CHART: Lower Taxes On The Rich Don’t Lead To Job Growth | ThinkProgress Congressional Republicans - during both last year's debate over the pending expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the current negotiations regarding raising the nation's debt ceiling - refused to consider tax increases on even the very richest Americans. In fact, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) blew up debt ceiling negotiations last week due to his insistence that those making more than $500,000 annually be shielded from any tax increase. The GOP justification for its position - even with income inequality at its worst level since the 1920s - is that raising taxes on the rich will destroy jobs. “What some are suggesting is that we take this money from people who would invest in our economy and create jobs and give it to the government. The fact is you can't tax the very people that we expect to invest in the economy and create jobs,†said Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH). However, history doesn't back up the GOP's claim. In fact, as Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, “in the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is nowâ€: For instance, in years when the top marginal rate was more than 90 percent, the average annual growth in total payroll employment was 2 percent. In years when the top marginal rate was 35 percent or less - which it is now - employment grew by an average of just 0.4 percent. And there's no cherry-picking here. Pick any threshold. When the marginal tax rate was 50 percent or above, annual employment growth averaged 2.3 percent, and when the rate was under 50, growth was half that. In fact, if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher. The top 10 years would share marginal tax rates at 50 percent or higher. The two worst years, on the other hand, were 2008 and 2009, when the top marginal tax rate was 35 percent. In the 13 years that the top marginal tax rate has been at its current level or lower, only one year even cracks the top 20 in overall job creation.
raising taxes on the rich doesnt lead to job growth . Our country is dieing. We have not had real growth since the clinton, and that was due to the internet.
Too bad there's more to an economy than personal income taxes. If the government lowers taxes and increases spending and regulations, is anything really accomplished? If the government increases taxes but injects the economy through direct subsidies and artificially low interest rates, did the taxes really have a visible effect? Think. A more important tax to talk about is the corporate income tax, of which the US has the highest in the world. Shouldn't we lower that so that corporations will have greater incentive to invest in our labor?
Whats percentage of the job growth during the years of highest taxes was government provided employment? I would be willing to bet it attributed for the difference between rates. Government jobs don't improve our economy. For economy to grow your not just looking at the amount of cash, you also have to keep in mind goods produced. Government jobs are typically service related, and they produce no goods, which in turn does nothing to improve economy. Furthermore increasing government employment neccesarily decreases wealth, as money spent on employees could instead be spent purchasing or creating goods in the private sector. Even if an economy keeps the same amount of cash for years running, you can still see growth if the amount of good available has increased. Unless taxing the rich creates private sector jobs somehow, id say this whole correlation is largely irrelevant.
I guess our history is the best reason to NOT lower corp tax...the trickle turned yellow real fast...now they want to make it brown... I would go into ultra fine details...but GC servers would crash, my pc hasn't enough ram or disk space to hold the ascii text alone... sooooo a slim version... reason #1 = history of corps in the last 110 years reason #2 = corps should NOT be 'legal entities like a person' every one feel free to add to the list...those two sum it up for me.
Government employment is still employment, which is better than unemployment. Economic activity improves the economy. Giving people with no jobs and no incomes an opportunity to earn gives them the opportunity to spend. Spending creates economic activity and improves the economy. It's REALLY simple economics. A person making $0 a year contributes $0 to the economy, but a person making $40,000, even if it's paid by other people, will spend most of that on goods and services. Seriously, this is as simple as economics can get... That doesn't even make sense. The money spent on creating jobs through government programs (including the military, which is the biggest jobs program in place in this country) benefits everyone because those people spend the money they earn. Private companies minimize the number of jobs they need to create to maximize profits. What do you even mean by this? This makes no sense whatsoever. (simplified to make things easier to understand) A rich person making $1,000,000 a year will pay about $350,000 in taxes assuming they don't use too many tax dodges. They still get to keep $650,000 and are still rich compared to most everyone else. If you raise their taxes by 5%, they will add $50,000 to the national economy to create at least 1 job while that person still takes in $600,000. The extra $50,000 that rich person would have made wouldn't go into the economy if they kept it, it'd just end up in a brokerage account for them to stash until retirement. I don't think lower and middle class people should be taxed like they are, but the rich should definitely have increases. That being said, we need to eliminate our military presence in every country where we're not currently at war (like Japan, Germany, Guam, The Phillipines, etc.), end the Drug War, legalize and tax all drugs, prostitution, gambling and open trade to Cuba. Those moves would do a whole heck of a lot more to stimulate our economy than some tax increases.
Or... or... ABOLISH IT! Give me the power to pick what social program that I like. I'm willing to participate a social program that benefits me and others. Taxes, on the other hand, enforce me and others to participate unethical or bad social program that does nothing but waste money by throwing it at fire. Wasted money is wasted.
I went to public school (for part of my education), I wouldn't be able to without taxes. I drive on the interstate, which wouldn't have existed without taxes. I live in a society where my food and water are inspected...I wouldn't have that without taxes. None of them would have been supported through my own decisions because I was a child who didn't have an income...is America home of the greedy and selfish? The people who think they can get by without paying taxes are the people who are simply too dim to understand how many government services they use every day. I want to cut the federal spending by a ton, but there are many programs which are needed. Plus, even welfare benefits a rich person like myself because it keeps those people off the streets, keeps them from robbing me and provides them an opportunity to become something other than a drain on society.
Indoctrination into what? My father was a senior policy advisor under Ford (you know, Nixon's former VP, a GOP President...) I grew up going to a private school with a ton of hippies, then to public school where I benefitted from the taxes paid by the people who provided me a place to go to school for free, then I ended up at a top prep school which feeds into Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the rest of those top schools. I'm a social Libertarian who believes in the benefits of a well designed government. You're just another Paulite (I voted for Paul in the 2008 primary...so how's that indoctrination theory working out for you?) who has no concept of economics or government. Tell me, how was I indoctrinated? Let me ask you this: Did you attend public school?
You believing that the services you listed wouldn't exist without "government". All hail our wise overlords in DC for without them we'd all be dead in a ditch somewhere, uneducated, eating poisonous food, and not have one paved road in all the land to drive on...
You went to public school which funded by the gov. The public school only teaches the party history, the party knowledge, party language, etc; Gov only whats you to know what you need to know. Nothing else. Private school on the other hand teaches you the on many different sides of views. Hey, did you learn economics in public school? I sure didn't. Did I learn well enough on English writing? I sure didn't. I'm on the road of recovery after what the gov damage to me and my knowledge. I have to relearn all the courses again in a different view.
Not in the long run. They tend to be temporary, inefficient and uncondusive to economic growth. It's retard economics, otherwise known as keynesian. According to my studies, saving and investing causes economic growth not spending and consumption. Especially not spending coming from an easily corrupted central planner that will blow it on things like corn subsidies or foreign aid. Parable of the broken window. It doesn't benefit the people who actually have money and know how to invest it... the ones who grow economies. Our military doesn't help the economy at all.
I think how we spend our taxes is much more important to solving any tax related issue than how we tax.