So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy?

sabrina 1

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Thu Oct-14-10 10:55 PM
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So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy?

The following article gives lots of facts and figures proving that contrary to Republican claims that eliminating the Bush tax cuts would sink the economy even more, the exact opposite is true.

It was written by David Cay Johnston whose word I would take over any Republican on this issue:

David Cay Johnston is a Tax Notes columnist. The Washington Monthly calls him "one of the country's most important journalists" and the Portland Oregonian says his work is the equal of Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair and Lincoln Steffens. At The New York Times, Johnston received a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for exposing tax loopholes and inequities. He now teaches the tax, property and regulatory law of the ancient world at Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management. He is the author of two bestsellers on taxes, Perfectly Legal and Free Lunch. His next book, The Fine Print, will be published in 2011.

http://media.bestofmicro.com/President-Bush-and-the-Republican-Party-were-riding-high-not-too-long-ago-just-like-Sony-and-its-PlayStation-business,1-V-93379-13.jpg

So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy?

The 2008 income tax data are now in, so we can assess the fulfillment of the Republican promise that tax cuts would produce widespread prosperity by looking at all the years of the George W. Bush presidency.

Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running this year on an economic platform of tax cuts, especially making the tax cuts permanent for the richest among us. So how did the tax cuts work out? My analysis of the new data, with all figures in 2008 dollars

The article has lots of data to back up the author's conclusions. But just looking at a few of those numbers is enough to make people very angry at what those tax cuts actually meant for the rest of the country. For example:

Even if we limit the analysis by starting in 2003, when the dividend and capital gains tax cuts began, through the peak year of 2007, the result is still less income than at the 2000 level. Total income was down $951 billion during those four years.

Average incomes fell. Average taxpayer income was down $3,512, or 5.7 percent, in 2008 compared with 2000, President Bush's own benchmark year for his promises of prosperity through tax cuts.

Had incomes stayed at 2000 levels, the average taxpayer would have earned almost $21,000 more over those eight years. That's almost $50 per week.

He says that just measuring the second year of Bush's tax cuts through the seventh, total income was still nearly $2 trillion less than the year 2000 levels.

He points out that according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, (who, he says was praised by the Bush administration for its reliability,) Bush's tax cuts cost $1.8 trillion in eight years.

And in the last two years, the total cost of the tax cuts reached $2.3 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center estimated.

The facts he presents on the earnings of the average American during the period since the Bush Tax Cuts were implemented, are simply stunning. Most earnings fell, some by as much as 4%. So rather than fulfilling the promises of prosperity that Bush promised his Wealthy Tax Cuts would produce for all Americans, the exact opposite happened.

I never did understand the logic that if you keep giving more to the wealthy, it will help YOU to become wealthy also. I thought it was because I am not very good at math!

His conclusions after studying the facts and figures recently released are as follows:

The hard, empirical facts:

The tax cuts did not spur investment. Job growth in the George W. Bush years was one-seventh that of the Clinton years. Nixon and Ford did better than Bush on jobs. Wages fell during the last administration. Average incomes fell. The number of Americans in poverty, as officially measured, hit a 16-year high last year of 43.6 million, though a National Academy of Sciences study says that the real poverty figure is closer to 51 million. Food banks are swamped. Foreclosure signs are everywhere. Americans and their governments are drowning in debt. And at the nexus of tax and healthcare, Republican ideas perpetuate a cruel and immoral system that rations healthcare -- while consuming every sixth dollar in the economy and making businesses, especially small businesses, less efficient and less profitable.

This is economic madness. It is policy divorced from empirical evidence. It is insanity because the policies are illusory and delusional. The evidence is in, and it shows beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts failed to achieve the promised goals.

So why in the world is anyone giving any credence to the insistence by Republican leaders that tax cuts, more tax cuts, and deeper tax cuts are the remedy to our economic woes? Why are they not laughingstocks?

That's what I would like to know. Why are they not laughingstocks? It never made sense to me to keep the money flowing upward hoping it would trickle down. They have bankrupted this country with by taking from the middle class and giving to the wealthy.

End the Bush Tax Cuts! Is there any rational excuse for not doing so? The cost to this country has been astronomical!

Republicans should be forced to explain this data to the public, before the election!