Exactly Where Your Tax Dollars Go (Illustration) »
Posted By btatman22 6 months, 2 weeks ago in Political NewsWe are going to make an assumption that nobody likes to pay taxes. That being said, the illustration to the left shows you exactly where your hard earned tax dollars are going, and how your government is spending them in 2009. As expected, military spending is high, but social security is also extremely high. Rather than droning on about where the money goes, just click the picture to the left. That picture is worth a trillion words.
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btatman22
Editor of Fresh Conservative which highlights conservative movements and exposes liberal shenanigans. I am Lutheran, yet not fanatical in my religion. I'll worship my ...
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mesodude6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Reckless Disregard: The Bush Administration's Policy of Cutting Taxes in the Face of an Enormous Fiscal Gap
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The Bush Administration's policy of sharply cutting taxes while increasing government spending is both misguided and harmful. Presumably rationalized in private as a way of shrinking government over the long term without paying a current political price, it in fact increases the government's distributional intervention by handing money to current voters at the expense of younger and future generations. The Bush policies have increased the future tax increases that are likely to be necessary. In addition, they are likely to require additional Social Security and Medicare cuts that can be seen in large part as negative taxes, refunding some of the positive lifetime net taxes that future retirees will by then have paid. Reducing future negative taxes is a lot like increasing future positive ones.
The fiscal gap is largely growth-proof because so much government spending, no less than taxes, is effectively pegged to the size of the economy. This means that we cannot outgrow it in the manner of past wartime national debts. High economic growth would concededly make default on the government's implicit obligations considerably less painful. However, the fiscal gap has the potential significantly to reduce economic growth, for two main reasons. First, it may result in large tax increases on workers to keep benefits flowing to seniors, reducing saving because the workers would have saved more of the transferred funds. Second, it may lead to an Argentina-style meltdown in the U.S. government's position as a borrower in world capital markets, potentially yielding chronic inflation, unemployment, and bank and currency crises that affect our economic productivity for an indefinite period.
The Bush Administration's policy of increasing the fiscal gap ought to be reversed as soon as possible, on both the tax and spending sides of the ledger. How this ought to be done is beyond this article's scope, although I have discussed aspects of it elsewhere. Current seniors ought to share in the burden, however, both through tax increases and Social Security and Medicare reform that should take account of differences in people's ability to pay. Unfortunately, policy changes in the near future are more likely to make things worse than better.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id...
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mesodude6 months, 2 weeks ago
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How Bush Tax Cuts Destroyed America's Economy
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http://www.politicaltruthusa.com/2009/04/how-bush-...
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mesodude6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Contrary to the mythology the party has created, GOP presidents are terrible for business.
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At last week's news conference, President Bush again said that he's reduced the deficit to $239 billion, created 8 million jobs and generated unemployment at a low 4.5%. He said the economy is strong, largely due to his tax cut policies. On the other side, Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), House Appropriations Committee chairman, has complained of our limited resources now because of Bush's "gargantuan deficits he created with that stupid war and those stupid tax cuts paid for with our money."
There is a widely held belief that Republicans are better for business than are Democrats. Let's look at the facts. The wild stock market ride of recent weeks does not compare to the two worst stock events, the crash of 1929 and the 1987 free fall, which also occurred under Republican administrations. Since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3% annual return on the S 500, Republicans only 8%. Gross Domestic Product growth since 1930 is 5.4% for Democratic presidents and 1.6% for Republican presidents.
Bush inherited from President Clinton an annual federal budget surplus of $236 billion, the largest in American history. Clinton balanced the budget for the first time since 1969. Budget surpluses were expected to total $5.6 trillion between fiscal year 2002 and 2011.
Despite this, Bush transformed the surpluses into a $1.1 trillion annual deficit in just three years because of the Iraq war and his relentless push for permanent tax cuts for wealthy Americans, a new iteration of Herbert Hoover's equally catastrophic "trickle-down" theory. Bragging about a $239 billion deficit sets such a low standard that Bush can claim horrific failure as a good thing for the country. The Bush administration's annual loss of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is unprecedented. Bush presided over the loss of 2 million American jobs in his first 2 1/2 years and has net gained 5.6 million in six years, the worst since Hoover. Clinton created 23 million jobs.
It's not rocket science to figure out the difference. Clinton: tax breaks for the middle and lower incomes who actually spend the money, no Iraq war. Bush: disproportionate tax breaks for the wealthy (50% to the wealthiest 1% by 2010), $750 billion for a war monetarily benefiting only a few military contractors and a financial sieve for the country. Democratic presidents spread the wealth through spending on needed social programs and targeting tax cuts to lower- and middle-income Americans, stimulating the economy more broadly. Republicans pump into defense contractors and high-income Americans, creating a significant detriment to the whole economy with larger deficits and higher interest rates.
A Simple Fact: Republicans Can't Manage the Economy
http://community.freespeech.org/a_simple_fact_repu... -
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fredricwilliams6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Neither the Republican presidents nor the Democratic presidents do a good job of managing the roughly $30,000 per family that the US Government will squander this year and next. A well-managed private organization could achieve the same results and return half ($15,000) to the average family.
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Government is designed to govern, not to run a country's economy or do the work of educating, building highways, etc. Ours does nothing well -- including its most important functions, protecting us from attack (remember 9/11? FAILED) and protecting us from crime (11 million crimes a year, 90,000 rapes, 17,000 murders).-
btatman22Comment removed: Spam
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juslen6 months, 2 weeks ago
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If you think these numbers are bad. Wait until the 2010 Obama numbers come out. You wont see defense spending reduced much, simply because Obama knows that would be a fatal mistake. Please note.. war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is separate from the defense budget.
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Next.. Health Care
And where is this money coming from? Its funny how some people say "Bush cut taxes and look what happened" There is one problem with that, raising taxes wouldn't have done anything besides give people less money to put on their credit cards. The government after all, is one big credit card for the government.
You make 1 dollar.. the government taxes 25 cents of that. Then when they spend that 25 cents.. they pay interest on that. Then the taxpayers pay the interest on it. So they pay in, and they pay out, repeat.
And who said government is the answer? Obama has said it loud and clear.
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