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Old 02-12-2018, 07:04 PM
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finnbow finnbow is offline
Reformed Know-Nothing
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: MoCo, MD
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Quote:
Originally Posted by whell View Post
Uh, no.


Top rate on regular income when Reagan took office was over 69%. When he left, it was 28%. Capital gains - you know, that tax that the rich guys pay - went from 23.7% in 1980 to 28% when he left.
Read and learn, Grasshopper.

The Economic Recovery Act of 1981, also known as the Reagan tax cuts, was the biggest reduction in U.S. taxes of the past 70 years, possibly even the biggest ever. That much is reasonably well-known.

What is less well-known is that these cuts were then followed by a series of tax increases that, if you add them all together, were almost as big as or even bigger than the 1981 cuts, depending on the measure you use.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...s-of-1982-1993

According to a 2003 Treasury study, the tax cuts in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 resulted in a significant decline in revenue relative to a baseline without the cuts, approximately $111 billion (in 1992 dollars) on average during the first four years after implementation or nearly 3% GDP annually.

During Reagan's presidency, the national debt grew from $997 billion in FY1981 to $2.85 trillion in FY1989. This led to the U.S. moving from the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation. Reagan described the new debt as the "greatest disappointment" of his presidency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan...t_expenditures

The bottom line is that supply-side economics has never once delivered what conservatives have promised - that tax cuts pay for themselves and that tax cuts for the wealthy equally benefit the poor. There's no question that tax cuts and/or spending (both are considered tax expenditures by economists, BTW) can stimulate the economy. However, there's also no question that they add to the deficit when financed with debt. Republicans have sold gullible ideologues (i.e., people like you) the notion that that you can simultaneously reduce taxes and pay for additional spending by revenue generated by tax cuts. It's sophistry, plain and simple regardless of how appealing the idea of a free lunch is.
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Last edited by finnbow; 02-12-2018 at 07:45 PM.
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