Au Contraire.

Raising taxes on the Rich & Corporate worked like a charm for both Presidents FDR and WJC. It all depends what you do with the money.

The periods of greatest economic prosperity in this country occurred when the top federal personal income tax BRACKETS were at 81%, 85%, and even 91%, while the top corporate federal income tax BRACKET was at 50%, AND after the top federal income tax brackets were raised on the Rich & Corporate.

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“2. Tax revenue isn’t the problem. Spending is.”

Wrong.

According to the independent non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the vast overwhelming majority of our current federal deficits and debt, as well as our medium-term projected future federal deficits and debt, are from the massive drop in federal income tax revenue as a direct result of the numerous rounds of massive tax cuts for the Rich & Corporate enacted during the previous administration.

Not even close.

1) There *is* a time for supply-side stimulus – but that’s when demand exceeds supply and we face inflation. We face the opposite situation where supply already exceeds demand. Ask any businessman whose warehouse is full of stuff he can’t sell and he’ll tell you what he needs is more customers, not more employees producing more goods he can’t sell. Now, I know that if every businessman suddenly and all together ran out and hired new employees, those employees would have more money and they’d buy more stuff. The problem is that what works for the whole, doesn’t work for the individual businessman, since to make a profit, he relies on someone else to increase the number of their employees, while he constrains the number of his.

2) Lumping all tax increases together is insane and best, duplicitous when I’m being polite and complete manure when I’m being blunt. The situation matters, but so does who receives the cut. We’re in a demand-induced, so to increase demand, we need to get more money in the hands of the folks with the greatest need. Give a dollar to someone whose belly is growling from hunger and that person isn’t going to salt the dollar away in an offshore mutual fund; that person is going to spend the money on food. It doesn’t matter what percentage of any tax reduction the wealthy salt away rather than consume, the fact is that any percentage is a higher percentage of money that isn’t going to stimulating demand.

3) If we have a demand slump, and the wealthy can’t any reason to invest in new production capacity when the existing capacity is sitting idle (the wealthy didn’t get wealthy by being fools)someone has to buy stuff. People (outside of the wealthy) don’t have the money when they can’t pay their mortgages because they’re now unemployed. States can’t spend the money because they are constrained by not spending more than they take in. Guess who that leaves – the federal government. At this point, only the federal government can stimulate demand and it can do it in two ways: a) spending money itself (on infrastructure improvements and R&D that has a prospect of long term payouts and keeping US in the lead on new technologies in fields that are too risky for private companies) and by funneling the money to those who *will* spend it – e.g., the unemployed.

And this is where the the difference in tax increases comes in. Taxing those who will not spend everything they make in the US economy and redistributing that money to those who will spend it all in the US economy isn’t rocket science. When it comes to engineering a recovery, it’s just common sense. Whether one is morally aghast at the idea of income redistribution or not, to argue that it makes no economic sense is pure manure.

Government spending does not equal government jobs. This is a typical right-wing spin statement. Most of the deficit spending has been about getting money back to people so they spend it and create jobs.

We have an idiot for a president who doesn’t have the first clue about the engine of our economy……the private sector and in particular small business. If you increase Government Spending, you crowd out the private sector investment Then you throw in a ton of regulations in the form of the EPA, NRLB, Obama-crap-care and the energy department and what do you have……a stalled economy and high unemployment with no end in sight( well at least between now and 2012). It really blows my mind how democrats can say with a straight face that taxing the rich more will help ease our financial mess…..they already pay the vast majority of the tax bill. As the Author correctly stated, raising taxes with collapse this economy.

I actually think the possible collapse of Greece will be a good thing for this country because it will finally wake us up to the impending disaster coming our way if we allow Barry and his cohorts to continue to occupy the White House. Can’t any of you Kool-aid Libs see that will we be in huge trouble when Interest rates rise as they will have to do in order to not only control the Fed-induce inflation that is on the way but also to attract the buyers for our bonds……if we don’t slash spending now and reform entitlements…….of course you libs don’t care, you have a president who is a scholar of the teachings of Alinsky.

Raising taxes doesn’t increase revenue. You assume people will work as hard to take home less. Clinton raised personal income taxes but reduced capital gains taxes to spur growth. But in the end, it still resulted in a recession…until W cut taxes and the economy grew again.

Obama is doing the opposite of Reagan. He’s increasing spending while revenue decreases. Thinking he’s helping the economy by creating government jobs and tax payer funded jobs is ridiculous. It’s like needing extra family income, so you decide to pay your kids to wash the car or do chores around the house. They may have extra money temporarily, but you have less and eventually you won’t be able to keep paying them.

What you can easily see is that tax REVENUES against GDP are remarkably consistent; which means if you want to increase revenue, you have to increase GDP, which means you have to create growth. Tax RATE increases don’t do this, they do the opposite.

Whenever someone says they want “tax increases,” immediately ask them to clarify whether they talking about tax RATE increases, which only serve class warfare, social engineering, and self-congratulatory purposes, or are they talking about tax REVENUE increases, which actually benefit our financial situation.