TED Talk - Nick Hanauer on Job Creation

[Kasz216]

Rath said:

SamuelRSmith said:

Rath said:

SamuelRSmith said:
Didn't both Reagan, and Bush Sr. (the "kings" of Reagonomics) increase taxes? And, I'm sure Reagan's initial tax "cuts" were just reductions in tax increases.

The top marginal income tax rate was dropped under both, severely under Reagan. He was the master of trickle-down economics.

Yeah, but tax increases occured elsewhere in the economy. Bush Sr. basically lost the 92 election because tax increases (well, one of the reasons, you also had the Perot effect, and some other issues).

Yep, they occured on the middle class basically. Reagan's policy essentially seemed to be "lower the burden on the rich, increase the burden on the rest".

He never raised taxes on the middle class.

Reagan raised the Buisness Tax, The payroll tax, created excise taxes on "unpopular" goods like cigarrettes and alchohol and closed tax loopholes... mostly for the wealthy in reforming the tax code to make it more simple.

The loopholes tax was actually revenue nuetral but it hit a lot of special interest groups and evened out who paid what at the higher end.

The tax increases were put there, because he couldn't raise income tax after having just lowered it and having such huge job growth... however the deficit was spiraling out of control and they weren't bringing in enough revenue.  He needed to agree to tax raises somewhere to get Democrats to agree to spending cuts.

 

Essentially the same issue we have now, except they found ways to make it work back then.