Trump's Second Term

Gulliver Foyle said:
I always laugh hard at people using the Laffer curve. It was literally writ on the back of a napkin and based solely on Laffer's feels. It's one of those things that have a superficial plausibility right up until you engage your brain.
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Ehh. I'm going to disagree a bit here. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Laffer curve as a concept. It's just that it's been hideously misused/abused by those with no interest in putting things at the highest point. Something like a 70% tax rate is often supposedly counted as the top of the curve, in other words, not the ever decreasing rate for the already rich and wealthy that the Republican party keeps pushing. Going by the Laffer Curve, they're rather pointedly decreasing government revenues and ignoring context in their propaganda as they try to claim that up is down and down is up, yet again.

Alternately said, more taxes total by lowering the tax rate is entirely reasonable, if taxes are bonecrushingly high. Taxes weren't and haven't been at anywhere close to that level all along, though. One could try to raise the very limited exception of that 90% on the highest tax bracket long ago, but total tax rate even for them was less than that and that group was already a group where the general nature of Laffer curve's applies badly from the start, given that selected groups of extreme outliers on a bell curve or a different bell curve (depending on the specific point raised) aren't well described by a general observation.
 
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Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The GREAT and very BRAVE soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America! In Afghanistan, 457 died, many were badly injured, and they were among the greatest of all warriors. It's a bond too strong to ever be broken. The U.K. Military, with tremendous Heart and Soul, is second to none (except for the U.S.A.!).

We love you all, and always will! President DONALD J. TRUMP
 
bruto said:
Or Penguin Island. Hegseth is sending out specifications for the tow boat. Wind power not acceptable.
in Anatole France's day there were still great auks, which were also called "penguins."
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I imagine a four hulled behemoth with a dozen boilers fueled by immigrant slaves shoveling coal into them. It will be named the God-King Donald .
 
Aridas said:
Ehh. I'm going to disagree a bit here. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Laffer curve as a concept. It's just that it's been hideously misused/abused by those with no interest in putting things at the highest point. Something like a 70% tax rate is often supposedly counted as the top of the curve, in other words, not the ever decreasing rate for the already rich and wealthy that the Republican party keeps pushing. Going by the Laffer Curve, they're rather pointedly decreasing government revenues and ignoring context in their propaganda as they try to claim that up is down and down is up, yet again.

Alternately said, more taxes total by lowering the tax rate is entirely reasonable, if taxes are bonecrushingly high. Taxes weren't and haven't been at anywhere close to that level all along, though. One could try to raise the very limited exception of that 90% on the highest tax bracket long ago, but total tax rate even for them was less than that and that group was already a group where the general nature of Laffer curve's applies badly from the start, given that selected groups of extreme outliers on a bell curve or a different bell curve (depending on the specific point raised) aren't well described by a general observation.
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Everything is wrong with the Laffer curve.

It claims that taxes are not just the primary, but the completely overwhelming parameter that limits investments, when in fact they are basically irrelevant, as the costs can just be passed to consumers.

Only when you make Capital Flight easy and have a world where States/Countries underbid each other can the Laffer curve in theory make sense - but only in that it claims that you have to have lower corporate tax rates than everyone else, meaning no State gets to tax at all
 
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bruto said:
Or Penguin Island. Hegseth is sending out specifications for the tow boat. Wind power not acceptable.
in Anatole France's day there were still great auks, which were also called "penguins."
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Yes, they're all pinguinus impennis, in latin, ie flightless and plump, or fat - i can see why Trump would feel an affinity, and the great auk would probably have waddled in a more trumpian manner.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The GREAT and very BRAVE soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America! In Afghanistan, 457 died, many were badly injured, and they were among the greatest of all warriors. It's a bond too strong to ever be broken. The U.K. Military, with tremendous Heart and Soul, is second to none (except for the U.S.A.!).

We love you all, and always will! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Click to expand...


Too little too late Bonespurs. Which coincidentally is what Melania always says...


I'm lying, that's really "Too little too early"
 
Andy_Ross said:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The GREAT and very BRAVE soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America! In Afghanistan, 457 died, many were badly injured, and they were among the greatest of all warriors. It's a bond too strong to ever be broken. The U.K. Military, with tremendous Heart and Soul, is second to none (except for the U.S.A.!).

We love you all, and always will! President DONALD J. TRUMP
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That's walked back his dismissal of one ally as cowards. Anyone else getting a non-apology or is that it?
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Everything is wrong with the Laffer curve.

It claims that taxes are not just the primary, but the completely overwhelming parameter that limits investments, when in fact they are basically irrelevant, as the costs can just be passed to consumers.

Only when you make Capital Flight easy and have a world where States/Countries underbid each other can the Laffer curve in theory make sense - but only in that it claims that you have to have lower corporate tax rates than everyone else, meaning no State gets to tax at all
Click to expand...
And again, I'm going to disagree. You're not really arguing against the concept here, just some side things that are sometimes tacked on. To borrow a quote from Google's AI for ease's sake - The Laffer Curve is a theoretical, bell-shaped graph illustrating that tax revenue is maximized at an optimal rate between 0% and 100%, rather than at the highest possible rate. Popularized by Arthur Laffer, it suggests that if taxes are too high, cutting them can increase government revenue by boosting economic activity, a concept that influenced supply-side economics and Reaganomics.

As far as that goes, necessarily vague as that is, it's entirely true. The biggest single fault point of the usage of the Laffer Curve is the right-wing's consistent invocation of the concept that cutting taxes when they're too high can make revenues go up is done to justify decreasing taxes while taxes already far below the tipping point.

Yes, there are more things that are entirely relevant to the general subject, because reality is complex, but that doesn't change the point made at all.
 
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i agree it's fine as a drawing to really roughly illustrate the basic reasoning behind the concept of the relation between taxation and economic growth

imo laffer drew it with the full intent to put the us on the wrong part of the curve
 
Eas
Aridas said:
And again, I'm going to disagree. You're not really arguing against the concept here, just some side things that are sometimes tacked on. To borrow a quote from Google's AI for ease's sake - The Laffer Curve is a theoretical, bell-shaped graph illustrating that tax revenue is maximized at an optimal rate between 0% and 100%, rather than at the highest possible rate. Popularized by Arthur Laffer, it suggests that if taxes are too high, cutting them can increase government revenue by boosting economic activity, a concept that influenced supply-side economics and Reaganomics.

As far as that goes, necessarily vague as that is, it's entirely true. The biggest single fault point of the usage of the Laffer Curve is the right-wing's consistent invocation of the concept that cutting taxes when they're too high can make revenues go up is done to justify decreasing taxes while taxes already far below the tipping point.

Yes, there are more things that are entirely relevant to the general subject, because reality is complex, but that doesn't change the point made at all.
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no, it's BS.
It could, even in theory, only apply to products with completely elastic demand. It's also just another expression of supply-side economics.
It also ignores that you want to maximize State allocatable funds, not just revenue: vice taxes reduce revenue by drastically reducing consumption, but they save the State money by reducing health costs - a State can absolutely maximise its total assets by taxing harmful activities into the ground.
 
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I'm surprised he hasn't started going on about how unfair it is that he hasn't been nominated for an Academy Award. Maybe he'll kidnap the Mayor of Osaka. I was going to suggest a right wing actor could curry favour by giving him theirs, but I can't think of a living right wing actor that's won one.
 
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