So tell me, what ideas do you have that actually work?

Yes obviously there are no problems going on in the country why if I got to CNN money they’ll tell me how everything is milk and ambroisia, wait what’s this…we’re in a recession? Possible stagflation? Comparisons to 1929? Rising debt? Unemployment rising? But low taxes, they were supposed to make our economy super powered and generate enough revenues to lower the deficit. Low capital gains was supposed to generate massive job growth through corporate growth. Food Crisis? Oil Rising? Financials suffering huge losses? But this wasn’t supposed to happen. Where is the massie GDP growth Dos? where is it?

Its the small investor who doesn’t think they can make it big who should be the one catered to, we make our revenues off the large ones and incentivize the small ones, so they’ll get bigger and eventually be among the group generating the revenues

Sorry but you have to convince me that people won’t invest under that method, in fact i’m pretty sure overall investment would be higher since any small loss in the rich would be offset by much higher investment by small investors

Your idea that in order to fund these high risk ventures we need to have the low capital gains is ridiculous, especially since many people use the low capital gains tax to avoid the income tax in the first place, liek by taking stock options and holding them for over a year.

Great point Aviash. I have often thought that a solution to CEO’s making poor business decisions for short-term bumps in stock prices (such a significantly downsizing or liquidations) is to decrease the economic incentive to hold their stock options. What we need to do is to make sure that CEO’s are worse off if they choose to hold their stocks for the purposes of making them qualified-dividends. Absolutely fucking brilliant. Someone should put you charge.

No what we should do is have an initial tax whether it is coporate stocks, normal income etc. all should be taxed at the same rate initially, then any profits made on investments after that intial tax is tax free up to a certain level, at which point it becomes taxed as well

Your befuddled Stanley because somewhere along this thread, Aviash realized that his brilliant tinkering with the economy and redistribution of income may actually have an **effect** on what people do, so instead of giving up his grand plan — he choses now to try to target the impact to try to fix the problem. You know, just get the bad guy. He can do this, of course, because he has first-hand knowledge of the financials of each company and knows exactly how increased cap gains rates will effect their investors, their balance sheets, their cash flows and everything else.

All hail Aviash!!

I believe that there should be an initial tax on all income, whetehr it is taken as cash or as option or whatever, and then profits on investemtns should have a certain amount tax free, this way you would close the loophole and incentiivize greater investment

Your idea that in order to fund these high risk ventures we need to have the low capital gains is ridiculous, especially since many people use the low capital gains tax to avoid the income tax in the first place, liek by taking stock options and holding them for over a year.

No what we should do is have an initial tax whether it is coporate stocks, normal income etc. all should be taxed at the same rate initially, then any profits made on investments after that intial tax is tax free up to a certain level, at which point it becomes taxed as well

mw, the capital gains tax is currently regressive, as it favors the rich since its lower than the income tax.

That is an interesting definition of regressive.

drop it only once in a while to get that short term boost and then raise it back up

You’re such a trickster. Way to work for Americans!

If you think that a hike in cap gains won’t mean a decrease in capital investment (even with your little game) you are wrong. You will see a decrease in long-term capital expansion by some business sectors. That will result in fewer jobs and a general stunting of the economy.

Look, I work in the renewable energy industry. These companies, even with the grotesque amount of subsidization that they are receiving now and in the future, require considerable equity investment. They are often high risk, speculative investments — if you up the capital gains it will effect the analytic matrix of investors, particularly big ones. WHY would you want to make it less attractive for people to investment in high-risk companies that create jobs among many other things good for society? Not every company is blue-chip. It is the companies in the margins that will be most effected by a cap gains hike — and these are the companies with the most to promise in terms of technological innovation and are the highest risk.

Wrong not in the long term if the only thing changed is the capital gains tax, you can read it right there, it has a small macroeconomic effect. Also economic growth’s biggest engine is consumption 2/3 of GDP, not investments.

Oh I agree Obama wasn’t as ready for the question as he could have been, however Obama was acting off of the belief that the moderators were being honest, which wthey were not

I guess this is where one really needs the audacity to hope that it will generate additional revenues, since there is no evidence of that and you raising Capital Gains in the face of evidence that it will slow the economy.

Got it.

mw, the capital gains tax is currently regressive, as it favors the rich since its lower than the income tax.

since most capital gains tax is in effect double taxation (most of the capital that was invested was initially earned and already taxed.) So it’s apples to oranges to compare the rates at which capital gains are taxed to the rates at which income is taxed, since the capital gains is an additional layer of taxation.

What does the CBO say about growth of economy or job growth? Both intuitively and from what I’ve read, these two things do fare better under a lower capital gains tax in the longer run as well as the shorter run. And certainly it’s intuitive that it would be harmful to our global competitiveness to have our rates go back to levels that are much higher than just about every other country, in a time where recession and joblessness and job outsourcing already loom large.

And a final point: to whatever degree you are correct about adjusting the changes for the parts that occur in response to the change, why didn’t Obama say that? As mw pointed out, he was making the argument that it didn’t matter if revenue went down, as long as the higher rate seemed more ‘fair’.

And while reductions in the overall taxation of capital income can measurably increase economic growth, a cut in capital gains taxes alone is likely to produce much smaller macroeconomic effects.

So capital gains taxes alone do little if anything, its capital income as a whole that makes a difference, capital gains taxes will only create a short term effect if any effect at all, this is about gapital gainst tax not capital income

Joint Committee on Taxation and Treasury both score raising capital gains taxes as raising revenues. There is some behavioral response but much of that is timing and doesn’t affect the medium-to-long term revenue loss.

Note that the experience after the 1997 cut and the 2003 cut is not a meaningful way to assess the impact of capital gains tax cuts on revenues because so many things were happening simultaneously. The JCT score of the capital gains cut in 1997 was a few billion dollars annually. The 2003 cut was something like $5 billion annually. But capital gains revenues can go up or down by tens of billions annually. So it is hard to look at the noisy data and infer ex post the revenue impact of these changes.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/04/16/sorry-charlie-you-re-wrong-on-the-cap-gains-tax.aspx

“In general, there is significant consensus that broad-based reductions in taxes on capital have the potential to boost economic growth over the long run. Reductions in capital taxation increase the return on investment and therefore the formation of capital. The resulting increase in the capital stock yields greater output and higher incomes throughout much of the economy.”

So we agree that a cut in Capital Gains increases short term revenue to Federal coffers and increases economic growth long term.

And tell me again - Obama wants to raise Capital Gains … Why?

The sensitivity of realizations to gains tax rates raises the possibility that a cut in the rate could so increase realizations that revenue from capital gains taxes might rise as a consequence. Rising gains receipts in response to a rate cut are most likely to occur in the short run. Postponing or advancing realizations by a year is relatively easy compared with doing so over much longer periods. In addition, a stock of accumulated gains may be realized shortly after the rate is cut, but once that accumulation is “unlocked,” the stock of accrued gains is smaller and realizations cannot continue at as fast a rate as they did initially. Thus, even though the responsiveness of realizations to a tax cut may not be enough to produce additional receipts over a long period, it may do so over a few years. The potentially large difference between the long- and short-term sensitivity of realizations to tax rates can mislead observers into assuming a greater permanent responsiveness than actually exists.

Because of the other influences on realizations, the relationship between them and tax rates can be hard to detect and easy to confuse with other phenomena. For example, a number of observers have attributed the rapid rise in realizations in the late 1990s to the 1997 cut in capital gains tax rates. But the 45 percent increase in realizations in 1996–before the cut–exceeded the 40 percent and 25 percent increases in 1997 and 1998 that followed it. Careful studies have failed to agree on how responsive gains realizations are to changes in tax rates, with estimates of that responsiveness varying widely.

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3856&type=0

I await your apology

And note the last line in the article I linked to as well; in 1993, 73% of all tax returns which showed capital gains (which represented 74 million returns that year) came from taxpayers who made under $75,000 a year. Extrapolating that from ‘93 to present time, and factoring in the wealthier people who filed returns with capital gains, makes it certainly plausible that Gibson’s figure of 100 million may be accurate (or even too low.) Do you have any links that would disprove it?

About time some of the MSM got their act together, quit the cheerleading and the softballing to ask real, serious questions.

Liberals crumble and whine when the shoe is on their foot. Suddenly, they go into apoplectic responses, wailing, “foul…not fair…those pesky right-wingers… ”
Being accustomed to special treatment from the media, it comes as a shock when faced with reality.

Okay, kidding, I didn’t actually get a chance to watch it. But I just want verify the new position: 1) The media has been unfairly negative and mean towards Obama, and 2) John MaCain (aka “Mr.Iraq”) is the media darling. One question: What exactly are you people smoking and how can I get some?

You know, I’m sure that if John McCain attended a church and befriended the pastor for 20 years of a ranting and raving racists, that would be brought up. I’m sure that if John McCain was friends with right-wing terrorists (maybe Eric Rudolph) he’d be given a pass by the media. I’m sure that if John McCain delared that black people were just bitter about slavery and thus voted against their economic interests and disliked white people — nobody would care.

Face it. If you don’t vet your candidate, your going to end up with some 7th inning disasters, even when they looked golden in the first 6, and that is what Obama is. Hillary was smart to stick around.

And that does indeed seem to have been the point of the entire thing. It wasn’t a debate — it was meant to make both of them look bad and once again establish McCain as the media darling. Mission accomplished.

When every single Obama supporter weigh’s in, and not one one of them says that Obama won, that means he lost.

Was the debate biased against Obama? yes.

Were some earlier debates biased against Clinton. Yes.

Did Clinton win this debate? Yes.

Will it have any impact on the polls. No friggin’ idea.

Happy to help. Obama supporters can continue to complain about the media now.

BUT I am hopeful that so far (knock on wood) these BS “controversies” (Wright/Bitter) haven’t hurt Obama in the polls. Maybe people are actually starting to think a bit more? I hold out some hope.

If tonights debate had to be summed up in one phrase only one comes to mind:
“What a disaster”
When even Republican bloggers are referring to tonight’s debate as “nothing but Republican water-carrying” you know something h…

I think Obama might get a net benefit from this, people are ticked at the debate and what they percieve as an MSM assault on Obama, I would not be surprised if Hillary overreached and came off as being mean and Obama actually got a bump in money and even support in the polls, I think the boos are telling.