The tax cuts deal

[Whacker77]

It makes it a 2012 issue.  I would argue it hurts the GOP by saddling them with an unpopular position in an election year.  But they'll be raking in donations from millionaires and billionaires in the form of hard to limit front groups.  And I can't recall Obama's base being as mad at him as this.  I do think it ups the odds of a Feingold primary.  As far as the GOP primary, I think it boxes in Daniels (who I remain skeptical will ultimately run).

Yeah, because the GOP hates to have a campaign with taxes as the main issue.  I love how the term "millionaires and billionaires" gets thrown around, but this bill affects those who make as little as 250,000 per year.  In some portions of the country, that's not a lot of money.  In Alabama or Kentucky, that is a lot of money.

Pushing the tax issue down the road just forces Democrats to fight this same fight two years from now.  Obviously, they lost the fight or Obama wouldn't have gone against the central pledge of his 2008 economic platform.  He and Democrats remain politically scared of taxes just as Republicans remain politically scared of entitlements. 

[Whacker77]

I suppose the only sane election results are the ones in which lots of Democrats are elected?

In all seriousness, if the rich are too rich as some of the more liberal posters here seem to suggest, just confiscate all income above $250,000.  Wouldn't that solve all the nations problems?   One, it would provide the government with loads of cash to spend on more stimulus, unemployment compensation, and maybe even single payer health care.  Two, it would promote a fairer society, right?  It would narrow the gap between the haves and the have nots by redistributing the money from one group to another.

This really may be the change we have been waiting to see.  After all, it's not the people's money.  It's the government's money it allows to go to workers as income.  What the government gives, the government can take away, right?  So if the government decided it had been too generous in allowing some people to be paid to much, it can just take away the excess income and then give it to those who need it more.

I really think we're on to something here.  It would be insanity to cut spending and lower taxes at the same time.  I mean after all, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge did just that after they won in 1920 and unemployment went from around 15% to 5% in just two years.  Based on how they calculated unemployment back then, it dropped to around 1% in 1928.  I think we can all agree we don't want that to happen so just prevent anyone from earning more than $250,000 a year.  Derek Jeter, the IRS is on the line wanting to know how they can claim $58 million of the $59 million contract you just signed.

[Whacker77]

To call Calvin Coolidge hallow, or whatever word you chose, is ridiculous.  You just don't approve of the libertarian form of economics he espoused.  I may not like Obama, FDR, or LBJ and their quasi-socialist views, but I don't call them hallow or some other derogatory name.

Harding, Coolidge, and Mellon came to power during a depression and their policies helped the country pull out of the problem quickly.  Unemployment rapidly dropped, taxes were cut, debt was paid down, and the army was brought home.  On top of that, money became more valuable as the good form of deflation existed.  Not a bad agenda and it sounds quite like what we're hoping to accomplish today.

Had Coolidge sought reelection in 1928, it's likely the Great Depression wouldn't have been so great.  Why?  Well, he would not have bailed out large portions of the economy or supported restrictive trade deals as Hoover did.  With the exception of the Wilson years (thanks TR), the economic policies that dominated from the late 1890's until the late 1920's were small government and libertarian.  The economic power of the country certainly seemed to improve then.

[Whacker77]

The only problem I have with this tax debate is certainty with which people say it will cost X amount of dollars.  That assumption is based on static forecasting.  As we know, we can't accurately predict the economic environment that will exist five years from now.  If we believe the economy will improve more than the CBO predicts, tax revenues will be higher and the deficit will be lower, and vice versa of course.

Here is my problem with the deal.  I always approve of tax cuts because it is the most effective way to limit the power and scope of government.  Still, large deficits and accumulating debt hurt all of us if there are no cuts to aide the issue.  Just as a starter, Republicans should support an across the board 10% cut, or just return to 2007 levels.  That was the high point of the last business cycle so I think we can assume that plenty of money was spent.

Maybe Obama will go against form and do this.  If he doesn't, hopefully the Republican who wins will try what Harding and Coolidge tried.  I know liberals disagree.

[Whacker77]

Here is a very important distinction between conservatives and liberals.  Liberals and the liberal professors who write the history books determine success based on activist accomplishments.  That's why FDR and LBJ are remembered so fondly.  Since conservative presidents generally don't believe in adding new programs to the federal roles, they are often deemed to have had few or no accomplishments by the liberal professors who decide success.

Coolidge was a successful president because he continued Harding's pledge of a "return to normalcy".  The country had seen plenty of progressive change and war under Wilson and was ready for less activism.  Harding and Coolidge gave them that by lowering taxes, lowering the debt, and bringing the troops home from Europe.  By any stretch, that would be deemed successful unless success is defined by the number of government programs created.  Isn't Clinton ultimately deemed a success because of the 1990's economy?

The economic policies of Harding and Coolidge produced one of the great economic booms in American history.  Unemployment averaged 3.3% during the entire decade and purchasing power and growth were both higher than stated because the good form of deflation existed.  The fact the economic boom ended in a severe downturn is the way the business cycle works.  The sharper the climb, the sharper the fall.  The same thing happened at the end of the 1990's.

It's also an affront to claim George W. Bush's economic policies were like those of Harding and Coolidge.  Both Harding and Coolidge believed in reducing the debt of the country, not just the deficit.  Bush never showed any inclination to balance budgets or even attempt to pay down the debt.  Both Harding and Coolidge also believed there were some problems that could not be solved by government programs.  Bush, to his detriment, believed in the power of government to promote conservative solutions.  Quite the oxymoron.

Throwing out the old canard that the tax cuts only favored the super-rich is just another piece of propaganda that has no basis in reality.  Under Harding, Coolidge, and even Bush, the share of taxes the so called super rich paid went up even though their marginal tax rates went down.  More people were taken off the income rates rolls as a result of the tax cutting.  Economic equality was also flattening in in the 1920's as more people became home owners and even stock owners through mutual funds, a new idea of the day.

By any definition Harding and Coolidge were successful presidents.  They presided over peace and prosperous economic times.  They were also both very popular among the public.  Harding even remained popular during the Teapot Dome scandal.  If the measure of success is define as government programs added, then only FDR, LBJ, and Obama can be considered successes.  Simply not liking the economic policies of an administration is not a reason to call them hallow.

[Whacker77]

Here is a very important distinction between conservatives and liberals.  Liberals and the liberal professors who write the history books determine success based on activist accomplishments.  That's why FDR and LBJ are remembered so fondly.  Since conservative presidents generally don't believe in adding new programs to the federal roles, they are often deemed to have had few or no accomplishments by the liberal professors who decide success.

Except that conservatives tend to believe in the preservation of entrenched privilege at the expense of even the most benign of liberal advances. The "arrow of progress" seems to be away from superstition, ignorance, and inequality.  

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"Return to normalcy"? The word itself remains suspect in my dictionary. In any event, a return to things as they used to be is often impossible. The cycle of history turns, old constituencies disappear as their backers die off without replenishment, cultural ephemera fade like the snow of the last April -- excuse me, due to global warming, March -- blizzard  as warm winds arrive from the southwest, and youth start challenging the complacent assumptions of their elders.

FDR saved the American economic and political order from a Depression that brought the Antichrist to power in Germany. LBJ sponsored political changes that seemed the only right things to do -- keeping Southern whites from denying blacks the vote. Thwarting change that later proves inevitable and desirable is no way in which to become a hero of history.    

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Nothing like the more sustainable boom of the late 1940s, though. I have known people who lived through the 1920s, and I have never known any of them to wax nostalgic about that decade. Unemployment remained low in part because much unemployment could be hidden as unpaid labor on the family farm. Few women were in the workforce. The Great Depression, above all else, demonstrates that the boom of the 1920s, was at best a mixed blessing. Indeed, by the late 1930s the economic conditions were generally better than those of the 1930s.

The first big reform of the FDR era was the insurance of bank deposits and regulation of banking so that people could trust that if they put money in the bank that it would be there. Social Security kept some people from starving. CCC and WPA projects undid some of the harm that free-wheeling capitalism had created. Another big one was the right to collective bargaining that Big Business had fought -- often with murder.

If you must choose between economic growth and social equity, choose social equity because growth without equity will eventually become a sham.      

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Deficits actually became surpluses when Bill Clinton was President. I concede that Dubya was not so much a conservative as he was a Big Government right-winger. The Right has its own favored ways of bleeding the Treasury -- armaments build-ups, business subsidies, defense of "American (corporate) interests abroad". Conservatives used to have no qualms about high taxes when they were necessary for paying down deficits; conservatives used to despise debt. Of course, now that debt has become a powerful tool of enriching entrenched elites, giving power of employers and banks over the common man, and propping up the economy for political gain.

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Late in the 1920s the GOP leadership may have had much disdain for public debt, it had no problems with private debt. Of course, people buying into real estate and stocks late in the 1920s had everything to be thankful about about five years later. Right -- and leopards make fine pets.

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By one definition they are failures: they draw little attention in American history books. Another is that people almost never showed nostalgia for the 1920s. I have known people old enough to do so -- and they have never told me how "fun" it was. Indeed the decade is better known for gangsters like Al Capone than for the political leadership. The Republican Party now almost never holds up Harding or Coolidge as exemplars of greatness.

Peace? Probably because after World War I, nobody in his right mind wanted war. Harding has long been linked almost entirely to the Teapot Dome scandal. Coolidge is almost never cited except in jest. When it comes to giving names for expressways, Harding and Coolidge are forgotten.      

Your view of history is so distorted by liberal mythology that it's not worth refuting.  In response to my defense of Harding and Coolidge as having not been hallow, you worked in global warming and social equity over economic growth.  You went on to argue they were failures because they drew little attention in the history books and few people show nostalgia for the 1920's.  Considering liberal history professors write the history books, big surprise.  I'm not even sure how to respond to the comment about not having roads named after them.

Just as I said originally, your definition of what success is revolves around government programs being enacted.  I never said FDR wasn't a success because of that, but I said success can be achieved without social programs.  You just don't believe in libertarian/conservative policies so you find anyone who practiced them to be not successful.  There's more than one way to skin a cat and Harding, Coolidge and FDR showed that.

I appreciate the time you put into your responses, but enough on this topic.  We agree to disagree on what defines success.