12-19-2016, 12:17 PM
(12-18-2016, 04:12 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(12-17-2016, 08:24 AM)David Horn Wrote:(12-16-2016, 11:27 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(12-13-2016, 01:47 PM)David Horn Wrote:(12-10-2016, 01:50 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Reagan's 1981 tax cut was an across the board cut of 23%, between 3 percentage points and 20 percentage points depending on your bracket. The social security tax rate increase was less than 1 percentage point. Only by being ignorant of basic arithmetic can one believe that Reagan increased tax rates overall.
It may be worth noting that this guy actually understand Reaganomics, and argues against it today.
He also argues that it worked well when it was used. Do you agree with that? If not, why are you bothering to bring him up?
Ok course he liked it then. Bruce Bartlett designed the system Reagan used. Other economists argued then, and now, that it was mostly smoke and mirrors, but I cited Bartlett because he saw real value ... then. He sees it as unusable to counterproductive now.
If you don't believe he was right then, you have no reason to believe he is right now. In other words, you're just fishing up a red herring.
Why? I can argue that Bartlett is overly optimistic about the market economy without making the argument that 'once wrong, always wrong'. I think his POV today is based on that old bugaboo: empirical evidence. Greenspan had the same revelation, that the economy didn't work the way he thought it did. Bartlett adjusted, as he should. Only a dogmatic ideologue would argue that a truth is a lie, because his philosophy says it must be one.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.