There is always a turning point and it happened in Bush's first year, according to my graphs and to the paper you cited, as well. The only point I was making was that Bush did not inherit a recession, as Parso suggested. Sure it did, but it wasn't the only thing that caused the recession, which had alrady begun. . . and it certainly wasn't inherited from Clinton. Well that's surely an optimistic spin. I'd say the economy recovered after a major drop and has crawled back to the level it was when Bush took office. National optimism, market confidence, prudent government spending, budget surpluses, relative peace, low unemployment . . . perhaps all of the above. Whatever it was, I'd like a couple of quarts of it right now. It ain't that simple. Both administrations had great influence on the economy in their terms and, in any case, both are responsible and are held accountable by history for what happens on their watch. Harry Truman said "The buck stops here", way too many people are eager to help this administration pass the buck.
if you havent before, you are about to now: under no circumstances should we raise taxes. we do not want the government to have more money to spend. and if we ever have a surplus, taqxes should be lowered immedialtely. money in private hands will be spent efficiently, money in government hands will not. if the government goes into debt, fine, let them reduce spending later and pay if off.
Take your time. I'm curious what criteria you use to determine that. The sources Tigerwins and myself posted tend to suggest otherwise.
I can break it down for you. The top 50% of wage earners, which is largely the rich and middle class, pay almost 97% of the US taxes. The top 5% of wage earners pay over 50% of the US tax revenue. This is the latest datafor calendar year 2003 just released in October 2005 by the Internal Revenue Service. The share of total income taxes paid by the top 1% of wage earners rose to 34.27% from 33.71% in 2002. Their income share (not just wages) rose from 16.12% to 16.77%. However, their average tax rate actually dropped from 27.25% down to 24.31%
Source: Edward N. Wolff, "Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership, 1983-1998," April 2000. Table 2. Note: The top 1% now own more than the bottom 90%. Note: The top 10% own 71% of all private wealth.
Fine, but in that case under no circumstances should the government spend more money than it makes. It's a trade-off between sufficient taxes to meet our needs versus irresponsible spending in excess of our needs.
It's not irresponsible to spend more than we make in a single year. That's like saying people shouldn't buy houses they can't afford with a single year's salary! Ridiculous. Debt helps us afford things we otherwise couldn't and is very healthy for the economy so long as it's reasonable.
You keep making comments that suggest single people somehow have less needs and fewer rights than couples? How do you figure that? I also fail to see any correlation between rich peoples taxes and family status. Does having kids somehow make you rich?
