drsmooth wrote:Hey you! Yea, you what posted the big-ass map of the US previdiciously!

Hope you're kicking in contributions to the Voxes, hogging up all that bandwidth attempting a funny that was not all that so much! Sheesh!

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:Hey you! Yea, you what posted the big-ass map of the US previdiciously!

Hope you're kicking in contributions to the Voxes, hogging up all that bandwidth attempting a funny that was not all that so much! Sheesh!

I thought it was funny.

Not everyone a) has the map of the United States HAMELS laid out in their head and b) associates Illinois with bordering Kentucky. And if you miss that point, then it doesn't make any sense. Unlike you, who seem to make it your mission in posting to make what you write as unreadable and impossible to understand as possible, I like making it easier for people to follow what I'm getting at.

jerseyhoya wrote:I thought it was funny.

Not everyone a) has the map of the United States HAMELS laid out in their head and b) associates Illinois with bordering Kentucky. And if you miss that point, then it doesn't make any sense. Unlike you, who seem to make it your mission in posting to make what you write as unreadable and impossible to understand as possible, I like making it easier for people to follow what I'm getting at.

You Can't Soak the Rich
By DAVID RANSON
May 20, 2008

...

Like science, economics advances as verifiable patterns are recognized and codified. But economics is in a far earlier stage of evolution than physics. Unfortunately, it is often poisoned by political wishful thinking, just as medieval science was poisoned by religious doctrine. Taxation is an important example.

... Will increasing tax rates on the rich increase revenues, as Barack Obama hopes, or hold back the economy, as John McCain fears? Or both?

... "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP." What a pity that his discovery has not been more widely disseminated.



The chart nearby, updating the evidence to 2007, confirms Hauser's Law. The federal tax "yield" (revenues divided by GDP) has remained close to 19.5%, even as the top tax bracket was brought down from 91% to the present 35%. This is what scientists call an "independence theorem," and it cuts the Gordian Knot of tax policy debate.

The data show that the tax yield has been independent of marginal tax rates over this period, but tax revenue is directly proportional to GDP. So if we want to increase tax revenue, we need to increase GDP.

What happens if we instead raise tax rates? Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax rate hike will reduce GDP, in which case Hauser's Law says it will also lower tax revenue. That's a highly inconvenient truth for redistributive tax policy, and it flies in the face of deeply felt beliefs about social justice. It would surely be unpopular today with those presidential candidates who plan to raise tax rates on the rich – if they knew about it.

... It seems likely that the tax system could maintain a 19.5% yield with a top bracket even lower than 35%.

What makes Hauser's Law work? For supply-siders there is no mystery. As Mr. Hauser said: "Raising taxes encourages taxpayers to shift, hide and underreport income. . . . Higher taxes reduce the incentives to work, produce, invest and save, thereby dampening overall economic activity and job creation."

Putting it a different way, capital migrates away from regimes in which it is treated harshly, and toward regimes in which it is free to be invested profitably and safely. In this regard, the capital controlled by our richest citizens is especially tax-intolerant.

... Presidential candidates, instead of disputing how much more tax to impose on whom, would be better advised to come up with plans for increasing GDP while ridding the tax system of its wearying complexity. That would be a formula for success.

Mr. Ranson is head of research at H.C. Wainwright & Co. Economics Inc.

Houshphandzadeh wrote:What's Hillary's game at this point?

Houshphandzadeh wrote:What's Hillary's game at this point?

Houshphandzadeh wrote:Hillary should go independent and make it a real royal rumble in the fall

jerseyhoya wrote:Yeah, Hillary wouldn't win a single electoral vote if she was an independent. Maybe a slight possibility of winning Arkansas. Obama would win DC, Hawaii and probably Illinois. So that'd be 504 or 510 EVs for McCain.

Actually Obama'd win Vermont too. So 501 or 507 EVs.

jerseyhoya wrote:Kennedy has a brain tumor. :?

Dunno how serious or what, but they're saying that's what caused the seizure. Not good.

Edit: MSNBC is calling it malignant, so quite serious. Though as far as I know they haven't said whether it's operable or what.

jerseyhoya wrote:White people like Obama just fine West of the Mississippi, by the way. The rout is on in Oregon.