Name:
Location: Granite Falls, North Carolina, United States

I'm an ordained United Methodist minister no longer pastoring churches, a former media producer with skills ten years out of date, a writer trying to sell my first novel, and a sales associate keeping body and soul together working for the People's Republic of Corporate America. I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world, who was my best friend for 17 years before we married.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

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I want to declare, if I haven't already, that I am neither liberal nor conservative, but I am interested in facts--and the truth those facts lead to.  So I care about what works, and what has been proven to work.  If a program doesn't work, it should be discarded, and if it does it should be maintained, regardless of which party put it into place.

Now, it may appear that I'm going over the same territory over and over, but I keep hearing the same tired arguments and no good rebuttals.

So once again I'll talk about it.

If it has happened I wish someone would tell me when:  When has there been a tax cut for the rich that wasn't followed by a recession, and when has there been an era of higher taxes on the rich that did not have prosperity?

In the Eisenhower era the top marginal tax rate was 90% or better, and so to avoid higher taxes industrialists put more money into their plants and people.  As a result, there were plenty of jobs, and people prospered.

In the Johnson Administration there was an income surtax, and we paid for Vietnam escalation and balanced the budget.  The minimum wage was $11 an hour, adjusted for inflation.

Nixon took the surtax off and we had a recession.  Or two.

Reagan cut taxes for the rich and we had a recession.  He signed the biggest tax increase in history and we had prosperity.

Bush cut taxes for the rich and we had the recession that brought Bill Clinton to the White House.

Clinton raised taxes on the richest 2% of society and we prospered.

Bush II cut taxes on the rich and we went into a recession from which we still haven't recovered, yet the Republicans want to make these tax cuts permanent.  Can we not look at what works?  Tax cuts don't.

Now for something completely different:

My T-shirt store is now open:  zazzle.com/qoheleth

Enjoy.

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