Another GOP myth debunked: higher taxes on the wealthy does not discourage work

May 7, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty argue that higher taxes will not discourage the wealthy from working harder or slow the economy. Higher Taxes Won’t Discourage Wealthy From Working Harder – Bloomberg:

“Top 1 percent earners now make 20 times the average, while they made only 10 times the average in the 1970s,” Saez, winner of the John Bates Clark young economist award in 2009, said in an e-mail. “If they worked hard then, they should continue working hard today, even if they are taxed at 50 percent.” The top federal tax rate is now 35 percent.

The two economists’ work is of more than just academic interest. President Barack Obama’s former budget director, Peter Orszag, has said their research on income inequality “helped to point the way for the administration in its pledge to rebalance the tax code.”

* * *

“The idea that we need to pay people many millions of euros per year to get them to work harder is just crazy,” Piketty said in a telephone interview.

He and Saez, a professor of economics at the University of California-Berkeley, agreed in a November 2011 paper that the rich do behave differently when their taxes are raised. They pursue financial strategies to reduce their taxable incomes and bargain for higher compensation, instead of cutting back on how much they work and save or becoming less entrepreneurial.

Peter Diamond, who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in economics, also sees little evidence that raising rates on the top 1 percent of income earners — households making about $350,000 or more a year in 2010 — would restrict growth.

“The overwhelming likelihood is that the revenue- maximizing federal tax rate is somewhere in the 50 to 70 percent range,” said Diamond, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “If you are reluctant to overshoot, well okay, you can only go up to 50 percent, which I like to refer to as the Reagan tax rate." (Ronald Reagan championed an across-the-board tax cut soon after he became president in 1981 that lowered the top rate to 50 percent from 70 percent.)

The economy actually grew faster in the 30 years before that tax cut than it did during the following three decades, according to Diamond and Saez. Gross domestic product per capita advanced at an average annual 2.2 percent rate between 1950 and 1980, compared with 1.7 percent between 1980 and 2010, their calculations show.

A suggestion for Connie Cass of the AP

May 7, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Arizona Daily Star today has this report from Connie Cass of the AP, Who's who? Obama, Romney are projecting mirror images. Ms. Cass says "For all their liberal-vs.-conservative differences, when the two presidential contenders describe each other, they sound like they're ragging on the same flawed guy. Or mirror images of that guy."

Ms. Cass misdiagnoses what she observes. Numerous other reporters have been reporting on Willard "Mittens" Romney's campaign of psychological projection, the "I'm rubber, you're glue" or "I know you are, but what what am I" phenomenon for several weeks now, which I posted about over a month ago.

So to help Ms. Cass get caught up to where every other reporter in the country is already well out ahead of her on, I will repost it here.

Repost: Willard 'Mittens' Romney: 'I'm Rubber, You're Glue'

It has been incontrovertibly established that Willard 'Mittens' Romney is a pathological liar.

But Mittens suffers from another disorder frequently associated with pathological lying, psychological projection, a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which he then ascribes to another person. This is the old schoolyard taunt, "I'm rubber, you're glue – whatever you say (about me) bounces off of me and sticks to you."

Mitten's psychological projection disorder is receiving a lot of media attention this week. Here is just a quick sampling. Paul Werdel writes at TalkingPointsMemo I’m Rubber, You’re Glue or "I know you are, but what am I?":

Call it the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” election.

Running President Bush’s campaigns, Karl Rove became famous for taking his opponent’s single biggest strength and turning it into his biggest weakness. Mitt Romney is laying out another approach: taking his own top vulnerabilities and projecting them onto his opponent.

As Romney begins to settle into the role of presumptive nominee, he is deploying the strategy more and more.

* * *

The “I know you are, but what am I?” dynamic is clear, if contradictory. Obama says I won’t lay out my real plans for Medicare cuts? Obama won’t lay out his plan. Obama says I want to end Medicare? Obama wants to end Medicare.

Even in his choice of stock phrases, Romney has raised eyebrows in recent days for using his opponent’s favorite lines. Twice in his Tuesday night victory speech in Wisconsin, he referred to Obama as “out of touch,” re-appropriating what is easily Democrats’ favorite descriptor for Romney in myriad press releases accusing him of being too wealthy and removed from average Americans to understand their problems.

The question now is whether Romney’s ju jitsu will insulate him from future hits on his well-established reputation for political opportunism — or merely serve to highlight his problems further.

Join Ron Barber today (Monday), 11:30am

May 7, 2012

by David Safier Ron Barber will hold an event where he will emphasize his commitment to protecting Social Security and Medicare today (Monday), 11:30am, at the Lighthouse/City YMCA, 2900 North Columbus Boulevard (north of Glenn, south of McCormick Park). And he wants you there. This is part of Barber's response to Jesse Kelly's "I campaigned … Read more

Coming soon: Tax-Free Fries

May 7, 2012

by David Safier Move over Freedom Fries. You're so pre-Iraq War. France is no longer a bunch of Freedom-hating cowards — or maybe they still are, but who cares? They're a bunch of tax-hiking Commies now that Socialist François Hollande is their new President. Expect a resolution to be passed in the House stating that … Read more

Speaker Tobin – what kind of cheese would you like with that whine?

May 6, 2012

By Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings   Nearly every Sunday morning at 8 a.m., Channel 12 in Phoenix airs Sunday Square Off, a weekly political discussion show. When discussing issues and matters where there is a partisan divide, host Brahm Resnick will bring in a lineup of guests that crosses that partisan divide; when … Read more

Amazing Book: The Republican Brain

May 6, 2012

Book review, posted by John Denker         The Republican Brain        The Science of Why They Deny Science … and Reality        by Chris Mooney This is an awesome book.  While reading it, I was repeatedly tempted to say to myself:   "I knew it! I knew it! Well, not 'knew it' in the sense of having … Read more

Wisconsin Update: Total Recall Primary on Tuesday

May 6, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison has a roundup of the latest news going into the Total Recall primary this Tuesday. Few are undecided about governor as recall primary approaches (highlights):

– The campaigns and special interests have spent about $40 million on a political blitz that has penetrated every household.

– Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker by five percentage points in the 2010 election, is expected to win the chance in Tuesday's Democratic primary to face Walker in the June 5 general election. Polls show him leading former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, who has received heavy union backing; Secretary of State Doug La Follette; and state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout.

– The state elections board predicts a voter turnout of 30 percent to 35 percent, or between 1.3 million and 1.5 million people, for Tuesday's primary, which would be the highest for a partisan Wisconsin primary in 60 years. Turnout is also expected to be high in June, and the race now appears to be roughly even.

Walker, Barrett in dead heat, poll says:

Gov. Scott Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, one of the Democratic candidates hoping to face him in the June 5 recall election, are in a virtual dead heat in the days leading up to Tuesday's recall primary, according to a poll released Wednesday.

* * *

[Barrett] has a 47 percent to 46 percent lead on the governor among registered voters, the poll said. But among likely voters, the situation flips, and Walker leads by 1 percentage point, or 48 percent to 47 percent.

Both results are well within the [Marquette University Law School] poll's margin of error.

The Marquette poll was released less than 48 hours after the candidates' deadlines to file campaign finance reports, which showed Walker with an eye-popping cash advantage.

But the Marquette poll indicates the millions spent by Walker haven't led to him pulling ahead in the polls. These recent results are even closer than Marquette's March poll, when Walker led Barrett by 2 percentage points.

* * *

"Despite Barrett's late entry into the race, he has improved his position both among Democratic primary voters and in the general recall contest against Walker," said political science professor Charles Franklin, who is a visiting professor at Marquette and director of the law school poll. "The contest is now essentially a tie."

The poll interviewed 705 registered Wisconsin voters by both land line and cellphone and was conducted April 26-29. It has a margin of error of plus or minus about four percentage points.

Given the polling, Barrett's primary opponents are pulling their punches to keep the focus on beating Scott Walker. Dems in governor recall race make their case at final debate:

The Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls were careful not to jab each other too hard Friday and risk alienating each other's supporters; the nominee will need a united front going into June. Instead they spent most of the evening trotting out well-rehearsed talking points against Walker.

Barrett and Falk, who have emerged as the two front-runners in the Democratic race, kicked off the proceedings by taking the governor to task over a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report released last week that found Wisconsin lost the most jobs of any state in the country between March 2011 and March 2012.

Scott Walker promised in the 2010 campaign to create 250,000 jobs in his first term. Now, Scott Walker is talking a lot less now about his pledge to create 250,000 new jobs.