01 December 2010

The Fab One: TAXMAN!

If you try to drive, I will tax Main Street...


Today we have Dear Leader 'negotiating' with the GOP re. precisely who gets fleeced after January 1st... this on top of $670B in wreckless Obama tax increases already.  

And if he does succeed in allowing Bush tax cuts to expire on the entrepreneurial class that Reagan said 'create most or all of the job growth' in the US -but whom Obama plainly considers class enemies- the feeble American economy will sure-as-you're-born be plunging straight into cardiac-arrest mode...

Washington Examiner (highlights RR):

The Obama administration is sending in high-ranking mediators in hopes of ending its stalemate with congressional Republicans over extending the Bush-era tax cuts. 
.......
The disagreement between the two parties over who should continue to get a tax cut has turned into a high-stakes game of chicken, with neither side willing to budge. 

Most Democrats want the current tax cuts extended to individuals earning less than $200,000 or couples making less than $250,000. Republicans are insisting the cuts be extended to everyone, saying it would help revive the fragile economy. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that if the new round of negotiations fails to produce an agreement, he will introduce a bill that would extend tax cuts only to the lower-income taxpayers.


Of course Obama is blaming his desire to bleed those he perceives as "rich" on the dubious ambition of reducing a federal deficit he and his own congressional allies tripled in just one year... this while ignoring clear historical precedent that proves total revenues could grow significantly under the real stimulus of a tax cut on those who employ people in this country.

Peter Ferrera (ex. Reagan WH Office of Policy Administration) writing in American Spectator (highlights RR) labels Obamanomics' revenue-side schemes Tax Piracy... while ineffectual and even deeply damaging:
...President Obama has consistently followed exactly the opposite of every plank of Reaganomics. As a consequence, we can rightly expect that America will now suffer exactly the opposite results, unless those economic policies are quickly overturned by new Congressional majorities. 

In 1983, President Reagan's third year, his tax rate cuts became fully effective, and real GDP zoomed upward over the first 4 quarters of recovery by 7.7%. That recovery flowered into a generation-long, 25-year economic boom, interrupted only by two short, shallow recessions, following President Bush's budget deal increasing tax rates in 1990, and the 9/11 terror attack in 2001. 

Art Laffer and Steve Moore have rightly called this Reagan boom "the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of the planet." Indeed, more wealth was created in America during this 25 year boom, from 1983 to 2007, than in all the prior 200 years of American history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined. That is why Steve Forbes has rightly called it an "economic Golden Age." 

The mirror image opposite of this economic performance would be the natural, logical result of following the mirror image opposite of Reagan's economic program, including the counterproductive incentive effects of Obama's comprehensive federal tax rate increases, the costs and burdens of Obama's reregulation hitting next year, and the continued drain of private sector resources due to President Obama's supposedly stimulative spending increases and deficits. 

Laffer explains: 
[W]hen the U.S. economy comes to 2011, the train's going to come off the tracks…. The tax boundary that will occur on January 1, 2011 tells me that GDP growth in 2010 will be some 6% to 8% higher than GDP growth in 2011. 
A year on year decline from trend of some 6% to 8% in GDP growth would represent a larger collapse than occurred in 2008 and early 2009. We see signs of that already even in this year's economy, which, again just the opposite of Reagan's performance, should be the peak economic year in President Obama's reign of error. 

Economic growth is in a tailspin, falling from 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, to 3.7% in the first quarter this year, to 1.6% in the second quarter. Unemployment is rising again, with the economy continuing to lose jobs every month. 

The stock market has been long stalled, mired 30% below its record highs over 14000 in the Dow. This weak economy couldn't be a worse time to raise Federal tax rates across the board. 

With President Obama's current economic policies, the probability of a renewed, double-dip recession is over 100%...


The GOP caving to this politically-feeble would-be redistributor would be a very bad sign of things to come... let's hope Boehner, Cantor, and McConnell can stick to the proven Reaganite principles they must uphold without exception if there's any hope still of turning this ship away from the falls.

More background on Reaganomics -which gave this country eight of the best years it's ever seen- vs Obamanomics... a comprehensively flawed set of policies that has America careening towards the fate of the Weimar Republic -here-