| TheRealMafoo said:
So do I.
Can you find a chart somewhere that shows how much money the US government collected each year? I looked for one, and can't find it. |
You are making two fatal assumptions:
1) The economy was generating the same amount of gross, pre-tax revenue as it was every year, when in actuality it wasn't, because an economy grows every year. So a lower rate in the next year could actually bring in more revenue. But government budgets grow also. Under Bush they skyrocketed, which is why we are broke as a country.
2) As steven brought up, you are ignoring inflation as well, which means that even if the Bush Administratin earned more revenue that it did not necessarily earn more "real" revenue when adjusted for inflation.
You also have not established where would be the appropriate tax level for our economy, and have failed to differentiate between the various levels of tax brackets in our economy and how the people in those tax brackets have different behaviors and attitudes towards spending and taxes.
So in reality there would be multiple different Laffer curves for multiple different sections of the economy.
Each Laffer curve would have a different optimum tax rate for the highest amount of revenue.
Without accounting for all of the things mentioned above, you cannot draw a sound conclusion. Issues and facts come before a conclusion, not after.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
