Defending the Truth

The Truth About the Rich
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
By Bill O'Reilly

How many times have you heard the left wail about tax cuts for the rich? How many times? Want to hear it again?

SEN. JOHN KERRY, D-MASS.: I will roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals.

REP. CHARLIE RANGEL, D-N.Y.: Let me tell you something. We have tax cuts for the very rich.

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you give your tax cuts to the rich.

SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN, D-CONN.: The fact is that I have opposed George Bush on most of the major policy initiatives of his administration from tax cuts for the rich.

SEN. JOE BIDEN, D-DEL.: If we were just to take one year of the tax cut for people making over $1 billion, that would generate $53 billion in revenue.


All right. Now a funny thing happened on the way to the bank: Those tax cuts for the rich have helped all Americans, especially the poor.

(Story continues below)

http://tinyurl.com/j9leq

...the rest of the article.

Bullseye. I see no one is going to touch this one because the evidence is all around us. Under 5% unemployment. Tax revenues increasing. Fighting a war. Low inflation. The dems can't say anything negative about the economy so every night it's Iraq, Iraq, Iraq on the news. Gotta be negative about something.

Of course there is nothing to say about this issue. Kennedy cut tax rates in the 60's, you guys remember him - the Golden Boy of Democrats, and revenues went up, Reagan cut tax rates in the 80's and once again tax revenues went up, so is it any surprise to anyone who has actually STUDIED HISTORY not to suspect the same would happen with the Bush tax cuts. The democrats are just continuing to hope that the schools will continue doing a poor job of teaching are children so that they can continue playing this broken and lying mantra of theirs about tax cuts for the rich. God forbid school vouchers will children might go to a school where they will actually study history and see that each time that the tax rates have been lowered revenues have increased. For those of you that suffered a public education in our school system (myself included) that is called a historical trend showing a direct relationship with lower tax rates and higher revenues. Which for those of you not following is the direct opposite of the Democrats plans, higher tax rates with lower revenues.

Thank God for the Public School system or else the Democrats would definitely lose even more votes.

dmk

I don't know if I'd thank God for that and I'm sure the liberals wouldn't. Hahahahahah.

Because God forbid people speak negatively about things that are not going well.

And, God forbid, liberals would admit that the economy - under a Republican administration - is actually very strong.

All right, this article is sort of twisting statistics, I think. Let's take a closer look at it.

Tax revenue has increased under every single president because of inflation. This author seems to ignore that. Had tax revenue decreased under Bush, we'd be having a real problem.

Take a look at this graph. It is adjusted for inflation:

http://www.heritage.org/research/fea...harts_C/c1.cfm

From this graph, we can see that tax revenue was at its highest under Clinton in 2000, not under Bush, despite what the article says. Not only that, Clinton was the only president fiscally responsible enough to keep his revenue higher than his spending.

Sgt pointed out that JFK and Reagan cut spending yet saw an increase in revenue. But again, so has every president. By far the fastest and most extreme increase in revenue occurred under Clinton. Revenue increased other under presidents, but it didn't increase as quickly.

This is simply not true. The deficit is not being sharply cut at all. The deficit is continually getting larger under Bush.

Looking at this graph, we can see that Bush has had a pretty high deficit throughout his presidency:

http://www.uuforum.org/deficit.htm

And looking at this graph:

http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

we can see that the deficit sharply increases, not only under the Bush administrations, but also under the Reagan administration. On the other hand, it sharply decreases under the Clinton administration.

This indicates that presidents who decrease taxes are either increasing spending, or are simpy not making enough profit from their lower taxes. On the other hand, the president who increased taxes had plenty of money to handle his budget and lower the debt.

"Income redistribution" is a misleading term. Capitalism is a method of income distribution in itself. Altering the way we tax people is merely altering the system we use to distribute income. We don't use pure capitalism, we use a slightly different technique. The Supreme Court which ruled that the income tax is Constitutional agreed with this understanding.

People sometimes think that if pure Capitalism would give somebody money, then he deserves that money, and any attempt to give him less money than pure Capitalism is a "redistribution of wealth". But the premise that the wealthy are more deserving of wealth isn't really justifiable. It cannot really be said that the wealthy work harder nor contribute more nor are more moral.

I don't mean to say that Capitalism is a bad thing. Capitalism encourages production, which makes life better for everyone. But let's not pretend that Capitalism accurately determines who deserves lots of wealth and who deserves little. Capitalism is what it is: an economic system designed to maximize production and acquisition of goods and services for everyone.

This paragraph is incorrect. First, the amount of spending Bush is doing will have a present-day boost to our economy because it brings more wealth into the market. The long-term effects will be negative because we'll eventually have to send out far more money than we put in based on our debt, but today we should see a stronger economy because of this spending.

Second, while gas prices are of some consequence to the economy, they are not of significant consequence at their current level. They are more likely to reduce the living quality of the average person than they are to cause a loss of jobs.

Based on the numbers I posted above, it should be pretty clear that lowering taxes does not increase revenue. For those of you who claim that Reagan's tax cuts increased revenue, well take a look at that first graph. Revenue increase was looking pretty average until Clinton came into office.

Now I do often support lowering taxes, for lowering taxes can provide a slight boost our economy. But let's not imagine that it also increases tax revenue. We will not see an economic lift so great that we remake the money we would have made in taxes. Go ahead and support tax cuts, but don't pretend that tax cuts will magically increase the amount of money the government makes. Tax cuts will decrease that money; realize this downside of cutting taxes.

I should also mention that it is quite debatable that tax cuts on the lower class would improve our economy just as much as tax cuts on the wealthy. After all, both sorts of tax cuts put money into the economy, and the lower class will also spend and invest their money. The democrats who criticize Bush's tax cuts on the wealthy may have been meaning to move those tax cuts to the middle and lower class. John Kerry, for example, campaigned on elevating taxes on the wealthy while decreasing taxes on the middle and lower class.

Are you saying no liberal has yet to admit that the economy has been strong under this administration?

You are right. Borrowing from social security to pay for all of his programs should not be included in his budget. no no