ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Kinser79]

(09-09-2017, 09:15 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(09-09-2017, 09:53 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(09-09-2017, 08:01 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-08-2017, 11:49 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(09-08-2017, 09:34 AM)David Horn Wrote: We aren't a tiny country poised on the edge of a wilderness in the late Agricultural Age -- not anymore.  Pretending we are is both stupid and dangerous.

We aren't an industrial power with limitless wealth and low debt either and pretending that we are is far more stupid and far more dangerous. Turning vast swaths over to the states is not only doable but the right thing to do.  The Constitution is best understood to be a compact for mutual trade and assistance rather than the formation of a unitary republic, for which even today the country is too large and too diverse to be.

The rest of your post is the usual liberal nonsense.

You fundamentally misunderstand how the economy works.  It's not a zero-sum game.  Economic activity creates more economic activity.  When the economy is slack, like it is at the moment, debt financed activity can start a righteous cycle of additional activity, but only if we actually do it.  40 years of GOP dominance in the economic sphere has created a systemic underperforming economic engine because Republicans refuse to accept the obvious: the private sector only works to its advantage.  Public sector investment is also needed and it's now critical. 

Feel free to pretend that your static view is correct, but answer this simple question: why did the US do so incredibly well for so long, when we exited WW-II with Federal debt equal to ~126% of GNP?  We're well below that now, and you are crying wolf.  

Yes, times are different.  Our population is stagnant now and it was expanding then.  This is a real issue, and more immigration will help with that, but waving the debt flag is both supercilious and flat wrong.  I notice it doesn't seem to apply to Defense spending or to huge tax breaks to the wealthy.  And handing things back to the states?  Really?  How do you think Jim Crow got going in the first place?

And you fundamentally misunderstand that taxation is at its most basic level theft.  But that isn't here nor there.  The fact remains that if you want to increase economic activity you have to decrease taxes, if you really want to accelerate economic activity you decrease taxes on those who produce wealth, which largely speaking means corporations.

Short of that the only real way to accelerate economic growth by government spending is to waste huge sums on a war.  I think we've been trying to blow that bubble back up for some time now--it isn't working out to well.

The GMs and Googles and the GEs don't really pay all that much in corporate taxes because they have and can afford to have armies of lawyers and accountants to reduce their tax burdens through the byzantine mess the tax code is.  So who gets slammed with the high corporate rate?  Smaller companies which actually employs most people.

Until you can demonstrate to me that you have a modicum of economic understanding of an average High School Student then perhaps we could have a reasonable conversation about the tax rate.  Unfortunately I highly doubt you have the intellect for such an understanding.  You can get back to me about corporate taxes when you've run a business.

I agree with you regarding how the small businesses that actually create most jobs are currently getting slammed by the tax system - not just by actually paying the corporate tax rate, which as you point out big business don't generally pay, but also the many subchapter S corporations that pay the maximum "personal" rate, which jumped upward at the end of 2012.

I would, however, point out that workers produce wealth as well, both for themselves and for their employers - and many aspects of the current system actually seem designed to discourage work.  For example with respect to the PPACA, the employer mandate requires employers either to make jobs part time, and thus not requiring health care but limiting the amount of work that can be done in a job, or requires employers to pay for health care, thus reducing the amount the worker can receive and thus making the worker less likely to be willing to work.  The individual mandate is enforced through a tax penalty that scales with income, thus increasing the effective income tax rate and providing less incentive to work.  Less workers doing less work means less wealth creation.

With respect to helping business, I think restoring the Bush top tax rate makes sense, but some of the present ideas that involve taxing workers more so businesses are taxed less are just borrowing from Peter to pay Paul:  they aren't going to improve things overall.

I think everyone who isn't a Dimocrat ideologue understands that Obamacare was a disaster.  However, the point remains that businesses employ workers, as such taxing them less means they have more money to invest in capital, hire more workers  (who can be taxed) and so forth.

Mind you I'm of the view that direct federal taxation should be completely eliminated.