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[Arachno-capitalist]

But will there be cell phone reception?

Im pretty sure at that stage in the game he's thinking satellite link ups, or a phone that works through his internet connection (which may or may not be a satellite connection, but if the island is electrified from the grid they can probably figure out how to run a fiber optic or coax cable up in there)

[Nabubrush]

There aren't going to be any phones when the fuck*ng zombies take over. That's the end point of owning an island, as far as I can tell.

[Nabubrush]

Oh I know, it just struck me as funny - "Hey, all you gotta do is knock down a quarter mill a year for 40 years or so, and if you scrimp, you might not spend your golden years fighting homeless people for cans of Alpo!"

[JorgeFabregas]

When taxes go up, revenues go down.

I'd like to see evidence of this wrt federal income taxes.

Or capital gains.

[wombat]

But will there be cell phone reception?

If you hate people so much that you want to live alone on an island, why would you want them to be able to call on the phone?

[Nabubrush]

To be fair, I think it's traditional to accept a request to cite when making claims.

[Choop]

well-stated, nabu. it follows the time honored rule of thumb "pics or shens"

[AugustWest]

When taxes go up, revenues go down.

You can change the revenuers game how-what you what, but there it is.

Ah, the Laffer Curve.  But how can you be sure we're past the mid point.  On half of the graph, revenue's increase when taxes go up.  How do you know we've reached that tipping point?

[Choop]

citation rejected as opinion and anecdote; please relate facts and data. there has to have been a study done.

[Nabubrush]

Dude appears to get a lot of support from conservative organizations. American Enterprise Institute and Bradley Foundation aren't exactly unbiased, FWIW. He does seem to have some interesting ideas, though.

I will say that likening Obama's speeches to students to "Hitler Youth" is sort of extreme.

[Nabubrush]

I'm not seeing the George Mason connection - am I looking at the wrong guy? (I see Stanford, Harvard, Cornell, etc, so I'm not saying he's a hack.)

[AugustWest]

That's a senior professor at George Mason University talking.

Then he should be familiar with the studies and be able to cite them.

[JorgeFabregas]

It seems to me that Ash's assertion is, in fact, heavily contested*. Perhaps the board's resident economist could chime in.


*Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/carter-reagan-revenue/
This Treasury Department paper says that Reagan's big tax cut, the ERTA, decreased revenue**:
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/tax-policy/library/ota81.pdf (table on page 17)



Looking at graphs of federal revenue provides no simple answers, as the revenue goes up almost every year
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
There is big drop from the last year of Clinton to the first years of W, presumably because of the big tax cuts in tandem with the post-9/11 recession.

I seem to remember a Reagan economist asserting ~5 years ago that the supply-side/revenue relationship had been misunderstood and the claim was never that cutting taxes would increase revenue, but that it might maintain revenue due to economic growth in a best-case scenario. I can't find that specific story right now, though.

**It also mentions that almost all post-war tax bills have been tax cuts owing to inflation/bracket creep. Given that, perhaps the brackets should just be shifted upward. Then we could argue whether $300k/year (as opposed to $250k) is rich.

[Choop]

hey man the onus is on you is all i'm saying

[littlefallsmets]

When you cut taxes and/or increase financial aid (certainly unemployment, anyway) to the poor and the middle classes, it stimulates the economy because they're in a position where they can't not spend it.

The rich already got money and are probably already spending everything they're comfortable spending at the moment, so it goes generally into their various reserves... or into investments that just redistribute capital amoungst the wealthy without stimulating the broader economy... or at best, go into luxury purchases that have little effect on the larger economy as they're produced by themselves-wealthy artisans or wholly overseas or are large collectables purchases that, again, simply redistribute wealth amongst the rich.

If I were obscenely wealthy and I, say, purchased a Honus Wagner card for a million and a half dollars, it would be awesome for me to have that card and all that but the money I spent would go largely to the dude who previously owned the card and to a lesser extent to some already upperclass suits at the auction house.

1.5 million in unemployment checks to 10,000 laid-off folks will probably end up buying... food from local grocery stores, gasoline from the local gas station, maybe a few extra Christmas gifts from the mall up the road... directly getting the overall American economy churning again.

Whatever else we're talking about here, remember: there is no logical defense of trickle-down economics. IDEO-logically, sure, but not logically.