Letting the Bush Tax Cuts Expire is Not a Tax Increase

[Skandelon]

Because conservatives spout this argument like a mantra, using terms like "raising taxes on the wealthy ALWAYS causes unemployment"

I don't think any have said it would raise unemployment in every business or in every situation, but in general it makes hiring more difficult because business owner has less money to pay others. Its not really that difficult IMO.

or "we should NEVER raise taxes" (really, not even in war time?)

I've not heard the war time argument, but I do know that is how the government started the un-consistutional 1-2% income tax back in the day with the promise that it would be revoked after the war. We all see how that worked out.

Government never lets a crisis go to waste. They use it to put yet another hand in the people's pocket, but only because "its an emergency," but low and behold when the 'crisis' is over there the hand remains stealing our money under the guise of "war" and "crisis."

I think 9/11 and the Haiti crisis proved that Americans are generous enough to decide for themselves what efforts we want to support with OUR OWN MONEY, without a bunch of money hungry corrupt bureaucrats ineffectively allocating our hard earned cash to their pet projects.

 

[InTheLight]

I don't think any have said it would raise unemployment in every business or in every situation,

http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=1708397&postcount=38

but in general it makes hiring more difficult because business owner has less money to pay others. Its not really that difficult IMO.

<Sigh> Here we go again. You are inferring that the business owner takes his personal wages, deposits it into the business checking account so that his company can hire someone. Is that how it is done?

When the CEO of Coca Cola wants to hire more people he rounds up the board of directors and has them all 'chip in' some of their personal money so they can hire more people at Coke HQ? But because they might have a 4.5% tax table increase they won't be able to hire anyone?

 

[Skandelon]

http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=1708397&postcount=38

He said, "Raising taxes ALWAYS results in rises in unemployment." But I take that to mean nationally. When the feds raise taxes the unemployment rate goes up. It doesn't mean every business in every situation has a raise in unemployment. I just don't see how you can't see how taking money away from an employer might hurt the employee. Baffling.


<Sigh> Here we go again. You are inferring that the business owner takes his personal wages, deposits it into the business checking account so that his company can hire someone. Is that how it is done? [/quote] Listen. If the business owner is taking home $300K and the government reduces his take home to $280K, he has two choices.

1. He can adjust his lifestyle by traveling less, investing less, buying less, or downsizing (all of which do affect the middle class, as explained before).

OR

2. He can increase his income from his business to make up the difference so that he doesn't have to downsize thus affecting his business' budget and thus the potential employment or raises of his employees (which also affects the middle class).

The latter option may not seem that likely but I've seen first hand examples of this when the business owner will just go back to doing more of the work himself and let a worker go to keep his income level the same.

 

[Havensdad]

Not renewing several year old tax cuts, is indeed raising taxes.

 

[TomVols]

How anyone can say with a straight face that marginal tax rate increases is not a tax increase is beyond me.

Of course, no one is doing much about one of the biggest YoY tax increases around: the Alternative Minimum Tax.