Taxageddon, Some History

Taxing Times, and That Ol’-Timey Liberal Religion | Power Line:

Naturally, liberals are apocolyptic over the tax bill ... anything that has even a TINY chance to allow people to keep more of their own money is "the end of the world" to liberals. This Forbes article claims that the bill is "The End of Economic Sanity in DC"  ... assuring us that there HAS been "economic sanity in DC" in the past and "this time it's different" ... ho hum.

A tax form that says "list your income" with a command to "send it in" (for people that make "more" than a given liberal of course!) is the only tax plan they MIGHT find "fair" ... until they start taxing "wealth" while you are still alive at least.

I happen to be reading "The Age of Reagan" right now and as luck would have it, just read past the quotes in the attached column -- they say history doesn't repeat itself, but only "rhymes". This one seems closer to a repeat to me! The following is a good quote from the linked, and the linked is well worthy of reading.

Liberal rhetoric on the issue is revealing. Allowing people to keep more of their own money was called “showering money on the rich,” as though all wealth belonged to the government rather than the people. If not outright egalitarianism, the Democratic attitude is at least rooted in a distributionist fallacy—the idea that wealth is distributed, mostly by government, rather than earned by individuals and apportioned by markets ...

I'm not going to do a ton of work and link everything, but these figures are mostly from my usual sources -- CBO, Wikipedia, etc.

Obama  YEARLY deficit 2009 $1.4 T, 2010 $1.3T ... the "stimulus" was spent on things like Solyndra, sending something like $30 B largely to democrat run schemes that knew how to write "green" on a piece of paper. The D's took over congress in '06 and it was downhill from then on.

Over his term, Obama added $10 T to the debt, W added $5 T , and the rest of US history (pre-BOistan) added $5T in over 200 years. If Trump adds less than $20 T on his own, he will be doing "better" by recent standards in which each succeeding president doubles the debt!

As the media and your lefty friends go nuts over the "massive increase in debt", just remember the BO cliff! All that is being discussed here are the question of the pitch of that far right of the chart based on TWO elements of which GDP growth is actually the major one. CBO policy counts all tax changes as economically neutral -- tax increases never decrease GDP, tax cuts never increase it ... even though both typically happen, in order to stay being called "non-partisan", the CBO just leaves the contentious issue off the table in it's calculations.

Why did the BO cliff happen? He attempted to "stimulate" the economy via massive government directed SPENDING, so GDP growth was terrible and and the money largely went to big democrat supporters as a reward for being democrats, vs where it might actually increase growth.

All the howling about the current tax bill is about twiddling the upward slope of the chart below -- the CLIFF is about Democrats actually being in charge.

People that pay attention know we have been to this movie before, with Reagan in '81. Slick Willie didn't get to wreck the economy ... the Republicans took over the House for the first time in 50 years in '94, and paid the price of controlling the RATE OF GROWTH in government spending, while Slick took the credit for a short budget surplus. In terms of how media works here, that is pretty much a "fair deal'.

The REAL test is if the Republicans and Trump are willing to take the hard measures of reducing that rate of growth in spending again ... they do NOT have to make actual "cuts", only reduce the rate of growth, and that chart will trend down again (slowly) as it did in the late '90s providing that the tax cuts have the desired effect of increasing GDP growth!

This is all pretty easy to understand, one would think that a few more people would consider understanding it.

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US Debt vs Global Warming

The Problem No One in DC Wants to Talk About  |  Ricochet:

Does anyone want to bet what the biggest problem for the US will be for the next 20 years? Global Warming or Debt?

Well, we are still closer to an ice age than a record warm period accoring to the Greenland ice cores.

BOistanis in their wisdom however find that Climate Change is more important than the economy ... they don't really care if they are poor comparted to if they are cold. They want to be cold rather than warm at all costs!

I'm betting that they really haven't thought cold and poor through as much as they think they have, and that after a few brown outs, 50% inflation, 60% unemployment and such vs a few tenths of a climate degree, they will have second thoughts.

Let's hope it isn't too late.


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The 5,000 Year Government Debt Bubble

The 5,000-Year Government Debt Bubble - WSJ:

When the international financial house of cards finally comes tumbling down it should be a surprise to no one. Governments have worked very hard to dig this hole, and anyone that cared to look realizes that "voting themselves benefits they can't pay for" is the normal end of "democracy". Even NPR sees this hole.

Mr. Sylla sums it up: “There were no negative bond yields in 5,000 years of recorded history.” 

Put another way, government bonds have never been so expensive.Paul Singer, founder of hedge fund Elliott Management, isn’t expecting a happy ending. He believes that because of massive entitlement promises plus huge debt, “the entire developed world is insolvent.” He says that a negative rate on a government bond is “crazier than zero, and zero was crazy enough.”

Thus we live at a time with slowing or slowed economies, but people largely still living a lifestyle that could only be afforded by rapidly growing economies.

It’s not as if the bond bubble is fun while it lasts. It’s painful for savers and corrosive for society to have governments systematically punishing thrift. It also encourages reckless governments to spend further beyond their means when they are rewarded for borrowing in this way. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the government-engineered bond bubble hasn’t delivered the promised economic growth. Who can confidently invest when the official price of credit appears to be so dishonest?

Corrosive, corrupt, clandestine, coercive,  catatonic,  criminal ... CLINTON!
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Xiuhtezcatl vs $146 Trillion

Meet the teens leading an unprecedented lawsuit against the U.S. government.:

Imagine naming your child "Xiuhtezcatl" ... pronounced "shu-TEZ-cuht".

We live in a world without any semblance of reason, so this "cuht" has spoken  before the United Nations . In Biblical times, David killed Goliath and cut off his head when he was probably younger than "Xiuhtezcat", and Goliath was 9' 9" tall! Today you get a lot of coverage for suing the US government -- or rather the broken and bankrupt facsimile remaining.

So the US combined unfunded liabilities and debt are $146 TRILLION according to the Star Tribune ... but both "Xiuhtezcat" and BO agree that the issue of our time is "Climate Change".

I guess that makes sense in some universe. During the next ice age, perhaps the "intelligent" can reflect on wisdom and priority.

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