Stephen Colbert has balls

[Admiral_N8]

Incorrect the recession ending had little or nothing to do with tax cuts, in fact the bulk of that money goes overseas. Most recoveries in economics are consumption driven, meaning as of right now we are buying more stuff. The problem was largely to do with Sept 11th, the War and several other smaller issues that were driving consumer confidence down.

Tax cuts=More money in the rich people and consumer pockets means cheaper and more goods, so consumers who have more money are able to buy more goods at a lower price increasing revenues from sales tax.

Of course thats my opinion, and you disagree thats all.

 

[Mr Sparkle]

1) He didnt do that much to research new fuel or do anything to free us from foreign oil.

2) We are still in a recession??? And the tax cuts did help the economy, remember all that huge growth recently?? remember?

1.- oh, OK phew! yeah, that's true.
2.- yes you are, the economy has had no HUGE growth, and it's been more of a recovery than a growth.

 

[The Overlord]

Tax cuts=More money in the rich people and consumer pockets means cheaper and more goods, so consumers who have more money are able to buy more goods at a lower price increasing revenues from sales tax.

Of course thats my opinion, and you disagree thats all.

Not any of that matters in the long run, the huge debt Bush has created is a time bomb that will go off in a few years.

 

[sinewave]

He didnt have to tolerate that skit, he could have left, but he chose to stay

But people are saying Bush doesnt tolerate questioning and criticism etc....but obviously Bush does, more so than any other president has that I can think of.

Look at all the stuff he puts up with...thats called tolerating, doesnt mean he has to like it or adress it, just means he has to put up with it.

have any other presidents stormed out of a room while being lampooned? no, so how can you say he tolerates more than any other pres. clinton got more than his share of crticism. how did he fail to tolerate it any less than bush. quit suckling at his dirty, oil-covered teet and admit you're wrong, for once. and you call me arrogant?

 

[Backdrifter]

Admiral Nate is hilariously devouted to Mr. Bush. This is pure comedy. I really hope that is him in his avatar.

 

[ShadowBoxing]

Tax cuts=More money in the rich people and consumer pockets means cheaper and more goods, so consumers who have more money are able to buy more goods at a lower price increasing revenues from sales tax.

Of course thats my opinion, and you disagree thats all.

No I just told you where that tax cut money went...it went overseas, it had nothing to do with the consumerism

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The Bush tax cuts have contributed to revenues dropping in 2004 to the lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950, and have been a major contributor to the dramatic shift from large projected budget surpluses to projected deficits as far as the eye can see.
The tax cuts have conferred the most benefits, by far, on the highest-income households — those least in need of additional resources — at a time when income already is exceptionally concentrated at the top of the income spectrum.
The design of these tax cuts was ill-conceived, resulting in significantly less economic stimulus than could have been accomplished for the same budgetary cost. In part because the tax cuts were not as effective as alternative measures would have been, job creation during this recovery has been notably worse than in any other recovery since the end of World War II.

Over the 10-year period from 2005 through 2014, the direct costs of the enacted and proposed tax cuts would total $2.8 trillion. The cost would equal 2.1 percent of the economy in 2014.
From 2005 through 2014, the increased interest payments on the debt that result from the tax cuts would amount to $1.1 trillion. The interest payments would grow steadily with each passing year and in 2014 would equal $218 billion — or 1.2 percent of the economy. This amount alone is as large a share of the economy as the government now spends on all programs and activities under the Departments of Education, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, and State combined.
Considering both the direct costs of the tax cuts and the associated increase in interest payments, the tax cuts would increase deficits by nearly $4 trillion between 2005 and 2014.
Over the next 75 years, the cost of these tax cuts — assuming they are made permanent — would be more than the combined shortfall in the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust funds.

• The one-fifth of households in the middle of the income spectrum will receive an average tax cut of $647.

• The top one percent of households will receive tax cuts averaging almost $35,000 — or 54 times as much as that received on average by those in the middle of the income spectrum.

• Households with incomes above $1 million will receive tax cuts averaging about $123,600. The tax cuts for millionaires will cause their after-tax income to jump by 6.4 percent, nearly three times the percentage increase received by the middle fifth.

Table 3
Distribution of Tax-Cut Benefits in 2004
(reflects tax cuts enacted since 2001)
Income Class
Average tax cut
% increase in after-tax income
% share of tax cut​

Middle 20 percent

$647​

2.3%​

8.9%​

Top one percent

$34,992​

5.3%​

24.2%​

Over $1 million

$123,592​

6.4%​

15.3%​

Source: Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center

Table 4
Average Value of Tax-Cut Benefits in 2004
Income Class
Three
“Middle-Class” Provisions​

All Other Tax-Cut Provisions
Middle 20 percent

$547
$100​

Top one percent

$1,320
$33,672​

Source: Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center

The Administration’s Hesitant Support of Provisions That Help
Lower-Income Households

​

The Administration has worked hard to create the impression that its tax cuts benefit all families, including those of modest means. In most cases, however, the Administration has accepted tax cuts for lower-income families only under pressure. When it has had the opportunity to initiate such tax cuts, it has consistently rejected them.

For example, when promoting his 2001 tax-cut plan in his first months in office, President Bush emphasized the benefits for low-income families with children by using an example of a waitress earning $25,000. As it turned out, the waitress he mentioned would have received no tax cut (or a small tax cut if she had significant child care costs) because the President’s proposal provided no relief to families that owed no income tax but paid significant amounts of payroll tax. The Administration received substantial criticism in early 2001 on this score, and it ultimately agreed to Congressional changes to its child tax credit proposal that provided significant aid to the waitress in the President’s example and to millions of other low- and moderate- income working families with children.

A similar story played out in 2003. The President proposed accelerating most of the income tax cuts enacted in 2001 that were scheduled to phase in over time, but he rejected accelerating the child tax credit provision enacted in 2001 that is of benefit to low- and modest-income working families. A front-page story in The New York Times called attention to this omission the day after the 2003 tax bill was signed into law, generating a torrent of criticism. The Administration shifted positions in the face of this criticism, voicing support for accelerating the provision in question. But the Administration expended little effort on this score, and the acceleration has not been enacted.

Job Creation​

A principal Administration justification for its tax cuts, particularly over the past year, has been their importance for job generation. The tax bills passed by Congress were somewhat less inefficient at stimulating the economy than the President’s original proposals. Even so, the results in this area have been poor.

• The Administration’s February 2004 Economic Report of the President itself noted that: “The performance of employment in this recovery has lagged that in the typical recovery and even that in the ‘jobless recovery’ of 1990-1991.”

• Employment remains substantially below its level at the start of the downturn, an unparalleled development this far into a post-World War II recovery. (Substantial job growth typically occurs by this point.) As of March 2004, there were still two million fewer jobs than when employment last peaked in March 2001.

For three years, the Administration has been claiming its tax cuts would boost employment. But for three years, actual job growth has fallen far short of Administration expectations. For example, since the summer of 2003, the Economic Policy Institute has been comparing actual job growth to the amount of job growth the Administration predicted would occur with the passage of the 2003 tax-cut bill. The Administration predicted that with the passage of the tax-cut measure, 5.5 million jobs would be created in the 18 months from June 2003 through December 2004. In the first nine months of this 18-month period, a relatively modest 689,000 jobs were created, just 13 percent of the Administration’s projection.

Undermining Future Growth​

<FONT face=Arial size=2>Over time, the tax cuts will become even less effective at generating economic growth. In the medium term, the tax cuts are likely to have little effect on the size of the economy, despite costing hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Studies by both the CBO and the Joint Committee on </B>

History has shown that the &#8220;trickle down theory&#8221; does not work. Hoover tried the &#8220;trickle down theory&#8221; (his words) to solve the economic problems the last few years of his only term when the greatest economic depression this country has ever faced began. It did not work and things got worse. Roosevelt got into office, raised taxes on the rich, created jobs for the poor and turned things around. Reagan employed the failed theory again in the &#8216;80&#8217;s and again it did not work. The rich got richer, but the poor got poorer and so did the economy. Bush Sr., with no vision of his own, continued the failed policy of his immediate predecessor. Clinton took a more progressive approach and turned the model upside down. Instead of making the rich richer in the hope that they will spend that money and thus create demand and therefore jobs, he created a tax environment that encouraged the creation of jobs and created an economic environment where everyone could get rich, not just a few, and it worked. Lots of jobs and lots of new millionaires were created while he was in office. Bush Jr. came in and once again applied the old trickle down model and immediately created a need to raise the debt to pay for an unneeded tax cut in 2001. Predictably the nation is lost jobs and there are fewer millionaires. Not learning from his past mistakes Bush pushed through yet another tax cut in 2003. He is not learning from his mistakes.

While it is a great sound bite, the facts show that the Republican &#8220;tax and spend&#8221; rhetoric about Democrats is not based on the facts. The facts do show that it takes a Democratic President to control and reduce spending. The truth is that the Republicans are the party of &#8220;borrow and spend&#8221;. They hate taxes, but love to spend; their solution is to put off till later paying for our security today, they prefer to see our children pay our taxes. Neo-Conservative thinking has run up over a 7 trillion dollar debt that will not be paid off for a generation or more, and it is still increasing at a record setting rate with no end to the increases in sight.

In 2002 the debt tax was eighteen cents out of every federal tax dollar. This tax is used to pay the interest on the existing national debt, and puts nothing toward principal. If Conservatives really want to lower our taxes, they should lower the debt tax. That would insure a permanent tax cut for the whole country (but it would not help them with their apparent goal to further concentrate the nation&#8217;s wealth in the hands of a few).

In his book Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, economist Thomas Sowell fleshes out his criticism that the term "trickle down" is a mischaracterization of conservative economic views:

"There have been many economic theories over the centuries, accompanied by controversies among different schools of economists. But one of the most politically prominent economic theories today is one that has never existed among economists - the "trickle down" theory.

"People who are politically committed to policies of redistributing income and who tend to emphasize the conflicts between business and labor, rather than their mutual interdependence, often accuse those opposed to them of believing that benefits must be given to the wealthy in general or to business in particular, in order that these benefits will eventually "trickle down" to the masses of ordinary people. But no recognized economist of any school of thought has ever had any such theory or made any such proposal. It is a straw man. It cannot be found in even the most voluminous and learned histories of economic theories.

"Proposals to reduce taxes on capital gains, for example, are often opposed politically by saying that those who make such proposals believe in a "trickle down" theory of economics. In reality, economic processes work in the directly opposite way from that depicted by those who imagine that profits first benefit business owners and that benefits only belatedly trickle down to workers.

"When an investment is made, whether to build a railroad or to open a new restaurant, the first money is spent hiring people to do the work. Without that, nothing happens. Even when one person decides to operate a store or hamburger stand without employees, that person must first pay somebody to deliver the goods that are going to be sold. Money goes out first to pay expenses and then comes back as profits later - if at all. The high rate of failure of new businesses makes painfully clear that there is nothing inevitable about the money coming back.

"Even with successful and well-established businesses, years may elapse between the initial investment and the return of earnings. From the time when an oil company begins spending money to explore for petroleum to the time when the first gasoline resulting from that exploration comes out of a pump at a filling station, a decade may have passed. In the meantime, all sorts of employees have been paid - geologists, engineers, refinery workers, truck drivers. It is only afterwards that profits begin coming in. [...]

"In short, the sequence of payments is directly the opposite of what is assumed by those who talk about a "trickle-down" theory. The workers must be paid first and then the profits flow upward later - if at all." (Basic Economics, pp. 388-389)

 

[Darthphere]

Admiral Nate is hilariously devouted to Mr. Bush. This is pure comedy. I really hope that is him in his avatar.

And some type of Narcissist.

 

[ShadowBoxing]

Admiral Nate is hilariously devouted to Mr. Bush. This is pure comedy. I really hope that is him in his avatar.

It is him...I thought it was some over the top rocker, I was wrong

 

[Backdrifter]

Tax cuts=More money in the rich people and consumer pockets means cheaper and more goods, so consumers who have more money are able to buy more goods at a lower price increasing revenues from sales tax.

Of course thats my opinion, and you disagree thats all.

That is the dumbest logic I have ever heard as far as economics go. I am amazed evertime at how they were able to sell Reaganomics to the public. It is almost as amazing as Britney Spears selling 38 million albums.

 

[Backdrifter]

It is him...I thought it was some over the top rocker, I was wrong

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!
*gasps for air*

.....bwhhahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!

 

[ShadowBoxing]

That is the dumbest logic I have ever heard as far as economics go. I am amazed evertime at how they were able to sell Reaganomics to the public. It is seriously amazing.

^read SBs incredibly long and unfinished post

 

[Admiral_N8]

1.- oh, OK phew! yeah, that's true.
2.- yes you are, the economy has had no HUGE growth, and it's been more of a recovery than a growth.

1) whatd you think i was going to say?

2) no huge growth? Look at the numbers the last 2 years.

 

[sinewave]

I never said Clinton took out the Taliban...you said in 6 years if we had a Dem we'd be farther ahead in different energy...and I said what makes you think that, judging by what Clinton didnt do. Never said Clinton took out the Taliban.

The tax cuts made the rich get richer yeah, and it helped bring about huge growth and got us out of a recession. So I agree, the tax cuts did help.

How come Al Gore did as little as he did during his 8 years as VP?

i misunderstood that clinton statement because you didn't articulate it well enough.

we're still in a recession and we've got an enormous federal deficit that future generations will have to struggle with all because of a lousy decision to start a lousy war by a lousy president. what a leader!

he's did do some good, but it looks like he's going to do a lot more now that he's out of office since he doesn't have to wade through as much political muck as when he was in office.

 

[Backdrifter]

And some type of Narcissist.

Yeah, his avatar gives me that impression as well. I wonder if he has a MySpace. I'd love to take a look at his photo album. I bet he has lots of pictures of just him with those snazzy sunglasses on

 

[sinewave]

I'M NOT GOING TO BOTHER WITH SCANNING THROUGH THIS WHOLE THREAD, BUT........AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO DIDN'T FIND THAT THE LEAST BIT FUNNY? HELL, PRES. BUSH HIMSELF DID A BETTER JOB AT CRACKING JOKES THAN COLBERT.

if you think that then you must not have understood colbert's jokes and/or have no clue about comedic timing or delivery.

 

[Admiral_N8]

have any other presidents stormed out of a room while being lampooned? no, so how can you say he tolerates more than any other pres. clinton got more than his share of crticism. how did he fail to tolerate it any less than bush. quit suckling at his dirty, oil-covered teet and admit you're wrong, for once. and you call me arrogant?

I say he tolerates more criticism and questioning because he does, he has to put up with much more stuff, much more criticism than any other president...you know, since most of the country and the entire world criticizes him and questions him

I am sure you would agree with that.

 

[Darthphere]

if you think that then you must not have understood colbert's jokes and/or have no clue about comedic timing or delivery.

I honestly dont think Colbert went with the intent of telling jokes. He got the president and he got him good.

 

[Admiral_N8]

i misunderstood that clinton statement because you didn't articulate it well enough.

we're still in a recession and we've got an enormous federal deficit that future generations will have to struggle with all because of a lousy decision to start a lousy war by a lousy president. what a leader!

he's did do some good, but it looks like he's going to do a lot more now that he's out of office since he doesn't have to wade through as much political muck as when he was in office.

My statement was pretty clear, I was talking about the energy and mentioned Clinton and somehow you made the connection to the Taliban??

How are we still in a recession?

 

[Backdrifter]

I say he tolerates more criticism and questioning because he does, he has to put up with much more stuff, much more criticism than any other president...you know, since most of the country and the entire world criticizes him and questions him

I am sure you would agree with that.

You say it because he does, huh? What else do you say because he does? Or because you say things, they are? Hmmmm....

 

[sinewave]

Admiral Nate is hilariously devouted to Mr. Bush. This is pure comedy. I really hope that is him in his avatar.

it is. he's admittted it. i picture someone who looks like that to drive an old beat-up trans-am and wear long leather trench-coats all year long while thinking he's god's gift to the ladies.

 

[Admiral_N8]

Yeah, his avatar gives me that impression as well. I wonder if he has a MySpace. I'd love to take a look at his photo album. I bet he has lots of pictures of just him with those snazzy sunglasses on

Thanks for the creepy attention

 

[Backdrifter]

it is. he's admittted it. i picture someone who looks like that to drive an old beat-up trans-am and wear long leather trench-coats all year long while thinking he's god's gift to the ladies.

Only he talks too much.

 

[Backdrifter]

Thanks for the creepy attention

So I'm right then, eh? Eh? Eh? Awwwright!

 

[sinewave]

I say he tolerates more criticism and questioning because he does, he has to put up with much more stuff, much more criticism than any other president...you know, since most of the country and the entire world criticizes him and questions him

I am sure you would agree with that.

i agree that he receives an enormous amount of criticism, but i believe he's earned about 80-90% of it. plus, it's not like much of it actually reaches him. he's way too sheltered by his staff and family.

 

[Mr Sparkle]

I hope he doesn't have a my space, my retinas would instantly implode.

sorry N8 old buddy, you're kind of color blind