Bob Sacamano
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Attractive young, college age women want me to say this on their behalf:
stay away from our fair city!
- Thread starter JBond
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Attractive young, college age women want me to say this on their behalf:
stay away from our fair city!
ScipioCowboy
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It's my fair city, dude. I was born there!
I have a really really nice overpass picked out. And it's right next to UT.
MetalHead
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Then you voted for him twice.
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I don't think like that anymore. I voted for who was best for our country. That's what everyone should do.
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ScipioCowboy
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Dude, I own this city.. If you can't get laid here, there's no helping you.
Hell, Ben lives under the adjacent overpass, and he's dusting off so much snatch that he can't even keep track of it.
FuzzyLumpkins
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Fiscal responsibility has nothing do with spending in and of itself. It's about spending versus income. Reagan was the first to increase spending while slashing taxes like they still do today. Since 1980 the average tax on a citizen has gone from 19% to 13%. Regan's supply side nonsense in particular resulted in revenues decreasing by over 2% of GDP.
That has been GOP policy ever since: appeal to the boomers by giving them something for nothing. A person born in 1945 has on average received more than $1.3m in government spending versus what they contributed.
I am a big fan of history. We have been under similar debt circumstances in our history, following WW2. What was the solution to the national debt? They paid for it.
Mitt Romney was right on when he complained about the 47% that don't pay taxes. His solution of cutting taxes for everyone was dumb as shit though. You want to be fiscally responsible? Go back to our tax rates during our zenith circa 1950. Sure we should raise capital gains and the like but at the same time the free ride for everyone else needs to go too.
On a final note, the Gramm bill is usually touted as the 'oversimplification' but the bottom line is that the financial deregulation that occurred during the 1990's allowed for the collapse to happen. Glass-Steagall prevented speculation between financial sectors ie insurance, consumer lending, commodity trading etc. The 'innovations' like derivatives and credit default swaps would have been illegal.
They should still be illegal but we cannot seem to find the political will to ban the practice. They are still doing it.
Our two party system sucks my ass.
ScipioCowboy
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Tax rates have very little to do with it. The most accurate means of measuring tax revenue is as a percentage of GDP. And, as a student of history, you should know that federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP remains relatively constant regardless of the top marginal tax rate. Consider the following chart, which measures annual federal tax revenue (i.e. the amount of money the government takes in taxes each year) as a percentage of GDP:
Now, what jumps out at you here? I'll tell you what jumps out at me: Since 1953, federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has remained relatively constant from year to year. In fact, the 40 year average is about 17.9 percent, and the measure stays within about a point of this number on a yearly basis. So it's pretty constant.
This next point is key: Since the 1950s, income tax rates have been as high as 91 percent (the 1950s) and as low as 28 percent (late 1980s); however, regardless of the tax rate, federal tax revenue has remained relatively constant around the 17.9 figure. As these numbers show, no matter how much you raise tax rates, federal tax revenue remains constant.
Let's compare the decade of the 1950s (which, according to you, was the zenith of America when we actually paid for things) and the Reagan years (when, according to you, Reagan recklessly cut taxes).
During the Reagan years, tax revenue as percentage of GDP averaged 18.03 percent -- higher than the 40 year average. During the 1950s, tax revenue as a percentage of GDP averaged 17.19 percent -- lower than the current 40 year average.
Reagan's supply side philosophy did exactly what it was supposed to do: Spur economic growth (4.4 percent annual GDP growth after the recession was over), and increase tax revenues.
The problem isn't tax revenue. It remains relatively constant regardless of the tax rates. Reagan's tax reforms did nothing to alter tax income -- in fact, federal tax revenue during the 1980s was slightly higher than the 40 year average. The problem is spending. And as I tried explaining to you earlier, much like President Obama, President Reagan inherited a federal budget that was already spiraling out of control and was then made worse by the collapse of inflation.
ScipioCowboy
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This from the article I posted:
The truth is, however, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act had little if anything to do with the current crisis. In fact, economists on both sides of the political spectrum have suggested that the act has probably made the crisis less severe than it might otherwise have been.
Last year the liberal writer Robert Kuttner, in a piece in The American Prospect, argued that "this old-fashioned panic is a child of deregulation." But even he didn’t lay the blame primarily on Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Instead, he described "serial bouts of financial deregulation" going back to the 1970s. And he laid blame on policies of the Federal Reserve Board under Alan Greenspan, saying "the Fed has become the chief enabler of a dangerously speculative economy."
What Gramm-Leach-Bliley did was to allow commercial banks to get into investment banking. Commercial banks are the type that accept deposits and make loans such as mortgages; investment banks accept money for investment into stocks and commodities. In 1998, regulators had allowed Citicorp, a commercial bank, to acquire Traveler’s Group, an insurance company that was partly involved in investment banking, to form Citigroup. That was seen as a signal that Glass-Steagall was a dead letter as a practical matter, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley made its repeal formal. But it had little to do with mortgages.
Actually, deregulated banks were not the major culprits in the current debacle. Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan Chase have weathered the financial crisis in reasonably good shape, while Bear Stearns collapsed and Lehman Brothers has entered bankruptcy, to name but two of the investment banks which had remained independent despite the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
Observers as diverse as former Clinton Treasury official and current Berkeley economist Brad DeLong and George Mason University’s Tyler Cowen, a libertarian, have praised Gramm-Leach-Bliley has having softened the crisis. The deregulation allowed Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase to acquire Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns. And Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have now converted themselves into unified banks to better ride out the storm. That idea is also endorsed by former President Clinton himself, who, in an interview with Maria Bartiromo published in the Sept. 24 issue of Business Week, said he had no regrets about signing the repeal of Glass-Steagall:
Bill Clinton (Sept. 24): Indeed, one of the things that has helped stabilize the current situation as much as it has is the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, which was much smoother than it would have been if I hadn’t signed that bill. …You know, Phil Gramm and I disagreed on a lot of things, but he can’t possibly be wrong about everything. On the Glass-Steagall thing, like I said, if you could demonstrate to me that it was a mistake, I’d be glad to look at the evidence. But I can’t blame [the Republicans]. This wasn’t something they forced me into.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/10/who-caused-the-economic-crisis/
FuzzyLumpkins
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The variance of total receipts since 1950 has been over 5%. I don't see that as anywhere near static. Supply side got us about 3 years of decent growth and a 3 decade long budget issue
In fact the chart reinforces my point. When taxes are ~18.5% of GDP we are able to pay for our shit. When they drop down into the 17% or even worse the 15% that it is today then you run huge deficits.
The 2002 tax cuts as well as the Regan era ones have just been another in a long line of lets get ours now and fuck those that come after.
As for the fact check article I cannot help but think their approach is unfounded. Who cares where the shitty assets wound up? The point is that they took private debt parceled it into commodities and sold them as investments. Had Glass Steagall not been repealed they would not have been allowed to mix the markets like that. I also get that the deregulation had been going on for awhile but Clinton put the final nail in the coffin and we cannot get it back in the box.
I get that Goldman et al leveraged like morons but the 'fact check' does not address where and how those shitty assets originated in the first place. That is the point.
In fact the chart reinforces my point. When taxes are ~18.5% of GDP we are able to pay for our shit. When they drop down into the 17% or even worse the 15% that it is today then you run huge deficits.
The 2002 tax cuts as well as the Regan era ones have just been another in a long line of lets get ours now and fuck those that come after.
As for the fact check article I cannot help but think their approach is unfounded. Who cares where the shitty assets wound up? The point is that they took private debt parceled it into commodities and sold them as investments. Had Glass Steagall not been repealed they would not have been allowed to mix the markets like that. I also get that the deregulation had been going on for awhile but Clinton put the final nail in the coffin and we cannot get it back in the box.
I get that Goldman et al leveraged like morons but the 'fact check' does not address where and how those shitty assets originated in the first place. That is the point.
FuzzyLumpkins
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And LMAO at those banks 'weathering the storm' reasonably well. They got the largest government bailout in the history of the world. If not for that they all would have collapsed. Couldn't let those IRA's take a shit with the Boomers entering retirement and still the electoral majority.
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If you weren't such a sensitive homo all the time, Jerry, I'd try to hook you up since I have connections. I'd just fear you getting upset with me and coming over to my place dressed in your Hoggettes outfit and skirt trying to pick a fight with me over our internet "differences".
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Given the basic principles of capitalism, they should have collapsed--along with GM and Chrysler.
ScipioCowboy
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Not really.
You said:
As the chart clearly shows, higher tax rates (i.e. 90 percent in the "zenith" 1950s) do not correlate to increased tax revenues -- especially when tax revenue in the 1950s was lower than the 40 year average and tax rates were at their highest. If tax revenue averages 17.9 percent, you can generally avoid large deficits by keeping spending at that rate. Before Reagan's first fiscal budget, federal spending had already climbed to almost 23 percent of GDP and was then compounded by the collapse of inflation.
It had nothing to do with the "tax cuts". In fact, most economists predicted Reagan's tax cuts would worsen inflation, and when they didn't, inflation dropped like a rock.
And I never used the world "static". I said, "since 1953, federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has remained relatively constant from year to year -- as in within point of the 40 year average either way on a yearly basis." There are handful of unusually low years and handful of unusually high years, but by and large, it stays within a point -- REGARDLESS OF TAX RATE (<--- That's the important point).
Not only did Reagan's supply side policies exorcise the stagflation of the 1970s. They brought about longest peacetime economic expansion until the 1990s.
Actually, the factcheck (a respected bipartisan organization) gives a myriad of reasons:
So who is to blame? There’s plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn’t fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn’t do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility … with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here’s a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
ScipioCowboy
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Just for the record, under the current tax rates, the projected revenue forecast for the next 6 years is as follows:
2013 - 16.7
2014 - 17.8
2015 - 18.6
2016 - 18.8
2017 - 18.8
2018 - 18.9
Provided the economy improves, federal tax revenue will return to its historic levels with four consecutive years above the 18.5 percent rate Fuzzy set.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205
2013 - 16.7
2014 - 17.8
2015 - 18.6
2016 - 18.8
2017 - 18.8
2018 - 18.9
Provided the economy improves, federal tax revenue will return to its historic levels with four consecutive years above the 18.5 percent rate Fuzzy set.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205
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FuzzyLumpkins
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static vs relatively constant? again a 5% variance is not "relatively constant' either.
That sounds straight out of a GOP propaganda reel.
You keep on fixating on the 1950 date but to be specific, I am talking about the tax rates when the deficit was really reduced beginning in the Eisenhower administration. I am not advocating the draconian wartime tax rates from before that.
I will take the 1953 to 1962 from an economic standpoint over 1983 to 1992 any day of the week.
i don't buy supply side tax cuts ceasing stagflation. Changing the feds asinine monetary policy, the emergence of the digital industry ie Silicon Valley, and the massive oil reserves discovered in the Yukon and Mexico in 1982 OTOH....
It's been demonstrated repeatedly that the economic benefit of supply side is bullshit. Most recently with Bush Jr's failure with the 03 cuts.
And again, I am not saying that there were not multiple causes that culminated in the near banking collapse. My point is that Glass Steagall served to insulate various sources from each other. There were multiple causes to the banking collapse of 1929 too.
It kept them separated. In essence what repealing it did was combine the fuck ups of the fed, the loan providers, consumers, etc with the commercial banking industry to create a ginormous national disaster. Glass-Steagalls point was to make it so that the fuck ups of individual sectors could not culminate into a national issue.
The bailout was for the tbtf banks. It wasn't for the individual mortgage companies nor the individual consumers. Most of those people are still fucked, A real estate bubble bursting shouldn't threaten a collapse of the entire banking industry. It did though because of those safeguards being removed.
That sounds straight out of a GOP propaganda reel.
You keep on fixating on the 1950 date but to be specific, I am talking about the tax rates when the deficit was really reduced beginning in the Eisenhower administration. I am not advocating the draconian wartime tax rates from before that.
I will take the 1953 to 1962 from an economic standpoint over 1983 to 1992 any day of the week.
i don't buy supply side tax cuts ceasing stagflation. Changing the feds asinine monetary policy, the emergence of the digital industry ie Silicon Valley, and the massive oil reserves discovered in the Yukon and Mexico in 1982 OTOH....
It's been demonstrated repeatedly that the economic benefit of supply side is bullshit. Most recently with Bush Jr's failure with the 03 cuts.
And again, I am not saying that there were not multiple causes that culminated in the near banking collapse. My point is that Glass Steagall served to insulate various sources from each other. There were multiple causes to the banking collapse of 1929 too.
It kept them separated. In essence what repealing it did was combine the fuck ups of the fed, the loan providers, consumers, etc with the commercial banking industry to create a ginormous national disaster. Glass-Steagalls point was to make it so that the fuck ups of individual sectors could not culminate into a national issue.
The bailout was for the tbtf banks. It wasn't for the individual mortgage companies nor the individual consumers. Most of those people are still fucked, A real estate bubble bursting shouldn't threaten a collapse of the entire banking industry. It did though because of those safeguards being removed.
ThoughtExperiment
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iceberg
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heh, wouldn't happen man. i'm not as sensitive as you think i am.
ScipioCowboy
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It's also a matter of historical record. So...
Economists agree that stagflation is the result of sudden supply shock (in this case, oil), an over-regulated economy, and loose monetary policy. Consequently, supply side economics sought to eliminate oil price controls and regulatory barriers, and advocate tighter monetary policy -- all of which it successfully did.
As far as the 1950s are concerned, you're the one who brought them up, not me. Don't get angry because it didn't go the way you thought it would. You're never going get to that period back. I suggest you move past it. The economy is now global and the workforce diverse. Europe has since completely recovered from World War II, and the days of Operation Wetback and keeping women in the kitchen are over.
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I was joking. Hit me up if you need some leads or ideas.