US Taxes

[Professor S]

Can you explain away how the cost of collecting taxes has gone down, or that all the claims that cutting taxes was going to lower revenue, when it in fact caused an increase? Bush increased revenue, at least to the norm of increases through the years as you pointed out, by making some of the most sweeping tax cuts in history. People said that would never happen, and yet here we are.

You also omit several factors that attributed to the loss of revenue after the tax cut... including the internet recession that killed the economy for a while and cost the US about 1 million jobs. Could that have had something to do with it?

As for the spending, it can be attributed to fighting a foreign war, but I also think he's spending too much in other areas as well, including subsidizing oil companies as of the latest energy bill. Tax cuts do work and a government can work in the black with them, but they need to have a more sensible spening plan. I will agree that Clinton's spending habits were much more "conservative" than Bush's, but I also understand that Bush has had to deal with a hell of a lot more than Clinton has.

My point in all this is that cutting taxes helps to increase revenue to the government. It does this by spurring the economy and increasing the revenue of companies and the general public. Essentially what you lose in per-dollar revenue, you get back in volume. True, you could probably reap the same revenues through punitive taxation and "getting those rich bastards", but why do it when you can actually make the same by taking less?