Bye, Bye Estate Tax!

[Dinner]

Originally posted by PLATO1003


Good idea. Let's don't steal all their money! Let's steal half and tell 'em they are getting a gift!!!

Give it to them? They're dead so now it's uncle sam's turn to have his share so we can actually afford to build a new road or school every now and then.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Give it to them? They're dead so now it's uncle sam's turn to have his share so we can actually afford to build a new road or school every now and then.

You mean "Uncle Sam's turn again ", right?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
What does that have to do with you deciding how other people should spend thier money?

It has everything to do with public tax policy. Don't like it? Tough.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Oerdin


It has everything to do with public tax policy. Don't like it? Tough.

It appears that the House disagrees with you Oerdin.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Oerdin


It has everything to do with public tax policy. Don't like it? Tough.

[PLATO]

Time to call it a night. Sleep well all.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by PLATO1003
You mean "Uncle Sam's turn again ", right?

This is a sepporate taxable transaction. When money changes hands uncle sam gets his share. when grandpa kicks the can and he gives his hoard of cash over to junior does money change hands? So it makes sense for uncle sam to get his cut.

Of course if the total value of the estate is below a certain dollar amount then there shouldn't be an estate tax. It should only effect the super wealthy as a way to prevent the formation of a perminent privilaged class.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by PLATO1003


It appears that the House disagrees with you Oerdin.

But the Senate does agree which is why we're going to have an estate tax for a long, long time.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by PLATO1003
Check out the latest leaders Kiddo.

I don't see anything to get excited about. Confidence is up a bit since the 'end' of the war, but no where near where it should be. The job situation is still getting worse.

[Jaguar]

[Sava]

Economics Reporting Review
EVALUATING REAGAN'S ECONOMY
Week of February 3 - February 9

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.


Editor's Note: This is a summary of Mr. Baker's nationally respected column, which features weekly analyses of the business and economics reporting in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Click here to read his full report.

President Bush's tax cut proposal was biggest economic item in the news this week. The proposal of a large tax cut at the beginning of a presidential term prompted obvious comparisons to the Reagan tax cuts. Two different articles in the New York Times made this comparison. In both cases they asserted that it is essentially impossible to evaluate the success of the Reagan era tax cuts. This agnosticism is inappropriate. Economists have standard measures of economic performance, such as GDP growth, productivity growth, and investment growth, the last being a major goal of the Reagan supply-side tax cuts. By each of these measures the economy performed more poorly in the 1980s than in either the 1970s or 1990s. It is always possible to identify extenuating circumstances which can be used to explain why the Reagan tax cuts failed by these measures, but there are few economic policies on which the evidence provides as a clear a basis to make a judgement as this one. The Times has frequently been willing to pass judgements on policies where the evidence was far more ambiguous.

It has been widely asserted in news accounts that tax cuts cannot affect the economy quickly enough to prevent or limit an economic downturn. A Times article informed readers that a tax cut is not likely to be implemented until at least the end of the summer and, "history suggests that the economy is likely to be recovering by then." In the last three recessions, the economy was still experiencing high and rising unemployment well more than a year after the recession began. The lesson from this history is that if the economy entered a recession at the end of 2000, a tax cut in the late summer of 2001 could provide much-needed stimulus.

California's electricity problems were again an important news story. A Times "Week in Review" piece discussed California's electricity deregulation in the context of the world-wide movement towards deregulation and privatization. It described California's experiment in electricity deregulation as being possibly the first "serious real world failure" of this movement. There are many instances of deregulation and/or privatization that would generally be regarded as failures, both nationally and internationally. Topping the list nationally would be the deregulation of the savings and loan industry, which led to a bailout costing approximately $250 billion (in today's dollars). Internationally, privatization has led to massive corruption and theft in many nations, including Mexico, Brazil, and Russia. In the latter, it also led to an economic collapse.

Both papers included articles on the California situation in which they attributed the looming bankruptcy of its two major utilities to the retail price cap on electricity. The previous week, both papers had reported the findings of a state audit of the companies, which revealed that they had been stripped of most of their valuable assets and cash reserves by their parent companies. While the retail price cap clearly has contributed to the utilities' problems, the fact that these assets were taken away is the reason that they have no reserves to cover temporary loses. This fact is especially important in the political debate surrounding a state bailout, since many taxpayers will be reluctant to support a bailout of utilities that placed themselves at financial risk by transferring large amounts of assets and money to their parent corporations or shareholders.

Both papers featured an interview with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, which included a discussion of his unfavorable assessment of the IMF's role in the 1998 financial crisis in Russia. Both articles imply that IMF's effort failed because the ruble eventually collapsed. In fact, virtually all economists now agree that the collapse of the ruble proved a real boon to Russia's economy, since it made its goods more competitive in the world market. This history indicates that the IMF policies were actually counterproductive, since the Fund was trying to have Russia maintain an over-valued currency, and that Russia was fortunate that the IMF did not succeed in its goal.

Click here to read Mr. Baker's full report.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4043
the contributing author is from http://www.cepr.net/ the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

key points from the article:
1. Reagan's policies failed to delivier (no sh1t!)
2. Any possible successes impossible to determine

the CEPR and the EPI (Economic Policy Institute) are both against these stupid policies... and they have more PhD's than you can shake a stick at...

[Sava]

Twenty years ago, in 1981, new President Ronald Reagan prodded Congress to pass a huge tax cut, mostly for the wealthy. One of his aides slipped and said the plan's small cut for lower brackets was a "Trojan horse" to lure Congress members into supporting it.

Reagan promised that the reduction would jump-start America's economy through the "supply-side" principle: i.e., the investor class would have more money to spend on factory and business expansions, creating jobs and causing money to " trickle down" to the working class.

Reagan said his cut would unleash "the dynamics of the free market," spurring growth, producing more federal revenue and balancing the U.S. budget by 1983.

Since tax reductions are immensely popular, Congress jumped on the bandwagon, even though then-Vice President George Bush previously had called supply-side "voodoo economics." A feeding frenzy occurred, with cliques of Congress members giving special write-offs to their favorite industries.

The result was the biggest tax cut in U.S. history: $1.8 trillion over the next nine years. But since Reagan also demanded an expensive military buildup, the federal government soon was heading for bankruptcy. Therefore, the biggest tax increase in U.S. history, $98 billion, had to be passed to try to curb the deficits. But it wasn't enough. Deficits soared, and the national debt quadrupled.

Today, new President George W. Bush sounds like an echo of 1981 as he calls for a huge tax cut. Will his plan likewise lead to deficits and the need for follow-up increases? Writing in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, former House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, commented: "Reagan's tax increases fell mainly on consumers, low- and middle-income people. Sales and excise levies. Reagan didn't call these taxes.' They were, in his euphemistic lexicon, user fees' and revenue-enhancers.'

"Big business got the gravy, and the country got the business. The monumental errors of 1981's tax-cutting frenzy burdened our national budgets for the next 18 years.

"Now that we're finally in balance, and could pay off some of the debt we amassed, it does seem a lousy shame to start down that same temptatious road again."

Politicians rarely seem to learn lessons from history. They think only of the next election. But we hope some senators and representatives remember the 1980s disaster, and inject caution into the current Washington bandwagon.

from http://www.wpi.edu/News/TechNews/010410/taxcut.shtml courtesy of the Associate Press.

Reagan rose taxes. I wish you Republicans would learn more.

[Kidlicious]

We are still paying the Reagan tax hikes. It's called interest on the national debt. Another benefit for the rich.

[Sava]

Reagan would put hard-core Communists to shame. His wealth-redistribution policies of cutting taxes for the rich and increase taxes on the poor and middle classes took money away from more than 90% of America and put it in the hands of big business and the rich.

[The Mad Monk]

Don't want to pay death taxes? Transfer your possessions to your children while you live. There are many legal ways to do it, and they only become more varied and effective as you climb the economic ladder.

Ending the death tax won't help the super-rich -- it will only make things more convenient.