Recent Comments

1. almost 14 years ago on Jeff Danziger

   Of course, there’s no reason a tow truck couldn’t carry batteries to give you enough charge to go as far as you can on the gallon or two of gas they’ll bring you if you run out.

2. almost 14 years ago on Tom Toles

   Personally, I’d give a lot to see a President (any President) go to the podium and say “The State of Our Union is (adjective. I have prepared a number of suggested legislative initiatives to address the key issues facing our union, which I have distributed to every Congressperson in writing. I look forward to prompt action on these issues” and sit down.

3. about 14 years ago on Lisa Benson

   Hey, bob875m, most of the “liberal” coastal states like NY and CA send significantly more in taxes to DC than we get back. The difference goes to you bozos who think you “really represent the country”. You should at least try to visit reality occasionally.

4. about 14 years ago on Tom Toles

   And what were the rates before and after JFK cut them? Just saying “cut taxes” is the answer regardless of larger economic context is, pardon my bluntness, idiotic.

5. about 14 years ago on Tom Toles

   jack, You need to understand tax law a bit better. Most of those things you list don’t affect taxable income at all. If a small business takes in $280K and spends it all on payroll, the net change to its taxable income is _$0_. The changes to the tax law that we’re talking about would only affect small businesses that generate over $250K *in personal income – it doesn’t change corporate tax rates – after all deductions, such as payroll, mortgage interest, and cost of sales (things like oil, oil filters, and air filters in your example).

   Bear in mind also that the situation is not Obama looking to eliminate the Bush tax cuts; they were originally designed to expire. What he’s looking to do is extend the tax cuts on people earning $250K and let the rest expire as scheduled by the Republicans when they were passed.

6. about 14 years ago on Tom Toles

   harley, you’re changing the line and then pretending to have found a “lie”. It is true that only 3% of small business owners would be affected. It is also true that 48% of the income went to that 3%. It is also true that only the amount they make over $250K would be affected by the higher tax rate.

   One thing that looking at those three statements should tell you is that there are a lot of small businesses with relatively small incomes. The other thing that should be obvious is that 3% of the small businesses aren’t going to create that many jobs, because a) there just aren’t enough of them and b) a lot of them (as I said earlier) are doctors, lawyers, or other sole proprietors who file as businesses for accounting and tax reasons.

   It’s not enough to just come up with a scary sounding number and say “this is what you should look at!” You have to actually look at it and see what it means.

   When you look deeper (all numbers from the SBA, www.sba.gov/research), the complaints look even sillier. In 2006, there were approximately 27M small businesses in the US. 6M were “small employers” (500). 20.7M were “nonemployers” - the individual lawyers, doctors, and other profressionals who don’t “create jobs”. In 2005-2006, businesses with 1-4 employees created just over 1M jobs, fully half of all jobs created by businesses 500 employees. That indicates that a lot of small business employment comes from starting new small businesses; it should be obvious that very few of those are immediately going to show taxable income over $250K.

7. about 14 years ago on Tom Toles

   Oh, and one more thing: even the small business people who report over $250K in taxable income will still pay the current rates on the first $250K in income. Their taxes will go up only on the amount they make over $250K.

8. about 14 years ago on Tom Toles

   Actually, it doesn’t cover most of the small business owners. Only about 3% of small businesses show over $250K in taxable income, and a significant fraction of those are doctors, lawyers, etc., who incorporate to make their business accounting easier and who aren’t ever going to do any significant hiring. The fact that this misinformation (being generous) has been repeated thousands of times on Fox still doesn’t make it true.

9. about 14 years ago on Tom Toles

   You’re half right, Justice22. At this point, the experimental evidence is overwhelming: “trickle-down” doesn’t work. The reason is simple: the problem is demand, not supply. Interest rates are practically zero (in real terms) already. Credit isn’t as easy as it was a few years ago, but any sound small business can get credit, and can do it cheaply. The reason they’re not increasing inventory is that they don’t see demand for their products. Pure and simple. Beyond the economic models, there have been a number of polls of small businesspeople, who say (contra what you will hear on Fox “News”) that the #1 reason they’re not hiring and building up inventory is that they don’t see demand for their products.

   Ditto for large companies, BTW. They’re sitting on loads of cash, because they don’t see anywhere effective to invest it. Because they don’t see demand coming back, either.

10. about 14 years ago on Tom Toles

    The problem is that you’re not looking at the data at all closely. When FDR was spending freely, stimulating the economy (from ‘32 to ‘36), unemployment was steadily decreasing. In ‘37, he listened to deficit hawks and reined in spending. Unemployment went back up. In ‘38, he went back to full-bore stimulus and unemployment started dropping again. It wasn’t a single policy from ‘32 to ‘39.

    Beyond that, “the left” doesn’t say that “stimuli always creates jobs”. Stimuli usually creates jobs, especially when monetary policy can’t, such as when interest rates are up against a zero bound, which they are right now. When you can’t turn the monetary policy knob any further, you need to find another way to manage things. And when you’re in this state, there’s no (economic) difference between “good” and “bad” stimulus. Economically, you could hire one group of people to dig holes and another group to come behind and fill them in. The important thing is putting money in people’s pockets so that demand can recover and businesses will begin to hire and increase production.