received.

And since you seem unable to comprehend this fact, I'll repeat it again for your enjoyment. There is no inherent value to your labor. A certain number of hours laboring at something does not automatically entitle you to a certain lifestyle.

If someone is willing to do it for less, too bad, fuck you. If services and material goods cost more in your labor than you'd like, too bad, fuck you. Reality doesn't give a rats ass what you think you deserve.

^^^Might makes right...whoever has the gold makes the rules...I'm bigger than you are, that's why!!!

No, I say we let petulant man-children like Spacetard decide who gets what based on what they feel they deserve for existing. That's a helluva way to run a railroad.