GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
5 comments:
To whomever just tried to ‘Palin’ my account. I just upped my password strength.
How about actually trying to create an argument. I realize most Obama supporters political views were retarded by the shallow, stagnant tide pools of the secondary/post-secondary education system but the growth can start now!
Man, you don't have to be a statistician to realize that just because two events are sequential does not mean that the first event causes the other event. You have an N of 3 there. Excuse me if I don't look to Charlie Gipson for my economic time-series data.
(by the way, I didn't Palin your account. I am curious to know what that means though).
I think it's facile to argue that an insufficient sample size revealed verbally during a relatively brief MSM news broadcast invalidates Charlie's argument -- the benefits of tax cuts seemed to have come at no discernible cost to the federal treasury.
In posting this I was less concerned about where the needle falls between correlation and causation and more concerned about what Obama's statement reveals about Obama's priorities; specifically that he values income equality (fairness) over income growth. The outcomes of this value system I think are numerically vast enough to satisfy even the smallest of p values.
Some jackass guessed my old blogger login and then attempted to clumsily guess my password this morning resulting in a lot of security emails from blogger.
So have you gone back to your censorship ways? This is the second time I've posted this site.
http://www.cbpp.org/policy-points4-18-08.htm
The partisan think tank you cite still doesn’t resolve the correlation vs. causation question that no one seems to have the answer to regarding capital gains tax cuts. In the short term there very much appears to be an inverse relationship between tax rate and tax revenue (which CPBB acknowledges) and in the mid-term there is data that suggests tax cuts reduce revenue. What is obvious is that cap gains tax cuts rightly benefit the rich more than the poor(they do have all the capital).
What the think tank fails to address are the benefits toward economic growth tax cuts could provide in the form of incentivizing saving and greater availability of capital for investment (venture capital, etc.) Over a long enough timeline what is their effect on GDP?
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-tax-cuts-affect-gdp.html
The only things that are clear is that the relationship between cap gains tax cuts and revenue is not clear and when taken in combination with his “Joe the Plumber” and the absence of redistribution is a “tragedy” comments for ‘01 Obama’s economics are at least somewhat Marxist.
That Ben has decided to review anonymous posts isn’t censorship. If you want your post to show up immediately get a blogger login.
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