re: Do republicans have egg on their faces right now in regards to taxation?

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I still think taxes need to be raised to pay down debts and try and keep social security and Medicare around.

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I'll trade you higher taxes for a simpler system (FairTax), deal?

Sure. Won't ever happen, but whatever.

Guess you should describe the fair tax system as I don't know what it is. I do favor a progressive system but don't really care that much. Just know social security and medicare won't be around in the future or will see huge cuts to benefits sooner rather than later the way we are going.

Do you know what the economy would be doing without tax increases? If not, then your assertion that tax increases haven't hurt is baseless. The only issue for discussion should be how much it hurt, and whether the hurt is acceptable.

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I contend this is because those additional taxes paid were on money that would not have gone into consumer spending and mostly would have simply been saved - moved around in different portfolio accounts.

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isn't "saving" how our companies have investment capital used to expand?

and our economic resurgence is on the back of the energy industry and a recovery from a recession. tax policy affects this, but isn't the cause of the recovery. we don't know how our recovery would be if companies had more money to invest/spend within their domain

linking individual policies or, even worse, presidents, to economies is foolish. blaming obama or bush for our economy is stupid

this board doesn't like government fricking with the economy. they didn't like bush doing it, and tehy don't like obama doing it

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Actually I think you just try to hard to make the facts fit your beliefs and preconceived notions.

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well i don't think looking just as consumer spending is a way to create policy, so i don't see why you think i'd accept it

it's not making facts fit anything. it's having a belief system

Yeah, belief system is a way to describe it as well.

This is just my opinion from your posts I have read, I think yours is a bit to principled without enough malleability to situations.

I don't have much of a belief system at all. I see very little black and white ever and think EVERYTHING is situational. Even morals.

So stuff like regulation bad, free market good is one of those things I see as silly.

In the past economic expansion has been accompanied by spurts in new enterprises. We are not seeing that. We are seeing older enterprises performing more efficiently. They have been able to do this with lower than historic requirements for capital investments. And the capital they have required has been available as credit due to the low interest rates the Federal Reserve has supported.

The money that has been extracted from the economy would have been almost exclusively used for capital investments rather than consumer spending. Since that money for capital was effectively replaced by cheaper capital from the Federal Reserve, it hasn't been missed much in the short-term. But what will be the intermediate and long-term effects when the Federal Reserve has to allow interest rates to rise?

Also, the demand for equity investments, or money looking to be invested, has been increasing, but the supply of equity investments hasn't been keeping pace. Thus, the prices of the available equity investments have gone up. Do you think the productivity of the underlying investments has increased in proportion to the increase in price? I don't. And I think there need to be a redeployment of capital from existing enterprises to new ones. But that will be retarded by the increased tax costs to the investors on long-term capital gains. Thus, capital will be tied up in less productive enterprises longer than it would otherwise.

So my answer is, yes. The tax increases have slowed the economy, and they will continue to do so.

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You even seem to acknowledge this in pointing out the low cost of capital right now and too many dollars chasing too few opportunities.

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Isn't too few opportunities all the evidence you need to realize economic growth is not where it could be? While there are multiple causes for too few opportunities, onerous regulatory environment being a huge one, higher tax rates can not be dismissed as one of the causes.

No, too few opportunities has nothing to do with taxes. There isa massive amount of capital looking for somewhere to land. It is a topic for another day but hedge funds and private equity and the masssive management fees and carried interest payouts is a good topic for discussion here.

germandawg, if taxes don't alter behavior, why do have sin taxes?