As Captain Midnight pointed out to you in his link to the CNN web site, and as I did in a post, you're totally ignoring what came after ERTA. Subsequent bills passed during the Reagan administration broadened the base and eliminated loopholes and tax shelters. You're the Laffer Curve expert, but I'd suspect when you drop the maximum marginal rate from 70% to 28%, as Reagan and Congress did, you don't loose as much revenue as people would think. At 70% people are scrambling to find ways to avoid recognizing income and paying tax. At 28%, not so much.
Originally Posted by Tiny
Reply:
I'm not sure you even realize what your saying as you seem to be bragging about Reagan's increasing taxes on one hand and cutting them on the other.
Reagan lowers taxes on higher income and then turns around with the most significant slight of hand ever! He raises the SS/Medicare tax. That is base broadening for sure!
No, it is not! The base-broadening was a function of the elimination of a whole smorgasbord of loopholes, shelters, and exclusions.
I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out how by cutting taxes on higher wages and increased taxing on all wages under what was it 65k at the time (as that what the SS tax did)?....would create more income inequality. Which it did...(No, it did not!)
Originally Posted by WTF
First, there was no sleight-of-hand associated with the 1983 "Greenspan Commission" finding that resulted in adjustments made to the Social Security system in order to shore up its long-term outlook. The resultant payroll tax increases were small potatoes compared to the across-the-board income tax cuts, which sharply cut rates
across the income distribution. The result was that total federal taxes (income and payroll taxes combined) were reduced substantially for middle-class taxpayers.
Second, as I pointed out earlier, and as was explained in the link I posted, the 1986 tax law actually
raised taxes on the wealthy!
So, if myriad tax policy changes passed during Reagan's presidency reduced the tax burden on the middle class while shifting a greater portion of it to the wealthy, how is it that you believe they somehow increased income inequality?
I'm going to have to get you and CM out to eat sometime and like Laffer....I can help explain things on a napkin to you!
Originally Posted by WTF
(That was directed at Tiny.)
I don't know about Tiny, but if you're up for taking me out to a fine restaurant the next time I'm in Houston, I'm all in! (Especially if you spring for a fine bottle of Cabernet as well.)
Regarding that "explaining things on a napkin" thing though, I'm afraid you're going to need a little luck.
If you think you're going to cogently rebut any of the points I made above, that better be a pretty fucking magical napkin!
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