08-30-2016, 11:02 AM
(08-27-2016, 05:53 PM)Anthony Wrote: All right, I believe in "Better-Than-Nothing-ism."
Knowing full well that so long as anyone with even a childhood memory of the Cold War is still alive - having been taken to see The Hunt For Red October by one's parents as a 6-year-old will do - there will never be socialism, "democratic" or otherwise, in America, propping up wages by cutting off immigration and having a large personal exemption from income taxes, even at the cost of a lower top marginal tax rate if necessary, is better than nothing - and certainly better than a return to the 19th Century, as the only recently defeated wing of the Republican Party was actively seeking to bring about.
Similarly, replacing ObamaCare with charity care funded by a tax on legalized marijuana sales would be better than the "nothing" that we would have in fact gotten had Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio won the Republican nomination and then the November election. EMTALA would have been gone in that scenario just the same.
And I'm anticipating the retort that my "better-than-nothing-ism" on the Culture Wars - ENDA and civil unions in lieu of same-sex marriages - proved not to be necessary. But is that really true - considering that the better-than-nothing approach here too would have meant less backlash, and therefore, fewer Republicans in both houses of Congress? And who knows what might have happened in that case?
Your assumption that cutting immigration would raise wages completely ignores the impact on demand growth. We are in a demand-starved economy; its gotten better but the basic problem is still there. Any measure, such as reduced migration, could easily throw us into another economic contraction. And with monetary policy already basically at ZIRP, even the behavioral effects of FED jawboning would be ignored - getting a contraction going in this current environment could lead to soup lines quicker than most people want to believe.
I'm fine with your desire for lower taxes, but if you truly want to make a difference, reducing or eliminating the payroll taxes (as Obama did early on in his 1st Term) would have, by far, the biggest bang for the buck. Just need to keep the monetary clueless morons from their knee jerk stupidity of cutting SS and other safety nets.
On the other end, Trump's proposal to greatly reduce the Estate Tax would do absolutely nothing for the economy - it would be great for his kids though.