He is the chief economic honcho at the New York Times, and has been there forever. He is also a professor of economics somewhere in the Ivy School belt out East.
I have long noticed that easterners for the most part have more difficulty with finding and telling the truth than folks in the fly over belt. Explanations are available if requested. Paul Krugman is the point of information here.
The notorious Paul Krugman……..who should have gone to Moscow for hire during the height of the Cold War, not for anything traitorous….he has no patriotism that is noticeable for anything foreign or abroad. Mr. Krugman appears to be a partisan…..somewhere within himself or for the loony-bin Left where words almost never mean what they are supposed to mean.
The Soviet Union’s Pravda and Izvestia used these words whenever a newspaper was put in print.
Mr. Krugman craves opponents to his writings…..that is probably what is at the base of his disorder. He desperately needs to have a following. So he apparently writes what he imagines might most offend ordinary people. He can’t be sure any conservatives pay much time reading him, so he writes “loathesomely”.
I don’t know if any conservatives actually read P.K.’s loathsome stories in the New York Times, but I do, and occasionally Dennis Prager does as well.
Here’s todays’s loathsome tale:
“Nice middle class you got here,” said Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. “It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
O.K., he didn’t actually say that. But he might as well have, because that’s what the current confrontation over taxes amounts to. Mr. McConnell, who was self-righteously denouncing the budget deficit just the other day, now wants to blow that deficit up with big tax cuts for the rich. But he doesn’t have the votes. So he’s trying to get what he wants by pointing a gun at the heads of middle-class families, threatening to force a jump in their taxes unless he gets paid off with hugely expensive tax breaks for the wealthy.”
Comment: Mr. McConnell, indeed, does denounce the budget deficit and does wish “to blow that deficit up with big tax cuts for the rich”. Well, almost that. He wishes to extend the Bush tax cuts of serveral years ago which well oiled the American economy. He wishes to extend the Bush tax cuts for all working Americans, which actually includes all of the middle class who have bothered to pay their federal income tax. It also includes a vast number of small business owners who will have more money to hire and expand his or her business versus Mr. Obama having more money to hire and expand his left wing businesses.”
Mr. Krugman: “Most discussion of the tax fight focuses either on the economics or on the politics — both of which suggest that Democrats should hang tough, for their own sakes as well as that of the country. But there’s an even bigger issue here — namely, the question of what constitutes acceptable behavior in American political life. Politics ain’t beanbag, but there’s a difference between playing hardball and engaging in outright extortion, which is what Mr. McConnell is now doing. And if he succeeds, it will set a disastrous precedent.”
Comment: I am waiting for “what constitutes acceptable behavior”. That is the “even bigger issue here” as Mr. Krugman puts it than ”Most discussion of the tax fight focuses either on the economics or on the politics – both of which suggest that Democrats should hang tough, for their own sake as well as that of the country.” I am also awaiting how the Democrats will do what for the sake of the country.
“How did we get to this point? The proximate answer lies in the tactics the Bush administration used to push through tax cuts. The deeper answer lies in the radicalization of the Republican Party, its transformation into a movement willing to put the economy and the nation at risk for the sake of partisan victory.”
Comment: Now I am waiting for “How did we get to this point?”
Mr. Krugman: “So, about those tax cuts: back in 2001, the Bush administration bundled huge tax cuts for wealthy Americans with much smaller tax cuts for the middle class, then pretended that it was mainly offering tax breaks to ordinary families. Meanwhile, it circumvented Senate rules intended to prevent irresponsible fiscal actions — rules that would have forced it to find spending cuts to offset its $1.3 trillion tax cut — by putting an expiration date of Dec. 31, 2010, on the whole bill. And the witching hour is now upon us. If Congress doesn’t act, the Bush tax cuts will turn into a pumpkin at the end of this year, with tax rates reverting to Clinton-era levels.”
Comment: “That is a pretty expensive pumpkin at any time. Mr. McConnell pressed for continuation of the lower Bush tax rates for everyone . No one in 2001 knew spendy-spendy Mr. Obama would be elected in 2008, and the Barney Frank-Chris Dodd duo, and Jimmy Carter era legislation would have caused so much chaos at and through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the home financing scandals.”
Back to Mr. Krugman: “In response, President Obama is proposing legislation that would keep tax rates essentially unchanged for 98 percent of Americans but allow rates on the richest 2 percent to rise. But Republicans are threatening to block that legislation, effectively raising taxes on the middle class, unless they get tax breaks for their wealthy friends.”
Comment: “Wouldn’t it be helpful to the Lefty argument if someone would document who the Bush wealthy friends were and what they did with the money from the old tax rate?”
Krugman again: “That’s an extraordinary step. Almost everyone agrees that raising taxes on the middle class in the middle of an economic slump is a bad idea, unless the effects are offset by other job-creation programs — and Republicans are blocking those, too. So the G.O.P. is, in effect, threatening to plunge the U.S. economy back into recession unless Democrats pay up.”
Comment: “Not so slippery here, chief Time Economicsman Krugman! Allmost everone agrees that raising taxes in the middle of an economic slump is a bad idea..PERIOD.
So, it’s those conservatives who wish to sabotage the economy of the nation just to be friendly to the wealthy……even the wealthy who paid for Obama’s election.”
Krugman asks: “What kind of political party would engage in that kind of brinksmanship? The answer is the same kind of party that shut down the federal government in 1995 in an attempt to force President Bill Clinton to accept steep cuts in Medicare, and is actively discussing doing the same to Mr. Obama. So, as I said, the deeper explanation of the tax-cut fight is that it’s ultimately about a radicalized Republican Party, which accepts no limits on partisanship.”
Comment: “I’d like Mr. Krugman to explain what a radicalized Republican does. Who are they? What makes them “radicalized?”
Krugman concludes: “So should Democrats give in?
On the economics, the answer is a clear no. Right now, fears about budget deficits are overblown — but that doesn’t mean that we should completely ignore deficit concerns. And the G.O.P. plan would add hugely to the deficit — about $700 billion over the next decade — while doing little to help the economy. On any kind of cost-benefit analysis, this is an idea not worth considering.
And, by the way, a compromise solution — temporary tax breaks for the rich — is no better; it would cost less, but it would also do even less for the economy.
On the politics, the answer is also a clear no. Polls show that a majority of Americans are opposed to maintaining tax breaks for the rich. Beyond that, this is no time for Democrats to play it safe: if the midterm election were held today, they would lose badly. They need to highlight their differences with the G.O.P. — and it’s hard to think of a better place for them to take a stand than on the issue of big giveaways to Wall Street and corporate C.E.O.’s.
But what’s even more important is the principle of the thing. Threats to punish innocent bystanders unless your political rivals give you what you want have no legitimate place in democratic politics. Giving in to such threats would be an economic and political mistake, but more important, it would be morally wrong — and it would encourage more such threats in the future.
It’s time for Democrats to take a stand, and say no to G.O.P. blackmail.”
Comment: At the Tax Lawyer’s Blog I got the following statistics:
The Richest 10% Pay 71% of Federal Income Taxes
Kay Bell takes a look at who pays federal income taxes in Where Does Your Taxable Income Rank:
Kiplinger took 2007 tax data (the most complete available) from the IRS and created an online calculator to show you where your income ranks compared to the rest of U.S. taxpayers.
I ran some various incomes through the calculator and learned that, in 2007 at least:
- The top-earning 50 percent of taxpayers reported 87.7 percent of all adjusted gross income (AGI) and paid 97.1 percent of total income taxes.
- The top-earning 10 percent of taxpayers reported 48 percent of all AGI and paid 71.2 percent of total income taxes.
- The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers reported 37.4 percent of all AGI and paid 60.6 percent of total income taxes.
- The top-earning 1 percent of taxpayers reported 22.8 percent of all AGI and paid 40.4 percent of total income taxes.
At the bottom of the income scale, the calculator told me that the lowest-earning 50 percent of taxpayers reported 12.3 percent of all AGI and paid 2.89 percent of total income taxes.
These statistics won’t stop the pro-tax crowd from accusing the anti-tax crowd of lying about which class of Americans bears the bulk of the tax burden. But the lies come from the left, not the right. And although these prevarications are not morally justifiable, they are politically understandable.
The only way the left can get its pro-tax, pro-big government agenda enacted is to convince the public that the rich are not paying their fair share. The left thinks you’re stupid and will take the bait.
But don’t.
The rich do not merely fund the lion’s share of the federal government, they fund it overwhelmingly.
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Let me be perfectly clear. President Obama has an agenda. As he repeated, quietly, that is true, during his 2008 campaigns, he believed in robbing “the rich” to pay “the poor”……which he called “distributing the wealth”.
Besides only some rich have any money left from which Obama can take taxes. In the good old USSR during its early days, the rich simply disappeared. The state gave itself ownership of all the earthly possessions of the disappeared as well as the possessions of all those who still appeared, but were forceably moved into smaller government-built quarters. The same size fit all.
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