Dwight Eisenhower, That Damn Foreigner!
I know some believe that government should take from some to give to the others. I think that’s an entirely foreign concept.
— Mitt Romney, yesterday
Might Romney consider checking what the income tax rates on the wealthy were during the 1950s and ‘60s?
Nah.
What was that funny line that Texas Governor Ann Richards used about George H.W. Bush at the Dem convention in 1992? Stick a fork in him; he’s done?
—-
The link from “a fork,” above, is to Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank’s hilarious Romney takedown today. Enjoy.
Adam Smith was a furriner, too.
So was Ricardo.
So was Pareto.
‘Course, they sound furrin, don’t they?
Of course the tax rates in the 1950s where those set during WWII by that evil person FDR, Ike did not have the stroke to reduce them when he took office there was another war in progress, and by the time that got cleaned up the dems controlled congress.
very good post
very good post
And if Eisenhower had wanted to reduce the top income tax rate, what would he have wanted to reduce it to, Lyle? Twenty percent less than the rate now, with the Bush tax-cuts? Not likely. And then, of course, there was that known Commie Nixon, who thought the progressive tax rates at the time were just fine. We had a war going on then, which we were paying for.
We’ve had two wars going on through the last decade, which we made the decision not to pay for and which are significantly responsible for huge debt that Romney had planned to highlight this week by bringing one of those debt clocks to his campaign rallies. The problem, though, is that this guy is campaigning on lowering incomes by 20% across the board, and only giving lip service to reducing the debt. The two are mutually exclusive; he just hopes that people won’t recognize that.
The main point of my post was to illustrate the patent falsity of Romney’s statement that it’s un-American to have a progressive income tax code. Really? It’s un-American to have a progressive income tax code?
How dumb does he think a majority of the public is?
Thanks, gutschiene!
I have said it before and it bears repeating–Ike could not get the Democratic nomination for president today–he would be viewed as too far left. I would vote for him in a heartbeat over our current president, but of course I do not have that choice. Instead we get Romney and Romney light
Lyle
I hate to see you working so hard to defend something which is both stupid and dangerous.
Stupid because ALL taxes take from some and give to others… even if it’s giving to Boeing, or just paying the people who clean the streets.
Dangerous because it encourages people… who are none to bright… to hate their fellow citizens because they imagine that those “others” are sponging off them… when they are having such a hard time making it themselves.
there might be a reasonable way for conservatives to counter some excesses of liberals, but all the Republicans offer is teaching hate, followed by the economic collapse that will certainly follow from treating a modern industrial economy like a feudal “marketplace.”
try to look around you and see what is happening without the party labels or brain damaged “ideology”. pick a problem and solve it… details count… without relying on some magic slogan.. “and then they lived happily ever after.”
The GOP right wing wanted Taft, not Ike. Their goal was to dismantle the New Deal. Nothing much has changed, except this wing gradually increased it’s influence over the party. So yes, Ike was a lefty, in their view. Koch Senior helped form the John Birch Society in 1958–the leader, Robert Welch, thought Ike was a tool of the communists and his extreme paranoia even turned supporter William Buckley into an opponent.
Am I confused? Or isn’t all economic activity the process of shifting assets with specified values? In effect trading one thing for another. Does the government “take from some” when it legislates an income tax system, or any tax system for that matter? When is this trope that taxes are a transfer of wealth going to reach its justly deserved death?
I send Con Edison my money in response to their bill for service. Con Ed accounting then uses that money and the money sent in by all of its customers to pay
its own bills and, hopefully, dividends to its stock holders. Sounds an awful lot like taking from some in order to redistribute the money to others. All economic activity is such a transfer of wealth.
When that transfer is the result of taxation by a government body the purpose is only to fund that government’s activities. Only those activities which can be shown to be totally a form of financial assistance can be legitimately described as a “transfer of wealth” from those with to those with a lot less. The vast majority of government economic activity is not such a literal transfer of wealth. We don’t generally speak of wealth transfers in relationship to the military budget, but soldiers and contractors are receiving payment from the government.
In effect, Romney is total BS. First of all he sequesters his own wealth in such a way as to avoid paying taxes at a reasonable rate. But more to the point, his implication that taxes are a transfer of wealth with no intervening activities between the two points of transfer is grossly misleading.
Jack
I have worked for bosses who go totally insane when the work falls off and the workers “have nothing to do”. so they come up with make-work that does the boss no good and insults the workers.
of course the boss would like to lay everyone off and send them home. but then, but then, thework might pick up again and the boss would lose money while he was scrambling to re-hire the workers.
“welfare” and “unemployment benefits” are in effect the way country manages times when “the work falls off.” it’s a way of keeping the workers alive until the work picks up again, and of course avoiding the high cost of labor that would come from the labor shortages if half the work force died of hunger waiting for the business cycle to come around.
but your average R still goes crazy at the sight of all those workers getting paid while they are not working. doesn’t matter that when they ARE working they are paying the taxes that help his business, or fighting the wars that save his life, or that they paid the taxes (social security) that pay for their own business. your businessman was, i think, raised by a father that went crazy whenever his son was “not working.” these people have absolutely no sense of what to do with themselves when the work is done… go to Vegas, maybe and dream of great wealth and willing women.