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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Eternal Whine for More Taxes from Krugman

The Eternal Whine for More Taxes from Krugman

Abstract: As we noted a while back[1], certain events can produce various outcomes in a variety of ways on this planet, except, we must note, for certain political platitudes that are strewn about unaltered in size, logic or form for decades in a spirited defense of foul and phony government and to aid the leftist eternal expedition for relentlessly grubbing money from others. Today we add even more proof that the so-called economist Paul Krugman has something of a debatable stature when compared to a one-trick pony: All he ever does is bawl for higher taxes, more spending and bigger government. Some things are cast in prehistoric stone. Proof follows below.

How to best read my blogs:

[I offer extensive quotes in this blog so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]

Opening Comment:

Generally, in propaganda exercises of the basest sort, it is permissible to ignite exciting cosmic political flames using even the roughest circular logic featuring the conclusion boldly stated up front and then use the remaining text to amplify the original assumption thus providing a ‘proof’ that the initial argument was sound. This forms the strongest and most unassailable defensive ring of circular logic that such techniques can devise as long as no probing questions are allowed. An example burst forth in the Opinion Pages of the New York Times as of 8.06.11:

Amid all the debt hysteria, it’s worth taking a look at the actual arithmetic here — because what this arithmetic says is that the size of the deficit in the next year or two hardly matters for the US fiscal position — and in fact the size over the next decade is barely significant.”-- The Arithmetic of Near-term Deficits and Debt By Paul Krugman August 6, 2011, 12:00 PM [2][emphatic points are mine in all quotes unless specifically stated otherwise.] [3]

Hardly matters? Look at the chart below. We could double out debt with our 1.5 trillion dollar deficits in a decade to 30 trillions or 200% of our GDP.

Today, this is amplified followed in theme and content by this:

The supercommittee was a superdud — and we should be glad. Nonetheless, at some point we’ll have to rein in budget deficits. And when we do, here’s a thought: How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal?”[4]Things to Tax. By Paul Krugman Published: November 27, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/opinion/krugman-things-to-tax.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Now, I was thinking about cutting government, approximately in half to get rid of the 40% deficit we have. This view is different from the constant whine for more taxes and higher spending by the left.

Higher taxes!

And I don’t just mean a return to Clinton-era tax rates. Why should 1990s taxes be considered the outer limit of revenue collection? Think about it: The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts? Why not also push some taxes above their levels in the 1990s?”—Things to Tax. By Paul Krugman

Why not? Would a 100% tax be acceptable? Or, do we need more to pay for our failed social programs and debt?

[Item 1]

About those high incomes: In my last column I suggested that the very rich, who have had huge income gains over the last 30 years, should pay more in taxes. I got many responses from readers, with a common theme being that this was silly, that even confiscatory taxes on the wealthy couldn’t possibly raise enough money to matter.

Folks, you’re living in the past. Once upon a time America was a middle-class nation, in which the super-elite’s income was no big deal. But that was another country.

The I.R.S. reports that in 2007, that is, before the economic crisis, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers — roughly speaking, people with annual incomes over $2 million — had a combined income of more than a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money, and it wouldn’t be hard to devise taxes that would raise a significant amount of revenue from those super-high-income individuals.

For example, a recent report by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out that before 1980 very-high-income individuals fell into tax brackets well above the 35 percent top rate that applies today. According to the center’s analysis, restoring those high-income brackets would have raised $78 billion in 2007, or more than half a percent of G.D.P. I’ve extrapolated that number using Congressional Budget Office projections, and what I get for the next decade is that high-income taxation could shave more than $1 trillion off the deficit.”Things to Tax. By Paul Krugman

What a scam! He goes back into ancient history and picks some trend and extrapolates that, like the EcoNazis[5] do with carbon dioxide numbers, and shows that we can dent the 1.5 trillion dollar deficit!

[Item 2]

And then there’s the idea of taxing financial transactions, which have exploded in recent decades. The economic value of all this trading is dubious at best. In fact, there’s considerable evidence suggesting that too much trading is going on. Still, nobody is proposing a punitive tax. On the table, instead, are proposals like the one recently made by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Peter DeFazio for a tiny fee on financial transactions.

And here’s the thing: Because there are so many transactions, such a fee could yield several hundred billion dollars in revenue over the next decade. Again, this compares favorably with the savings from many of the harsh spending cuts being proposed in the name of fiscal responsibility”—Things to Tax. By Paul Krugman

We should regard economic trading as dubious? Only in some Marxist hamlet with no fresh drinking water or a radio. I am wondering what happened to the debt burden here. This nonsense is just a way to avoid cutting spending in any leftist social program. There is no mention of the debt here. Here are the current numbers from usdebtclock.org.

Federal Spending and Taxation [Trillions]

Column1

GDP

15

Spending

3.607

Tax revenue

2.304

deficit

1.303

70% of revenues

1.612

Deficit as % of GDP

8.7

Debt Track at Current Rate

Column1

2011

108.7

2012

117.4

2013

126.1

2014

134.8

2015

143.5

2016

152.2

2017

160.9

There are two significant factors to look at closely here: [1] at our current deficit of about $1.5 trillion dollars we surpass Italy in debt by 2014 and [2] the taxes paid by our ‘rich’ are already $1.3 trillions.

Question 1: Are Democrats really going to stop excess spending even IF taxes were raised another trillion??

Question 2: Are Democrats really going to reduce the debt by using extra tax revenues to buy up that debt?

The NYT excels in this practice of limiting the argument to a small sticky debating space and ignoring important inputs. Since near-financially bankrupt New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[6] was taught how to do this by Duranty and garnered some Pulitzer Prize and wild applause from the Communists and the simple for his lies and we also see this continue in practice today, we cannot believe anything in articles like this propaganda piece.

The word tautological must be expanded in scope and depth to accommodate most of the hackneyed scribbles and coached mental gyrations of the current screed. To suggest that there are no other options to leftist government than more taxes while ignoring the debt is sufficient proof to vote all these parasites out of office who agree with this socialist rubbish.

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com



[4] Things to Tax. By Paul Krugman Published: November 27, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/opinion/krugman-things-to-tax.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

[5] Polishing the Pedestal of the Stooges: EcoNazism threatened by Big Oil and the Charge of the Leftist Cavalry http://ryckki.blogspot.com/2010/10/polishing-pedestal-of-stooges-econazism.html

[6] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Unionwhich only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

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