Rfidler:
Better bone up on your statistics.  The percentage of wealth has concentrated steadily into fewer and fewer hands.

If one millionaire is created for every dollar in wealth lost by a million non-millionaires, then ONE person has acquired the wealth (albeit a dollar per) of a million people.  It’s not hard to figure out, skeezix.

You also assume, incorrectly, that the revenue increase was due to the tax reduction.  In fact, the revenue increase was DESPITE it. There is NO evidence that the growth in the economy was due in any way, shape or form to the tax cuts, except in the minds of pinheads like Rush Limbaugh. Even Darth Cheney recognized it, saying “Ronald Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”.  Again, the ability to analyze causality of various variables seems to be beyond tea-baggers and neo-cons.

ITW:
“It has been tried repeatedly since 1981 and failed miserably every time, increasing the deficit.”

That’s a non-sequitur. The Laffer curve predicts tax revenues, not deficits. Revenues are income, deficits are from overspending- totally unrelated. In fact, following the Reagan tax cuts, REVENUE soared. Unfortunately, so did spending, by more than the revenue increase- hence the increase in deficits (and the national debt) to which you allude. Reagan failed, like all modern presidents, to control spending.

And,
“They have merely accelerated the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.” Not true. How many millionaires are there today compared to 20, 30 years ago, in constant dollars, and as a percentage of the population?

Pezzie, February 20 at 1:48 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

I would like someone to explain to me how you can ” reduce taxes across the board” and at the same time reduce the national debt?  I’m sure there are others that are also scratching their collective heads at this comment.

********************

It’s called the Laffer Curve and it’s based on the idea that lowering taxes SO stimulates the economy to grow that the additional activity generates MORE tax revenue than was lost.  It has been tried repeatedly since 1981 and failed miserably every time, increasing the deficit.  One of Ronald Reagan’s henchman made the mistake of admitting PUBLICLY that they knew the tax reduction would raise the deficit.  His name was David Stockman and Reagan ripped him apart for doing so.  He was, in his own words “taken to the woodshed”.

That was the penalty for telling the public the truth under Ronald Reagan.

The Laffer curve works on the basic premise that if the tax rate is zero, tax revenue is zero, but if the tax rate is 100%, revenue will ALSO be zero as nobody will work for NO take-home pay. 

Since the tax rate is between 0% and 100%, and revenue is greater than zero, there must be a point at which an increase in the tax rate SO dis-incentivizes the public that revenue falls.  This is called the “turning point”.

If the tax rate is ABOVE the turning point, decreasing the rate to the turning point will increase revenue.

If it’s below that turning point, decreasing the rate will decrease revenue.

But the problem is that economists like Laffer like to draw smooth, even curves and that makes the turning point look like it’s at 50%.  Yet, in fact, Laffer had NO evidence that that turning point was there, at 40%, or at 98%.

So these uncontrolled “experiments” in tax cuts as stimulus have NO basis in economic theory or logic.  In fact, the clearest evidence is that we are below that turning point and have ALWAYS been below that turning point as revenue, while having risen, has never risen due to the GOP’s “stimulus”.  They have merely accelerated the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

C.Curtis.Dillon wrote:  “What rankles me more than anything else is the blatant stupidity with which the rank and file of the party embraces this suicide.”

That’s the thing that continually confuses me.  Surely these people have observed people like Rubio & his flowery lies over & over but still seem to believe that this time it’s going to be different.  If they don’t bow down to the routine lies, out comes religion to finish the job. 

There is no doubt in my mind that this country has been dumbed down to the point of utter stupidity.  Personally I have no idea what it will take to undo the brainwashing that is going on with these conferences and other garbage produced by these so-called compassionate conseratives.

It’s almost enough to make one want to crawl back under the blankets and just give up.

I agree with Liberty lady, and I certainly don’t want children to repeat the Bush years that flows over to Obama, or the Facist state Palin/Becks Tea Party is taking us, in which the GOP is funding. We must be careful of whom we follow,—-that may lead to dictatorship as in Germany of the 30’s.

ISN’T IT A BLAST THAT WE CAN HAVE A LEGAL IMMIGRANT WHO
UNDERSTANDS THE NECESSITY OF TELLING IT LIKE IT IS. MARKO IS THE
TYPE WE NEED IN THE SENATE THAT COULD HELP TO BRING THIS NATION
BACK TO ITS SENSES. I ONLY WISH I COULD CAST A VOTE FOE HIM.

Sorry Liberty Lady, it’s not the status quo.  That might be OK at some level.  These clowns believe that they can reduce taxes to nothing (for the wealthy ... forget the middle class as we are the tax slaves they want for what follows), increase spending for the military and our wars, destroy any semblance of a compassionate government by removing social security, medicare, welfare in any form, the EPA, OSHA and any other agency that stands in the way of their rampant rape and plunder of the nation’s wealth ... you get the idea.  This is the America Ronny Raygun envisioned and the Republican party embraces.  They want us to become like the Chinese where a select few control everything and trample any and all who challenge the system or object to their enslavement.  What rankles me more than anything else is the blatant stupidity with which the rank and file of the party embraces this suicide.  Don’t they see that they too will be sacrificed when the time is right?  So, I would love to provide future generations with the country I grew up in ... one that had compassion for the weak and sick, that believed that there were things more important than million dollar bonuses and which believed that American should be the model for the world and not the master.  But it would appear the right wing and the greedy have won the war and are now just cleaning up the few remaining pockets of resistance.  As I have said in the past ... goodbye America, RIP.