Main reason why Trump's tax plan is a ruse....

[nat4900]

We've all heard before several times from republican presidents that HUGE tax breaks will stimulate the economy, and this type of rhetoric shows that the average American has a very short memory span.

Reagan, both Bushes and even Obama (who extended GWB's tax breaks) told us that trickle down would happen, and instead we got small GDP gains and high unemployment rates....

The main reason that the GDPs of 5 or even 6% gains will not happen under Trump, is that NO CEO would bypass the potential of going overseas where labor costs of $2.00 per hour would easily realize a much higher profit........Offer CEOs even a 15% tax rate (pretty much what most of them are currently paying anyway) and they will STILL go where labor is cheaper.

The bullshit that huge tax breaks will pay for themselves is just that....bullshit, and the preamble of even more massive deficit spending.

 

[NightFox]

Reagan, both Bushes and even Obama (who extended GWB's tax breaks) told us that trickle down would happen, and instead we got small GDP gains and high unemployment rates....
.

Hmmm... didn't the Reagan years average 3.5% GDP growth during his 8 years, with a high watermark of 7.3% in 1984 while the unemployment rate went from 10.8% when he took office to 5.4% when he left? Would you characterize that as small GDP gains and high unemployment?

Didn't George H.W. Bush RAISE taxes thus dooming his re-election?

 

[hadit]

Reagan, both Bushes and even Obama (who extended GWB's tax breaks) told us that trickle down would happen, and instead we got small GDP gains and high unemployment rates....
.

Hmmm... didn't the Reagan years average 3.5% GDP growth during his 8 years, with a high watermark of 7.3% in 1984 while the unemployment rate went from 10.8% when he took office to 5.4% when he left? Would you characterize that as small GDP gains and high unemployment?

Didn't George H.W. Bush RAISE taxes thus dooming his re-election?

Yes, that happened.

We should take note that, no matter what happens to tax rates, government spending always goes up, a lot. Yes, lower rates result in more revenue, and higher rates in less (because of the human nature the models never take into account), but if spending increases simply outpace any additional revenue, there's no positive result on the debt.

 

[Mr Natural]

We could eliminate all corporate taxes and all regulations and overseas labor will still be far cheaper than American

 

[nat4900]

We could eliminate all corporate taxes and all regulations and overseas labor will still be far cheaper than American

Precisely my point....thank you.

Expecting a large conglomerate to hire more Americans who demand high wages and benefits and tenure, is the rarely acknowledged factor in the demagoguery of bringing jobs back..........We had somewhat of a chance (as an example) when we explored alternate energy resources....NOW, China has taken that industry over; they manufacture 2/3 of the solar panels in the entire planet.

 

[boilermaker55]

Some real truth about ronnie....
On August 2, 1988, President Ronald Reagan announced that he had changed his mind about the pro-union plant-closing bill. He had vetoed it three months earlier, but now let it become law without his signature after intense pressure from presidential nominee George Bush and former Treasury Secretary James Baker, now Bush's campaign chairman. Reagan claimed that only this action would enable him to sign a Congressional trade bill almost unequaled in its anti-consumer protectionism.

Ronald Reagan's faithful followers claim he has used his skills as the Great Communicator to reverse the growth of Leviathan and inaugurate a new era of liberty and free markets. Reagan himself said, "It is time to check and reverse the growth of government."

Yet after nearly eight years of Reaganism, the clamor for more government intervention in the economy was so formidable that Reagan abandoned the free-market position and acquiesced in further crippling of the economy and our liberties. In fact, the number of free-market achievements by the administration are so few that they can be counted on one hand—with fingers left over.
Taxes

Before looking at taxation under Reagan, we must note that spending is the better indicator of the size of the government. If government cuts taxes, but not spending, it still gets the money from somewhere—either by borrowing or inflating. Either method robs the productive sector. Although spending is the better indicator, it is not complete, because it ignores other ways in which the government deprives producers of wealth. For instance, it conceals regulation and trade restricdons, which may require little government outlay.

If we look at government revenues as a percentage of "national income," we find little change from the Carter days, despite heralded "tax cuts." In 1980, revenues were 25.1% of "national income." In the first quarter of 1988 they were 24.7%.

Reagan came into office proposing to cut personal income and business taxes. The Economic Recovery Act was supposed to reduce revenues by $749 billion over five years. But this was quickly reversed with the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. TEFRA—the largest tax increase in American history—was designed to raise $214.1 billion over five years, and took back many of the business tax savings enacted the year before. It also imposed withholding on interest and dividends, a provision later repealed over the president's objection.

But this was just the beginning. In 1982 Reagan supported a five-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax and higher taxes on the trucking industry. Total increase: $5.5 billion a year. In 1983, on the recommendation of his Spcial Security Commission— chaired by the man he later made Fed chairman, Alan Green-span—Reagan called for, and received, Social Security tax increases of $165 billion over seven years. A year later came Reagan's Deficit Reduction Act to raise $50 billion.


Let's look at the record:



Spending

In 1980, Jimmy Caner's last year as president, the federal government spent a whopping 27.9% of "national income" (an obnoxious term for the private wealth produced by the American people). Reagan assaulted the free-spending Carter administration throughout his campaign in 1980. So how did the Reagan administration do? At the end of the first quarter of 1988, federal spending accounted for 28.7% of "national income."

Even Ford and Carter did a better job at cutting government. Their combined presidential terms account for an increase of 1.4%—compared with Reagan's 3%—in the government's take of "national income." And in nominal terms, there has been a 60% increase in government spending, thanks mainly to Reagan's requested budgets, which were only marginally smaller than the spending Congress voted.