Michael Kinsley is apparently doing well after brain surgery last week. As he wrote in his most recent column for TIME,
That’s right, brain surgery — it’s a real conversation stopper, isn’t it? There aren’t many things you can say these days that retain their shock value, but that is one of them. "So, Mike — got any summer plans?" "Why, yes, next Tuesday I’m having brain surgery. How about you?" … People don’t expect to run into someone who’s having brain surgery next week squeezing the melons at Whole Foods. (Unless, of course, he’s squeezing them and shrieking, "Why don’t you answer? Hello? Hello?") Self-indulgently, I’ve been dropping the conversational bomb of brain surgery more often than absolutely necessary just to enjoy the reaction. And why not? I deserve that treat. After all, I’m going to be having brain surgery.
Anyway, this was attached to the end of the column:
Editor’s note: Kinsley’s surgery took place on July 12 and went fine.
His first words were, "Well, of course, when you cut taxes, government
revenues go up. Why couldn’t I see that before?"
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Kinsley’s surgery took place on July 12 and went fine. His first words were, “Well, of course, when you cut taxes, government revenues go up. Why couldn’t I see that before?”
Yes indeedy! Why couldn’t he see that before? It’s been proven over and over. Now let’s just have all the other big-government liberals fixed the same way.
At last! An explanation for Lexie’s irrationality comes to light.
Otherwise, how could you come to such an irrational and unsupported conclusion?
Did the same operation eliminate recognizing the illogic of waging a multi-billion dollar war without raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere?
Brad probably just required out-patient surgery to continue supporting an administration that totally lied about the causes and results of invading Iraq.
Predictable Hurl, Who cares why we invaded Iraq anyway? Saddam deserved what he got and will get. Hopefully a few others will follow suit in the near future. It is time to Git ‘er Done, as some wise sage says all the time.
It’s Tax-Cut Time, Once Again
Record federal revenues are proof that corporations and individuals are still overtaxed.
By Thomas E. Nugent
Well, the numbers are in and the tax-rate cutters are basking in the political sunshine of being on the money once again: Lower tax rates have led to bulging tax revenues.
The size of the bulge was ably documented in a Wall Street Journal editorial:
In the first nine months of fiscal 2006, tax revenues have climbed by $206 billion, or nearly 13%. As the Congressional Budget Office recently noted, ‘That increase represents the second-highest rate of growth for that nine-month period in the past 25 years’ — exceeded only by the year before. For all of fiscal 2005, revenues rose by $274 billion, or 15%.
And the source of the bulge was pinpointed by none other than the New York Times:
The main reason [for the increased tax revenues] is a big spike in corporate tax receipts, which have nearly tripled since 2003, as well as what appears to be a big rise in individual taxes on stock market profits and executive bonuses.
It’s time, in other words to celebrate. The supply-side Bush tax cuts of 2003 worked. The Laffer curve, and the notion that if you tax something less you get more of it, also worked. Hurrah!
Okay, celebration over. It’s time to get back to work.
Today’s outsized tax-revenue stream should alert knowledgeable politicians to the fact that both corporations and individuals are still overtaxed…….
And all the GOP did was repeal a portion of the Clinton tax increases which had put the economy on the skids. If we could just get them to repeal all of the tax increases since the Reagan tax cuts, and have zero deficits, the economy would take off.
RTH,
Give up trying to talk sense about the Iraq war and the Bush administration on this blog.Just leave these guys in they’re deep denial kissing each other’s butts while the US is being slipped out from under them.
Lexie reminds me a deckhand on the Titanic celebrating because he won’t have walk as far for a bucket of water to swab the upper decks.
In case you missed the real news, our enormous national credit card bill is just a tiny bit less than the humongous credit card bill that was projected.
Bush is running up debt that will make Reagan’s bill look like pocket change. Clinton had to pay Reagan’s “supply side” binge. Dear Leader’s bill will be so stupendous that our children and grandchildren will paying it off– to the Chinese.
David Wessel: WSJ NEWS PAGES Washington Wire:
Do Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves?: Not if you read the fine print in the new White House midsession review of budget trends. “While difficult to estimate precisely,” Treasury long-run analyses of the effects of President Bush’s tax cut would “ultimately” raise total national output of goods and services by 0.7%.
So is that enough to pay for the tax cuts, even after allowing them to work their economic magic over the next 10 years? The Center for Budget Policies and Priorities, a Washington think tank and advocacy group that is distinctly unfriendly to Bush fiscal policies, says it isn’t. “A 0.7 percent increase in the economic output that the Congressional Budget Office has projected for 2016 would represent an additional $146 billion [in gross domestic product],” it says. “If new revenues equaled as much as 20% of the additional output, the increase in revenues resulting from making the tax cuts permanent (assuming Treasury’s best-case assumptions) would be $29 billion.”
That’s a lot of money. But how does it compare to the size of the president’s tax cuts? The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, using conventional analyses, says making the president’s tax cuts permanent would reduce federal revenues in 2016 by $314 billion. That is more than 10 times what the Treasury analysis suggests tax cuts would generate by prompting more hours of work, more savings and investment and more efficient use of resources…
Classic Dave: Who cares why we invaded Iraq anyway?
Do you continually get rooked by con-artists in real life or do you just play an easy mark on here?
RTH,
we can only hope that somehow, sometime, somewhere you will maybe develop some critical thinking skills! Please don’t continue to uncritically lap up everything you read, even if it is in the WSJ. Their coverage of the economy has been on a steep downward slope for the past 6 years – might as well be the NYT.
“Treasury long-run analyses of the effects of President Bush’s tax cut would “ultimately” raise total national output of goods and services by 0.7%.”
When? Over how long? Per year? Per month? Per decade? Do you at all see the problem with a useless statement like the above?
“The Center for Budget Policies and Priorities, a Washington think tank and advocacy group that is distinctly unfriendly to Bush fiscal policies“
Heh. I’m sure that outfit can be expected to give us an accurate and impartial picture. I’ll gladly refer you back to my post above – it’s at least as impartial.
Overall, you can cite all the Left think tanks and “experts” you want. They are just as wrong now as they were 3 years ago. If you want the real story, look at the real numbers (at the BEA, BLS etc.). Forget all those misguided projections. They are just as wrong now as they were in 1999 when they projected humongous surpluses as far as the eye could see. If those projections were so wrong over just a couple of years why would you trust them over an 8-year period? Then as now they were operating on the GIGO principle.
The deficit is only 2% of GNP now and dropping. Very manageable. The left doesnt understand how to manage the economy.
Dave, just try running your household budget or your business’s finances at “only” a 2% annual deficit. See how many years you can do that without your creditors calling the repo man.
It would be so easy to eliminate this deficit by just freezing spending levels at the previous year’s level.
Lee, I sort of agree with you on freezing spending. Let’s start with the military budget. Next lets freeze subsidies to the oil companies. Then let’s end payments to tobacco farmers.
About the deficit issue, does the budget include the cost of the Iraq quagmire? At one time those costs were off-budget. If that’s still the case (and frankly I don’t know), the deficits are actually far larger than what the president has been crowing about.
If president X presides over huge budget surpluses and president Y presides over huge budget deficits doesn’t it follow that president X is doing a better job managing the fiscal health of the country? Without attaching names to X and Y everyone writing on this blog would quickly agree that is the case.
That would only be true if you leave out all those pesky details and real life complications. Face it, X had a remarkably unchallenging presidency while Y was hit with problem after problem, beginning with the recession inherited from X.
Bud, lets try funding ONLY what the constitution intended. That would be a novel concept. Defense is a valid expenditure. Most of the other stuff is not.
As I (and a lot of other people) predicted in a previous post, the economic boom continues to pump tax revenues into the state coffers. Thank God that Bobby Harrell and the rest of the legislature are home, and unable to spend all of it for a few more months.
The increased federal revenues would be enough to wipe out the deficit this year, but the GOP allowed too much spending increases. The Democrats wanted another $140 BILLION in new spending.
Lexie, did you get to the last paragraph of the article segment?
“The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, using conventional analyses, says making the president’s tax cuts permanent would reduce federal revenues in 2016 by $314 billion. That is more than 10 times what the Treasury analysis suggests tax cuts would generate by prompting more hours of work, more savings and investment and more efficient use of resources…”
I guess that it’s time for some more voodoo economics purple kool-aid… or a reading comprehension course for Lexie.
BTW, that conclusion was from the notoriously left-wing “congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, using conventional analyses…”
Was the article from Mother Jones? Nope, the bastion of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal, published it.
How did you feel when the Joint Committee on Taxation reported that Clinton’s looting of Social Security would require an 80% FICA tax to keep Social Security solvent?