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Sean Hayden
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Re: Economists

Post by Sean Hayden » Sat Aug 29, 2020 3:23 am

:lol:

I'd rather have a global government. --dream

--//--

For Seabass:
At its conception in 1913 until the late 1930s, the federal income tax was intended to apply only to the wealthiest earners in society. This intentional policy sought to exempt lower income earners from the burdens of paying for the government’s operations. Single filers could exempt the first $1,000 of their earnings (roughly $15,000-$18,000 today) from taxation, with an extra $500 exemption between 1925 and 1931. Married filers enjoyed roughly double that amount in most years. The eligible taxpaying public hovered around roughly 10-15% of all income earners (measured as “tax units”) prior 1939.

This all changed beginning in 1940, as FDR marshalled through a rapid succession of tax measures that simultaneously (1) raised rates across the board, (2) lowered the exemption level, and (3) ramped up tax enforcement by the IRS. While these measures slightly increased the already-high rates upon the wealthy, the bulk of their burdens actually fell upon the poor – mainly working class people who previously paid no income taxes due to falling below the exemption threshold.

Between 1939 and 1942, Roosevelt cut the personal exemption in half. Single filers now had to pay taxes on income earnings above $500 (roughly $8,000 today). Married filers saw their exemption drop from $2,500 to $1,200 by 1942, and again to only $1,000 in 1944. The revenue strains of World War II provided an important impetus for these policies, but Roosevelt’s actions both preceded U.S. entry into the war and persisted as a permanent feature of the tax code after the return of peace in 1945.
https://www.aier.org/article/fdrs-forgo ... -the-poor/

--look into excise taxes for more on how he taxed the little guy

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Re: Economists

Post by Brian Peacock » Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:27 pm

Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:31 am
I'm not seeing a justification for the claim that worrying about a government being hard up, or going broke, is a convenient political fiction.
Hmm. That's not quite what I thought you were asking for, because that's not quite what I said.
Brian Peacock wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 9:49 am
...The conservative narrative around taxation is that tax cuts make you richer, therefore give you more purchasing power, and therefore stimulate the economy. This gives the impression that there's a fixed amount of money to go round, that incomes and taxes are balanced in such a way that if you're getting less someone else is getting more, and that the economy is founded on consumption.

In simple terms, the government is not a household or a business because the latter are merely the users of a currency whereas the former is the issuer of currency. The government's fiscal capacity, it's ability to create and spend money, is virtually unlimited compared to the ability of a household or business to earn money and then spend it.

In this regard, stories about how the government are hard up or can go broke are misinformed, or just a politically convenient fiction...
For a bit more context I spent a bit of time outlining how government spending precedes economic activity etc, with spending, of course, being a hot political issue. Western governments don't operate on pocket-book economics like households or the majority of businesses do, balancing incomings against outgoings, and the idea I'm trying to get across is that narratives suggesting that the nation's finances do work that was, stories about how tax revenue is equivalent to the nation's wage packet, do not really reflect the reality of how the monetary system operates.
Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:31 am
Weren't the austerity measures a response to a hard up, threatening to go broke, government? How would this hard up, broke government have spent its way out of trouble? Obviously, they were given another loan to see their way out. But, at first glance at least, it hardly seems prudent to rely on such things.
Who does a government ask for a loan? 'Borrowing' is another term which is used to suggest that the government's finances are essentially the same as household accounts. If you can't pay for a new roof you go to the bank and persuade them that you can pay back a loan plus a 'little extra' over a fixed period. You sign an agreement and the bank add some zeros to your account. The bank has an understanding with some institution further up the financial food chain that allows them to add zeros to people's accounts, to create an account deposit, and they pay the difference between what they've added an a bit of what they've charged back over time. Those zeros travel up a food chain that leads to the government and the central bank, and get added to... "The Deficit" (scary music!). The bank created money it didn't have and then told the government about it who marked it up as 'out' rather than 'in'.

Governments also spend money they don't have by adding zeros to the accounts of regional governments, contractors, public service providers, tax rebates, blah blah blah, and add it to "The Deficit!". They create money out of thin air in the form of debt, where debt is a function of the future value of the money they've just created. Governments also issue short, medium, and long-term bonds. Bonds are another way to managed the zeros, and as well as generating revenue they can also be used to take value out of the system now on the understanding that a certain amount of addition value will be returned to the economy over time. This also goes on "The Deficit!" Governments also allow regional government and public service providers etc to borrow in the commercial markets which, as we've seen, ultimately bubbles back up the food chain to the government - another way the government can borrow money from itself while adding the extra value of interest and charges and economic activity into the system. All of this comes under 'borrowing'.

Just as every dollar spent is someone else's income, and every liability is someone else's asset, the other side of "The Deficit!" can be thought of as a 'surplus', that is; "The Deficit!" represents the difference between the value the government has created (or allowed to be created) and the proportion of that value that remains at-large in the economy. If the deficit were zero then the amount of value the government had created would match or balance the amount of value in the economy, which would mean that there was no additional value being created on either side of the equation. And if the deficit were a positive number, an actual surplus, then the government would be creating value and withholding it from the economy.

Government 'borrowing' is not like getting a loan from a bank for a new roof and "The Deficit!" is not like an overdraft.

The conservative narratives starts with the assumption that there exists somewhere in the world a limited or absolute stockpile of money - unused money made out of savings; when governments have a shortfall between tax revenue and spending ("The Deficit!") they have to borrow (in the traditional sense) from that pile; if governments borrow they reduce the size of the money pile, which increases competition and drives up interests rates; if interests rates rise private businesses find it increasingly difficult to access the money pile, which reduces investment; when investment falls the economy slows; when the economy slows tax revenues fall; when tax revenues fall government has to borrow; rinse and repeat - therefore Deficit Bad!

But as I've pointed out, that's not actually how the system works. When a business wants an investment loan they go to a bank, and if the request meets the bank's conditions the bank create a deposit for the borrower - they aren't moving some money from one pile to another; they have the authority to add some zeros to an account and pass that information up the financial food chain. Given this system, and the fact that base rates (the cost of money) are so low at the moment as to be negligible, why do conservatives still insist we need to cut taxes to boost business investment?
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Re: Economists

Post by pErvinalia » Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:45 pm

Loans have nothing to do with deficits other than the interest repayments being added to spending (when it's the government borrowing).

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Re: Economists

Post by Seabass » Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:39 pm

Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 3:23 am
:lol:

I'd rather have a global government. --dream

--//--

For Seabass:
At its conception in 1913 until the late 1930s, the federal income tax was intended to apply only to the wealthiest earners in society. This intentional policy sought to exempt lower income earners from the burdens of paying for the government’s operations. Single filers could exempt the first $1,000 of their earnings (roughly $15,000-$18,000 today) from taxation, with an extra $500 exemption between 1925 and 1931. Married filers enjoyed roughly double that amount in most years. The eligible taxpaying public hovered around roughly 10-15% of all income earners (measured as “tax units”) prior 1939.

This all changed beginning in 1940, as FDR marshalled through a rapid succession of tax measures that simultaneously (1) raised rates across the board, (2) lowered the exemption level, and (3) ramped up tax enforcement by the IRS. While these measures slightly increased the already-high rates upon the wealthy, the bulk of their burdens actually fell upon the poor – mainly working class people who previously paid no income taxes due to falling below the exemption threshold.

Between 1939 and 1942, Roosevelt cut the personal exemption in half. Single filers now had to pay taxes on income earnings above $500 (roughly $8,000 today). Married filers saw their exemption drop from $2,500 to $1,200 by 1942, and again to only $1,000 in 1944. The revenue strains of World War II provided an important impetus for these policies, but Roosevelt’s actions both preceded U.S. entry into the war and persisted as a permanent feature of the tax code after the return of peace in 1945.
https://www.aier.org/article/fdrs-forgo ... -the-poor/

--look into excise taxes for more on how he taxed the little guy
Lol. ANY tax is going to be too high for these Austrian School guys. They are extremists.

Compare tax rates on middle and lower income households from that era to current rates in Western Europe, Canada, and Australia. They weren't high by comparison, and they were lower than what you generally see in Scandinavia. Don't forget to account for inflation.

https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci1 ... ackets.pdf




Regarding war...
Conservatives like to cite WW2 as proof that war is good for the economy. And yet, dozens of countries fought in WW2 and none of the others got rich. Most of them were devastated. None of the belligerents in WW1 got rich either. The US hasn't gotten rich in any other war. In fact, usually—not always, but usually—war tends to devastate economies. But it just so happens, according to American conservatives, that it was not FDR's economic policies, but rather it was the war that was responsible for economic success in those years. Funny how that works...
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Re: Economists

Post by laklak » Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:12 pm

It helps if you win and the war isn't fought on your land. Then you get to sell all your shit to the winners AND losers. All those nice factories, tooled up for Sherman tanks and 105 howitzers, they needed something to do.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Economists

Post by Sean Hayden » Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:45 pm

Seabass wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:39 pm
Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 3:23 am
:lol:

I'd rather have a global government. --dream

--//--

For Seabass:
At its conception in 1913 until the late 1930s, the federal income tax was intended to apply only to the wealthiest earners in society. This intentional policy sought to exempt lower income earners from the burdens of paying for the government’s operations. Single filers could exempt the first $1,000 of their earnings (roughly $15,000-$18,000 today) from taxation, with an extra $500 exemption between 1925 and 1931. Married filers enjoyed roughly double that amount in most years. The eligible taxpaying public hovered around roughly 10-15% of all income earners (measured as “tax units”) prior 1939.

This all changed beginning in 1940, as FDR marshalled through a rapid succession of tax measures that simultaneously (1) raised rates across the board, (2) lowered the exemption level, and (3) ramped up tax enforcement by the IRS. While these measures slightly increased the already-high rates upon the wealthy, the bulk of their burdens actually fell upon the poor – mainly working class people who previously paid no income taxes due to falling below the exemption threshold.

Between 1939 and 1942, Roosevelt cut the personal exemption in half. Single filers now had to pay taxes on income earnings above $500 (roughly $8,000 today). Married filers saw their exemption drop from $2,500 to $1,200 by 1942, and again to only $1,000 in 1944. The revenue strains of World War II provided an important impetus for these policies, but Roosevelt’s actions both preceded U.S. entry into the war and persisted as a permanent feature of the tax code after the return of peace in 1945.
https://www.aier.org/article/fdrs-forgo ... -the-poor/

--look into excise taxes for more on how he taxed the little guy
Lol. ANY tax is going to be too high for these Austrian School guys. They are extremists.

Compare tax rates on middle and lower income households from that era to current rates in Western Europe, Canada, and Australia. They weren't high by comparison, and they were lower than what you generally see in Scandinavia. Don't forget to account for inflation.

https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci1 ... ackets.pdf




Regarding war...
Conservatives like to cite WW2 as proof that war is good for the economy. And yet, dozens of countries fought in WW2 and none of the others got rich. Most of them were devastated. None of the belligerents in WW1 got rich either. The US hasn't gotten rich in any other war. In fact, usually—not always, but usually—war tends to devastate economies. But it just so happens, according to American conservatives, that it was not FDR's economic policies, but rather it was the war that was responsible for economic success in those years. Funny how that works...
You've got a bad habit of laughing at people that correct your errors. You said "he didn't tax the little guy". Not only did he tax them, his administration was the first to tax her income, never mind what she was already paying in excise taxes.

--regarding WW2: our expansion was indeed greatly aided by the devastation of much of the world. I don't see how that is an equivalent statement, nor invitation to the study of, "how war is good for the economy".

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Re: Economists

Post by Sean Hayden » Sat Aug 29, 2020 7:17 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:27 pm
Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:31 am
I'm not seeing a justification for the claim that worrying about a government being hard up, or going broke, is a convenient political fiction.
Hmm. That's not quite what I thought you were asking for, because that's not quite what I said.
Brian Peacock wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 9:49 am
...The conservative narrative around taxation is that tax cuts make you richer, therefore give you more purchasing power, and therefore stimulate the economy. This gives the impression that there's a fixed amount of money to go round, that incomes and taxes are balanced in such a way that if you're getting less someone else is getting more, and that the economy is founded on consumption.

In simple terms, the government is not a household or a business because the latter are merely the users of a currency whereas the former is the issuer of currency. The government's fiscal capacity, it's ability to create and spend money, is virtually unlimited compared to the ability of a household or business to earn money and then spend it.

In this regard, stories about how the government are hard up or can go broke are misinformed, or just a politically convenient fiction...
For a bit more context I spent a bit of time outlining how government spending precedes economic activity etc, with spending, of course, being a hot political issue. Western governments don't operate on pocket-book economics like households or the majority of businesses do, balancing incomings against outgoings, and the idea I'm trying to get across is that narratives suggesting that the nation's finances do work that was, stories about how tax revenue is equivalent to the nation's wage packet, do not really reflect the reality of how the monetary system operates.
Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:31 am
Weren't the austerity measures a response to a hard up, threatening to go broke, government? How would this hard up, broke government have spent its way out of trouble? Obviously, they were given another loan to see their way out. But, at first glance at least, it hardly seems prudent to rely on such things.
Who does a government ask for a loan? 'Borrowing' is another term which is used to suggest that the government's finances are essentially the same as household accounts. If you can't pay for a new roof you go to the bank and persuade them that you can pay back a loan plus a 'little extra' over a fixed period. You sign an agreement and the bank add some zeros to your account. The bank has an understanding with some institution further up the financial food chain that allows them to add zeros to people's accounts, to create an account deposit, and they pay the difference between what they've added an a bit of what they've charged back over time. Those zeros travel up a food chain that leads to the government and the central bank, and get added to... "The Deficit" (scary music!). The bank created money it didn't have and then told the government about it who marked it up as 'out' rather than 'in'.

Governments also spend money they don't have by adding zeros to the accounts of regional governments, contractors, public service providers, tax rebates, blah blah blah, and add it to "The Deficit!". They create money out of thin air in the form of debt, where debt is a function of the future value of the money they've just created. Governments also issue short, medium, and long-term bonds. Bonds are another way to managed the zeros, and as well as generating revenue they can also be used to take value out of the system now on the understanding that a certain amount of addition value will be returned to the economy over time. This also goes on "The Deficit!" Governments also allow regional government and public service providers etc to borrow in the commercial markets which, as we've seen, ultimately bubbles back up the food chain to the government - another way the government can borrow money from itself while adding the extra value of interest and charges and economic activity into the system. All of this comes under 'borrowing'.

Just as every dollar spent is someone else's income, and every liability is someone else's asset, the other side of "The Deficit!" can be thought of as a 'surplus', that is; "The Deficit!" represents the difference between the value the government has created (or allowed to be created) and the proportion of that value that remains at-large in the economy. If the deficit were zero then the amount of value the government had created would match or balance the amount of value in the economy, which would mean that there was no additional value being created on either side of the equation. And if the deficit were a positive number, an actual surplus, then the government would be creating value and withholding it from the economy.

Government 'borrowing' is not like getting a loan from a bank for a new roof and "The Deficit!" is not like an overdraft.

The conservative narratives starts with the assumption that there exists somewhere in the world a limited or absolute stockpile of money - unused money made out of savings; when governments have a shortfall between tax revenue and spending ("The Deficit!") they have to borrow (in the traditional sense) from that pile; if governments borrow they reduce the size of the money pile, which increases competition and drives up interests rates; if interests rates rise private businesses find it increasingly difficult to access the money pile, which reduces investment; when investment falls the economy slows; when the economy slows tax revenues fall; when tax revenues fall government has to borrow; rinse and repeat - therefore Deficit Bad!

But as I've pointed out, that's not actually how the system works. When a business wants an investment loan they go to a bank, and if the request meets the bank's conditions the bank create a deposit for the borrower - they aren't moving some money from one pile to another; they have the authority to add some zeros to an account and pass that information up the financial food chain. Given this system, and the fact that base rates (the cost of money) are so low at the moment as to be negligible, why do conservatives still insist we need to cut taxes to boost business investment?
I think it would help me to understand you if you provided a piece of writing, preferably from a conservative economist, that you think exemplifies the error of comparing household budgets to government budgets.

As it is, it's possible that such a comparison is only a convenient abstraction, convenient because it hides details to ease the consumption of a complex subject by the general public, without necessarily sacrificing the important truths eg they were broke, couldn't pay their bills, and were given loans with demands aimed at correcting their situation.

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Re: Economists

Post by Seabass » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:22 pm

Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:45 pm
Seabass wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:39 pm
Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 3:23 am
:lol:

I'd rather have a global government. --dream

--//--

For Seabass:
At its conception in 1913 until the late 1930s, the federal income tax was intended to apply only to the wealthiest earners in society. This intentional policy sought to exempt lower income earners from the burdens of paying for the government’s operations. Single filers could exempt the first $1,000 of their earnings (roughly $15,000-$18,000 today) from taxation, with an extra $500 exemption between 1925 and 1931. Married filers enjoyed roughly double that amount in most years. The eligible taxpaying public hovered around roughly 10-15% of all income earners (measured as “tax units”) prior 1939.

This all changed beginning in 1940, as FDR marshalled through a rapid succession of tax measures that simultaneously (1) raised rates across the board, (2) lowered the exemption level, and (3) ramped up tax enforcement by the IRS. While these measures slightly increased the already-high rates upon the wealthy, the bulk of their burdens actually fell upon the poor – mainly working class people who previously paid no income taxes due to falling below the exemption threshold.

Between 1939 and 1942, Roosevelt cut the personal exemption in half. Single filers now had to pay taxes on income earnings above $500 (roughly $8,000 today). Married filers saw their exemption drop from $2,500 to $1,200 by 1942, and again to only $1,000 in 1944. The revenue strains of World War II provided an important impetus for these policies, but Roosevelt’s actions both preceded U.S. entry into the war and persisted as a permanent feature of the tax code after the return of peace in 1945.
https://www.aier.org/article/fdrs-forgo ... -the-poor/

--look into excise taxes for more on how he taxed the little guy
Lol. ANY tax is going to be too high for these Austrian School guys. They are extremists.

Compare tax rates on middle and lower income households from that era to current rates in Western Europe, Canada, and Australia. They weren't high by comparison, and they were lower than what you generally see in Scandinavia. Don't forget to account for inflation.

https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci1 ... ackets.pdf




Regarding war...
Conservatives like to cite WW2 as proof that war is good for the economy. And yet, dozens of countries fought in WW2 and none of the others got rich. Most of them were devastated. None of the belligerents in WW1 got rich either. The US hasn't gotten rich in any other war. In fact, usually—not always, but usually—war tends to devastate economies. But it just so happens, according to American conservatives, that it was not FDR's economic policies, but rather it was the war that was responsible for economic success in those years. Funny how that works...
You've got a bad habit of laughing at people that correct your errors. You said "he didn't tax the little guy". Not only did he tax them, his administration was the first to tax her income, never mind what she was already paying in excise taxes.
Well, perhaps it would help if you define "little guy". Then perhaps we should clarify what we consider to be high or low tax rates. I'm using the current developed world as a baseline. If you're going by Austrian School standards, then we'll probably just have to agree to disagree. I don't consider tax rates in the developed world to be particularly onerous.
Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:45 pm
--regarding WW2: our expansion was indeed greatly aided by the devastation of much of the world. I don't see how that is an equivalent statement, nor invitation to the study of, "how war is good for the economy".
This doesn't really add up. Countries that aren't economically devastated will have more buying power and will be more productive trading partners than economically devastated ones.
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Re: Economists

Post by Brian Peacock » Sat Aug 29, 2020 10:15 pm

Sean Hayden wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 7:17 pm
...

I think it would help me to understand you if you provided a piece of writing, preferably from a conservative economist, that you think exemplifies the error of comparing household budgets to government budgets.

As it is, it's possible that such a comparison is only a convenient abstraction, convenient because it hides details to ease the consumption of a complex subject by the general public, without necessarily sacrificing the important truths eg they were broke, couldn't pay their bills, and were given loans with demands aimed at correcting their situation.
It's covered in the books I quoted, but that's a lot of words. But Joe posted vids as well! There's quite a lot of reviews of the books online, many of them antithetical to the premises of their authors. All the authors are economists. Blyth and Kelton are at the empirical end of economics and pretty even-handed in their approach. Adler and Blakeley come from a distinctly left-of-centre perspective that offer a more explicit challenge to Capitalism.

As to what I called 'conservative narratives' about tax and spending etc: Investopedia has an article on deficits, borrowing and spending that falls on the side of classical economics. Conservative commentator Tom Rogan explains why deficits are bad using the household income analogy here. This article on deficits from a money advice site compares tax revenue to wages, economic crises to losing a job, but in the end seems to try and have it both ways. This blog post from the conservative thinktank The Adam Smith Institute covers the basic assumptions about government borrowing from a fixed pile of money and thus reduces the capacity of private sector investment. These are just from a quick and dirty Google search - you might have better luck.
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There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Economists

Post by Sean Hayden » Sat Aug 29, 2020 10:35 pm

I don't consider tax rates in the developed world to be particularly onerous.
--privileged much? Personally, I think I should at least get healthcare.

It's not a matter of opinion seabass. Prior to FDR's administration, only the wealthy had their income taxed. He expanded the pool of income tax payers to include middle and working classes. (An interesting thing about the middle class in the US: almost everyone assumes they're part of it. They aren't.)

Have you looked into excise taxes yet? They made up the bulk of federal income at the time of those awesome tax rates, and who paid more heavily for those?
This doesn't really add up. Countries that aren't economically devastated will have more buying power and will be more productive trading partners than economically devastated ones.
No, countries that are devastated need help. The US being intact was able to offer that help. Giving the help provided an opportunity to strengthen relationships, establish favorable trade, and to rapidly expand influence through initiatives to rebuild, and to bring the world into the UN.

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Re: Economists

Post by laklak » Sat Aug 29, 2020 11:19 pm

Store brand air freshner. New Econo-Mist! Works like the name brand, but cheaper!
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Economists

Post by Sean Hayden » Sat Aug 29, 2020 11:30 pm

:share:

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Re: Economists

Post by laklak » Sun Aug 30, 2020 12:04 am

Don't be a bogart, man.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Economists

Post by Sean Hayden » Sun Aug 30, 2020 2:47 am

I'd never.

--//--

Before the thread goes off the rails, I'd like to assure everyone that yes, it was started with education in mind, and primarily my own. :biggrin:

So thanks for playing along, and for the reading recommendations.

I saw psychoserenity lurking. Please feel free to join in! I value your input, and I promise I'm only playing a part to get at the best info I can.

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Re: Economists

Post by pErvinalia » Sun Aug 30, 2020 2:56 am

No matter what term it's given, there's no doubt that there's been a political narrative that giving tax cuts to the "wealth creators" leads to economic benefits to all.
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