None of the articles about declining workforce participation mention the effect of Baby Boomers leaving the workforce, estimated to be between 10,000 and 12,000 every day. Where are these bubbles, this inflation caused by Fed policies of which you speak? And do you really think that the manufacturing jobs that disappeared over the past 25 years are coming back? Even if every factory shuttered since 1980 magically reopened, they're only going to hire a fraction of the people thanks to automation and innovation. You want to know who's going to benefit from these policies? Not the middle class, unless you define middle class as people with income above $2 million annually.
And this is Reaganomics 2.0: tax reform that slashes personal and corporate taxes, and calls for at least $1 trillion in improvements for bridges, roads and other public projects. It makes me laugh how the right is always yelling about how the government should manage the debt like a household budget, when they also believe that less revenue and greater spending are somehow compatible. Even Reagan was awakened to the reality, and was forced to accept rollback of almost all of his tax cuts before the end of his first term.
Baby boomer account for some but certainly not all of the workforce numbers. Let me type this slowly so that you can understand. U6 unemployment is at 9.6%. That means that many, many people that want to work have given up or have settled for part time work. After all 94% of the jobs created under Obama were part time.
Asset bubbles are created when rates are artificially low. This in part lead to the housing bubble of 2008. Investors get very cheap money, take huge risks because it is so cheap, raise asset prices to unrealistic levels not supported by the fundamentals and then the bubble bursts. It has happened many times in our economic history.
Tell the auto workers they won't benefit for these jobs. Tell the energy workers they are not going to benefit from these jobs. Tell the new workers at Sprint/OneWeb they are not going to benefit from these jobs. You've adopted Obama's "we can't do better philosophy." His "new normal" attitude. Thank goodness Trump has rejected it.
And you're simply wrong about Reagan. He did roll back some taxes but even with this his tax rates dropped dramatically. We had historic economic growth under Reagan averaging a whopping 3.5% even after Volkker raised interest rates to tame Carter's massive inflation which caused a recession early in Reagan's term. We more than doubled revenues to the Treasury during Reagan's term demonstrating that lower taxes and lower regulations are very stimulative. Reagan's military build-up was both stimulative and eventually brought down the Soviet Union. He compromised with Tip O'Neill to get his military spending approved in a Dem congress. As a result, Tip wanted new domestic spending on social programs which did run up the deficit.
I believe you will see the Ryan Congress force Trump to pay for the infrastructure spending which will occur over many years. For starters, the $300B in repatriated profits will make a nice down payment on paying for that spending.
From Politifact:
So it’s accurate to say Reagan increased levies during five years of his administration, but there’s a caveat: The overall tax burden on businesses and individuals went down during his presidency.
We examined data from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that computes the nation’s tax revenues as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product -- the total of all goods and services produced.
When Reagan took office in 1981, federal taxes were 19.6 percent of GDP, the highest level since World War II. That figure dropped to 17.3 percent during his first term and rose to 18.2 percent at the end of his second term.
A second analysis:
So, for those who care about the truth, here are some details. One of the tax increases Reagan signed (the
Highway Revenue Act of 1982) was a temporary increase in the federal gas tax from 4 to 9 cents. (This could be thought of as a sort of “user fee,” inasmuch as the revenue generally went to roads and infrastructure.) Another was a cigarette tax (
Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985.) These are real tax increases, but should not be confused with the income tax.
(Reagan also deserves special criticism from free marketers on the right for raising the capital gains tax rate — as well as the corporate rate — in the
Tax Reform Act of 1986.)
Make no mistake, these were real tax increases — in some cases, “regressive” taxation — but they pale in comparison to the scale of the income tax cuts that defined the Reagan era. Again, it’s important to put things in context. When inaugurated, Reagan inherited a nation with 16 tax brackets — ranging from marginal rates of 14 percent to 70 percent. By 1989, that was down to two brackets — with marginal rates of 15 percent and 28 percent. (Those rates — and brackets — were short lived. By the time Clinton left office, the top marginal rate was back up to 39.6 percent. But you can’t blame Reagan for tax increases that came after his tenure. That’d be like President
Obama blaming
George W. Bush for tax cuts passed in 2011…)
Again, my argument is that some taxes are more important than others. Do massive cuts to income taxes — perhaps the most confiscatory and arbitrary form of taxation (which disencentivize the very act of
working) — carry the same weight as a temporary consumption tax increase which raised just over 3 billion in revenue a year? I would argue that the two clearly aren’t the same thing — and yet that distinction is seldom made.
So how has this canard advanced to a state where it would demand correction so many years later? Both sides have contributed to advancing this misleading narrative. It’s in nobody’s interest to clarify the distinction — that not all taxes hikes and cuts are equal. Conservatives who oppose
all tax hikes (or revenue raisers such as removing deductions) gain little by exposing Reagan’s nuanced approach. Liberals benefit most from the opaqueness — because they can label Reagan a serial tax increaser — while ignoring the broader impact of his work on the federal tax
racket.
Facts matter. Reagan’s legacy has been co-opted and mangled by both sides. Yes, he raised taxes. Yes he cut taxes. The real story is how he raised taxes and how he cut them. And the overarching theme is that Reagan dramatically lowered tax rates and broadened the base. He was a reformer willing to make tough decisions. And at the end of the day, his legacy is that of a free market tax cutter. “If you aggregate together all the tax hikes … Reagan was a net tax cutter,” says Americans for Tax Reform’s
Ryan Ellis. “I believe that makes him unique in the 20th century Cold War era. (Kennedy’s were passed by Johnson, who later raised taxes to pay for Vietnam).”
Why is it important to set the record straight on this? Because liberals continue to attempt to hoodwink conservatives into supporting deficit reduction plans along the lines of tit for tat. “We’ll cut spending if you raise taxes.” Looking to history, though, conservatives should be wary of this feint.
Reagan was offered such a deal (a 3-1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases) in 1982, and it’s the reason he reluctantly agreed to the largest tax increase of his presidency, the “
Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982.” The Democratic Congress then promptly proceeded to ignore the planned spending cuts.
George H.W. Bush encountered the same trick in 1990. It cost him the presidency. The same idea was tossed out last summer — and smartly rejected by the GOP.
President Reagan deserves better than to have his legacy misrepresented. It is healthy for us to properly assess his policies. He came into office amid very difficult times, vowing to restore the American dream. Considering the full body of his work, I’d say that was a mission well accomplished.
Read more:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/06/ronald-reagan-raised-taxes-11-times-the-real-story/#ixzz4VNb4HXX0
