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modestobulldog

How are you faring under the new tax regime?

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I screwed up for 2018. I left my withholding at the same rate I had it for the last 5 years. I set my W-4 to single and zero which in the past had me owing nothing and getting a small return. This year my return was $5600. I way over paid. Maybe one of you CPA types can help me figure this out because I dicked the dog this year.

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4 hours ago, happycamper said:

In theory, for supply side economics, you're letting wealthy people keep more money, so they spend more on infrastructure and hiring people and raises and conspicuous consumption, so the rising tide from above lifts all boats and all that money trickles down to all levels of society. 

In spending, you're giving money to a lot of people in the form of government workers and contractors and corporations, who use that money for investment and raises and hiring people and conspicuous consumption, so there's more money being pushed into the economy (I mean... especially apparent when you're running 4% of GDP deficits, that's pushing more money into the economy than is really there). 

It isn't the same, but the effect of "money to the economy" is similar. If you cut spending and cut taxes by less than you cut spending, yes, you're being fiscally responsible and good for you, but you have to expect the economy to react to just having less money in it and you're going to experienced localized pain that is much more than the generalized benefit you're giving out, at least in the short term. Kind of the NAFTA problem, everyone loves cheap AF wal-mart, but cleveland is way more depressed than what cheap wal mart can provide locally. 

It isn't even close to the same.  You are a child with your socialist thinking.

In supply side everyone gets to keep their money and make better economic decisions with it than government does.   Rich people don't buy groceries or TVs that have little economic impact, they buy companies and invest in jobs and create economies of scale that benefit everyone.

Government money is wasted on one time purchases and the effect is over in a very short term.

Supply side benefits last long term and benefit the economy continually for years if not decades.

They are not comparable.

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1 minute ago, bluerules009 said:

It isn't even close to the same.  You are a child with your socialist thinking.

In supply side everyone gets to keep their money and make better economic decisions with it than government does.   Rich people don't buy groceries or TVs that have little economic impact, they buy companies and invest in jobs and create economies of scale that benefit everyone.

Government money is wasted on one time purchases and the effect is over in a very short term.

Supply side benefits last long term and benefit the economy continually for years if not decades.

They are not comparable.

So your argument is that supply side is better because money isn't spend on consumer goods, despite the fact that consumer spending consists of two thirds of the economy?

Unlike lawlor you didn't go from facts to ideology, you just started with ideology and kept going.

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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8 minutes ago, happycamper said:

So your argument is that supply side is better because money isn't spend on consumer goods, despite the fact that consumer spending consists of two thirds of the economy?

Unlike lawlor you didn't go from facts to ideology, you just started with ideology and kept going.

Facts are facts.   You consider it ideology because you are not capable of admitting the facts.

Government handouts never work to spur the economy.  Japan is at 23 bailouts and counting since 1986.  None of them worked.  FDR's new deal didn't work, Obama's 6 trillion dollars didn't work.

Reagan's supply side caused the biggest expansion in the economy in a century.  Bush's supply side prolonged it, while his spending and overregulation ended it.   Trumps supply side has the U.S. economy expanding even though the rest of the world is heading into recession right now.

Those are the facts child.

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2 minutes ago, bluerules009 said:

Facts are facts.   You consider it ideology because you are not capable of admitting the facts.

Government handouts never work to spur the economy.  Japan is at 23 bailouts and counting since 1986.  None of them worked.  FDR's new deal didn't work, Obama's 6 trillion dollars didn't work.

Reagan's supply side caused the biggest expansion in the economy in a century.  Bush's supply side prolonged it, while his spending and overregulation ended it.   Trumps supply side has the U.S. economy expanding even though the rest of the world is heading into recession right now.

Those are the facts child.

 Blues, what are you talking about? The 8 years that Reagan was in office, the mean economic growth rate was 3.5 percent and the median was 3.7 percent. That's less than half the rate that it was growing in the last 8 years of FDR's presidency (8.8 and 8 percent mean and median growth rates), it's significantly less than the growth rates of the JFK/LBJ period (4.75 and 4.9 percent), it's less than the growth rate during Nixon and Ford from 1971 to 1979 (3.57 and 4.6 percents), it's less than the years that Clinton was President (3.56 and 4.0 percent). https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-year-3305543

I'm not sure what you're arguing, but it doesn't have anything to do with reality. You know people write this stuff down so we can look at it later, right?

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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7 minutes ago, happycamper said:

 Blues, what are you talking about? The 8 years that Reagan was in office, the mean economic growth rate was 3.5 percent and the median was 3.7 percent. That's less than half the rate that it was growing in the last 8 years of FDR's presidency (8.8 and 8 percent mean and median growth rates), it's significantly less than the growth rates of the JFK/LBJ period (4.75 and 4.9 percent), it's less than the growth rate during Nixon and Ford from 1971 to 1979 (3.57 and 4.6 percents), it's less than the years that Clinton was President (3.56 and 4.0 percent). https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-year-3305543

I'm not sure what you're arguing, but it doesn't have anything to do with reality. You know people write this stuff down so we can look at it later, right?

What came after the 8 years Reagan was in office?   The biggest economic expansion in a century.

Reagan recovered an economy from crippling interest rates and inflation and set policies that led to the 90's.  The supply side effect lasts years and decades.  After all it is really just allowing capitalism to work more freely and we all know capitalism is the only way to float all boats.

Your government handouts are socialist and we all know how they function and their proven fail over the last century.

Your denile of these facts child just makes you look stupid.

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9 hours ago, happycamper said:

Who said net gain? Deficit spending eventually results in a net loss, but it also results in a short term gain - and that term is longer than most people's memories (and is probably even longer than most election cycles, meaning fractured continuity of purpose). 

I said net gain, because if it eventually ends in a net loss how is it a good thing? I like bacon cheeseburgers and having one makes me happy, does possibly dying of heart disease at 45 if I have them twice a day my whole life justify the short term relief I get? Politically sure, but that doesn’t make it a good policy.

9 hours ago, happycamper said:

NAFTA indubitably created wealth, but the targeted pain it cased was worth more politically and culturally than the small gain it gave everyone.

It was worth more one time. The pain is still unaddressed and the wealth is tangibly real and been felt every day since it was signed. Although I’m not sure what has to do with the line of conversation that began with pointing out that yes, you can increase tax revenue by lowering taxes.

9 hours ago, happycamper said:

It is if Peter is willing to wait 30 years for repayment. We have a net inflow of money into this country because of who is buying our debt. That money gets spent mostly in this country. Will it have to be paid back? Probably! Unfortunately for those other countries, our currency is the world baseline and they bought our debt in our currency. We can inflate away a lot of the debt, paying them back at negative inflation, and still be the best bet in town. It's not sustainable but what global hegemony is?

Our currency is a world baseline for now, and to act like that will never change is ridiculous. Inflating the debt away and screwing everyone in the process isn’t going to result in a world where they all just laugh it off. We’ll be poor, in economic crisis, with an inflated currency and a pissed off population looking for any drastic measures for relief; perfectly situated for a tyrannical government to impose a new order. Which is to say nothing of how the rest of the world goes to shit when a gimpy United States goes into a real crisis. Lots of people are going to suffer, people who might not have to it we address our problems in ways that actually work.

9 hours ago, happycamper said:

Does it?

Yep. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/amount-revenue-source

The JFK tax cuts increased revenue, the Reagan tax cuts increased revenue, the Bush tax cuts increased revenue until the recession, where every recession decreases revenue. And the Trump tax cuts have still led to the highest revenues in the country’s history as Cps pointed out.

9 hours ago, happycamper said:

Is that what they are doing? How do you truly measure what any one person creates on a macroeconomic scale? For that matter, we're seeing companies doing stock buybacks. That isn't innovation.

They certainly are responsible enough to have earned the money we peel out of their wallet and have to borrow to pay the rest. That doesn’t mean they’ll always be responsible in the future, but anyone with a 401 k or holding stock that gets a buyback is sure as hell getting rewarded for responibly investing in company that has enough increased faith in itself to buy into it. And the point isn’t to measure an individual’s effect macroeconomically, but the effect of millions of individuals having more money to freely spend and invest as they see fit, letting the market adjust to that and rewarding those derserving. Inevitably some of those rewarded are innovators who break in and take market share by building a better light bulb.

9 hours ago, happycamper said:

You have gone from information to ideology here, lawlor.

Negative ghost rider. 

9 hours ago, happycamper said:

They run a deficit because they can (and it feels to them like they have to). Historically everyone runs a deficit. Spain, even with more money than the world had ever seen coming in, declared bankruptcy something like once a decade. Rome had onerous estate taxes to just pay for the army and debased its currency in an effort to stay afloat. The only real way that Rome ever balanced the books was by conquering other places, enslaving their people, and stealing all their money. Once they ran out conquerable places, they struggled mightily. William essentially leveraged his conquest of England and was able to pay by granting titles and land, not by balancing any kind of ledger. 

Paying for government has always been the little dutch boy at the dyke. Sometimes you run out of fingers and then what? You borrow some!!! If you don't you get replaced and by god the next guy will sure borrow fingers so he gets to keep his job. 

So your move is to point to a brittle country entirely dependent upon American hegemony to not be enveloped or dominated by its more successful neighbors, a great empire that spent itself to death and was conquered by barbarians, and fuedal family that lasted only a few generations before falling to the Plantagenets? The whole point of this conversation is to worry about how to deal with our problems so that we don’t become like them. But if you want to point to them as if the fact they existed once means it’s okay that we follow their stupidity to the inevitable same result, I’m sorry man, I’ll never be okay with that. The point of American global hegemony should be to maintain it long enough that when we finally cede it, it won’t be because of economic disaster, but that those who gain spheres of influences have become good enough actors not to at the least currently maintain gulags for undesirable populations or repress their democracies and people while murdering their dissenting opponents. The point is to survive long enough as the empire to make the world well enough so that it no longer requires us to be one.

At this point the next guys we’ll be replaced by are horrible, and the process of replacing us might leave the world inhospitable for nation states. Worse can come to worst. The reason we worry about this stuff is to prevent that. And it’s clear we have a spending problem, not a revenue one. Minor raises in tax rates don’t increase revenue appreciably more than lower ones, and they’re often worse in the long term. There is an ideal tax rate for the maximum amount of economic growth and tax revenue at any given time, no economist that should be taken seriously even disputes this.

Supply side theory is not a “trickle down” policy of social engineering meant to make everyone rich while also decreasing inequality. It’s about finding the ideal tax rate to increase maximal revenue to let government do what it does. Now, if someone wants to say the rates should be raised because the ideal sweet spot isn’t met, I’ve never heard any evidence for it. But to say taxes must be raised is the only way to increase revenue is completely refuted by historical evidence. We have a spending problem, period.

We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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8 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

I said net gain, because if it eventually ends in a net loss how is it a good thing? I like bacon cheeseburgers and having one makes me happy, does possibly dying of heart disease at 45 if I have them twice a day my whole life justify the short term relief I get? Politically sure, but that doesn’t make it a good policy.

I never made any value judgments on all of these, but come on lawlor, we're discussing public policy. Most people can't think to save 4% of their income annually, do you really think that a 5 year boost is going to be valued less than a 50 year drop? Hell, our politicians often don't even have careers as long as it takes to see the difference between short term and net, let alone have terms that long. 

8 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

It was worth more one time. The pain is still unaddressed and the wealth is tangibly real and been felt every day since it was signed. Although I’m not sure what has to do with the line of conversation that began with pointing out that yes, you can increase tax revenue by lowering taxes.

Our currency is a world baseline for now, and to act like that will never change is ridiculous. Inflating the debt away and screwing everyone in the process isn’t going to result in a world where they all just laugh it off. We’ll be poor, in economic crisis, with an inflated currency and a pissed off population looking for any drastic measures for relief; perfectly situated for a tyrannical government to impose a new order. Which is to say nothing of how the rest of the world goes to shit when a gimpy United States goes into a real crisis. Lots of people are going to suffer, people who might not have to it we address our problems in ways that actually work.

Yep. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/amount-revenue-source

The JFK tax cuts increased revenue, the Reagan tax cuts increased revenue, the Bush tax cuts increased revenue until the recession, where every recession decreases revenue. And the Trump tax cuts have still led to the highest revenues in the country’s history as Cps pointed out.

How do we know that they increased revenue vs revenue was going to increase anyway? This is my biggest pet peeve about economics, the epistemology is much weaker than physical sciences but we act like it's gospel. 

8 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

They certainly are responsible enough to have earned the money we peel out of their wallet and have to borrow to pay the rest. That doesn’t mean they’ll always be responsible in the future, but anyone with a 401 k or holding stock that gets a buyback is sure as hell getting rewarded for responibly investing in company that has enough increased faith in itself to buy into it. And the point isn’t to measure an individual’s effect macroeconomically, but the effect of millions of individuals having more money to freely spend and invest as they see fit, letting the market adjust to that and rewarding those derserving. Inevitably some of those rewarded are innovators who break in and take market share by building a better light bulb.

Okay, but how is that any different than the short to mid term effect of increased spending?

8 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

Negative ghost rider. 

So your move is to point to a brittle country entirely dependent upon American hegemony to not be enveloped or dominated by its more successful neighbors, a great empire that spent itself to death and was conquered by barbarians, and fuedal family that lasted only a few generations before falling to the Plantagenets?

This is a remarkably narrow view of Spain, lawlor. Spain and France were the two European powers, full stop, for about 200 years. Spain in the 1600s didn't just hold most of the New World, they held the Netherlands, Italy, the Phillipines, Ceylon, Brunei, had a union with Portugal... Spain wasn't a brittle country for much of its colonial time, it was a superpower. The last 100 years of empire don't define the entire 400 years of it; you may as well be claiming that Rome wasn't impressive in 130AD because it was eventually sacked by the Goths. 

8 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

The whole point of this conversation is to worry about how to deal with our problems so that we don’t become like them. But if you want to point to them as if the fact they existed once means it’s okay that we follow their stupidity to the inevitable same result, I’m sorry man, I’ll never be okay with that. The point of American global hegemony should be to maintain it long enough that when we finally cede it, it won’t be because of economic disaster, but that those who gain spheres of influences have become good enough actors not to at the least currently maintain gulags for undesirable populations or repress their democracies and people while murdering their dissenting opponents. The point is to survive long enough as the empire to make the world well enough so that it no longer requires us to be one.

White man's burden for hegemony, eh? (I'm +++++ing with you, I agree that the other actors with power enough to be hegemons are reason enough to maintain the current order). 

8 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

At this point the next guys we’ll be replaced by are horrible, and the process of replacing us might leave the world inhospitable for nation states. Worse can come to worst. The reason we worry about this stuff is to prevent that. And it’s clear we have a spending problem, not a revenue one. Minor raises in tax rates don’t increase revenue appreciably more than lower ones, and they’re often worse in the long term. There is an ideal tax rate for the maximum amount of economic growth and tax revenue at any given time, no economist that should be taken seriously even disputes this.

Is that ideal tax rate ever enough, though? That's the thing and that's why governments always historically go broke. You can't kill the golden goose with taxes but you also have a jazillion things to spend on, many of which are survival level necessities (if not survival level for life, certainly survival level for staying a nation state or keeping your party even remotely in power). 

8 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

Supply side theory is not a “trickle down” policy of social engineering meant to make everyone rich while also decreasing inequality. It’s about finding the ideal tax rate to increase maximal revenue to let government do what it does. Now, if someone wants to say the rates should be raised because the ideal sweet spot isn’t met, I’ve never heard any evidence for it. But to say taxes must be raised is the only way to increase revenue is completely refuted by historical evidence. We have a spending problem, period.

That isn't how supply side has been sold. Also, I'd like you to provide numbers. When the corporate tax cuts came out, there was a legion of economists saying "this will not ever pay for itself and no tax cuts ever pay for themselves, independent of whether this is a good idea or not". 

I agree that we have a spending problem. I don't think that you can infinitely supply side yourself into prosperity. At some point you run out of taxes to cut. 

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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21 hours ago, happycamper said:

It's not sustainable but what global hegemony is?

 

10 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

The point of American global hegemony should be to maintain it long enough that when we finally cede it, it won’t be because of economic disaster, but that those who gain spheres of influences have become good enough actors not to at the least currently maintain gulags for undesirable populations or repress their democracies and people while murdering their dissenting opponents.

 

Good stuff. 

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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