AntonToo
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- Jun 13, 2016
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? That is factually wrong.
There was a budgeted surplus in 2000 with a projection for surpluses going forward. It is how the Bush tax cuts were sold as - giving back to the people these projected surpluses...except when all this green turned into rivers of red ink due to bad economy and trillion dollar wars the Republican support for ever more tax cuts hasn't moved even one inch.
When it rains the fix is tax-cuts, when it snows the fix is more tax cuts, when it's sunny we need more tax-cuts. This complete disregard for economic factors points to severe intellectual deficiencies on economics in the right-wing movement - it's a straight up tax-cut cult.
And the other half the equation is an ever expanding government, requiring a greater and greater share of the citizens wealth. Tax cuts are desirable, making the government spend tax money more responsibly is desirable.
Thats right, [Spending] and [Revenues] are the 2 components of [Deficits]:
R - S = D
It is very straight forward math but there is one side of the political spectrum that refuses to acknowledge that reducing Revenues effects the deficits. (see thread's OP).
IF it reduces revenues. Economic growth leads to increased tax revenues. We have not surpassed 5% GDP growth in the past 8 years. Tax cuts when done properly increase economic growth, and in turn increases revenue. What comes first is getting government to cut spending and stick to it.
You are conflating general economy and tax-cut effects specifically. Just because economy is doing good or bad, does not necessarily mean ANYTHING about tax-cuts. Their effects need to be isolated from everything else going on.
You are also conflating tax-cut costs to budget and some secondary effects that offset a fraction of those upfront costs. This is known as "dynamic effects" and Bush's own economists estimated them to offset about 20% of the upfront cost. Other then their modest offset, "dynamic scoring" also sets up a false standard - spending EQUALLY has dynamic effects, but nobody ever scores that, so you end falsely comparing apples and oranges.
But we do seem to agree on the order of policy - first post the surplus THEN start tax-cutting.
Never conflated anything. In history we've seen stagnant economies come roaring back with tax cuts
You say you don't conflate and IMMEDIATELY proceeded to conflate.
Just because economy roared, doesn't mean it roared because of tax-cuts. Correlation is not nearly the same thing as causation.