The Daily HatchOverall tax revenues have risen despite a recent decline due to the recession. Congress cut income taxes and the death tax in 2001 and capital gains taxes and dividends in 2003, yet revenues continued to surge even after the tax cuts were passed.
Chart 14 of 42
Max Brantley this morning on the Arkansas Times Blog, August 15, 2011, asserted:
Billionaire Warren Buffett laments, again, in a New York Times op-ed how the rich don’t share the sacrifices made by others in the U.S.. He notes his effectiie tax rate of 17 percent is lower than that of many of the working people in his office on account of preferences for investment income. Candidates such as U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin believe — with election results to support them — that Americans support such a tax system.
It appears according the chart below that the rich do sacrifice more than others which contradicts Max Brantley’s statment above. Welcome back Max. We missed you!!!
Top earners are the target for new tax increases, but the U.S. tax system is already highly progressive. The top 1 percent of income earners paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes in 2008, while the bottom 50 percent paid only 3 percent. Forty-nine percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax at all.
Chart 13 of 42
The charts in this book are based primarily on data available as of March 2011 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The charts using OMB data display the historical growth of the federal government to 2010 while the charts using CBO data display both historical and projected growth from as early as 1940 to 2084. Projections based on OMB data are taken from the White House Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The charts provide data on an annual basis except… Read More
Emily GoffResearch Assistant
Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy StudiesKathryn NixPolicy Analyst
Center for Health Policy StudiesJohn FlemingSenior Data Graphics Editor
John Brummett in his article, “Economic expansion comes to Wisconsin,” August 15, 2011, asserts:
So this estimated $35 million got spent by national special interest groups on these recall campaigns, these temper tantrums. This is a big chasm; generally speaking, Republicans think public employee unions are too fat while Democrats think they are noble champions of working people in a world the Republicans want to hand over to the untaxed super-rich.
This is where Brummett misses the boat. The problem is not just that the public employee unions are too fat, but that they exist at all. Take a look at this article below:
February 19, 2011
Somewhere, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is grinning past his cigarette holder at Wisconsin’s governor. They are on the same page regarding government unions.
Except that Scott Walker — Republican cheapskate, his visage Hitlerized on signs waved by beet-faced union crowds besieging the Capitol — is kind of a liberal squish compared to FDR. He’s OK with some collective bargaining.
Unions are enraged. They’ve been calling such increases unspeakable since Walker was elected handily in November. Then, Feb. 10, Walker went further. He’d allow public-sector unions to negotiate only pay, not benefits, mainly because he wants HSA-style health plans and 401(k)-style retirements for state workers, and unions would fight that, tooth and ragged red claw.
So unions erupted. Teachers faked illness in such numbers as to close school districts for days. Mobs beat on the doors of legislative chambers. And in some heavenly Hyde Park, the great liberal god of the 1930s is saying he saw it all along.
Roosevelt’s reign certainly was the bright dawn of modern unionism. The legal and administrative paths that led to 35% of the nation’s workforce eventually unionizing by a mid-1950s peak were laid by Roosevelt.
But only for the private sector. Roosevelt openly opposed bargaining rights for government unions.
“The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”
And if you’re the kind of guy who capitalizes “government,” woe betide such obstructionists.
Roosevelt wasn’t alone. It was orthodoxy among Democrats through the ’50s that unions didn’t belong in government work. Things began changing when, in 1959, Wisconsin’s then-Gov. Gaylord Nelson signed collective bargaining into law for state workers. Other states followed, and gradually, municipal workers and teachers were unionized, too.
Even as that happened, the future was visible. Frank Zeidler, Milwaukee’s mayor in the 1950s and the last card-carrying Socialist to head a major U.S. city, supported labor. But in 1969, the progressive icon wrote that rise of unions in government work put a competing power in charge of public business next to elected officials. Government unions “can mean considerable loss of control over the budget, and hence over tax rates,” he warned.
There was “a revolutionary principle rather quietly at work in American government,” he wrote.
The principle was working at about 100 decibels in Wisconsin’s Capitol last week, once the union drum-beaters got going. What worked them up was the money they’d concede, they said, but even more that Walker would make their unions surrender the control they’d gained over every government budget.
Walker, like other Republicans, was long accused of hating government. For eight years as chief executive of heavily Democrat Milwaukee County, he would not raise taxes, which opponents said showed his contempt for government.
Yet all this past week, he praised public employees and he said the work government does is so necessary, taxpayers should get as much of it for their money as possible. Meanwhile, thousands of schoolteachers on the Capitol lawn manifested their intent to obstruct Government and their belief that the tots back at Roosevelt Elementary could darn well spend a day or three watching Nickelodeon at home.
And, to beat all, the president who now professes to be the new Reagan weighed in to say Walker was being unduly mean to unions. President Obama gave no audible word on whether unions were being unduly mean in shutting down schools.
Walker, good Republican, is no FDR but he is offering Wisconsin a new deal, lower-case. Wisconsin’s been a seedbed of bad ideas since it hatched Progressivism, and for years it’s stuck with unionized government even as the price swelled. Walker’s radical shift is to try securing necessary government at a better price. The unions, whose model depends on making government labor as costly as taxpayers will bear, object.
May they be haunted by the ghost of the 32nd president, and his little dog, too.
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 12)
This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.
Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”
“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.
| Posey: Last Minute Plan Falls Short of What is Needed to Curb Debt Washington, Aug 1 – Congressman Bill Posey (R-Rockledge) released the following statement regarding his vote against the debt limit deal: “Our nation is deep in debt and plummeting deeper in the red every day. The Federal government is spending way beyond its means. The credit ratings agencies have warned that the U.S. will lose its AAA credit rating unless Washington enacts a credible, long-term plan to control spending and reduce the national debt. That is what is required. “The last minute bill put forward today does not achieve this goal. Regardless of its enactment, the U.S. will still be at serious risk of losing its AAA credit rating. To date, the only plan introduced that passes muster for the credit rating agencies is the Cut, Cap and Balance legislation which passed the House with bipartisan support last week and is purposefully being blocked in the Senate. “Today’s legislation includes a weakened Balanced Budget Amendment option. In my view, it makes no serious effort in bringing us closer to passing-on such a popular and necessary provision to the States for consideration. A Balanced Budget Amendment is needed to ensure that Washington’s addiction to spending is broken. Washington must begin to live within its means. Somehow that principle had to be tossed-out to get the Senate and Administration on board with this deal. “This bill grows the debt to $16.7 trillion without implementing a long-term plan to control spending. The real crisis is not the Administration’s impending arbitrary deadline to raise the limit, but the lack of a plan to ever repay this money and reverse this terrible trend of deficit spending and debt accumulation. “Again, I thank the Speaker for his efforts in filling the leadership void and for putting ideas out on the table.”
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Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday.
Milton Friedman – University of Chicago School of Economics ProfessorHere is an essay written to honor the 99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth:Our Greatest Protection
Americans have increasingly come to view government as a vital protector against economic hardship. U.S. politicians, especially from 1900 on, have touted various interventionist economic programs as essential for America’s prosperity and security. Free-market economist Milton Friedman, on the other hand, understood that the best protection for American workers and consumers springs not from government intervention, but from economic freedom. It is this freedom to choose that guards us from exploitation and opens innumerable doors of opportunity.
Friedman describes in his book “Free to Choose” how economic freedom aids consumers. In a competitive market, businesses have strong incentives to produce goods that consumers need and demand. The freedom of new entrepreneurs to grab a share of the population’s demands ensures that the vast majority of consumer needs are met. Also, price spikes are mitigated by the competition: even if all existing stores agree to keep prices artificially high through collusion, new vendors can enter the marketplace and thwart their efforts. Consumers cannot be forced to buy particular products, and thus will voluntarily contribute to the expansion of high-quality vendors while abandoning companies that provide poor service. According to Friedman, it is free competition, not government regulation, that protects consumers from exploitation and shortages of essential goods.
In his works, Friedman also points out the benefit workers gain from economic freedom: the crucial ability to earn wages that reflect the value of their skills. In an open market, companies will compete strategically for the most productive workers, driving wages up and rewarding good work. The free market also allows workers to become entrepreneurs and manage their own time and resources. Free markets ultimately protect workers from poor conditions by providing them with the freedom to choose a job according to their own desires and abilities. By contrast, a legally enforced monopoly system hurts workers, as they can only seek work from an employer with little incentive to offer competitive wages or pleasant working environments.
Similarly, Friedman argued that the freedom to choose among schools can help protect American children against a poor education. The more options parents have regarding schooling, the more schools will be held accountable for the teaching they provide. The worst situation for any student is to have only one compulsory schooling option, as is true for many inner-city children. Without any alternative, they have nowhere to turn if their assigned school fails to provide a good service. Friedman and his wife Rose were tireless advocates for increased school choice, knowing that increased freedom for families could provide an escape route for children in poor schools.
Dr. Friedman deeply understood the importance of freedom in our society. America’s key to prosperity and long-term economic security is the liberty that enables her citizens to apply their skills and talents without arbitrary government interference. Anytime a citizen is left with only one vendor to buy from, one employer to work for or one school to attend, that citizen becomes vulnerable. Our greatest protection against both corporate and government exploitation lies in our freedom to choose.
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
On May 11, 2011, I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
I just did. I went to the Senator’s website and sent this below:
Posted by Chris Edwards
Charles Krauthammer is absolutely right that Republicans must call President Obama’s bluff on the debt-limit vote. I suggested that the House GOP pass $2 trillion in cuts tied to a $2 trillion debt increase, thus handing the matter over to the Senate and the president and refusing to budge.
Krauthammer has the same idea, but with $500 billion in cuts and a $500 billion debt increase. That would certainly be better than Senator McConnell’s chicken-out plan, and it would have the advantage of being so modest in size that I think it would ultimately get large support in the Senate from moderates.
The cuts–small “trims” really–could be taken right from Obama’s own Fiscal Commission report. The table below illustrates how modest and limited are the reforms needed to hit $500 billion in savings over 10 years. Indeed, the data from the commission only covers a nine-year period and includes just some of the proposed entitlement savings.
| Obama Fiscal Commission Entitlement Trims | $Billions |
| Trim Health Care Subsidies | |
| Reduce subsidies for medical education | $60 |
| Expand Medicare cost sharing | $110 |
| Enact tort reform | $17 |
| Reduce Medicaid tax gaming | $44 |
| Reform Tricare | $38 |
| Trim Social Security Growth | |
| Increase benefits by chained CPI | $89 |
| Trim Growth in Other Entitlements | |
| Increase other entitlements by chained CPI | $43 |
| Reform federal retirement benefits | $73 |
| Reduce farm subsidies | $10 |
| Reduce student loan interest subsidies | $43 |
| Total Trims, 2012-2020 | $527 |
It would be blindingly obvious to most voters that Obama would be responsible for a debt default if he couldn’t bring himself to sign such modest cuts that were proposed by his own fiscal commission. Then, when the government runs up against the debt limit again five months from now, the GOP should have another package of cuts ready to be passed. This next time they could perhaps focus on discretionary program terminations, some of which I’ve proposed here.
2012 Presidential Republican Primary Debate In Iowa pt.2
Ben Smith wrote a fine article:
Byron York asked Mitt Romney directly about the report that he’d bragged to S&P about a 2002 tax hike, and he again dodged the question, giving an answer that’s true but irrelevant:
I don’t believe in raising taxes and as governor I cut taxes 19 times … I was fortunate enough to be a governor who got an increase in the credit rating of my state … Our president simply doesn’t know how to lead and how to grow our economy.
One honest answer, which former Romney aide Eric Kriss gave me, was the former governor opposed taxes broadly, but that you tell ratings agencies what they want to hear, and they don’t care if you raise taxes or cut spending as long as the numbers run up. But that answer gets in the way of the claim that the U.S. downgrade is a judgement on spending.
The other answer is also obvious: Romney governed as a right-leaning technocrat, not an ideologue, and he’s hoping to squeeze through on the left side of this primary without getting into the details of governance.
October 15, 2008 — bryanelliff
Francis A. Schaeffer died in 1984. He wrote over twenty books during his career, mainly concerning the Christian worldview and its relationship to society and its place in the philosophical sphere. These include The Christian Manifesto, The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, and He is There and He is Not Silent. Educated at Westminster Theological Seminary, he came to have a major influence on the religious community in the West through his writing, speaking, and ministry at L’Abri in Switzerland.
How Should We Then Live? is a history of Western thought and culture. It begins with ancient Rome and traces the flow of Western philosophy and society through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Modern Era, and into the twentieth century. The study is made for a specific purpose. It is not meant to be a “complete chronological history of Western culture” (Author’s Note). Rather, it is made “in hope that light may be shed upon the major characteristics of our age and that solutions may be found to the myriad of problems which face us as we look toward the end of the twentieth century” (Author’s Note). In other words, the object of the book is to draw upon the past in order to better understand the present and better face the future.
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What can be learned from the past? Schaeffer loosely draws out three ideas through his exposition of Western history. First, the tendency of Western culture is to move toward humanism. Humanism is a way of looking at the world that begins from what Schaeffer calls “particulars”–the individual entities that make up the universe (the opposite of “universals” or “absolutes”). The most important particulars are individual human beings. Humanism posits that an autonomous human, with his senses and reason, can come to a true understanding of what surrounds him with no need for outside revelation. While there are notable exceptions (such as the Reformation), Schaeffer shows that the tendency of the West is always to move back to humanism in some form. He speaks of the religious humanism of the Middle Ages, the more unashamed secular humanism of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the despairing humanism of the twentieth century.
Second, Schaeffer demonstrates from history that a culture cannot function well on a humanistic base. The problem is that man, starting completely from himself with no outside revelation, can never “arrive at universals or absolutes which give meaning to existence and morals” (55). Schaeffer maintains that, without absolutes, there is no foundation, no unity, and no significance for individual man and for society. Man becomes nothing more than a machine in a cause-and-effect universe and the form of society becomes arbitrary. Though a culture may start out well and optimistically on humanistic base, it will–as we have seen in the twentieth century–inevitably end up in despair, meaninglessness, and deterioration. Only when there is a Christian worldview in the cultural consensus, Schaeffer shows while pointing to the Reformation, does culture function well.
Third, Schaeffer argues that if humanism is allowed to take its course, the result in Western society will the manipulation of an elite, authoritarian government. “As the Christian consensus dies [leaving no absolutes and no base on which the society can function], there are not many sociological alternatives” (223). Schaeffer lists three: “hedonism” (223), “the absoluteness of the 51-percent vote” (223), and “an elite filling the vacuum left by the loss of the Christian consensus” (224). Hedonism only leads to chaos (what happens when two hedonists meet on a narrow bridge?) and the 51 percent vote is a completely arbitrary absolute which the society will eventually reject. The only option left is the control of a manipulative elite that hands down arbitrary absolutes to the society. “An elite, an authoritarianism as such, will gradually force form on society so that it will not go on to chaos. And most people will accept it” (245). “Humanism has lead to its natural conclusion” (225).
Schaeffer ends his book with a call to Christians to stand up against the inevitable direction of the culture. “To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision for it” (257). The title of the book is taken from Ezekiel 33:1-11, in which God called Ezekiel to be a watchman for the house of Israel and speak out against the societal problems of his day. “Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?” (258).
It has been shown what the purpose of the author is in this book. Now the question is whether the author fulfills that purpose. Schaeffer does achieve his goal, but only partially. The main section of the book, concerned with the history of the West and with looking at the problems of the future, is convincing. He does a masterful job of taking the breadth of Western history, tracing its flow, and pointing out the path that it will take in years to come. Looking at Western society thirty years later, the solidity of his logic is clear because much of what he predicted is coming true. He is also to be commended for presenting his positions in memorable and fresh ways.
However, the last section of the book leaves something to be desired. Schaeffer fails to be entirely convincing when he calls the Christian minority to fight against cultural trends. His argument for this is based on an unsupported presupposition–that Christians are obligated to affect the functioning of culture and government. This concept does not seem to have much scriptural warrant, and Schaeffer certainly does not feel the need to give any. The New Testament writers taught that a believer’s relationship to government should be one of quiet submission and that his or her relationship with the culture should consist of preaching the gospel. While there are notable exceptions to this rule (Christians should be concerned about the relief of injustice and poverty, for instance, but this is not what Schaeffer is referring to), Christians are never exhorted to exert their energy in surface cultural reformation. Instead, they are exhorted to work for the salvation of souls. Ironically, Schaeffer seems to be setting up an arbitrary absolute.
How Should We Then Live? deserves thoughtful reading. It is masterful in its breadth and originality and helpful in its major purpose-expositing Western thought and viewing the future in its light. However, not everything Schaeffer says regarding the Christian’s role in society should be accepted without careful consideration.
Bryan Elliff Copyright 2008
Posted by David Boaz
Conservatives have become so furious with President Obama that they forget just how bad some of his predecessors were. One Jeffrey Kuhner, whose over-the-top op-eds in the Washington Times belie the sober and judicious conservatism you might expect from the president of the “Edmund Burke Institute,” writes most recently:
A possible Great Depression haunts the land. Primarily one man is to blame: President Obama.
Mr. Obama has racked up more than $4 trillion in debt.
Yes, he has. And that’s almost as much as the $5 trillion in debt rung up by his predecessor, George W. Bush. True, on an annual basis Obama is leaving Bush in the dust. But acceleration has been the name of the game: In 190 years, 39 presidents racked up a trillion dollars in debt. The next three presidents ran the debt up to about $5.73 trillion. Then Bush 43 almost doubled the total public debt, to $10.7 trillion, in eight years. And now the 44th president has added almost $4 trillion in two years and seven months. (Here’s an online video depicting each president’s debt accumulation as driving speed.) So Obama is winning the debt war, but it’s not like he caused the debt crisis or the unemployment crisis all by himself.
And then, trying to prove that Obama is even worse than Jimmy Carter — even worse than Jimmy Carter! — Kuhner makes this curious claim:
Most importantly, Mr. Carter had respect for the dignity and integrity of the presidency. He never trashed his opponents the way Mr. Obama does.
Really? Maybe Mr. Kuhner is too young to remember Carter, and didn’t bother to check his claim, or maybe he just got carried away. But I can remember October 1980, when President Carter repeatedly said that the election of Ronald Reagan would be “a catastrophe” that would mean an America
separated, black from white, Jew from Christian, North from South, rural from urban.
Liberal columnist Anthony Lewis asked in the New York Times, “Has there ever been a campaign as vacuous, as negative, as whiny? Probably so — somewhere back in the mists of the American Presidency. But it would take a good deal of research to come up with anything like Jimmy Carter’s performance in the campaign of 1980.” The venerable Hugh Sidey wrote in Time magazine, “The wrath that escapes Carter’s lips about racism and hatred when he prays and poses as the epitome of Christian charity leads even his supporters to protest his meanness.”
Obama is a big spender who portrays himself as a “beyond left and right” above-the-fray president trying to work with everyone while demonizing his opponents. But let’s not forget the meanness of Jimmy Carter and the spendthrift record of George W. Bush in seeking to establish Obama’s uniqueness.
Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict
Did you notice in President Obama’s speech on July 31, 2011 that he said cuts would be made in a 10 yr period but because of our sensitive economy we would spared in the near future? Will cuts ever come or is the government addicted to spending too much?
The first time a deal passed, a predecessor of mine made the case for a balanced approach by saying this: “Would you rather reduce deficits and interest rates by raising revenue from those who are not now paying their fair share, or would you rather accept larger budget deficits, higher interest rates, and higher unemployment? And I think I know your answer.” Those words were spoken by Ronald Reagan. But today, many Republicans in the House refuse to consider this kind of balanced approach.
The Top 10 Percent of Earners Paid 70 Percent of Federal Income Taxes 
Taxes per Household Have Risen Dramatically
Federal Revenues Have More Than Tripled Since 1965
The Daily Hatch 