[Professor S]

Originally Posted by TheGame

Strangler, I agree with most of the second half of your last reply to me.

But I'll need to clear up a couple of points, for one.. I call capitalism an experiment only because in history its shown that in all civilizations it can only last so long before socialism, or concepts of socialism start to take over.

Because we are romantics and let a dream of a uptiopian society (or nightmares of a controlling shadow government) get in the way of our own happiness and self-actualization.

Also, lets not go completely black and white. I still believe that some socialist constructs are useful, such as medicare and medicaid, unemployment benefits (not welfare) and public schools. Where my support ends is where we try to impose these constructs on the entirety of society instead of reserving them for those who truly need it.

What's happening in this day in age in america, is that we allowed certain companies to get so big, that the goverment is actually >>scared<< by the idea of them failing. The most true thing you said is that capitalism is not perfect, and we're just being presented with an example now of why it isn't.

And we are presenting an argument of how is does work when you take the time to look at it in the long view and outside of recent events, and how socialism has failed to the point of catastrophe every time it's been attempted. Each time it is attempted, people ignore the past and simply state "last time we didn't try hard enough/spend enough money on it".

Looking just at the 20th century you will see how economic crisis have been comparative blips on the radar and they never stopped the exponential growth of wealth across America. Our current standard of living in this recession is far better than it was for most of the 20th century, possibly excluding the mid-late 90's and mid-late 80's. And as a non-sequitur for Jason1's benfit, both of those time periods were marked by low tax rates.

In my last post, when I said what we're doing now isn't working.. I'm not still saying we should raise taxes, I'm just saying that somewhere along the line the system is broken. Maybe once everything crashes down we'll be able to see what the biggest flaw was.

Are you equating our tax system with the economic meltdown? If so, please explain.

Standing alone, I'll agree that the tax system is broken, but we're not currently fixing any of it, but instead we're smashing it harder to make sure that it's REALLY broke up good.

Even though the graphs display raw data on tax rates vs government revenue, I'm still going to say the numbers are misleading. Before you cry about me saying that, remember, I do accept the fact that Tax cuts do not hurt government revenue directly. But somehow it hurts them indirectly, because it has created the need for the government to spend more. If the government is spending more then its increase in revenue, then its broken.

What evidence do you base this on. It makes no sense to me. Taxes and spending are mutually exclusive concepts. We have not been good at reducing spending at any point in our history, regardless of tax rates.

Now, you could say that there is other reasons spending went up, just as much as I could say there's other reasons government revenue went up. But the fact remains that right NOW we're spending money to help patch up some failed buisnesses because we're scared of what will happen if they fail.

Once again, please show evidence that decreased taxes equals increased spending. We've provided evidence of our argument, please provide it for yours. To use out current situation, we're in the middle of spending more money now than in the entirety of out nations history, and I see the taxes going UP for the wealthy, not down.

I'll agree the government is scared of what will happen if companies fail, but I believe the concept of "too big to fail" is incorrect and damaging. These companies assets are tied to collateral so they have inherent value. When one company goes down, they are consumed by the stronger one, and we saw that starting to happen when this crisis first began. Do you see it happening now? No, because everyone is waiting for what the government will dictate to them.

Meanwhile we've bailed out AIG four times now... and I believe that if a company is big enough to not fail, its big enough to be divested into smaller parts. In the end I think you are confusing taxes for a means of social justice and/or means to regulate companies, and I think that is a damaging concept.

One could venture to say that your tax cuts to the upper class actually caused them to gain too much power and influence over the economy.

Keep in mind the very wealthy also got their wealth decimated by this crisis, and you could say on a relative basis that they were hit HARDER than the average person because this was a financial meltdown that has trickled down to mainstreet. One German businessman killed himself over it. Bear Stearns went down with the ship and many people were ruined within the company. Stock options all but disappeared.

Lets also not forget the government's role in all of this, pushing lenders to give bad loans through incentives and preferential treatment. I still urge everyone to google the Community Reinvestment Act and it's expansion.

I'm not saying the data ont he graphs are wrong, but there's a lot more factors that cause that end result to be true. Just like if you were to post a graph of GPD vs government spending, or Tax rates vs ticket prices to NFL games. While their end revenue may not have changed, what HAS changed is that we're getting deeper and deeper into debt. Tax cuts may have nothing to do with it, but I believe it has everythign to do with it. I think Tax cuts have everything to do with the widening of the gap between the upper and lower classes.

1) Once again, please provide any supporting evidence that decreased taxes cause increased spending. I fail to see how they relate. We spend regardless of taxes.

2) Yes, the gap has widened between the upper and lower classes, but what they don't tell you is that while the upper class has grown 70% adjusted for inflation over the last 30 or so years, the lower classes have grown 30% adjusted for inflation. They're both growing, its just that the wealthy are growing faster, and I see no problem with that. Most of the top 5% are our risk takers, investors and small business owners and they be rewarded if they make good economic decisions.

Yes, there are unethical exceptions to the rule, but they remain exceptions when you consider that the top 2% of our earners equals 2.5 million people.

I think that how spending has been handled in the government has been irresponceable and is mostly meant to patch up what issues that face us today while ignoring what issues face our children. And I think that has been the case for a LONG time, and I think that a part of what's happening now is we're paying for the mistakes that have been made over the last half century, and we're trying to hand our issues off to the next generation without dealing with it ourselves.

I agree with most of what you say about irresponsible spending, but please explain the half a century of of mistakes. Exactly what are you referring to? I can point out blips on the radar, but as a whole the 20th century, especially the latter part of it, was an amazing time for America and it's economy.

I take any gross income chats with a grain of salt, how about some NET incoming numbers for the last 10 years, taking into consideration the spending too and not just the raw revenue that the governemnt has gained.

Thats called the deficit, and we're at apporximately 1.7 trillion or so, and expected to grow considerably.