Ha, it would seem that all this sudden attention has crashed the SEIU web servers. Hopefully, it will give them a little scare to see that so many people have suddenly taken an interest in their activities.
Bat One
· 1 year ago
When I checked it 15 minutes ago, they had Obama's picture pasted all over their site. You'd have thought it was an Obama campaign site.
Which brings up another question... I wonder what the fair market value of such a website endorsement is, and if it has been properly reported to the Federal Election Commission at that value, as required by federal law?
kbiel
· 1 year ago
Wow! It finally loaded for me. Screw fair market value, is it even legal for a union (not a PAC) to go into the tank for a particular candidate? I always thought that they were allowed to endorse certain issues, but not (necessarily) candidates.
golfmann
· 1 year ago
[b]"A National Healthcare Union"[/b]
Gee, I wonder if any deals have been struck in our impending Nationied socialized medicine fraud coming down the pike?
Voodoo economics [quote] * The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) [b]and the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that extending [b]the capital gains tax cut enacted in 2003 would cost $100 billion over the next decade[/b]. The Administration's Office of Management and Budget included a similar estimate in the President's budget.
* After reviewing numerous studies of how investors respond to capital gains tax cuts, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service concluded that cutting capital gains taxes loses revenue over the long run.[/b]
* [b]The Bush Administration Treasury Department[/b] examined the economic effects of extending the capital gains and dividend tax cuts. Even [b]under the Treasury's most optimistic scenario about the economic effects of these tax cuts, the tax cuts would not generate anywhere close to enough added economic growth to pay for themselves -- and would thus lose money.[/b][/quote]
[url=http://www.cbpp.org/policy-points4-18-08.htm]No Free Lunch on the Curve[/url]
Bat One
· 1 year ago
WOOF,
I have appointments at the gym and a MA class afterwards, but I would not miss an opportunity like this to prove your Brookings and CBPP talking points memo dead wrong.
In the meantime, perhaps you would find out who some of those so-called experts are... besides CBO... and the specific CBO document(s) your talking points memo refers to.
You might also explain why CBO is considered to be non-partisan when Director Orszag was appointed just last January... by Speaker Pelosi?
Let's start, as does economist Don Luskin [url=http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/luskin200601270946.asp]here[/url], with CBO's 2003 Budget and Economic Outlook, published in January of that year, before the Bush tax (rate) cuts of 2003 were enacted. Table 3-5 on page 60 listed estimates of $60 billion in anticipated capital gains tax revenues in 2004 and $65 billion in 2005.
The January 2004 CBO Budget and Economic Outlook lists reduced estimates of $46 billion for 2004 and $52 billion for 2005, which means CBO was forecasting a decrease in capital gains tax revenues of $27 billion from a two year total of $125 billion to a new total of only $98 billion for the same two year period.
Now to the 2006 CBO Budget and Economic Outlook Report, Table 4-4 on page 92 to see just what really happened. In 2004, capital gains liabilities totaled $71 billion and for 2005 the total capital gains tax liabilities totaled $80 billion.
While CBO had estimated a drop of $27 billion because of the capital gains rate cut from $125 billion to $98 billion, the Treasury actually took in $151 billion, $26 billion more than had originally been forecast by CBO [b]BEFORE[/b] the rate cut was enacted!
As Luskin put it exuberantly,
[quote]...instead of costing the government $27 billion in revenues, the tax cuts actually earned the government $26 billion extra.
CBO's estimate of the "cost" of the tax cut was virtually 180 degrees wrong. The Laffer curve lives![/quote]
Nor is the 2003 capital gains tax rate cut the only example of such a "cut" not "costing" the Treasury lost revenue, but actually increasing the tax revenue taken in. And the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is not the only agency with bogus estimates and conclusions regarding tax rate cuts.
This from the July 2005 Report to the American Family Business Institute by economist Daniel Clifton, [url=http://www.atr.org/content/pdf/2005/jul/071205%20afbi%20jct%20final.pdf]"LEARNING FROM HISTORY: JCT'S STATIC SCORE CAN NOT DETERMINE THE REAL REVENUE EFFECT OF REPEALING THE ESTATE TAX"[/url]
[quote]In 1997, Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the Taxpayer Relief Act which cut taxes on capital gains, expanded savings vehicles, provided limited estate tax relief and attempted to simplify the tax code. The 1997 tax reduction initiated a series of tax cuts over the next seven years and, as they have consistently done, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) overestimated the static revenue loss and the salutary effects of tax cuts on savings and investment. The most important provision of the act was a 28.6 percent reduction in the capital gains tax. The rate was reduced to the capital gains rate prior to the 1986 Tax Reform Act...
As a result, JCT estimated the capital gains tax reduction would net a gain of $7.8 billion to the federal treasury for the one month left in FY 1997 through FY 1999. Over the ten year period, however, JCT estimated the reduction would result in an overall $21 billion loss to the government coffers...
More growth meant that FY 1998 tax revenues surged $87 billion above the CBO's FY 1998 forecasted revenues and $130 billion above the fiscal year 1999 expected revenues (7.7%). Through fiscal year 1999, JCT expected tax revenues to decline $19 billion from the original baseline. Yet, revenues came in $130 billion over expectations by the close of FY 1999.[/quote]
Capital gains revenues projected by CBO to be $55 billion, $65 billion, and $75 billon respectively for 1997, 1998, and 1999, actually came in at $79 billion, $89 billion, and $111 billion.
For anyone interested in the statistical arcana, Clifton's study explains in some detail why CBO estimates have been so consistently unreliable in under-estimating the revenue gains from capital gains tax rate cuts.
The CBO 2002 paper on "Capital Gains Taxes and Federal Revenues" cited by WOOF does have one interesting point to recommend it, however,
[quote]Because of inflation, the difference between the sale price of an asset and its basis overstates the income that the asset holder earns; taxes are thus imposed on phantom income created by inflation, a characteristic that the taxation of gains has in common with the taxation of interest income. At the same time, gains are treated favorably by not being taxed when earned but when realized, which is often many years later.[/quote]
This is true insofar as cap gains are not, yet, indexed for inflation. Clearly they should be. But there are instances when capital gains are taxed when "earned" rather than when realized, and clearly this is NOT as it should be.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates, by their own published figures, were wrong, as are those who rely on them. Charlie Gibson's statements regarding capital gains tax (rate) reductions were correct, as were his questions of Senator Obama... who blew it!
WOOF
· 1 year ago
Bat against the bogus figures people [b]The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Joint Committee on Taxation. Congressional Research Service, the Bush Treasury Dept.[/b]
Lonely at the top?
Bat One
· 1 year ago
WOOF,
Bogus figures??? I don't think so. If you look real, real carefully, you'll see that the CBO report you wrongly offered in support of the incorrect conclusions originally stated list the very same numbers for the very same years that I cited via Luskin and Clifton. The numbers are what they are. It is your conclusions, and CBO's of course, that are in error... just as I said they'd be.
As R108 has been saying here for months, the difference is between the static analysis model used by CBO, and foolishly relied on by those of you on the economics-illiterate Left, and the more realistic dynamic analysis model, which more accurately takes into account the effect of the lowered cost of capital on the economy as a whole and on those making investment decisions within the private sector.
Unlike the thought processes at CBO and JCT, folks in the real world do not make decisions in a theoretical vacuum. Which explains why Don Luskin and Dan Clifton are consistently right, while the folks at CBO, and you, are consistently wrong.
WOOF
· 1 year ago
Stick with your apologists. The proof in the pudding is the 9 Trillion dollar deficit. [quote]The JCT's and OTA's cost estimates [b]include the feedback effects that gains tax rate changes exert on the tax base through the realizations response.[/b] But they do not include the revenues that might result from the effects on overall economic activity. That omission has been criticized as a failure to perform "dynamic" scoring.(7) Critics often claim that the omitted feedback effects on output, and thus revenues, are substantial, and that not taking them into account both biases policy against cuts in capital gains taxes and contributes to large forecasting errors. Yet [b]feedback effects on growth are likely to be small, and their omission from cost estimates has no bearing on the accuracy of CBO's budget projections, which include growth effects.[/b][/quote]
likwidshoe
· 1 year ago
WOOF said, Voodoo economics and then said, tax cut enacted in 2003 would cost $100 billion over the next decade
A tax cut that costs money. That IS voodoo economics WOOF.
The question is why you support this "Voodoo economics".
The proof in the pudding is the 9 Trillion dollar deficit.
Of which most comes from the voodoo economics you whole-heartedly support. You may call it the "Great Society", but it's really just voodoo economics.
You're not fooling anybody here WOOF.
Bat One
· 1 year ago
[quote]Stick with your apologists. The proof in the pudding is the 9 Trillion dollar deficit. [/quote]
WOOF,
Now you're sulking! And trying to change the subject as well. You've been proven wrong, using exactly the same numbers from Treasury and CBO that you were relying on. Be a man about it, and acknowledge your defeat.
As for this,
[quote]Yet feedback effects on growth are likely to be small, and their omission from cost estimates has no bearing on the accuracy of CBO's budget projections, which include growth effects.[/quote]
The idiot who wrote that, most likely a liberal Democrat, ought to fired for stupidity alone. Obviously, when the CBO's projection is for a 21% drop in revenue ($27 Billion) and the actual tax liability for the same period is a 20% increase ($26 billion) above the initial forecast, that's a swing of $53 billion or 42.4% of the original, pre- rate cut two year forecast. And you would offer that a 42.4% increase in tax revenue "...has no bearing on the accuracy of CBO's forecasts"???
May I suggest that some other subject would be more suitable for your knowledge base and analytical skills. Fingerpaints, for example!
Finally, about those deficits... Even an average high school student, condemned to a government/union run public puddle of educational indifference, can understand that equations have, by definition, two sides. Thus, if a budget is out of balance, clearly more is being spent than is being taken in. Reduce the increase in spending while increasing the growth of revenue with pro-growth policies such as cuts in the marginal tax rates, and the deficit goes away.
Finally, please don't let your angst at being proven wrong about cap gains tax rate cuts effect your honesty in other areas. That $9 trillion you referred to is not the deficit, but the cumulative increase in the national debt, and it represents an easily sustainable 2.4% of GDP. As I suggested before, these discussions aren't going to get any easier for you if you don't know what you're talking about.
WOOF
· 1 year ago
Excuse me for writing deficit instead of debt. You can cite all the simple math and chi-square standard deviation regressions, the economy is still the proof in the pudding.
Bat One
· 1 year ago
WOOF,
Standard deviations? Regressions? Chi-square? Whatever nonsense are you talking about now? Remove all the zeros and a mere child could do the math. The CBO on which you and others on the Left unwittingly rely said that the cut in capital gains tax rate would result in a $27 billion reduction in revenue. Instead revenues came in some $26 billion higher than originally predicted... an "insignificant" error of over 42%!!!
And this happened not just once, but both times the cap gains rate was cut... once under a GOP administration and once before under a Democrat.
That ain't Voodoo, WOOF. And it ain't statistical analysis or econometric modeling. It's arithmetic! Perhaps you should learn some.
kbiel
· 1 year ago
the economy is still the proof in the pudding.
What the hell are you talking about? I thought the discussion was on tax revenue, which Bat One clearly demonstrated was increased by cutting capital gains taxes rather than decreased as projected by the sources you cited to back up your claim that extending the tax cuts would decrease revenue. So, if the facts don't support you, change the subject?
Game over woof. You lost and you're quickly moving from pathetic loser to drooling morn status.
WOOF
· 1 year ago
Revenue gains from tax rate cuts are a small fraction of the revenues that would have been collected had rates been untouched.
When gains taxes are lowered entities take advantage of the opportunity to maximize gains, revenues go up. If Congress talked about lowering gains rates next year, revenues would go down this year as entities held off selling. In the long run gains are realized through sales. Pay me now at a lower gains rate translates into lost revenue later.
Bat One
· 1 year ago
[quote]Revenue gains from tax rate cuts are a small fraction of the revenues that would have been collected had rates been untouched.[/quote]
WOOF,
More rhetorical nonsense! Don't you know when to retire gracefully and go lick your wounds?
1. Where's your proof that this is so?
2. From what point do you start to determine just how much revenues would have been collected? And how exactly are those projections arrived at? After all, CBO and JCT projections have already been thoroughly discredited. Got anything authoritative to rely on instead?
[quote]In the long run gains are realized through sales. Pay me now at a lower gains rate translates into lost revenue later.[/quote]
This would be true ONLY in a fantasy world in which the assets in question always increase in value and never, ever decrease. Furthermore, like CBO and JCT (hardly a compliment!) you are assuming a static, rather than dynamic model. That is, you assume that everything else is equal. But as Luskin and Clifton have clearly demonstrated, everything else is NOT equal. The increase in the supply of capital alone changes all such decisions.
Finally, let me remind you that when Mr. Bush proposed to privatize a portion of Social Security, on a purely voluntary basis, you were one of the most strident in opposing the idea by reminding us that markets do not always go up, but experience downturns as well... Exactly the opposite of what you now imply in relation to capital gains taxes.
"Pay me now at a lower rate" does not always translate into lost revenues later, as you've stated. Just ask the guy whose house appraised at $600,000 2 years ago, but won't even bring an offer of $500,000 today. Or, if you prefer a Democrat example, ask the guy who didn't sell Amazon.com or Global Crossing before the dot com bubble burst in late 1999.
poetryman69
· 1 year ago
At best, Wright is a stranger to the truth. Just as it is troubling that conservatism has become a Satanic cult bent on practicing ritual human sacrifice and dismemberment in Iraq for the next 100 years, so too is it disturbing that a cult on the left thinks they can curse America and lie about it or that we are to supposed to admire them for the way they curse us. Well in that case, dm U too! And in the words of FUtus, the sitting VP, fu as well.
likwidshoe
· 1 year ago
Just as it is troubling that conservatism has become a Satanic cult bent on practicing ritual human sacrifice and dismemberment in Iraq for the next 100 years...
Lunatic alert!
Proof
· 1 year ago
[quote]Lunatic alert![/quote]Ah, for the [i]good old days[/i] when p-man just spammed us with the same nonsense over and over! Now, it has a whole [i]new[/i] line of nonsense!
All Comments
Which brings up another question... I wonder what the fair market value of such a website endorsement is, and if it has been properly reported to the Federal Election Commission at that value, as required by federal law?
Gee, I wonder if any deals have been struck in our impending Nationied socialized medicine fraud coming down the pike?
http://www.seiuhealthcare.org/nationalunion/Def...
[quote]
* The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) [b]and the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that extending [b]the capital gains tax cut enacted in 2003 would cost $100 billion over the next decade[/b]. The Administration's Office of Management and Budget included a similar estimate in the President's budget.
* After reviewing numerous studies of how investors respond to capital gains tax cuts, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service concluded that cutting capital gains taxes loses revenue over the long run.[/b]
* [b]The Bush Administration Treasury Department[/b] examined the economic effects of extending the capital gains and dividend tax cuts. Even [b]under the Treasury's most optimistic scenario about the economic effects of these tax cuts, the tax cuts would not generate anywhere close to enough added economic growth to pay for themselves -- and would thus lose money.[/b][/quote]
[url=http://www.cbpp.org/policy-points4-18-08.htm]No Free Lunch on the Curve[/url]
I have appointments at the gym and a MA class afterwards, but I would not miss an opportunity like this to prove your Brookings and CBPP talking points memo dead wrong.
In the meantime, perhaps you would find out who some of those so-called experts are... besides CBO... and the specific CBO document(s) your talking points memo refers to.
You might also explain why CBO is considered to be non-partisan when Director Orszag was appointed just last January... by Speaker Pelosi?
Later.
where do I send the bill?
The January 2004 CBO Budget and Economic Outlook lists reduced estimates of $46 billion for 2004 and $52 billion for 2005, which means CBO was forecasting a decrease in capital gains tax revenues of $27 billion from a two year total of $125 billion to a new total of only $98 billion for the same two year period.
Now to the 2006 CBO Budget and Economic Outlook Report, Table 4-4 on page 92 to see just what really happened. In 2004, capital gains liabilities totaled $71 billion and for 2005 the total capital gains tax liabilities totaled $80 billion.
While CBO had estimated a drop of $27 billion because of the capital gains rate cut from $125 billion to $98 billion, the Treasury actually took in $151 billion, $26 billion more than had originally been forecast by CBO [b]BEFORE[/b] the rate cut was enacted!
As Luskin put it exuberantly,
[quote]...instead of costing the government $27 billion in revenues, the tax cuts actually earned the government $26 billion extra.
CBO's estimate of the "cost" of the tax cut was virtually 180 degrees wrong. The Laffer curve lives![/quote]
Nor is the 2003 capital gains tax rate cut the only example of such a "cut" not "costing" the Treasury lost revenue, but actually increasing the tax revenue taken in. And the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is not the only agency with bogus estimates and conclusions regarding tax rate cuts.
This from the July 2005 Report to the American Family Business Institute by economist Daniel Clifton, [url=http://www.atr.org/content/pdf/2005/jul/071205%20afbi%20jct%20final.pdf]"LEARNING FROM HISTORY: JCT'S STATIC SCORE CAN NOT DETERMINE THE REAL REVENUE EFFECT OF REPEALING THE ESTATE TAX"[/url]
[quote]In 1997, Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the Taxpayer Relief Act which cut taxes on capital gains, expanded savings vehicles, provided limited estate tax relief and attempted to simplify the tax code. The 1997 tax reduction initiated a series of tax cuts over the next seven years and, as they have consistently done, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) overestimated the static revenue loss and the salutary effects of tax cuts on savings and investment. The most important provision of the act was a 28.6 percent reduction in the capital gains tax. The rate was reduced to the capital gains rate prior to the 1986 Tax Reform Act...
As a result, JCT estimated the capital gains tax reduction would net a gain of $7.8 billion to the federal treasury for the one month left in FY 1997 through FY 1999. Over the ten year period, however, JCT estimated the reduction would result in an overall $21 billion loss to the government coffers...
More growth meant that FY 1998 tax revenues surged $87 billion above the CBO's FY 1998 forecasted revenues and $130 billion above the fiscal year 1999 expected revenues (7.7%). Through fiscal year 1999, JCT expected tax revenues to decline $19 billion from the original baseline. Yet, revenues came in $130 billion over expectations by the close of FY 1999.[/quote]
Capital gains revenues projected by CBO to be $55 billion, $65 billion, and $75 billon respectively for 1997, 1998, and 1999, actually came in at $79 billion, $89 billion, and $111 billion.
For anyone interested in the statistical arcana, Clifton's study explains in some detail why CBO estimates have been so consistently unreliable in under-estimating the revenue gains from capital gains tax rate cuts.
The CBO 2002 paper on "Capital Gains Taxes and Federal Revenues" cited by WOOF does have one interesting point to recommend it, however,
[quote]Because of inflation, the difference between the sale price of an asset and its basis overstates the income that the asset holder earns; taxes are thus imposed on phantom income created by inflation, a characteristic that the taxation of gains has in common with the taxation of interest income. At the same time, gains are treated favorably by not being taxed when earned but when realized, which is often many years later.[/quote]
This is true insofar as cap gains are not, yet, indexed for inflation. Clearly they should be. But there are instances when capital gains are taxed when "earned" rather than when realized, and clearly this is NOT as it should be.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates, by their own published figures, were wrong, as are those who rely on them. Charlie Gibson's statements regarding capital gains tax (rate) reductions were correct, as were his questions of Senator Obama... who blew it!
Lonely at the top?
Bogus figures??? I don't think so. If you look real, real carefully, you'll see that the CBO report you wrongly offered in support of the incorrect conclusions originally stated list the very same numbers for the very same years that I cited via Luskin and Clifton. The numbers are what they are. It is your conclusions, and CBO's of course, that are in error... just as I said they'd be.
As R108 has been saying here for months, the difference is between the static analysis model used by CBO, and foolishly relied on by those of you on the economics-illiterate Left, and the more realistic dynamic analysis model, which more accurately takes into account the effect of the lowered cost of capital on the economy as a whole and on those making investment decisions within the private sector.
Unlike the thought processes at CBO and JCT, folks in the real world do not make decisions in a theoretical vacuum. Which explains why Don Luskin and Dan Clifton are consistently right, while the folks at CBO, and you, are consistently wrong.
The proof in the pudding is the
9 Trillion dollar deficit.
[quote]The JCT's and OTA's cost estimates [b]include the feedback effects that gains tax rate changes exert on the tax base through the realizations response.[/b] But they do not include the revenues that might result from the effects on overall economic activity. That omission has been criticized as a failure to perform "dynamic" scoring.(7) Critics often claim that the omitted feedback effects on output, and thus revenues, are substantial, and that not taking them into account both biases policy against cuts in capital gains taxes and contributes to large forecasting errors. Yet [b]feedback effects on growth are likely to be small, and their omission from cost estimates has no bearing on the accuracy of CBO's budget projections, which include growth effects.[/b][/quote]
A tax cut that costs money. That IS voodoo economics WOOF.
The question is why you support this "Voodoo economics".
The proof in the pudding is the
9 Trillion dollar deficit.
Of which most comes from the voodoo economics you whole-heartedly support. You may call it the "Great Society", but it's really just voodoo economics.
You're not fooling anybody here WOOF.
WOOF,
Now you're sulking! And trying to change the subject as well. You've been proven wrong, using exactly the same numbers from Treasury and CBO that you were relying on. Be a man about it, and acknowledge your defeat.
As for this,
[quote]Yet feedback effects on growth are likely to be small, and their omission from cost estimates has no bearing on the accuracy of CBO's budget projections, which include growth effects.[/quote]
The idiot who wrote that, most likely a liberal Democrat, ought to fired for stupidity alone. Obviously, when the CBO's projection is for a 21% drop in revenue ($27 Billion) and the actual tax liability for the same period is a 20% increase ($26 billion) above the initial forecast, that's a swing of $53 billion or 42.4% of the original, pre- rate cut two year forecast. And you would offer that a 42.4% increase in tax revenue "...has no bearing on the accuracy of CBO's forecasts"???
May I suggest that some other subject would be more suitable for your knowledge base and analytical skills. Fingerpaints, for example!
Finally, about those deficits... Even an average high school student, condemned to a government/union run public puddle of educational indifference, can understand that equations have, by definition, two sides. Thus, if a budget is out of balance, clearly more is being spent than is being taken in. Reduce
the increase in spending while increasing the growth of revenue with pro-growth policies such as cuts in the marginal tax rates, and the deficit goes away.
Finally, please don't let your angst at being proven wrong about cap gains tax rate cuts effect your honesty in other areas. That $9 trillion you referred to is not the deficit, but the cumulative increase in the national debt, and it represents an easily sustainable 2.4% of GDP. As I suggested before, these discussions aren't going to get any easier for you if you don't know what you're talking about.
You can cite all the simple math and chi-square standard deviation regressions, the economy is still the proof in the pudding.
Standard deviations? Regressions? Chi-square? Whatever nonsense are you talking about now? Remove all the zeros and a mere child could do the math. The CBO on which you and others on the Left unwittingly rely said that the cut in capital gains tax rate would result in a $27 billion reduction in revenue. Instead revenues came in some $26 billion higher than originally predicted... an "insignificant" error of over 42%!!!
And this happened not just once, but both times the cap gains rate was cut... once under a GOP administration and once before under a Democrat.
That ain't Voodoo, WOOF. And it ain't statistical analysis or econometric modeling. It's arithmetic! Perhaps you should learn some.
Game over woof. You lost and you're quickly moving from pathetic loser to drooling morn status.
When gains taxes are lowered entities take advantage of the opportunity to maximize gains, revenues go up. If Congress talked about lowering gains rates next year, revenues would go down this year as entities held off selling.
In the long run gains are realized through sales.
Pay me now at a lower gains rate translates into lost revenue later.
WOOF,
More rhetorical nonsense! Don't you know when to retire gracefully and go lick your wounds?
1. Where's your proof that this is so?
2. From what point do you start to determine just how much revenues would have been collected? And how exactly are those projections arrived at? After all, CBO and JCT projections have already been thoroughly discredited. Got anything authoritative to rely on instead?
[quote]In the long run gains are realized through sales. Pay me now at a lower gains rate translates into lost revenue later.[/quote]
This would be true ONLY in a fantasy world in which the assets in question always increase in value and never, ever decrease. Furthermore, like CBO and JCT (hardly a compliment!) you are assuming a static, rather than dynamic model. That is, you assume that everything else is equal. But as Luskin and Clifton have clearly demonstrated, everything else is NOT equal. The increase in the supply of capital alone changes all such decisions.
Finally, let me remind you that when Mr. Bush proposed to privatize a portion of Social Security, on a purely voluntary basis, you were one of the most strident in opposing the idea by reminding us that markets do not always go up, but experience downturns as well... Exactly the opposite of what you now imply in relation to capital gains taxes.
"Pay me now at a lower rate" does not always translate into lost revenues later, as you've stated. Just ask the guy whose house appraised at $600,000 2 years ago, but won't even bring an offer of $500,000 today. Or, if you prefer a Democrat example, ask the guy who didn't sell Amazon.com or Global Crossing before the dot com bubble burst in late 1999.
Lunatic alert!