Believe it or not, I liked this Joe Klein piece about deficit attention disorder so much that I wasn’t sure what part to excerpt. I think this really is the best paragraph:
here is, for example, Glenn Hubbard, who was featured on the New York Times op-ed page recently in defense of the deficit commission, describing the problem this way: “We have designed entitlements for a welfare state we cannot afford.” This is the same Glenn Hubbard who served as George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser when Dick Cheney was saying that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” One imagines that if Hubbard was so concerned about deficits, he might have resigned in protest from an Administration dedicated to creating them. But, no, he’s here to speak truth to the powerless — to the middle-class folks whose major asset, their home, was trashed by financial speculators, thereby wrecking their retirement plans and creating the consumer implosion we’re now suffering. Hubbard is telling them they now have to take yet another hit, on their old-age pensions and health insurance, for the greater good.
The whole piece is good, touching on nearly all the important points in this debate. I don’t have much to add.
El Cruzado
Methinks a few pundits confuse the Greater Good with the Good of the Greater.
And of course they all think they’re Great.
Just Some Fuckhead
Joe Klein is shrill.
Jennifer
As I’ve said before at my joint, for most of the people in the country, Social Security and Medicare are investments in the same way a home is. Stuff like wars of choice, unfunded tax cuts for billionaires and the like are like the shiny, superfluous boat they just bought last year and have only used 4 times that’s parked in the driveway. After the bottom drops out of the economy, conservatives rush to tell them that they won’t be able to hang on to the house, because they have to keep up on the boat payments. When of course, any rational person in the situation would sell the boat rather than flush 20 years’ worth of investment in a home down the drain.
The disconnect between reality and the conservative mind is most jarring when it comes to accurately describing or predicting how most people do and will actually behave when trying to protect their rational self-interests.
c u n d gulag
This is like the mugger who beat the shit out of you, making you pay for the damage your face did to his knuckles.
Fuck these people. Not enough bad shit can happen to them. But nothing bad will happen to them.
Sad…
Elizabelle
RE Glenn Hubbard:
You must see Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job” for the extended interview Hubbard granted the filmmaker and then you can see him wishing like hell, in real time, that he hadn’t because Ferguson was asking seriously inconvenient questions.
(I also loved that Ferguson managed to include a video clip of Hubbard in the Oval Office with GW Bush. Also in the frame: Lawrence Lindsey and Scooter Libby, neither of whom Ferguson ever identifies.)
Here’s the NYT movie review on “Inside Job.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/movies/08inside.html
Go see it, and be prepared to depart the theatre saying “we are so fucked.”
Brick Oven Bill
Re: Truth and ‘Just Pay for Them’
Man has evolved with three principle methods of communication ordered in increasing levels of biological sophistication: Dance-Language-Mathematics. Klein demonstrates either a complete lack of grasp of Mathematics, or a gross level of deceit. The Greeks taught us that Truth is demonstrated by the right triangle, described by the Pythagorean Theorem. Mathematics are still very valuable today. We now demonstrate Klein’s error and/or deceit:
Obama’s proposed tax increase on ‘the rich’ is 39.6%-35% = 4.6% increase.
This tax bracket generates $600 billion in annual revenue.
Thus the theoretical increase in revenue stream is:
0.046 times $600 billion equals $27.6 billion.
In practice this would generate less money due to behavioral changes.
Now, DougJ’s President is running a large and growing budget deficit currently around $1.4 trillion. Again, behold Mathematics:
$27.6 billion divided by $1.4 trillion equals 0.019, or 1.9 percent.
In conclusion, 98.1% today’s deficit will not be affected by the proposed tax hikes, and things are rapidly getting worse due to the nature of democracy, clearly explained by Socrates, a noted Greek. Socrates teaches us that democracy quickly devolves into tyranny.
Therefore, Balloon Juice should come out in full support of the Tea Party Movement, as demonstrated by holding one of those fund raising drives for me.
BR
@Elizabelle:
Seconded.
Edit: Check out this talk by Aussie economist Steve Keen (one of the few who predicted the crash before it happened). Two points are interesting – first, the model he presents shows how the banking system as it works today inherently appears to stabilize at low unemployment/inflation before exploding, and more importantly, it is inherent in the system that the banksters end up with all the money. He concludes this through straightforward economic modeling, which is why it’s interesting.
Elizabelle
Hubbard and his ilk are egregious. The NY Times business section addressed “Ethics for Economists” largely because of econo-ideologues like him.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/ethics-for-economists/
Filmmaker Charles Ferguson (Inside Job, An Inconvenient Truth) took on economists for hire — including Larry Summers — in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. (linked within Nancy Folbre’s economix blogpost, above and here:)
“Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics”
http://chronicle.com/article/Larry-Summersthe/124790/
kay
@Elizabelle:
Transcript, where, helpfully, Hubbard brings up “depositions” unbidden:
(Soundbite of film, “Inside Job”)
Mr. FERGUSON: Do they include other financial services firms?
Mr. GLENN HUBBARD (Dean, Columbia Business School): Possibly.
Mr. FERGUSON: You don’t remember?
Mr. HUBBARD: This isn’t a deposition, sir. I was polite enough to give you time, foolishly I now see. But you have three more minutes. Give it your best shot.
Maybe Klein had space constraints, so couldn’t reference the full horror. Government + business + academia.
I don’t know which category the American Enterprise Institute, where he also pulls down a paycheck, falls in – all three? None of the above?
Ailuridae
@Brick Oven Bill:
Obama’s proposed tax increase on ‘the rich’ is 39.6%-35% = 4.6% increase.
This tax bracket generates $600 billion in annual revenue.
Thus the theoretical increase in revenue stream is:
0.046 times $600 billion equals $27.6 billion.
You’re spectacularly stupid. If a 35% bracket generates 600B in revenue and you want to solve for how much a 39.6% tax bracket would generated you don’t multiply 4.6% times the revenue generated from the 35% bracket. Instead you would multiply .396 against the total income that when when mutliplied by .35 yielded a tax base of 600B.
Alternately you could solve the following for x
35/600 = 39.6/x
where x is 678B and the difference is 78B nearly three times the result you suggested was the difference between the brackets. In a post that you lectured us all pedantically on mathematics you got really basic math wrong.
You’re a stupid fucker, aren’t you? Maybe you can be front paged. If not maybe you can go away until you aren’t so repellently ignorant.
asiangrrlMN
This post is depressing to the extreme because it just doesn’t matter. The divide is going to worsen, and the government will be cheering it on every step of the way (especially the Republicans).
On the other hand, I read the title as “Tunch to the Powerless”, which made me smile.
The Grand Panjandrum
DougJ tell me what you like about the penultimate paragraph in Klein’s piece? Do you really believe that Erskine Bowles is center-left? Maybe I’m being overly critical here but this is why liberals get pissed at the mainstream media. The Overton Window is now shifted so far to the right that Erskine Bowles is center left? Pete Peterson a “nominal Republican”? Whoa! This framing is all wrong and an important distinction that does indeed make a difference. Klein is very unclear here and is he inferring that Pete Peterson is also center left because he is a “nominal Republican”?
Yes I think Joe is on the right track but that paragraph needs to be cleared up. I would not put either one of those guys in the center left category. I know that is Joe editorializing and it bugs the shit out of me that a Villager would write something like …. oh, I get it … he’s writing like a Villager. That clears it up. Never mind.
Corner Stone
Kinda OT but wow. WTF?
And this quote doesn’t seem ominous at all:
Consumer Risks Feared as Health Law Spurs Mergers
Brick Oven Bill
You really suck at math Ailuridae. Fortunately for you I have the day off of work and therefore can enlighten you. Increasing the tax rate 4.6 % on an income stream of $600 billion would have the theoretical result as explained above.
You are describing a ratio between two rates:
39.6% divided by 35% equals around 1.13 but this has nothing to do with anything. As an example 59.6% divided by 55% equals 1.08, but would still yield the theoretical 0.046 times $600 billion equals what I have previously said. And if you were to raise taxes from 0 to 4.6%, you would have infinity% per your pico-brained scheme. You can ask DougJ, who is some kind of Mathematics professor, or something.
Now even if you had a point, which you do not, $78 billion out of $1.4 trillion is nothing, and leads us to Phase 3 of what will hereby be defined as the Humanity Cycle.
Elizabelle
@kay:
Thank you. Listening away now.
arguingwithsignposts
OT, but while everyone was distracted by the Snowbilly Snooki in the Times Magazine, Jon Meacham was failing at analogies (Hoekstra-level fail) in the Book Review. (blog whoring link warning)
Ailuridae
@Brick Oven Bill:
No dumbass, if 35% generated 600B from a sum X, 39.6% generates 678B from the same sum.
We’ll just do this at 5% intervals to show how much of an idiot you are
@0% = 0$
@5% = 85.7B
@10% = 171.4B
@15% = 257.1B
@20% = 342.8B
@25% = 428.5B
@30% = 514.2B
@35% = 600.0B
You want everyone to believe that the next nearly 5% jump will generate a difference of ~1/3 the previous revenue jumps. We’re not arguing Laffer curves here – this is simple mathematics.
You took 4.6% of 35% to get to 27B which is why your number is almost exactly off by a factor of three. Basic, embarrassing math error.
You have no idea what you are talking about. As always. And when you were demonstrably proven false you doubled down and made even less sense. I suspect you’ll be on the front page soon. Or maybe you’ll get a page at the Atlantic.
Napoleon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Peterson was in Nixon’s cabinet. That doesn’t sound very nominal to me.
kay
@Elizabelle:
Anytime.
I heard Hubbard yesterday. It was nice, because it’s a preview of the coming conservative talking points.
He’s trying to cement this distinction between the “welfare state” and a “safety net”.
Conservatives know one of those phrases is negative, if you’re a dumb-ass, and that’s “welfare state”, while “safety net” is very appealing. Both of those phrases have an actual, real-world definition, but that’s not how he’s using them. He’s using them to mislead. Nice, for an academic, huh?
It’s not even subtle. He’s hammering it home. He’s Luntz with academic credentials, basically. I wouldn’t be surprised if they polled on it.
Brick Oven Bill
Inanimate objects have greater Mathematical abilities than Ailuridae. Behold the above differences in rates presented by him, with the Mathematical relevance of bees flying out of a witch’s butt. Now consider the rates being considered by DougJ’s President:
@0.046 = $27.6 Billion
@0.046 = $27.6 Billion
@0.046 = $27.6 Billion
@0.046 = $27.6 Billion
@0.046 = $27.6 Billion
@0.046 = $27.6 Billion
@0.046 = $27.6 Billion
@0.046 = $27.6 Billion
At this time, I must depart, to attend a Teabagger barbeque.
alwhite
WAIT! Joke line & quality thinking?!? That would have worked ina Star Trek episode where Spock needs to confuse the computer so that it can’t maintain control over the ship!
I suppose, it had to happen sooner or later. I can’t remember the last time I was glad I read one of his pieces. Thanks.
Cole used to occasionally point out a decent piece on a wingnut site with the label “we read them so you don’t have to”. This is almost in that realm.
Ailuridae
@Brick Oven Bill:
Yep you’re stupid. You’re taking 4.6% of 35 (1.61) and declaring that the revenue difference generated by that 1.61% increase is the same as the revenue generated by a 4.6% increase. Just how fucking stupid are you?
I’m going to have to bookmark this thread for the next time your tired, useless self shows up in a thread.
jeffreyw
A whispered Truth, perhaps?
JAHILL10
@Ailuridae: I love you, man.
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: 2 questions, how is Homer? and any ideas about what to do with a ton a apples that I have.
Kyle
@Ailuridae:
Go easy on BOB. He’s gunning for a commentator spot on Fox News, so he has to demonstrate a track record of egregious innumeracy, parochialism and stupidity in the service of right-wing ideology.
Of course, unless he’s a blonde with big tits, that still won’t be enough to get him the job.
goblue72
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: BoB is a teabagger AI cooked up by the geeks at the MIT Media Lab after a Jolt fueled all-nighter playing WoW. If it feels like you’re arguing with a computer, it’s because you are.
MikeJ
@Ailuridae: BOB’s argument seems to be that we should tax the rich more heavily, since the added income from this tiny increase isn’t enough.
Jamie
good point, the press seems to think nothing happened on the debt issue before Obama was elected.
BGinCHI
Every time Hubbard is on the shitty Marketplace show on NPR I want to drive off the road and smash into a crowd of Republican hypocrites.
We just don’t really have those here.
When Joe Klein nails it, you wonder how the Dems can’t get their message across.
jeffreyw
@schrodinger’s cat: Homer’s doing great! Still hasn’t won over Bea, tho he hasn’t given up!
Apple butter!
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: Now I need,
Photos of Homer and a recipe for apple butter.
Dee Loralei
@jeffreyw: I love pics of your Brittanys.
Alluridae, aren’t you a professional poker player? Or am I misremembering? I trust your math. My son amazes people how quick he does math in his head, and a lot of that is from playing a lot of poker. We’re going to the Soooner Nation for Turkeyday and we’re planning a few trips to the Indian Casino in Norman, so he can gamble legally.
And GoBlue, that may be the most profound thing anyone’s ever said explaining BoB, good job, you!
Jamie
well If a banks profits from it’s extorting the public purse from complete imploding, I want some of that action too.
Ouch, the Houston Texans just imploded. They may need a bailout too.
Mike G
@MikeJ:
Using BOB’s math, I’m -3694.68% sure of this.
Ruckus
@Ailuridae:
I have to give you credit for at least trying to teach this person something. But you have to realize that with no educational basis to start with, it’s a lost cause. 2 points on the humanity scale though for the effort.
jwb
BJ is really fucked up today on Firefox for Mac. The comment box doesn’t even appear.
jeffreyw
@schrodinger’s cat: You know what they say…
Apple butter? Takes time, is all.
Ruckus
Ok this is pretty cool. Mike G and I post at the same time and my comment gets appended to his?
This is what I wanted to post:
@Ailuridae:
I have to give you credit for at least trying to teach this person something. But you have to realize that with no educational basis to start with, it’s a lost cause. 2 points on the humanity scale though for the effort.
BGinCHI
@jwb: Yeah, but now it’s back.
Probably Cole broke it swearing at his TV while Ben Roethlisberger was picking his teeth out of the turf.
asiangrrlMN
@jeffreyw: I can attest to the deliciousness of said apple butter. And, I second the need for Homer pics.
Ruckus
@goblue72:
Could you make a computer do math that badly?
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I have to say, I think I liked it better when this thread was kinda broked.
jwb
@BGinCHI: You’re right!
jwb
@Ruckus: Plus, this BoB is obviously a sock puppet.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Pourquoi?
@jwb: DougJ being bored again, no doubt.
jeffreyw
@asiangrrlMN:
Here’s some Homer for ya.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Just to be argumentative. :) I’m still in a bit of a snarky mood, plus it’s cold in my bedroom cause of a draft I can’t find.
jwb
@asiangrrlMN: That was my thought, too.
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: Thanks!
Homer looks like a younger leaner Tunch.
jcricket
Stopped clock, twice a day, and all that.
I even thought Klein managed to avoid the whole “the left does it too” thing – his main beef with the Democrats is their penchant for deregulation (something I agree entirely contributed to this problem).
Of course there are easy solutions to Social Security that also don’t hurt the poor and middle class at all. Start taxing income over $250k, and eventually allow inflation to cause the lower-end wage cap to close the gap. Boom, problem solved, no benefit cuts, no retirement age increase.
There are even partial solutions to the Medicare problem without cutting into doctor/hospital profits – allow Medicare as the public option, at least for those 55 and up. Having younger/healthier people in Medicare would shore up the finances significantly.
Yeah, yeah, single payer, socialism, slipper slope – never gonna happen. But I love how we’re not discussing any of this. The only options are the table seem to be Soylent Green, or Soylent Red.
Citizen_X
Sort of on topic: Some communist says we should raise taxes on the rich, I guess to destroy capitalism. When asked about claims that taxing the Masters of the Universe more will make them go Galt, this guy says,
What does this guy know about business, anyway? And besides, trickle-down economics IS RIGHT THERE IN THE CONSTITUTION!
At least, that’s what BoB told me.
Ruckus
@jwb:
Bad math and bad breath or is it a clean sock?
James E. Powell
@Citizen_X:
Buffett is off a bit here. We’ve been waiting for trickle down to bring us prosperity since Reagan.
Anyone who argues that policies that increase the wealth of the ruling class will benefit to the working class is a liar.
Anyone who believes such arguments is an idiot.
BGinCHI
@Citizen_X: Dude, he invented the fucking buffet. Before he came along everyone had to eat at their assigned places with annoying servers bothering them every five seconds.
Show some respect forgodsakes.
Comrade Luke
@Citizen_X:
Reagan coined “trickle down” thirty fucking years ago, we’ve been going downhill the entire time it’s been implemented, yet the argument is still taken seriously. It’s really unbelievable.
Not only is trickle down wrong economically, it’s fucking insulting. I can’t believe no one has made that argument. “Trickle down? FUCK YOU! I’m not going to sit here and wait for your fucking table scraps”. Never happens though.
BTW, I realize there was a “boom” under Clinton, but the vast majority of that went to the rich anyway. Real wages haven’t risen at all.
BGinCHI
Buffet is really just responding to the lack of demand by pointing out the glaringly obvious to the amazingly selfish.
Supply side econ and its adherents (read: everyone on the right and some in blue dog land) works when wages are sufficient for demand to keep the system going, but when the producer overlords overheat capitalism to the point where wages (and now, jobs) are so low, they have created a dangerous imbalance.
Instead of fucking around with the minimum wage and some unemployment insurance, I wish we’d just tax the shit out of the rich and plow the money into infrastructure and investments, with the express goal of narrowing the gap between rich and poor.
And I’d call it Patriotic and American.
Oh, and fuck Arthur Laffer.
Triassic Sands
Excuse me, but the “middle-class folks” are not “the powerless” — because they exist in such numbers that they can determine the outcome of every election. Just because they choose to elect Republicans, who will screw them every time, doesn’t make them powerless; it makes them stupid.
The powerless, now as always, are the poor. Their numbers are not great enough to determine election outcomes, except in very close elections, and because of a variety of attributes that often accompany being poor (relatively uneducated, ignorant, apathetic) they often don’t exercise what little power they do have. There is no excuse for the poor not voting, but there are lots of reasons why they don’t.
J. Michael Neal
@Brick Oven Bill: @Ailuridae: You’re both morons, because you’re both doing the math right, you’re just using the figure of $600 billion to represent different thing. When he calls it a revenue stream, BoB is saying that that’s the income of the individuals in question, while Ailuridae is using it to represent the amount of tax raised from those same individuals.
One of you two is egregiously wrong on the facts, and I have no idea which one it is, but you both look like idiots talking past each other about math you’re doing correctly.
JWL
Joe is approaching, or has already arrived, in dinosaur land.
His sensitivity is touching.
priscianus jr
Tell it like it is, Joe!
Kat
The Billionaires Want More, More, More
But if you really want to depress yourself, go read what Chris Hedges wrote back in January.
Redshift
@J. Michael Neal:
It’s really not that hard to figure out. I didn’t even have to do any math, just look at BOB’s statement:
This is egregiously wrong. The current deficit is down from the previous year, and lower than Bush’s last budget.
asiangrrlMN
@jeffreyw: Awwwwww! Little Homer is so adorable!
@Yutsano: Oh. I can support that. I am argumentative all the damn time.
@schrodinger’s cat: Son of Tunch!
factsolife
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Sadly, the bit about Pete Peterson is even worse than you think. Klein writes that “Peterson … is in favor of higher taxes for the wealthy, … and even a provision that would tax the profits of private-equity moguls as regular income instead of capital gains, a proposal that his former partner at the Blackstone Group, Stephen Schwarzman, compared to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939.”
Does he mean this Pete Peterson? New York Times, 2/15/08:
Or maybe this one? Washington Post, 10/9/07:
Maybe Peterson has since changed his position, but I haven’t seen it.
xian
I think the term trickle-down dates to the 20s
Judas Escargot
@Brick Oven Bill:
At this time, I must depart, to attend a Teabagger barbeque.
…do they taste as bitter and gristly as they look on the teevee?
Ailuridae
@J. Michael Neal:
Try reading his initial post again before you start talking calling me being a moron.
When you write this
When he calls it a revenue stream, BoB is saying that that’s the income of the individuals in question, while Ailuridae is using it to represent the amount of tax raised from those same individuals.
that pretty plainly doesn’t jibe with this from BOB:
Obama’s proposed tax increase on ‘the rich’ is 39.6%-35% = 4.6% increase.
This tax bracket generates $600 billion in annual revenue.
Thus the theoretical increase in revenue stream is:
Italicized emphasis mine. BOB is his initial post is plainly claiming that 600B per annum is generated a year from the top tax bracket at 35%. No ambiguity whatsoever. BOB is using it to describe the amount raised from those individuals as well. If there is any ambiguity at all it is whether BOB means it to include only those individuals incomes in the top marginal tax bracket or the entirety of those individuals’ incomes in all bracke’ts.
BOB’s wrong, I’m right and you should work on your reading comprehension before calling me a moron.
James E. Powell
@Ailuridae:
BOB is his initial post is plainly claiming that 600B per annum is generated a year from the top tax bracket at 35%. No ambiguity whatsoever.
I can’t agree. There is some ambiguity in BOB’s initial post. Specifically, it is not perfectly clear whether the $600B is tax revenues generated from the top bracket or the total taxable income of the top bracket. I thought he was referring to the latter, but I can see that it is not perfectly clear.
Whatever ambiguity there may have been in BOB’s initial post is cleared up in his post @14 where he says
Increasing the tax rate 4.6 % on an income stream of $600 billion would have the theoretical result as explained above.
I have no idea where he got that $600B number from. Do you?
Mr. Furious
@The Grand Panjandrum: Labeling Erskine Bowles as “center left” was my big takeaway from the column as well.
It annoyed me so much that it neutered most everything else Klein wrote.
J. Michael Neal
@Ailuridae: What James said. You pretty clearly misinterpreted BoB’s comment. I figured it out on the first try; though it was ambiguous, the math worked that way. Post #14 made it absolutely clear that my reading was right. The trick is to at least assume that someone is doing the math right and figuring out what assumptions they would have to be using for that to be true. If the assumptions are pretty simple, as they were in this case, it’s generally a safe bet that those are the assumptions being used.
Or in the case of BoB, they may not be so much assumptions as disingenuous twistings of the facts. Still, that’s what to go after him on.
J. Michael Neal
@Mr. Furious: If you take a look at all of Bowles’ positions, and not just the ones in the news right now, “center-left” isn’t an egregious description. I could quibble about it, but it’s not enough to just dismiss anything the describer says.
Ailuridae
@James E. Powell:
I can’t agree. There is some ambiguity in BOB’s initial post. Specifically, it is not perfectly clear whether the $600B is tax revenues generated from the top bracket or the total taxable income of the top bracket. I thought he was referring to the latter, but I can see that it is not perfectly clear.
Wait, what? BOB’s initial post is perfectly clear. Again:
Obama’s proposed tax increase on ‘the rich’ is 39.6%-35% = 4.6% increase.:
This tax bracket generates $600 billion in annual revenue.
Thus the theoretical increase in revenue stream is
He’s talking about revenue generated from taxation. Plain as day. He realized he is totally fucked on this so later he tried to pretend that he was suggesting there was a total of 600B in individual income in the US subjected to the top marginal tax bracket. But yeah, that’s not correct.
James E. Powell
@Ailuridae:
We just disagree then. I think BOB’s sloppy writer. One who doesn’t really understand what he is talking about at times. I get the impression he is restating things that he has read or heard elsewhere and that he not quite getting it right.
You, on the other hand, seem to think he is an incompetent liar. I think you give him too much credit.
But none of that matters. I want to know the total number and total income of all persons (including married couples filing jointly) who would be affected by an increase in the top rate from 35% to 39.6%.
I also want to know why we don’t just make it an even 40%.
Ailuridae
@J. Michael Neal:
Well that’s an immensely charitable way to view BOB’s post and it completely ignores the sentence where BOB plainly writes
Obama’s proposed tax increase on ‘the rich’ is 39.6%-35% = 4.6% increase.:
This tax bracket generates $600 billion in annual revenue.
And you know what? That’s about all BOB got right in his initial post! And I am surprised other people don’t understand this a little better (it is disappointing to say the least). Here’s a “fun”Tax Policy center page on Federal Revenue in 2009
2.5T collected in 09 with 45%, or, 1.13T being from Federal income tax.
If BOB’s back tracking assumption is correct and their is only 600B in taxable individual income over 250K then that bracket (all individual income earned over 250K) would account for about 210B and all other income tax on income below 250K would amount to 900B in revenue. Well that’s pretty plainly not possible. But I am through trying to reason with folks so let’s look at some awesome number crunching our “good friends” at the Tax Foundation did for 2008. Here
So in 2008 the overall income tax collected in the US was 1.03T versus 1.13T for 2009. The top 1% (the tax bracket over 250K is typically said to “affect the top 2% of all earners) alone paid 392B in taxes. Let’s assume that the relationship between overall income tax collected and income collected from the top 1% is linear (we know that this isn’t the case as income is consolidating at the top but w/e) the amount that the top 1% alone paid in income taxes in 2009 was ~430B. So the folks in 1%-2% range would have to account for another 170B for BOB’s initial number to be correct for 2009 and about 130B for 10 or 100B going forward from that. So BOB’s initial number that 600B would be generated in 11 from the top 2% of earners incomes over 250K was likely right, he was then caught in a stupid math error and back tracked/lied. Amazingly, some people here who consider themselves numbers wonks came to his defense in a really dumb way,
FWIW, if you think that the top 2% of earners AGI is around 600B you need to understand some really basic stuff about income inequality in this country. This is like Simpson and Bowles thinking that Medicare, SS and Medicaid cost more in total than the amount of revenue collected by the government everywhere. Its plain budget ignorance.
For 2008 the Adjusted Gross Income of for the top 1% was 1.7T; for the top 5% is was 3T. If you thought that 600B was a plausible income for the top 2% to be taxed on you were at least off by a factor of three and more likely four.
The progressive blogosphere so bad with numbers it hurts.
J. Michael Neal
@Ailuridae: I never took any position on whether his facts were right or not. All I said is that you were being stupidly insistent that he had the *math* wrong long after it was perfectly clear that you were simply working from different facts. Going on and on and on about how he can’t multiply when it was obvious that he can was idiotic. Continuing to insist that your interpretation is the only clear one in his initial post after multiple people have told you that they came to a different conclusion about it than you did is more idiocy.
Continuing to insist that after post #14, when it became perfectly clear what he was talking about, was just moronic. With the number of things you can correctly roast BoB for, it’s dumb to ficus on something he got right. He was talking about income. As I said, that was apparent to me from the beginning. It only became more obvious, but you were too busy having the argument you wanted to have rather than one that would have made it obvious he was wrong. Honestly, it isn’t that hard to read the posts that you are trying to refute, but you, at best, skimmed over them after you decided that you knew what the problem was.
Ailuridae
@J. Michael Neal:
You keep dodging this initial statement:
Obama’s proposed tax increase on ‘the rich’ is 39.6%-35% = 4.6% increase.:
This tax bracket generates $600 billion in annual revenue.
And it is really obvious why b/c there is no ignoring BOB’s original intent. And the reason I am ignoring BOB’s post 14 is because it completely contradicts his initial post. You have chosen to take that as his obvious meaning despite the fact that in his initial post he writes something totally different and his initial post contained a close approximation of the revenue he said the government took in. How do you explain he plainly wrote that 600B was the revenue generated from the top 2% when it’s also very close to the truth?
BOB pedantically lectured people on math and then made a plainly obvious math error (multiplying the new tax rate against the product of the old tax rate and the initial taxable income rather than against the initial taxable income). Rather than admit he was wrong, he changed his story (directly contradicting his previous post when he plainly wrote that 600B in revenue was generated), started to back track and lie and left before he could be pinned down. This is SOP for BOB
You then misread his post and mine, pedantically called he and me morons, were corrected on his original post and have now doubled down. But yeah, keep calling me an idiot.
Mr. Furious
@J. Michael Neal: That might be true, but I have to look at this as a “What have you done for (to) me lately?” situation.
If Klein’s misframing lends credence to the impression that the trickle-down, regressive horseshit chairman’s mark from the Cat Food Commission is half from the “center-left” then the damage is done. And that’s really the only view of Bowles I’m presently concerned with, and the only one that matters.
If part of Bowles feels differently, fuck him for putting his name on that report.
Tom M
Ailuridae, FWIW, trying to explain, in glorious detail, why you’re correct and BoB, J Michael and whoever else is utterly wrong was a waste of your time but I quite enjoyed it.
The discussion has been that letting the tax rates revert on the top 2% would raise $680 billion over 10 years so the increase you discussed makes sense.
BoB’s an innumerate and J Mikey can’t read.
Nice work.
PWL
Shorter version of Glenn Hubbard: “Well, we fucked up, but you’re the ones who’re gonna have to pay, not us. And remember–it’s for your own good.”
Acharn
I really, really hate when they say, “The largest items in the budget — old-age entitlements, especially — are likely to grow in the future, and we have to pay for them.” We’ve already set up methods to pay for them, dummy. But of course his masters want him to keep repeating the lie. He does go on to say some sensible things, like, “There is a larger problem: Why are we spending so much time and effort bloviating about long-term deficits and so little trying to untangle the immediate economic mess that we’re in? ” In general I try not to read anything by Joke since Aimai’s wonderful putdown of last year, but this column wasn’t so bad.