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"Empirical" finding. That's a most boring thing to the most members on this thread. I brought indicators suggesting the lack of relationship several times. But they didn't matter to the people who don't know the difference between Marxists and those who don't vote Republicans.
[QUOTE=Dickhead; 427706]The author claims [B]and presents empirical evidence[/B] That tax rates and economic growth are unrelated. See what kind of holes you can poke in this.
[QUOTE=Matt Psyche; 427717]"Empirical" finding. That's a most boring thing to the most members on this thread. I brought indicators suggesting the lack of relationship several times. But they didn't matter to the people who don't know the difference between Marxists and those who don't vote Republicans..[/QUOTE]
If you'd PM me an Email address I'd send you a .pdf copy of the paper I quoted below. I think it would change your mind about tax rates on business.
[QUOTE=Tiny12;427716]My argument is also with high marginal rates on corporations and a tax system riddled with loopholes. I assume unlike Member #2041 that you don't disagree with that. The evidence is pretty clear cut that they slow economic growth.[/QUOTE]Yes, I do disagree with that and posted a very fine study showing that there is not much correlation between corporate tax rates and economic growth. You didn't look at it. As far as your empirical support, why not post it publicly?
Since corporate taxes are about 9% of revenue, per
[url]http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm[/url]
one would suppose marginal individual tax rates would need to go up by that much (actually it would be the inverse of 1 minus 9%, minus 1, or 9.89%; let's just go with 10%), if the corporate tax were eliminated. That would imply rates of 11%, 16.5%, 27.5%, 30.8%, 34.1% and 38.5%. Capital gains taxes would have to go up by 10% (not 10 percentage points) as well. Hmmm. The "old" rates that are scheduled to return are all higher than that except for 16.5%. So now would be the perfect opportunity to eliminate the entire fucking thing!
When did I ever say I was an economist? I did pay attention in the economics courses I took, and I took quite a few, but I don't have an econ degree and I have never worked as an economist. You don't have to be an economist to find out how much the corporate tax brings in and do the simple math I just did to prove that people talking about rate of 50 or 60% are full of shit.
I also have other goals besides growth in GDP, growth in GDP, and growth in GDP. Hong Kong may have strong GDP growth but it has a tremendous amount of pollution, as does China. Singapore is a fucking police state. Plus (this should be obvious) it is a lot easier to get high GDP growth when you are in an earlier stage of development. What country has the highest per capita GDP? High tax country or low tax country?
As far as I know, I have taken two positions on taxes: Abolish the corporate tax in a revenue-neutral fashion and tax all forms of income at the same marginal rate. I have never said anything about cutting taxes or raising them. Notice it isn't part of my platform. I would use monetary policy over fiscal policy whenever possible.
[QUOTE=Dickhead;427720]When did I ever say I was an economist?[/QUOTE]To be fair, I'm pretty sure he was referring to me.
[QUOTE=Member #2041;427721]To be fair, I'm pretty sure he was referring to me.[/QUOTE]He was quoting me.
[QUOTE=Dickhead;427720]Plus (this should be obvious) it is a lot easier to get high GDP growth when you are in an earlier stage of development. What country has the highest per capita GDP? High tax country or low tax country?[/QUOTE]I already went around the block with Tiny12 a few pages back in this thread. What is obvious to both you and I about growth rates vs. Overall stage of economic development is quite clearly NOT obvious to Tiny12. He seems to think that higher growth rates than the U.S. in places like Mexico and Thailand and Indonesia has nothing to do with the relative state of economic development in these countries, but rather, is purely a function of U.S. government spending under Obama (and, I might add, ONLY Obama, not his predecessor).
Sorry, My last post was intended for Matt. I knew Dickhead has a strong background in economics, finance, and accounting, and called him an economist when he's not, as we now know. And I feel like a dumb shit, I just found a link to the paper that I paid $31. 50 for:
[url]www.aiecon.org/advanced/suggestedreadings/PDF/sug334.pdf[/url]
They looked at a lot of countries. In the U.S. they just looked at the corporate tax rate, but apparently Gentry and Hubbard (2000) would have extended their conclusions to other businesses whose taxes show up in the personal rate. I haven't checked out that second paper.
Member #2041, my comments about Mexico, Thailand and Indonesia were related to their emerging from recessions worse than ours with a lot less debt to repay. I also said that if you do that, you have a better base to grow the economy from. I agree with your last post, and would compare, say, the USA to Western Europe, not to a developing country, when looking at taxes and growth rates.
And the European country with the highest GDP per capita is Luxembourg, and both their top marginal individual tax rate and their average individual income tax rates are higher than the US's, to say nothing of their VAT. I am not an advocate VATs, by the way. They are okay for developing countries that have trouble collecting taxes. I will try to read that paper today. Be sure to look at the one I posted a couple of days ago because it reviews a lot of prior studies.
[QUOTE=Dickhead;427727]And the European country with the highest GDP per capita is Luxembourg, and both their top marginal individual tax rate and their average individual income tax rates are higher than the US's, to say nothing of their VAT. I am not an advocate VATs, by the way. They are okay for developing countries that have trouble collecting taxes. I will try to read that paper today. Be sure to look at the one I posted a couple of days ago because it reviews a lot of prior studies.[/QUOTE]O. K, I'll take a look. You might want to take a look at link to the Wikipedia post to GDP per capita adjusted for PPP, in my post down a little on this page. Luxembourg and Norway are the two exceptions. The other top 10 wealthiest countries, including the USA, have relatively low taxes. I agree on the VAT. A tax that politicians love because the people who ultimately pay it don't know they're paying it, but easier to collect than an income tax.
[QUOTE=Dickhead;427727]Be sure to look at the one I posted a couple of days ago because it reviews a lot of prior studies.[/QUOTE]This is Auerbach's paper, Berkeley, Who Bears the Corporate Tax? I started on it. It's going to take a while, it gets pretty technical and I don't have the background to understand some of it.
OK, so this study examines other countries. The one I posted examines the US corporate income tax. Looking at other countries is problematic because they don't have similar overall tax structures (I. E, VATs, taxation of holding gains, etc.) to ours. The authors make this assumption:
"Consistent with this interpretation, however, we provide evidence that a low corporate rate leads to a fall in personal income tax revenue, in spite of the higher growth rate. We presume this occurs because people [B]reduce their time as employees[/B], where income is subject to the personal tax, and instead become entrepreneurs, generating corporate tax revenue and perhaps personal tax losses."
The bolded part is at odds with most research I've seen. People can't afford to do this. I hope not too much of the rest of the paper is contingent on this.
"low current effective tax rates on new investment suggest faster short-run growth"; this is the thinking behind IRC Sec. 179 or so-called "immediate depreciation."
"if tax policy is used to respond to business-cycle fluctuations, this could also induce a short-run correlation between tax rates and the growth rate." True and a reason I favor monetary policy.
"there is a tax encouragement to being self-employed when the effective tax rate on business income is less than the tax rate on wage and salary income. This would occur to the extent that the corporate tax rate is below marginal personal tax rates." In the US this would only apply to C corporations, which are seldom used by entrepreneurs (but might be if you took double taxation off the table). Same is true about what he says about risk taking. All this would be neutral under my platform.
I am not sure a Cobb-Douglas function accurately captures an economy where about 30% of all industries have economies of scale, but I doubt it's significant to the findings. The choice to use the top marginal tax rate was probably appropriate given the thrust of the paper, but weakens any extension of the study to an overall society.
Okay, I finished it. It doesn't convince me of anything regarding the US. The numbers say that if you hold individual rates constant and raise corporate rates (an overall tax increase) , it is bad for GDP. I have no problem accepting that. Although the "p" values are high, the are-squared are not, indicating many missing factors. You can also see from reading this how much easier the analysis would be if corporate income taxes were eliminated.
Again, Zimbabwe and Ghana and such are not close enough to the US for this study to mean anything, although I do thank you for finding it. Now go look at my study [B]about the US. [/B]
[QUOTE=Tiny12;427730]This is Auerbach's paper, Berkeley, Who Bears the Corporate Tax? I started on it. It's going to take a while, it gets pretty technical and I don't have the background to understand some of it.[/QUOTE]Okay. Try to finish it before you vote, though.
[QUOTE=Tiny12;427647]For some reason Democrats believe they're always truthful and the other side is not. Here's a list of Biden's "untruths" during the debate from a conservative web site:[/QUOTE]Yes Biden had some "untruths" too. Not to excuse him, but in some cases I think he just didn't have his facts right, versus knowingly stating something untrue.
Democrats don't believe Democrats are [i]always[/i] truthful.
What I would say though, is that nobody is better at crafting a deliberate falsehood than a Republican.
[QUOTE=Wild Walleye;427659]There really is no hope for you, is there? Solyndra, Fisker, Lightsquared, any of this ringing any bells?[/QUOTE]Romney's claims of cronyism have been shown false by CNN and Washington Post:
Completely False - Fact Checking Romney's Claim Of Obama Cronyism And Fisker (CNN)
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plx_alKP0aQ[/url]
4 Pinocchios for an unproven Romney claim of 'crony capitalism'
[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/4-pinocchios-for-mitt-romneys-unproven-claim-of-crony-capitalism/2012/07/17/gJQAYuYPsW_blog.html[/url]
I'm sure if they looked into it they could find a bunch of Republicans who received stimulus funds as well. That would be fishy too, huh?
Face it, you just believe what you want to believe.
Biden has had honesty issues going back to when he got caught plagiarizing:
[url]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2008/08/the_write_stuff.html[/url]
One of the guys running for Congress here has been arrested twice for pissing in public and once for breaking into vending machines. Where the fuck do they get these guys?