Last time Goldberg was in I wrote and said I want to see his Journalist bonafides!! Its been awhile now since Jonah has been there!!

Lindy

just happy you’re now blogging where i and many others can see you.

kathleen @
71

Another perspective on the AG fiasco. Byron YOrk at National Review. Come on open up your minds..

http://article.nationalreview……Q5Y2FiNTY=

Open our minds for what? Another round of BushCo talking points? Read and heard nothing different from york that I haven’t already heard/read from any other wing-nut. Nice try though.

I was kidding.

In other words, his tax policy actually lasted long after his last day in office. Compare to Reagan, whose tax policy started vanishing while he was in office and exists today only in the feverish imaginations of the American Enterprise Institute and the WSJ editors.

No, I don’t think the claim that Kennedy’s tax reforms were short-lived is persuasive. Public policy is organic, needing regular pruning.

And less fertilizer than policy makers tend to apply.

Montag adds, “My point in this is that every downward shift in the overall tax structure is followed by further reductions for the wealthy.”

This point is extremely difficult to discern from what you actually said. The point is also not correct, as the Clinton tax hikes on the wealthy illustrate. And after Bush, when the grown-ups are back in charge, we’ll raise taxes on the wealthy to levels that at least pay the bills.

I do believe that the government that is best taxes the least… and also pays its bills. The major reason that giantism in government is necessary is as a counter to giantism in corporations. Unfortunately, gigantic government does things like spy on citizens and start unnecessary wars. Hoover was doing the former 60 years before Michael Hayden, and McKinley was doing the latter in Cuba and the Phillipines almost 100 years ago. We tend to think warmly of government as the instrument of civil rights enforcement, consumer protection, and environmental action. But the real source of those actions was citizen involvement.

As for taxes declining, I think you’re confusing a relatively short-term generational social trend away from the New Deal and toward conservativism with (faulty) theorem about tax policy. What is true is that in democracies, demagogues often attempt to bribe the people with their own money.

And, like Reagan and Bush the Lesser, often succeed.

Montag, I have to wonder which side of the war on bulls—t you are fighting.

The tax bill included:
* An investment tax credit

Which was expanded later, and combined with accelerated depreciation.

* Elimination of tax havens

Which are now back in spades. See David Cay Johnston’s Perfectly Legal for the sordid details.

* Tax Americans abroad on income, foreign property, dividends, and the estate tax

Once large numbers of civilians began operating in Vietnam, the exemptions on income earned overseas were reinstated, and were raised when significant numbers of technical people began working in Saudi Arabia and Iran.

* Withhold on dividends and interest to stop tax cheating

And these have been successively modified over the years, and are still highly manipulated.

* Eliminate the exemption on dividends because it ends up being regressive

Which was partially returned later.

* Increase capital gains taxes on business property

Which have steadily come back down over time.

* Tax co-ops, private lenders, and insurance companies

This is probably still in place.

* Increase tax audits

This, too, has been reduced and shifted to lower income brackets.

* Extend the 52% corporate tax rate

This was later reduced to a nominal rate of 35%, beginning in 1982.

* Tax jet fuel (rather than raise the rate on av gas)

The effective rate on jet fuel has continued to drop, since it is a fixed rate (4.4 cents/gal), while jet fuel prices have increased. And, there are some exemptions to the tax on international flights, I think.

You present no evidence that the loopholes came back quickly and I don’t think there is any.

Okay, let’s look at indicators on how revenues are divided. Since the tax system is one of the most immediate ways government can redistribute income, what happened in those years after Kennedy’s drop in the top rate? (Let’s be clear that I’m not talking very short term here, but over the longer term–a decade or more.)

During the `50s, corporate share of total federal revenues remained stable at about 28%. On average, in the `60s, about 21%. Similarly, the effective rate on corporations through the `50s was 49%. In the `60s, 38%, and in the `70s, 33%. There are similar reductions as compared to GDP. This suggests that those loopholes which tightened briefly were relaxed or new ones were created, since the economy was generally expanding over that period. Had Kennedy’s tax plan remained in place, revenue shares would have been flat to increasing. (These figures come from the CPBB.)

Similarly, if one looks at the distribution of personal real wealth, and make the same assumption that taxation is a principal means of income redistribution, most of the gains achieved from Kennedy’s tax plan were gone by the late `70s. The share of the top 1% was 31.8%, and in 1975 was 21%. The percentage for the 1% from 1976 onward rose sharply and steadily, to 38.1% in the late `90s and about 40% today.

My point in this is that every downward shift in the overall tax structure is followed by further reductions for the wealthy. It’s been the overall trend ever since that initial move by Kennedy. I’m not saying that Kennedy’s tax plan–as it was then constituted–was not revenue neutral for a short period of time (although the corporate share of total revenue did go down).

What I am saying is that Kennedy’s drop in the top rate was followed by successively regressive alterations in the tax structure, which, over time, have caused a maldistribution of income and real wealth. For me, it was the beginning of what we now see today. Congress has successively restored the loopholes and effected further drops in the nominal top rates, and created new ways of tax avoidance for the wealthy.

Cheers.

Nolo 150,

Coookies…

ooh! — cool. i get some?

thanks. . .

lolo @ 137

I wonder what’s up for late night. Um maybe pens it’s been awhile. Any guesses?

lolo

Whale blubber.

Just because.

teeheehee

the best we can hope for over the next 20 months is relentless taking of names and correcting the record of how savagely the bushites savaged our nation domestically and degraded it internationally.

before this administration, i objected on a relatively constant basis to one policy or another by our government. but i had never before been ashamed of being an american.
as a bonus, they’ve also created something i never thought i’d have to cop to. i never thought that, when traveling out of the country, i’d have to be AFRAID of being an american.
splendid work they’ve done.

Coookies…