[Shaudius]

Originally posted on 04/14/2012:

No I'm saying high taxes on everyone including business is to blame. I'm going to take a wild guess and guess you have never invested in your own business. Makes it hard to have a conversation with someone who simply doesn't understand the effect of high personal taxes, high business taxes, matching FICA, social security tax and medicare.

Maybe that's what you're saying now, but thats now what you were saying before. Which is what I was responding to, "Investors will not risk their cash on low returns and high taxes cause low returns. That's exactly what happened in the 70's when tax rates soared to 70% and the economy grounded to a halt. Republicans AND Democrats came up with massive tax cuts that propelled the country out of a deep recession into one of the most prosperous times in history."

Yes, Republicans and Democrats came together in the mid 70s in response to a recession, it worked so well that's why we had another recession in 1980/81...

Furthermore we didn't actually have a recession that started in 1978, we had a recession in 1974-1975 and then another one in 1980-1981. Unemployment shot up after the recession of 1974-1975 and then went down again until 1979 and then shot up again in 1980-1981.

"high personal taxes, high business taxes, matching FICA, social security tax and medicare.

Any small business that is running into high business taxes isn't doing it right. While I have only a little bit of experience running my own business, I have helped numerous people set them up, both personally in my life, as well as in a job setting and why you wouldn't incorporate as an LLC, LLP, S Corp(or please don't, a sole proprietorship) is beyond me.

As far as the Medicare and SS matching taxes(FICA is the same as saying both of those) that's a completely separate issue from personal income, or even general corporate taxes. We can argue back and forth about the merits of the system(which is a completely separate debate, and I do agree there needs to be serious reform to that system), taxes on businesses are a completely different subject than individual income tax, which was what this discussion was about in the first place.

Besides all that, many of the largest companies in the world were founded in the 1960s, when corporate income tax actually made up a greater share of GDP than it does today. The idea that today we are so unfriendly to business in the tax code, but somehow growth and business startup still happened throughout a period of time when tax were far higher just doesn't compute.

Your facts are selective. The US began imposing all sorts of hidden taxes and business taxes during the 60's and 70's as well as raising personal taxes. The economy ground to a halt because of it. You blame it on "monetary policy" lol, give me a break. So if we raised taxes to 100% it would be fine with you because afterall thats only 9% over our highest effective rate?

At no point since the great depression has the highest marginal tax rate risen, for a brief time the amount of income that was subject to the highest rate did rise, but it quickly fell again. Hidden taxes? Like what?

Nice strawman about thinking I want to raise taxes to 100%. My argument is simply that higher taxes do not neccesarily stiffle growth in such a causal way as you would have us believe, and certainly they haven't been rising over time and causing recessions, because they've in fact been falling over time. Tax rates don't cause recessions, other factors are much more important.

Yes, I blame it on monetary policy in part, because that's what a lot of economists, who unlike you apparently, actually know that income taxes have been falling over time, not raising blame it on. No one actually knows the real causes of recessions, they can only suggest and not in such blanket terms.

Futhermore, the tax proposed by your tax and spend boy, the millionaire tax, would only raise $5.1 billion a year. Isn't rather insulting that he would spend sooo much time on this when we need to cut 3 trillion?

Its political posturing, yes, but what would you have him do? He proposed a budget that cuts a fair few things, and losers the deficit over time, but that was a non-starter in an election year. I'm not a huge Obama supporter, but at least I think he's coming to the table. I still can't go over the quotation from Mitch McConnell, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-A09a_gHJc