What are you going to do with your huge tax cut bonus?

I got a huge tax cut bonus when I moved to Taiwan and opened a company. Oddly enough anything that lowers the cost of goods and services produced in the U.S. is bad for me now so sign me up for higher taxes and more government in the U.S.

I support tax cuts. I benefited from the Reagan tax cuts and my standard of living went up dramatically. I also remember standing in line for gas under Jimmy Carter. I don’t know how it will affect my biz yet, but so far, I’m seeing more traffic.

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I didn’t factor in tax cuts and what they may or may not do to economic growth. I noted the current GDP growth is around 3%, and all that would be needed to more than compensate for the tax cuts, would be to maintain 3%.

Good luck with that. Even taking out globalization (something DP said he was going to reverse), automation and inflation will kill that. Companies are already announcing layoffs and firings. With the tax-cuts making incentives redundant, there is no reason to increase payroll, or even increase salaries or benefits.

Not being negative. Just realistic.

Weren’t the gas lines in 79 more a result with what was happening in the ME rather than tax policy?
Didn’t Reagan raise taxes more than he cut them?

Sure. I’d agree with that. 40 years ago, I was a teenager so I remember the effects on the dollars in my pocket. Jimmy Carter brought us stagflation which is not a lot of fun to live through. I remember that my standard of living increased dramatically after Reagan came into office. Housing interest rates dropped from 18% to 7% and I had the ability to move out of the crappy rented house and into a new home. I had more money in my pocket as a lower income military wife.

Maybe they’ll buy a beach front in one of the sh… … countries?:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

The Reagan years, Americans flooded Europe as the dollar went up to almost threefold to the European currencies back than. European products went to the US in huge quantities, exports from the US on the other hand down the drain.

Everyone loves tax cuts. One of my biggest concerns about moving home is taxes.

But with lowering taxes how does the US pare down it’s debt and deal with it’s deficit? Or is this not important? Where does the moneys for infrastructure, education etc come from? Will it mean an increase in fees and taxes elsewhere? I’m genuinely curious how things work in the US.

They don’t!

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I was 9. I don’t remember all those bad things. I did not see it. I remember the news stories, but I looked out my window, all was right with the world. At least in tiny Cheyenne area.

I believe the stagflation had its origins in the Nixon/Ford era. Ford ran on the WIN slogan. My mom had one of those pins. Whip Inflation Now! Wow.

Here’s how it works in the USA.

  1. Borrow from China.
  2. Print more dollars (only works when USD is pegged to oil)
  3. Refuse to acknowledge that overspending on wars (Republicans) and overspending on “social” programs to get votes (Democrats) increases the debt too much.
  4. Increase the debt ceiling whenever the goverment borrows too much. Never address the root of the problem.
  5. China and other nations stop lending money. Oil is decoupled from the USD. USA becomes third world.
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The only significant way to pare down the public debt is to make it shrink in proportion to GDP. The US needs to grow GDP so big that the public debt shrinks by comparison. Grow our way out of it, basically. The US has done this several times in the past.

There are some debt-reducing dents made on the margin (e.g., Apple’s repatriation of overseas profits will shrink the overall current account deficit), but they won’t bring the public debt anywhere near zero.

I think macroeconomists agree that some public debt is desirable. Otherwise there can be no meaningful monetary policy. Not an excuse, however, for perpetual deficit spending. Hardly.

There’s a debt-to-gdp ratio at which the dollar will lose its magic and the bond market will revolt and it’s game over. No one knows what that ratio is and some even claim the sky’s the limit.